by Julian Miles | Jul 3, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“I once met an elven prince, did you know?”
Grandma’s been in and out of deliria for a week, it’s good to hear her sound so strong.
I smile down at her.
“You told us all about that in ‘The Elf from Mars’.”
Her eyes catch mine and she gives me the little smile I love. It’s the one that means grandma’s about to share a secret.
“Oh, tosh. They were all based on him. If I’d written a book about a girl getting lost in the woods and meeting an alien, it’s the only book I’d have ever done. A space elf and his daring human girlfriend roaming the galaxies? Same core, but way more room for adventures.”
The smile turns rueful.
“Meant I could weave a romance from the infatuation I had.”
“Infatuation? With who?”
She chuckles.
“Do a dying woman a favour, Addie. Put the pieces together.”
Is she serious, or seriously off in la-la land while sounding sane?
“I can read you like a book, young lady. I’m back. This is my last day, I’d guess. Clearer in my head than it’s been for a long time. So, get me a sip of something and I’ll tell you one last story.”
After drinking, she settles back with a sigh.
“I was fifteen. Didn’t have a clue what to do with the good looks that had come upon me. People started paying attention. Jealousy, lechery, teenage betrayals, and hormones. It didn’t mix well. I lit out for the woods to sort my mind.”
She chuckles.
“By the time I’d sorted my mind, I’d gotten myself lost. In my own back yard! My grandpaw woulda been ashamed of me. Well, there I was, trying to think of a way out when it strolled into the clearing looking like a render of the perfect man done by a lady artist. Plus pointed ears, but lacking dangly bits.”
“Shame on her.”
We both giggle, then she carries on.
“We walked and talked. Elbadirel was a prince doing his hundred years of civic duty by scouting frontier star systems.” She sighs: “By the time he escorted me home, I was in love.”
“You wrote nine books after an alien encounter?”
“Not just one. I was thirty-five when he rescued me after my car broke down one winter night. He hadn’t aged a day. I nearly died of shock. We talked for hours, he escorted me home, and I realised I was forever in love.”
Half-jokingly, I ask: “Again at fifty-five?”
“Yes. It was wonderful. Seventy-five, too.”
“You’re ninety-four next month.”
She shakes her head.
“I’m not going to make it, Addie.”
* YES, YOU ARE. *
The room fills with rippling light. Something comes through the wall!
* TIME WAS, I ASKED YOU TO BECOME MY ELIADREL. TWICE. NEVER HAS IT BEEN ASKED THRICE. UNTIL TONIGHT. WILL YOU COME AWAY, GENEVIEVE? *
Grandma gives him a smile that nearly breaks my heart.
“I should have said yes that first time, but I was scared. No longer. I accept.” She points at me: “What of Addie?”
* WRITE THE NOTE SHE WOULD HAVE FOUND. THIS WILL BECOME A DREAM. *
The most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen smiles at me while rippling light drowns my mind.
*
I called the police after spending hours frantically searching the snowy woodland. Her note said she’d gone to walk forever among the trees, and not to cry as it was her choice.
They never found her.
Sometimes I dream the Elf from Mars came and took her away. I think she’d have liked that.
by Julian Miles | Jun 26, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The sensation of having no legs is new, and I’m not liking it. Being unable to connect to the in-ship stream is worrying. At least I was able to reach the emergency button. Right on cue, the door panel slides back to admit-
A ghost in black.
“You’re dead!”
She smiles. Another one that doesn’t warm her eyes.
“Nearly, Miles. I called it a good effort.”
My mind flashes back to that day on the Eventide. We stood at either ends of the shuddering evacuation room, atmosphere venting about us, she in the ballgown I gave her, me in the environment suit I’d changed into before the bomb I planted killed her along with the ship. Her eyes went wide, I pulled the trigger. She went over back-
No.
She rose up before she went backwards when the beam hit.
“You tip-toed! Took it through the face instead of the brain.”
Callisto smiles. This one reaches her eyes.
“Your recall is good as ever, but still needs prompting to work properly. That arrogant surety versus actual attention to detail never changes. I’ve watched you, on and off, ever since I got out of rebod.”
She always loved to have every angle covered. Which is why a lover’s betrayal was the only thing that – judging from the evidence before me – only nearly caught her out.
“How’s the new bod?”
There’s a grimace in reply.
“This is the second. Emergency relief was pushed, trying to save all the worthy from the Eventide after you cracked it open. The go-bod I ended up with wasn’t optimal. I had to live with seizures for a year until I could get a me-bod printed and have myself cut across to it.” She smiles. This one makes her eyes flash. “I kept going by knowing we’d meet this way: you paralysed, and me standing over you.”
I wave my arms.
“Partially paralysed. You’re slipping, Callisto. Getting sloppy.”
Her quickdraw is flawless. The dart gets me centre-mass. Got to admit, had our situations been reversed, I’d have waited before taking the shot. Gloating has always been a weakness of mine.
I slump back. Fast-acting, major muscle groups only. I can still roll my eyes.
“Better, sweetie?”
