by featured writer | Oct 26, 2006 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Featured Writer
The nails slide out effortlessly from beneath the shizu skin of my fingers. The swollen carapace of my back splits in even sections and the hive breathes. The hum becomes a vibration you can feel in your chest.
Something like icing bleeds out my tear ducts and I’m crawling with death. The paper medical gown twitches where it shouldn’t and starts to tear as new bones find new ways to move and the flesh swells to accommodate. My eyes are wide and black. New teeth start growing out of my shoulders and elbows. Saber tooth armour. Clear quartz cataracts rise out of my forehead. The diseases in the air reflect back through the magnifying bacterial lens that is my aura.
I make Pestilence look like a child just starting out.
I’m not even out of control yet.
I am barely seen scissors in a pulled open mouth. I am moving so fast I become a series of shadows. I become a force. Sounds of my destruction are lagging a long time behind my actions. People and equipment are obliterated before they’re aware of danger. I’m moving so fast it’s like I’ve been unhinged from time. It seems obscene that I should be able to maintain this kind of speed.
Tumours form on my skin and blink open to reveal new biological armaments. The cells of my body have finished what the creators intended and are starting to improvise. I am bionanotechonology. Tiny molecular compound copies of me spray out in spore clouds to infect and replicate other flesh.
My only limit now is imagination. I’m becoming art. A bioluminescent avatar of creativity though destruction. A messenger of the meat come to destroy. I am all the horsemen. I’m the nightmare of the flesh. I’m conscious disease. I am biomass. I’m DNA with the lid off. I’m psychotic cellular intelligence with no brakes of conscience. I’m cancer’s descendent.
I leave a trail of hot fat and warm blood.
I tear through the lower floors up to street level. Guards empty entire magazines of experimental weaponry into me. They become food. I burst through the asphalt into afternoon sun. I am a multitude of arms and eyes and teeth behind a black ashen sporecloud that does not obey the wind.
I can smell the entire population of this city waiting to become one with me.
I figure if they can get me somewhere airtight with walls I can’t break…but that’s academic. I don’t trust them to get that organized before I become too big to contain.
They. I’m already thinking of them as they.
So easy for humanity to be shed.
Here they come. I lose conscious thought as I expand all my senses to the fight and the expansion.
___________________
This is your future: Submit your stories to 365 Tomorrows
365 Tomorrows Merchandise: The 365 Tomorrows Store
The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow
by submission | Oct 25, 2006 | Story
Author : Angela N. Hunt
“We’re flying.â€
His voice is soft. Satisfied.
Her smile never wavers, nor her posture or the angle of her head to the angle of her swan white neck. But the hand in his squeezes for a half-second. Her feet keep perfect time with his as they glide across the floor, bars of the Blue Danube Waltz carrying them as effortless as their feet.
They slide into a perfect pause.
“Like doves,†she says quietly.
And they’re off again, whirling around each other in a tighter orbit than any binary star.
* * *
Caspurtina, the Residence’s sorceress, turned away from watching the dancers with a satisfied nod. Looked like she’d have her Dancers for the Mystery after all. With a flick of her wrist, she shook out the fingers of one elegant, manicured hand over the surface of a nearby nanoparticle-board table, one of many surrounding the dance floor, each displaying a different fractal star pattern. Starlight fell in brilliant sparkles from her fingertips. Wouldn’t do to have too much residual enchantments mucking up her next working.
The sparkles played havoc with the nano-surface, setting up a new and exciting fractal pattern not in the designer’s specs that then proceeded to make the surface of the table break out in a swath of tiny pansies. She’d have to have someone clean that up.
She took in the group of somber suited investors.
“As you can see, we have all the elements that we require for our gala,” Caspurtina said.
“Will there be a need of additional funds?” the banker from Tokyo inquired.
Caspurtina grinned, pure charm.
“Only if you wish to flatter me,” she replied and he bowed in amused return.
With that, the investors dispersed, off to find other entertainments for the evening.
Caspurtina took one more look at her chosen Dancers, though they didn’t know it yet, taking in the white feathered skirt floating against the sharp black of tuxedo pants, feet flashing like wings.
