by Julian Miles | Aug 1, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Damn them. They make you envious, make you hate yourself, your life, every breathing minute of your existence. I hated them, but it got me thinking.
How pretty is too pretty? There has to be a threshold. Under it, you’re plain or acceptably good looking. Over it, you’re a walking insult.
Insult to what?
That’s where it all opened up to me. Being pretty isn’t just about genetics – okay, they help. But the truly enraging pretty things work hard at their annoying lives. Self-indulgence, self-denial, discipline, they have it all. Even the ones without wealth are easy to spot. They work all the time to look good. Not to live. No. They just exist to make others feel bad about themselves. No purpose beyond being things for the less fortunate to aspire to.
I’ve always been good at mathematics, and my programming skills are adequate. So I sat down and wrote myself a program. Tried to make a name that would be an acronym of ‘pretty’, but gave up. Named it DEADPRETTY – and that’s when the big plan started.
A world without pretty people. Just average types getting by as we always do.
That fired me up. I spent eight years taking DEADPRETTY from basic media scanning to full profiling with illegal privileged access. For that, I got a job with the government infotech division. Read-only access with no data withdrawal was easy to arrange and conceal. I also upgraded a few things. Got promoted a couple of times. But the pretty people still grated on me.
The transfer to Janus Habitat got me where I wanted: an environment where I could stage a controlled test. Then came my first real problem: how to kill lots of people effectively?
That took me a while. In the end, I went for a two-stage process: the first makes all the people available for killing. The second sorts the pretty from those who will survive.
DEADPRETTY is my opus. It reviews a person from birth to now, evaluating every little thing they have, did, or do. After that, it calculates how pretty they are. That stumped me for a while, but in the end, a percentage was easiest: one hundred percent being the perfect pretty thing who has everything, is physically flawless, and possesses a mind able to perpetuate the crime of their existence. Most people fall in the forty to sixty percent range. For this test, I set the threshold to seventy-five.
At midnight I set the program to execute. It took complete control of the habitat in less than ten minutes. Within an hour, everybody except me was unconscious.
The assessment phase is taking longer than expected. I only have a nineteen-hour window before the next ship docks. Which is why I’m doing this, of course: to make this viable. Reprogramming the evaluation criteria is fiddly, but the predicted completion time falls to under eighteen hours.
Damn them. They even look pretty when dead! Arrayed in their gaudy clothes across the walkways and parks of Janus Habitat, their colours picked out by the intensity of the night lighting. From my drone view, they look like jewellery scattered across the ground. Beautifully irritating.
A needle stabs into the back of my neck. No! How did I…? My fingers fumble across the control boards. As my head slams down on the console, I see my life laid out on the screens. Someone’s comment is highlighted: ‘a workaholic who seems to hate everything about himself’.
Damn the pretty things. Damn them all. I never allowed for them being infectious.
by Julian Miles | Jul 25, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Of all the things I loathed while growing up, learning that kept me indoors and sat down was highest on the list. Consequently, I became a superlative athlete with appalling academic skills. If it wasn’t for my never-admitted abject fear of my mother’s wrath, I’d probably not even have bothered with the basics.
It’s a combination that set me up for military service, like my father before me. Mother said his father had been a soldier too. I looked her in the eyes and promised to never father a child anywhere that I might need or have to leave. So, when the space army offered me enrolment in Special Projects Division, one of the things that decided me was the mandatory sterilisation.
“Bantal! Bantal!”
At the cry for assistance, I look up from my notebook to see Sergeant Jevnis being carried in. Carefully putting the book on my private shelf – mother would be delighted to see me do that – I rise to see what’s befallen our oldest team member.
The octopus/bear hybrid troopers place him down with a care made possible by having four upper limbs apiece. They then step back and salute.
“Shon kora, Troopers. Gothni.”
Reassured, they sprint from the bivouac to return to their unit as instructed. Myself, Jevnis, Helene, and Taranys are the four Specialists assigned to this world. The hybrids were fast-bred here for combat, and regard anything with a lifespan longer than ten years as holy oracles.
“Sorry, Geelo. Didn’t turn fast enough.”
I sluice the half-metre slash. Bone and cerametal articulation are visible at the bottom.
“Did you kill the chancy bolnu?”
I like that local word. Carries all the weight of every scathing nickname you can think of, and combines it with a deep respect for devastating martial skill and fearless, stubborn courage.
“Beheaded it as I went down.”
For a monster with three heads, any one of which can ‘pilot’ the body, that’s the sort of move that causes the hybrids to revere us.
“For once, they were right to bring you to me.”
Due to their reverence for our lifespan and combat abilities, the hybrids – I must come up with a name for them – tend to bring us all of their problems, no matter how trivial. Which is why these sorts of duty tours are often referred to as ‘combat kindergarten’.
“Monkel threw a fit at the sight of me. Made the kids enthusiastic about getting me here.”
