by featured writer | Sep 1, 2011 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Featured Writer
Taffy leapt from the ridge, a howl of joy trailing behind him until he hit and rolled on the green grass below. He came smoothly to his feet and looked up at his launch point, a hundred metres above. A smile cut his grimy features as he imagined their faces. Didn’t say anything in the rules about gravtac boots.
He wondered where Sam and Ellie had gone. He’d warned them that trying to stay together was dumb. Then again, they’d only asked for money whereas he’d managed to strike the whole room silent when he asked for a platinum rated ID card.
Ellie levered herself up on her elbows and looked up at the elegantly dressed elderly gent, his stance reflecting a life of the very best in everything. He looked down at her with a cold regard.
On the other side of the clearing, Sam gasped as his attempts at shallow breathing sent waves of agony through him from where the impaling javelin pinned him to a tree. His vision dimmed as his blood formed fractal swirls in the little puddles that were scattered at his feet. Conversation sounded loud over his fading heartbeat.
“Oh, good kill, my Lord.”
“Thank you, Jenkins. A hundred metres with a torque-spear should net me the range trophy, I feel.”
“Indeed, my Lord.”
Ellie let her head hang so they wouldn’t see the tears. They had only wanted a life together, and Taffy’s idea of being Foxes seemed like such a good way to make their fortune in a few hours. She felt a hand grasp the hair her mother had loved brushing and pull her head back. Tears streaked the grime on her face as she stared into the dispassionate eyes of the elderly gent. His other arm did something below her vision and scarlet fountained up into her view just as the pain hit.
“Sweetly done, Messir. Clean to the spine in a single stroke.”
“I do think that they deserve a quick end. Pass me a towel, would you? It bled on me.”
Night was falling as Taffy strolled up to the gates of the mansion. He could almost taste his new life. The guards scanned the game tag on his wrist and let him in. The drive was long, and the clean gravel crunched under his boots as he quickened his pace to get past the trophy racks, staring fixedly ahead to avoid seeing anyone he knew. Ahead of him, the sounds of genteel partying rose into the tranquil summer evening.
Something hit his lower back. He tumbled forward as his legs went numb. By the time he heard approaching footsteps on the gravel, the numbness had taken his entire body away. A hand rolled him over, his eyes frantically flicking about before settling on the dapper young man next to the little girl in a ruffed summer dress. She stared down at him, her features pinched and eyes wide. She tore her gaze from him and looked up at the man;
“Are you sure they’re animals, Daddy? They look like us.”
“Would the Watch let us hunt them if they weren’t, Cynthia?”
“No Daddy, the Watch only let us do good things.”
“Precisely, darling. Now can you do it?”
“Yes Daddy.”
The sweet little girl pulled a filigree-chased antique Webley .22 automatic from her designer purse. His eyes widened as she knelt down by him and patted his matted hair, gentling him like a beloved pet in pain.
“There, there.”
He felt the cold tip of the tiny barrel against his clammy brow.
A click.
Darkness.
by featured writer | Nov 17, 2009 | Story
Author : William Tracy, Featured Writer
The royal palace was mostly quiet. It was late afternoon, and the heat from the desert sun drove all but a few guards to seek shade. Even construction on Pharaoh’s great pyramid on the far side of the Nile had halted for the day.
A woman, face twisted in anger, strode purposefully toward one of the palace’s grand entrances. The guards, armed with spears and swords, stepped forward to intercept her. She extended her arm, and a sword with a blade of violet flame materialized in her hand. With inhuman speed, she dispatched the guardsmen and entered the palace.
She hiked briskly to the royal chambers, and threw open the doors. There the mighty Pharaoh, a god on earth, lounged on a couch next to His favorite wife. He started in surprise and horror, and His great crown tumbled to the floor.
Consumed with fury, the woman beheaded Pharaoh’s wife with a single stroke of her fiery weapon.
“All this time, you had another wife here?” she yelled. “How could you do this?”
For a moment Pharaoh sat, dumbstruck. Then He frantically tried to gesture to someone behind the intruder.