When I flick my eyes from side to side, doing the closest thing to a nod I can manage, she laughs properly. I’ve missed that… Surprisingly true, and a realisation too late – again.
Callisto holsters the weapon as she steps closer to stare me in the eyes.
“The crew are sleeping in the lifeboat they’re headed away on. They didn’t know their wealthy client is a double-crossing interstellar thug.”
She straightens up.
“The other lifeboat is mine, because I’m not leaving here in the fresh produce container I arrived in.”
So that’s how she got on board.
With a move I don’t quite follow, she stabs me low in the side. The drug cocktail she used is very good: pain receptors aren’t affected at all.
Crouching next to me, cerametal dagger cradled idly in her offhand, she gives me a smile like she used to when we were in love. Well, she was. I was in lust while getting paid a fortune for revelling in it.
“I’m not sure if the overloaded drive core exploding, the decompression it causes, or the blood loss will kill you, but a little variety never hurt anyone, did it?” She chuckles, quoting one of my favourite pre-kill phrases.
“Bye.”
She gets up and leaves. Just like that. I’d definitely have gloated. Such a beautiful set-piece. Shame it’s me in it.
by Julian Miles | Jun 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It was a lovely evening. We’d seen a band, gone for a meal, had a fine THC vape, and were wandering home, giant mocha lattes in hand.
“Hey, isn’t that a Spot?”
I look where Tam’s pointing. There’s a robodog coming down the sidewalk towards us. Bright yellow carapace, quick stepping, cheery rainbow flag bobbing at the end of its antenna.
It stops. A little turret where the head should be turns our way.
“Tamzyn Coombs?”
A female voice, probably artificial.
Tam raises her eyebrows, then steps forward.
“Yes.”
I see her drop, then hear the shot. My first urge is still to spin round while drawing a gun. Instead I feign tripping up on some raised paving and go down hard. I kick a bit, twitch onto my side – so I have some view of the street – before relaxing and going still. Ignore me, robot assassins, I’m unconscious.
After a short wait, robodog deploys a pair of manipulator arms. That isn’t a Spot. It’s a Zeke. Based on the same chassis, but created for urban infiltration. In the silence, I can hear the rotors of a drone come closer. Probably keeping a lookout. The Zeke takes Tam’s bag, then slides or cuts off her jewellery and places them inside.
A bulkier manipulator rises with a gripless pistol mounted on it. The robodog moves round, positioning the weapon carefully, then shoots Tams lifeless body again, this time point blank. Bits splatter. A dum-dum round to conceal the real cause of death. That done, the Zeke trots away, stolen bag swinging. The drone sound fades.
This is a new level of savage. I’ve been stood next to comrades who got shot: she was dead before she hit the ground. On a side street in a city an ocean away from the nearest war!
Without fighting my reaction, I make myself scarce, using every trick available to avoid being followed by anything. Bad times fleeing through foreign cities where every watcher could be hostile come to mind, bringing all the old freight that’s not helping me now. Finding myself down by the railway tracks, I sprint, letting the hard exercise help me process the chaos in my head.
Tam I’ll grieve for later. Something’s changed in the people versus those who rule, and I need to get some place where I can confirm my suspicion: this wasn’t a one-off.
Her social media supports ordinary people, providing links to resources and stuff like that. She never failed to call out corporations, and recently caused a case to be brought against our local Senator for his dealings with certain pharmaceutical lobbies.
Algy runs an all-night cybercafe. He looks up as I slip in through the rear door to the kitchen.
“Whose blood are you wearing, brother?”
“Tam. Killed by a sniper drone after a Zeke got us to stop. I faked a trip and knockout, then legged it soon as.”
He crosses himself.
“Lord above, may she rest in peace. Who targeted her?”
“Some three-letter mob. Get me to a secure browser.”
The nets are alive with reports of a spate of murders linked to muggings and suchlike. Officially unrelated, but in less than six hours we’ve hit a critical shortage of high-profile activists. Nearby drones are a common theme.
I turn to Algy.
“My guess is they’ve got mass production of combat robots up and running. They’ve decided they have the numbers to be immune to mass protests.”
“Are they right?” He snarls.
I scowl.
“No. It’ll take time and martyrs, but we will overcome.”
by Julian Miles | Jun 12, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I watch Nona and Paul walk away, then drop back down. Nothing to do for a while. My next workday is Thursday, so I’m free for the next five days. I wonder if Wanda… No, she’s off with Eber doing resistance stuff. I couldn’t do that. Wearing one of those heavy respirators and sleeping in pressurised tents? No. To be honest, I don’t see what they’re resisting. I mean, there hasn’t been a war in ten years. Can’t remember the last time I witnessed a fight. Haven’t heard of any, either.
Eber and the die-hards say we’ve been conquered and our proud heritage demands we should strive for our freedom from the aliens with every breath, every drop of blood. That whole ‘never surrender’ thing.
Which is where he and I parted ways. I asked one question: “Why should we fight to get back to a situation far worse?”
He hit me. Called me a defeatist. He called me a lot of other things, too. But it doesn’t matter – another thing he couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.
