by Julian Miles | May 23, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Sarraled stared through the viewport as the lander spiralled down through the thin atmosphere.
“Looks like this place was inhabited.”
The pilot nodded: “They died out just before we established the base. Sad, really.”
“That good?”
“Yes. Although innately aggressive and stuck in capitalist societies that were decaying towards several flavours of dystopia, they had the most wonderful art. There’s a display in one wing of the centre.”
“I’ll check it out. Thanks.”
He toured the ‘Earth Works’ gallery and was moved to tears of awe. Such élan. Such verve. Such a shame they were gone.
“Deputy Director Sarraled? Welcome to Kruptos.”
He turned to face a dryland-caste Chutfen.
“Thank you. And you are?”
“Director’s Assistant Edrumel, Deputy Director. Please follow me.”
The Director’s office was sparse in furniture but rich in art hung upon the seven walls. Director Nodrunj perambulated across to clasp Sarraled’s hands warmly with his manipulator fronds.
“Sarraled! Delighted to have you here at last. Ready for the posting that will ensure your career?”
“I am, Director. Although a little bemused by the distance.”
Nodrunj wove his fronds into a worryknot: “It is unfortunate, but the founders of Kruptos thought it fitting.”
“For what?”
“‘To’ what, actually. As Deputy Director, you are privy to the information. We – as in the Galactio Primul – killed this planet.”
Sarraled near fell off his chair in shock.
“But why? How? There was no record!”
“Be at ease, Sarraled. It started with a false assumption by the scout group, which led to an erroneous decision.”
“Erroneous? I’ve seen the Earth Works. To destroy a race capable of those marvels is a Dust Level offence!”
The fronds shifted smoothly from worryknot to peaceweave.
“Steady, Deputy, steady. The scouts thought this world was a single territory under a governing body called ‘United Nations’. It wasn’t. So when a fanatical nation fired nuclear rockets at the Galactio Primul ambassador’s craft, the warning given was acted upon. As fission attack is Dust Level, you know what followed.”
Sarraled took a deep breath. He knew: a Scorch/Freeze Retaliation.
Nodrunj slid his fronds into honourtwine: “In the aftermath, the scout group was executed. All mention of Earth was removed. Earth became ‘Kruptos’ – a word taken from one of its ancient languages. It means ‘to hide or escape notice’.”
Sarraled nodded, his face pale.
Nodrunj relaxed his fronds: “We have a twofold remit: the overt one is to ensure that every reconnaissance of inhabited planets is conducted with absolute rigour. In effect, ensuring that the horror perpetrated here is never repeated. The covert one is to ensure that certain Dust Level Threats are kept hidden, buried deep beneath the ruined surface of this planet.”
Silence stretched until the Director of Kruptos slapped a frond on his desk.
“Deputy Director Sarraled, do you still feel ready for this posting?”
Sarraled looked out of the window, where what had been a towered bridge drooped, partially melted before the sudden cooling by glacial winds solidified it, forever caught in the act of collapse.
“I am ready. Ready to hide what must remain hidden, and discover what must be known.”
By the time Deputy Director Sarraled became Director Sarraled, his words of acceptance had become the motto of Kruptos.
by Julian Miles | May 17, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s a smashed petri dish in the sink, the splashes of water on the pieces syncopating with the drumming of the water pouring into the steel basin. I look down at a hundred moving reflections of my face as the water rushes away. The flow carries an occasional crimson blossom with it as my grip slips about the gash I’ve inflicted on my right hand.
“Simon! Put this on it.”
Limala hands me a clean cloth. The wound is soon staunched in layers of blue-striped cotton.
“What were you thinking?”
“Fredor’s Hall.”
Her eyes drop. I met Agoryn Fredor after I got mugged in Gagra. He was the translator the police called to make sense of what the battered Englishman was ranting about. Over the subsequent years, he and I corresponded about many things. Mostly based around our mutual fascination with alternate history.
I have always been claustrophobic, otherwise I would have accompanied Agoryn and his wife on their expeditions, including the one that made their name and caused their deaths.
Deep in the Krubera cave system, they found a narrow chute off the passages between Big Junction and Perezagruzka. They kept the base camp informed as they plunged deeper and deeper, heading beyond 1900 metres. Then they went suddenly, awfully quiet. It took the rescue teams a week to find them, lying at the bottom of the hundred-metre-high chamber they had plummeted through the crystalline ceiling of. The walls were carven with diagrams and glyphs in a language unknown to man.
I took it upon myself to translate the writings in the Hall, in memory of my friends. Three years later I married my research assistant, Limala. Two years after the honeymoon, we succeeded. Two days later we publically conceded defeat and published our research to help others in the field – all bar one item: it was sheer chance that allowed us to crack the strange alphabet, and it is unlikely that ‘serious’ linguistics specialists will come across what we used for a while, at least. It’s just a document from some long-defunct alternate history site – we’re not hiding anything; we just don’t want to be the ones to have to tell everybody.
I’ve read the creation myths of a hundred cultures, and listened to the ravings of more alien conspiracy theorists than most. Not one comes close.
