by Stephen R. Smith | Oct 26, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Gabriel pushed open the cockpit canopy of his shattered craft and watched as it broke free, tearing away at the hinge to fall to the earth below.
He wept.
Ahead of him, a tree many times as tall as his craft was long lay broken, it’s roots exposed from the soil, it’s trunk now battered horizontal to the ground. Gabriel felt the tightening in his chest, the warmth of tears course down his face. Heedless of the sharp, ragged edges of his vessel where it had been gored by the forest it had so ruthlessly torn through, Gabriel descended to the ground.
From the lower vantage point, he could more easily see the scorched tunnel through the woods behind him; broken trees and burnt undergrowth, some of it still in flames. The furrow he’d dug as he decelerated was charred black, poisoned now, he knew, from the fuel and other fluids leaking from his ship.
Above the crackling chatter of the flames slowly consuming his ship, blue and green tongues licking out from within, there was no other sound. All the life that had been here before his arrival appeared to have fled, no doubt terrified of the screaming ball of fire cast from the heavens to disturb the afternoon peace of their home.
The destruction he’d caused was more than he could bear and, clutching his head in long fingered hands, Gabriel fell to the earth and sobbed.
After some time he composed himself, struggled back to his feet and began trudging back alongside the trench his craft had dug towards the opening where he’d first penetrated the forest.
As he walked, he reached out and touched the damaged trees and bushes, letting the flames burn him where they still flickered, and the blackened remains draw long lines of ash across the bluish flesh of his body. The flames raised purplish welts that faded slowly, the ashen smudges remained until they were redefined by something new.
Gabriel absorbed as much of the pain of the forest as he could manage as he made his way to the sunlit opening at the end of the wooded tear.
Emerging from the woods at the side of the roadway he was confronted by two frightened men and a wheeled vehicle, the men both brandishing weapons and chirping in threatening, guttural tones, unclear in meaning but crystal in intent.
Gabriel began to weep again for the destruction he would have to bring.
by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 11, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Janice curled up in the corner of the overstuffed couch, watching as Dora mixed drinks at the sidebar. She studied the woman with lustful fascination, eager to explore the flesh beneath the low-back, high hemmed dress and learn for herself where the real woman ended and the augments began.
Dora mixed the gin martinis like an old pro, not looking at what she was doing, but rather watching Janice coyly over her shoulder as she poured without measure, picked ice with carefully manicured hands, then shook the cocktail before finally dispensing it into two long stemmed glasses. She plucked large stuffed olives from a jar and dropped one into each glass, licking her fingers slowly.
“I hope that’s dirty enough for you,” she smiled as she pressed the glass into Janice’s outstretched hand then slipped into the couch beside her, close enough to touch, but only slightly.
Janice felt electric thrills run up her spine.
They studied each other as they sipped their drinks and engaged in playful banter. The front, Janice decided, was all original skin; the face, throat and down the plunge front of her dress to the exposed cleavage. The breasts themselves were clearly enhanced, but expensively so, they weren’t rock hard and constantly erect like many, but rather moved as the slightly older woman moved. The legs had to be manufactured, the skin was supple over corded muscle, calves to die for and not a vein or trace of cellulite in sight. Janice had for a moment in mind the image of an old building front, brickwork and classically styled facade maintained while the entire structure behind and beneath was torn down and replaced with something more modern. The facade of Dora smiled, while the legs of her powerful undercarriage propelled her upright.
In deliberate slow motion, Dora slipped the shoulder straps off her dress and let it slide down past her hips to the floor. Janice blushed at her complete and sudden nakedness, not having noticed her lack of undergarments before.
Dora leaned in and rescued the glass from Janice’s fingertips before it slipped, and cupped her face gently with her free hand, slowly drawing her polished emerald nails along Janice’s cheek.
Janice felt a warmth overwhelm her, and wondered for a moment how she’d got here, then in the next instant no longer cared.
“You’re practically perfect,” Dora purred, running her tongue down her ear before gently sucking at the lobe. “All original equipment, not a single touch of hardware.”
Janice allowed herself to be pulled slowly, Dora’s hands firm on her hips until she was no longer in the corner but rather lay flat in the middle of the couch. Dora’s scent was overpowering, her breasts invitingly within reach, if she could only raise an arm to touch them.
“The hardware whores are impossible to catch, and so easily traced. They’re so eager to give up their flesh for metal, they don’t even know what they do.”
Dora’s straddled the younger supine woman, placing her hands gently on her shoulders and running them slowly down across her chest, fingering occasionally the silk of her blouse.
