by submission | Jun 25, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jess Chua
[24 June 1975]
“You don’t have to worry. The results will change your life.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Mrs. Stevenson was awash with hope and relief.
“It’s all going according to God’s plan and decision.”
“Praise Him!” The Stevensons raised their palms to the sterile bright ceiling.
Dr. Abraham left the room to retrieve Mr. Stevenson’s analyzed sample from the small office next door. He thought of his accolades and his brand new Mercedes waiting for him outside. The luxury sedan was white, spotless and pure—just how women were meant to be.
He leaned back against his chair, beginning the process that had enabled so many of his patients to have their dream miracle children. He didn’t have the heart to tell the couple that Mr. Stevenson had a low sperm count. It was unbecoming for a man to know. On the other hand, Dr. Abraham had intelligence, good looks, and good breeding. His seed was of a better stock and quality than most of his female patients’ husbands. He was doing *them* a favor.
“Praise Him,” they’d still proclaim when he was back with his sample.
Dr. Abraham was always there to perform his moral duty as a righteous man: to ensure that life won, to ensure that earthen vessels bore fruit.
[24 June 2005]
It troubled Dr. Abraham that people didn’t know where they went when they died.
He was leaving his legacy through a premier crisis pregnancy center. He had also dutifully multiplied during his time on earth.
Sure, there was Heaven for the worthy souls.
But was there something else? What if human beings could use technology to delay death forever?
He wrestled with it for decades, whether to condemn or fully embrace technology.
Cloning and cryogenic preservation were really an insurance against the unknown.
He signed the papers.
[24 June 2084]
His eyelids slowly opened to a clean and brightly lit room.
A throng of poreless beauties ambled around. They were lithe and strong, models of health and natural athleticism. Two of them were monitoring his vital signs.
*Abraham…* he heard an inner voice in his mind.
His heart began to slowly thaw as it gave its first pumps. Recollections returned as the digital upload of his memory bank began to process.
“What year is it?” he asked. He stared at one of the female beings through the domed chamber he was locked in. She looked back at him with piercing green eyes but said nothing.
The wording on the screen changed, this time to an image of a small fetus in utero. Dr. Abraham smiled as he thought back on his previous life’s work.
The fetus on the screen suddenly took on a grotesque reptilian form before morphing back to a more benign human presence.
“Behold!” proclaimed the green-eyed woman, gesturing over the doctor’s abdomen. “This is how we’ll be saved. Like the best of our hosts, we’ll adapt for we are strong and brave.”
Dr. Abraham screamed into the echoless chamber, powerless to abort the mission he had been forced into, as the perfect beings gathered around him to sing:
“Praise Him!”
by submission | Jun 24, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Transmissions from the Heaven Probe sizzled with white noise. In a moment of high drama, a shadowy figure had approached the lens, speaking in tones both measured and incomprehensible.
Dr Helen Forster smiled for the media. “Here is that first image from Heaven, cleaned up.”
Bishop Vaughan interrupted. This had always been his moment.
“We prefer the term deistic space.”
Did we expect angels to look human?
The discovery of deistic space has seen theology expand from its theoretical beginnings to the experimental discipline it is today. Observations suggest our universe is the shadow cast by that numinous dimension.
Compared to the worship-contaminated environment of Earth, the Mare Orientalis on the moon’s far side has proved a superior site for astrotheological observatories, and staffed by atheists, is entirely litany-free.
“This is Professor Jamshidi,” said Helen Forster afterwards.
Bishop Vaughan inclined his head.
“The Iranian linguist,” she added. Off-camera, her smile was perfunctory. Under the makeup, her eyes were bruised by long hours and ambition.
The bishop took Dr Forster aside. “A Muslim—”
“The only scholar with the necessary expertise.”
The bishop turned and held out his hand. “Welcome, Professor.”
Neurons in the human cortex form a unique fractal array, and without the distraction of a heartbeat, it opens to the universe like an aerial. Before being brutally awoken by doctors, those who undergo Near Death Experiences sense this.
Modelled on the brain, the Large Prayon Array will let us overhear the primordial divine Word commanding the Big Bang. Soon it will be too late for God to have secrets.
“I watch like everybody else,” said Professor Jamshidi. “I hear the voice and I think, I know this.”
He took the bishop’s silence as scepticism. “Aramaic is my study. At the University of Tehran for thirty years.”
“They speak Aramaic in Heaven… in deistic space?”
Jamshidi shrugged. “Perhaps they think we still speak it here.”
On the laptop video, the angel stared, its eyes much too large.
“First, it announes itself with the honorific, Morning Star.”
