by submission | Feb 24, 2008 | Story
Author : Neil Griffith
Allan sighed and took a deep breath.
“I’m from the Olympus Mons colony, I was a kid when it happened.â€
‘It’ didn’t require any explanation, all the worlds knew of Olympus Mons. With over 3000 people tragically killed, it was the greatest disaster ever to happen to humanity off of the surface of the Earth. The event was the Titanic of its era, it even had a classic twist of the folly of man, building a colony in the base of a giant mountain, said to be indestructible by an infamous quote from the colony’s founder. “Whatever disaster may beset the face of Mars, people may seek shelter at Olympus. No home is safer than the home of the Gods.†The largest habitat ever built at the time, no one attempted to equal its scale for a decade.
Because of the thousands of hours of surviving electronic footage, Olympus Mons was also one of the greatest documented disasters of all time. Despite that fact there remained one mystery, as much as was known about the events immediately following the disaster, very little was known of the actual cause. Many conflicting tales of what caused the east side of the mountain to collapse onto the superstructure of the colony cropped up over the years. The Mars government said there was an earthquake from rare tectonic stress causing a landslide. The survivors, however, always gave a very different tale.
“Did you want to talk about it?†asked the attractive woman Allan had just met.
Allan smiled and swirled his drink a little. He was used to this.
“It was an accident,†said Allan.
“How do you know?†asked the woman.
“My family remained inside the colony for almost an hour after it happened,†said Allan, “We were in a part of the structure furthest away from the collapse. My father took his EVAC suit and climbed into the wreckage in the upper part of the superstructure to rescue people. But if someone wasn’t wearing an EVAC suit when all the outer walls get ripped open, there wouldn’t be anyone alive to find.â€
“Did your father find what caused it to happen?†asked the woman.
Allan shook his head yes and said, “Him and about a dozen others looking for survivors stood right in front of it. There was a drill rig still standing there, right at the highest point they reached in the mountainside above where the land broke away. He said you could easily see where a giant sheet of rock must have split from where they were drilling and it caused a landslide right into the superstructure. The guy operating the rig must have been standing on the rock when it broke away and rode it all the way down.â€
The intriguing charm slightly faded from the woman’s eyes and she had the typical look of shock and bewilderment Allan had known too well, then she asked why she never read about the real cause.
“Nobody in space wants to read about accidents,†explained Allan, “Specifically ones caused by man. When you live in an environment where you count so desperately on people to keep you alive it always has to be a million in one fluke, God’s will, or something else’s fault, but not man. People cannot face the reality their lives are constantly at the mercy of somebody else’s incompetence. It’s too much of a horror to deal with. So blame it on the mountain, tectonic stress or some such nonsense. It has nothing to do with the arrogance of man pushing too far and reaching too high.â€
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by submission | Feb 23, 2008 | Story
Author : Steven Saus
Inside, she was free.
Her consciousness flitted from desktop to watch to media player. Her sight was composited from surveillance videos, streaming webcams, and a million stuttering stills uploaded from cameraphones. She flexed her arms, and cranes swung thousand-pound loads, drawbridges opened, and floodwalls moved on electric motors. With a wriggle of her fingers, rising gates freed a herd of cattle, electricity sparked through transformers, and the monotone motions of a hundred assembly-bots gained a little unpredictability. Her legs were wheels and stilts and foundations. She was not afraid of the wheels Inside; they could not hurt her here. She twirled and laughed and danced across fibers, wires, and empty air.
Reality sparked twice and dissolved into the static white noise of pain.
“Sorry, Sissy,” her Nana said. The disconnected wire lay limp in her hand. She could almost see Inside, just on the other side of a fiber optic tube. She looked up. Her reflection was twisted and broken in her Nana’s glasses, though the glasses themselves were fine. The sour smell of her own urine wafted into slowly reactivating nostrils. “It’s time for your bath.”
Outside, she was trapped in the ruined stumps of limbs, the burned skin screaming with pain, her charred vocal cords useless. Her Nana began to gently wash her, the soft cotton cloth scraping sandpaper against the healing wounds. If tears popped the soap bubbles on her cheek, no one could tell.
