by featured writer | Oct 12, 2009 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Featured Writer
When the last Earthmen landed on the Martian surface, they would have sworn they were suffering from some form of mass hallucination or hysteria. Perhaps the ship had taken a hit from a micro meteor and the crew was succumbing to asphyxiation induced delusions, but all appeared to be having the same dream. It was as if they had walked into a Ray Bradbury story. Wherever they looked they saw lush verdant hills and valleys forested with exceedingly tall, thin trees of deep blue and green.
Joe Webster, the team’s medical specialist, cracked his helmet and drew a deep breath. “Well, the air is thin but okay. It’s kind of like being in the Rockies .” His voice was weak in the lean atmosphere. The rest removed their helmets.
“Hey, uh…Captain? This looks more like Iowa than Mars,” systems analyst Ray Rowe remarked. The four men looked around in wonder and awe rather than shock or surprise. “Did we somehow make a mistake?”
“No mistake. That’s Earth there,” Lt. Metz replied pointing upward to the twilight sky. “Captain. What do you think?”
“Well, whatever is going on here, I think we are about to get some answers,” Captain Drexler remarked, looking off into the distance.
The other three followed his gaze as a procession of brilliantly robed figures approached them. The people, creatures, Martians, whatever the hell, drew to a halt before the delegation from Earth. They were tall, something over two meters, with large ears, and nostrils much like a seals that opened and shut with each breath. They had blond hair with gleaming violet streaks. Apart from these differences, they looked remarkably human.
The two groups regarded one another for a few moments. The humans with confusion, the Martians with quiet contemplation. Finally one Martian, resplendent in flowing blue and red robes of a shimmering material spoke up.
“Welcome men of Earth. Long have we awaited this day. You come on a very auspicious occasion. And, I might add, a very lucky time for you.. Come, the feast awaits.” The voice boomed even in the rareified air.
Without another word the “Welcoming Committee” turned and left. In shocked silence the men followed.
The mixed group entered a crowded hall constructed of iridescent stone and were seated around a grand banquet table of the same material. The table itself was laden with deliciously tempting dishes.
Captain Drexler turned to his host at his left. “Excuse me…er…”
“Call me Bob.”
“Okay, um…Bob. From Earth observations and the photographs from our probes we assumed Mars to be…,”
“A lifeless, desolate, desert planet,” the Martian asked.
“Well, yes.”
“We can deceive your instruments, but not your natural senses. Mars is as you see it. Now please, eat. I am sure that will you find the food is not only edible, but quite palatable as well.”
The men followed the example of their gracious host and dove into the feast sans utensils. To their delight they found the food to be beyond anything they had ever tasted before, as if all their lives they had had only water and were given a vintage wine for the first time.
As they ate, their host stood and raised his hand to silence the assembled crowd. “Fellow astronomers, cosmologists, and our special guests. Tonight is an historic occasion in our field, for tonight marks the destruction of Earth.”
The four Earthmen choked on their meals. “WHAT,” they exclaimed as one, showering the table with partially chewed food.
“Oh yes,” their host said, turning to his guests, “Earth must be destroyed. It’s obstructing our view of Venus.”
by featured writer | Oct 6, 2009 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Featured Writer
“Goddamn it, this is the seventh time this week that this goddamn machine has stolen money from me,” Joe screamed, feebly punching the mechanical purveyor of carbonated beverages, “the goddamn thing has more of my money than I do.”
“Then stop putting your money in it. Now come on, we’ve got to go, she‘s coming back tomorrow, so we only have a little time. We have to get to the lab,” Jess scolded. They made their way down a long corridor and across the cavernous testing area to the lab proper, a corner of a warehouse walled off on two sides with green parachute material.
Pushing aside the flimsy material, Joe entered on the silent wheels of his chair, his partner and fiancé Jessica marching swiftly behind. The rest of Dr. Stewart’s grad students were already there, and jumped up as they entered.
“Good, everybody’s here. What was the doc thinking, leaving us in charge while she is away at the symposium. Well, when the cats away…” Steve Bloch remarked as he reached out to wring Joe’s hand. “Ready for a joy ride buddy?” They shared a wolfish grin.
“Alright people, let’s fire him up.” Christopher and Christine (Chris and Chris) Carlysle, fraternal twins, formerly identical twins, raced to a pair of terminals while Jess smeared saline paste over Joes skin.
“Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages,” Steve bellowed in his best ring master voice. “Allow me to present Skeletor,” with a grand flourish, he pulled a canvass from the large cloaked object dominating the small lab.
“I don’t believe it,” Jessica exclaimed. “When did you manage to finish it?”
“Joe and I spent the better part of last week on it since she’s been gone. Joe worked on biofeedback loops, and I finished this end up about an hour ago. What do you think?”