The alien race have a name that sounds like ‘Bangarstom’. Somebody called them Bangers, and that was the end of the naming discussion.
Technically, they didn’t invade. Fifteen years ago, an unexpected meteor shower lit the skies for a week. Unusually, many of them survived the burn and landed. By the time the authorities realised the scale of the problem, it was already out of hand. Vena advena is what the scientists called it – a majority decision after weeks of wrangling gave way before the effects of what the rest of the world had come to call Peace Weed.
It spread fast. Where meteorites landed in urban areas, the response was able to contain the effects with only a few accidents. Those only occurred after the authorities realised burning the alien plant released a smoke that acted like a concentrated dose of the chemicals given off by the living plants. So they experimented sloppily, killing an unknown number of people and animals, then settled on a couple of forms of hard radiation. Which also killed things, but not immediately, and nowhere near as quickly as it killed Peace Weed.
When it became clear that huge tracts of wilderness had become infested with Peace Weed, several governments proposed the use of methods that ranged from nuclear weapons down to radioactive crop spraying. None of the options were adopted. The amount of land that would be sterilised would spell the end of civilisation. Scientists noted Peace Weed was a non-competing species, and that it had become effectively established worldwide in record time.
The results of the chemicals given off by the weed were never properly categorised, because nobody cared. Science, like everything else, moved to providing solutions for the ills and deficiencies that had plagued humanity for decades. Nobody wanted to compete anymore. Many wanted to co-operate. The rest wanted to just live their lives without hunger or pain.
Then the Bangers arrived, asking politely if they could set up a few towns on the understanding they would share non-military technology without reserve. Everybody agreed it would be a good idea, as we hadn’t quite sorted out the transition from capitalism to where we’d arrived without warning.
That was twelve years ago. Between us all we sorted the final details of becoming a ‘quiet planet’, and have been that for ten years.
We are, at last, at peace.
Wanda flops down next to me.
“Why is Eber determined to return to a dystopia?”
“Fear, probably. You done with them?”
She kisses me.
“Yup.”
by Julian Miles | Jun 5, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Standryl looks down from the walkway. It’s like peering into one of those curio shops on a winter evening – corridors of angular junk filled with mysterious shadows and twinkling lights – except here, every constellation of lights is an old spaceship. The perspective is deceptive, too. The ‘corridor’ he’s looking down is many kilometres long, running parallel to the north-south axis of this satellite.
He turns to his guide, a cyborg so old all its biological components have mummified. It sounds like old dresses crinkling when it moves.
“Tell me how he did it.”
The voice is dry as well. Completely toneless. But the eyes brighten as it tells the tale.
“The Jessop family operated a salvage operation back on Old Earth. When humans went into space, Horace Jessop figured they’d make the same messes they had on their home planet, just spread over a bigger area. He started operating a salvage service, where one of the Jessop Wrecking ships would go anywhere – for a fee – and take away space junk.”
Standryl watches a robo-tracer drift by, locator beeping softly as it seeks the particular make and model of ship a spacer tasked it to find.
“I recall he was famous for the volume of stuff he cleared up. Wasn’t there something shady about that? Accusations of fraud?”
“Yes. The base claim was that the recycled material he returned to market was only a fraction of what he took in. Tenuous theories of unsafe practices used in the disposal of gravitic cores and similar perilous scrap were built on suspicion and guesswork. But, apart from the raw numbers being largely correct, nothing criminal or dangerous was ever found. Jessop Wrecking returned thirty percent of its salvaged material to market. What happened to the rest became the topic of media speculation and fictional accounts for decades.”
“Then the wars rolled in.”
“Yes. All Jessop Wrecking ships were destroyed during the defence of Shargyn in the First Conflict. By the time the Third Conflict collapsed into the Great Retreats, there was nothing left of the company. Other wreckers catered to the demand. A demand that had changed. After the depletions of war, resources were scarce. Recommissioning and repair became the thing. Scarcity of old ship parts made it a lucrative business. Spacers started scouring former battle zones and debris fields.”
“Soon after that started, Alison Bant found this, and you.”
“Yes. She was unique. Spent days talking with me, then disappeared for a few months while she changed her name, found two investors, and bought the Jessop Wrecking name back from GalactaBank. The launch of this facility was spectacularly successful.”
“This is the place Horace stored all the ships he didn’t recycle?”
“Yes. In addition to predicting a need for salvaging, he was also sure a need for spare parts would develop, made all the more keen by the long serviceable lifespans of spaceships. He was right. This facility was used to store every vessel in eighty percent or better completion, but impractical or too costly to return to service at the time. He knew he’d never see this place open its docks, but he also knew it would.”
Amazing long-term vision.
“What was he like?”
The cyborg turns to face him.
“A fat man with a love of brandy trifle and fried vat-grown herring. He never drank hot drinks, and was a cheerful player of ancient boardgames who’d quite literally play for days if uninterrupted.”
The venerable companion droid turns to gaze downwards.
“He called this view ‘fascinating’.”
It pauses.
“I wish I could have salvaged him, too.”