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by J.R. Blackwell | Feb 22, 2008 | Story
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer
“I’m not one of your lab monkeys, I’m your investor, so don’t give me any more of your scientific jargon.” Mr. Bates pointed his cowboy hat at Dr. Copenhagen. “Don’t tell me about electrons, tell me about how your machine will send Leroy running home with his tail between his legs during the holiday ball at the Hague.”
“Leroy? I’m sorry Mr, Bates, I don’t follow.”
“Leroy Holkins runs the Holkin Institute of Science. He rubs some award in my face every time the holiday ball comes around.” Mr. Bates clenched his fists. “This year, I want to stuff it up his nose.”
“Right, well, our discovery cannot fail to impress him.” Dr. Copenhagen motioned for Mr. Bates to follow him towards the labs. “One principle of science is that if you observe anything, you change it,” said Dr. Copenhagen.
“Doesn’t seem right. My hat is still a hat if I’m not looking at it.” Mr. Bates face scrunched. “How can you look at something without watching?”
“We-“
“Never mind, I don’t want to know. Just tell me how I can rub this in Leroy’s face.”
The florescent light gleamed on the top of Dr. Copenhagen’s bald head. “My team has found a way to observe without observing, to watch the inside of a closed box. Sir, this fundamentally changes the way we perceive everything. Experiments once proven will have to be tested again. It will change science forever.”
“Even for Leroy?”
“Yes, even your friend Leroy.”
“Have you been listening? The man isn’t my friend. Just show me what you’ve cooked up.”
“If you come this way, I’ll give you a demonstration.” Dr. Copenhagen motioned Mr. Bates though a set of double doors. In the middle of the laboratory, on a sturdy, steel table was a mirrored glass sphere. It was a five foot high imperfect sphere, marred and scored, like it had been crumpled and clumsily rebuilt. A tangle of wires connected the sphere to a row of monitors. Mr. Bates saw his reflection distorted in the surface.
“This is it?”
“This is our triumph.”
“It looks old,” said Mr. Bates, rubbing his chin. “This thing feels like, I don’t know how to say it, but like an old church.”
“Sir, I’m not sure what you mean. We constructed this a month ago in this laboratory. It’s appearance is dictated by it’s function, a necessity- “
“Never mind Doctor. Just show me what it does.”
“I’ve prepared a simple chemical reaction for you to observe. If you would just turn to the monitors, you will notice a flask on the screen. This flask is located inside of the machine. Keep your eyes on it while I engage the process.”
Mr. Bates turned to the monitors, studying the glass vial. Dr. Copenhagen scrambled to the back of the sphere and took a crooked knife out of his coat pocket. He hacked at his left wrist, splitting the skin along a pink scar. Smearing the blood along a break in the glass, Dr. Copenhagen watched as the smoke rose from his blood and the glass crackled, then grew to close the gap in the shattered mirror.
In the newly grown mirror, The Others stared out at him. They were smoke and terror, sharp edges and swift movements. Dr. Copenhagen flicked his bloody wrist over the glass. “Just do it, you bastards.” He muttered. The Others flit over the mirrored surface, sucking the droplets of blood though the glass.
“I don’t see anything happening yet,” said Mr. Bates.
“Just a few moments,” said Dr. Copenhagen. “It’s about to begin.”
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by submission | Feb 21, 2008 | Story
Author : Jason Frank
Dear Fontilibus Corporation rescue crew, space explorers, other would be rescuers, or whom it may concern,
How are you?
Good, I hope. Whether or not you’ve found my remains,it should be clear to you that I’ve been better. If I were alive, we would be talking right now and you wouldn’t be reading this. I hope you do read this. It’s just a small little card. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes to read.
Whether or not you are from the Fontilibus Corporation, I want to take this time to detail some of my experiences with their fine product, the Xcape5000. For the most part, this product has met and exceeded my expectations. I’ll elaborate a bit before moving on to the one or two little complaints I have.