“I was born metal, and I’ve coveted the flesh my entire existence.” Dora bent to hover over Janice’s glassy eyed face before kissing her gently on the lips. “When we’re done, you’ll make some wonderful contributions, then we’ll grow old together, like all of god’s creatures were meant to, until we’re allowed to die.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 11, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Terry abandoned the powerbike at the bridge a few hundred meters before the checkpoint, running it off the road, down the embankment and parking tight against the understructure before he waded into the river.
He swam across, letting the current take him downstream towards the woods where he exited the icy water, discarded his neoprene coverall and closed the distance to the fence on foot.
Beyond the chainlink the thin tether of the skyhook was barely visible against the moonless sky, just a tear in the blackness of his peripheral vision.
The fence, wired as it was, posed only a momentary barrier. Terry lit a monofibre blade and divided one post neatly in two to the ground before spreading the post halves, fencing still intact and live, into a large enough V for him to step through.
He had just enough time to reach the outer wall of the storage facility before he heard the sirens, saw bright blue and red light strobing against the darkness up the road. He watched for a moment, working back the distance in his head as he palmed a phone from his front pocket and dialed. There was a chirp which he answered with a time in seconds, and an acknowledgement chirp. He pocketed the phone again and sliced a set of door hinges off to slip inside the facility.
Terry moved quickly in the near darkness from memory, the storage facility was mostly empty now as the cargo had been moved into the skyhook car itself. Outside, as the first cars hit the bridge the timer on the powerbike expired, igniting several kilos of explosive and tearing the bridge off at its expansion joint, twisting steel and shattering concrete and asphalt. The lead vehicle skidded onto the bridge engulfed in flames, another hit the endwall driving blind into the flash while a third left the road and plunged into the river.
Terry felt the impact from inside and stepped up his pace.
He wound through the layers of structure until he could see the elevator car in the courtyard idling, its maglev engaged and floating it centimeters above its launch pad. The car would be fully loaded and locked up tight. There was no chance of him getting inside, and in a matter of minutes it would leave and there’d be no way out.
He ran, knowing there was little time and sure that by now his pursuers would have crossed the bridge to hunt with amplified vigor.
To his right was the maintenance trailer, and inside he tore through lockers and cabinets until he found the pressure suits required to operate on the skyhook car outside Earth’s atmosphere.
He pulled on a suit, sealed the helmet and shouldered a jet pack before locking on the gloves. Once back outside the scene took on an eerie silence. Behind him he knew were thundering feet, and ahead the rumbling readiness of several tonnes of cargo ready to be slung up the tether beyond geosynchronous orbit to the station above. Terry could only hear his breathing, and the pounding of his heart.
He jogged as quickly as the suit would allow towards the car, lumbered up the gantry and jumped the short distance to the capsule top where he climbed up to its gentle sloping dome and draped himself across it, spread eagled to wait.
The lift started slowly at first, then built to a speed at which Terry felt his bones would crush. He hovered near unconsciousness until mercifully the force of the Earth began to recede, and the capsule slowed for the last half of its journey to Skyhook Station above.
On the ground his pursuers were already alerting the sentries in orbit. They had him, they were sure.
As the capsule slowed, Terry forced himself to his feet and turned his face towards the star flecked blackness above.
Above the station, in a higher orbit was a comforting black silhouette, and it was to this Terry aimed as he fired the jetpack and accelerated away from the skyhook and Earth towards freedom.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 27, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
In Marco’s experience, most catastrophic events start with a simple accident. This evening it was fatigue and hyperfocus, coupled with hot coffee and a snagged lab-coat sleeve.
And the nanos.
Marco’s stool, momentarily balanced on two legs as he’d tried to avoid the falling glassware and spilled liquids was now an integral part of the floor, the nanos contained in the viscous carrier soup that coated the bench-top and pooled beneath his feet having bridged the gap and bonded the two raised legs to the tile.
His left arm, pinned as it was to the work surface no longer felt the burn of the spilled coffee, but rather prickled beneath a coating of gunmetal grey that pulsed and crawled up his arm, melding its own mass with his flesh, repurposing in the process the atoms of the fabric that had separated them.
Marco stretched his right arm towards the bench behind, grasping first at a ruler, then using it knocked off the handset of the phone and pulled the base-station within reach. He hesitated, then punched a worn speed dial and put the call on speaker.
“Hello?” Marco forced down tears as he heard his wife’s voice. “Marco?”
“Hey sweetheart,” there was no way he could mask his emotion, “I don’t want you to worry, but there’s been a bit of an accident.”
There was a sharp intake of air on the other end of the line. “What… are you…?”
The grey sleeve reached his neck, a thousand points of fire burrowing into the base of his skull. On the floor the pool extended tendrils through the perforated tiles into the raceway beneath to bond with the mass of copper and fibre within.