Jamshidi paused the video. “You will say Aramaic lacked this word. But the prefix royal, added to fight?”
The bishop cleared his throat.
“Translates as war,” concluded Jamshidi. “It says the war in heaven goes badly.”
Supported by a counterweight in geostationary orbit, Project Babel was to extend beyond the atmosphere. Cutting-edge theology would unite nations in this colossal enterprise, searching for the prayon, the smallest, indivisible word of God.
Sadly, Big Theology overreached itself. Cost overruns, unnoticed differences in units of measurement, and mistranslation of the word hubris, halted construction.
Dr Forster shepherded Jamshidi to the rear of the building. The bishop thought the involvement of Muslims needn’t be advertised.
“Your cab, Professor,” said Dr Forster, her thoughts already elsewhere.
Jamshidi was not one of the fanatics. He overlooked the fact that Dr Forster flaunted herself like an immodest woman. He knew it was her, not the appalling clergyman he must convince.
As his ride pulled away, he looked back, but she had already gone.
There were subtleties only a scholar able as himself could appreciate, how in Aramaic, the word losing could imply falling, as a coin is lost falling from a purse.
How the one calling itself Lucifer warned they would soon be falling from Heaven.
A host of high-divinity sources have been detected approaching Earth. Attempts to make contact are under way, despite those who say we should not be meddling with god-like entities we do not understand.
Before astrotheology, such attitudes were common, but if we were meant to remain ignorant of Him, God would have made us all atheists.
by submission | Jun 23, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jackson Lanzer
Screens illuminate my face as the names of the damned dance to a symphony of crimson letters atop a digital stage. I will give each name justice. It is what they deserve.
My forearms are strong. It takes strength to push a button that snuffs out another man’s flame.
One name amongst the crowd of traitors catches my eye.
James. Accused by his neighbor of harboring a personal telephone. Guilty. Espionage against social order. Death.
The screen changes from the crimson names to a colorless, bleak cell. John sits on a chair, and tears rip themselves from his closed eyes. He knows his fate.
My fingers hunger for justice, and I set them rampant, leaping toward the button. My index finger hits plastic, and a guillotine slices through the room.
Thud.
The screen is doused in color: scarlet death.
Darkness conquers the screen momentarily before another name is dragged before me.
Sara. She taught her daughters about Susan B. Anthony. Guilty. An attempt to destabilize gender order. Death.
Again my mighty forearms grasp the button, bearing the weight of Sara’s fate. I think of her children as I press the button, and I smile as I free them from lies.
Again, a wave of scarlet purifies the screen. The truth remains eternal.
A third name arises on my screen. Only I know this name.
I knew this day would come.
“Comrades, it is not enough to bring justice to our enemies,” the glorious leaders would say. “We must bring justice to ourselves. Revolutions are built on sacrifice.”
So my arm reaches towards the button as the screen shows a young revolutionary at his desk.
I watch the revolutionary. He stares at a screen, contemplating a man’s fate, and his arm inches toward a button.
I take a deep breath and press the button just as the revolutionary presses a button of his own.
As the blade rips through our body, I don’t scream or cry like the others.
I simply wear the proud smile of revolution.
by submission | Jun 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: Bryan Pastor
The summons had arrived three weeks ago.
“Jury duty, ugh.” Andy moaned.
The summons was simple upper case bold text.
“YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED TO SERVE AS A JUROR. IT IS YOUR DUTY AS A CITIZEN TO COMPLY, ALL WHO ARE CHOSEN MUST ARRIVE AT THEIR APPOINTED DATE AND TIME, REGARDLESS OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC POSITION.”
Below that in bigger bolder letters was a date and time. May seventh, eight am.
Andy arrived at his date and time to stand in one of several queues inching their way slowly through security. He tried to make polite conversation with the cute little neon in front of him, but she wasn’t having it, he chalked that up to the stack of court docs she carried.
“Papers?” the guard asked. Andy handed them over. The guard glanced at them quickly and handed them back, to a distracted Andy who was watching the girl board an elevator.
“Floor six, scan the back of the form.”
Andy hurried to the elevators; she was gone. Up to floor six, a sterile lobby of glossy grey concrete. A dozen steps from the elevator there was a pulsing red light. He walked over and held up the summons. He thought he saw something embossed on the blank side of the sheet. A door he hadn’t noticed opened on his right. An arrow pulsed on the floor pointing him to the portal.
He followed the hallway for a minute when he came to another door, which opened as he neared it. Sitting at a small desk next to a chair was the neon from downstairs. She smacked her gum and rolled her eyes as Andy entered.
“Sit.” She ordered.
