by submission | Jan 11, 2009 | Story
Author : Carter Lee
My world is motionless.
I remember making cuts in my forearm, back near the beginning. The skin would separate, but blood wouldn’t flow. As soon as I looked away from the almost invisible incision, it would disappear.
I remember cutting off a finger, once.
It isn’t cold here, or warm. The sun always shines overhead, and floats as motionless as the air.
Sometimes, I notice that I forget to breathe.
This could be Hell. If I could find my body, I could believe I died long ago. But I appear to be whole, and healthy.
It would be easier if I were alone. But the house I live in is surrounded by the city I live in, and the city I live in is filled with people. I think the city is filled with people. The city is filled with an endless variety of statuary, that I seem to remember once being mobile, being alive. Being something other than motionless, impervious, unresponsive.
I don’t know if time is passing now. I don’t know if time passes when, unable to remain in one place, I wander out into the city I live in. Does time pass as I study the tableaux created, here in my city of stillness?
Close to the house I live in, there is a woman, her arm outstretched, touching the cheek of the man in front of her. Just barely touching his cheek. She could be reaching out to caress, to remove something unclean from him, to make contact with this man through the primal sensation of touch. Her face, however, is twisted, with frozen tears on her pale cheeks, and the man bends away from her hand. He is captured, one arm slightly raised, his hand holding a hat, in a belated effort to protect himself from her hand. Her hand, which is barely, only slightly, touching his cheek.
There is a man who has a bullet exiting his chest; there is a young girl who has, without noticing, dropped her ice-cream; there is a woman suspended in mid-air, the first shock of the car’s impact crossing her features. There are more.
There are perfectly captured scenes of love and hate, in the city I live in. Pictures of acts of kindness, and malice, of good, and of evil. Each rendered in heart-capturing detail. It might be that, in the infinite variety of these displays, in the incredibly diverse palette in which they are tinted, I have found some proof of god. How else could such things exist?
The beauty that surrounds me is at least as much proof for a devil, though. Who else could devise a torture as exquisite, as horrible, as this? What more perfectly created torment could there be, than to be imprisoned, alone, amongst such a multitude? To be with and separated from, surrounded by but invisible to, everything and everyone?
I remember throwing myself off of a building. Several times. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
I sit. I listen.
There is nothing to hear.
by submission | Jan 10, 2009 | Story
Author : Jason Kocemba
The time train was late.
His great(x5) Grandfather’s birth certificate felt massive in his pocket, a nano-singularity. Did that flimsy piece of paper (wood based!) really cause him to lean to the left? They had caught up and were closing in and the train was late.
He spent time wondering what might have happened if things had been done differently. Was he wasting time trying to change what had happened, trying to make things right? Time had been used wrongly, he had been used wrongly, his whole family had been used wrongly.
He lifted his wrist watch. He watched the second-hand do another seven ticks until it showed eleven pm precisely. The temporal display showed agitations in the ether.
He heard them behind him, in the crowd. Their ancient dialect was barely recognisable as words, more like a continuous audible stream of nonsense syllables.
The station wall clock was two minutes faster than his watch. The colon between the digits winked out and came back on, winked out, came back on. His eyes moved to his watch. Tick. The second-hand jerked on. Tick. His eyes moved to the wall clock. The colon winked out. Tick.
11:01
Was he doing the right thing? He wiped his sweaty palm on his shirt. He hated waiting, after so much wasted time it felt wrong. But it was all relative anyway, right?
He resisted the temptation to pace. He stood, bright shiny shoes three inches apart, grey slacks pressed into a knife edge, his shirt tucked half in and half out of his waistband.
His hand wiped itself on the shirt again. His eyes ticked to his watch, the flashing colon, the tracks, and back to the watch. He resisted the urge to shuffle his feet. The voices moved closer, and the nano-singularity in his pocket seemed to be gaining mass.
