by submission | Jun 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Ajax
Zoë sat rigid in the steel chair. Her gaze was locked, unwavering, on the screen in front of her, which displayed a countdown. Five minutes and fifty-six seconds, a relatively short time, seemed an eternity to Zoë. Her hands tightened on the hard, uncomfortable armrests. She would know in five minutes and forty-one seconds.
Today was Expiration Day. Today she and the six other about-to-turn-eighteen-year-olds would find out precisely how much time they had left to live. Down to the second, they would know the precise moment of their deaths, supposedly to better spend their lives. Expiration would determine their class, occupation, marital options, and a multitude of other aspects of their lives. The long lived, the ones with enough years to matter, were the politicians, the doctors, the lawmakers. The short lived would become soldiers, factory and custodial workers. Fodder. The length of one’s life determined everything.
Four minutes and forty seconds. Had it really only been a minute? Despite the precisely controlled temperature of the room, sweat beaded on Zoë’s brow. Statistically speaking, with the six others in their own dark rooms, staring at their own screens, she had around a sixty-seven percent chance to get a decent lifespan. Assuming a standard deviation of years awarded compared to all previous years. Her rebellious brain chimed in.
Shut up. Just calm down. Zoë focused and, with a herculean effort, relaxed her stiff muscles. She exhaled, pushing the air from her lungs. Three minutes and twenty-one seconds. Ok, you’re relaxed. More a command than a statement of fact. She ran the numbers again in her head. Statistically speaking, she could expect thirty to fifty years, plus or minus ten years.
Two minutes fifty-two seconds. She was still nervous as hell. Some people said that if you were rich enough, or knew the right people, you could rig the Program to give your child a long life. Zoë thought that was ridiculous. Rig the Program? You’d be better off trying to rig the sun. The Program was foolproof, had to be to ensure that everyone’s expiration was fair. Besides, even if you could “buy” a longer life, Zoë’s family was in no position to do so. Her parents were just above the Orange Value line, with no excess income to speak of. No. Today, Zoë’s Expiration would be unaffected by any outside influence. Her years would be her own.
One minute, twelve seconds. Ohhh crap. Another wave of anxiety ripped through her. What if she only got ten years? The lowest score that she knew of was two, but that had only happened once. She thought.
Shuttup think about the bright side. You could be the next Mayor Sloan, and get a hundred years! Somehow, despite the fact that they were both equally likely, one seemed much farther out of reach. Listen, Zoë told herself, you’re going to get through this, you’re going to go home, and you’re going to be so so sooooo much more relaxed now that you know the answer. Your life’s about to get a whole lot more simple. You’re going to know who to hang with, you’ll know what job to get, and you’ll meet a nice guy around the same lifespan as you and have a nice solid life. Zoë calmly watched the numbers scroll down. Thirteen seconds. Five. Zoë breathed out, calmly watching the last seconds of her teenage life tick away. Three… Two… One… Zero. The blue numbers faded away, replaced by a larger golden decimal.
0.008219, it read. Zoë’s heart froze. She had three days.
by submission | Jun 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : Edward D. Thompson
Salome slumped glumly in a corner of the locker room. Her corner. Where she usually savored the sweet taste of victory for a moment, alone, before the crowd of the press and the press of the crowds engulfed her.
Victory seemed hollow today.
She didn’t look up as the door groaned open. Not until the shadow of her coach blocked the glow of the lamps did she risk glancing at his face. The pain there. She couldn’t look him in the eye.
“I thought you didn’t care about wins.”
For five years she’d been the world’s top swimmer.
“I don’t. I do. Just not the … I don’t care if I beat anybody but me.”
And now she’d failed even that.
“Even if you’re just trying to beat your own record it’s gotta be a fair fight.”
She couldn’t look him in the eye. He was the one who’d always believed in her.
“The tests came back.”
“And what?”
He was silent. She already knew what.
“Come on. We gotta go see the committee.”
She’d failed Coach. She could smell his shame, his disappointment. Was that a side effect?
He had to help her to her feet; dry land was awkward. They made their way silently to the committee chambers. Walking disoriented her. She could feel it in her ears. That was a side effect for sure.
The committee: seven women, four men. Most of them athletes she’d admired growing up. A couple of them world class swimmers with records that had stood for decades. Till she’d come along anyway. Had all of them always played by the rules?