We’re a small planet at the edge of the Milky Way, once used as a waypoint on a great journey. They built an infrastructure here to support the vast starships passing through. That infrastructure was salvaged by the last vessel. As a final act, they purged the grounds they occupied so nothing would taint the evolution of the planet.
But they missed some of the primates they had modified to assist. These were initially sickly and scared, but smart enough to adapt. Their descendants were the legendary prehistoric giants who interbred with the early Denisovans. After that, they ravaged the dawning world, scaring early man so badly he either banded together to drive them out, or worshipped them as avatars. But eventually, each civilisation they haunted no longer had a place for monsters. Routed from the societies they depended on, their last mention is as the Fomori of Irish myth.
We’re the bastard descendants of something that should not have survived. I reach out and turn off the tap, looking down at the petri dish. When we’re done, we sterilise them. I cannot shake the fear that those who went on that journey may eventually come back. What then, for that which has grown, unwanted, from their leavings?
by Julian Miles | May 9, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I don’t get to see Grandma Spoon as often as I like. What with the economy, austerity zoning and riots, cities can be difficult places for those unable to use or reach civil transit lines.
She wouldn’t move. Her home was the one she’d shared with Grandpa Kev, and there was no way she was going to quit it in any other way than the way he had: feet first in a coffin.
I saved up to charter an armoured private hire from a company with a solid rating. I was a little concerned when it turned up with driver and guard, but they assured me it was a precaution: one of the reasons they had such a good rating.
When I asked about the lack of bulldozer blade, they explained that it had become unnecessary for the area – they would follow the bus route!
Quite frankly, given the money I’d spent, I lost it: “There haven’t been buses since they enclosed and secured the rail lines! What’s your game?”
“Sir, please take a seat, and we’ll explain as we go. Standing around is still chargeable.”
I settled into the seat and the driver dropped the privacy screen between compartments. He talked as we wove our way through the morning traffic.
“It started eight months ago. A regular run reported a clear route into one of the worst areas. Video showed the road had been properly cleared, too. The wreckage was back from the carriageway. We wrote it off as a Domestic Army intervention.
But over the next few weeks, other routes were cleared. Also, some of our regular pickups on those routes stopped calling. It was strange. We checked with allied firms, and they had the same problem.”
The guard took over the story: “One evening, one of ours was limping back after an ambush when another mob finished the job. With the driver KO’d, my mate Abel is down to praying. Suddenly, the crazies leg it. He hears a big noise, then a bloke in honest-to-god platemail knocks on his window and asks if they’d like a lift!
Turns out the armoured geezer works for James, who runs the bus. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. This ‘bus’ looks more like an armoured locomotive on dump truck wheels. Got a bucket and jib up front to clear the way, steam cannons to clear the bandits, and a passenger compartment with hand-stitched curtains and a craft stall! And the ‘knights’. Bunch of mad women and men who act as enforcers. James likes his routes clear, and not just the roads. He says: ‘a bus is useless without passengers. People need to get on safely’. The knights come down hard on anyone who messes with the route or places nearby. He’s got a decent run, from town centre to Bluewater Fields. People pay what they can. He gets a subsidy from the retailers in the Fields and the borough councils. He says he’ll have a second bus next year. All built local, from salvaged bits, like the first one.”
Grandma introduced me to Elgin, who’d taken the bus to ‘pop over’ for tea. I contacted the hire company and cancelled. Elgin and I took the bus back. I was dropped off at a civil transit station. Got cookies and lemonade from the craft stall, too.
I’m going to be seeing Grandma more often. I’m also toying with the idea of helping with the Bus Three Project. Grandma laughed her head off when I said that community was coming back, and was bringing armoured steam-buses.
by Julian Miles | May 3, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The clouds are limned in blood. Carmichael said it was a trick of the light; I have to take it as a warning ignored.
We came to Acheron – actually Acheron IV, but as the rest were uninhabitable, we dropped the designator – to build a paradise. The planet was the right distance from the sun, had oceans, freshwater lakes, gloriously rich loam, and no creatures bigger than a sparrow. The bird-drop seed cycle was handled by a beautiful, green avian that fell perfectly between Swift and Hummingbird. It was also the fastest bird ever recorded, routinely achieving speeds in excess of 180kph as it shot through the night.
Acheron was to be the utopia that Homo sapiens deserved. The omen of seeking to build that fabled ‘no-place’, and the abysmal history of previous attempts, did not matter: we were the ones who would succeed.
Eight months and our cattle were breeding spectacularly. A second harvest was in. Our log haciendas had already been featured on lifestyle feeds. We had completed acclimatisation for all Terra-originated organics. The start of our ninth month would be marked by the atmo-dome being dissolved so we could finally experience our new home properly.
We were all outside, champagne in hand, when Teleon released the collapsers. High above, a tiny, bright circle appeared. It spread rapidly as the nano-nibblers consumed the dome, repurposing the ‘stem’ material into more nano-nibblers. The ring expanded until it dropped to the ground all round us and we cheered, raising our glasses in toast to our paradise home.
