by submission | Sep 20, 2008 | Story
Author : Peter Carenza
APRIL 14, 2065
3:30 AM
The phone startled Lofton out of a restless sleep. He poked the speaker button.
“Lofton.”
“We’ve got a situation Delta at the compound, Rick…. It’s a runner. This is serious.”
“Do you have any idea where he’s headed?”
“We’re working on it.”
7:20 PM
It was a little over an hour to curtain rise. Offstage, the producer fidgeted nervously with a pencil. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a hunched figure in what appeared to be a nightshirt holding a dufflebag.
“Hey you…” he shouted to the tall, thin gentleman whose garments had obviously been underfitted. Then he noticed, gave a slight look of disappointment, and said, “Oh, you must be our Abe. It’s about time… most important day of our lifetime, and I thought our Abe Lincoln wasn’t going to show. Dressing room’s upstairs, but hurry.”
The pseudo-Abe gave a nod of his head and disappeared up the stairs. For a second, the producer looked somewhat out of sorts. Casting sure picked a good one, he thought. This actor was a dead ringer for Lincoln.
8:08 PM
Phone attached to his ear, Lofton was trying to make sense of it all with Desmond, the assistant director.
“So you’re saying it was Ronnie’s idea?”
“Swear to god, Rick. He confessed when we pressed him.”
“At least, it gives us a good idea where he’s headed,” Rick affirmed.
“Yeah I know…” Desmond paused briefly, contemplating. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
8:45 PM
The ceremony started on time. The spotlight turned from the flag processional onstage, upwards and to the right, to a gaudily-decorated balcony with burgundy seats. The partition wall was, as it last had been two centuries earlier, removed. Within the booth sat four distinguished guests in period garb, actors representing the four who occupied the same luxurious space that fateful spring night: Major Henry Rathbone, his fiancée Clara Harris, and the Lincolns, Abraham and Mary Lincoln. The narrative continued, scenes from An American Cousin interspersed. Lincoln’s double, indeed a stunning likeness of the former President, slid his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a white handkerchief.
9:00 PM
Amid a thundering ovation, the president stood, still clutching his handkerchief in his left hand while he waved with his right. But as the applause died down, he didn’t sit. Rather, he slowly unwrapped the silk cloth and pulled from it an antique Derringer, glaring at the Presidential box, where President Clarke could only watch in stunned amazement, raising the gun from his side and pointing it at the Commander-in-chief.
In an instant, there was a loud crack. It was not the pseudo-Lincoln, whose limp body tumbled from the balcony to the orchestra below, following the dropped Derringer replica that Lincoln had stolen from the bound and gagged actor in the alley. The well-positioned rifle of Rick Lofton from a balcony above and across acquired its mark.
10:15 PM
Minutes after clearing the crowd, Lofton stood outside Ford’s Theatre with a cigarette, watching the emergency personnel filter in and out like ants. Desmond approached him from behind.
“Is everything secure?” asked Desmond.
“Perfectly. Our men will divert the ambulance and recover the body.”
Lofton took a long, deep puff. “How’s the replacement coming?”
“Unfortunately, we’re running a little low on DNA… and the President will have to wait a few more years for a new advisor.”
“And Reagan?”
“He’s a little too wily for his own good, so he’ll be terminated, replaced, and isolated… Imagine that… John Wilkes Booth, Clarke’s distant relative.”
“Yeah. Guess vengeance is genetic.”
He stomped out his cigarette and walked back inside.
by submission | Sep 19, 2008 | Story
Author : Steven C. Rockoff
There was no blood, just the smell of ozone. That’s the thing about lasers. They’re cold, impersonal, and efficient; like a seductive bureaucrat. There is something comforting about blood, about seeing your life escape. But here I was, flung on the floor, with a small hole in my suit, just left of the tie. That was it. All I had to show for the violence. C’est la vie, I suppose.
In my right hand, a photomatic hand-cannon: friend, lover, confidante, dispatcher of goons. Just out of reach, to my left hand, the briefcase. Monopoles filaments, ten of them. Just a handful of scrap, but they were enough. Enough for me to retire. Enough for me to get killed. And there he was, the killer, all 200 pounds of mean just a few feet away from where I was slumped. He lay face-first on the floor. The back of his blue suit was covered with holes, as if someone had used him to put out their cigarettes. He was dead, stone dead. Still, he had gotten off that shot, that one shot. And here I was. Here we were, I suppose. And the pale Martian light filtered through the window into the lonely office.