Monkel’s one of the crab/wolverine hybrids we brought along from Cerus 9 – which reminds me: I still need to name them. Some hybrids are too good to leave for recycling. We scoop them up, extend their lifespans, and build cadres of deadly monsters. But, no matter how much we educate them, their reverence never fades completely.
“Okay, shut down your torso pain feeds.”
He chuckles.
“You think I haven’t done that already? I’m not as tough as you.”
Our healing is incredible, but eccentric. A wound like this will heal perfectly in about three days, but will not close. To get it right, it needs a little help. I pull out my needle and thread, cut myself a two-metre length and double it through the eye.
“Going right to left. Grab the tail, will you?”
Jevnis pinches the ends of the thread between the thumbs of his right hand. I use my right hand to press the wound closed, then start stitching.
I can hear mother laughing every time I do this. But I like to think she’d be proud.
by Julian Miles | Jul 18, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I staggered from the wreck of the Templeton stark naked. I’d been submerged in a sensory womb, enjoying some virtual sports with colleagues from C-Shift, when all three dropped offline. I wasn’t to know their side of the ship had been torn asunder by a rogue asteroid. While I tried multiple options to reconnect, the Templeton hurtled out of control, rammed through the escort corvette Wiltshire, scorched itself featureless entering the atmosphere of Velomere, and carved a trench twenty kilometres long into the largest continent.
There isn’t a description for my shock when I exited the womb – convinced I’d done something wrong because of having to use the emergency manual release – and found myself standing in half a room, gazing out at burning forest as a wave of sensory-enhancement gel sluiced across the blackened floor and out across the ground beyond.
My attention lingered momentarily on the verdant hills I could see between clouds of smoke and steam, then the needs of the moment struck me. A childhood of foraging and making do surged back into mind. I grew up on Atalus, a backwater world that deliberately cleaves to a low-tech way of life.
My parents taught me to farm, forage, hunt if needs be, and the joy in making and repairing. I’d thought it all useless after I ventured off-planet. Turns out it was another win for the ‘just in case’ school of learning.
Four days later the survivors of the Wiltshire followed the smoke of my fire to the makeshift camp I’d established to house the dying survivors of the Templeton. The womb had saved me from a brutal battering and lingering death. All I could do was make twenty people comfortable. Those from the Wiltshire were in worse state, but only from the privations of the trek to reach me. Their conventional upbringing had left them unprepared for offline survival.
While their medical orderly tends to the dying, and the few who might now survive, I face the other nine survivors. My father’s words come to me, back from the first day he led me out into the wilds and watched while I tried to make head or tail of what to do first.
“Us human’s aren’t so good without our tools. We don’t react properly. Something that could be used as a weapon is comforting when you find yourself troubled and in the wilds. Without it, you’re instinctively on the defensive. You might not need to be that way, but your thinking has already changed. It might not be entirely detrimental, either, but every advantage counts.”
I point at the ground, carpeted with all the detritus a forest sheds.
“You’ll be collecting wood – or its equivalent here – for fires and to make shelter. Somewhere along the way you’ll come across a chunk that’s a little too big for one purpose, too small for another, but sits comfortably in your hand. Keep it. It might be useful, might even serve as a weapon – until you can upgrade to a suitable rock.” I grin. “More importantly, it feels good.”
Gatsbul shakes his head: “Pick up a stick? That’s your Atalunian survival wisdom?”
Yallit turns to him: “I think he means to be on the lookout for potentially useful things while foraging, and not limit ourselves to specific targets.”
Edrin nods: “The moral is that intelligence and tools will keep us going.”
Two more interpretations. There isn’t a correct one. That’s the idea.
Like my father said: “Give survivors a purpose, and something to think on. Both keep hopelessness at bay”.
by Julian Miles | Jul 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The tennis-court sized office is lit like a summer afternoon. Everything within is red, but each item is a different shade.
“You must tell me who makes those soft ownership collars for you. I’ve only seen that shade of purple once before.”
Rooney turns to meet the six-eyed gaze of Tokok. Courtesies taken care of, the grey and mauve spider-mantis noble unwinds its five-metre body from the undoubtedly painful crouch necessary to be at eye level with a human.
“We call them ties, Tokok. Would you like some?”
He’d got fifty, part of a bulk salvage acquisition.
“Could you get me twenty? Laktik will be in a frightful rage over my staff wearing her bridal colours as ownership apparel.”
“I’ll send thirty. Her rage might damage some.”
“Thoughtful of you. Would a kilo of green rocks be acceptable?”
Rooney keeps his expression neutral. The Doktup come from a gem world: ‘coloured rocks’ like emeralds mean nothing to them.
“Entirely.”
“This trade is completed.”
He sits in the only piece of human-sized furniture in the office.
“I presume you called about something a little more serious than ties, Tokok?”
The monster waves it’s fighting pincers about: an expression of great mirth.
“Dressing ones staff correctly is terribly serious, dear Rooney. But, in this case, your insight is correct… I have received a complaint.”
“How did that happen?”
