by submission | Mar 21, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jake Christie
“Hundred and fifty bucks.”
Harry looked at the tiny vial in the clerk’s hand, filled with a slightly opaque purple liquid, then back at his face. “For that much?” he asked.
The clerk nodded. “This is the top of the line stuff, man,” he says. “The Jimi Hendrix. Nothing like it.” The door chimed, another customer coming in. There was a line starting to form. “If you don’t want it…”
“No, no, I do,” said Harry. He pulled his cash from his pocket and started peeling off bills. “How many, ah…”
The clerk held the vial close to his face and squinted in. “Three hits, I’d say. Unless you want, you know, an experience.”
Harry handed over the money and thanked the clerk. The vial felt cool in his fingertips, colder than the rest of the room, maybe colder than it should have been. Like it wanted out of that vial. “Is there a place here?”
“Sure,” said the clerk, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “In the back.”
The back room was like the other side of a coin, the complete inverse of the front. Where the front was all antiseptic and shiny, counters and vials and hard corners, the back room was soft and inviting. Lots of colors, lots of curves, and a lots of people in chairs and on mattresses, their heads lolled back, their eyes closed or looking at something that wasn’t there. There was no music, just the rhythmic sound of breathing.
Harry found a comfortable spot and rolled up his sleeve. He took out his syringe and poked it into the vial, then slowly pulled out the plunger. A third of the purple liquid disappeared from the vial. Then half. Then all of it. He tapped his finger against the needle, took a deep breath, and stuck it in his arm.
He leaned back and closed his eyes. Blackness enveloped him. He listened to the sound of his breathing – in and out, in and out. Then, even that faded away. He was left in darkness and silence, floating out of this specific place in space and time. No longer sitting in the back room. No longer himself.
It started as a dull rumble, like a highway off in the distance, then grew louder and louder. It wasn’t a highway, it wasn’t an earthquake. The rumbling became more distinct, into voices – a sea of voices, all screaming.
In the darkness and the roar, Harry suddenly felt that he was no longer lying down. He was standing, there was a warm breeze blowing on his face. And there was something in his hands – left handed, even though he was a righty.
He opened his eyes and looked out over the crowd. Thousands of people, hundreds of thousands. All staring right at the stage, right at him, and cheering. He heard one voice, close to the stage, say his name: “We love you, Jimi!”
Harry plucked the pick from his mouth and stretched his fingers around the neck of the guitar. He’d never learned how to play, but it had always been his dream to be a rock star. He always wondered what it would feel like. And now, he knew how to play. He knew how to play everything.
Somebody in the back room was playing a Stradivarius at the Met. Somebody else was playing trumpet with John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. Harry was holding Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, in Jimi Hendrix’s hands.
“I love you too,” he said. “We are the Jimi Hendrix Experience. This next one is called ‘Purple Haze.’”
by submission | Mar 20, 2014 | Story |
Author : Tom Coupland
Dropping from his vantage point, Sijen kicks out, snapping the neck of the first guard. Hearing his partner’s choked scream, the remaining patrolman swings about, weapon leveled. Rising from his landing crouch, Sijen’s blade like hands take the man below the rib cage. Intestines, stomach, lungs, burst in turn. Continuing the fatal movement, vaulting over the ruined body, Sijen sprints off down the corridor, followed closely by the two white shadows that are his brothers. Their goal is close, but time is short.
Passageways stretch out all around them; a trick of perspective making their target larger on the inside than it had looked on their approach. They takes turns at speed, navigating their way through the labyrinth, following the route etched into their minds. Drawing ever closer to their target.
Alarms ring out. Days of preparation at the monastery have reduced time to a crawl for the covert boarding team, high pitched alerts become deep undulations of sound. Even with their ear piercing intent removed, their meaning is clear, the time for subterfuge is over, but the team have nearly arrived. Signalling farewell, Biji breaks off to head towards the nearest power relay. Their aim, as for them all, clear in his mind.
A flash ahead. Sijen leaps towards the ceiling as the projectile whispers past, followed shortly by the dull crack of its firing charge. Beneath him now, Dijen snakes towards the hardened firing position protecting the hatch that leads to their target. Skin changing from ghostly white to burning red, Dijen unleashes the microfilm suit’s power supply as he closes. He is not the one that must reach their goal.
