by submission | Feb 23, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
He opened the door. He stood there a moment before he turned on the light. On the far wall, opposite the door, he saw the picture of Jane Russell. He stepped into the room, and placed the bag and the roses on the bed. The bag was heavy, and he wasn’t as young as he used to be.
His arm ached.
He walked around the bed of Room 137 and stood before the picture. She was dead now, but he remembered watching her on the Saturday afternoon movies when he was a boy. She was so beautiful; so elegant.
He looked at the picture a moment longer, then turned to the bag on the bed.
He bent over and a wicked cough shook his body and burned his throat. In a moment it passed, but his chest ached from the exertion. The cancer had eaten him down to a stick of a man. The doctors had given him six months to live over eight months ago. He was living on borrowed time.
He opened the bag and took out the four tripods. He placed the mechanisms on the tripods and set them on the four corners of the room. When done, he sat on the bed, out of breath, and looked at the picture of Jane Russell on the wall.
“See you soon,” he said.
He had lived a long, rich life, but his time was at its end. In his day, he was considered one of the top physicists in the world. Upon retiring, he turned his attention to the concepts of time travel.
He held the remote control in his sweaty hand. Should I? He thought. He snickered. What do I have to lose? I’ll most likely be dead this time tomorrow, anyway.
It was a morbid truth.
He looked at the remote. He had never taken a wife, never had children. He was alone in the world with only his video library of Jane Russell films like The Outlaw and Hot Blood to keep him company. He had watched them all a hundred times over and, in his own way, he loved Jane Russell.
But, would she understand?
He hoped so.
He reached out and picked up the bouquet of roses. He knew that she was beautiful, that men swooned for her. He decided he would write a note and leave it, along with the rose, beside her bed. He didn’t want to be a burden.
He went to the desk and penned the note, doing a dozen rewrites until he was happy. He folded the note and tucked it in the roses, then he stood by the desk, hoping that nothing physical occupied that space back in 1986 when she had spent the night there.
He took a deep breath and punched the remote.
It wasn’t a bright flash, not a spinning multi-colored tunnel. That was all Hollywood glamor. Instead, it was like the blink of an eye. One moment, he stood in the motel room in 2014, the next, he was there in 1986.
It was dark in the room, but he could hear soft breathing.
She was asleep.
His eyes adjusted and he saw her. She lay there. Alone, like he was.
He stood there awhile.
Then, when he knew he could stay no longer, he placed the flowers by her bed.
##
The cleaning crew found him the next morning on the bed, a single rose in his hand. He had died in the middle of the night with the picture of Jane Russell next to him.
No one noticed she now held roses in the picture.
by submission | Feb 22, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jedd Cole
There are a million people in this city, and none of them speak the same language. They are passing through to distant parts, nodding their heads to the immigration officers and their berets. They are carrying their passports in the numb fingers of their right hands. They are dragging their bags across the sterile floor with their left hands. They are sagging under the weight of bags on their shoulders and broken backs.
It is cold on the platform. Outer space tends to make everything cold. It’s the perfect condition for the fever.
There are a million venders in this city, one for every man, woman, child. They use their machines, machines with lips and beautiful faces and smooth skin to speak honeyed things to these little polyglots. It is not coercion–everyone accedes to vendors’ programs. Come earn a living working for [mining conglomerate] on Mars. Realize the [“career goal” entry from mandatory survey] you’ve always dreamed of at [mining conglomerate] in the Tau Asteroid Station. Visit your [“closest deceased relative” entry from mandatory survey] in the holographic gardens on Titan. The machines love these people and kiss them in careful ways.
There is only one answer. It’s the social pathogen, the Yes Fever. And it’s catching. There are a million slaves in this station-city, headed for parts unknown that they think they know because the machines have told them all about it–the successes awaiting their eager labor in the side of unassuming red rocks–the opportunities for visiting masked holograms of dead relatives during lunch break before returning to the off-planet call center–the chance to make it big working for a new man every night, their faces bidding on you in a dark room downstairs.
It’s got to be a fever–it’s cold on this platform, but they’re all sweating.
There are a million seats on the ships at the edge of this city. They are empty and full and boarding but never unloading. There are a million one-way tickets being given to the nodding infirmed, headed to distant parts and new lives just like this one. They’ll never lose the fever, though. They say it’s terminal.
by submission | Feb 21, 2014 | Story |
Author : Deirdre Coles
The key is, you never take anything from really rich people. They’re paranoid, and they often have their own kinds of security. It’s much better, usually, to aim lower.
Jackson had gotten four decent cameras from the wedding of anxious, pregnant young bride and a sullen groom on Friday evening. With all the booze and bonhomie in the hotel ballroom, nobody was keeping a close eye on their stuff.
As he walked past another reception room, a flash of peacock blue caught his eye, a woman twirling around in a long glittering dress, and he stepped inside.
The room made him nervous right away. He didn’t look toward the woman in blue. In a long-practiced maneuver, he scooped up a serving tray, brought it over to the nearest table, and picked up a few empty glasses, a couple of plates, and a camera, with a napkin draped over it.
Back at his apartment, he decided not to sell this one right away. The camera was really beautiful. It was a very pale iridescent yellow, with intricate sculpted buttons with no words.
He experimented with it a bit, and figured out how to take a picture of the two sugar maples across the street outside his window.
But when he looked at his photo, the trees were scorched and ringed with litter. The pavement was cracked and buckled, the buildings in ruins., with broken glass everywhere.
