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.
by Julian Miles | Feb 3, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Jardine dragged himself over the log, gasping in agony as the belt that formed the tourniquet on his leg caught. His jodhpurs were stained and the lower sections were covered in bloody handprints where he’d had to kick Harvey loose.
It had been the first Pembrokeshire hunt in over a century, set in the recently restored forests and part of the carefully designed fauna management plan. After all, if one were going to restore a nineteenth century estate, why not have authentic methods of vermin control?
Those last two words came back to haunt them. They had all laughed at the antics of the anti-hunting lobbies of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but really, in the hierarchically-enlightened twenty-third century, what could the great unwashed do?
It turned out that some of the ‘unwashed’ had kin who had fought in the Tarantilla and Shoren Gar campaigns. Descendents who excelled in the comparatively new discipline of cyborg handling.
The Pembroke Hunt had used genegineered hawks for spotting and all the hounds were networked – it made it easier for the packmaster. Things had been going swimmingly until the fox turned at bay, and the hawks had all gone dark in rapid succession. The packmaster had shouted something unintelligible before going into a Grand-Mal seizure and thrashing himself to death. Far away, they heard the baying of hounds in full rout. It became a fascination, listening to the number of crying animals drop off one by one. By the time the last hound limped into view, those remaining realised they had left it far too late to run. To reinforce that, the one flying thing that remained unloaded an unholy number of dart-missile things into their horses. Some horses blew up while the others keeled over, either shutdown or dead. Riders were crushed, limbs were broken.
Into this scene of chaos came the Fox.
A red-eyed hunting cyborg – the Rorschach stain of white question marks visible on its head identifying it as one of the deadly Critsune marque – set itself to slaughtering the downed huntsmen.
This encouraged the ambulatory survivors to flee, and the macabrely reversed hunt began in earnest. All afternoon they fled, manners and artifice banished by terror and desperation. Naked brutality surfaced, where people crippled former friends to give themselves more time.
As evening drew in, Jardine had kicked Harvey until his nose broke and he fell backwards into the cutting. Jardine knew that cutting, it was the one that ran across the foot of the wooded backdrop to the formal lawns. Lawns that replaced the lakes about Pembroke Castle. He was nearing safety!
He curled himself with his back to the log while the pain in his leg eased. When his vision was no longer grey at the edges, he gathered himself for the last stretch.
Red eyes opened in the shadows between him and the castle towers.
There was a crackle. A voice came from the Fox: “The birthplace of Henry Tudor silhouetted against the last light in a way that he himself could have admired on his way to Bosworth. Fitting, don’t you think? A nod to heritage as we have this out.”
Jardine choked, his throat dry: “What do you want? Money? Fame? Have you recorded this?”
There was a chuckle: “I want you to die, Foxhunter. I want the abhorrent practice to remain a thing of the past. Thus you will be a statistic of a massacre unclaimed. Fear is better for keeping this sort of thing under control.”
The Critsune leapt for the kill.
by Julian Miles | Jan 21, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
She’s screaming like her life is being dragged from her using blunt instruments. Occasionally she’ll stop, but after a series of ominous ‘thuds’, she’ll start again.
“We ‘ave control of zis street.” This from the blue-uniformed Avantacop.
“Rubbiz. The rezonink places this addrez within oor control perimeter.” Response from the black-and-orange uniformed Fourgeecop.
“City statutes give prioridee response t’us.” A riposte from a grey-uniformed Spartacop.
“How about we co-operate to cover the premises from all sides, achieve entry with precision and numbers, then use superior force to area-neutralise whatever threat is inside?” The suggestion comes from my partner, in Carabinieri black – just like me.
We’re one of the six official police forces that could be here, were it not for the mandated EU ‘open-market’ rulings on civil policing. Now, in addition to the five ‘resident’ national police forces and regional police forces, there are twenty-eight ‘guardian’ (corporate) police forces and countless franchise mobs. It used to be a nightmare with just five or six of us versus the Cosa Nostra and friends. This? This is a new ring of Dante’s hell in the guise of policing, and criminals rarely enter the equation – or get caught, for that matter.
The screams escalate again and Armand looks at me, his brows creasing. We both think back to the meeting we attended four days ago. This is it. The moment that was discussed and everyone agreed to.
He nods at me and we both cross-draw paired Webley & Scott Suppressors. Armand takes both of the Avantacops and I drop the standing Fourgee and Sparta. Their companions show their uselessness by trying to exit their cars and join the firefight, instead of securing their positions and calling for assistance.
Ignoring the downed pseudocops for a while, we retool with compressor-pulse shotguns and storm the building where screams continue. It seems that sudden, decisive action involving the direct application of violence was something that our little gang of drug-crazed torturers were not expecting. They were waiting for hostage negotiators and news crews. They continue waiting until their bodies hit the ground from three floors up. Some people are a waste of the judicial system’s time.
By the time the ambulances pull away and the coroner’s van is loading, the pseudocops are reclining in their neatly parked vehicles, in the car park of a local convenience store four blocks away.
Four days ago we agreed that we would be police, and any jurisdictional arguments from competing forces would be treated as interference with the execution of our duties, if co-operation was refused or ignored. The people deserve to be protected when the threat is nigh, not to wait until the bureaucracy is done.
