by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 25, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Marshal’s great grandfather had taken up the guitar as a older man, and played it as though he simply always had done so. He had passed this love onto his son, Marshal’s grandfather, before the Departure. Marshal’s family had always been tradesman, and his grandfather used his degrees in micro-fabrication to get on the ship, and his skill at coaxing sounds from his stringed instrument to secure not only a wife, but a place in the social scene on Discovery when she set off into the stars.
Marshal’s grandfather had one child on the voyage, a daughter, and she grew up always at her father’s side, basking in the warmth of his music. She took up chemistry, and divided her time between misusing chemicals in defiance of the ships authority, and caressing deep rhythm and blues from the guitar her father had left her.
When Marshal was born, it was clear his mother’s chemical abuse had affected him, but she didn’t survive his birth to make amends.
Marshal grew in the care of the crew to be a stoic but directionless young man. He dabbled in chemistry, in microbiology, and settled on psiono-sonics as a field of study. He found he had a heightened sensitivity in communications, and was tasked with reaching out across the void of space to the other star ships en route to new star systems.
In time, the voices grew harder and harder to find through the darkness, and communications duty became an eternity of projecting into nothingness, deafened by the silence returned.
When the star drive began to fail, Marshal felt it before anyone. He tried to describe to the Captain how the engine was losing its rhythm, how he worried it would stop beating.
He’d been thrown off the bridge, and confined to his quarters.
When the star drive went out, the captain locked himself in his own cabin, refusing to acknowledge it was true.
Marshal had spent very little time in his own cabin, having not grown up there, and finding it unsettling to be in the room this mother he had never known had once called home. He could never connect himself to the space, but now, confined there as he was, he found himself idly picking through her things, discovering the woman who had made him and then left him here alone.
He flipped through frames of images, some single and still, some sequenced and moving. He heard laughter, saw a smile he recognized sometimes from the mirror, and felt a rhythm that resonated somewhere inside.
When he found her guitar, it fit his hands like well worn gloves, filled a hole he hadn’t realized existed. His fingers found the chords to a song he’d never heard. A to C sharp, to G sustained, back to A. Words drifted into his head with impossible clarity, “If you can just get your mind together, then come on across to me.” Across the ship each psionicly projected note from Marshal’s guitar turned every surface capable of vibrating into a point of amplification. Everyone stopped, and listened. “We’ll hold hands and then we’ll watch the sunrise,” people spilled into the hallways, “from the bottom of the sea.”
Marshal felt long closed doors open in his mind as he reached out into the depths of space. He felt the wave come back a hundred strong, and the Discovery reeled as unseen voices chimed in “But First, are you experienced?” In his cabin, the Captain closed his eyes, tears streaming down his face. They may be lost, but they were no longer alone.
by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 18, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The men that delivered Louis to the Chancellors chambers had done so quickly, forcefully and without remark. Louis had goaded them through the tunnels from the parking garage, up the elevators and along the corridors without rebuke until they deposited him violently on the cold stone floor and left the room.
“Louis,” the Chancellor frowned down at him, “you disappoint me.” He shook his head slowly as he spoke. “I thought we had an understanding.”
Louis pulled himself to his feet, the binders on his ankles and wrists making it an awkward and painful task.
“Chancellor Godheid, you’ve gone too far this time. You have no grounds for arrest, you have no reason…” The Chancellor cut him off abruptly.
“Quite the contrary. We know exactly what you do, and who you do it with, and I’m afraid you won’t be permitted to do it anymore. We have rules.”
“Rules? What about my rights? If you’re going to charge me, I want my lawyer. I want my minute of discretionary conversation.” Louis straightened and met the Chancellors cold glare. “Have you forgotten the law?”
“Forgotten the law? We made the law. My grandfather’s grandfather brought the law here with him from Earth and forged a new world around it. We made the law when we made this city from the living rock, made farm lands from the lifeless dust. We made the law for people like us, Louis, we made the law for the people who would abide by it. Not for you.”
Louis spat on the floor, the saliva quickly drawn into the pores of the polished stone. “You didn’t make the law, like you said you just brought it with you. It was written by better men than you. I have the right to a fair trial by a jury of my peers. Everything I know about you and what you do will be brought to public record there. You can’t stop it, you can’t stop the people hearing about how you run your little empire. We’ll see how they like you when I tell them what you are. You go ahead and try me if you dare, and I’ll hang you on the letter of your own law.”