All stared in hushed silence. “It’s …beautiful.” The Chris’s whispered in unison.
Before them, in gleaming black stood Skeletor; a bio-mechanical hydraulic exo-skeleton. At nine feet tall and four wide, the skeleton was composed primarily of nano plastic woven of industrial diamond dust. A recently formulated ultra strong material commonly employed as ballistic armour and heat shielding for ship to shore spacecraft.
“Okay Joe, ready to try it on?”
“You don’t know how ready,” he said, slamming his fists down on his useless legs.
It took all four of the students to get Joe into the skeleton, the process made more difficult by the slick but necessary saline gel that covered Joe’s body. It was used to facilitate the neural mechanical interface.
A strap bristling with wires was secured to his forehead, and similar attachments were tightened around his arms and legs as he slipped his hands into thick gloves. All of these devices were lined with metal contacts similar to dull needle points to receive his mental input.
“Joe, how does it feel?” Jess asked
“The contacts are annoying but not unbearable.” He took a few tentative steps. “Balance is good, gyros are working.” He crouched down, and leapt five feet into the air. The others cheered. “Well, so far so good, let’s try a little test of strength.”
Joe raised his mechanical arms above his head, and shook them at the ceiling. “Vengeance is mine,” he screamed and sprinted to the heavy warehouse doors. He easily ripped them off their hinges and tossed them aside. He stooped below the lintel, and disappeared down the hall, howling obscenities all the way.
The remaining four stood in shocked silence.
“Shit.”
Steve, still stunned, turned to Jessica, “What is it?”
“He’s going after the Coke machine.”
by featured writer | Oct 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Featured Writer
In the cavernous interior of the ships main docking bay, three coffin like tanks came to life. Inside each, the senior officers of The Crimson Lady were resuscitated. The tank lids retracted and a thin mist spilled to the floor, swirling among the thousand other sarcophagi that littered the hanger. In each was a member of the 1st/110th 28th Infantry Division (m).
Slowly, the men began to stir. Finally released from the frozen half life of cryostasis, Division Commander Sergei Orlof, his XO Lieutenant Colonel John Derbyshire and division CSM Paul Walker painfully stepped from their tanks for the first time in nearly eighteen months.
Rubbing the knots out of his calves, Sergeant Major Walker checked the comlink tattooed on his left wrist. “What the hell? We’ve been in orbit for almost thirty six hours. Why weren’t we defrosted earlier?”
General Orlof sat down heavily on the edge of his tank, and worked the kinks out of his massive shoulders. “Well, it doesn’t look like anybody’s been taking pot shots at us. Better get to the bridge and find out just what the hell is going on.”
The bridge of the carrier was worn from countless battles but remained spotless. Dust doesn’t settle in micro-g. The exec plopped down in his chair, and fishing a lead from the base of his skull, plugged into his console. He sat motionless, a blank look on his face as he absorbed a year and a half of encrypted messages from the Confederation council.
After what seemed hours, but in reality was something less than thirty seconds, the executive officer turned to face the men and delivered the message.
“Your not going to believe this. Apparently peace has broken out.”
“What,” Orlof bellowed, “are you sure about that?”
“Yes sir, the orders are straight from the Supreme Council. We are to stand down, and return to Earth. The Asiatic Alliance has sued for peace. The war is over. That would explain why weren’t attacked when we entered orbit. What should I tell them,” the young colonel asked.
The general looked over at the Divisional Command Sergeant Major. The two regarded each other coldly. They had been friends from the first, the CSM merely a buck sergeant placed in charge of the general’s barracks, and the general still a green officer cadet. Both nodded their heads in unison.
The General flipped open a small panel set in the arm of his command chair, and flipped a red toggle.
Below on Europa, above the Tesla Dome of the Asiatic Alliance colony of Thera, the vast face of Jupiter dominated the view. Children played in the parks, and the colonists went about their daily rituals lost in their thoughts.
If one of the colonists happened to be looking at just the right spot in the sky, they might have noticed an almost imperceptible pinprick of light detach itself from a larger yet still tiny point.
Slowly the speck grew, until it blossomed just above the dome, a breathtakingly beautiful flower that bathed the colony in the brilliance of thermonuclear fire.
With a grin the general turned to his XO. “Tell them; `Please repeat last message.’”
by featured writer | Sep 27, 2007 | Story
Author : Todd Keisling, featured writer
Jimmy lost his pinky finger today. I can’t wait ’til I lose mine. Mommy says it’s gonna happen sooner or later. Sometimes I daydream about it—what it’d be like to lose my arm, my foot, my fingers and hands.
