by submission | Sep 30, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
He hadn’t planned on becoming a ghost hunter, but that’s what Mordem Letac felt like now. A trained naturalist, he’d come to the northern reaches of the Yukon Territory earlier in the summer to study migration patterns in the face of ecosystem collapse related to rapidly accelerating climate change.
In some ways studying ecosystem collapse prepared him for becoming a ghost hunter because the once-thriving tundra he was surveying and cataloging had turned into something of a ghost town. Most of the native species had disappeared leaving little but the harsh winds of a bleak winter to come.
And now he was hunting for a ghost. In his own mind, Mordem felt he was humoring a few of the locals from Old Crow, a town of a little over 200, mostly Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation. Many of whom said, privately, that if he wanted to know what had happened to their caribou, foxes, hares, ermines, musk oxen and even wolves, grizzlies and polar bears, he needed to talk to the Silent One, a legendary spirit who at catastrophic times appeared near an ancient stone-ringed berm a couple miles outside of Old Crow. Atop the wide berm was the battered remains of a homestead.
Turned out Mordem wasn’t much of a ghost hunter. He didn’t have to be. The Silent One was there when he sidled into the structure through some missing clapboards. She was as grey and grained as the floorboards she was hunched over. She was painting figures in bright red paint. Paint that Mordem quickly realized was blood.
The blood came from a large carcass off to her right. A carcass that Mordem couldn’t identify: large, bluish, with crocodilian jaws and massive webbed claws. A trail of blood led from it to the Silent One’s brush.
The Silent One ignored Mordem. Cautiously, he approached to examine the figures being meticulously brushed. He immediately recognized the painted shapes: caribou, foxes, ermines, wolves, grizzlies, musk oxen, polar bears. With sweeping strokes the Silent One was creating wave after wave of them in parallel and convergent motion. It was mesmerizing and beautiful.
And then she brushed a larger figure at the rear of all the others: the croco-frog-carcass thing but with snapping jaws and slashing claws bearing down on the other creatures.
A hunt. An uber predator on the prowl.
It hit Mordem like forty degree water: the Silent One was painting a pattern he was very familiar with: migratory routes. And the predators that followed the migration. Whatever that hideous carcass was, it was likely responsible for the disappearance of the area’s mammals.
Mordem took out his phone and began snapping photos trying to process what it meant. An obviously alien species was preying upon the creatures of the Canadian tundra. It was surreal, but not frightening to him. As a naturalist, it made sense. Not the alien species, of course, but the migration and the predators.
Then the Silent One began painting another figure behind the croco-frogs. It was three times the size of a croco-frog and even more vicious looking. Mordem moved for a closer look, and the Silent One met his eye for a moment.
Her eyes were primordial, bright, rich like nebulae ready to give birth to suns. She gave him a very knowing look. And then she was gone. Vanished before his eyes. Only her blood-stained brush remained. Mordem looked down at her last drawing. It was terrifying to behold, but what paralyzed Mordem was what she’d painted in the creature’s fists: a wicked-looking weapon. Some kind of firearm with energy beams flaming forth.
Deep down, Mordem, like every other predator in the wide, wide, wide universe, feared a new alpha predator, another top dog with teeth bared, hellbent and hungry for conquest.
He saw clearly, as the Silent One saw, that it was time to get moving.
He just didn’t know where the human race could flee.
by submission | Sep 29, 2024 | Story |
Author: Ann Graham
Other Sister touches Timid Sister’s elbow, offers a boiled egg on a tiny porcelain plate. She swallows the egg whole. From May to October Timid Sister pushes aside the drapery and plants her face between the window grille bars at sunrise. There’s a smear where her nose lands. Stock-still, she spies a ruby-throated hummingbird eagerly take the sugary liquid. The blown glass globe, already hung on a twisted wrought-iron stand when the centenarian sisters moved in some seven years earlier. Timid Sister flutters, emulates the throaty waves. The cloying syrup makes her cough. Minuscule undulations of the scarlet gorget reflect the easterly sun until it’s bombarded by another feisty hummer. Tracked, trailed, two smooth streaks, one directly on the other’s tail. Timid Sister’s beak bumps the glass pane; her shoulders hunch; her feet disappear. Other Sister touches Timid Sister’s elbow and offers a blue crystal bowl brimming with treacly nectar.
by submission | Sep 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: Welsh Diepreye
The discovery was accidental, like most revolutionary things.
