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.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jun 19, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Carter had watched the glittering mass approach his ship with a strange kind of indifference, simply stared as it washed over his bow view port and coated his freighter without ever considering the possibility it may be hostile. As he stood by helplessly while it ate holes in his hull, he wondered how he could have been so stupid.
The cloud hadn’t appeared on his scanners, hadn’t appeared to have any mass at all until it surrounded his ship, sticking to his hull like glue. He could only watch, fascinated at first, then terrified as blisters appeared on the inner surfaces of his ship’s skin, bursting and depositing little spheres of quicksilver inside. It wasn’t the balls that terrified him, though the smell of rotting egg meat burned his nose, it was that the little balls solidified, unfolding into lithe multi-legged, long bodied eating machines. They burst into his bridge and forward walkways by the hundreds, and as they hatched, began vomiting on and then literally drinking up anything their stomach juices contacted and dissolved. Once satiated, the gleaming silver bug-beasts folded back into balls and just as quickly dissolved into liquid again, before dividing into several smaller balls that would start the process anew.
Carter watched long enough to realize he had a serious problem before high tailing it to the lower cargo hold. He had hoped to get into the tow craft and out into space before it was eaten too. Hitting the cargo bay door release at the far end of the corridor while still at a full sprint, he ran hard into the door itself before he realized it wasn’t opening. Shaken and bruised, he could see through the window that the silver vermin had eaten through the bay door seals, evacuating the atmosphere, most of the cargo and a good portion of his escape vehicle. Carter noticed that in the now airless bay, the silver creatures moved sluggishly, their cycle of dissolving, gorging and reproducing having slowed to a crawl. This gave Carter an idea.
Bobbing and weaving to avoid the falling balls of liquid death, Carter sprinted the length of the ship to the aft engine compartment, then down into the maintenance room below it. The engines were offline, and the silence was deafening as he pulled the environment suit on feet first, engaging the autoseals once he’d pulled it above his shoulders, and clamping the helmet onto his head, he watched the light strobe from red through amber to green as all the seals engaged, and the atmosphere stabilized.
Carter carefully picked his way across the cramped space, keying the override for the airlock and cycling the outer door, leaving the inner door wide open. Alarms screamed in the small space, and he was sure they echoed elsewhere in the ship, but in a moment he ejected himself into space and let the evacuating gases carry him away from his vessel and into the peaceful calm of total vacuum.
He turned to look at the remains of his craft, floating amidst the wrecked and half eaten cargo containers and shrapnel from the shuttle. As he powered up his suit thrusters in short bursts to accelerate himself away to safety, he wondered how long before someone picked up his beacon, and whether his oxygen would last. It was then that he noticed the flecks of silver congealing into tiny balls on his visor, and by the time the smell of sulphur reached him from the depths of his boots, he didn’t even have time to wonder if anyone would hear him scream.
by Stephen R. Smith | May 30, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
David closed the door and slid the deadbolt, tossing his keys on the hall stand. He crossed the small parlor to the sideboard, and as he reached for a tumbler and the bottle of Jamesons, he was startled by a voice from the corner.
“I’d prefer you didn’t do that,” a deep, tired sound from the direction of his overstuffed armchair.
David’s hand shook, gripping the glass tightly as he turned to where the man sat hidden in the shadows. “Who the bloody hell are you, and what are you doing in my flat?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t have let me in if I’d asked.” The figure produced a cigarette from a jacket pocket, and tearing the ignitor open drew deeply before exhaling slowly into the room. “I’m in collections David, and I’m afraid you’re in possession of something that’s no longer yours to keep.”
“Jesus, are you here about the television? I’m only a few days past, and if your lot kept better shop hours, I’d have been able to pay it last week when I was in the city. Here, you can take the cheque and shove off.” He started back towards the hall, but stopped when it was apparent the figure wasn’t moving.
“This isn’t about the television, it’s that body you’re wearing, I’ve come to take it back.”
David stood still, not sure he’d just heard correctly. “You’ve come for what?”
“Do you remember the company you owned, the money you made, before the accident, before…” he paused, waving around the now smokey room, “before this place? Do you remember when you acquired that body?”
Far more words formed in Davids head than made it to his lips. He could only stammer “accident? company?”
“You were quite a powerful man in your day I understand, but you had that thing for experimental aircraft, so your company had you heavily insured,” the cigarette glowed brightly as he inhaled, “and that insurance policy bought you out, reconstituted you in that body you’re wearing now.”
David looked down reflexively, noticed that he still held the glass, and in a daze set it down on the sideboard.
“Of course the condition of the insurance was that you be disassociated with your past, which is how you wound up here. I suppose the insurance company covered the rent.”
“I don’t understand, what do you mean by ‘that body you’re wearing'”
“You see, the insurance company put your policy claim out to tender, and the winning bidder scraped up what was left from your cockpit and installed you into the body you’ve been wandering round in these last few years. The problem is that company’s gone bankrupt, and as they purchased the rights to that body from my employer, and as they never paid for it, my employer’s sent me ’round to pick it up.”
David fingered the glass, and shakily uncapped the bottle of whisky. “My employer, my insurance, won’t they cover what’s owed?” He didn’t believe what was happening, but it was beginning to seem unnervingly familiar.
“We started there, unfortunately the insurance is nearly tapped, and I’m afraid your previous employer doesn’t seem to like you that much.”
“How long have I got, and what then?”
“In a few minutes, when you’re ready, I’ll release you to the ether, and return that body to my employer. It’s not like you weren’t living on borrowed time anyways now, is it?”
David poured a healthy measure from the bottle into his glass. “I think I’ll have that drink if it’s all the same to you, at least the whisky I’m sure I’ve paid for.”
