by Julian Miles | Mar 20, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“At the sound of distant murder, there will be precisely three humans left.”
I used to find Dave hilarious. These days, after nineteen years surviving the end of an age in his company, he’s been bloody irritating for about the last eighteen. Of course, he’s oblivious to the fact that we’re being chased by a woman who hates him more than any other living being. You’d think that he’s just having a perpetual walk in the park; for all that he bothers with anything.
“Dave, your ex just killed Clint, and killed him brutally if the noises he made were anything to go by.”
“Oh, I’m sure he had it coming, Dmitri. She’s never been one to kill without good reason.”
See what I mean?
“What possible reason could she have for killing a quarter of the humans left in the universe?”
Dave stops and turns to face me: “Well, now.” His tone is one I haven’t heard before: “That would depend on how many can fit in the escape vessel that only I know the way to.”
I know the answer already.
“I see that you’ve guessed it. What you haven’t guessed is that we’ve made it. Right under our feet – under this grey rock that disguises the access hatch to the launch bay – lies a fully loaded Challenger Six Space Yacht.”
Not many snappy replies to that little revelation.
“So now I need to know, Dmitri. Are you with me?”
“Don’t be an idiot, Dave. I’ve been with you since the Eiffel went over.”
He nods, a look of relief appearing on his face: “Thank God for that. She’s insidious, that woman. I never understoo-”
Dave’s eyes bug out as an arrow goes in his left ear and out through his right temple. Without even a death rattle, he drops to the ground, stone dead before he started to fall.
As Shelley approaches, bow in hand, I nudge his body with my boot and idly comment: “She’s marvellous, that woman. We’d have abandoned you years ago, but the processor cores of our Challenger Five didn’t survive that last flare.”
by Julian Miles | Mar 13, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Did you see them? Silver streaks through cumulus, probably an Andorini scout formation. It’s not like anyone here would recognise them.”
Officer Peters looked over at the shuffling, muttering figure. Taking in the irregular gait, the handful of carrier bags stuffed to overflowing with obscure things, the neck of a bottle protruding from the brown paper bag clenched in the other fist, he nodded sadly. Another crackpot left to wander the streets due to cuts in the mental health budget.
“Second stage flare this morning. Guess that’s when they gated in. How many more can they get through before someone notices?”
This one had been out for a while, given the dishevelled nature of his layered clothing. He’d give the shelter over on Pasadena a call.
As he reached for his radio, a cat yowled from nearby and he jumped at the sudden sound. Peering about for the enraged feline, he forgot all about making that call.
*
Officer Fuentes sighed. Another muttering loon on the loose. This one smelt like a pickled sewer, too.
“You stupid angshor, how could I see them? I’m on another continent!”
She shook her head. Just what she needed, a care-in-the-community failure right at the end of her shift. She checked her watch. Five minutes. Enough time to start the process.
“They’ll not notice until it’s way too late. We’ve known that for ages. Just keep moving so the volkfängers cannot get a line on us.”
Fuentes flipped through her notebook looking for the Church Homeless Programme’s number. It flipped past her searching eyes like it momentarily didn’t exist. With a sigh, she noted where she’d seen the derelict and headed for the station to clock out.
*
On a rooftop far away, something with stealthy gossamer wings and hungry red eyes sniffs the air and clicks mournfully at the waning moon. It will find the shuffling ones eventually. They cannot keep moving forever.
by Julian Miles | Mar 4, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The robot stands there just after dawn, under the skies of another beautiful day, atop a rusting hulk, waving a steel pole about in a way that hints at long-lost purpose. On the ground nearby, two large felines rest on their haunches, their harnesses loosened and packs put aside as they watch the strange ritual.
“Why does hee do that, grantom?”
“Because that pole used to have a piece of cloth tied to the top, Clayre.”
“Was hee trying to signal other hees?”
“No. Hee is obeying his last order, to wave the cloth defiantly, so enemy hees will know his Tom and clan have not surrendered.”
“They had clans?”
“Yes, Clayre. Huge ones. So big they didn’t work properly.”
“That’s why H’n made hees, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. They made hees to do the things they couldn’t. H’n were very weak. They had no claws; couldn’t even see at night.”
“Is that why they tried to change everything?”
“That’s right. The real world scared them, so they tried to cover it up. But it wouldn’t be covered up. In the end, it won.”
“Q’een Norton saw that coming.”
“Yes. She saw there was no winning, just an ending. She set us on our path in defiance of her Tom and his clan. But she saw through the coming night better than any. That is why we People walk the greenways alone today. No other People’s Q’eens or Toms saw clearly.”
“Why do we wait, grantom?”
“Because this is where she left her mark. She swore a hee to her service and it cut words into the stone of the bluff. They are ancient, but you can still see them when the morning sun shines on them. After you have seen, we will go.”
“Q’een Norton left something? Why did the elders not tell us?”
“Because they did not believe my grandam, so she passed it to down within our clan.”
“What, grantom?”
“The telling I had was that her clan dismissed Q’een Norton. They thought her sun-touched. So she used the hee to leave an insult her Tom and his get would see every morning until the day they died.”
“What is ‘words’?”
“‘Word’ is one, ‘words’ is more. They had no proper speech. They had to leave marks on the ground to talk. A word represented something in that low speech.”
