by submission | Jun 10, 2010 | Story
Author : Jason Branning
“Beautiful lake Sgt.” Crounty says.
“Yes, yes it is corporal. Want to go for a swim?”
Crounty laughs hard, his crackling mic fills my ears. “Nah sarge I think a non nitrogen atmosphere is enough for me, diving into pure mercury I’ll leave up to the special forces”
I chuckle and nod him along.
“Crounty make camp at nearest convenience.”
“No prob sarge.”
The platoon moves forward and I’ll catch up later. It really is beautiful. With the limited atmosphere and small size of the planet, you really do get a good look at the stars and curvature of the planet. Almost like a ant in the bottom of a glass looking at the world beyond.
We’ve been humpin this ground for months now, but none complain. I have a good connection with the men, and they me. I know their sweeties and dreams and aspirations. They know what I’ve told ’em. Mostly true. Life gets dull when there’s no one to fight, and these boys were trained to fight.
A meteorite shines across the sky and I can see both the reflection in the mercury and it itself. What a marvelous sight. I revel in the glory of what is, and what could be. I revel in all the things we don’t know and may never know.
One of these days I’m going to have to tell them there is no going home. There is no home. I wonder which of of my troopers will be the last to look at this sky?
by Duncan Shields | Jun 9, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I should have stayed in hardware.
When you’re working on a tank or a missile array, you might feel bad if the project is considered a dead end and shut down but you wouldn’t feel guilty. You wouldn’t feel like a traitor.
You wouldn’t feel like a murderer.
I’m a general in charge of a project designed to create a batch of superhumans under American control. We’ve learned a tremendous amount from the twelve brave souls who were picked from various armed forces and three civilian organizations.
1. We’ve learned not to try to augment people past a certain age. The implants cost too much to maintain.
2. We’ve learned that taking people with a previous experience of the outside world makes them hard to control.
3. We’ve learned that we’d be better off augmenting embryos with better biotech and raising them under controlled circumstances.
This project is to be terminated.
They’re about to be sent on a high priority mission by me to a bunker in the middle of a desert. Inside that bunker is a bomb. It will detonate and kill all twelve of them.
I am about to brief them over dinner. I’ll tell them about a threat to national security lurking in that bunker. I’ll say that they have to get in close to steal it back. I’ll say that the defenses are sneaky and not to trust their eyes.
I am about to lie to them.
They trust me because I’ve been with them since the beginning of their first treatments and I have always told them the truth.
I will be able to do this but I’ll feel it for the rest of my life.
I’m going to request a transfer back to hardware.
by submission | Jun 8, 2010 | Story
Author : Andy Brazil
It’s difficult to know which will kill us first, the decompression when the shields fail or the radiation poisoning from the crippled engines. Either way, it’ll be messy and unpleasant. That’s why we decided to do it this way.
Un’Shaqq was staring out the window, watching the stars. She didn’t flinch as the needle sank below her brown fur, didn’t turn her gaze as her right paw signed her thanks. I was almost out of her quarters when I heard her body fall, her body harness rattling on the metal floor.
Dorothy and Paul were already gone when I got there: their bodies lay next to each other on the bed, the open tablet bottle a testament to their choice, the sound system still playing. Verdi, I think.
Sal was huddled on his chair, pale, legs drawn up, knees below his chin, hands clasped by his ankles. Rocking as he stared at the dead monitor screen. “It’s all gone” he said as I entered, “All gone, central core, off-line storage, back-ups, everything except the optical disks and they end 5 minutes before the accident.”
“They won’t know, Jane” he continued, “They won’t know what hit us – not from the system. So I wrote it down for them. Only there’s no pens you see, no paper for that matter”
I turned to follow his gaze. The far bulkhead was covered, the handwriting starting in the top corner above his cot, like a child’s crayon in rusty brown. I glanced back and down, the thin smear on his socks next to his wrists confirming my suspicions. I tilted my hand slightly; let him see the needle held there. “No need” he smiled, “but they’ll know now, when they come looking.” I nodded, “Yes Sal, they’ll know” I murmured as I gathered him to me, “They’ll know”
“Getting cold now” he said. We’d moved to the bed and I was lying next to him, his head on my chest. Then, “I wish we’d… you know”.
Eventually I eased his head back and stood. I was stiff from lying so still for so long, but there was still time. Time, and one last visit to make. It took a while to thread my way down to the engine rooms, the bulkheads twisted by the explosion like crumpled card, but eventually I stood in the cavernous space. Stood by the ruined engines – the engines that had been my rival for her love for so long. Stood and called her, my lover, my friend, my soul-mate. “Kitty” I called and stood, my head to one side.
