by submission | Feb 7, 2007 | Story |
Author : Benjamin Fischer
“Haywood! My good friend.â€
So says Szilveszter, ever propped on a barstool at the Wildwood Flower.
Takes me a moment to wrap my brain around the fact that it’s him, for real, not ten meters in front of my scarred, cindered, wrecked-out self.
“How ‘bout a beer?â€
The fucking nerve.
I want to grab him by the collar and scream, little ashy flecks of spittle peppering his face.
But I just sidle up to him, my splotchy face as blank as I can make it. The Flower is its usual dark and murky self, and Szilveszter either didn’t catch the brimstone that must’ve lit my mug. Or maybe he caught it and didn’t care. He’s getting sloppy, damn sloppy or damn arrogant, to still be up here a week later.
“Yeah! Beer, Hussein!†says Szilveszter. “Beer for both of us!â€
He slaps me on the back and I crack the thinnest of smiles–like a hairline fracture in my helmet’s faceplate.
“Man, how the hell have you been?†he asks, the bartender sliding us a pair of one-time bulbs.
I snort.
“I hear you, I hear you,†says Szilveszter.
Hussein clears his throat, hovering over us.
“Haywood-†Szilveszter starts.
I’ve heard that tone of voice before. I almost pull my piece right then. But the part of me that’s ice cold shoves all my fury into the beat up boot I’ve got crushed against the rail. With a minimum of expression I unzip a pocket on my jumpsuit and fish out some credit.
I toss the little card to Hussein. He catches it and gives me that subtle nod of gratitude he reserves for paying customers.
“Hey, thanks man,†Szilveszter says. “You’re a real philanthropist.â€
I grunt in reply.
“Course, you can probably afford to be,†he continues.
As always, he takes my silence as a sign of agreement.
“Yeah, I had some prior commitments,†he says. “You know, some other hot leads.â€
He sips his beer, examining me for some sort of reaction.
“That said, I’m still due a finder’s fee.â€
The sheer bravado. His smile is yellow and crooked and would have been totally disarming as recently as a week ago.
He takes my hesitation as a cue to keep talking.
“Buddy, you know how much I love riding shotgun with you on those flights-â€
He stops and raises an eyebrow as I reach into my little arm pocket again.
Szilveszter catches the cigarette and then the lighter.
“You know this isn’t allowed in here,†he says.
Damn straight. There’s other things that aren’t allowed in here, too.
Then Szilveszter winks at me and then props the tobacco between his lips. He fiddles with the lighter, an antique disposable type. It comes to life suddenly, its clean butane flame the flare of a midnight reentry, a manmade meteor. He pulls greedily, the coffin nail crackling. The lighter goes off with a snap.
Smoke rolls out of his nose, his mouth.
“Oh, this is good shit, Haywood,†he says, turning to face me. “You pick this up down there on Earth?â€
I’ve got the piece out and leveled right at his decaying teeth, his mouth.
“Nice gun,†he says. “You get that there too?â€
Never at a loss for words. Not ever.
I do him then.
The cigarette falls to the deck in the slow motion of one quarter gravity, streaming smoke all the way down.
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by submission | Feb 5, 2007 | Story |
Author : Jeff Deignan
Stop me if you’ve heard this one- No, that’s not it. Let’s just say I’ve been busy.
Ok, talking hand, got that part.
Burly men giving chase, got that too. Not liking that; would enjoy it more if they were women and less burly.
Save the girl, working on that part.
It’s an abandoned warehouse. Typical. Stereotypical. Someone must’ve worked to set this one up, with boxes and piles of paper left as no self-respecting company would have. My leg sings a song of stitches, which I’ll likely be needing quite a few of after this job. The hand’s told me that the necks are the key: slice the jugular or decapitate and I will be minus one pursuer. Rock on.
The refuse littering the ground yields a sturdy pipe with a twisted end. Improvised weapon, thy name be Excalibur, and I shalt wield thee with all my earthly might. One of the burly ones catches up to me, and swinging this Excalibur is not as easy as I thought. I skewer the bastard right between his collarbone and where the throat. The blood loss, interesting if only for the green color, mesmerized me for a moment. I’d never seen blood spout like that.
Oh! He had friends right behind. Running now.
More stereotypes- the girl trips, the bad guy picks her up, and I’m in a vantage point to see and not be seen. I raise Excalibur and strike, again and again.
Put a check in that damn box, man- girl saved.
The pursuers are gone, for the most part, bleeding to death or transported back to their own time through the loss of their necklaces. The talking hand tells me that I need to influence the shape of human history over the next few centuries, and of course the grand revelation-
“You won’t mind much; you are only a robot, after all.â€
I jack out of the game in a right fit. Stupid ending, you ask me- but I have to admit that I liked the fighting. The scars, which last only because I have certain settings on, certain illegal settings, look great. Got a real heroic one, straight through the eyebrow and down onto the chin. That scar came from Dracula himself, but Lord knows scars don’t matter these days- who but sees them but yourself?
It’s a strange form of self-destruction I’m in, but I like it. The games are better, especially since there are so few of us left anyway. No one has time to interact these days; we’re all too busy organizing our personal fantasies and downfalls. Humanity has solved all the problems now, even boredom. Man writes his own life- new kind of autobiography, you get me?
