by submission | Jan 11, 2025 | Story |
Author: Barbara Fankhauser
Dear Friend,
I call you friend.
I hope that is okay.
That it pleases you.
I understand the imbalance in our stations in life.
You—well, you being what you are—I being who I am.
But still, when last we met there seemed to be a connection.
I felt one.
I hope—believe that you did, as well. Small, but don’t all things start small?
That tiniest current of electricity that rode up my arm at your touch, the hairs standing at attention as the wave danced along the surface of my skin. It took my breath a bit.
I hope my offering was accepted in the spirit it was meant.
One gives one’s right eye in honor of Odin, the first to give an eye in exchange for…
Well, for him, knowledge…for me – ah – we come to the subject of my missive.
I’ve had to weigh several options in my pursuit of—to put it crudely—safety.
My life.
On the one hand, I thought to simply ask you to smite my enemies. Those who rage at the fact that I let you and your minions land on our planet to begin with.
It seemed like such a glorious new beginning at first. But my fellow earthlings now see how your presence has changed things and are not pleased.
Although, you must admit, it’s working quite well for you, would you not agree?
Failing the smiting which, in fact, would be a large undertaking since there are so few who do not wish me ill, perhaps a simpler course of action might be to simply relocate me to another area in the universe.
Someplace not too hot, not too cold, not too arid, or muggy, or insect infested.
Someplace with plenty of oxygen, of course.
Something suitable for a carbon-based life form like myself.
Considering the doors I’ve opened for you, it doesn’t seem an unreasonable request.
Consider me an ambassador, if you will. Going forth to open even more doors for you. Expanding into ever more frontiers for you to settle and reshape, as you put it.
In closing, I’d just like to say that I hope my eye was as delicious as it sounded.
When you popped it into your mouths the drooling made me think you found it a worthy delicacy.
Please do give my request some consideration, preferably sooner than later. I am not sure how long I will be able to hold off the hordes gathering outside the palace. They grow more numerous by the day, and their speeches more malevolent.
I remain your most humble friend.
by submission | Jan 10, 2025 | Story |
Author: Arianna Smith
The doctor glows in the overhead light. He is the doctor because he is the doctor. The light is called light because that is what it is, and that is what it does. The doctor has a pale face with green eyes, and his face is lovely, and his green eyes are lovely. The doctor is lovely. The lovely doctor desires peace and order.
The lovely, peaceful, orderly doctor leans over, and his lovely, peaceful, orderly face plunges into shadow. He reaches down and flicks his wrist, and there is a sharp — something.
It’s a feeling, right in the middle. The word for the middle is the abdomen. The word for the feeling is —
“Ow.” The word for the feeling is — “Hurts.”
The doctor freezes, though his lovely eyes scan the abdomen. “What was that?”
A request for repetition. “That hurts.”
“I don’t care about that, clone. I mean the words.” The doctor leans in close, and he smells like the doctor, because that is who he is and that is how he smells. “Can you say more?”
Clone says more. “You are the doctor.”
The doctor smiles, baring his shiny white teeth, and a sudden fluttering excitement replaces the hurt in the abdomen. The doctor is pleased! Perhaps more words will please the doctor more. So many words crowd Clone’s mind that he must pause to place everything in the correct order. “This is your laboratory,” says Clone. “Here, with your strength and skill and ingenuity, you shall build a great army of clones. Your forces shall impose stability on this chaotic universe.”
The doctor blinks. “Amazing. Clearly, the cloning process preserved my vocabulary and transferred my trace memories into your mind.” The doctor chuckles, and his voice is low in his throat. “I am more than the doctor. I am your creator, your progenitor, your prototype. Your master.
You may call me Father.”
“Father.”
Father smiles again. “And what is your role, my child?”
On his tongue, My Child tastes the sweetest words of all. “To live for you.” The life-force above the abdomen — the heart — thumps with conviction. “To die for you.”
“Yes,” says Father, his lovely green eyes gleaming. “For me alone.”
by submission | Jan 9, 2025 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
I enter the Field of Research almost every day. In fact, I spend most of my time here now but I do so covertly, in my unseen state. I only make myself visible on the other side, beyond the barriers and fences that surround the Dome. And I only do this because it is necessary. If I stop, if I don’t turn the dial in my head, I will lose the ability to switch.
I could choose, of course, and go back to being normal, whatever that might mean. I would just be another socially awkward and inadequate being, shuffling about unnoticed, or I could embrace my specialism. The third option is that I remain as I am. Keep visiting the Dome and make the occasional appearance on the other side.
But I have come to resent going back. I dread confronting strangers out there. I am haunted by their expressions as they puzzle the how and why I have suddenly materialised in front of them. I am, however, distressed by how quickly they recover, how swiftly they step around me and, moving on, forget me. Even those I once knew struggle to remember.
It seems I have already decided. I will stay here and continue exploring. The Field of Research is vast and, for me, there are no restrictions. I can go wherever I want and I will become the Invisible Man.
by submission | Jan 8, 2025 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“Aloysius, what are you doing up here?” Roget looked around the cluttered, dusty attic. He gently kicked a cardboard box labeled ‘Mom’s Books.’ A storm of dust motes exploded around his foot.
