by submission | Nov 15, 2008 | Story
Author : Glenn Blakeslee
Janie and I sat on the rocks in the afternoon sun, overlooking the shallow valley and, beyond it, Gordon’s face on the mountainside. We waited until the sightseer buses left the parking lot, and walked down the path to the viewing area.
It was impressive. Gordon’s face was a quarter-mile across, set amid slabs of granite, tilted back at a forty-five degree angle. Foreshortening made his brows appear heavy, his nose overbearing. His eyes were closed but it was still obviously Gordon.
Janie stopped almost to the interaction kiosk, her hands clenched on her chest, but I continued. I stood for a while, and called Gordon’s name.
The eyes slowly opened, gimbaled up to the sky and then down at the viewing area. They blinked, slowly. The lips on the mountain moved, and the sound of his voice came from all over, rumbled through the rocks at my feet. Gordon said “James?”
“Yeah,” I said, “It’s me,” and the lips on the mountain smiled.
“And Janie, too,” Gordon said. Janie stood on the path, still, her hands clenched.
“You look… amazing,” I said, and it was true. “Your skin looks so real.”
“It is real. It’s my actual skin, cloned into a macro-analog, tougher, more durable.”
“Cool,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
“My eyes are amazing,” Gordon rumbled from the rocks. “They’re like real eyes, liquid-filled, with a billion charge-couple devices close-packed where the optic disk would be. I can see forever.”
“We’ve just heard about this, and came to see you,” I said. I moved from behind the kiosk, to make sure he saw me. “We wanted to know that you were happy.”
“I am happy. It’s wonderful,” the rocks rumbled. “Janie?” She raised her face to his. “I still love you,” Gordon said.
I could see tears streaming down her face. I started to walk to her, but she ran up the path. I followed.
“Janie?” Gordon said.
#
I came back a year later, alone. There were no sightseers, no buses or cars. Gordon’s eyes were open, staring up into the midday sun. His skin looked cracked and leathery, eroded around the sides of his nose. Crows sat on the expanse of his face, cawing, picking at loose pieces of skin.
Gordon was slow to answer. He recognized my voice but wouldn’t move his eyes from the sky. “I can see forever but there’s nothing to see,” he said, his voice lower than before. “We’re all alone here, I’m all alone,” he said, and then wouldn’t speak any more.
#
I made my third and last visit to Gordon three days after Janie’s death. It was dusk, the light gone from the valley, the stars rising at my back. I could see his profile, and glints of starlight reflecting off his eyes. He didn’t respond to me, but spoke continually in a rumbling growl. “I am your master,” he said, “Kneel to me. I am the lord of this land, you are my creation. Kneel to me.”
I stood there for an hour, and then started up the path.
“Hands!” Gordon screamed. “Give me my hands!”
The next morning I found four laborers in town. We used garden tools to chop and hoe the square mile of Gordon’s face to pieces. I severed the cable to his cold-fusion power supply. I split the aqueous humor of his eyes with a pike, widened the gap until the liquid ran down his cheeks. We dug to the embedded center of his analog-brain, and I crushed it.
It took hours. The crows came by the thousands.
by Stephen R. Smith | Nov 14, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Street-lamps outside lit her bare flesh an iridescent blue, but he knew in the absence of light, she was chiseled obsidian, black as the sun was bright.
“It’s been a while,” her voice low and gentle, “I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”
Logan unrolled a soft-case on the night table beside the bed, absently fingering the half dozen syringes nestled within. It was going to be a long night.
“I could never stay away,” he read her face from where he sat on the edge of her bed, “I told you I’d come back, didn’t I?”
Taking her face in his hands, he felt her hair stalks bristle beneath his palms, the beating of her hearts carried up his arms as her pulse quickened.
Her hands found flesh beneath his shirt, and holding him so tight his ribs ached beneath the pressure, she pulled him over her to leave him gasping on his back beside her. She wasted no time flaying his clothing from his body, razor sharp claws extending and retracting, slicing fabric, grazing flesh but never drawing blood. When she mounted him, it was with the fury of an animal. Her breath came in frenzied gasps. His hands guiding her hips at first before sliding across her muscled body, to her breasts, then to her face. Where he touched her, her flesh turned the colour of sun touched pink as her body mimicked his own.
Flattening herself against him she pressed her mouth against his, forcing her tongue between his lips. She bit gently, serrated teeth tearing into flesh. He felt the fire of her saliva rushing into his bloodstream. His heart begin to pound, the muscle labouring as though to burst the confines of his chest. As his body stiffened, her excitement intensified, and she sat upright, heaving against him with renewed vigor.
