Worms

by submission | Feb 21, 2007 | Story

Author : J. S. Kachelries

Captain’s Log, Day 523: This is the 38th Earth day since we landed on Europa. At 0900 hours this morning, our exploration team discovered extraterrestrial life! They named them “Europea Hortenis” (Nightcrawlers of Europa), because they resemble big, fat worms. They are about six inches long, and one inch in diameter. They have a huge mouth at one end that contains about 100 razor sharp, articulating teeth. Our Xenobiologists would have been thrilled just to find bacteria-type life in Europa’s subterranean ocean. Imagine their elation to discover complex, multi-cellular life just a few inches below the surface. In addition, they’re easy to capture. You just pick them up by the tail. They aren’t flexible enough to turn around and bite you.

Captain’s Log, Day 526: Today we brought some of the worms inside the ship. They died almost instantly, or so we thought. When we examined one of them using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), it came back to life. Our biophysics team determined that their “spine” was made from an aluminum-copper-iron alloy that produces electrical energy as Europa orbits through Jupiter’s variable magnetic field (magnesynthesis, so to speak). The worms use magnetic fields for energy like Earth plants use sunlight. Since the interior of our ship is heavily shielded, the worms became dormant inside. When we took them back outside, they were their nasty ice-crunching selves again. Their teeth were made of Cubic-Boron-Nitride. On Earth, that’s a super-hard ceramic use to grind carburized steel. Apparently, that mouth was used to scour the ice for metals and minerals, presumably so they could grow.

Captain’s Log, Day 555: Today I had to post guards full time around the ship. Thousands of worms have begun to overrun our base. Apparently, they think our ship is a 24 hour buffet. We bent four screw drivers trying to pry their teeth off the aluminum landing struts.

Captain’s Log, Day 576: We thought we had the worm situation under control, until the external lab station collapsed. The damn worms had tunneled into the structure from underneath, like termites. I worry that they have eaten their way up through the ship’s landing module, and got into the return module? I have no way to check. Therefore, I decided to abandon the mission three months early, and orbit Jupiter until Earth is in the right position for our return trip.

Captain’s Log, Day 577: We achieved orbit just beyond Callisto. I sent an EVA team to examine the underside of the module to make sure there were no holes. Everything checked out. Look’s like we made it.

Captain’s Log, Day 714: Our situation is perilous. I’ve ordered an immediate return to Earth. We’ll have to adjust our trajectory in-route. We have to get away from Jupiter’s magnetic field as quickly as possible. The video monitors show that the worms are in the unshielded airlock and storage bays. They ate so many holes in the outer hatch that we can’t pressurize the airlock. We have no way to get at them, since our EVA suits are in a compromised storage bay. We’re trapped!

Captain’s Log, Day 718: We’re not going to make it. They’ve began to penetrate the interior hull. They eat through the meteoroid patches seconds after we plug the holes. At least we discovered what our mistake was. It was the ice samples in the storage bay. We had checked the samples for worms, but not for their eggs.

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The Quickening

by submission | Feb 15, 2007 | Story

Author : TJMoore

Lightning struck her left wingtip sending a twinge all the way down to her ribs. Finally it had begun. She flapped her enormous wings, increased her speed and altitude. She needed a body strike.

It had been twenty rotations since she had mated and the time was right. She could feel the clutch of eggs, dormant and unmoving in her womb, waiting.

Another lance of lightning flashed in the swirling clouds above her and she started her localized spiral up into the maelstrom.

She had never been pregnant before so she was a little nervous. The unknown was always two sided.

Suddenly, a blazing hot arc of static electricity that enveloped her whole body in a corona of blue energy slammed her, causing her to shudder. That was a good one, she thought.

She could feel the energy pooling in her womb as the eggs reacted to the static charge. Some of the eggs would burst and some would char, but a small percentage would transition to the second phase of development and become children.

Unsure of how much energy was required, she circles in the permanent storm getting hit time and again by the ferocious bolts until, finally, unwilling to risk burning another egg, she dove down to the relative calm of the lower stratosphere.

The orange clouds of Jupiter surrounded her like lilies on a pond as she flapped toward a distant flock that was her family, a bluish train of ions trailing after her leaving sparkles in the sky.

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Temponaut

by submission | Feb 14, 2007 | Story

Author : Duncan Shields

The good news is that my time machine works.

The bad news is that the laws of the universe will only allow it to go forward.

I don’t know what I was thinking. We sent it forward two minutes and then three minutes and then a month. All tests were green. No time passed for me but the people in my lab saw me disappear for four weeks. It was a success. There was talk of a government contract. We didn’t dare do a test back in time yet. The causality equations were still being worked out.

I just wanted to impress Jenny. I’d been drinking. It was late. I wanted to go a few hundred years into the future, find something amazing, and bring it back for her. It seemed like the most romantic thing anyone had ever done to my drunk lovesick scientist mind. I took a deep breath and hopped in and dialed in the tempordinates.

I hit the go button. Everything worked perfectly. I stared at the exit door, took a deep breath and pulled the handle.

With a crack and a hiss I walked out into the darkness. Immediately, floodlights came up and a loud horn made me freeze like a scared dog. It looked like I was standing in some sort of parking lot but it was hard to tell with the light shining down on me. I shielded my eyes with an upraised hand. I squinted into the darkness.

“Quin do lave track temp shift over max chain” said a booming voice from a loudspeaker.

“What?” I stammered back “My name is Dr. Jenkins. I am from the year 2008. I, uh, I come in peace.” I finished lamely.

My stomach was really not enjoying the celebratory whiskey anymore. I was scared like I hadn’t been scared since I was a child. I staggered forward onto my knees and vomited noisily onto the pavement.

That was all six months ago. Turns out they’d been waiting for me. This tempstation had been set up like a barrier across all of local time. It catches us illegal time travelers like tennis balls thrown against a net. I was the thirtieth one that they had caught so far but I was a semi celebrity seeing as I was the inventor of the first time travel machine.

Unfortunately, it meant that they had to tell me the bad news that every time traveler since me already knew. It’s not a return trip. You can’t go back.

They say they’ll let me out of the holding cell soon. I have a support group of temporal displacement counselors and fellow temponauts waiting to help me adjust to this new future society.

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