by Duncan Shields | Feb 21, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Hitler’s daughter was ruling with a penchant for experimentation.
She talked of a future where Aryans were recognized by their deeds and initiative, not by the colour of their skin or hair.
Controversial and beautiful, Hitler’s daughter was short with the same dark hair as her father.
She administered the shot that killed him in his hospital bed. Grey-haired, drooling, and given to fits at the end, it was the ministry’s decree that he be put out of his misery by his then sixteen-year-old daughter. The photograph is famous. Her chin is tucked into her chest and her straight black hair is falling over her eyes as she depresses the plunger on the syringe. The resemblance to her father in that moment in unmistakable and is belied only by a twinkle in her eye. His hand is grasping at the front of her uniform. If one squints just right, the shadow from his clawed hand coupled with his bent fingers almost form a swastika.
Chancellor Hilda.
German medicine had come far. Top in the world when it came to longevity drugs, plastic surgery and prosthetic limbs. However she banned experimentation on the poor and homeless.
“There were still discoveries to be made”, she said, “but only by using the guilty”. The subtle accusation hidden in the statement by lumping the scientists in with the subjects was not lost on the scientific community. There was no doubt about how punishment would be meted out. The scientists would end up on their own bloody tables if they dared dismiss her rules in their dark laboratories.
She said that the future lay not in compassion but neither did it lie in brutality. She said in a historic speech that, “some things, while fragile, were still valuable to the empire. Even degenerates can see the beauty in the world of our new Empire”, she said. “Let them paint.”
The conquered Europeans had intermarried and mingled with the Japanese and Russians. Half-breeds were tolerated. The resulting beauties with their Slavic cheekbones and epicanthic folds had started to supercede the outdated Aryan ideal.
The first mixed-race officer of the SS had a medal pinned to his chest last week, for instance. The young ones, no matter their race, were anxious to serve for the glorious 4th Reich Europe, citing that their inner Aryan was probably more faithful and loyal than many of the meek and tender blue-eyed ghosts of German heritage. Such inflammatory rhetoric caused controversy but also brought attention to their fearless attitudes. It would be stupid to turn down manpower determined to help the empire and this was a new age, she said.
America’s economy was failing and while it was not economical to fight them conventionally, it was in everyone’s interests to wait and see how long it would take that country to starve. Some of the political commentary in today’s newspapers were calling it a Kalter Kreig or “cold war”.
She, herself, had a penchant for the folk music of the defeated Americas and allowed their import into the underground. American polkas and neo-jazz movements were sweeping through underground Europe. The Reich youth, like any youth, were embracing anything controversial that would anger their parents.
She is the face of The United Reich Territories. She is feared and loved.
She has charm greater than her father. She is patient.
Heil Hilda.
by Duncan Shields | Feb 13, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
It was a way of life down here to prove how far you were willing to go.
The stew of Oddtown. The people that lived here knew that they’d never work in a place that required a dress code let alone a mannered way of behaving. The modifications they had done to themselves were extreme.
There was work that a person could get done that was reversible. Horns, smaller tattoos, piercings, subdermal implants, that sort of thing.
Judge’s kids got those to show that they were rebelling against a society that they didn’t create. All tasteful and done in places that could be covered up by business suits and hairstyles in later life when they realized that their destiny was to be a benefit to society rather than a burden.
They took their little rebellious walk in the wilderness on Oddside. If they were lucky, they made it back out with a few ‘hardcore’ stories and some street cred with the other kids from rich families. Learned a few staring tricks for negotiations in the boardroom when they finally accepted Daddy or Mommy’s tuition and went to law school. Memories to make them think that they had a soul or had experienced ‘real life’ for at least a little bit.
If they were unlucky, they met up with the people that didn’t give a fuck about their parents or futures. A few shots of crackoin later, a few hours of video later, and few ransom demands later, a few brain burns later, and the little girls and boys from the rich side of town ended up in pieces amongst the garbage bags in the alleys. Either that or just stumbling around dead-eyed until they starved to death.
But the smart inhabitants of Oddside realized that these kids had money and would soon be running things. Becoming friends with these kids could be good down the road. Ever since the inheritance act was passed, the poor became poor forever and the rich angled with each other for more money. The gulf between the two societies became an uncrossable trench littered with the Icarus skeletons of people who tried.
It’s all about appearance.