The Chancellor closed the distance between them in a heartbeat, twisting his captives ear painfully, as though he were merely an insolent child, and hauled him stumbling onto the balcony outside.
“Look,” he waved at the landscape splayed out beneath and beyond the outcropping of carved stone on which they stood, “look at what we have made here. You think you can take this from me?” Louis was awestruck by the view. He’d seen the city from the ground his entire life, but never had the expanse of it been as apparent as it was from this altitude. Red rock fingers reaching out through fields of blue to the horizon, littered at regular intervals with domes of stone and alloy and polished glass. Sliding transport lanes arced between them, moving colonists and goods alike to and from the city center.
“We brought from Earth only what was useful. You’re right, by the laws of Earth you are entitled to your trial. You’re entitled to be found innocent or guilty and your sentence meted out appropriately. By the laws of Earth you’re allowed your day in public court, and to tell whatever stories you may wish to tell.” Louis smiled as the Chancellor leaned so close he could feel the heat of his breath on his ear, and there his expression froze. “We’re not on Earth now though, are we Louis?”
by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 5, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Erik had been in this room before, although it seemed smaller this time.
“Please, Lieutenant Skane, have a seat.” The room’s other occupant was well weathered, maybe not retirement age, but close to it. The bars on his uniform, like the lines on his face, were as much a measure of mileage as of seniority.
Erik pushed his way awkwardly between the chair and the sparse desk, wedging himself between the arms of the seat and feeling the metal complain as he lowered his considerable mass into it.
“Lieutenant, I understand you’re inquiring about discharge; I was hoping we could convince you to stay.”
Erik met the officers gaze, caught the briefest glimpse of discipline tempered revulsion, and looked away.
“I want my old body back. I want you to undo what you did. Looking like this isn’t any use to Ops anymore, and sure as hell it’s no good for me.”
The old man sat back, steepling his fingers. “Splicing in gene code to bring out your current… characteristics, that’s one thing, but excising that code now that it’s physically manifest, I’m afraid that’s just not possible.”
“You made me, made me look like this, made me look like…,” his nose vents flared as his anger grew, “made me look like them,” he finally hissed.
“Yes, and coupled with your training and rather unique qualifications your looking like them allowed you to go where no one else could go. You were instrumental in our victory; you should be proud.” He opened his arms wide in a gesture of welcome Erik knew he could not possibly mean. “Your people are very proud of you.”
“My people? I have no people now. I’m nowhere close to human, and you exterminated everyone of what you turned me into. You didn’t bother to tell me I’d wind up alone and stuck looking like this.”
The officer folded his hands neatly in his lap, addressing Erik as one might speak to an unruly child. “As I recall, you agreed to this project because, and I quote, you had ‘nothing to lose’.” The old man frowned, shaking his head. “You were pretty clear about that when you were trying to get yourself killed in Special Ops. We saved you from yourself Erik, gave you purpose, cleaned your slate. You can’t just expect everything to go back the way it was before.”
Erik shifted uncomfortably, feeling the chair begin to buckle beneath him. “I can’t do this anymore. I’ve seen things…” he paused, a sudden surge of anxiety overwhelming him, for a moment. “I just can’t do this anymore.”
“Well, we could put you back into an infantry unit; your Special Ops status would clear you to go anywhere you wanted.”
“No.”
“Deep space? Engineering?” He counted off options on his fingers. “There are mining colonies on several higher-than-Earth-gravity planets where…”
“No,” Erik cut him short “I’m done.” He stood up, awkwardly extracting himself from the chair. “When you made me, nobody ever said you couldn’t unmake me.” He turned, and found himself face to face with an unfamiliar reflection in the polished metal of the door. It stared back, half again as tall as he should be, the harsh light creating highlights on the black matte of his scales. In three years, he still couldn’t connect himself to what stared back at him from every mirror.
He opened the door, hiding the reflection. “I may have had nothing to lose then, but I always figured one day I could have something to lose if I wanted to. I guess I had that to lose after all.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 28, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
My favourite time is just before dawn while she still sleeps. I stretch out, savour the crisp night air, feel the coolness of the sheets against our naked flesh. Soon the earth will turn us to face the sun again, and I’ll feel the warmth as its energy permeates the room, watch as its light drives out the shadows. Until then, I’ll content myself with the sounds of soft breathing, and the rhythmic music of her heart propelling life throughout her body.