“The human female,” Tokok checks a nearby screen, “Wendie Smith, identifier NKH22492, insisted the problem be escalated to the highest level. My staff understand humans assigned here are to be treated on par with full-fledged Notaries of Doktup like myself. Each passed the complaint to their senior, who spoke to this Wendie, then passed the complaint to their senior. I wished to talk with you before speaking to her.”
Rooney pulls out a datapad and looks her up, then does a double-take. 27 complaints against retail staff this year? It’s only the 23rd February!
“When will you be calling her?”
“I couldn’t treat her with such disrespect. She is in reception.”
“Tokok, would it be acceptable if I accompanied you, and handled the opening discussion?”
The flesh-eating predator sags back into its chair in relief.
“Thank you, Rooney. She is apparently quite strident.”
Funny how the screams of captives being dismembered doesn’t disturb them, but being shouted at stresses them out.
“One thing, Tokok? Please come down without holographic disguise. I think the situation will be swiftly resolved when Wendie realises she faces a Notary of Doktup.”
“I will accept your guidance.”
Rooney smiles. Doktup look like upright-walking cartoonish locusts with their disguise fields on. Plus, the ones who serve are smaller: they don’t have the dietary advantages of Notaries.
“I’ve been waiting over an hour! The rudeness of these Dock Tops! Call this service? Hah! This really isn’t good enough! These aliens don’t understand when you order a triple-syrup mocha with marshmallows and sprinkles it has to come in a jumbo cup or the froth leaks out! They ruined my skirt! I expect the insect who served me to be – Sweet Barnabus! It’s a monster! Who let it in? Get it away from me! Help! Help!”
The outside door swings wildly in the wake of her exit.
Tokok looks down at me.
“Does a screaming retreat mean the same on your worlds as it does on ours?”
“You can’t chase her home and eat the whole clan.”
“Sure?”
“Absolutely. But, it wouldn’t be right to ask any Doktup to engage with one so blatantly defeated. Instruct your staff to forward any further calls to me.”
“Thoughtful of you, again. Many thanks.”
by Julian Miles | Jul 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
How were we to know
How far this war would go?
We weren’t ready,
We’re never ready,
To be over.
Bombs rained down without warning. The Keloden landed on the planet the next day, while we huddled in a shattered basement. Clinging to each other, and the things we thought we needed.
“You’re taking the Madran?”
“Benthusian guitars are too rare to lose. I toured the universe with it. The case is armoured, too. Could be useful when running from these trigger-happy giant frogs.”
Gerthe always smiles when he’s pushing through something he’d rather not face. I look over his shoulder and watch the forest burn beyond the city limits. We used to play tag there. I bury my head in his shoulder.
“We’ve only just found each other. This isn’t fair.”
He strokes the back of my head.
“Politicians who perpetuate wars don’t care about the people who live in war zones. Our job is to get out. Then we can get back to making music and life together. Besides, timing has never been our thing, has it?”
I let go, then grin at him. Neighbours since infancy, only admitting we loved each other in our twenties. He’s right.
“Pick up that expensive guitar, rock star. Prepare to run faster than from a mob of adoring fans.”
He chuckles.
“You didn’t see us on Linury: the booking agent didn’t tell us they eat any bands they really don’t like. We only just made it to the ship. Luckily, we’d chartered our own for that gig.”
I look outside. Night has fallen. The croaking invaders are serenading us with incomprehensible tales of what they slaughtered today. We run for it.
Take me back to making love,
Not fearing death from high above
We weren’t ready,
We’re never ready,
To be over.
Nine weeks and three worlds later, we were holed up in a blasted skiff on the far apron of what had been a bustling spaceport. The Keloden hit our capitol world much harder than ours. All the advice we’d got about making it here predated that, because nobody survived to update it.
“What do we do now?”
I look at him and grin. When sane options run out? Do something insane.
“I’ve been watching them. When they gather to croak sing, they never secure their vehicles. Let’s steal one of theirs for a change.”
He looks at me, hope dawning on his face. As if on cue, the nightly croaking chorus starts up.
“Grab everything. We’ll only get one chance.”
We race across the spaceport, desperation driving us to ignore the privations of the last two months.
I choose a medium freight lifter: big engines for hauling give them extra go when empty. Charging up the rear ramp, we run straight through to the control room. Throwing myself into the pilot’s saddle, I let intuition guide me because I can’t read the labels.
The ship comes alive. I hunt for seal and pressurise controls.
Something hits the back of the saddle. There’s shooting!
Gerthe shouts: “Upship!”
I lift off. Seal and pressurisation turns out to be automatic.
Once clear of the planet, I swing about to find the bullet-scored Madran case up against the saddle. Beyond that lies Gerthe, under the Keloden he disarmed and killed after it mortally wounded him.
He’s still in my arms when a Benthusian cruiser rescues me.
If you could only touch my hand,
I know this love would stand
We weren’t ready,
We’re never ready,
To be over.