Take Mannycentric, for instance. He had robotic, cherry-red fists the size of oil drums. His shoulders and biceps were grafted to take the weight. If he relaxed, his knuckles dragged on the ground. Those fists could knock chunks out of buildings when they were fully charged. They weren’t gloves. The birth-meat of his forearms and hands was long gone.
Killie had antlers and four hearts. Her scars and tattoos ran the gamut from tribal to baroque. Not much of her original skin still showed. Hundreds of small, scalloped shark fins inserted from her tailbone up to her shoulder blades turned her entire back into a cheese grater.
Flail had extra joints installed in his legs. He ran like a deer and leapt like a flea. He had the buttonhole pupils of a goat.
They were currently letting a blonde rich girl buy them drinks and impressing her with violent stories, watching her eyes grow wide, feeling her excitement growing. She obviously thought she had a wild streak and was ready for whatever the night threw at her. She was wrong. Manny, Flail and Killie had been promised a hundred credits to deliver her to the Skinner. They were just waiting for the roofies to take effect. If they didn’t need the money, they might have tried to make her a friend.
It was a way of life down here to prove how far you were willing to go.
by Duncan Shields | Feb 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
It’s a unique experience to be involved in an explosive space decompression. If you survive, you never forget the sound.
It’s like something turns the volume down sharply in the middle of the explosion. The screams, the shattering of glass, even the rushing wind, all suddenly has nothing to express itself with. The air becomes thinner and disperses. The medium through which noises travel expands to the point of non-existence and you’re left with the silence of space. Even while all around you people are screaming and flailing, alarms are wailing, and everything that was in the room is now clattering and colliding as it spins out into the starry blackness.
And I should know.
We were on our honeymoon in a Galactic Class 8 Yacht on the starboard promenade eating lobster while the musicians were setting up onstage. The bank of space-facing windows were massive. The official reports said there were four hundred and thirty eight people in the hall with us, relaxing and talking to each other. Most of us were wearing our fanciest clothes, pretending that we were wealthy even though this was a discount cruise. Alison and I had waited long to get married. She was thirty-five and I was going to turn thirty-eight in ten days. She looked beautiful as she turned to signal to a waiter for another coffee bulb.
Perhaps the ship was old. Perhaps it was poorly designed. Maybe a safety inspector was hungover and missed something at the previous inspection.
A sharp crunch like someone stepping hard on a champagne flute right by ear and suddenly the wall to my right became ‘down’ and we all fell into space. Fail safes failed, blast shutters jammed and circuit breakers broke.
That is why my nightmares are silent. When I wake up screaming, it’s from seeing my darling wife bloat, freeze, and rupture. In the dream, she screams as soon as the viewing plate shatters, pluming glittering glass dust into space, and keeps screaming as we are both pushed by strong forces into the black. Her hair whips crazily and she kicks like a first time skydiver, reflexively trying to get her balance in mid-air with no up or down. Her scream starts like a fire alarm and very quickly whips down to silence even though her mouth is still wide open. He throat is still vibrating but her voice can no longer travel to my ears.
Other patrons screams, the clinking of silverware and plates, furniture colliding with the instruments of the musicians, they all fade to nothing and the last thing I hear is my wife’s screaming. The last thing I see is her mouth filling with popsicle blood as her lungs shred in their freezing rush to fill the vacuum.
I see it often. Her mouth is a tattooed O on the front of my mind. The nightmare is down to two or three nights a week.
The sticky safety cables that fired out managed to grab me but they missed her. I was reeled in sharply like a fish and I survived. I was one of only six that did. All six of us were paid a lot of money by the company to keep quiet about the accident. We all agreed to take it.
I am back home now with no need to work for the rest on my life. I’ll never go into space again. I need noise around me at all times, even when I sleep.
I cannot stand silence.
by Duncan Shields | Jan 19, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Our breasts are sore and our balls itch.
We feel like half of our food goes towards our tumours now. The black accordion beside our bed makes our four lungs work, squeezing long and then flat, our only sense of passing time when the lights are off. All of the instruments around our bed make the room look like Christmas. They softly ping, beep, scratch, whine, record and bear witness.
We are in the grip of a sadness so total that it will last us the rest of our lives which, if the doctors and technicians are right, will be about another six days.
We raise our hand up to the button that makes more pain medication drip into the tubes and it’s exhausting. The competing muscles from two people fused together struggle and fail before flopping back down on the bed. Several medical alarms go off and then go quiet again, just like they do every time we move.
