by Julian Miles | May 3, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The clouds are limned in blood. Carmichael said it was a trick of the light; I have to take it as a warning ignored.
We came to Acheron – actually Acheron IV, but as the rest were uninhabitable, we dropped the designator – to build a paradise. The planet was the right distance from the sun, had oceans, freshwater lakes, gloriously rich loam, and no creatures bigger than a sparrow. The bird-drop seed cycle was handled by a beautiful, green avian that fell perfectly between Swift and Hummingbird. It was also the fastest bird ever recorded, routinely achieving speeds in excess of 180kph as it shot through the night.
Acheron was to be the utopia that Homo sapiens deserved. The omen of seeking to build that fabled ‘no-place’, and the abysmal history of previous attempts, did not matter: we were the ones who would succeed.
Eight months and our cattle were breeding spectacularly. A second harvest was in. Our log haciendas had already been featured on lifestyle feeds. We had completed acclimatisation for all Terra-originated organics. The start of our ninth month would be marked by the atmo-dome being dissolved so we could finally experience our new home properly.
We were all outside, champagne in hand, when Teleon released the collapsers. High above, a tiny, bright circle appeared. It spread rapidly as the nano-nibblers consumed the dome, repurposing the ‘stem’ material into more nano-nibblers. The ring expanded until it dropped to the ground all round us and we cheered, raising our glasses in toast to our paradise home.
Our noisy cheer masked Teleon’s death. His wife found the pockmarked slab of bloody ruin that he had been. She screamed loudly, then even louder after a cloud dropped on her. Most of us stood about in confusion: that deadly moment of hesitation. But those who acted were the first to fall. Clouds rained down and the dying began.
I got to watch from the single greenhouse as my friends were consumed by nebulous entities that looked like clouds, pounced like leopards and fed like frenzied sharks. The scientist side of me noted a pack order in feeding, with some ‘clouds’ circling slowly while the killer fed. After the killer rose, multiple ‘lesser’ pack members would swarm the remains. They were all messy, wasteful eaters.
I knew my mind was using clinical observation to distance itself from the horror, but could not stop. My heart raced as my brain sought survival options, whilst I calmly observed that these were obviously the apex predators of this planet’s trophic hierarchy. They were why the Emerald Proto-Swifts were small, nocturnal, and ridiculously fast. Why there were no large fauna. It seemed like paradise was guarded by monsters of suitably legendary nastiness.
A cloud has squeezed through the skylight into the greenhouse. It’s a small one, probably last in line for the feast hogged by its bigger kin. Did it’s finding of me indicate an improved hunting ability, or was it a common trait?
I smile. Ever the scientist. As the cloud slowly approaches, I lift a ground sensor and ram the half-metre spike through my heart. Sweat runs from my forehead. I bite my lips to stop myself screaming: I suspect a scream will make the monster lunge. To die quickly, I need to pull the impaling spike out. The sensor beeps, determining my temperature and mineral content.
The scientist inside howls as the observer yanks the spike from between my ribs.
That hurts even more. I look up.
The clouds are limned in blood.
by submission | May 2, 2016 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
“Oh my God! I found life!”
Kenrin was kneeling on the ground, peering at something in the dust. As Ederford, Roana, Viccison and I walked over to him, he shifted position, suggesting that whatever he was looking at moved, and rapidly. He had found an animal!
The four of us skidded to a stop around him, and huddled together to try and get a glimpse. It took me a second, because both the creature and the regolith were a very dull brown, basically grey, but it was there. Life.
Life was a precious thing in the universe, as it only occurred on approximately one planet for every fifty star systems, and interstellar travel wasn’t easy. Sixteen times the speed of light may sound pretty fast, but light isn’t all that fast in the first place when talking about galaxies. To get from Gerfysa to here, Manklenon, took four years.
The little beast was around five centimeters long, with a body that looked like a pine cone and… fourteen legs. Each one was very thin, and had something that looked like a hook at the end. Despite my fascination with exobiology, I couldn’t help but admit that it did seem a bit too “buggy” for my liking.