Sijen breathes a prayer for his brother, as the waves of heat and sound from his sacrifice wash over him. Reducing the magnetic output of his suit he returns to the floor and races to the breached hatch, diving through the smoke and flames onto the bridge. Operators nearest the door, incapacitated by his brothers sacrifice, can be ignored, but there remain three, lurching to their feet, hands grasping at holsters.
A tremor, signalling the loss of his remaining brother, vibrates through the ship. Darkness engulfs the room, confirming his success. The darkness is brief, yet still it is interrupted by three desperate flashes of light. Popping into life, the emergency lighting illuminates Sijen striding towards the central command chair. Lacking Sijen’s heightened vision and lethal speed, in the dark the three hadn’t stood a chance.
It’s time to perform his role. Jacking into the central pedestal he shifts into the realm of pure data that controls the ship. Nearing the engines representation the pressure on Sijen’s mind becomes close to unbearable, sweat beading on his brow as he wrestles with the ships systems for control, face contorting with effort for the first time during the operation to save his world. Breaking through he takes power from, the soon to be redundant, life support systems, forcing fuel regulators to open far beyond their safety limits.
Klaxons replace alarms. The ship simultaneously crying out for aid and warning any aboard to leave. Sijen, assuming a meditative pose before the viewing screen, bids his home farewell. His mission complete.
#
A new star pierces the darkness above and a moan passes through the vast congregation gathered before the grand cathedral, high on it’s hill at the centre of the capital. A soft lament for the fallen swells from the brethren. It rises and falls, drifting on the wind, out into the quiet of the night and the population of the city knows time has been bought, paid for with blood. Time it so desperately needs. Time to finish it’s preparations for what was to come.
by Stephen R. Smith | Mar 19, 2014 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
I’ve got my finger on the trigger.
It took the better part of an hour to make the climb from where you forced my fighter into the dirt to this rocky outcrop overlooking your crash site, but I’ve got the high ground now and you don’t stand a chance.
Through the sight on my long gun I watch as you frantically dart towards your burning ship, only to be forced back by the flames again and again. I don’t quite see the point, you can’t put the flames out, and even if you could it’s never going to fly again. Niether will you once I get tired of watching your futile antics.
From here your ship doesn’t look nearly as fierce as our mission briefing described. It was hard to make out as we flashed past each other in the silent duel of space, or even in the frenetic dogfight once we’d punctured each others hulls and been forced to take refuge in the lower atmosphere. You fought like a champion, I’ll give you that.
Funny, now that it’s sitting still, your fighter looks more like a crop duster with guns welded on than a military vessel. You’re braver than I thought.
You’ve recovered something from the burning craft now, a small package? Food maybe? Weapons or a survival kit? It’s hard to see from here through the smoke and heat haze of your ship’s final throws, but whatever you’ve found you’ve finally abandoned your ship, staggering with your burden away towards the low rocky ridge closer to my perch.
It might protect you from the ship’s blast, should it come, but it won’t save you from me, you’re actually giving me a clearer shot.
That is a crop duster. What the hell? I can see the builder’s marking on the tail fins now, you would have had to buy that black market, or from us directly.
That doesn’t make any sense, why would a merciless killing force like you’ve been built up as, be flying refitted farm equipment?
Behind me my ship explodes, the concussion pounding in my ears even through what remains of my helmet. Thank god this atmosphere is breathable, but I guess that’s what we’re fighting for, isn’t it? You want it, we want it.
As you tear your helmet off I realize you’re not nearly as ugly as I expected. Not entirely unlike us, and… jesus! You’re a woman! I’m no sexist, but my finger comes up off the trigger nonetheless. You’re tearing into the package you recovered, I can’t wait to see…
When the tiny hands reach up, and the wailing of a child carries broken on the wind, the barrel of my gun lowers to the ground.
This is no crack military fighting force. Woman flying farm equipment with their children on board? We have some of the best intelligence personel in known space, they didn’t miss this. They didn’t misread this. They misled us.
I look high up through the cloudless sky and catch the occasional flash of light as the sun catches a wing, or the streak of a weapon’s discharge and wonder who’s going to win, and when they do how long it’s going to take for them to come down here and find me. Or you. Us.
The word sticks in my throat, and I know that as much as I don’t know what you’re going to do when I get there, I really don’t have any other choice.
