All Gentleness And Its Enduring

by deviantArt Contest Winner | Mar 10, 2008 | Story

Author : Salli Shepherd

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. ~Iris Murdoch

Pothilas set his briefcase down on the hallstand and paused to appreciate the afternoon light that lent his white-on-white decor an almost sanctified air. The apartment was warm, he realised. Too warm. He hung up his Director’s robes and hurried toward the biotank in which Sverta lay limply, sunk deep in her fluid, her tubes and filaments rustling. The sun was unseasonably hot, and it wasn’t as though she had the freedom to shift away from its glare. He frowned and closed the drapes.

“Sorry. Stuck in a Board meeting.”

Kneeling to adjust the tank’s temperature gauges and filters, Pothilas shook his head. Had he really just apologised? When he was satisfied that no damage had been done, he sat on the nearby sofa, studying Sverta’s vestigal nostril-slits and the smooth concavities where eyes might have grown. It was difficult to regard these new GenMods as little more than glorified tomato-bushes. Which was the whole point of them, really, but even he had to admit there was something inherently disturbing about the FructaFille prototypes.

The concept of the GenMod “companion plant” had been a stroke of genius on his part, and largely responsible for Pothilas’ rapid rise to the Directorship. GenCorp was banking on the thousands who’d happily part with a year’s salary for the sake of fresh produce and something semi-responsive to care for, when the alternative was standard ration synth-biscuits, mechpets and solitude. The World Genetics Council had finally decreed the experiments sound and classified the FructaFilles as plants, despite their features. Though perhaps those should be toned down somewhat; he’d talk to the Techs tomorrow.

Reaching forward, Pothilas plucked a ripe fruit from one of Sverta’s thicker tendrils. As he did, a spray of red flowers unfurled along her trunk and shoulders. Of course the way she quivered and blossomed at his touch could be nothing more than an animal– or rather, he amended quickly, a vegetable– reaction. Sverta’s tendrils stroked his chest and flower-buds burgeoned on her skin, bursting moments later into full display. Her perfume was unusually rich and heady today. Pothilas felt almost giddy with it as he bit into the fruit.

“Delicious, my dear.”

Where the swell of a woman’s hip would begin, Sverta’s trunk branched into the root-ball from which she fed on nutrient-rich fluids below. Pothilas found himself wondering what it might be like were GenMods permitted fully-formed bodies. He frowned again. Clearly, he’d been too long without proper female company. Brushing Sverta’s vines aside, he hunted through sofa cushions for the neurophone unit.

That night, as he spent himself inside an elegant woman whose company per day cost one thousandth of a GenMod FructaFille, Pothilas groaned and clenched his teeth, his mind filled with a red dazzle of flowers. Sverta, in an adjacent room, drank their pheromones through her pores and swayed to the measured rhythms of the Earth, while bloom after bloom flourished on her body like fireworks in slow-motion.

Outback

by deviantArt Contest Winner | Mar 9, 2008 | Story

Author : Phillip English

Dust swirls past a naked lightbulb and out amongst the wire-brush scrub. There is an old man, mid sixties, seated on the verandah. In his lap lies a twelve gauge shotgun; it is broken open, showing two empty barrels. A cache of shells nestles in the flannelette next to the gun, rolling back and forth with each deep breath he takes. The only sound is the continual plink of a moth impacting against the glass of the bulb.

A shuffling wakes the old man up, and he starts as he regains consciousness, spilling shells onto the hardwood slats. It’s the dog, a kelpie cross. It stands at the edge of where the greasy shine from the lightbulb fades into the night. Its back left leg is trembling and ticking. It stands there for a minute or so, and the old man stares at it. Eventually the dog lies down, sitting like a sphinx in the dirt and watching the old man bending down slowly to pick up the shotgun rounds.

There is silence once more; the moth has flown away to chase the spark of stars. The verandah’s joints creak as the man stands up. A puff of dirt floats in the now-still air between them as the dog springs to all fours. The man loads his gun and snaps back the barrel. The dog’s ears prick. He brings the rifle up to his shoulder and fires both barrels straight at the dog’s head. The dog is kicked back, and its body tumbles out into the darkness. The man swallows, licks his lips, and reloads.

He finishes tucking two more shells into their home just as the dog staggers back into th light again. Its lower jaw is stripped away, leaving a palate peppered with slivers of fang to pool bloody saliva onto the dirt. Added to this is a small string of silvery liquid, like mercury, dripping from the remains of its nose. It appears to be fighting against the flow of the blood; some of it succeeds in regaining its place within the confines of the dog’s skull.

The old man flips the barrels closed again and takes aim. The scratch of the gun against his stubble reminds him of the animals that he has destroyed. And not just animals. He fires once more, and the dog’s skull explodes in a silver streak, twisting the lightbulb’s feeble glow into a neon fuzz that settles slowly to the dirt.

He relaxes slightly, drops the gun from his shoulder, and stomps back to the seat on the verandah. There is time for sleep now; the flies will take until morning to discover the corpse and lay their eggs, before springing off in a perfectly controlled formation; a silver speck residing in each of their tiny brains, searching for its next, stronger host.

Arwik Razy

by Kathy Kachelries | Mar 7, 2008 | Story

Author : Kathy Kachelries, Staff Writer

He’d always known about them.

When it snowed, Arwik lived in abandoned buildings. He slept in the rusted creases of abandoned subway tunnels to escape their satellites, and he ate whatever he could forage. He found a lot in disposal bins, but he’d never tried to eat it. People poisoned that stuff, he knew.

They injected tracking devices into his skin when he slept. Often he’d find an unexplained pockmark on his body, something that looked like an insect bite, but he knew what was inside of it. He used to try to gouge it out, but he soon realized that they’d used nanites. Thousands of silicon creatures, eating him from the inside out.

No one believed these things.

At first, he’d tried to warn people. He tried on the subways and on the streets, but everyone walked by with their eyes firmly on the ground. They could come for anyone, he said. They could come for you. Arwik hadn’t wanted anyone to get hurt.

Now, it was about survival.

Sometimes he saw the cops on the street and felt their sideways glances. Sometimes he couldn’t see them at all, but felt their eyes as they watched him through the scope of a sniper rifle. Arwik had seen those rifles, watched them in movies as a child. He knew the power of invisibility.

Once, they’d cornered him on the L train. The trackers, he knew. The goddamn trackers. They always knew where to find him. They offered help, but he knew what help meant. Scalpels and brainwashing. His eyes held open with wires as he would be forced to watch propaganda. Drugged with truth serum and forced to confess to everything he knew about them. He’d be executed in an electric chair, or shot at point-blank range in a seedy alleyway. Sometimes he wished that he hadn’t been smart enough to figure them out. If he hadn’t known the truth, they might have left him alone.

Arwik ran, dashing up slush-covered subway stairs until he found a dumpster in a trash-filled alleyway. The metal lids scrambled the signal, and surrounded by fish bones and plastic bags, he knew that he was almost protected. They could have used dogs, but they didn’t. That time, he’d gotten away.

It’s impossible to know who’s real. Some of them are brainwashed, or have given into the nanites. Some of them might even be cyborgs. Arwik has nowhere to turn. No one is ever safe.