It had started with a dame. It usually does. She was green, bright green, with feelers on her head that bounced in step with the swing of her hips. Her dress was yellow, like the sun, like warmth. She told me a story, the dead father, the shady dealings, that she wanted to sort it all out, just get it over with. I didn’t believe it, but I didn’t have to- I needed the work, she needed a private eye. It started out all right, a little legwork, staking out the family provisions business. Wasn’t hard to figure out, her father was a made man, one of the old families from Arabia Terra. Half the restaurants in New New Amsterdam bought supplies from the business, and the rest paid anyway. But she didn’t just want the information; she wanted the will, a manila folder in a black briefcase. I didn’t trust her, but I didn’t see it coming either.
I scheduled a meeting with one of the runners. We met at a café, I paid him, and he handed it over: simple. Must not have known what was in the briefcase, probably dead now. I brought it back to my office, and was just about to pour myself a gin and tonic when the door crashed in. My back was to the door; I turned around and even managed to squeeze off a couple shots. Then I fell, like a feather on the moon. It was my lung. The laser had punctured it. I couldn’t shout, I couldn’t speak. His laser was low-intensity, and not everything had cauterized. I was bleeding, but only on the inside. Story of my life.
I heard steps. I struggled to get up, even a little. With my last effort, I raised the gun to the doorframe. That’s when she came in, yellow dress and all. I couldn’t make out her expression. Everything was dull, dark. I couldn’t keep the laser level. She stepped over the dead man and looked down at me. An angel, or a devil? Bismillah.
by submission | Sep 18, 2008 | Story
Author : Ben Spivey
10:25am, on the wall hung an old analog clock. The second hand ticked once forward then once back; the battery was close to dead. Josh sat in front of his pc; its glow illuminated his sharp face.
Behind him his fiancé slept under a neon blue blanket. Her arm hung over the bed’s edge making the implant barcode visible on her wrist. The numbers read 9780502. They signified everything from bank records to birth caste.
He flicked up the room’s light switch. The bulb hesitated to glow and the numbers on his wrist read 9780500. Untouchable.
“Wake up Scarlet.” He said.
She pulled the blue over her amber hair, “Sleepy” her voice came through muffled like static.
He pulled the blanket past her waist. She put her hands on her face, “The light,” she moaned.
He put on his parka and pulled the hood over his forehead; strapped his boots.
Out of bed she wiggled into a pair of black leather pants that complimented the tank top she slept in, as well as her curves.
11:15am, garbage, knee high, lined the streets gutters. Caste 00 was restricted to the slums, the alleys. 02 moved freely.
11:19am, blanket sky was gray as the sun selectively broke through in circled spots.
“How do I look?” she asked pushing Audrey Hepburn sized glasses to the top of her head.
“Stunning,” he said while patting his pocket, making sure he remembered his wallet.
11:27am, brown brick building, Tokyo neon sign read: Red Shift.
He took her by the hips and held her close, “That’s the place.”
They stand for a second deep in each other’s eyes.
“You deserve this,” she said.
Inside the Red Shift an anorexic man who looked like a Soho street dealer said, “You’re late,” as he disappeared behind a red taffeta curtain. From behind the curtain he said, “Name’s David.”
11:46am, he reappeared, goggles strapped to his face. “Payment?”
Josh put $78 onto the counter. David’s eyes reflected through the goggle’s black tint. Behind the taffeta curtain was a hallway decorated exclusively with Virgin Mary candles and pictures.
11:51am, “Sit down,” David said opening a case full of various electronic gadgets and rusted surgical tools. “Give me your wrist. Relax. First a shot first, disrupt the tags.”
“Will this work?”
“You’ll be caste zero two before you know it.”
The needle went in smooth; David smiled crooked.
11:54am. “I feel dizzy,” Josh said.
“That’s your girl out there?”
Josh nodded like a drunk, “Scarlet.” He slid out of his chair like a dead fish. The floor was cold and ubiquitous. “Drugged me,” he squeaked and coughed. He watched the room twist and spin. It reminded him of when he was a child at the park. His legs couldn’t understand his brain telling them to stand. He dragged his weight toward the exit, toward David walking away, toward Scarlet. He gasped air; his vision turned black
11:59am, “Scarlet?” David asked, resting his sandpaper elbows on the curve of the front counter.
“Everything alright?”
“Fine,” he assured her, he paused, “Follow me.” They walked past Virgin Mary. “I’ve got my own problems you know? I’m double zero too,” David held up his scared wrist, removed flesh; he’d long cutout his barcode. “To be set free; you’re my ticket, I need your barcode.”
In a flash she sees Josh laying flat, his eyes glossed. “God,” She gulped; turned too run; she felt a needle slide into her neck.
“You won’t feel a thing,” David said as she collapsed to the floor. Holding her wrist he began to cut out her barcode.
by submission | Sep 17, 2008 | Story
Author : William Tracy
The president leaned back into the couch on Air Force One with a smile and a sigh. She had been in office for only a month, but she was already getting used to the perks.
The secretary of defense cleared his throat. “Mrs. President, we need to talk.”