Dr. Elara Voss, a brilliant and obsessed astrophysicist, had spent years studying the gravitational anomalies at the edge of our galaxy.
What she discovered was not just a black hole or a pulsar, but something far more mysterious: a shimmering veil in the very fabric of space.The veil was invisible to the naked eye, detectable only through a complex array of instruments that recorded faint fluctuations in dark matter.
Elara could not believe her discovery. There it was, a seemingly thin membrane separating our galaxy from another that operated under entirely different physical laws.
She named it the Veil of Kosmos, a poetic nod to the ancient Greek word for the cosmos.
The Veil had become his obsession. For months, she had led a secret mission to understand its properties. The more she studied it, the more he challenged explanation.
It was as if the veil wasn’t just a boundary, but a sentient entity guarding the gateway to a parallel universe. Elara’s data showed that the veil pulsed with a rhythm akin to a heartbeat, as though it were alive. As word of the discovery leaked, the scientific community was split.
Some hailed it as the most significant finding in human history, while others warned of unimaginable dangers.
The military, predictably, wanted to weaponize it.
But Elara, with her unwavering determination, fought to keep the project in the hands of scientists.
The breakthrough came when Elara and her team successfully sent a probe through the Veil.
For a brief moment, they received data from the other side – a galaxy of inverted stars, where light behaved like a liquid and time ran in a loop.
But then the probe was suddenly destroyed, as if torn apart by an unseen force.
Undaunted, Elara prepared a manned mission.
She knew the risks were great, but the potential rewards were even greater.
A glimpse of another galaxy, another universe, was a dream no scientist could resist.
As the day of departure approached, however, a series of cryptic messages began to appear in their communications a language no one could decipher.
Elara was confused.
The messages were being transmitted through the Veil, but not to the other side.
They came from the veil itself.
As his team worked tirelessly to decode the messages, one word became clear: Stay.
The warning was ominous, but Elara insisted.
She could not let fear stop her from making the greatest discovery in history.
As the shuttle approached the Veil, they received one last transmission.
This time it was not a word, but a call: Do not cross.
War awaits. The crew debated whether to continue the journey.
Was it a trap?
A deterrent?
Elara, driven by curiosity and pride, made her decision.
They were going to cross.
As they passed through the Veil, the shuttle’s equipment failed.
The laws of physics were warped; the crew felt as if they were being torn apart, their atoms scattered across dimensions.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the chaos ended.
They were on the other side.
Before them lay a galaxy of breathtaking beauty: planets glittering like precious stones, stars pulsing with unknown energies.
But there was something else too: an armada of alien ships, massive and menacing, the likes of which they had never imagined.
The warnings were proven true.
In the distance, a giant rift rippled through space, a tear in the cosmos that threatened to destroy both galaxies.
The fleet was not prepared for battle; it was desperately trying to close the rift, to prevent the two universes from merging a cataclysmic event that would wipe them both out.
Elara understood that their presence was the cause.
By breaking through the Veil, they had destabilized the fragile balance, and now both galaxies were on the brink of destruction.
Wasting no time, she sent one last message through the Veil, a desperate plea for help for the world she had left behind: “Do not follow.
Seal the Veil.
Save yourself.
And then, silence.
by submission | Sep 27, 2024 | Story |
Author: India Choquette
The first word that comes to mind when I think about RE-Gen Beach: fresh. As soon as you step onto the property (see my post on cute protective boots), you’ll immediately feel why a day pass costs so much. You won’t find anything this strong in a city spa—it’s too potent to export! (It literally melts the containers!)
