Angel of Time

by | Mar 5, 2008 | Story

Author : Jacinta A. Meyers

A man lay limp in my arms. The body of a little boy was sprawled a few feet away from us, his young face motionless against the blood-stained earth.

“I will stay with you through this.” I said, stroking the man’s face very gently. “I won’t leave you.”

He coughed a little, grit his teeth.

This was my least favorite part. I had only seen an unmaking twice before this. It’s different from death. In an unmaking, the body disintegrates before your very eyes. The DNA in every cell actually unwinds, each reverting to a more primitive state until they cannot hold a recognizable form, cannot continue to function as a complex whole organism. It’s a relatively quick process compared to the amount of time it takes a human being to develop over the course of a lifetime. The rate of change is comparable to the development of a fetus, only in reverse. I watched the wrinkles fading from his face.Very soon this man would be nothing more than a puddle of inert, inorganic matter.

His eyes roved slowly over to the boy still lying in the grass. “Why?” He managed.

“Because I had to.”

He sputtered a bit. “I only came back to tell myself I had a future to be hopeful for. I can remember being so… so despondent then…”

“I had to kill you. That is our job. The past must be protected at all costs.” I said it as I had been trained to. “Through it, we are protecting our future.” He would understand, if he still could.

He was shrinking in my arms. Growing lighter, growing limper. A small trail of saliva ran down his chin. He shuddered. But something in his eyes hardened. “You…are wrong. There is… no way you can be sure.” He was fighting it. “You… may have damaged the future worse… than I might have. Worse… than you could ever know.”

But I was smiling. I held his diminishing body close. “There will still be a future for us to be hopeful for.” I said. “Shhh, it will be over soon.”

“You… you broke the rules… you and your kind…”

“Perhaps we did.” I whispered gently to what was left of his ear. “But you broke them first.”

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Smoke

by | Mar 4, 2008 | Story

Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer

Below level one-one, there have been several issues with the life support mechanisms. High temperatures, pressures, and an abundance of certain harmful chemical compounds have rendered these levels uninhabitable. You will require a blue keycard to pass the environmental filters, and even so, such an action is not recommended.

“Ash!” Peter yelled, scanning around for his companion. Ash and Peter were regular visitors to the zero-levels, part of a small cadre of ‘smokers’: people who explored and mapped the zero-levels. They repaired essential machinery, looted non-essential gear, and created maps. The only real danger any more was the smoke, and that was most of the appeal in and of itself.

The grating underfoot was heating up. His helmet was analysing the smoke: as they penetrated lower, the percentage of sulphur was increasing. This was level zero-three, the last level that had been reliably mapped. Any further down, and the corridors couldn’t be relied upon to stay in the same place from day to day. Peter dragged his fingers across the wall to his left. A long string of plastic stretched away from his fingertips, and he swore. The wall was searing hot, and he’d just reduced the integrity of his gloves. The choking smoke was only getting thicker.

Ash was nowhere to be seen.

Peter’s helmet picked up and amplified a skittering sound coming from beneath his feet. There was a hole to his right. In the smoke, forethought was a luxury that most couldn’t afford. It had killed a good number of people that had paused when they should have jumped. He dropped through the hole, landing safely on zero-two.

The visibility was down to about a metre, so Peter upped the power on the primitive radar built into his suit. A faint return came back from the corridor to his left. Ash. He chased it down, radar traces mapping the outlines of the corridor onto his visor.

He was moving too fast. He never saw the floor fall away beneath him. He crashed down onto zero-one, and promptly blacked out.

Pain screaming along his arm and across his back dragged him back to consciousness. The skin of his suit had melted to the floor where he’s struck it. The radar unit was damaged, emitting at only irregular intervals. Someone dragged him to his feet, something clacked against his visor.

“You’re in a bad way, Peter. I’ve found somewhere safe to rest, but you have to trust me. Do you trust me?”

“Yes!”

Ash took hold of Peter’s good arm, and started to drag him along, running through corridors that were slowly drifting, semi-liquid due to the heat. Peter dimly wondered how he could move with such surety. Suddenly, their run sloped downwards. Zero-zero. Still, Ash didn’t stop. With a last burst of speed, he dragged Peter through one more corridor, and down through a hole.