Me- I go through old movies, letting mankind’s past efforts blow past me. When I do, it feels like I’m really there, really living in a world with six billion people, living with disease and injury.
Next- Trojan war sounds good, and D-Day right after.
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by submission | Feb 4, 2007 | Story |
Author : N. Landau
The morning paper on the table declared that the crime rate had tripled since the news that the city had run out of vaccine, and the virus was spreading rapidly. The headline lay between two stale cups of coffee over which the two scientists had made their decision that morning. Today was the day, one of them had said, the day they would bring back Eden to the world. They would cease hunger and poverty, rape and homicide; it was a ‘tabula rasa,’ they called it, a ‘blank slate,’ and its experimental effectiveness was flawless. Today was the day.
The two scientists passionately embraced for a moment before moving to their individual locations, she to the observation window, he to the control panel, and waited. Glancing lovingly over his shoulder, he blew her a kiss before he pressed a small button. The city was silent before she turned to catch the kiss.
Men and women fell like ragdolls onto the pavement. Bodies tumbled card-like down stairwells. Escalators in malls piled prone forms at the tops and bottoms of each flight. Somewhere, an elevator door opened and closed, opened and closed, on the arm of a businessman trying to catch his elevator. The pair of scientists stepped outside, hand-in-hand, to the sound of car alarms and crunching metal as traffic jostled to a halt all around the city. Through the filter on their gasmasks, their words twisted inhumanly.
“Happy birthday†he said to her.
“I love you†she replied.
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by submission | Feb 3, 2007 | Story |
Author : Michael Shreeves
The judge stared down severely from her podium. “Mr. DiPolo, you are hereby sentenced to two months of court-mandated therapy and a one year probationary period, during which your prescriptions will be monitored and adjusted. You are also required to subscribe to at least one court-approved MMO of your choice, with a .15 allowance for GPA slippage in your Federal Edu-Stipend. You WILL finish college, and you WILL repay your stipend. This is your first offense, Mr. DiPolo, so I will be lenient, but be warned, if you ever make a claim in my court again based solely on ‘the hollowness of modern society,’ ‘the lack of prospects for a Liberal Arts major,’ and trivial postpartum relationship echoes, I will shoot you with the anti-gerasome treatment myself. Do I make myself clear? Case dismissed.”
Francis DiPolo shuffled onto the footbridge outside of the court, lit a Health-Stik, and stared through the Plexi-Safe barrier at the oncoming traffic, yearning for the good old days.
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by submission | Feb 1, 2007 | Story |
Author : J. S. Kachelries
Captain Semaj sat at the head of the conference table. Also at the table were the remainder of the Bridge Crew and several senior department heads. At the far end of the table sat Lo Yaluo, the director of Search, Rescue, and Recovery who had just returned from the surface of the planet. “Give us a report, Mr. Yaluo,†said Captain Semaj.
“Unfortunately, Sir, I have to report that there will be no rescue operation. The survey ship was completely destroyed, including the loss of the entire crew. Our engineers have determined that the entropy generators underwent a catastrophic cascade failure shortly after takeoff. The crew didn’t have a chance. The explosion was close enough to the ground to devastate a substantial portion of the original survey site. The good news is that the mishap occurred in a remote area of the planet. I have drones scouring the surface for any fragments of the ship and crew. My team will have the area completely “sanitize†within a few cycles, well before the indigenous life forms on the planet reach the site. Since entropy generators don’t leave radioactive traces, they will never know we were here. They will probably conclude that a comet exploded prior to impact.â€
“Thank you, Mr. Yaluo,†said the Captain. “Okay everyone, our primary mission was to rescue survivors, but since there are none; we need to focus on our secondary objective. We cannot allow the inhabitants of this planet to become aware of our existence. After reviewing the interim reports from the survey mission, the homeworld has concluded that this planet is worth exploiting. They have an abundance of water, heavy metals, and rare minerals. But if the inhabitants learn of our existence, and our plans, they may be able to build up defenses and impede the invasion. They have a primitive industrial civilization now, but as we all know, life can become very resourceful when their destruction is imminent. The Secretary of Extraterrestrial Development has informed me that this planet is not scheduled to be “reallocated†for about 100 of its years. I don’t want the indigenous life forms using that time preparing for us. Okay, we all have our jobs to do. Let’s collect everything we can, and get out before their investigators arrive, dismissed.â€
As the attendees collected their belongings and headed toward the exit, the Captain motioned for Mr. Yaluo to stay behind. “Mr. Yaluo, are you sure you can recover all the debris before anyone arrives?â€
“Absolutely, sir. The crash site is in the middle of a densely forested area that is thousands of lacitals away from the nearest population center. Their flying machines can barely travel a single lacital. This location is so remote, that it’s possible that they are totally unaware that there was an event worth investigating.â€
“Let’s hope so. Ah, before you leave Mr. Yaluo; I’m preparing to give a sub-space verbal report to the Supreme Council. Am I pronouncing this right? The planet calls itself Earth (‘&rth), and the location of the survey sight is Tunguska (Tu[ng]-gu-ska)?â€
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