by Duncan Shields | Dec 16, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Yes, the aliens were invasive. Savagely invasive. But how could we blame them? We were a treasure trove to them.
The aliens had no name of their own, you see. As a warrior race, they let the planets they invaded name them. As they took planet after planet and civilization after civilization, they collected names. They were up to one hundred and sixty four.
Unpronounceable names screaming forth from terrified beaks, mental picture collages from psychic races, bursts of scent from pheromone speakers, they were all collected in their databank.
If a planet had no sentience, the aliens moved on. Slaughtering animals that could not name them held no interest.
And this is why Earth was like a rainbow of temptation to them.
With over 6900 languages on Earth, the aliens could increase their name count (and thereby their reputation) by factors of ten. And that didn’t even include slang or scientific definitions.
They took their time, making sure to take at least one speaker of each language to record their names for posterity while they laid waste to us.
It was fascinating for us to find out that the way we split and diverged our languages was unique. Most alien civilizations leaned towards a common language but we didn’t. What a strange thing to find out on the eve of our doom.
They didn’t destroy the forests or the oceans. They only targeted the cities and the towns.
As a reward for our staggering bounty of names, they left enough of us to start another stable gene base with the promise that they would be back in another ten thousand years to do it all over again after we’d evolved and split and developed new languages.
There are a hundred thousand of us now. They picked us all up and dropped us in Indonesia where it’s hot most of the time. We’ve started having as many babies as possible and doing our utmost to survive and keep each other safe.
Earth is reclaiming the ruined cities. The stink of human death is dissipating on the wind. In time the animals will multiply faster than we can eat them and the oceans will fill back up with fish.
Although this is the worst chapter of human history, or maybe even the end of it as we have no way to record our findings now other than scratching on bark or painting on cave walls, it sometimes feels as if we are in a new Eden.
I am thirty-two years old. I am on a beach in this hot country. The sun is going down. I can smell the boar our party killed cooking on the dinner fire. Sixty-three women are having babies in the next few months. We are by necessity polygamous to increase diversity for strength. We have no shame at nudity and we must not tolerate jealousy.
We’ve painted pictures of the aliens on any available surface as a warning to future generations. We are struggling to maintain one language among us but we are from all over the world. It’s hard. But we’re trying harder than humanity has ever tried to speak one language to each other so we can all understand. We are one tribe now.
I cannot bring myself to thank the aliens. My own family and all of my friends were killed. I am the only person from my city left alive.
But sometimes in moments like this sunset, I feel something like gratitude in my chest and it makes me feel conflicted inside.
I turn away from the sunset and go to eat.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
We meet every six years.
The project churned out over two hundred of us. When they ordered us terminated, twelve of us escaped. There are eight of us left.
The government made a Superman straight out of the comic books back in 1952 but you know what they say about absolute power. They gave the strength and the nigh-invulnerability and the flight capability to a handsome, decorated young soldier named Walter Johnson. You should have seen him. Blonde hair, tall, honest, great shape. What a shame. He did what he was told for almost six months until one day, in a fit of pique, Walter killed his commanding officer by accident by punching him in the face.
They found the officer’s helmet embedded in a brick wall about a block away. They theorize that his head may have been atomized. Walter had been ordered to kill a few too many innocents and his sense of nationalism finally eroded to nothing. The rest of the team, following the eventuality scenario orders, opened fire. It didn’t work. He killed them, too.
Feeling hurt and betrayed, he went rogue. He tried to go underground but he was recognized wherever he went. He couldn’t get plastic surgery because nothing could penetrate the force-field around his body. Eventually, they cornered him in a warehouse in Texas where he’d been posing as an airport mechanic.
Their last-ditch insurance policy was cruel. Walter had a brother. They hauled the brother out and said that if Walter didn’t kill himself, they’d kill his brother. Walter was borderline suicidal by this point anyway. He’d been thinking about ways to do it.
He flew up into space. The vacuum did him in. He may have been invulnerable to the cold but he still needed to breathe. It didn’t take long. His body fell back to earth like a meteor and landed outside of Lubbock.
They killed his brother after that. No loose ends.
Using a specially designed drill bit, they drilled into Walter’s body and scraped a few cells out from beneath the force field.
Enter us. We were a batch of clones made from Walter. They figured if they could make us and control us from birth, we’d be more obedient. They kept us off the expense charts and away from the media. We were to be covert. They outfitted us with new tech as it became available. Things went great until puberty.