They fell – not far – onto a soft surface. The smoke was gone. In a daze, Peter stared upwards. Another suited individual was pushing a hatch shut and sealing it. Ash propped himself up, and pulled Peter’s helmet off him. The small compartments and corridors that Peter had known all his life were missing: they were laying on grass, the air was sweet and clear. Soft light permeated the area. There were trees in the distance, showing up sharp against the bulkhead. There were plants growing in neat rows.

“Welcome to Agriculture One, Peter.”

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Dark Water

by | Mar 3, 2008 | Story

Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer

“When the Surface became too crowded, Man had already hollowed out great caves in the crust of the Earth, mined for metals with which to build his towers. It was simple for those who desired space to move downwards, found the first cities of the UnderEarth.”

-Excerpt from The Laws of the UnderEarth

Testimony of Arla, The Insane

Eleanor was burning, her pelvis felt blistering to touch. Her breath came out wet and hot, like steam from a kettle. She stumbled forward in the darkness, one hand on her swollen belly, the other clutching the cave wall

Eleanor thought again of turning back, of the hospital of Under Shanghai, it’s doctors clad in sunflower yellow. Then she felt the Fury, like before, that wash of emotion that had driven her deeper into the uninhabited caves. She stepped forward into cold, wet mud and the Fury abated, as it always did when she obeyed.

Eleanor cried out with another burning contraction and stumbled into the mud. She crawled forward, the blue light of her glow necklace showing only her muddy hands and darkness. Eleanor heard the soft gurgle of water ahead and the sound made her thirsty. She wanted to embrace the water, to be surrounded by it, to drown.

Eleanor touched the surface of the lake. She slid into the water, like a bubbling volcano meeting the sea. The light of her glow necklace reflected off the surface of the dark water. The caves extended farther than her light could reach, deep and long.

Eleanor leaned her head into the mud on the shore and let her body float in the water. Her contractions quickened and she felt her molten center squeeze, pressure building. She cried out, feeling herself tear, her blood leaking from her, the head building, pushing out from inside her body.

She felt the Fury approach, close, closer and then there was cold flesh, snaking around her legs and arms and neck. She struggled, burning, her baby fighting inside her. The wet flesh slapped against her neck, pulled her under and pushed her up, gasping. Eleanor screamed. The Fury pulled on her throat and Eleanor sobbed. She pulled off her necklace, her only light, throwing it back the way she came, back into the dark.

The Flesh was soft now, supple, supportive. It cradled her. Eleanor felt something scratch the small of her back and relaxed, cold and calm. The contractions were coming fast now. Eleanor felt her body pushing and some other force pulling the child out of her. Instead of the Fury, Eleanor felt the silence, vast and old. Then she was empty.

There was a splash of moving water and Eleanor felt something rise before her in the darkness, something massive. The flesh around her quivered and she could see, in dim outlines, thin shapes snaking towards her.

Her eyes adjusted and she could see a black outline in the dark, tentacles and the shape of her baby. Eleanor squinted and thought she saw glistening eyes and dark moving shapes. Eleanor reached out for her child, towards the huge, alien shape.

The baby’s eyes opened. Its pupils were red as lava. Eleanor felt the flesh around her quiver. The mind that had touched hers, great and old was deciding if it should keep the baby or sink back into the water. Eleanor felt her mind go clear, go dark.

The UnderEarth God enveloped the baby for a long moment. Then it held the infant out to Eleanor. She took her baby and brought its molten mouth to her breast.

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Go out with a Bang

by | Mar 2, 2008 | Story

Author : Christopher Kueffner

“I thought you didn’t smoke,” she asked.

“I did, and I quit,” he replied through a bluish cloud, “but it seems an appropriate time to pick up the habit again.”

“Really,” she drew the word out as if stretching it like taffy. “That could very well be the most ridiculous statement I’ve ever heard from you, and that’s saying something.” She got out of the bed and walked over to the kitchenette. She filled a glass with water and drank it, unworried by her nakedness.

The man, also naked, took another drag from his cigarette. “A cigarette after sex is nice.” He contemplated the little pillar of ash at its end. “I’ve found something.”

