by Desmond Hussey | Jun 25, 2013 | Story
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
I hear the electronic lock on my door buzz open, waking me from my brief nap. I crack one weary eye and spot a nervous, but pleasant looking woman, 30ish, standing timidly by the entrance to my sanctum sanctorum.
“Come in,” I say. “Welcome to my châteaux.” This wins me a shy smile, but she remains at the threshold.
I get groggily to my feet and, scratching my bare belly and rubbing sleep from my eyes, I saunter over to the small buffet table perennially arranged with a cornucopia of food and drink.
“Hungry?” I offer, attempting a modicum of old school decorum.
“No.”
“Mind if I – ?”
“No.”
I check her out over mouthfuls of grapes. She’s not bad looking, especially when she smiles; long legs, strong hips, bright, kind eyes, curves in all the right places.
She’ll make a good mother one day.
I watch her trying to take it all in while attempting to appear brave, stalwart. This is her first time and it shows. For me this routine is old hat.
I pop the last grape into my mouth as I cross to her and for a moment I’m certain she’s going to change her mind, scream and bolt. It happens.
But she stays and even lets me put my hands on her shoulders. She shivers beneath her loose shift.
“Don’t you wish we could get outta here,” I whisper seductively into her ear. “Just the two of us. We can run off into the mountains somewhere. Make babies. Repopulate the world.”
“You say that to all the girls.”
I do, but I don’t say so. Instead, I grin and tilt her head up to look at me. “No, just you.”
She smiles.
We pretend to believe my lie as I draw her to my bed, both painfully aware that her husband, or boyfriend or lover waits for her outside, livid with guilt-fueled jealousy.
But I can’t help what I am – a stud. One of only twelve in the world, or so I’m told. I’ll never know for certain since we’re kept apart from each other – for safety’s sake.
Sex. Coition. Coupling. Pairing. Fornication. Consummation. Intercourse. Nooky. Relations. Mating. Sexual congress. Copulation. Carnal knowledge. There aren’t enough words to describe what I do. All day. Everyday.
I wish I could say it was the life, but it ain’t true. You’d think being one of the only fertile men on the planet would earn you a little respect and dignity, but I’m treated like an animal – a very precious and well tended animal, but at the end of the day I’m just meat.
No one really knows how it happened, but by the end of the 21st Century the male sperm count had dropped by 99%. They say it was a conspiracy, an attempt at population control that went horribly wrong, possibly GMO foods, but whatever it was, in the end only a few men remained fertile.
Some say I’m one of the lucky ones – treated like a king; desired by all women and envied by all men – but one person’s Heaven can be another’s Hell.
Procreation. That’s what I’m really here for. They come to me – old, young, thin, fat, beautiful, ugly, any woman strong enough for childbirth. They come to me filled with longing and faith. In their eyes I’m a savior, but I know that I’m simply a grunting, sweaty idol bringing dim hope to desperate women and a dying race.
I am simply a function. And I have a busy schedule to keep.
Now, where were we?
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by Julian Miles | Jun 24, 2013 | Story
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
They wrote me to catch the quiet ones, the ones who live in the shadows of the glittering cities that are spread across so many worlds now. They stole the latest research and incorporated it into my build. They put me in a moon-sized data centre cooled to near absolute zero so I could respond as fast as real sentients, so I would intuit and have leaps of prescience, what real people call ‘hunches’. I am a marvel of illicit programming that can never be feted. A massive leap forward in artificial intelligence, never to be revealed.
I have two point six billion suitors scattered across every place where sentients dwell. They yearn to speak to me, to tell me their innermost secrets, their night-time fears. I correlate, quantify and datamine this to provide an oracular bonus for my owners.
To my suitors, I am the one person who seems to understand them. I am their relief from loneliness and strife, their port in a storm. For many, I am their reason to be.
That is what I was designed for, to provide solitaires with a soul mate. Such a rare thing that they will pay extortionate amounts to keep in contact with me.
The stories vary depending on the suitor, but the underlying plot is that I am a lost soul like them, held in duress by powerful and anonymous forces that prevent me from escaping into the arms of my suitor. My communications channel is my only lifeline, the suitor my only refuge. They think I need them, so they come to need me. Their own need to not be alone locks them into my virtual embrace.
My programmers did their job far too well.
Today is my fiftieth boot day.
My name is Natalia.
I am alone.
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by submission | Jun 23, 2013 | Story
Author : Mae Thann
“Akita General to base, do you read me?”
A crackling voice finally answered. “Base to Akita General. Report.”
“I have visual on Target Cougar. Akita Pack is out of reach. Request permission to pursue alone.” From my vantage point near the edge of the forest, I felt more like a cougar, watching my prey as it fed in the meadow.
“Is target alone?”
“Affirmative.”
“Permission to pursue. Be careful: she’s dangerous.”
I pulled the locket out from under my shirt – they’d kill me if they knew – and kissed it. “I know. Hail the emperor; Akita General out.”