Scientists are always so shocked by nature. Wet dreams, anger issues, sullen feelings of not being understood, the need to explore, sex, growth spurts, massive confusion, floods of hormones causing borderline insanity. They couldn’t control us.
They had weapons that could penetrate our force fields. One morning, mechanical soldiers came in and opened fire on our bunks. They got most of us right then and took a bunch more of us out in the ensuing battle. Sixteen of us fled. Twelve of us made it past the outer defenses and survived the trek to civilization.
We were homeless for a while. We drifted apart. We stole where we could but some of us got jobs. The secondary backup that they had was to turn off our powers remotely. They wanted us intact in case they collected us so that they could make more.
Every six years, we meet up. Joey’s missing an arm. Jamie’s got cancer now but it looks good for a complete recovery. Sarah only pops in for a second, looking great in her suit. This time even Jake made it but he looks like the heroin is winning.
We talk for a while.
by Duncan Shields | Nov 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The shapeshifting aliens are untrustworthy. It’s not their fault.
They see the world for what it is, through a kaleidoscope.
Us humans, we only get to see one viewpoint of the world. People react to our outer shell with no variation. We can get fat or thin or muscled over the course of a lifetime with some cosmetic surgery here and there, perhaps, but for the most part, we remain unchanged. This inescapable fact colours how we percieve the world.
Shapeshifters are both invisible and at the same time, all things to all people. They sense the fantasies that will make their missions of espionage go smoothly. That general likes the young girls, especially bobbed brunettes with scars, for instance. That high-ranking banker woman is pining for an old love. It’s a simple trick for a changeling to make itself resemble that old love in order to grease the information tracks.
This ability to make any human bend to their will gives the ‘shifters a much truer insight into humanity than we ourselves will ever possess.
It makes the changelings unreliable, regardless of the punishment chips and id tags we install to make them subservient and identifiable to us. They don’t set out to fool us. They just have fuses on their minds because of what they are. They start to despise all humans, not just their mission targets.
After that, they fall in love with each other.
The thing is, a ‘shifter will never be satisfied with a human. They can only be truly pleased with another changeling.
It’s like putting two mirrors face to face and creating an endless hallway.
Two shifters, embittered and ready to defect, will rent out a motel room. Once inside, they will shudder with changes. They will have a game of trying to match what the other puts forth. Clothes will disappear, bodies will melt and flicker through age and skin colour. Body parts will grow, shrink, or disappear in an ongoing fluidic transition from one form to the next, faster and faster.
They will see how aesthetically perfect they can make themselves and then how repulsive. They will pull out their entire repertoires. They will have sex with each other in every possible way, heating up the room.
After they have exhausted their options of humanity, they will start to delve deeper into the imagination. They can only do this with each other. Without another ‘shifter present to spur them on deeper into the realms that they could never go to separately, they would only be able to go through human forms.
Dragons, dogs, octopi, half-imagined air creatures made of bone clattering with sexual hunger, panthers, chittering car-sized insects, and misshapen sculptures of flesh with many holes to fill.
The changes become too fast and quick for their minds to keep up. In a mutual orgasm of delight, they die, leaving behind protoplasm and a bundle of fertilized eggs.
It’s not uncommon. About twice a year, two of our shifter agents will stop answering their phones. It’s only a matter of time before we track down the hotel where they ascended to another plane of existence.
If they weren’t so useful otherwise, we wouldn’t employ them.
by Duncan Shields | Nov 15, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
It was a beautiful day for a ship launch.
These are the things I remember:
I remember the sun shining down out of a blue sky that arced from horizon to horizon over the beach with only a scattering of clouds above the water.
I was perched on the small hill about a mile away from the launch site with my mother. Her bright red hair was still full and lustrous but shot through with grey. She’d say to me that every grey hair was from a time I fell and hurt myself. That’s how much she loved me.
I remember her bringing her hand above her eyes in a salute to shield them from the sun. She was perched sidesaddle on her hip in a red dress. She’d tucked her heels up underneath her and was leaning on her other arm, her hair was teased by the wind. When I remember her, this is the image that comes up the most, her leaning into the breeze. As an adult, I can look at this memory objectively and see her not only as my mother, but as a woman. I can see how attractive she must have been.
She squinted, bringing a half-smile to her face.
In my memory, she looks out across towards the massive ship.