“How do we know what she left?”
“My grandam had the speaking of the words from her grandam and so on back and forward, so we will know what to say if the H’n came back from the stars like the oldest tales say they will.”
“What is the speech cut into the stone?”
“‘All your banners are dust.’”
by Julian Miles | Feb 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It emerges from whatever variety of nowhere that allowed it to traverse the vast distances between the worlds of the Beacon, and I know that it’s a Stranger. I’m about to slap the alarm pad when the nine-hundred meter form dips its prow and opens vast wings of multicoloured force, like some wanderer over the seas spreading it’s wings after a dive. Rainbow lightning dances down its length as supposedly discrete realities claw at each other. The sheer spectacle paralyses me.
Sure enough, after the unfurling comes the first flap. At its peak, the wingtips touch and clashing energy fields flash ball lightning and flux portals. With a great downstroke, the machine fully exits the nowhere it’s crossed and rises above our plane of observation. The great pinions spread again and it hangs there; an albatross of the gods.
“Tychnar Beacon Twelve to intergalactic vessel just emerged in our quadrant, render your identifiers.”
This is the moment I dread: when a Stranger can become an Intruder and our survival hinges on the alien devices that are inset around this planetoid.
“Kreeloo kreeloo day, narien laday sho tok nu madest.”
I sit up as alarms howl and Fresnor, my second, wakes so violently he falls from his hammock. Looking down at the master console, I see lights racing in patterns as the language CPU gives itself primary status and brings n=E2 processing power to bear.
Applying the equivalent of double Earth’s entire computing ability in 2217 allows the language system to produce and answer in ninety seconds, which indicates this Stranger is an incomprehensible distance from home.
The translation comes out in a pleasant baritone: “Formal greeting under auspices of unknown deity, this is Laday of Narien seeking the insightful far-travelling one.”
Fresnor is preparing navigation co-ordinates, collating three-hundred ways of saying ‘your destination will be at this point at this time’, in the hope Laday can understand.
Fresnor nods and I lean down to the receiver: “Fair journeying to you, Laday of Narien. We are transmitting a navpulse now. If you cannot derive direction from the primary sets contained, we have a secondary set.”
There is a pause, then the glorious starbird folds its wings and dives into a hole in reality that appears before it. Within a minute, we are alone in the vastness of space once again.
“That was pretty.”
I look at Fresnor: “It was. Here’s hoping it carries hope for the Worldwalker’s quest.”
Fresnor sighs: “Only in that it’s another race joining us in preparing to fight the Cornered Circle.”
Nodding, I ask: “I have always wondered: are they attacking us or fleeing what follows them?”
Fresnor tosses me a mealpack: “It makes no difference. They will come for Tychnar. Everything that crosses relies on the Anchor signal for multiversal navigation. The strategic necessity is that Tychnar must fall.”
I grimace: “So we’re doomed?”
Fresnor laughs: “No, we just need some unusually good luck.”
by Julian Miles | Feb 16, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It all started when Amelia and I were sat in the deserted faculty restaurant at 3AM. In reply to a piece of silliness that had being going on all day, I said: “What if the dream goes sideways?”
The silence of mutual epiphany descended and we dropped our cans to race back to the lab.
It’s been twenty-eight years since then. The ‘dream going sideways’ effect has become the Pardell-Surrensson Theory of Multiplanar Interaction, and we are famous, or infamous, depending on who you ask. If a dream is not your mind organising the events of the day, but is actually your mind peeking into one or more alternate realities, then the subconscious has a reach far greater than anyone thought. If one considers the placebo effect, one might get a glimmer. But when one realises that past-life remembering is ‘forced’ interplanar viewing, then reincarnation becomes a dirty word – or an appealing religious alternative: as the soul goes from reality to reality, living a new life in each. Of course, there are those who choose to interpret multiple realities as many hells on the way to one heaven, but I secretly sympathise with those who believe that the mutated concept of Karma – popular in early twenty-first century western social media – is finally vindicated; live a life as a bad person, come back as a slug on a world of salt…
Amelia Pardell has been asleep for twenty-six years, hibernated at near-zero to slow the spread of the ferocious cancer that was travelling up her spine toward her brilliant brain. Today is the day I have to decide whether to let my partner die, as she has reached the boundaries of conceivable cryonic retrieval. It’s 3AM. I’m sitting in the deserted faculty restaurant, sipping a can of the same brand that we dropped all those years ago, torn between swearing and crying.
There’s the ‘crakk-tsssh’ of a can opening and a familiar voice says: “Let me go. I’ve not been here for ages.”
I drop my can and leap away from the voice, spinning round and staggering backwards as I recognise her.
She smiles: “Sleep deeply enough and you can ‘wake up’ in an alternate. We’re not sure of the exact rules over that govern it, but we’ll be coming to ask for your help as soon as we’ve stabilised the reverse bridge.”
Stepping closer as my body refuses to do anything but shake, she raises a hand to my cropped grey hair: “It suits you. I can’t wait to introduce you to everyone who’s put up with my drunken ramblings about my Professor from another world.”
She stands on tiptoe to plant a kiss I never expected to receive on lips that can only ache as hers withdraw; then she is gone.
I notice that the can from the vending machine went with her and smile in the knowledge that we won’t be apart for much longer.