Stood and waited for the kiss of her teeth.
by submission | Jun 7, 2010 | Story
Author : Richard “Zig” Zagorski
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
Another hour had passed … one of how many Gerald could no longer tell. He’d lost count long ago, or at least he thought it was long ago; time was meaningless here. Each hour melted into the next, and a human can only count so high. He wasn’t even sure if he slept at all or if he was constantly aware of the marking of each hour’s passage.
In the pre-voyage information session, all of the passengers making the long trip to the new colony were briefed on how the slumber pods functioned. Each person would climb into his or her assigned pod, which would then be sealed. A sleeping gas would permeate the enclosure. After the inhabitant was asleep, the pod would fill with viscous stasis fluid, which would be refreshed every hour. The passengers would spend the 200-year voyage asleep and unaware of the passage of time, to be revived once the ship arrived in orbit around the second planet of the Morgan system. Their new home.
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
One more hour had passed.
For whatever reason, Gerald was not asleep and unaware in stasis – not completely anyway. The only sense that functioned was his hearing. He felt nothing against his skin, he saw nothing …he wasn’t even sure if his eyes were open. And with his nasal passages filled with stasis fluid, he smelled nothing at all. But he could hear the slushing of the stasis fluid being refreshed periodically, as it would do each passing hour of the 200-year voyage.
How many hours, how many days had passed … there was no way to know.
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
Another hour …
Were any of the other colonists awake and aware? Or was he the only one?
Why was he awake? He’d never heard any reports of malfunctioning stasis pods.
It was horrifying.
Time just stretched great distances, both forward and back.
With the lack of external stimuli, his mind had drifted into fantasy … every fantasy life he’d ever thought up, he re-created. When he ran out of material for that, he relived his entire life in his mind … and relived it again … and again … and again …
Now he had nothing to focus his mind upon. Just noting the passing of each hour, but unsure how many still lie ahead of him.
Once the ship got to the new colony, who would he be? Would any of himself still exist after two centuries of complete solitude and sensory deprivation? Would he be sane? Would he be able to recognize the difference? Would he care?
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
Another hour …
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
Another …
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
——————–
by submission | Jun 6, 2010 | Story
Author : Charity Bradford
Time moved toward a decision that would affect millions of lives. They needed more information and there was only one way to gather it. Someone must be chosen to be their eyes and ears. A human counterpart would process the emotions. Then the decision.
They watched the earth as a whole for a thousand years, and then focused on individual lives for another hundred. The chosen one waited patiently as his leaders decided on a human female. After watching the female for weeks, they recognized the signs of her pain even though they did not comprehend the sensation or meaning of it. She packed her bags and started to drive. She was utterly alone…and perfect.
A deer in the headlights, swerving, rolling, hanging upside down with tears running down her cheeks, and a melancholy love ballad crackling on the radio. This is how they met her in the flesh. Humans were so fragile. They cut. They made improvements, implanted the sensor relay connecting her to the chosen one, wiped her memory and returned her to the earth. A new start. A last chance to understand. When she woke in the hospital, she remembered nothing, not even her name, and they began to watch through her eyes.
Everyone watched the visual and audio feed, but only the chosen one received all the sensory data. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. For the first time in his twenty three hundred years he felt something. The cold metallic edge of fear and a blanket of gray wretchedness began to cover him as it slid through the relay. He tried to shrug off the heaviness, but it only settled lower into his chest. The darkness formed itself into a ball and slipped between his clenched lips. The sound of sorrow shattered the silence of millennia. All eyes turned toward him with the same question swimming in their fathomless depths. How?
Thin fingers wrapped around an elongated neck, probing for understanding. Vocal chords unused for generations awakened at the first stirrings of emotion. One small moan and they throbbed with new pain, delighted to be needed again.
“I did not think, or take action to cause the sound. It happened in response to” there were no words in their vocabulary to describe the sensations, “what I feel.”
The relay works, but vocalization is unexpected. Keele, the expedition leader continued to study the chosen one.
The emotions are strong, heavy. I do not understand how humans can function with them. Even his mind voice quivered as the emotions continued to fill him.
Ketani, you are the chosen one. You will endure and you will decide the fate of this planet. We will enclose you for protection. Keele waved to those standing around, and Ketani felt himself being helped into a stasis room. The stark room curved around him like a womb, undulating in random patterns to sooth and comfort. The others set him gently on the floor and walked away. He tried to stand and follow them out, but the flood of emotions coming from the female weighed him down.
Please, I can not do this alone! Don’t leave me alone.
The door closed. In light of his own solitude, he began to understand the source of the female’s fear and anxiety. Once more his vocal chords vibrated with the sound of emotions too physically powerful to hold inside a thought.