Really. What better way to summon the ghosts of Fred and Ginger for a command performance?
___________________
This is your future: Submit your stories to 365 Tomorrows
365 Tomorrows Merchandise: The 365 Tomorrows Store
The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow
by featured writer | Oct 24, 2006 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Featured Writer
I’m standing in front of the safety glass and seeing the thing look up at me. Its legs end in black tentacles that look diseased. The fingernails of its left hand are very long. One nostril is dripping what looks like grape juice onto the cell floor. It’s a little pathetic and I get a swell of sympathy that I have to stamp down on immediately.
I have to remember the deaths. I have to remember Allison.
I try to keep the steel in my voice. I can see Allison in his jawline. I can see Allison in the patches of long blond hair that poke through the short black haircut. I can see Allison in his left blue eye with the long eyelashes.
“Ask question?†he says to me.
“Yeah, I have a question†I say. “Are you scared of dying?†I ask this thing.
With a shock, I can see that it has two blue eyes now and the rest of its patchy and uneven hair is turning blonder by the moment.
“Not as long as I know you’re here with me.†It responds. Its voice is getting higher, closer to Allison’s. Its English is getting better. It’s gaining focus. Its shirt is getting tighter as Allison’s breasts push forward and fill the man’s shirt that it’s wearing.
It’s gaining strength by the second. Allison’s been gone for months. I thought I could to do this. I was kidding myself. My vision is starting to blur with tears and I can see that Allison is nearly complete before me behind the glass.
I watch my fingers reach towards the lock. I stop and look at my traitorous hand. I don’t have the code to open the cell anyway. I have no idea what I was about to try to do.
“Brian†it says. Allison says my name. “Let me out. Let’s go somewhere. Quit your job. We can live somewhere hot. Let’s forget this and get out of here.â€
I breathe deeply. I realize that I’m standing and my forehead is pressed against the glass. With a start, I stand back and straighten my clothes. Control. Control. I turn and walk towards the main elevator up to the office. I leave this parasite behind.
“Brian, they’re going to kill me!†the Allison thing shouts to me as the door to the elevator closes.
It’s a few floors up and then a brief scan on checkout and I’m out. They saw the whole thing on CCTV so they don’t ask me any questions. They let me out into the fresh air and into my empty life.
The department doesn’t know when Allison was taken. I may have been living with the parasite for days before they detected it. Maybe weeks. I might have made love to it.
I get behind the wheel but the shaking and the tears start before I’ve started the car. I feel almost grateful that the thing in the there let me see her one more time.
___________________
This is your future: Submit your stories to 365 Tomorrows
365 Tomorrows Merchandise: The 365 Tomorrows Store
The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow
by Stephen R. Smith | Oct 23, 2006 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
He made the corner into the alley at a full sprint, nearly missing a mountain of abandoned waste containers, but not completely. One foot caught a lid, throwing him off balance, and momentum and gravity combined to send him skidding across greasy asphalt into the wall opposite. Rain water and urine raced each other to saturate his coat and chinos as he struggled to regain his feet, sweat and fresh blood clouding his vision where the alley brick had left its mark.
He’d killed a mech just ten minutes earlier, and he knew exactly what would happen if they caught him.
The buildings lining the alley stretched skyward, shutting out any light from above, and the streetlights could no longer penetrate the murk as he stumbled forward. A dumpster loomed out of the darkness, offering a route to a fire escape above, and he clambered upwards, leaping from the complaining metal of the bin to the hanging rungs of steel, then pulling hand over hand until he could hoist a foot up and climb higher to safety.
He hadn’t meant to kill anyone. He thought he’d surprise his girlfriend at home, used his key to her apartment, and found him there, with her.
The iron staircase announced his ascent to anyone with any interest, but he was past caring now, he needed to get clear of the area, and once he was on the roof, he was sure he could disappear.
She’d screamed when she saw him, just standing in the doorway of her bedroom, watching this other man, watching what he was doing with her. Something snapped, and he was suddenly wielding a lamp he didn’t remember picking up, swinging repeatedly at this strange mans head.
