by Julian Miles | Jul 5, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The tide is full of bodies and the sky is filled with lies. Sullen waves roll corpses back and forth, trailing organic tatters in varying shades of death. Above me, seagulls scream furiously at the metallic crags that obstruct their flight and deny them perches with beams of fiery death.
Earth was poisoned: blighted crops, tainted waters, acid rain. Letharn proposed colony ships. The world laughed. Then the Madagascar Quake of ’73 delivered a tsunami that left the land it covered radioactive as well as salted. While many pointed fingers at the submerged tailings of Fukashima, others turned to Letharn, prepared to discuss. When the ‘Greenflame’ fungoid moss defoliated the Amazon in a matter of months, people wheezed as the oxygen content of the atmosphere dropped by non-decimal percentages. Letharn built his first ‘Jargangil’.
His mountain-shaped behemoths were all named Jargangil, after a table-top mountain in his homeland. Jargangil I was built off the coast of Australia. II was off the coast of Wales. III arose off Los Angeles, and the game was on. A fevered gestalt of race for survival and the only competitive event that mattered. While the ships were identical from the outside, interior fitments and passenger load varied far more than advertised. Jargangil C and Jargangil M were rumoured to be elite vessels with barely twenty percent of the passenger capacity of other ships, their interiors given over to landscaping, spacious accommodations and immense stores of luxury foodstuffs.
In the end, it made no difference. Letharn’s Jargangils took on all who would (or were permitted to) leave the dying Earth and made ready for deep space. Clouds calmly drifted against silver cliffs as main drives roared to life. Sea turned to steam under spears of white-hot power, but the vessels did not lift. Drive plumes faded and steam dissipated. Silence spread as we who were left, either by choice or denial, puzzled over their lack of departure. The clouds were undisturbed.
Then a single speck fell from Jargangil LIV. That speck turned out to be a dead body, purged by Letharn’s ruthless, automated answer to graveyards: eject the dead into space.
More specks appeared and horror rained down. Sheers numbers overwhelmed attempts to manage the mass of cadavers. All communications were ignored. Thousands of mountain-sized hazards dot the skies. Rotting flesh pollutes both sea and air.
Letharn’s designers either miscalculated, or were undone by contractors cutting corners. Within seconds of the drives firing, insulation and cladding materials combusted under the transferred heat, starting chain reactions that released toxic fumes into the areas where people lay in their launch cradles. The following minutes do not bear thinking about: billions died in agony.
The Jargangils remain, devoid of life, defence systems preventing all boarding attempts. We await the near-inevitable day when experimental gravity-repulsor drives reveal their design flaws, and drop Letharn’s toxic mountains into the seas of Earth.
by Julian Miles | Jun 22, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The office is derelict, with many more overturned chairs than collapsed desks. Filing cabinets stand crooked and burst, the once-precious burdens they held now repurposed as nesting materials or fodder.
A few plasticised pieces of paper flick or wave in the desultory breeze, which enters through the hole where the wall collapsed into the alley – the piles of masonry broken by the protruding bones of some unfortunate caught in the fall.
Tonight the scavengers of this dank corridor, where the river Thames is slowly winning a guerrilla war against the low-end, are moving cautiously around the derelict office. In the only sturdy corner, one of the desks has been righted, and a chair placed behind it. In that chair a shadowed figure sits, the glowlight on the desk angled away, making the shadows of the alley seem more menacing.
In the alley, the new patches of inky dark cede before a black figure, who waits by the edge of the hole, invisible to the one who waits within.
“You know they’re going to blame you for this, don’t you?” The voice from behind the desk is conversational and cultured.
“I’m not responsible.” The reply from the shadows of the alley is guttural to the point of incomprehensibility.
“I did not say you were at fault. I said you were going to be blamed. It is a subtle difference; only for those directly affected.”
“What my sib did is not on me. Whyfor you blame me? Seek the one who held my sib in thrall.”
“Your sib, and you, are an urban legend, living testament to the errors of the early animorph projects. With your body in the light, the sensation will cause the spotlight to fall elsewhere. A monster is better for headlines than some convoluted plot about a chip and its maker.”
“My sibs are not for your diversions, Mister Manter. You should have looked elsewhere for them.”
The figure behind the desk quietly presses the button on a small, secure transmitter. The winds picks up, and the dark beyond the fading illumination of the glowlight seems to deepen. The figure behind the desk quirks his head, as if an expected event has not occurred.