Jackson was starting to get a bad feeling. He took a deep breath and took another picture, this one at an angle of the street corner. On the camera’s screen, the building on the corner was gone, with only one partial wall remaining.
Nobody like Jackson survived for long by being stubborn, or ignoring their instincts, so he didn’t waste much time arguing with himself. He walked down the street to a playground and took a picture of a toddler in the sandbox. Never a good idea to take a picture of a kid, but Jackson was in no mood to be careful. He heard an exclamation behind him and walked swiftly away.
As soon as he got around the corner he took a closer look. The chubby toddler with her Viking-blond hair had become a gaunt, sunburned preteen. So, not much time, then.
Jackson sighed as he turned the camera around and took a picture of his own face. He thought he’d expected the bare, grinning skull looking back at him, but it came as a shock all the same.
He walked slowly back to his apartment. The first thing to do, he thought, was to get far away from all the big cities. And the camera might help him figure out where.
Back in the hotel, a creature who now looked not at all like a woman in peacock blue frowned at her companion.
“I thought you said the human would get rid of it, if it foretold his death?”
The other creature shifted uneasily. “It seems they may have changed since my last visit. Or maybe this one is different than most.”
“Perhaps we should prepare for a longer visit, then. It seems we have a great deal more to learn.”
by Clint Wilson | Feb 20, 2014 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
I have successfully synchronized myself with this system’s most evolved planet. As my physical form materializes in the nitrogen rich atmosphere I zero in on an artificially constructed dwelling. It is full of crude technology. Visual/audio and communication devices abound, along with appliances for both preserving and cooking organic food. Then there is basic waste removal plumbing and quasi-advanced temperature control. Overall these beings appear to be verging on the modern ways that I am used to and are probably on their way to interstellar integration.
There is one being home. Surprisingly my intelligence meter sends back a very low-end scan. I have seen their technology. I know that my scanner is missing something. As I appear in a common area the being spies me and launches into a tirade of unintelligible shouts and taunts. I immediately send out soothing, calming messages via telepathy. The quadruped responds quickly and ceases its verbal barrage. It obediently sits back on its haunches and seemingly awaits further communication.
Typically I can communicate quickly with just about any intelligent or quasi-intelligent species but with this one it takes a while. At first I think it is telling me that it has been enslaved here, but then I determine that it is actually quite satisfied with its living arrangement. “Tell me more,” I say in mind speak, as I continue to try and ascertain how this being manipulates all of the complicated devices in its home without opposable thumbs.
Meanwhile, the Johnsons enjoy their day at the beach, secure in the thought that their faithful mutt, Brutus, is safely guarding their home.
by Julian Miles | Feb 19, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It took me twenty years. I mortgaged everything I had, including family, friends and the love of my life. But G-Nano was worth it. A revolutionary method where leading-edge technology would restore the Earth’s damaged biosphere as a side effect of improving everyone’s lives. The adaptability of the code allowed scalability that ran from going one-on-one with disease organisms to cleaning the plastic islands at the ocean gyres. I submitted the patent request along with the gigabytes of proving data, then waited for the calls to start.
After a month, there was only one: “Professor David Adams? This is James Rufford of the Ministry of Defence. A car will be outside your block in two hours. It will bring you to discuss your patent application.”
The driver was courteous, as was everyone I met on the way to the nicely-appointed office where James Rufford waited. He looked up as I came in, his wall screens displaying the highlights of my work.
“Professor Adams. Firstly, may I compliment you on the genius of your work. Secondly, may I apologise for the fact that it is about to be classified beyond public scrutiny forever.”
I just stood there, my mouth hanging open. He gestured me to a chair.
“You cannot be serious.”
He smiled: “I am. Let me show you why.” The wall screen showed a grainy, scanned photograph of a group of bearded, top-hatted gentlemen standing next to a wooden frame that supported a tall, naked being with hourglass-shaped openings where its eyes should be.
“In 1754, a Dakerda scout crashed in the Lake District. While computers were unknown to the gentlemen of the time, the mechanicals salvaged from the wreckage were revelations to them. What the only survivor told them before he died was an epiphany. The Dakerda were looking for a new planet as theirs was ruined. Earth fitted the bill: clean with a primitive civilisation. At that time, the gentlemen involved rightly concluded that we could not withstand the Dakerda. So they came up with plan.”
I raised my hand. “The Industrial Revolution. Mechanisation to evolve the technologies we needed.”
He shook his head: “Nearly right. They decided to make Earth unappealing.”
I slammed my fist down on the table: “Surely it is time for that policy to be reversed. We have the technology now.”
“In 1947, another Dakerda scout came down in Roswell. Analysis of that vessel against what little remained of the 1754 wreck showed technological advances on par or exceeding our progress. Their computers took us thirty years to crack.”
Rufford looked at me: “The Dakerda remain so far beyond us that it is doubtful we would even slow their invasion of Earth down.”
I just stared at him. The implications were horrific.
“Professor Adams, we cannot ‘clean up’ Earth. The moment we succeed, the Dakerda will invade and wipe out humanity. We must keep the pollution while we work on expanding into space. Our only defence is to become a star faring race so we can flee. Of course, if we fail, the polluted Earth will eventually spell our doom anyway.”
Twenty years. I mulled over what he had told me to work out why I had been brought in. With a smile, I extended my hand: “How can I help?”
He looked relieved: “Your designs bear similarities to the architecture of some Dakerda systems. We’d like you to discover how they work.”
“I would be delighted.”