The kids at school, Billy Zemicks and Janna Clebold and Harvey Valencia, they came in last week missing an eye, a toe, an ear. Not all at the same time, of course, but pretty darn close. It was like they were the most popular people in school. Everybody wanted to see them, touch the places where their parts had been and ask what it felt like.
Jimmy was in the bathroom, having the Oralator brush his teeth for him when his pinky fell off. I asked him if it hurt. He said it didn’t, and then he spat into the sink. A couple of his teeth went down the drain.
Our teacher Mrs. Crabtree says it’s all part of our natural progression. What scientists a hundred years ago were calling evolution. Only backwards. It’s kinda hard to explain, but it’s got something to do with how we used to be monkeys, and how we grew into humans. We made wheels and fire and then we made computers and cars. Then we figured out a way for machines and inventions to do everything for us.
So I asked Jimmy if he was gonna celebrate, and he said, “Nah, I’m just gonna chill out in front of the tube.” I followed him to the living room where he sat down next to Mommy and Daddy. They were watching TV while the SofAid fed them. Jimmy told Mommy and Daddy about his pinky.
Mrs. Crabtree said, “Over millions of years, creatures can gain or lose abilities and appendages based on necessity and survival.” She told us all this while holding up a stump where her hand used to be.
When Jimmy told Mommy and Daddy about his finger, the SofAid connected him to the Network. Then it inserted a needle into his arm and began to feed him breakfast. Daddy said, “That’s great, son! You’re on your way to becoming a man.”
On TV, the news reporters said it was happening everywhere, and that it boggled all the scientists in the world. Evolution was supposed to happen after a long time, not right away. Not like this.
They said we should embrace this new wonder of humanity. They said, “Imagine, no longer feeling the need to sleep! Or eat! Or copulate!” We still needed to sleep and eat, of course, but they said it was always a possibility. That was one of the great things about evolution.
I still don’t know what copulate means, though. Maybe I won’t have to. It sounds gross.
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by featured writer | Sep 24, 2007 | Story
Author : Todd Keisling, featured writer
My brother used to tell me about the glory days, when the Government was less unified and there was more than a single state. Usually what he told me went along with what they taught us at the Academy in history class, but sometimes he’d add little details here and there. Things they didn’t include in their presentations.
This was after he’d joined the Military, served a couple of tours and came back. He was different when he returned. Told me and Mama that he’d seen his nightmares come to life during that time, that we just wouldn’t understand. Not long after is when he’d start telling me about the way things used to be. About how there used to be actual television broadcasts with fictional plots. He called them “sitcoms.”
We had this car. A real zoomer. Old rust-bucket from the 20th. He bought it before he was recruited, and before he left for duty I told him we’d fix it up when he came back. I didn’t expect him to return, but he did. Sometimes I think maybe it would’ve been best if he hadn’t.
One day, while we were both on our backs underneath the old GT, my brother told me that I should stop taking the supplements.
He said, “There’s more in them than just serotonin.”
I told him we had to by law, that we’d be in big trouble if we didn’t, but he just chuckled. He told me people used to read for enjoyment. The last book I actually saw was in an antique shop downtown.
“They didn’t have to outlaw books,” he said. “Back in the day, a lot of people wrote about futures where governments banned books. They were wrong. People just stopped giving a shit. Channel Zero took care of the rest.”
He took the ratchet from my hand and looked me in the eye.
He said, “This country was built on revolution. They want you to forget that. Don’t you ever forget that.”
Two days after he killed himself I was out working on the car to clear my head. Mama came to me, her eyes all puffy from crying, and gave me a letter. No name or return address. Just had my own name scrawled across the front. The letter simply said:
“Warehouse 27. Corner of Reed and Pine. Wednesday. 11 PM.”
And then, below that, it said:
“Your brother was a good friend.”
I was told my entire life not to break curfew. Two hours of Channel Zero were mandatory. We were always supposed to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior, and I’d heard about what happened to those who were caught in the streets after hours.
What my brother told me underneath the car that day stuck with me, and I wanted to know who sent this letter, so I managed to sneak out. I took to the alleys and the old routes I used to follow when I was a kid.
Warehouse 27 wasn’t empty. There were a lot of young men like me there. There was a lot of anti-Government propaganda tacked to the walls. After a few minutes, the doors were closed, and several soldiers and patrol officers filed into the room.
One man in a black uniform stepped forward and said, “You’re all under arrest for conspiring against the Government.”
Everyone murmured. We knew we’d been had.
“High treason is punishable by execution,” he said, “or by four years of Military service. The choice is yours.”
The soldiers cocked their rifles and took aim. I realized then what my brother was talking about, and why he enlisted in the first place.
The choice was obvious. I just wish I’d had time to say goodbye to Mama, and that I’d finished that damn rust-bucket car.
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