The irony is that we were in love before all this. Two cadets on a starship. Cadet Robert Jacobs and Cadet Linda Castle. Bright kids with bright futures that knew nothing about what cruel surprises fate had in store. We held hands in the corridors, had sex whenever we could, and blushed when we thought of each other.
What fools.
The transporter badly needed a resequencing, the official inquiry found. Our molecules were transposed, inverted, inverted back and then met in the middle somewhere. Normally, when this sort of thing happens, the victims die immediately or are returned to the pad intact and separate as their backup selves. In this case, not only were the safeguards dormant, we survived the melding.
The mashing of our bodies and minds together has changed us into a giant lump of flesh with arms and legs splayed out like a starfish. Our heads are mashed into one staring monstrosity. Our nervous system allows us to feel pain but we can barely move. The tumours started immediately and continue to multiply and grow. Our entwined DNA is rejecting itself but we cannot be separated.
And now we know way more about each other than we wanted to. We know that Linda did not love Robert and much as she said she did and that she had her eye on another cadet. We know that Robert had a history of sexual abuse that he never disclosed to Linda. We know that Linda was very mean to her ex-lovers. We know that Robert tortured rodents as a child. Our minds are one and the veil is down. We know so much more about each other than any human has a right do. Every insecurity, bowel movement, unfair thought, dark corner and weakness laid out like an autopsy for us both to see.
We’ve been told that our backup selves will be returned to life after we die and informed of the anomaly. This ruling is supposed to be humane. They will never be allowed to witness the abomination we’ve become. We will never be able to tell those two idiots to break up immediately. That’s the most frustrating thing about this entire experience.
We have a unity two humans have never before achieved.
We cannot wait to die.
by Duncan Shields | Jan 9, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Do I consider myself a citizen of Earth? Do I consider myself a human? Am I an alien sympathizer? Members of the council, I fear I no longer know what these questions even pertain to. They are meaningless sounds to me now with no more gravitas than the bark of a dog. I have only the following to say and I say it not in my defense for I know that is a laughable word in this court. I say for the sole reason that I must. It is on my mind and I fear the end of my career is near if not my very existence.
I have seen people who attended one meeting out of curiosity have their entire lives destroyed by the subsequent investigation. I have seen people who, solely by being accused by this committee, have seen their occupations disintegrate.
To be dramatic, you are angels with flaming swords, blind to the destruction you’re causing but unwilling to stop because you’re convinced your actions are just. If I was scared, you’d see it as guilt. But I am calm, and you see that as a suspicious flippancy. There is no victory for the accused in this room.
The sense of insolence you perceive in me is merely a sense of resignation. My life was doomed the moment your men knocked on my door. I have been brought before the all-powerful and my life is over. People who can’t even pronounce xenosympathizer have been dragged before you in tears after running from arresting officers out of simple animal fear that you mistake for culpability. Their attempt to flee and subsequent weeping are no more an admission of hubris than this table is carved from a block of cheese. You take far too much joy in your mission, your unattainable goal. No society can be spotless.
A human ship landed on that planet, yes. The ship was destroyed and the astronauts were murdered, yes. I don’t know if the pilot and crew were perceived as a threat or food but I do know that it was a mistake to land without further research. The fault is ours.
The aliens were not communists. They were insects. They had no concept of money or values. They ate and built. It was not a political philosophy. It was nature functioning at a base level. They drew no line in the sand and they did not belong to a side. They didn’t have the emotions with which to hate us. This is all our doing. We are guilty of genocide. Our act was not retaliation. Our act was a first strike.
And now, out of guilt and a bloodlust that was only fueled by their deaths, we are turning on ourselves. This, the aftermath of our shameful first contact, will be looked back on with even more horror than our mass slaughter of that race. No matter how many ‘sympathizers’ you root out and destroy, you will always be lady Macbeth and your hands will never wash clean of blood, both red and green.
I did nothing when they were destroyed as I have done nothing since. I have attended no meetings. If I am guilty of anything, it is of not raising my voice when it may have mattered. I await this mockery of human dignity to run its course and I am humiliated to be alive during this chapter of earth’s existence.
–Last recorded words of disgraced xenobiologist Jance Hayward, 63rd traitor executed in the state of Arizona during the post-Xenocleanse Purge of 2061