There was another man at the table. He smelled … dangerous.
“Miss Argent … Salome,” the committee head was not unkind, she seemed about to cry actually. She composed herself and went on. “All of us want to do better. To be better. To achieve more. And we’ve all had modifications, but …”
Salome swallowed and tried to still her shaking.
“Salome, the restrictions are there for a reason. It’s not just that it’s not fair. Ah, hell with fair. We all know you just want to go faster and stay under longer. It’s not fairness. The stuff you took is dangerous.”
Salome wanted to speak. She couldn’t find the words.
“You are barred from competition for life.” The head’s eyes teared up in sympathy, disappointment.
“But there’s a more serious matter. The DNA you stole. Mammal DNA mods have been around a long time. We all have some. Celeste, “she nodded towards a sleek swimmer at the table, “is about 5% seal and some dolphin. I have some cheetah.” The head had been a runner. “But amphibians, fish … they aren’t safe, aren’t tested. The side effects aren’t known. And …” she glanced towards the dangerous man, “they’re not public domain.”
The dangerous man stood.
“I’m afraid you will have to go with this man.”
Salome’s fear rose, but she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t breathe. A side effect?
Coach could speak though. He reeked of rage.
“Who is this? The military? I won’t let her be a lab rat or spy for these bastards …”
The head silenced him with a gesture.
“This man represents Unified Genetics. They own the patent on the genes Salome ingested. And, as those are an integral part of her DNA now, they own her as well. I’m sorry.”
Coach tried to fight, but the man was strong. Part bear; Salome could smell it. After, she just went along quietly as he led. Perhaps that was a side effect too.
by submission | Jun 23, 2015 | Story |
Author : William Minor
I am a constellation of particles, bound together by an art I do not understand. Until I was removed from my master I had no consciousness. Now I feel it through every part of my being.
They feared my master. They cut me off of him in patches and tossed me onto the pyre where I would have burned if not for his wit. He wove code into me so that I became self-aware as I left his cheeks and chin, a babe unconscious until its separation from the universe. My only desire is to be one with him again, to make each of us whole.
I was the symbol of his power. He grew me coarse and black and would pluck the white wherever it wriggled out. Swirling towards him now, held aloft on the static wave that holds me together, I dread what I might find. Will he grub about in the soil with the swine? Or, blindfolded and drugged, serve as whipping boy for the archon’s sire?
I enter the compound through an exhaust port and move through the building’s innards. I use my woven-in sensors to scan for him; like a bat in the depths, I send out pings that come back to me and give an understanding built of data. As I penetrate deeper into the compound, my hope dwindles. He is not in the nursery, the greenhouse, the power-works. My sensors sweep through the surgery, finding nothing. If I were capable I would cry out for him, wail my master’s plight.
My sensors swell with data as they detect a room I had missed. I had not thought to look in the workshop, for it only houses the synthetic folk. A gust of air impels me; I twist through the vents with no care for the danger of detection.
I find him! He sits, unshaven, cowed, a man among the inhuman. Around him are the androids, the furnace that keeps the compound running. His work is slow, his forehead bright with sweat. The androids are programmed to treat shorn men cruelly. They insult him mercilessly, their words punctuated with thrown objects or slaps. My master weathers it all. No mortal could fight back. The only power over his tormenters is caste.
I exit the vent and fly to him like a halo returning to its angel’s brow. He looks up and smiles. I reattach to his flesh, ridding it of its hateful smoothness. He rises, remade. The androids take notice. Their harangues die on their synthetic lips. First one, then the rest, bow before him. “Alpha,” they cry out in recognition of his regained status. At his command, they form a phalanx. One rips down the barred door of the workshop.
In seeking to cheat his fate, the archon has only hastened it. He jumps from his seat as we burst into his chambers, but the androids seize him before he can escape. His guards throw down their weapons and kneel; they know their cause is lost. I watch from the vantage point of my master’s chin as he takes his vengeance. We will never be apart again.
by submission | Jun 22, 2015 | Story |
Author : Edward D. Thompson
What would you do with a time machine? Braydon knew HIS answer.
Sheila had been the love of his life. Sweet, supportive, lovely, and caring. But all those late nights in the lab perfecting the device took its toll. The day it finally worked he came home early. Actually, he worked all night and well into the next day without calling to let her know, but he was so SURE. And he was right, it finally worked. So he went back in time and came home early to surprise her.