She swung around, and saw two naked children. “You had kids?!”
With two strokes, she killed and mutilated one of the children. The other turned and fled rapidly; the woman then threw her sword like a javelin, impaling the boy.
“That is it!” she screamed. “I have had it with you! You can stay in your virtual reality and rot for all I care! I am leaving you!” she flickered and disappeared.
Pharaoh glanced around wide-eyed. The royal entourage stood motionless, petrified. For several moments the god-king tried to regain His composure, then gave up. He terminated the simulation.
After all, Pharaoh can’t allow His people to see Him cry.
by featured writer | Nov 10, 2009 | Story
Author : William Tracy, Featured Writer
A lone figure swung precariously from the side of a sky-scraping tower, painfully inching his way up a rope.
That tower and others stood in rows, crowding out the sky. Their sides gleamed silver, studded with large, black windows. The streets below were lit as much by flickering lamps as by the slivers of sunlight that scraped past the immense buildings. The dark streets teemed with bustling people clothed in rags. The occasional horseless carriage pushed through the crowd, horn squawking.
High above the metropolis, bloated dirigibles drifted lazily from one tower to the next. None paid heed to the tiny figure crawling up one of the great buildings, skulking in the shadows.
He smashed a steel-toed boot through a window. He rolled through the hole, and rose to a kneeling position. He paused, listening for the footsteps of golems—the dead reanimated galvanically to become the mindless servants of the powerful.
Satisfied that he was undetected, he moved swiftly through the halls and passageways toward his objective.
He opened a door to a teetering catwalk. In the vast chamber below him, rows of massive transformers and dynamos repeated on and on, bolts of electricity leaping from one to the next. A single steel column in the center of the room stretched from the floor to the ceiling, intersecting the catwalk. At that place was a knife switch. The lone figure walked forward and reached for the switch.
“I don’t think that you want to do that.” A sharply dressed man stood behind the lone figure, flanked by two golems bearing electricity guns. Two more golems emerged at the far end of the walkway, cutting off any escape.
“If you throw that switch, you will short-circuit the generators below you. The explosion could destroy the entire building.”
“Maybe that’s what I want.”
“Do you have any idea what I am doing here, and what is at stake?” The man in the suit searched the other’s eyes. “I am creating mankind’s ultimate invention. I am building a machine that will change history.”
“You are building a computer. A machine that can perform mathematics.”
“But it is so much more! I am building something unparalleled in human endeavor: A machine that can think! Can you imagine what this means? Our creations will do our work for us. Humanity will live by the fruits of its ingenuity, and we will create a new utopia.”
“Your machines will work for you, and replace us. You will have no more use for the poor, and will then destroy us.”
The man in the suit sneered. “The poor are not my fault. I built my wealth by my talents and my labors. I have given up my leisure, my health, and my family for it. It is mine for I have earned it.” He laughed without humor. “Why should the poor be entitled to what they have not earned? They have done nothing to deserve a better life for themselves.”
“I am doing something now.” He threw the switch.
by featured writer | Nov 3, 2009 | Story
Author : William Tracy, Featured Writer
1165 Third Street is quiet, as it has been quiet for over a century.
Once, its two hundred floors housed accountants, engineers, executives and staffers. Its occupants ebbed and flowed with the fickle whims of the economy.
All that ended with the Great Collapse.
Gone are the desk phones and paperwork. Here are mildew and insects. Once-plush offices have become dank caves home to skittering vermin. The gleaming plate glass windows have given way to jagged holes whistling in the wind. In sunlit corners, mosses give birth to grass.
1165 Third Street groans. Its steel skeleton cries one last plea against the indignity of neglect, then is silent. For one heartbeat, two heartbeats, three, it drops from the sky.
On the second floor, a deer leaps from a gaping window and bounds to safety. On the forty-second floor, an owl awakens in time to know its own mortality. On the fifty-third floor, a lynx screams for its kittens. On the one hundred thirty-seventh floor, a hawk spreads its wings and lunges for the sky.
On the roof, a lone tree twists in the wind. A mouse scurries in its shadow, then squeals as the ground drops from beneath it.