Much to my surprise, I escaped the destruction of the fleet frigate I was serving on. The same can’t be said for the rest of the crew as whatever destroyed the ship did so rather unexpectedly. I myself was napping in this pod at the time. I woke up surrounded by some very familiar looking debris. Clearly this was my ship. I’m sure it was Johnson’s arm that floated past my little window. How many hours I had spent watching that arm, the way it coyly bent while holding a drink, the quick spring of it unbending to throw that drink in someone’s face. I can’t tell you how long I’ve had to think about that arm down here.
The Xcape5000 not only got me out of that pickle, it also found me the human life supporting planetoid you are currently standing on. Two for two! I was so happy to be alive that I celebrated. I ate and ate and drank and drank and sang and sang all the songs I could remember.
This would be a good time to segue into some of the less satisfactory features of the Xcape5000.
First of all, the food supplies included in the pod weren’t completely adequate. They really should factor in the celebration factor when determining how much food they pack.
Secondly, the quick responding Fontilibus Rescue Crew, they all looked so attractive in the brochure, turned out to be not so quick to respond. The brochure guaranteed a speedy pickup and I was a bit disappointed with this.
On the bright side, those slugs you’ve noticed squirming all around turned out to be completely edible and the pregnant ones secrete some fluid that packs quite a buzz.They’re fun to toss, too. You might have passed a black rock on your way here. That’s what I use to mark my longest throw (both feet behind the pod’s tail fins). So, as you can see, I’ve had plenty to do. When my arm would get sore from tossing slugs, I would read and reread the technical manual for the Xcape5000. That’s when I found about one more brilliant feature of this fine escape pod.
It turns out that this, and all Fontilibus escape models, has a self destruct sequence. I sure was tempted to engage it when I found that out. Instead, I decided to think about it while tossing some slugs. I came up with a happy little thought that kept me warm at night and kept me going until whatever it was that I finally succumbed to. See, it was an easy matter to rig the destruct sequence to the motion sensors outside the pod. The only problem was, how do you get someone to stand close by for the five minutes it takes to arm?
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by Kathy Kachelries | Feb 20, 2008 | Story
Author : Kathy Kachelries, Staff Writer
Most of them come at night. They assume that their objective would be easier to complete while the target was fast asleep, so we increase security at dusk: three guards outside of the bedroom door and two inside, and another dozen on patrol. Sometimes they have bulletproof clothing. Sometimes they have guns that can burn a hole straight through a body. Our scientists spent weeks analyzing them, but we can’t replicate the battery. It’s unfortunate. Technology like that would be useful on the front lines.
Some of the travelers are scrappy, with banged up equiptment that looks older than they are. From their actions, we assume that they are rogue. They bring their wallets, and based on their ID, most of them date from the 2700s. The other ones, the ones with polished weapons and uniforms, carry no identification. From the manufacture dates on their equipment, we’ve determined that they come from the late 2600s. Words and names are written in Chinese, but the ID cards say America.
At first, this caused concern.
We’ve tried to predict our future based on their existence. We will win the war. Victors don’t make assassination attempts. We know that at some point in the 2600s, the American government realized that their program would be unsuccessful, and the remaining equiptment fell into the hands of private citizens. We know that China and America share military secrets. We can find no trace of Japan, so we assume that they lost their war.
We haven’t shared this information. If they have a protection force similar to ours, they’re keeping it to themselves. If they don’t, we can assume no attempts have been made on the Emperor’s life.
Our greatest concern is assassination in the years before our division was founded. However, the Leader remembers no unusual events, and his ancesteral line was unaltered. We’ve theorized that another group of temporal soldiers protected him then, but left it in our hands once he rose to power. Our records would be invaluable to future generations, and eliminating us would wipe those records from existence.
We haven’t been able to interrogate them. The soldiers who aren’t killed commit suicide in seconds, and their bodies disappear in a flash of light. The rogues’ bodies usually remain, and autopsies have revealed significant changes to their biology. Implants made of an unidentified material. Evidence of advanced surgical techniques. Unfortunately, we can’t use this knowledge to our advantage without the equipment to properly analyze it.
With every attempt, our efficiency increases. Assurance of victory raises morale, and every dead traveler is proof that the Leader will not be killed.
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