by submission | Nov 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: Celso Almeida
On the crisp evening of February 9th, 1986, Leo, a 13-year-old with a passion for astronomy, stood in his backyard, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Halley’s Comet. The new moon cast a perfect stage for Leo’s celestial observations, a moment he had anticipated since he first became fascinated with the universe, inspired by the captivating episodes of “Cosmos”, with Carl Sagan.
The night was clear, stars shining brightly, and the comet’s tail visible in the dark sky. Leo absorbed the details his dad had shared about the ice and dust expelled from the comet’s head, creating the mesmerizing tail.
His dream of becoming an astronaut, however, had been tempered by the recent tragedy of the Challenger’s explosion just two weeks before. The vivid memory of the catastrophe, especially the loss of the crew members, lingered as Leo gazed at the celestial wonder.
Lost in his thoughts, Leo didn’t notice Sandy, his neighbor and schoolmate, approaching. With hands on her hips, Sandy greeted him, “Hey Leo, what’s up?”
Without taking his eyes off the binoculars, Leo replied, “Not much, just enjoying the view. Halley’s Comet is quite a sight.”
Sandy, intrigued, asked, “So, is that fireball up there going to hit Earth and finish us off?”
Leo began to explain, “First of all, that thing up there isn’t a ball of fire. It’s basically a mountain covered with a layer of ice, which melts when the comet approaches the Sun on its translation…”
“Trans… what?” Sandy interrupted, furrowing her brow.
“Translation; sorry, but I’m not the one who makes up the names. May I continue, miss?”
“Please, sir,” Sandy said with a playful smirk.
“As I was saying,” Leo continued, “the comet’s ice layer melts when it approaches the Sun, creating that beautiful tail we have in front of us.”
Sandy pointed at the comet, asking, “Wait a minute, Mr. Wise Guy; are you telling me that that thing over there is not a ball of fire but of ice?!”
“Exactly!” Leo declared, chin lifted in triumph. “But it’s okay to confuse it with a meteorite, the ‘ball of fire’ that falls from the sky; it’s a very common mistake.”
“Meteorite, comet… turns out you didn’t answer my question: are we all going to die soon?”
“No ma’am, you can keep making plans,” Leo finished with a chuckle.
“I think that’s really good, because I really want to go to the University,” Sandy said with wide, sparkling eyes, looking directly at Leo.
As she spoke, Leo’s mind was flooded with unexpected images—memories or fragments of dreams. A futuristic scenario unfolded before him, featuring a large, gleaming silver sphere known as the Quantum Time-Translation Machine, a time-travel device Leo and a team of brilliant minds would create in the future. Leo was getting an opportunity that very few people have in life: one more chance to do it all over again, only this time without making the same mistakes; but for everything to work out this time, Leo would have to remember the future.
Interrupting his thoughts, Sandy asked, “Leo, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Leo, still processing the influx of information, managed a smile. “I’m fine, Sandy. Just lost in thought.”
As the Comet approached the horizon, Leo’s mother opened the kitchen door, flooding the backyard with artificial light. The moment of epiphany shattered, and Leo, blinking to adjust to the sudden brightness, said, “Bye, Sandy. See you tomorrow at school.”
Sandy lingered for a moment, taking in the cool night air, before heading home.
by submission | Nov 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Ian McKinley
In technical forensics, the worst place to work is a university. There you find sophisticated, cutting-edge equipment, with interfaces so user-friendly that application requires no fundamental understanding of their operational principles. Such kit is often claimed to be idiot-proof but, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean student-proof!
As prime investigator, I was the first to enter the cavernous lab when temperatures dropped sufficiently. The bulkhead door creaked open and I peered in, amazed that the basement had been capable of withstanding the blast, before remembering that it had hosted a research reactor sometime in the distant past. There was a crater where the meson-resonance transmuter had stood and other parts of the floor, ceiling and walls were covered with a glassy coating of whatever remained of the room’s original contents. I fancied that the faint pink colouration could be evidence that the perpetrator had been hoist by his own petard, in a rather literal manner, but it was actually more likely that all traces of him had disappeared with the off-gasses.
I automatically checked my dosimeter – a little above background, but no significant hazard. My pad pinged the black box – actually an eye-watering shade of scarlet – but it was clearly visible, imbedded in the concrete wall to my left, just above head height. All I had to do was enter my over-ride code to download a record of the last experiment and cause a holographic summary to appear.
The machine was used to produce radiopharmaceutical isotopes, which explained what a post-grad with a background in molecular engineering was doing in the lab in the first place. I could guess what he thought that he was going to achieve by forcing a half kilo of depleted uranium, probably taken from shielding in the lab next door, into the irradiation chamber and setting the resonance for Au-197. But surely even the dumbest of students would have wondered why the original sample holder was dimensioned to hold milligrams of substrate or questioned the need to disconnect four different safety interlocks in order to initiate the transmutation?
Within a couple of minutes searching the web, I was informed that this technology was actually a spin-off from muon-catalysed fusion, which finally transformed that long over-hyped power source into routine commercial operation. Evidently, transmutation into gold would proceed until the runaway energy release vaporised the entire machine. Those who won’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it! Why do these guys never think to check if any other idiot has tried the same thing? They would have not only learned about the inevitable catastrophic explosion, but also the calculated value of the sub-nanometre thick layer of gold on the lab walls – somewhere around 80 cents.
by submission | Nov 16, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jaryd Porter
I gripped my reclining chair’s arms.
She hopped up and down, hair cascading across her shoulders–a happy dance.
“It’s almost time,” I said. I bit into my bottom lip. Blood.
Our apartment door beeped and shifted upwards. A four-legged drone entered and made a loud buzz before addressing my wife and me.
“Delivery for Mr. and Mrs. Pennyworth. Please send feedback to BirthLIVE.com or using the BirthLIVEapp. Have a pleasant day,” the drone droned.
We ignored the babbling machine. I jumped up from my chair and grabbed onto our little cardboard package. With a little boxcutter, I severed the tape and opened the vacuum-sealed bag. It had a little white sticker: “Scott Pennyworth, Male, Healthy, 121 IQ….”
Through the white bag, a hefty little shape stirred in a golden fluid. All that glitters is not gold, for this present did not glitter at all.
We followed the instructions we’d received through our email accounts. We took the bag to the bathroom, ran lukewarm bathwater, filled the thing. Sarah couldn’t stop grinning and crying, so I held her hand to remind her “yes, this is real.”
We submerged the bag in the lukewarm water. She held it with her left hand and I held it with my right. Gradually, the bag’s water soluble material began to disintegrate and create a slimy, thick substance in the bathtub. To think, a couple with less money might have to use a bucket or a public facility to receive such a gift.
“Do we still like Scott? Or did you want to name him after your dad?” Sarah asked. She wanted me to name him. She wanted us to have that between us.
“Don’t be so old-fashioned, honey. Scott is a perfect name. It’s the one we agreed on,” I said.
We held hands, while Scott emerged from the slime, buoyantly brought to the surface. He emerged bawling and carelessly making fists. Sarah released me and quickly grabbed a nearby body towel and held Scott in her arms. That was our baby boy. And for ten more payments of 15,000 a month, he’d grow to be the child we always wanted.
I saw all the traits we’d selected: my blue eyes, Sarah’s broad nose, Sarah’s dark skin, my straight teeth, my lobeless ears, Sarah’s birthmark on the back of her neck…. The rest, we left up to “god.” From our genetic material, in a lab somewhere unknown to us, our son was molded. But he was born in the bathtub and into loving arms.
by submission | Nov 15, 2023 | Story |
Author: WF Peate
Thunder shakes the ground leaving an ozone smell. Rain clouds stream across the sky like whales.
I’m holding my Quantum computer phone to my left ear with my left hand while casting my fly rod with my right. A shiver goes up my spine from standing in the ice-cold trout stream.
“Hon, one more fly cast and I’m coming home. Be there by dinner.”
Kaboom. A flash of lightning strikes my fly rod and travels through the phone.
Darkness. So this is death.
Why do I have to pee?
I stagger up. The Quantum phone is a molten mess. I’d paid three months’ salary for access to all the world’s knowledge, continually updated.
I’m new-born calf weak. I stumble to the highway and a truck takes me to the emergency department where I work. Ears ring like a fire alarm.
“Doc you’re a mess,” shouts Nurse Renee as she cuts off my muddy burned clothing.
“Thanks. See someone about your Wilson’s disease.”
Her brow furrows. “Nothing wrong with me. Here’s your transportation to the scanner.”
My colleague Dr. Ross Quinton turns the screen so we can both read my scan.