“Yes?” she sat up again.
“As you may recall, in 2004 then-President Bush committed the United States to making a manned landing on Mars by 2020. You are going to have to tell the American people that it isn’t going to happen.”
“Well, if it’s a budget matter–”
“No it isn’t. We cannot land a man on Mars.”
“Really? I listened to NASA’s presentation last week, and their plan seemed pretty complete.”
“Technology is not the issue, either. We landed on the moon in 1969! Yet we haven’t gone back since 1972.”
“Well, manned moon missions are expensive. Funding dried up.”
The secretary shook his head. “That’s only half of the story. In 1973, both the United States and Russian governments secretly signed a pact to make no manned missions to the moon or beyond.”
For the first time, the president looked concerned. “What?”
He tried a different tack. “We’ve had working nuclear rockets since the sixties that could easily and cheaply get us to Mars and beyond. Did we use them? No!” The secretary leaned forward. “Instead, the United States government clandestinely funneled money into Greenpeace to protest the use of nuclear power in any form, specifically to generate political opposition to any such project.”
“Well, Greenpeace is an environmental organization. Why wouldn’t they protest nuclear power?”
“It’s clean, and essentially renewable if you use breeder reactors. A nuclear power plant actually produces less radioactive waste than a coal-fired plant that releases radon gas straight into the atmosphere!”
“Well, after Chernobyl, who could blame–”
“The Chernobyl incident was triggered deliberately.”
The president looked shocked.
“The reactor melted down after every single safety system present was disabled for a ‘test’. The Russians aren’t stupid. Sabotaging Chernobyl was their way of holding up their end of the bargain.”
“You’re telling me that for thirty years the United States and Russia have been secretly pushing anti-nuclear propaganda?”
“That’s not all. We’ve had complete—highly classified—plans for faster-than-light spaceship drives since the late eighties. Never tested, but the physicists say they should work.”
“But why?”
“In 1972, the United States and Russian governments were contacted by an extraterrestrial agent. Our planet was brought to their attention by the X-ray radiation generated from nuclear tests. At their behest, we halted manned exploration of the solar system.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“They agreed not to vaporize us as long as we stay on the reservation.”
by submission | Sep 16, 2008 | Story
Author : Josh Zingg
Ariston crunched his way along Access-01 toward what was left of the capitol, keeping his head down and goggles tight over his eyes. The wind surged at him, and he felt its coarse touch wearing away his spirit. Wasn’t much left to wear, these days. He pulled aside his face cloth and sneezed into the air, immediately regretting it as the gale blew his dusty spit back on him. He sighed internally and wiped a gloved hand over the pockmarked chest plate of the old Sanja mk. II he wore under his various wraps.
He looked up and squinted, not because of the light, since of course there wasn’t much anymore, but because his goggles were so abraded he had a hard time seeing. The signal lights of the SC guard stations blinked lazily at him through the haze, and he could see the distant lights of the city and the dull black edifice they had dropped in the middle as a command center. “Reconstruction Nexus” they called it in the leaflets they kept dropping on every village they could spot.
“This cutting edge modular facility will serve as the central hub of the Sol Consortium’s reconstruction efforts. It serves as a home base for the J9 Precipitators hard at work in the upper atmosphere and houses the peacekeepers ensuring your safety throughout the area surrounding Ouranopolis.”
Lyle snorted at the thought, puffing a bit of dust out of his red nose.
Picking up his pace he adjusted the thin cloth covering his mouth and nose in the vain attempt to get a few clean breaths. He heard a rumbling from behind him and hurled himself to the side of the road, tucking his head and rolling down the embankment. Seconds later, a huge APC trundled by, weighed down with “peacekeepers” and entirely heedless of pedestrians. With the wind always howling in your face it took you a while to hear the things coming. Their solid tires churned the gravel of Access-01 and their engines were brutish Clodians, built for strength over grace, but no sound overpowered the ever-driving wind for long.
For a long moment Ariston just lay there in the ditch, his chest laboring in the thinned air. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it was a year ago and he was lying on green grass in Independence Park. The sky above him was a pure blue dotted with fluffy clouds here and there. A cool breeze blew from the northeast, rustling the squat native trees. All of Eleuthera’s lifeforms were rather squat, but they had a certain elegance to them. He could smell the Sunbursts in bloom all around and Eirene was next to him… Eirene.
His eyes snapped open and he looked up, not at a clear blue sky but at a whirling brown smear, streaked with darker bands. He could make out a diffuse glow on the horizon where the bloated red sun was rising. High above him he noticed one of the peculiar eddies in the dust storm that marked the presence of a Precipitator. The massive SC gravships trolled the stratosphere, straining out the dust and particulate matter kicked up by their own mass drivers a little over two standard years ago.