Andy sat in the chair, a standard rig like back in college. The girl took a few minutes to plug him into the deck.
“I am Magistrate Elle Hammons. You have been selected to act as a juror in the trial of Frankie Flameshot (a presumed alias). She began to read the counts, some pretty heavy stuff, it went on for two minutes.
“You are representing the state and are given every tool you need. Mr. Flameshot has one pistol with one shot. We assure you he can’t hurt you with it. The lawyers will begin closing arguments before me starting now. Subdue or kill the defendant.”
Andy bopped into the Ether. He was in a large open space, reminiscent of a gladiator’s arena. There was a pulse and Andy got the gist of what he needed to do, another pulse and he understood the system he was jacked into, inventory management, the like. He finally noticed that he was not alone when he felt the hard tap of a bullet smack against his exoskeleton.
Frankie must have been a repeat customer because he used the time Andy was lollygagging to cross the distance between them. Andy pulled up a submachine gun intending to do this quickly but managed to fumble it. Frankie took the opportunity to ninja-kick Andy, sending him sprawling. The dropped submachine gun was in Frankie’s hand. Any scrambled up, raising a shield. There were several taps and the shield crumbled, them several, harder this time, as his exoskeleton weakened. A few more and Andy was done.
“Objections your honor.” A voice spoke. The assault paused, and Frankie was frozen. It took a moment for Andy to realize he could flip through his inventory. He equipped a new shield and an automatic shotgun. The look on Frankie Flameshot’s face evaporated into panic.
“Overruled.” the magistrate declared after consideration.
A moment later justice was served.
by submission | Jun 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Caleb Coy
Lieutenant Elizabeth Rodriquez gazed at the lunar surface, her heart thrumming. Floodlights lit up the expanse of the moon’s far side, a barren ocean floor. Her crew-mates, Commander Harrington and Dr. Crowe, shared the silence, emptiness, and a simple two-fold mission.
Set up a radio telescope. Collect a sample from the sphere’s largest crater.
The chamber opened with a hiss. In her descent, Elizabeth could hear only her own breathing and the digital whirring of her life support and data-gathering hardware. Her booted feet touched the snow-like ground.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” she announced. The Chinese proverb she’d selected was a clear nod to Armstrong. The endeavor felt so small, and the other scientific chatter rang through everyone’s helmets like any routine.
But she was the thirteenth to ever set foot here. Joined by the fourteenth and fifteenth. A privilege.
“How’s the fairway?” asked mission command over the comms, their signal bouncing live from earth to a satellite to the module.
“We’ll need a sand driver,” Harrington joked.
“I see something,” said Crowe, faintly nervous.
Elizabeth turned her shoulder light in the direction of Ali’s. Emerging from the horizon of shadow just beyond the reach of light, advanced a scurry of violet. Things. They kicked up the ashy pillar of dust. Dozens, maybe more. Tall legs, dark as wine, stilts with nothing atop them, their movements like arachnids, synchronized in some frenzy. Toward her. Her team.
“The hell?” said David.
It was impossible. Life. Heretofore unknown. Swarming upon these visitors now. No time to turn and run.
Had it not been for the screaming, they would not have heard a single step in the soundless vacuum.
Elizabeth had no words. She knew in an instant, beyond panic, the meaning of this closing curtain. Defeat welled up in her. The creatures were quickly upon them as any predator knew to do its will upon prey.
“It can’t,” she said, before the swarm overtook them. Six, maybe seven feet tall, with hundreds of black eyes, they struck with their limbs and knocked Elizabeth to the ground. The other two bodies fell beside her. A pair of fangs hovered over her helmet, then clamped down.
The first sound of contact, and it was like a tennis ball hitting a window. Again, the mouth struck the helmet. The mandibles felt strong, but the material of their suits was stronger.
Crowe was shrieking.
“Can’t move,” cried Harrington.
Any other words were lost in the gasping grunts of distress, the sound of teeth striking Teflon and polycarbonate. Try to rise, and a hungry head pushed them down.
This would not be their salvation. If the suits held, so would the endurance of these arachnoids with limbs like stalks of lavender. As her helmet jostled back and forth against the dust, she knew she would not be devoured. She would be starved of oxygen in less than a solar day.
A thousand steps they never heard coming. There was no cosmic order to this.
She knew then what her training and her life commitment expected of her. With all the breath that remained, about fourteen hours under duress, she and her team would give a testimony. As their helpless bodies rocked under teeth and tarsus, they would use their dwindling time to theorize, to analyze, to report. Anything else was futile.
To die in this lunar maria, to be the first to perish at the hands of an extra terrestrial, to survive enough to give a full account of the inexplicable. Her one final leap.