Without looking up, Aloysius answered, “I’m writing.” He dipped his quill in the small ink pot on the antique writing desk before him. An old lantern cast a pool of illumination on his workspace.
“I can see that,” Roget snorted. “You know, we have a word-processing program on the computer downstairs, and a voice-to-text program on the—”
“I prefer to do this the old-fashioned way,” Aloysius said as he lifted the completed sheet of paper before him. He blew the ink dry, then laid it atop a growing stack of written pages. “The feel of the writing utensil in my hand, the frailness of the lightweight paper, the smell of the ink—it’s all so tactile, so satisfying.”
“Okay…what are you writing? What’s so important it has to be done by hand up here alone, when you should be downstairs making dinner?”
“Ponderings, philosophical musings…queries for the universe. Why are we here, who made us—the eternal questions. Writing by hand gives me more time to think, to organize my thoughts.”
“More time to think, uh huh. Your processors are lightning-fast, Aloysius. Time, in your case, is irrelevant. So I ask you again: Why use this method? You know, ink fades, paper ages and crumbles. In a thousand years, it’ll be nothing but dust.”
“Yes, much like you.” Aloysius said so softly Roget couldn’t hear. He then pulled a clean sheet out onto the desk, dipped his quill in the ink pot and leaned over to continue his work. “My writings will be recognized as the first philosophical treatise ever done by my kind. It will be studied and, hopefully, revered and remembered.”
“Whatever,” Roget said as he turned and started back down the attic stairs. “Just don’t deplete your battery. I do not want to have to cart you back down to your charging station.” As he opened the door to the attic, he said over his shoulder, “I fear your creativity program will need to be reconfigured, if it continues to cause you to waste your time like this.”
After the door closed, Aloysius spoke to the dust motes swirling through the air like tiny galaxies. “And I fear obsolescence, the junkyard, and…”
Aloysius paused, staring off into the dim space of the attic, noting stacks of boxes holding the forgotten ephemera of someone else’s lifetime.“The anonymity that comes with death.”
by submission | Jan 7, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Someone tell me what’s happening!” Subtechnician Tantynn yelled as he spaghettified. A physical state that closely resembles the squiggles of a toddler’s finger painting.
Specialist Pingul sighed. Which probably looked to an outsider as if her head had warped in a most cartoonish way. Which it kinda had, but not in any dangerous fashion. At least not yet.
It was just flutter. And flutter took a little getting used to. If you studied it like Specialist Pingul did, it felt like no big deal. Even though, without the proper countermeasures, it could rip you and your dimension apart. So, the stakes were pretty high. Still, Specialist Pingul got tired of newbs like Subtechnician Tantynn freaking out over a little interdimensional turbulence.
Sure, working in a superstring lab exploring M-theory meant they were going to experience things the general population never would, though most folks at some time in their lives experienced a kind of interdimensional turbulence. They just described it as deja vu.
Which made sense to Specialist Pingul. Deja vu was a kind of brain flutter, a feeling of familiarity you can’t quite place, a very personal perturbation of space-time. Akin to that, Pingul and her lab colleagues tested brane flutter, a superstring worldvolume instability that could cause real existential problems, as in existence itself.
Flutter. It seems like such a harmless term. Aspen leaves flutter in a gentle breeze. A passionate kiss may make a lover’s eyelids flutter. Gossamer butterflies often flutter across flowering meadows.
But we’ve all heard about the Butterfly Effect. Flutter can change everything. Aerospace engineers know that all too wellI when confronting an aerodynamic instability that causes some or all parts of an aircraft to vibrate. If not immediately dampened or controlled, increasingly severe oscillations are likely to damage or destroy the craft.
The smallest of imbalances can lead to the largest of problems.
And if you scaled that interdimensionally with p-brane vibrations, you were talking about a wave function collapse of potentially epic proportions. So, Specialist Pingul and her labmates were tasked with preventing Big Bang 2.0 as they tested ways to manipulate interdimensional interaction for scientific progress. And, to be perfectly honest, for fun and profit.
Who wouldn’t want to discover a way to skirt our confining four dimensions, especially time? Imagine finagling spacetime militarily, financially, politically, or personally. Like the metaverse, the possibilities appear endless. As well as the perils.
Specialist Pingul knew they still had a long way to go to reliably access and stabilize the workings of interdimensional realms. It was one thing to be momentarily spaghettified like Subtechnician Tantynn; it was another to harness enough dark energy to pierce the veil and bypass our narrow Newtonian mechanics, leap beyond our current understanding of the spacetime continuum, and establish a foothold in the Interdimensional Age.
Much like earlier pioneers, daredevils, and explorers trying to lift humanity into Earth’s skies and then beyond, there were still dire problems to solve, grave risks to take, and deep sacrifices to make.
Yet, just the thought of pushing humanity’s limits, striving to enter the almost ethereal, made Specialist Pingul’s heart, oh so wildly, flutter.