“Oh?” She absently picked a feather from the bed off of her right breast.

“Yup.”

“What?”

“An asteroid.”

“Oh, come on,” she sniffed. “Ever since that asteroid missed us a couple of years ago, everybody’s talking about asteroids.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and handed him the glass. He sipped, looked fondly at her body and handed the glass back to her.

“Well, I found one, nevertheless.” He stubbed out the cigarette in a saucer on the nightstand. He leaned over and kissed her side where the waistband of pants would normally be. He kissed his way up her ribcage.

“What was it called, Aprophis or something?” she asked.

“Apophis was the one that just barely missed us in 2029,” he stopped kissing her body and lay back. “This one is not Apophis; it’s a different one.”

“What, is it going to hit us or something?”

“Well, yes.” He drew another cigarette out of the pack.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not.” He lit the cigarette and dragged deeply on it.

She put the water glass on the nightstand and rested her hand on his chest. “What will it do? They said that last one, Aprophis, I mean Apophis, would have wiped out a big city.”

“Yes, but life on Earth would have continued. This one gives every appearance of being bigger, denser and faster.”

“I thought they were looking out for these things,” she furrowed her brow, “I thought they had all these asteroids charted out.”

“There’s an awful lot of space out there, and an awful lot of stuff flying around. The prevailing theory around the office is that this is a charted asteroid, but it got close enough to another one for its orbit to change.”

“Around the office!” she blurted incredulously, “You mean other people know about this?”

“Yes. We’ve all checked and rechecked the data. The Director has been informed, too.”

“So the government knows, too,” she got up and grabbed the robe from its hook on the bathroom door. She wrapped it around her body and held it close as if it were woven of asteroid-proof cotton. She looked at him again. “You’re not bullshitting me, are you?” Her tone had acquired a bewildered, accusatory edge.

“No,” he shook his head and sat up.

“Well, what are they doing about it?”

“I’m not sure anything can be done. There wouldn’t be much point, other than to cause mass hysteria.”

“You mean they can’t shove it out of the way or dig some shelters underground?” She paced and gestured sharply with her hands.

“Not in six hours, no.” He put out the cigarette. “Would you take that robe off and come here?”

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Parasite

by | Mar 1, 2008 | Story

Author : Lucas Atkinson

In my dream I am wandering through Babylon. Prostitutes linger on every street, thieves wait at every corner. Barefoot children look at me as I pass; shopkeepers watch me too, from shadowed doorways, behind flags and tables piled with weapons and fruit. In the distance buildings rise – the courts, full of judges with grins and thick expensive robes; their eyes narrow as they smile, the markets with a subtle finger cheating every scale , the temples with their rows and rows of idols shaped like writhing snakes or women with many breasts or birds with teeth and human hands. The Babylon of my dream is also the New York of my childhood – the pickpockets dressed in rags mingle with gangs implanted with flashing fluorescent tattoos. As I pass them, their smiles are them same.

Every night, I wander through those streets again. On the ship, the narrow corridors seem lonely, and I am afraid the next turn will lead me there, to that place, and the scrubbed metal will give way to the mud, the brick, the littered streets. Sometimes I think I can smell the city – perhaps, behind the sweat of the crew and the scent of engine oil, might that be the faintest hint of the city’s open sewer? Of sun-baked stone? Of sour incense?

I can see it in the eyes of the crew as well. They are dreaming of the city too. They too are afraid that they will turn a corner and find themselves in the market, or one of the many shadowed alleys. When we eat meals together, the crew does not converse. The city is our other cargo, an unwanted twin to the one in our hull.

When we first met them they only farmed. They could not transport food more than a few miles; none of their villages numbered more than a few hundred. When we gave them what we knew – techniques, know-how, theory – their villages moved, changed, conglomerated. The largest was not far from where the ship landed. “We call the city Babylon,” they tell me in fluting voices. They pause. They are smart; they can read human faces already. “Is this a name you know?”

In the dream, behind the markets and the temples, there is a great structure. It was a tower once; now it is collapsed. Its form against the blue sky is ragged, like a wound.

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