1165 Third Street drives into the earth with a roar. All around, waves of blackbirds and crows rush aloft. Beneath them, deer and jackrabbits bound down the cracked and pitted streets. A black cloud rolls after them, raining shards of glass and metal.
The boom fades to a dull rumble, and the air is filled with the scolding and chattering of birds.
The rubble moans and settles. Here a chunk of plaster skips through a maze of metal. There an I-beam seesaws hesitatingly before sliding to its resting place.
The wind changes direction, and the clouds of dust part. The setting sun burns crimson through the haze, and the ruins cast long shadows on the murky air.
A deer steps deliberately, nose twitching, ears alert. A coyote snuffles through the twisted debris, then dashes after a rodent.
The old financial district is quiet, as it has been quiet for over a century.
by featured writer | Oct 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Featured Writer
Klaxons screamed inside the ship as she plunged into the Sun. The three crew members on the main flight deck were violently shaken in their couches. Their Kevlar straps strained under the onslaught.
“We’re entering the upper photosphere.” That statement could not have been heard above the painful noise had it not been for the bone conductive communicators implanted in their parietal bones.
“What’s the hull temperature,” commander Stanislaw asked.
No reply came.
“Damnit, what’s the reading,” he barked.
“Sorry Mik, my mistake. There are no readings, nothing is working back here. The way I see it, is that when our skin gets a nice brown crispy texture, we’ll know the hull’s been breached..”
“Thanks for that bit of optimism Al. Isn’t anything working?” Mikhail Stanislaw, mission commander, was amazed at how calm the guys seemed despite their impending death.
“I have nothing on my screens Cap,” replied mission specialist Beth Svoboda, “But it sure as hell is getting warm in here.” The sound of her shaking voice coupled with the rumble of the ship reminded Mik of talking with his mother as a boy while the train they rode rumbled across the tracks into Moscow.
A horrendous wrenching noise tore through the cockpit. Al Dane was the first to identify the crash. “Sounds like we just lost the colony pod. There go three hundred people who won’t ‘Enjoy Paradise in the Off World Colonies,’” he finished mimicking the now familiar mantra of the omnipresent emigration ads.
“At least they won’t feel anything. Lucky bastards. Straight from cryo to crispy in two seconds or less, or your next cremation is free.” Beth remarked in her sing song voice.
“It will be the same for us right?” The first quaver of concern was evident in Al’s voice. “”We’ll go painlessly right?”
Mik answered without emotion, heedless or unaware of his comrades fears. “Never fear, ours is a sturdy craft. She can take temperatures far higher than the pod. No my friend, I fear that our end will not come so quickly. The heat will continue to build until we are literally boiled in our own fluids. Then we shall slowly be dry roasted. After that, all that remains will be three piles of anhydrous powder left to be borne upon the solar winds.”
“Hey, I didn’t sign up for this. I’m nothing more than a glorified bus driver. Who’s idea was it to loop the Sun instead of Jupiter.” Al’s voice was reaching a sharp crescendo.
“Relax,” said Beth in her slow calming voice, “It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing we can do. It will all be over soon. Look at it this way, in a hundred years, who’s going to care?
The ship, if it were possible, seemed to rock more violently. “Well, looks as if this is it. Das vidanya everybody.”
“See you on the other side,” piped in Beth cheerfully.
“Gaack,” said Al.
The craft shook so violently, it felt as if she would b torn apart. Kevlar straps did break. The few instruments that weren’t built into the ship became deadly missiles
And as quickly as it had begun it ceased. No noise, no sense of motion, nothing.
Nobody spoke for what seemed an eternity. Al broke the silence. “So, this is it?”
“Apparently,” Beth responded.
“It’s not so bad.” He sat in thoughtful silence for a moment. “Hey, remember those Orange Julius stands they had when we were kids?”
“Yeah, what about them?” An almost dreamlike mask had descended upon Beth’s features.
“I Think I’m gonna get me one.”
“Hey Al?”
“Yeah Mik.”
“Get me one too.”