A clawed hand extends into view. The pallid scales are almost obscured by dried blood. In that massive grip, a receiver flashes silently.
“We are not man-made mutants, Mister Manter. My father watched the sons of the Third Reich rain bombs upon this city, and his father swam through the bodies drifting away from the Great Fire. I venture that I will live to see all the outcomes of tonight’s endeavours. You, however…”
The voice growled into silence, and Mister Manter launched himself from behind the desk, his Sireo chargegun punching fist-sized holes through the outer wall.
“Damn you, Sharktor! You’ll not take me!”
The thrum of a compressor-pulse shotgun was nearly lost in the Sireo’s howl, but the impact wasn’t. It caught Manter in the kidneys and threw him through the hole in the wall.
As he ricocheted off the opposite alley wall, a gigantic hand swatted him down. Manter’s remaining breath left him in a rush as he slammed into the ground
“My name is Chak’tur, and I have no intention of taking you, Mister Manter. Here is as good a place as any for you to die.”
Manter gritted his teeth and turned his head – in time to see the monstrous, clawed foot descending.
A sudden scream rolls through the darkness, then cuts off, leaving only echoes to fade.
by Julian Miles | Jun 16, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Where did we find him?”
“Outside a pizzeria on the Alpenring in Walldorf.”
“Obviously a man who travels first class.”
Hans chuckled.
Dolf stretched: “So, before he vanished, on camera, from a locked cell, and the infestation of sharp dressed young men with Hamburg accents began, what did our mystery guest tell you?”
Hans pulled out his notebook: “He spoke almost perfect Hessian. I had to get my grandfather to verify my translations. Grandpa said that he was speaking ‘Darmstadter’, and he hadn’t heard that spoken since he was a child.”
Dolf raised a hand: “So he’s a bit of a linguistic mystery as well. Move on.”
Hans grimaced: “We’ll have to. The suits took the tapes.”
Dolf glared at Hans.
Hans ducked his head and continued: “He claimed to be Grustaf Kolingt, a ‘Geldaj’ – some sort of private detective. Anyway, he had been hired to look into a trio of disappearances, one every fifty years or so. Now, things got weirder when I asked about their cold case methodology, because he didn’t understand. Lifespans where he comes from average two hundred and fifty years. Two of the disappearances had made headlines that Grustaf had read!”
Dolf looked up: “Only two?”
“Yes. The first one occurred before Grustaf was born. The fourth was imminent. Grustaf was hired to prevent it, and find the cause.”
“Man from another world ends up in Walldorf? Come on, Hans.”
“I thought the same. Then he listed the three missing people, and one of them was familiar.”
Dolf sat up: “In what way?”
“Frankfurt,” Hans waved his hands as Dolf started to rise “on-Oder. The other Frankfurt. I read about the stranger that appeared there when I was a kid. Said he came from ‘Laxaria in the country of Sakria’, but vanished before authorities could do anything. That was back in 1851. Next one was in 1905: a man caught stealing bread in Paris. Had a torn map of a place called ‘Lizbia’. He spoke no language anyone could interpret. Again, he vanished before anything more could be done. Then, in 1954, a chap was detained at Tokyo airport: presented a well-used passport from ‘Taured’, in Andorra. They locked him up overnight, -”
Dolf interjected: “And he was gone by morning.”
Hans grinned: “Precisely. So, Grustaf did some basic detective work – common themes, places, etcetera. The only overlap was visiting some place called Mantuk, an abandoned town in what we’d call Connecticut.”
“Let me guess. Our intrepid private detective went out to Mantuk, didn’t he?”
Hans grinned: “He did. Found an abandoned naval station with generators still running. Inside, he found what I would call a ‘mad scientist’ by the name of Johann Titor. Unfortunately for Grustaf, he had henchmen. They overpowered him, then threw him into Titor’s machine. He has no idea what Titor was trying to achieve, but the result of a failure is what happened to the disappeared, and to Grustaf. They become ‘Losgemacht’: slipping from one reality to another, until they encounter the reality that matches the resonance that Titor’s machine imbued them with.”
“What happens to those who don’t find a matching reality?”
“They spend a short time in each reality, then ‘drift’ on. Until they die.”
Dolf leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head.
“Then I hope Grustaf Kolingt gets lucky and lands in a reality where they need impetuous detectives.”
Hans raised his coffee cup: “I’ll drink to that.”
by Julian Miles | Jun 10, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Even before everything came apart, I hated hills. And, back then, I had gears. This old clunker only has one cog at each end. So there’s nothing for it but to push down on one side while hooking the other side under the pedal to pull up. If that isn’t enough, it’s time to walk.