Our noisy cheer masked Teleon’s death. His wife found the pockmarked slab of bloody ruin that he had been. She screamed loudly, then even louder after a cloud dropped on her. Most of us stood about in confusion: that deadly moment of hesitation. But those who acted were the first to fall. Clouds rained down and the dying began.
I got to watch from the single greenhouse as my friends were consumed by nebulous entities that looked like clouds, pounced like leopards and fed like frenzied sharks. The scientist side of me noted a pack order in feeding, with some ‘clouds’ circling slowly while the killer fed. After the killer rose, multiple ‘lesser’ pack members would swarm the remains. They were all messy, wasteful eaters.
I knew my mind was using clinical observation to distance itself from the horror, but could not stop. My heart raced as my brain sought survival options, whilst I calmly observed that these were obviously the apex predators of this planet’s trophic hierarchy. They were why the Emerald Proto-Swifts were small, nocturnal, and ridiculously fast. Why there were no large fauna. It seemed like paradise was guarded by monsters of suitably legendary nastiness.
A cloud has squeezed through the skylight into the greenhouse. It’s a small one, probably last in line for the feast hogged by its bigger kin. Did it’s finding of me indicate an improved hunting ability, or was it a common trait?
I smile. Ever the scientist. As the cloud slowly approaches, I lift a ground sensor and ram the half-metre spike through my heart. Sweat runs from my forehead. I bite my lips to stop myself screaming: I suspect a scream will make the monster lunge. To die quickly, I need to pull the impaling spike out. The sensor beeps, determining my temperature and mineral content.
The scientist inside howls as the observer yanks the spike from between my ribs.
That hurts even more. I look up.
The clouds are limned in blood.
by Julian Miles | Apr 28, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Detective Narda looked about the scene in horror. Some of the colours of blood on the walls and ceiling he didn’t have a name for. A couple weren’t even in his visible spectrum – his forensic scanner added them to his augmented vision as blue dots or green stripes. The whole place smelled like month-old dairy products sprayed over a charnel burn.
He turned to Detective Cummins: “How often are people killed around here?”
Cummins looked up from his magnifier: “Usually takes a couple of dozen times, unless you’re thorough.”
Narda sighed. High-tech supercultures were a nightmare. Give him a backwater planet with neo-cowboys and proto-cows any month of the calendar. He looked about again. Actually, right now, he’d even settle for a mining world with shovel-handed Blinktrolls and their daily dishonour duels.
“Okay, Cummins, what are the variants?”
“We start with the original core person, born of uterine female from an egg fertilised by something accredited as eighty percent or better human analogue. That person, upon achieving notoriety, will take steps to ensure their continuance, over and above any steps their doting parental units may have. To that end, we have babyclones, kidclones, teenclones, and – rarely – adultclones. Then we can add at least half a dozen virtual images, especially if the original is a tycoon of some kind. Now, if the virtuals have been dimensioned, they are full entities in their own right. Then we have back-projection, where virtual images are flashed onto mindless organclones, or holoclones, where a dimensioned virtual has had a body grown from original stem cells.”
“That’s a lot of persons.”
“I’m not finished. Many wealthy folk like to travel, and to get the full sensation, they have bodies for each environment, so they can experience each one in-the-skin. Of course, skinjobs are meant to be extinguished at the end of a cruise, after the person has flashed back to their core body. But some get out, through malice or negligence. Then we can add the clones from stolen DNA for celebrity sex-dens – which is narcissistic in the extreme or straight-up too-far-gone in the fandom stakes.”
“Paying to have sex with a copy of your favourite star?”
“Or paying to have sex with yourself, a transgendered version of yourself, or just being there to let your fans have at you without them knowing they’re getting the real deal. It’s a whole sick snark and I, for one, will never sleep properly again.”
Narda visibly shuddered: “Definitely too far over the edge. Was that what happened here?”
Cummins shrugged: “There may have been some escaped sexclones, but what we have here is, as far as we can detect, every person of Clutha Moreno.”
“The gang boss?”
“The tentacle-eared overlord of the Cozria Nila himselves.”
“How many?”
“Best guess: seventy-two.”
“Paranoid, wasn’t he?”
“A bit. But a lot of these were not ‘official’ persons. Rival gangs, pretenders, vengeful ex-partners, the list is long and ultimately irrelevant. It would seem that Clutha’s DNA included obsessive-compulsive greed. So when it came out that he was coming here to transfer his core image to a new person, every one of the would-be usurpers turned up to take his place.”
“What was waiting?”
“Magtoran Eradicator.”
“The DNA sniffing assassins exist?”
“Actually, one does. He’s a licensed killer and a good friend of law agencies in these parts.”
“Does he have a contact point?”
“Known only to Planetary Governors. It’s safer, what with his thousand-year lifespan.”
“Safer?”
Cummins gestured to the carnage: “With the enemies he’s accrued, he doesn’t do unexpected. He will kill first and apologise to your relatives if appropriate.”