The iron rungs curled over the rooftop wall, and his heart pounding, chest heaving, he threw himself onto the flattop roof, gravel scattering beneath his boots as he raced towards an adjacent rooftop at random. He could run for miles up here, the buildings so close together, he could be halfway across the city before anyone knew to look for him.
He’d hit the stranger ten, maybe thirty times when it happened, the bastard started twitching wildly, not like a human would twitch, but violently, mechanically, arms and legs flailing about in perfect synchronized rhythm, the girl scrambling to safety, not from the bloody lamp, but from the flailing stiff limbed machine in a death fit conniption on her bed.
This was a somebody’s mech. Someone would own him, and they’d hunt him down and exact payment for the damage he’d done to their property. He fled. She screamed after him, but her words lost themselves in slamming doors and his tumbling down stairs. Lost themselves in the realization of liability and the promise of violent repercussions. People had been killed for accidental damage to these mechanical men, and he’s smashed this ones brains in, pulverized it beyond repair.
The city moved beneath his feet, slipped by as he jumped the narrowed gaps where buildings leaned towards each other, reaching to close any available space above the streets. Time and distance passed between he and his crime, and with each step, each ragged breath he began to feel less frantic. He would be safe, had to be safe, they couldn’t find him up here, they’d no idea where he’d gone. Maybe she wouldn’t tell them who he was.
He leapt again, a sudden drop in his stomach as the next roof came up to meet him, a sudden flare of blue light, voices amplified into his brain. Panic overtook him and he lurched left, trying desperately to make the next rooftop. A sudden flash, eyes flooded with light before consciousness was ripped violently away and gravity took complete control.
The officer lowered his weapon, and thumbed his radio. ‘Control, this is five niner two, two, seven, the runner’s down, send a pickup to my twenty – over.’
A second uniformed man turned off the tracker he’d been focused on, walked to the fallen figure and kicked it lightly in the ribs. ‘I never will get why they bother to run.’
The shooter powered down his pistol and holstered it. ‘You want to be careful kicking that thing, you break it, and its owner will see to it you pay for it the rest of your career.’
___________________
This is your future: Submit your stories to 365 Tomorrows
365 Tomorrows Merchandise: The 365 Tomorrows Store
The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow
by submission | Oct 22, 2006 | Story |
Author : Pyai (aka Megan Hoffman)
On top of the highest shelf of plywood painted to look like expensive wood, in the corner of the spare bedroom, sat a globe. The globe rested on a base of wrought iron with gentle scrolls and turned out feet like a bathtub. The globe itself was made of copper, the lines of latitude and longitude the structure of the sphere and the continents rough globs of flattened metal not actually bearing resemblance to modern continents other than Africa adrift in an empty hollow sea.
One rainy evening my brother Dante had taken the globe down to use in his newest and bestest invention. Open on his floor were books on Time Travel, Teleportation, Electrical Engineering, and Quantum Calculus. Math, he once tried to explain to me, worked differently if you managed to get small enough.
He came out of his room the next morning looking dirty and disheveled, grinning from ear to ear with huge cuts on his arms. Mother scolded him and patched him up, but I snuck into his room and listened. He spoke first of visiting a Maha Raja in ancient India and convinced him he was a magician by accurately reading the stars for him. There had been no impending cosmological phenomenon like an eclipse to seal his place as the Maha Raja’s favorite foreigner, so once the ruler had lost interest in him he had to flee for this life with the aid of the Maha Raja’s daughter, who of course could not run away with him because she was betrothed to another man.
After that he had traveled to Old New York City before the wars and aided the Mayor’s detectives in solving some mob-related murders. Dante showed me the place where one of the mob bosses’s henchmen had cut him with a knife. It was quite an impressive mark, even after Mom had slathered nano-disinfectant goop allover it.
When I grow up I want to be just like my big brother Dante. He always builds these great inventions and has these great adventures. He says I’m too little to help him with anything. Mom says he’s One Of A Kind. I can’t wait until I’m old enough to be One Of A Kind, too.
___________________
This is your future: Submit your stories to 365 Tomorrows
365 Tomorrows Merchandise: The 365 Tomorrows Store
The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow
