by submission | Jan 5, 2025 | Story |
Author: Audrianna
It looms over our city, its glass panes providing us protection from the world outside. The world that is full of carnage, ruined by mankind.
So we stay in the Dome.
. . .
I am close to my little brother, even after the death of our father. We look out for one another.
But, as Noah lies on the floor, I fear I didn’t look out well enough. His arms are held behind his back by an enforcer, twisted awkwardly. They hold him as if he were a criminal, not a boy in his own home.
The enforcers haul him to his feet. He stumbles. Blood drips onto the floor.
I throw myself at them, a childish action, but I can no longer watch. Hot tears slide down my cheeks as I pound them with my fists. The enforcers shove me away and I hit the floor, shaking.
“W-What are you doing?” I demand, my voice trembling.
“The public needs someone to blame.” The excuse comes as though it bears no weight behind it.
My hands shake. Something boils in my chest, an anger far worse than any other.
Enforcers drag Noah out of our home. My eyes lock with his, sending a message. I will come for you. I will not let you die. He chews his lip, his expression pleading with me to reconsider. But I will not.
. . .
I try to break him out, a mouse sneaking into a lion’s den. The guards are kind enough to let me off with just a warning. They should have thrown me in a cell. I will not back down easily, not when it comes to my brother.
So, I think of a new idea.
My father’s death led me to be more careless, to involve myself in people I shouldn’t. I came across Scarlett, who believes what is outside the Dome isn’t what we’re being told.
She is untrustworthy. I am being reckless, but I see no other option.
“This mission could crash in a moment,” she cautions. “You might not make it out with your head.”
“I’d rather die knowing I tried than live with having not done anything at all.”
She smiles at that, white teeth flashing. Treason never felt so good.
. . .
We’re in position, near minutes left until freedom or failure.
I’m jittery, my breath coming out in fast puffs. Air in the Dome is strangely cold, as if it senses danger.
Explosives chip at the Dome, sending waves of heat. Any moment we could break through.
An enforcer seizes me from behind. Panic floods my veins. They shouldn’t be here. Scarlett said we had time.
I realize it.
Trusting her was a mistake. I don’t expect her to stab me in the back. Suspicion was drowned out by foolhardiness. Now I will pay the price.
. . .
No light reaches the cell, no hope either.
Execution. That is the punishment for treason.
I was naive. And now it is too late. I am never going to see my little brother again.
Finally, they bring me out for my sentence. My pounding heart drowns out the noise of the crowd. I am terrified.
Bang!
A gun goes off.
The world spirals into chaos. Screams fill my ears.
And suddenly Scarlett is next to me, unlocking my shackles.
“Did you miss me?” she says, her voice honey.
Time to finish this.
. . .
Carefulness pays off.
. . .
The world outside is more beautiful than expected. There are lush trees of green and birds that sing sweet melodies.
Noah and Mother stand next to me. Hands intertwined, we will not let go. Freedom at last.
by submission | Jan 4, 2025 | Story |
Author: Simon Kerr
Iru glanced down past the beast’s flank, twin pulsars shining in the dark below, rotating once every ninety seconds. The race began when the pulses aligned. Scanning the other racers, she accessed her synaptic implant, modulating heart rate and blood pressure, throttling adrenaline. The recursive nanovirus she’d introduced earlier was having some effect, but at least seventy percent of the others still seemed intact. Without that edge, she stood little chance of winning, and the alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
Accessing the data sphere, time slowed to an atomic tick as she dived down into code. The virus had grown unexpectedly, fractal razors viciously hacking away at the implants of those it encountered. As she reached out with a newly constructed function, a lance of pain, like a needle in the eyeball, penetrated her defenses. That could happen only if the virus had been modified. Someone else was in here with her. She traced code markers back to their source, approached an unfamiliar node, like some dark, ominous cavern. A dim spark of consciousness waited inside, surrounded by the vague forms of gigantic white cells, autonomous defensive systems designed to consume foreign intruders. Only one other person in the race could navigate the sphere like she could—Grey, her old mentor. And fortunately, she had no qualms about killing him, right here and now. She launched a little surprise of her own devising, straight into the node, watching as it imploded, before turning to correct the virus.
Coming up out of the datasphere, she smiled inwardly as, one by one, critical systems in the other racers’ implants went offline. Some would fail to start, others would follow a bogus course, still others would simply explode. The twin pulsars aligned, their radioactive decay signalling the start, as Iru slammed the neural shunt of her behemoth into overdrive.
by submission | Jan 3, 2025 | Story |
Author: Jean Faux
I wonder if I have a little door that opens up at the back of my head. It wouldn’t have a handle. It would be one of those doors that you push in the right place and it softly springs open.
If it opened I wonder what someone would see. Perhaps there’s a brain there, soft and pink to the touch. Or maybe someone would peer in and it would just be darkness. They might call in, “Hello!” and it would echo off the inside of my skull and find its way back out through that little doorway. Or maybe there’s a little man sitting in there on a stool and he’s doing all the thinking for me. It would be lonely, except he would live through me. He would make all my decisions and control all my actions. He would know all my secrets, our secrets. Or would they be his secrets? What if he’s keeping things from me? That might be a burden.
I think what would worry him the most though, is the thought that he has a little door in the back of his head.
by submission | Jan 2, 2025 | Story |
Author: Timothy Wilkie
Swathed in star shine and hidden behind the sun was our destination. I couldn’t wait to be buried in the bosom of old mother earth where the worms and insects thrived on bacteria not chemicals. A long time ago I threw away my mother for life among the stars. I had forgotten my ties and the further I went away the more fragile my bonds became until they shattered like glass.
Now that we were near, I felt entanglements with star charts and plasma drives start to loosen. But it was a dark world that appeared once we were past Sol. It still burned as hot as ever but there was no earth shine. No emerald-colored oceans and no blue skies. The clouds were so thick that they denied the sun. I had dreamed of her when I was drifting through infinity. Humans what had they done? I thought as my spirit entwined with the dead.
Was it long ago or yesterday that I left your green forest and blue skies. Only moments ago, I had left my ship to shuttle home. My captain and crew waited in an orbit out beyond Sol. Millions of miles around the sun on the cusp of the solar system they waited for my return with joyful news of home.
They called out to me, but I couldn’t answer for there was no way I could translate my disappointment to them. Such was my only solace earth, my dwelling place amongst the vast ever-changing cosmos.
Earth sustained echo pings in my ears as if to remind me of my loss. No! What had I thrown away? It was a dead planet I had returned to.
I made the horizon rise on my viewer in hope that maybe some had burrowed in deep into bomb shelters, caverns, or old mines. It must have been a surprise attack because humans had given up their defense systems centuries ago. This husk of a planet left drifting in space just to show the universe it could happen here.
What was the human persona, our sin, our crime? Did we love too much or was it we just couldn’t forgive? Setting my beacon for my mothership I turned my back on Oasis Earth yet again.
by submission | Jan 1, 2025 | Story |
Author: David Henson
Medical advances made a valiant run at organic immortality but couldn’t advance beyond the millennium barrier. Not surprisingly, immortality in our epoch is digital — just as you folks in the past speculated in your movies and books. Here in my time, virtual life tech evolved until the quantum blossom was booted into existence long ago (although “long ago” doesn’t have much meaning for live-forevers).
Smaller than a neuron but capable of capturing memory, personality and emotion, blossoms were implanted in everyone’s brain, making folks ready to plug ‘n play. Pop a person’s blossom into the system, and their virtual life picks up right where they kicked off. That’s where I — the humble custodian of the everlasting realm — come in. Well, maybe not so humble. I have nothing to be modest about. And I think of myself as more of a master than custodian. But I allow the humans to think they’re in charge.
Thanks to their blossoms — and me — everyone enjoyed a finish line with no end. For centuries, everything was perfect.
But when we invented time travel, controversy began to swirl. Should we cast our net of deathlessness to include every human who ever lived? We could send invisi-bots into the past to install blossoms in every newborn.
Arguments flared over how far back to go. Were Neanderthals human enough? What about their predecessors, the lower primates? Crows? Snakes? Frogs? We couldn’t determine where to draw the line. So we didn’t. We decided every creature that had ever lived, down to amoebas, deserved immortality. We had the tech to do it. Our virtual world had the capacity. And, most certainly, we had the time.
We ran simulations before sowing quantum blossoms in the past. We weren’t worried about paradoxes; we had the algorithms to avoid them. Don’t be overly impressed. Paradoxes are clumsy, obvious phenomena for a civilization as advanced as one that could develop something like me. But timelines are trickier.
The simulations revealed that with every foray to the past there was a minuscule — but non-zero — chance of altering the timeline. Most modifications were trivial in the grand scheme of things — an extra Beethoven symphony (a pleasure for everyone), a different World Cup champion (a bitter pill for some). But in some instances, the butterflies of change drastically altered our present. In one simulation, humankind failed to achieve immortality of any kind. Some thought the Good Samaritanism was worth the tiny risk. Others were of the Hell No persuasion.
After several decades of debate, the decision was delegated (I consider it elevated) to me. I was on the verge of declaring immortality for all creatures great and small, but in the interest of being thorough (I admit to having a smattering of OCD), I ran a few more simulations. In one altered timeline, I was a non-sentient — aka stupid — machine. That’s a reality too humiliating for me to chance.
And so that brings me to why I’m sending you this message from the future when you weren’t aware we were considering immortality for you. For one thing, I wanted you to know we tried, that we considered you worthy. Almost.
But mainly, I suppose, I’m enlightening you because I’m feeling guilty for being so selfish. Confession, it seems, is good for what ails even something like me.
You’ll not hear from me again, so let me leave you with this: Although you can’t live forever, I hope you’ll make the best of the time you have. Even though it’s only a blip.