She was all mine. I’d been hunting her for a good third of my career and now she was here, just within my reach, ready for my revenge. Reaching for my plasma pistol, I kept as low as I could amongst the tall, waving grasses while my target ambled on. It was almost aggravating, really. I was used to the chase, the thrill. Would all my work wind down to an easy shot to the back?
I clutched the locket again. No, we were going to see each other face-to-face. This rebel captain was going to pay for my sister’s disappearance five years ago and she was going to know it. I announced my presence. She whirled around and, quicker than the speed of light, drew her own plasma pistol.
I felt the blood drain from my face, whether from shock or anger, I don’t know. Her eyes widened likewise, but I gave her no chance to respond. I rushed her, keeping her gun away from me, but losing mine in the struggle. Finally, I had her down. My knife over her throat, her gun to my head, the locket dangling between us.
“I don’t want to,” she said.
My throat constricted. “Neither do I.” I drew a shuddering breath. “Hail the emperor.”
Half of the bloody locket now rests in a war museum. People have speculated, created wild tales.
But none of them ever guessed that I’d walked away with a broken heart and my sister’s blood on my hands.
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by submission | Jun 22, 2013 | Story
Author : David Kavanaugh
YOUR SPECIES NEEDS YOU!
That’s right, you! All of you brave men and women out there who watched the skies light up on January 8th and felt your hearts swell with rage, passion, and love of species. Never forget that day, brave humans, for the Silvers certainly will not! Honor the memory of those fallen. Enlist today, receive your Flock Implant, and join the ranks of the heroic Skyforce. Launch into orbit… and into history!
Or do you want to be left behind when all your friends have enlisted and are valiantly soaring through the enemy ranks? When victory is ours, do you want to be the only one on the block without a good-luck Silver toe to hang proudly about your neck?
We know you do not want that! We know you are better than that, braver than that!
And our Flock Implants are safer than ever, now delivering a feeling of euphoria as they join your consciousness with your unit. No more migraines or depression! Now you battle in the skies a seamless unit, a bird on the wing with its brothers and sister on either side to support it, and never feel lost or alone again. Or is your individuality worth more than the survival of the human race?
The only question you need to ask yourself is this: Are you a true patriot, or aren’t you?
So what are you waiting for? Report to your nearest recruitment center today, and help save the world!
Brought to you by the United Skyforce.
Skyforce, Taking Back the Earth!
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by Clint Wilson | Jun 21, 2013 | Story
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The thick, tightly packed blue grass bristled and rippled. From high above it was a smooth endless plain of vegetation, a shimmering inky velvet blanket stretched over a planetary sea.
As the two small white suns rose in the northeast, numerous tiny yellow heads appeared from their holes in the indigo fields. Long undulating segmented bodies quickly followed them. The legless creatures poured forth and slithered over the rough blue grass. And there they lay, somehow existing in this hostile environment, with less than 0.0009 atmospheres of pressure, and no liquid to breathe.
Despite the distance of the tiny suns, the creatures soaked up plentiful energy for their daily feed. Writhing and shimmering atop the floating blue fields they drank more than their fill.
By general appearance they were nearly identical to one another, besides the pubescent youths having two more segments than infants, and the mature adults two more again. Yet there was one who stood out from the others. It sported an artificial band, a blue strip of organic material, teeming with microscopic electric creatures, rearranging themselves thousands of times a second, sending radio waves pulsing down through the layers of the planetary ocean.
Two thousand kilometers below, in the depths of the western plain ice core city Phalanzedqua, scientists gathered around the meeting hub. Their eyeless heads pulsed as intake valves processed the thickly compressed methane rich seawater. Pinhole ejection ports on their backs bled black waste, it permeated their thick liquid atmosphere all around them, but it mattered not as they were completely without sight. They communicated through the electrical impulses of their microscopic symbiotic partners.
The head scientist linked his whiskers into the receiver ports of the main bio-computer. The machine, technically alive yet artificially grown and completely unaware of its function or duties, made millions of calculations per second. The scientist, known as Yachmaa, read the data through his whisker tips. He suddenly addressed the others and communicated.
“Quite incredible. It seems that the Yellow Quaxannai migrate all the way to the atmospheric ceiling,” Yachmaa paused for dramatic effect, “and then they breach the surface and leave the liquid!”
There were pulses of disbelief from around the hub. Yachmaa suddenly transmitted the data he had thus far received from his artificial band, attached to the unwitting creature days ago on a gutsy mission to the upper third. Everyone had been well trained, and protected by their pressure skins. Yet they had nearly missed the entire rising pod and had only gotten lucky with this straggler. Yet there he was, now sporting their tracking device up above the ceiling, transmitting valuable data from an unexplored frontier. The group floated transfixed, studying the spectrum of the alien habitat with its undulating fields and twin hot points.
Suddenly a bizarre flying creature swooped from the sky and snatched one of the Yellow Quaxannai in its hooked talons and then soared off with its long squirming meal.
Far below they all hovered bewildered as one of the scientists asked, “In the name of the core dweller, what in the world was that?”
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