11:02
He felt the wet patches under his arms, he felt sweat run down his back to soak into his trousers. He wiped his already damp sleeve across his brow, and caught sight of his watch as it moved past his eyes. More seconds wasted and the temporal agitations had become distortions.
His eyes ticked to the tracks. Was it coming? Another bead of sweat ran down his back, another second ticked by in this era.
Someone stood behind him. He heard a familiar voice talk softly in a dialect he understood. He felt a hand press down on his left shoulder. He knew he would soon fall under all that combined mass.
“Stop running now,” the voice said. Other voices spoke; he did not understand them.
“I have to go back, Constable,” he said, feeling a deep bass rumble through his feet.
“You cannot,” the Constable said.
11:03
“The time line will re-assert itself, all paradox will be erased,” he said. He knew if he turned around and looked at the Constable he would be looking into his own face, his own eyes. “You will be erased.”
“Can you be sure?” said the Constable, who was also him. “Perhaps it is you who will be erased, perhaps both of us.”
“It is wrong,” he said as the train pulled in to the station. His whole body vibrated to that bass rumble.
With a clap, air rushed in to fill the space where he had been.
The Constable lowered his arm: “Damn, just in time,” he said, and disappeared.
by submission | Jan 9, 2009 | Story
Author : Matthew Forish
I stood there fighting back tears, her hand held in mine, separated only by the rubber surgical gloves I was wearing. They were a perfect match for the rubber smock that covered the rest of my body, and the rubber cover over my hair. That was all for my protection, the rubber acting as a buffer to prevent static contamination. The plastic mask I wore ostensibly for her protection. Even the weakest bacteria or virus could be deadly to her with all of her defenses shutting themselves down. Now though, it just seemed superfluous.
She smiled weakly up at me, her tired eyes looking up into mine. She was trying to be reassuring. It didn’t work. I knew she didn’t have much time left, that victims of this particular strain didn’t last more than a few days, depending on their mental fortitude.
I remember back a few months ago, when the news first broke – a whole new kind of virus. It had started out small, just little bugs here and there, easily treatable, minor symptoms, nothing to worry about. People would find themselves forgetting important things, or sharing just a little too much information, or subtly altering their behaviors. It was all much worse now, how quickly the viruses had progressed.
There was really nobody specific to blame. We all should have known better, should have seen this coming.
We didn’t though. I mean, who would have thought? Certainly not the scientists who developed the technology that was the underlying cause of all this. They were just pushing the boundaries of knowledge, trying to make the world a better place. Who could have guessed it would have ended up like this?
In the beginning, only important scientists and military researchers had access to it. Soon it started trickling down to the bigger corporations. All that power at your fingertips, a dream come true for many. Revolutionary new technology was the result – things that we never dared dream of before were now a reality. Our world was heading toward a utopia.
By the time they became commercially available, any ethical controversy had already been laid to rest. Society had accepted the idea, and was ready to lay down their money for this new advancement. The things were quickly integrated into all kinds of products, making all our little tools and toys better, faster, easier to use.
We should have known. Some unscrupulous people are always going to exploit new technology. That’s what happened of course. We built computers whose functions almost perfectly mimicked the human brain, and the hackers started writing viruses that would attack them.
Did they know the bloody things would cross over to us? Did they know their maliciously coded creations would infect people through any simple static shock, that it could be transferred over the phone, through the internet, and from electronics to people and back? Did they realize that code designed to shut down computer systems would cause the human body to shut itself down as well? Did they even care?
The monitor signaled a flatline, and I sank to my knees in despair. My head bowed low and I closed my eyes, feeling the tears streaming down my face. She was gone.
by submission | Jan 8, 2009 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
First came the wind. Rushing out of the east, searingly hot, almost hurricane force, the wind taking my breath away and the rough smack of dust and grit peppering my skin.
Next came the shockwave. If the wind was a slap, the shockwave was a solid punch, pounding every inch of my body, the pain powering right through the epidermis to the muscle and bone and beyond. Although I couldn’t feel it directly, I knew that with the shockwave came a deadly blast of active particulate radiation, enough to kill me many times over.