Which is a bit of a bugger with forty kilos of scavenged stuff in the panniers. Then again, I’m going back to Racehill Fort, where sanity still exists. I have three people with me, and we chat about things and laugh as we go. Most of the south coast is a feral wasteland. If pedalling harder is the tariff for being part of civilisation, I’ll happily do it.
“Chargers!” Cindy’s cry is hoarse with fear.
Damn and blast. I’d hoped that the new equivalent of mechanised cavalry hadn’t spread this far. Should have guessed it – electric motors do good work on smooth going, but off roads, they’re shite. The mountain bikers, foresters and horsefolk make short work of them. Which means they are bound to the roads, and roads delimit the old urban territories. Like the one we live in.
“Push on! There’s a dip we can use to help with the long up to the fort!”
True enough, but the sounds I’m hearing are not servo-driven bicycle tyres. They sound like –
A black-helmeted rider shoots from a side road, his e-motorbike sporting armoured fairings, spiked leg guards, and a pillion with a hand crossbow.
“Stand and deliver!”
You can hear the amusement in the bastard’s voice: he’s enjoying this.
I raise my hands: “We’ve not got much, just some canned goods.”
He points at me: “Dump it all.”
We do so.
Pillion dismounts and stretches with a groan. Unlike the compact frame of the rider, this one’s a bit of a monster. I note that the crossbow does not waver while the stretch and audible bone cracking occurs.
After the stretch, he waves the hand that doesn’t hold the crossbow as he speaks: “Here’s how it goes, kids. You’ll not be scavenging anything until our conditions are met.”
Mark’s face betrays his bafflement: “What?”
Rider shakes his head: “If you leave the fort to get stuff, we will stop you on the way back. Every time. If you keep trying, we’ll slash your tyres.”
We are faced with a man who knows his threats.
I raise my arms: “What conditions?”
There is no hesitation: “Vegetables.”
Mark beats me to it: “What?”
Linda gets it: “You’ve lost your farmer, haven’t you?”
The rider laughs: “Good guess. So, here’s how it goes. We want fresh veg, and you grow loads up there. But you need people who do the brute force thing. We’ve watched you, and you’re either shit at it, too squeamish, or both. We are very good at violence -”
Linda interrupts with: “But shit at gardening.”
Pillion grins and stops pointing the crossbow at us: “You’d be right, lady.”
I start pushing my bike: “You wouldn’t happen to have any bicycle sized motors would you?”
Rider scratches under his helmet: “The sort that helps pushbikes up hills? I’m sure we could find some.”
“Then I think you’ll be welcomed with open arms. Providing you bring the gear to fit ‘em as well.”
Both of our erstwhile highwaymen burst out laughing, and I know an alliance has been formed.
by Julian Miles | Jun 2, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s a spade stuck in a pile of earth, and Harry would want it so. We’ll not disturb it, letting wild plants grow and moss run riot. He loved digging. Said it made a man of him when he first did it in the trenches, and lamented the fact that politicians didn’t have to spend a month of every year ‘getting their hands honestly dirty’.
We’ve used his ashes mixed with compost and loam to bed in the tomatoes, and we hope that his crop will be a bumper one. And, by being in the tomato troughs, he’s next to Maggy in the marrows and rhubarb. He always said it would be good if they could be together again.
Consider it our little contribution to that wish, Harry, my old friend.
The shop’s doing well and the council has approved our grant to revive the old greenhouses. I think it had more to do with Beatrice being the Mayor’s grandmother than ecological reasons, but a win is a win, and these days that’s so rare no-one will say a thing to endanger it.
Losing Harry is a sad landmark. He was the last of us who remembered retirement. Even during his last years, there were people who scoffed at him. A period of your life when the government paid for you to have time off? Nothing but myths spread by scroungers to hide their parasitical lifestyles, living off the back of hard working people. ‘Cradle to grave labour, the only way for the good of all’. That was the credo, these days. You only got your cremation for free, and a little memorial service at your local temple if you’d served in the emergency services or armed forces.
Harry said that the Merger Temples were heartless, like supermarkets for gods. When Edith pointed out that the Merged Places of Religion Law reduced fundamentalism, Harry only laughed, and said that all it reduced was the amount of prime real estate owned by the Church.
I’ll miss Harry. He had a way about him. Like he carried truths he had fought to find, and they are what gave him ‘weight’: the gravitas we are lacking.