“Bob you had two God shots. Lightning entered your left brain. Should’ve killed you. If you had fallen face forward into the stream you would’ve drowned.”
I never noticed before, but Ross smelled like he was dying, bitter and sweet — garlic in an ice cream cone.
“You were holding that Quantum phone to your left ear. Maybe it absorbed the electricity?”
“When can I return to work? Gillian is disabled and Scooter is ten. I’m the breadwinner.”
“Never.”
At home, Gillian and Scooter make me comfortable. Gillian takes a phone call. She rolls to me in her wheelchair. “Renee, Ross Quintin’s wife, says thank you for referring him to a cardiologist. He just had four-vessel bypass surgery. She saw a doctor about her Wilson’s disease. Says you diagnosed it when she was your nurse.”
I tell her how I knew about Renee and Ross.
“Bob, you have always been a great diagnostician, but . . . “
“Not this good. Ever since I got electrocuted holding that Quantum computer phone I can read signs on faces.”
Scooter’s face lights up. He shows us an article about a woman who couldn’t speak because of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Stanford put neural sensors on her brain and she was able to speak using an avatar.
“Did the lightning through the Quantum computer phone create a neural data port in my head that accesses all medical knowledge? I can’t type and I can barely hear. How’re we going to survive financially?”
Word got out about the “Miracle Doc.” Folks lined up at our door. Donations were never enough.
One day we watched the CEO of the biggest tech company.
“He’ll be dead in a week.” I called his office. They thought I was a crank and hung up.
I put our money on that CEO’s company on a short call (You profit when the stock price goes down). Our money doubled when he died. I watched, diagnosed CEOs, and made rewarding investments.
One evening the President spoke. Surgery would save her.
“Ross I’m glad you’re better.”
“Thanks to you.”
I said the President needed surgery ASAP. “Ross, you’re politically connected, leader of our association.”
“I know Sandra Sittau, the President’s chief of staff. I’ll call her.”
Ross made a different call, “Senator Charles. Your odds of taking the nomination away from the President are going to improve dramatically this week.”
by submission | Nov 14, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Setzer was sure of it. He’d checked the instruments numerous times and taken thousands of readings. The signals were real. Something was out there and coming his way.
What to do? He thumbed the chipped edge of his mug and took a sip of coffee many hours cold. Get ready he supposed. For the first time in many weeks, he heated water and shaved. He tidied the cabin, even sweeping out the ashes from the cast iron wood stove. Then he carried his only chair onto the narrow porch and waited.
All his life, he’d been waiting. He’d known this day would come when the waiting would be over, and he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Being alone had first been a habit, then a mindset, finally a lifestyle. Deciding in his early years that the universe existing between his ears was as wide as the star-filled one, he’d lived completely within himself.
Except for the lizard.
Setzer’s ever-insistent reptile brain poked at the great worry. The old problem. The inherent threat of immensity. A primal suspicion impossible to shake, and therefore he could not not chase it. The perverse comfort he took in relentlessly searching for the threat, staring it down, was what had sustained him all these years. And now it was here.
The certainty that he, we, would never be alone again made him feel as never before. Empty. The last drop drained. Lonely. He was suddenly a lonesome man looking from his porch to the horizon, unable to make a move, waiting for the others to make theirs. Time was no longer a tool, just torture.
Coolly (he could think no other way), he tried to understand the epoch unfolding, but had no frame of reference for himself as consequential, as the center of anything that mattered. Whether or not he detected the signals of their coming, they would still come. By now, maybe others knew as well and were reporting it. Maybe all humanity knew what he knew.
It was another way he was not alone, and he grew more anxious. His chair felt hard for the first time and he fidgeted, unable to keep focused on the horizon. Finally, he stood and began walking. It did not matter where. He was not alone. He would be found. They were coming and he would be found, like any other.
There it was. He’d lived a separate, completely individual, life, but he could not escape the whole. The immensity. Every morning, every afternoon, every night, he was part of it. No different than any other.
Setzer wandered a fair way from his cabin to the ridge overlooking a crosshatch of ravines draining to the river below. Like a mere raindrop, he could end up there too, without a choice, flowing to the sea.
Didn’t matter where you started, what you did, what signals from other worlds you discovered, you were headed where everyone else was.
Immensity meant none of us was alone. We ultimately fell and flowed to where the cosmos drained. The liberated, the leashed, the led, the lost, the lively, the lonely. Thrown together no matter which planet conquered which, we shared the same old problem.