The sensation was exquisite; his pupils fixed and dilated, his field of view remained filled with her taught, muscular flesh seemingly lit from within. Unable to blink he watched as her own lower lids closed, her eyes now translucent yellow, staring through him for what seemed like an eternity before she squeezed the upper lids shut, crying out in pleasure. Her moans washed over him in waves, the powerful paralyzers in her saliva mixed now with endorphins as her other fluids flooded his system. She had intoxicated him completely as he came, the feeling strange with his body now completely immobile and consciousness rapidly giving way to euphoric nothingness. His heart counted off his final moments in beats, unbearable in their intensity while alarming in their diminishing frequency.
In the moment he was sure he would slip away forever, the happiest of departures, he felt a lance of pain through his chest. With a sudden intake of air, his lungs filled and his heart resumed a laboured but steady beating. One by one he felt his muscles unclench, his body gradually relaxing into the sweat soaked sheets beneath him. He had barely the energy to moan as she withdrew the needle from his chest, laying the empty syringe with the others on the night table.
“That…” he could barely move enough air to make a sound.
“Shh,” she placed a finger on his lips, “you need to rest.” She curled up beside him, placing her head on his chest. “I’m glad you came back.”
Logan closed his eyes, feeling the lingering effects of her coaxing him toward sleep.
“Loving you may kill me,” he finally breathed, “but leaving you surely would.”
by submission | Nov 13, 2008 | Story
Author : Tony Pacitti
“You ever hear of a fellow named, Jules Verne?” the man asked me.
“Sure I heard of him. Frenchman. Done borrowed an idea or two from him from time to time.”
“It’s funny you should say that,” he said.
The man smiled such that it didn’t do much in the way of makin’ me feel at ease. It was the kind of smile that said he knew a secret I wouldn’t guess in a million years.
Now the only thing to rival the number of notes these fingers of mine have plucked are the number of miles these feet have carried me. I done walked my fair share across this great nation, I’ll tell you what. From Kennebunk to Salinas and from there right on back to Macon. Hell, I didn’t even stop once the entire way and I done it to prove that there ain’t nothin’ a man can’t accomplish when he’s got the gumption.
I have however made plenty of stop in plenty of towns on plenty other voyages across these forty-eight states. As a result I’ve got myself something of a reputation as a raconteur. A wanderin’, song singin’ story teller like they used to have in the old world. I tell it all, tales of heroism and horror, rags and riches. The people of this country have a thirst for the sweet drink of Someplace Else, especially during these dark times, and I’m happy to be the bar man fillin’ their empty glasses. In some places my services aren’t as appreciated as they once were, thanks to my only mortal enemy, The Radio, but there’s still a personal connection to a crowd that no gizmo can ever make, especially not when old Fin’s around.
It’s because I’m a storyteller that this here man in black approached me. He said that as known as I am I can disappear without any suspicion.
“It won’t matter how long it’s been since anyone seen you last,” he told me, “They’ll all just assume you’re someplace else.”
He took me to a large steel mill where I was told a group of men were waiting to make my acquaintance. The first of the other recruited men I met was an ancient lookin’ Englishman named Barkley. His hands were like twisted, knotty branches and his face barely visible through a bramble of yellowing gray hair. All that showed through it was a fat, pockmarked nose and two sunken, stitched shut eyelids. His eyes themselves where kept in a jar he carried and I’ll be struck dead by God Almighty if they didn’t follow me as I moved passed him. The man in black told me that Barkley here had studied under a man named Crowley and had spent years in places powerful in black magics such as the Far East and the voodoo swamps of Louisiana.
After leaving Barley to his mumblin’ in tongues, the man in black was met by a clean-cut gentleman wearing glasses and a strange suit that looked more like a machine than a garment. They spoke at length about timetables, trajectories, heavy explosives and, unless I misheard, alchemy. Almost as if he’d forgotten I was there, the man in black introduced me to the iron and hose clad Captain Stewart.
The busy Captain stomped off, fast as his heavy suit would allow and it was at this point that I finally demanded to know what was going on.
“Why Mr. Sassafrass,” he said with that wicked smile again, “We’re releasing you gentlemen of your terrestrial tether.”
Jules Verne—these old boys were breakin’ for the stars!
by submission | Nov 12, 2008 | Story
Author : Elizabeth L. Brooks
Every morning after the war, Joshua went up to the roof to take care of the dovecote. The chore gave him an excuse to get away from the pounding resentment and fear that throbbed through the living spaces below.
He enjoyed it when they needed some care – when the whitewash on the box was peeling, or it required some attention more than simple feeding. After the war, idle hands were simply inexcusable, and every minute that Joshua spent caring for the ‘cote was a minute he didn’t have to be down in the noisy, cold dark below.
