by submission | Feb 25, 2023 | Story |
Author: Timothy Goss
I awake with a start, like something bit my toe. Its dark, early hours of the morning when sound if muted and amplified simultaneously. I sit up and gently shake my head while caressing the sore appendage. My mouth is dry and thick with yesterday’s dreams; moving slowly I reach the kitchen and fill an empty cup with water. Droplets cling onto beard and moustache and I stare absently out of the back window into the darkness of the railway sidings. They are pitch-black at this sunless hour and strange reflections hover on the glass, a shadow play where foxes howl, or whatever foxes do. The houses on the other side of the railway yard are large, semi-detached; our back gardens face each other over the debris ridden wasteland, some three hundred metres apart.
There are lights during the evening, family homes like light, usually they are orange or white, sometimes red, but now they are green, an unearthly green pulsating ever-so slightly. Something in its glow, in its pulse, its wavelength, it’s rhythm, and things change shape without motion or motive, fizzing and popping as they mutate. A silhouette, unconscious, controlled or blindly obedient, stands naked in the thickening atmosphere, I can see it clearly over the distance, sexless. I can taste something, smell something too, not unpleasant but wrong, something is wrong, something that doesn’t belong here and now.
Above the house, above the trees, a spherical distortion warps focus and an empty space, like a missing pixel on a cinema screen, barely perceptible to the eye, but our senses are fine tuned, becomes the focus and the silhouette rises toward it, up and up, through the build and beams in a point of pale green photons. I trace its path, take a sip of water and darkness congeals around me; then, for a millisecond only, the sphere focuses upon itself and rips the silhouette from here to there, forcing a square peg through a round hole. The sudden release of energy is blinding and the darkness melts the world around us.
Something enthralling – focus locks for eternity, or it is perceived – Things change shape and a silhouette unconscious, controlled – atmosphere thickens and I can taste something, smell something wrong, something that doesn’t belong – A sphere warps and focuses, hung above the house, the trees, and the silhouette rises through the building guided by congealing ether like dark matter everywhere – It finally tears us from here to there forcing hot portals to drop in and mop up – and my cup is empty and I move to fill it again…
The displaced sphere is gone, disappeared long before I register it leaving, imperceptible, like the blending of sea and sky. And then the house is dark and the distance is as it should be, everything turns black and grey, and dull and finaly vanishes, like the sphere, into the grey black shadows of the approaching day.
by submission | Feb 24, 2023 | Story |
Author: Aric Coppola
The machine whirred and abruptly stopped. It had never stopped on its own before; it had to be told to stop. Yet now, the machine had come to a halt.
“What did you do?” Alphonse asked, peering over his computer.
“Me? What did you do?” Marie asked, staring over her own computer, nostrils flaring.
“Nothing,” said Alphonse. “I was the one who turned it on.”
Marie stood up and walked across the laboratory towards the machine, Alphonse at her heels.
They stared at the readout on the computer terminal: .000000000000000000000001.
“That can’t be,” said Alphonse. “C’est impossible.”
Marie ignored him and punched a series of numbers into the machine’s keypad. The machine’s digital readout went black and then showed a long readout of equations and commands. “There,” she said. But as soon as she’d spoken, the terminal again read: .000000000000000000000001.
“Can we reproduce it?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. “It was the simplest one yet.”
Alphonse’s bottom lip quivered. “I can’t believe it. That was it? That was all? That was the solution?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It seems so.”
Alphonse straightened. “We must inform the directorate. Secondary tests must be conducted immediately, and then the public has to be informed so that—”
Marie grabbed his wrist. Her grip was strong, surprisingly strong, much stronger than most prize-winning physicists.
Alphonse peered into her bloodshot eyes. Behind the red twists of veins and the cool blue irises, there was real-time processing. It wasn’t an unfamiliar look. He’d seen this every time they’d made a breakthrough together. And yet this time, there was something eerily different about her gaze.
“What?” he asked, suddenly feeling uneasy, the excitement of their discovery slipping.
“No,” she said. “No one can know.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, face reddening. “It’s the solution to all of it, Marie, all of it. If we can reproduce this at scale… that’s it! You know that’s it!” He wrenched his wrist free of her grip and tried to rub away the blossoming bruise she’d created.
“Non,” Marie whispered.
A small shiver ran up Alphonse’s back. “Non?”
Marie turned from him abruptly and slid into the chair at her own computer terminal. Alphonse hovered behind her.
DELETE CODE 33.1.18, she typed.
“What are you doing!” He reached across her, panic setting in fully now. “You can’t do that!”
With the push of her index finger, she pressed a single key. The screen went black.
“Vous êtes fous! Why would you do that? What is wrong with you?” He ripped her from her chair and flung her body to the tile floors. “You’re crazy!” he cried, spittle flying from his mouth. “Why, Marie? At least tell me why!”