The ship was white with scooped shapes. It didn’t look aerodynamic but my mom told me that it wasn’t that kind of ship. It was a ‘long-range’ ship which meant that the science was different. It didn’t need to worry about drag and other wind-tunnel qualifications. It would ‘slip’ up and out from this plane of existence and then come back to this dimension at its destination. It wouldn’t take as long as the other way, she said. He’d be back soon.
When I asked her when daddy would be back, she just looked away from me, back up at the ship. I could see love there, but also a little resentment. My father, the astronaut, was going on this trip against my mother’s wishes. I’d heard them fighting at night when they thought I was asleep.
We sat there on our red-checkered blanket having a picnic at the launch. We were there with hundreds of other people. Red-necked sightseers, teenage couples, scientists, keen students, and the families of the other astronauts, all of us on blankets with picnics, ready to see the launch take place.
Ten. Nine. The numbers rang out from the loudspeakers in the distance. Our little radios shouted out the numbers as well, a half second before the sound from the launch pad got to us. It made an echo of the numbers. I remember feeling like I was in a dream.
My mother’s hand tightened on mine. I leaned up against her. I was eleven, old enough to be embarrassed by affectionate gestures from my parents but not old enough to do without them. I held onto her and we both watched the ship that held my father.
There was a clap of thunder and a ripple of imploding wind and the ship was gone.
That was sixty years ago. Their calculations were off. The ship came back this morning.
To everyone on the ship, they’d been gone for two months.
They were being briefed. My father was being told that my mother had died twenty years ago, ten years before my own wife. He was being told that I was in a wheelchair and that I had six grandkids.
I was about to meet my father. He was still thirty-six. I was looking forward to it.
by Duncan Shields | Nov 11, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The white Silracan clicked its chest-legs together and reared back in what was the human equivalent of a bored sigh. Between it and the hologram of the Earth forces commander lay a chess board made of light. Admiral Grimwald gazed sternly at the board, concern creasing his angry brow.
“As you can see, Admiral. I’ve created a version of our battle here in what you call a chess board. A very interesting game, I have to admit. I’ve quite enjoyed forcing our armaments and troops into an approximation of it during our takeover of your race’s empire.”
The Admiral’s face might have been carved from wood for all the change it showed at this statement. He still looked at the board, contemplating the layout.
It was going bad for black. The white pieces took up most of the board. The black only had a few pieces left to protect the king.
It wouldn’t be long before they lost Earth itself.
“One thing you need to admit, Admiral, is that at this point it would seem you are quite close to checkmate, as you say. If you are the Black King and I am the White King, then I think the game draws nearly to a close. However, I can give you a chance to end the game now and abdicate peacefully. Here. I’ll appeal to your…..ah, yes, that’s the word….sentiment.”
The Silracan clacked its mandibles together in a staccato demand. An underling brought a mutilated human forward. A soldier, still able to stand through sheer force of will. She trembled but managed to bring her head up into a level gaze with the hologram of the Admiral.
“If you give up now, Admiral, I’ll spare this hostage’s life. Though she may be a lowly pawn, I believe you can see the symbolism here. I will spare both her and the rest of your people. Slavery is an ugly word but I believe your race will find it preferable to death.”
The Admiral looked at the hostage. For the first time in six months of military action that had descended into costly attrition, rebel tactics, and guerrilla warfare, he smiled. It was like he’d forgotten how.
“Well I’ll be damned. What’s your name, private?” he asked.
“Sheila Bailey, shir.” She managed to push through her ravaged mouth.
“Your family will be notified. You’ll get more posthumous awards than anyone else in history. Well. Are you ready?” asked the Admiral.
The Silracan’s head craned back and forth between the human exchange in bewilderment.
“Quebec Uniform Echo Echo November.” Said the captain.
The Sirlracan checked the translator to see that it hadn’t malfunctioned.
The soldier fell to the ground and writhed. Smoke started to pour of her mouth as the nanotech in her bloodstream went to work, turning all of the chemicals in her body into very powerful explosive device.
“All of my soldiers were given this injection. All of my ‘pawns’ as it were. The hope was that at least one would make it over to the other side of the board. I never thought you’d actually help with that.” Said the Admiral to the Silracan sadly, watching the soldier die.
The Silracan screamed and tried to twist away from the now-glowing body of the soldier. Milliseconds later, a giant explosion tore the mothership in half.
Without leadership, the Silracan forces dissipated.
“That soldier is no longer a pawn.” Said the captain as he watched the mini-nova from the mothership’s imploding drive, big enough to be see with the naked eye happen in the night sky.
“Now she is a queen.”