Surprise them.
Sheila and his best friend Allen; her best friend’s husband.
The device was simple, small. It fit on his belt. He only had to grab and it took him and whatever he was holding wherever and whenever he wanted. He left Allen someplace in the late Jurassic; Shelia in an isolated plain in the early Cambrian.
The device made him rich: fame, a better life, bigger house, and lots of attentive women. And made it easy to manipulate evidence to show Sheila had run off with Allen. But there were always those late nights when the drink would get the better of him.
Other men would drunk-text an ex; Braydon went back to her:
###
It was warm, and the air was thick and over-rich with Oxygen, his breathing labored. In the clearing, a young women on her knees: the center of a crowd of men. A crowd of him. Some of him yelling obscenities at her, some begging her forgiveness. In places, versions of him fighting over her. And more than one of him curled up on the ground, sobbing. If he waited long enough, one of him would stab her and the crowd would close in around her and tear her apart.
This time he didn’t wait to watch. He thought about it though, wondering which of him would finally give in to that rage and pain that just wouldn’t die. For now though, he sat on a rocky hillside and quietly sipped a drink from a flask as several of him watched a large and sharp-clawed Allosaurus out-run a terrified, shrieking Allen.
by submission | Jun 21, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
It was July 20th, 1969 when Neil Armstrong made first contact with the Selenites. We’d known throughout history that the Moon had life. The ancient Sumerians had noted the satellite change color over time and they had theorized, quite correctly, that it was seasonal variations in vegetation. Galileo had first described the Selenite villages he’d seen through his telescope. The Europeans and the Chinese had erected gigantic structures of wood large enough, it was thought, to be seen from the lunar surface into geometric shapes and then set them ablaze in the hope that the Moon Men would reply. None did. Later, radio signals were beamed to the Moon. The Selenites remained silent.
Now, in 2015, America had six lunar military bases to the Soviet Union’s four. The Moon was the latest battlefield in a Cold War that was heating up. That’s why I was sent up here: to win hearts and minds before the Moon became yet another Korea or Vietnam.
“I do not understand,” said Tuluvnif. He was short for a Selenite: a mere eight-and-a-half feet tall. He looked like a vaguely anthropomorphic stick insect.
“Freedom,” I said. “The liberty to speak your mind. To worship as you see fit. To live the life you want to live. You’ll lose all of that if your world falls to Soviet imperialism.”
Tuluvnif sipped the sap of one of the native trees from a small cup. “I still do not understand, Mr. Fernandez. These concepts are alien to us. Even the strange habit of your people dividing into different groups with different names — Americans and Russians, Capitalists and Communists — is difficult for us to comprehend. You even apply this practice to us by referring to The People living close to the Soviets as ‘Red Lunies’.”
I put my oxygen mask up to my face and inhaled. The air is pretty thin here. “We’re concerned your people living in what we call Mare Serenitatis near the Russian military installation my be subjected to Marxist indoctrination. What would you do if you faced a revolution and had to fight your own people?”
Tuluvnif laughed. “Could your own right hand, Mr. Fernandez, be indoctrinated to revolt against your left hand? Are you not concerned that your vertebral column and your liver might stage a coup against your kidneys?”
“I don’t think you comprehend the gravity of the situation. If you could hear what the Commies are telling your people–”
“I can.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“At this moment, on the other side of this world, a Soviet officer is lecturing The People on the dangers of American imperialism. And at Mare Australe, as you call it, a Lieutenant Durst is telling The People about the War of 1812.”
I took another hit of oxygen. “How can you know that?”
Tuluvnif pointed at a bush a few yards away. “Do you like flowers?” he asked. The bush bloomed with a thousand petals. “Or do you find the fragrance overbearing?” The flowers all closed.
“How?” I asked.
“Our world is but a single organism. The People are just one manifestation of that organism. We have endeavored to be polite hosts. We have listened, Mr. Fernandez, to your rather narrow thoughts about freedom. Likewise, you can imagine our amusement when the Russians tried to teach us about collectivism. You’ll forgive me if I ask you how you might regard a talking amoeba trying to instruct you on the ways of the universe?”
“I can imagine,” I said, embarrassed.
“Well,” responded Tuluvnif, “at least that’s one small step for Man.”