That should have told me that we never should have filed the report.
Kenrin deftly clapped the animal into a specimen jar, and handed it to Viccison. “Get that back to the lab,” he said, “and do what you gotta do. I’m gonna try and find more organisms. You three, spread out and help me look.”
Over the course of our adventure, we found a few more life forms, all equally buggy in nature. When we all returned to the hab, we ran a few tests on the bugs, figured out what they were made of and what they could do, and sent our report back to Gerfysa at a slightly improved 20c. We never imagined the consequences.
Twenty Six Years Later
Achpersson Drives have improved in the past few decades, allowing more people to get to Manklenon that would have ever been possible when my team found its biosphere. Being a living planet, it attracted a lot of tourist attention, and civilian tours began eight years after I first arrived. That’s how everything died.
No one could stand the little “Manklenites,” as they were called. Anyone with any kind of arachnophobia went berserk on them. The creatures, unfortunately, had a knack for creeping into normally sealed spaces, ending up in people’s hotel rooms and luggage. But, despite the disgust, the attraction of alien life made people keep coming. Keep killing. Now, with a more complex ecosystem than previously considered riddled with holes, Manklenon’s biosphere could no longer support itself. It has become the lifeless stone we thought it was on approach. Now here I stand, on Ganorpeña, in front of an alien that is the spitting image of a centipede.
I think I’ll hold off on that report.
by submission | May 1, 2016 | Story |
Author : Indiana Fairhurst
Confused, I open my eyes, it’s blurry. I slowly become aware. The sound of the ocean becomes louder and louder.
“I’m alone. Where am I? Who am I?”
My dry throat causes my voice to come out raspy and harsh. I struggle to stand up. It’s apparent I’ve been here for a while. But where is here? There’s sand on either side of me going miles farther than I can see the end of, and behind me, trees, grass, mountains, all such a lush green, all so beautiful. But I wonder, how did I get on this island? I spend all my time searching for answers, any sign of other humans, but nothing.
I go further, I’m deep in the island now, searching. Suddenly, I fall down a steep hill only to find a home, made from logs and branches covered by giant leaves. I walk to the door cautiously but anxiously. But when I walk in, I don’t see any people, but instead, boards covered in complex equations, walls covered in sketches, notes, and calculations.
“I remember.”
Not everything comes back, but enough to know why I’m on this island. I remember the virus, how it killed so many people. I remember my plans, my research, my mother. My sweet mother who died so young from the thing I had come to this island to cure. I tested it on myself, and that’s what caused the memory lapse. I did it to myself.
As the percentage of deaths grew, I realized that my research couldn’t wait any longer. That’s why I came to this island, I needed this specific environment for research.
I see my journals, I remember how some were for research, and others personal. I remember logging my thoughts to keep myself sane. The more I read the more my tears stain the pages. It wasn’t what I expected, I was always alone, always isolated from the world around me. My eyes scour the room when what looks to be the remains of a dog catches my focus.
“Darwin,” I cry out as I remember what it was that helped me finalize the cure. Something was missing, I needed bone marrow, more than I could take from myself without taking my own life as well. Battling my thoughts I fall to my knees short of breath and in shock of all the information that just came flooding back into my memory. I did it to save humanity, it was what finalized the cure that will save the lives of millions. But in the process I ruined myself. I killed the only friend I had since childhood. How could I have done this? How could I kill the only friend I had ever had? I scream until my face turns blue.
“I’m a monster.”
I’ve done nothing for days, despising the person I’ve become. As I take a bite of the most beautiful fruit I have ever seen, I remember what on the island is nutritional, and what’s fatal. My breath runs short, my throat tingles and my vision goes blurry. I fall on my back only to see a helicopter, the same I had arrived in, and the same that was scheduled to pick me up this day. I try to scream, I try to beg for help, but all that comes out is a whimper, a desperate last attempt to justify all that I’ve done to get here. But I know… I know the last chance of humanity surviving will die with me, and I know it was all for nothing.