Start at the main resort building. The air is a little gentler there because it’s the furthest from the actual meltdown site, and when you’re aiming for a natural chemical peel, you want to ease into it and let the air slowly break down the outer layers. You will feel a little stinging to be honest, and definitely bring an umbrella because the sun will feel extra strong as the old skin melts off.
If you take the walkway, you’ll see venders who sell local oranges. Buy them! The oranges are infused with the chemicals and will give your colon a good cleansing. My advice: choose the vendors with the most deteriorated features. True locals will be missing all or part of their noses, and they sell authentic fruit (see my post on scammers).
I don’t recommend that first timers go off the walkway because you don’t want to trip, but if you’re a returning visitor, it’s worth seeing the foundations. People scratched messages as the disaster struck. My favorite: “I reach for you, but time has ended.” And at Re-GEN, time can end for your skin, too!
by submission | Sep 26, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
So far, the Time Traveller had found nothing worth collecting.
Also, he was being stared at as he walked round the market. He seemed to be the only person dressed in a suit and tie as portrayed in pictures from this time, and while some of the locals wore head coverings, none resembled the brimmed hat of his own costume.
These were notoriously violent years, perhaps they sensed a victim.
He clutched the money tighter in his pocket.
#
“Books are all priced,” said Chelsea Dog. “Just sit and take the money.”
He had somewhere to be, details not explained, like everything Chelsea Dog did. Like his name.
“And don’t go putting customers off moaning about stuff.”
Frank said nothing. He owed Chelsea Dog a favour and was looking after his market stall for the afternoon.
The stall on his left was festooned with dream catchers and scented candles. On the other side was old vinyl. From opposite wafted the occasional smell of speciality cheeses.
Perched on a wooden stool in a cave of books, Frank watched people drift by as if borne by an invisible river. Sometimes they snagged long enough to examine a paperback or two.
Chelsea Dog couldn’t be making much money here. Frank thought it more likely it was how he laundered cash from his other dealings.
The record guy was about Frank’s age, with the same greying beard, but he kept his headphones on. The thin woman with the dream catchers didn’t seem very New Age and complained at length about inflation and rent increases.
A man in a grey double-breasted suit and trilby was studying the cover of Steppenwolf.
“A classic,” suggested Frank, but the gent dropped it back in the box.
“I already possess a less damaged copy.”
After a moment he asked about the badges on Frank’s lapel.
“These? Well, this one’s Kyoto Hi!” Frank pulled a face. “Some fights we lost, just hot air and Dubya moaning about the cost.”
The gent peered more closely, so Frank tapped another.
“Got nuclear power nein danke in Berlin the year the Wall came down.”
“This is most interesting. And do you have provenance for each of them?”
“Stop the bloody whaling. Remember those Greenpeace inflatables banging through the spray to put themselves between the harpoons and the whales?”
Usually by now folk remembered they had somewhere else to be, but the gent smiled encouragingly.
“I was in the Oil Wars,” Frank heard himself saying. “Hard to believe they put lead in petrol then. We put a stop to that and fixed the ozone hole.”
He ploughed on despite the man’s puzzlement.
“You know, the Montreal Protocol.”
“Ah, the banning of chlorofluorocarbons. Though the replacements were greenhouse gases and in the end it was all futile.”
Frank opened and closed his mouth. Who recalled Chernobyl now? There were always new spills, new melt-downs, new extinctions. He’d warned them, but no one ever listened.
“Ephemeral markers of history like your badges rarely survive,” the gent was musing. “So much was lost in the Melt.”
“If you would sell them,” he confided, patting his pocket. “I have money.”
Somehow whales had lingered on, pollution hadn’t fouled everything, and thanks to fossil fuels, sunsets took your breath away.
It’s believers who need hell the most. In his heart, Frank hoped global warming saw everybody roast.