Marie the brilliant scholar, and even more brilliant scientist, stared up at him from the floor. For the first time, Alphonse saw exhaustion in the woman’s gaunt face.
“Because,” she said simply.
“Because why, Marie? We’re all going to die because of you.”
“I know,” she said, eyes watering. “We deserve it.”
by submission | Feb 23, 2023 | Story |
Author: John Adinolfi
Jessica always wore a tinfoil hat. Everyone knew everyone’s business in Prescott Bay, but no one knew why Jessica wore the hat – which didn’t stop them from having theories.
“Look, here she comes,” called Mary Worthington. “Doesn’t she care what people are saying about her?”
Of course, when Mary said people, she meant herself. She was the ringleader of the small town’s never-ending gossip mill.
“Give it a rest, Mary,” Alice Bennett said. “Jess is just a little odd, that’s all.”
“Odd? A little odd?” Mary mocked. “Wearing white after Labor Day is a little odd. Wearing that hat is looking at odd in the rear-view mirror!”
Jessica smiled and waved to Mary and Alice as she approached. She knew what they thought and didn’t care. Each day she fashioned a new shape for her hat using foil left over from sandwiches, chicken, or slices of cheese. The cheese ones could get pretty ripe, but she figured that only added to the mystery. Today’s hat was shaped like an English bowler. She laughed to herself when she saw Mary and Alice wrinkle their noses. It was a cheese-foil day.
“Don’t worry,” Mary shouted. “That hat will protect you from alien death-rays.”
Mary and Alice hooted loudly, circling their index fingers around in the air while pointing to their heads. Jessica marveled at how unimaginative these people could be. Sure, the foil could keep death rays out – but it also provided a great conductor to let communications in. Then again, she supposed, they’d think that was just as crazy.
Jessica shrugged and continued her walk to the beach. She adjusted her hat and listened carefully to today’s instructions from the Zorfar leadership. Her preparations would be done soon. When all was ready, she’d signal the full Zorfarian fleet to land.
The takeover of these weak earthlings would be, to use one of their idioms, a piece of cake – wrapped in tinfoil, of course.
by submission | Feb 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Doesn’t matter who I am. I am not the land.
I walk it. Day in day out. One footing at a time.
A footing is not a standard unit. It is determined by growth, the flora and fauna, in a defined area when it is clear nature has begun to rebalance there.
My job is to make sure that rebalancing is not disturbed. The land must mend, but I am not a healer. I’m a killer. A defender against my own kind.
We are out of balance, scales tipped far beyond the pale, and so we pay in pound upon pound of flesh. It is indeed dire, brutish, unfair. But that is where we are, and I must keep my footing, clearing it of poachers, pragmatists and, most of all, parents.
Breeding is a crime. Our time is long past. Instinctive urges and actions still gnaw at our hardened Resolve, but there are enough who know how little we matter. Which matters the most. So, we walk the land, footing to footing, armed, ready to kill any who break our Resolve.
Upon a day risen borderless grey, my path crossed the infant’s. A mewling babe tucked in a reed-woven basket set upon the worn path. This was not unheard of, but I had not crossed such a thing before. I crouched next to the creature, rustling, suckling air, still pink, still warm, wrapped against the thick dew.
Its eyes sought mine. Mine did not answer. The Resolve was clear. The child should be left to the land. The land was made for this. I was not.
I walked on, too slowly it seemed. A force stronger than the Resolve, my resolve, tugging at my heels. A heaviness outweighing every step. To turn was to tumble. Spill headlong into futurelessness. No more pictures in my head.
Except the child.
I walked it back. The footing unsure, without comment, still and grey. The land does not judge. Only my kind.
An empty basket, beating hearts, a measure of all lost. And everything to be gained.
Doesn’t matter who I am. I am not the land.
But with child, I am more than Man.
by submission | Feb 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Mikki Aronoff
We sit immobilized, re-reading the same fortunes wriggling out from our smashed cookies: “This is the last thing you will ever need to read.” Slips of paper like unearthed, restless nematodes unsettle our party of poets and teachers, one of whom retired that day. The waiter sweeps around us, bent, upends chairs onto tabletops. We conjecture: Jokes? Unhappy workers at the print shop? Surely not one of…us? The artist among us cracks a smile; as words are no longer necessary, perhaps now she could live off her paintings? We laugh, nervous, stumble to the street. Neon lights flicker on and off. We dig into pockets, purses, alcohol-wipe our hands, plaster masks across our faces, walk home. Later, texts fly like infinity signs among us — we’ve all received the same singular communique stuck in our doorways, tucked under windshield wipers. But the contents were empty as our streets, as the morning papers. They had tried to wean us. First, that fading print. Then just headings and pictures and captions, next only front page headlines, then