I’ve only been with her a short while, but she has taught me so much. Helped me experience things I could never have known without her, not so completely.
We seem to have been made for each other. She’s so physical, tangible and alive, but lacking in drive, control. I lack her physicality, but more than make up for it in unencumbered motivation. We’re perfect together.
When I found her, I was content to merely follow, to do no more than observe. Lately I need to take more control, to dominate. My desire has grown from this place of comfort, and I’m no longer satisfied unless I’m flexing my muscles, imposing my own will. We had stopped doing the things that bore me, and instead have filled our days with activities that satisfy us both. Sometimes I ride her like a freight train, driving her mercilessly toward some visceral discovery. Other times I’m content to just watch, allowing her to occupy our time with some more intellectual pursuit.
She’s becoming more unsettled lately, seems almost to fear my presence, but I’ve been careful not to overstep my bounds. She couldn’t possibly believe I would hurt her. I couldn’t hurt her, she’s all that I have.
I had very much hoped that we could forge a lasting symbiotic relationship, her and I. That we could peacefully coexist, and for that to satisfy me. She’s given me other gifts though, along the way. I’ve learned jealousy and selfishness, hunger and lust. I’m afraid I won’t be able to share her, that’s not enough anymore.
This morning she will remain asleep, and I’ll awake fully in her place.
I do love the feeling of the sunlight through the windows, warming our flesh. My flesh.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jun 24, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
It had started as a series of simple disagreements, but it was clear before too long that at the heart of the matter was a fundamental difference in driving principles.
James had spent his life in aeronautics, building anything that flew. He simply realized that he’d wanted more.
He tried so many times to get a personal flight system into development, but the company was convinced that flight was a luxury only for the rich, the powerful; the governments and the military. Flight wasn’t for the peasantry.
It was the realization that he couldn’t build another thing for the industrial complex that prompted him, one sunny Monday, to tender his resignation. He had a lab of his own, and his name on enough patents and royalty paying inventions that money wouldn’t be much of a problem for a while if he were careful.
It took the better part of a year; watching his diet and engaging in intense cardio and endurance training; designing his system and redefining his physique.
In the Spring, with the help of a local mod shop which specialized in surgical steel grafting, he began the painful process of attaching mount points to his upper arms, shoulders, spine and hips. By the fall, he’d become accustomed to the threaded stubs that peppered his back and arms. He spent hours with thin cables threaded into his body, suspended from the rafters of his shop, practicing maneuvers under stress. By the time the Clematis were blooming again, he was ready.
He carefully packed his equipment in the dark hours before dawn, and two hours later was out of the valley and up the mountain road. As the sun finally crested the horizon, he was standing with a hundred feet of sheer cliff face below him.
Two long cylinders pointed skyward, a hands-width apart, perched atop telescopic legs. He stood stripped to the waist with his back to them, walking slowly backward to close the distance. Flexing, arms spread, he activated the tether. A series of short cables snapped stiff towards his back, reaching, groping until each found a predetermined socket into which they spiraled deeply, threading down almost to the bone. Gradually a series of new cables walked down each arm, tethered themselves, pulling out the fabric as they went. James could only grin as the wind took up the slack in the material, and his flight system pulled in tight.
He’d heard vehicle traffic, but in his highly focused state, he’d paid no real attention until a flurry of truck doors opening and booted feet made him turn around. A half dozen black trucks had all but blocked the road way, coming as they had apparently done from both higher and lower on the mountain. James found himself staring down a score or more armed soldiers, faceless behind riot masks but well teethed with automatic weapons.
“It’s ok, it’s ok, I’m not trying to kill myself. Honestly.” James smiled as he held his hands outstretched at his sides, the wings casting long shadows across the soldiers before him. He could imagine how he would look from their perspective, a dark winged silhouette, with a halo of bright sunlight. “I’m a scientist, I’m testing an invention…”, he trailed off as he recognized his old corporate logo, black decal on black paint on the doors of the trucks.
He could sense the red points of light centered on his chest, and he readied himself for the leap backwards as the realization struck him. They weren’t afraid he was going to die, they were afraid that he just might live.