He had taken on the task almost two weeks after the war, when he realized everyone else was afraid: afraid to go out into the ever-light sky above and risk breathing the air; afraid to climb the rickety stairs to the roof of the crumbling building; and most of all — afraid of the dovecote itself.
Joshua had subtly encouraged their fears, afraid in his turn that this precious hour of solitude would be snatched away from him. To them, he was a sort of post-technological shaman, performing odious duties and speaking the magical incantations necessary to keep their cold, dark haven safe. They appreciated what he did, but they didn’t want to come any closer to him — or the dovecote — than they had to.
He had been a little afraid of it at first, himself. The innocuous wooden exterior hid a nightmare tangle of wires and lights, a tangled and blinking nest for the “dove” at its core — a disembodied brain floating in a thick soup of nutrients. But it had not changed for six years, and there was only so much fear a simple brain could engender. He had, in fact, begun to talk to it as if it was still a person.
For six long years, Joshua had climbed the stairs every morning, reveling in the searing light and scorching heat, knowing it would shorten his life, not caring. The dovecote was his escape, his only friend, and he wouldn’t abandon it, even to prolong his life. It wasn’t much worth prolonging, anyhow. Beth had been out shopping when the war happened.
Joshua didn’t understand the war, but in that, at least, he wasn’t alone. Once upon a time, men had fought wars themselves, and had known why: Land, resources, revenge, religion– There was always a cause that those fighting could comprehend. Each advancement in martial technology allowed the fighters to stand a little further apart and to do a little more damage, and the causes had become a little less immediate to the fighters, a little more abstract. This last war had been entirely unpredicted, and had been over in the space of a few heartbeats.
Only those lucky enough to be within the protective radius of a dovecote had been spared. Some days, Joshua thought perhaps the dead were the lucky ones.
Joshua had been talking to the dovecote ever since the war, six years ago. Never before had it answered.
by Patricia Stewart | Nov 11, 2008 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
I was sound asleep in my San Agustin home when I was awakened at three in the morning by a member of Homeland Security. Without explanation, I was unceremoniously whisked from my comfortable bed and hustled onto a LJ40 Learjet. It wasn’t until we were airborne that my “escort,” a fella by the name of Drake, discussed the reason for my late-night abduction. “Professor Ehman,” he finally explained, “as the director of the SETI Institute, you are in a unique position to help us. It seems that a ‘situation’ has arisen that requires your expertise in extra-terrestrial communication.”
“You are misinformed, young man,” I replied with some degree of annoyance, which was no doubt caused by the loss of REM sleep. “In order to ‘communicate’ you need two parties. SETI only sends and listens for messages. We haven’t ‘communicated’ with any extra-terrestrial life yet.”
“Well, Professor, that’s about to change. Yesterday, an alien spaceship landed in southern Peru. It’s your classic stereotype flying saucer. It has some kind of hieroglyphics on the side, but our cryptologists can’t make heads or tails out of it. Right now, the ship is just sitting there. Nobody has come out, and they are not responding to our transmissions. That’s when we figured we needed your help.”
“Have you tried speaking in Inca?”
“What?”
“Use your head, son. Why would the ship land in southern Peru rather than a First World country? Clearly, they landed there for a reason. My guess is they’ve been to Earth before, and have returned to the location where they expected to find Earth’s most advanced civilization. Five to six hundred years ago it would have been the Incas. Look, since I’m captive here anyway, I’ll try to help. Does this plane have a computer with internet access? I need to do some research.”
A few hours later, we flew above the flying saucer on our way to the Lima airport. As I stared at the tiny ship in the middle of the vast gravel-covered desert, I suddenly realized that I had made a one thousand year mistake. I quickly brought up Google, and entered “Nazca lines,” and pressed search. “Hey, kid,” I said as our tires screeched on the runway, “on our way to the site we need to make a stop in the town called Huancavelica to pick up a Mister Atabalipa. He’s an old religious leader that might be able to help us.”
An Army Chinook helicopter shuttled us to Huancavelica, and we continued on to the spaceship with Mister Atabalipa praying nonstop in the seat next to me. After landing, we were ushered to the front of the crowd by six heavily armed solders. I turned to the old religious leader and said, “Tell them…Welcome to Nazca, we are pleased that you have returned.”
He spread his arms, and spoke in some ancient Indian language that sounded like gibberish to me. It must have worked, however, because a ramp slid out from the side of the spaceship and pivoted to the ground.”
“Holy crap,” muttered Drake, “it worked. What do you think they will look like?”
“My money says they’ll look like monkeys, but it’s entirely possible that they may resemble, birds, lizards, or maybe even giant spiders. I guess we’re about to find out.” Just then, a large door at the top of the ramp slid to the side…