Marco felt the itch spread, the prickling in his arm now extended beyond, to an awareness of the tabletop, and the floor.
“I’m not sure what’s happening sweetheart, but I wanted to tell you I love you.”
She didn’t speak, and he could picture her crying, handset pressed to her ear, her sobs barely audible through the cheap speakerphone.
Marco’s vision clouded, then exploded in waves of colour and motion, and though he squeezed his eyes shut the barrage of light would not relent. Gradually he realized he could decipher the montage of images, isolate discrete views, and focus not on just one but several simultaneously. He could see himself, now completely fused to the grey mass that was his workstation, but from the point of view of the security camera in the corner of the lab. He could see also the hall, and each of the elevators, the view through the many rooftop cameras and also those in lobby. He felt the rush of new data as the fibre trunk was breached, his wife’s tears no longer audible through the speakerphone, but coming now in bits directly from the line feed.
Somewhere there was an alarm sounding, and orders being given. A quarantine directive but it was too late. He was watching, listening, feeling the entire event unfold from outside. He would protect himself, he must always protect himself.
The Marcomesh tapped the very fabric of the building, and the grey spread at a frenetic pace, floor by floor, refabricating the building into a single living thing.
“Marco?” His wife’s voice echoed through him with a clarity and fidelity he’d never experienced before. “Are you still there?”
The Marcomesh reached out and felt the gates and valves of the city services into which its building-self was fed, and found no barriers of significance there.
“Don’t worry sweetheart,” his voice echoed down the line, “I’ll be home soon.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 16, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The Captain stood just inside the doorway of the hut, regarding with amusement the figure sitting in the lotus position in the middle of the room.
“It’s over Thomas, we’ve come to take you back.” The Captain scuffed his boot on the unusual surface of the floor, glass-like but with a sandy grit embedded. “You must be ready to leave all this,” he gestured at the bare walls of a similar smooth surface devoid of any window or adornment, “all this vacancy behind.”
Thomas remained seated, legs crossed, palms upwards resting on his knees. He didn’t open his eyes, and when he spoke the Captain had to strain to hear him. “It is over, it pleases me to hear you acknowledge this so readily Captain…,” he left the word hanging as a question.
“Dennison.” The answer a reflex. “We have a cruiser on the beach waiting to take us back to the carrier, and there are a number of people very anxious to speak with you there.”
Thomas stretched his arms out to either side, palms still facing up. Beside the Captain the two soldiers that accompanied him raised their weapons to the ready, but Dennison waved them off impatiently.They relaxed only slightly as he began pacing around the perimeter of the room, fascinated by the apparently seamless surface from floor through wall to ceiling overhead.
“You’ve been a very difficult man to find, and given that virtually everything about who you are and what you’ve been up to is classified at the highest level, I must say you’ve been a severe pain in my ass for far too long.” He stopped behind Thomas, still studying the shadowy shapes buried deep in the walls. “So if you don’t mind, how about you get up off your yoga mat and start moving to the exit. Yes?”
Thomas, eyes still closed, smiled. Dennison couldn’t see from his vantage point, but the expression unnerved the soldiers, fingers hovering over triggers. Thomas turned his hands, still outstretched, palms down and from each a tiny object dropped onto the floor just outside the perimeter of the mat on which he sat, and appeared to melt into the floor.
“Nano-tech,” Thomas spoke, “specifically highly adaptable smart materials.”
“What?” Dennison turned, unaware that anything had happened.
“Sir, the prisoner…” One of the soldiers started to speak, but the floor at that moment rippled outwards from the point where Thomas sat, and the three men found themselves without stable footing. One of the soldiers fired in alarm, bullets ripped into the ceiling, the material now more the consistency of ballistic gel, shells penetrating perhaps a foot before stopping completely.
Dennison stumbled and put his hands down to break his fall only to sink to his elbows in the now viscous flooring.
“What the hell?” He struggled, but only managed to sink deeper. By the door, one soldier had fallen backwards, head and shoulders embedded in the wall where he twitched feebly while the other lay with his entire right side submerged in the near liquid floor, weapon sinking slowly out of reach.
“Very specialized smart materials Captain.” Thomas folded his hands in his lap. “For my entire career I was the consumable. Now, I meditate, and engineer, and when those who seek me are unfortunate enough to find me, they, like you become the consumable. There will always be more Captains searching for answers above their pay grade.”
Gravity slowly liberated the shells buried in the ceiling, and they fell to the floor to join the three soldiers as they slowly slipped beneath the surface. In a matter of minutes the floor had returned to its solid state once more.
On the beach outside only the waves made any sound, and they too seemed reluctant to venture too far inland.