I didn’t have to wait for the radiation to kill me, fast as the massive exposure would have been. On the heels of the shockwave came… something, not another shockwave, but similar in its effect and feeling. Hot, though, where the shockwave had been neutral. Instantly my flesh boiled, my eyes popped in their sockets, my skin flayed away as easily as cobweb. No sight left, but feeling remained long enough to assure me that each part of my body was disintegrating in its turn, roasting and then simply whisking away under the astonishing pressure of that ungodly blast.
Then a sudden, agonizing yank, pulling my mind from its vanishing shell and back into the host body. Worn and mentally gasping from the experience, I greeted the other minds, and then made my report to the Many.
“Assignment: Test Weapon #99,425 on symbiote body with observer.
Method: Human symbiote body shackled to a concrete wall with uninterrupted exposure.
Analysis: Weapon #99,425 comprising mass reaction of heavy metals, specifically atomic numbers 92 and 94, is fully effective against human bodies. Physical destruction is close to 100%. No major flaws detected on direct test.
Recommendation: Implant the relevant equations in their scientists at the earliest opportunity. Assignment complete, awaiting reinsertion into next available symbiote body.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Jan 7, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
When Lieutenant Parks and a lone Private lifted off from the rooftop in the only available escape vehicle, they were painfully aware that they were leaving behind a vastly outnumbered platoon of men engaged in a firefight for their very lives.
Leaving was the only option.
Picked up by a troop transport in low orbit, they sprinted from the airlock to the cockpit, where Parks found himself face to face with the ship’s Captain.
“Find a seat in the stalls, you can pickup fresh men when we’re in high orbit and redeploy.”
“With all due respect, Sir, we’re going back. I’ve got men waiting; they need picking up.” Parks braced himself for an argument.
“You’ll find a seat, or I’ll…” the Captain stopped short as the Private hit him in the forehead with the butt end of his Ka-Bar, thrown silently over Parks right shoulder. Parks caught the man as he fell, tossing him back to the Private as he slipped into the vacant seat beside the pilot.
“Well done. Stow him, and the weapon. Make sure you’re both strapped in tight,” he called back to the retreating soldier.
“Aye sir.”
The Lieutenant turned his attention to the controls in front of him as he addressed the pilot.
“You keep this ship in good repair?”
“Sir, it’s maintained regularly, I don’t…” Parks cut him off.
“Hands off and hold on.” Parks didn’t give the pilot a chance to respond as his Private signaled the all clear. He threw the ship into a steep dive, following the vertical trail from the escape pod, before peeling off over hostile territory just above the range of their ground weapons. Locating the open end of the alley they’d only days before retreated down on foot, he swung wide, then banked a hundred and eighty degrees hard to the right, rolled the troop ship over on its back, and hurtled down between the buildings towards his embattled men. The wreckage strewn surface of the road screaming by above his head, he raced to close the distance to the tower his troops were barricaded inside.
Parks eased the stick back as the rear of the enemy battalion came into view, giving up altitude and leveling again with the startled ground troops within a half kilometer of the streaking inverted craft. He waited, gauging the distance before violently pushing the controls all the way forward, at the same time easing off on the throttle and firing the rearward lift thrusters.
The ship shuddered stem to stern as slowly the inverted nose gained altitude while the rear of the craft swung in the opposite direction. It’s engines swung in a massive arc, tearing a wide trench in the ground below, vapourizing men and equipment alike as the ship hurtled towards the end of the alley.
With barely a few hundred meters to spare, Parks had turned the ship end over end, and eased gently to rest at the base of the building where his men were pinned down. The street before him was a molten mass of men and machines. Not a single shot was fired as the troop doors were opened, and the platoon walked, carried or dragged each other into the hold.
The familiar voice of his Sergeant rose above the cacophony of the wounded and weary. “Won those wings in a card game, did you sir?”
Parks grinned as he locked the doors and pointed the bird skyward.
“Good to see you too Sergeant.”