As I start to climb down from on high to where you’re huddled, rocking your child in your arms, I’ve still got my finger on the trigger, and I really don’t know who to trust.
by featured writer | Mar 18, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jay Knioum, Featured Writer
I’m getting grease on my sandwich when she walks in. The whole hangar pretends to be busy while throwing glances at her.
She looks around, finds me, smiles. She’s walking my way, but her eyes are all for her baby. I’ve been pulling extra shifts getting her baby ready to fly.
There’s a monkey on her shoulder. It leaps off, and scrambles into the cockpit.
She tosses her goggles on top of my workbench, brushes a braid away from her shoulder. “How’s she look?”
Perfect, I want to say, but that wasn’t the question. “I patched your oil leak, unstuck your throttle problem. Had to replace your altimeter, but I told you that.”
“Yeah, you told me that.” Her eyes are brown. Could’ve sworn they were blue. They’re blue in my dreams.
Those brown eyes are turning the ship over and over. My eyes? Well, I guess they’re doing ungentlemanly things, but they snap back to attention when she speaks.
“Am I loaded?” she says.
I shake my head, grinning. “Yeah. The clockguns are all bolted in and topped off, but the extra weight’s gonna drag ass.”
She smiles, and not like a lady would. “I might have to shoot somebody this time.”
I don’t ask. I don’t, usually. She wouldn’t answer anyway.
She presses against me. She smells like sweat and diesel, but it’s like flowers to me. When she pulls away, her goggles are gone from the workbench. In their place is a stack of League bearer notes, every one a little singed. Blood on the top of the stack. Still good. More than the usual amount.
“Thanks.” She grins, walks away and climbs aboard her baby. The monkey sticks its tongue out at me as the ship roars to life, rotors spin up and pinions unfold.
The Aphrodite takes to the wind again, and I’m just standing here holding my wrench.
by submission | Mar 17, 2014 | Story |
Author : cchatfield
The small group marched forward in loose formation, swaggering with the confidence that their training would kick in when needed. The sandy landscape offered no threats, no hiding places, no life.
Their destination: a lone tower, hidden in a secluded valley lined with flat, open rocks.
“Looks like it was built to last,” commented the leader.
The tower stood a hundred feet high, pale sunlight illuminating its simple apex. The rusty surface silently boasted of the hundreds of years it had stood untouched and promised tenfold more.
“It’s just up there?” asked the navigator, rubbing his hands.
The leader nodded, “Should be a stairwell. And don’t get excited, we don’t know what the security’s like.”
They soon located a door leading to a winding stair that filled the entirety of the tower’s innards. It opened to a dark room and the group of mercenaries froze, alert for booby traps. They knew from experience that the ancient treasure hoarders had perfected the technique of turning empty spaces into dangerous surprises.
They entered slowly, adjusting to the darkness.
“We got it,” whispered one of the mercenaries, eyes wide at the sight of the altar sitting on the opposite end of the room. An archaic padlock hung limply from an unassuming chest seated in the place of honor. Guns held tightly, all attention focused on their quarry.
Off to the side was a standing oval, four feet tall. It resembled a woven basket, braided with dusty metal strands rather than plant fiber. The navigator motioned towards it with his gun. “Looks like a cocoon doesn’t i-”
A razor blade grew from his throat. The rest of the team was in motion before he hit the floor. They ducked and rolled to avoid the flying whips of metal hissing around the room. A few strands of razor thin wire bisected the leader. Thicker vines of ropy cord snarled the second and third-in-command. In a moment the group had deteriorated into a pile of corpses on the floor, the echoes of their sparse gunfire bouncing into oblivion.
Fully unwrapped, a small robotic figure tread softly around them. Green orbs acted as eyes on a childish body. Hundreds of wires fanned from her head in a constantly writhing, prodding cloud. They worked quickly, dissecting the team and slipping the remains through a thin grate to land with dull clacks on a pile of bleached bones.
After inspecting the chest for signs of damage, the mechanical girl stood over the leader’s cooling form. The corner of a picture peeked from his pocket. While the wires busily stripped bodies on the other side of the room, she snatched it and folded it into plated metal hands.
Their job done, the girl regained her position in the corner. She unfolded the picture, her emerald eyes feasting on the image while the wires reassembled, sheathing her form.
The tower, built to last, crouched in silence.
