by submission | Jan 16, 2021 | Story |
Author: Sabrina E. Robinette
The choice was obvious for most, but I struggled. Should I die freely on Earth, or live in debt on Mars? “In debt”– that’s what they called it, but everyone knew better. There were rumors of labor camps and brutal mining colonies, none confirmed but all believable. Everyone knows what will happen to them when they board the Applewhite Corporation’s space shuttle to Mars, but they go anyway. It’s not like there’s a better fate to be found on Earth, where millions have been wiped out by the nearly unlivable atmosphere.
The trip to Mars requires a down payment of ten thousand dollars. The rest will be paid over a period of ten thousand years; generations of mining the land for resources to pay back the Applewhite family for saving the select few that could afford to evacuate Earth in the first place. Nearly everyone eligible had chosen to leave, and today, my family is among those lucky few at the boarding dock. My mind is still torn, even as we stand in line to board the shuttle.
I turn around to observe our shipmates. Their eyes are glazed over, pamphlets in their hands, grim expressions settling on their faces. Lambs to the slaughter. I can see the reality of the situation hitting them; the condemnation of future generations to lifetimes of labor, the horror of thousands of years of indentured servitude. My mind is made up; I’ll be the first to break this cycle. I pull my father aside, and we argue in urgent, hushed voices.
“You’re going to burn if you stay here,” he reminds me, one hand clasped tightly on my shoulder. “Or die in a hurricane, or a flood. You’ve seen the news, haven’t you?”
I can’t play dumb. I know what will happen to me, and I know it’s going to be a painful death. But when I look at my father, I see a lifetime of slavery and servitude ahead of him, and I’m not sure which one of us will have it the worst. “I know what I want to do, Dad,” I assure him. “I’ll be happier here than I would be if I came with you. There are survivalist colonies all over the world, you know– I have a chance at life here.”
“Sweetheart.” My father’s grip tightens, but tears begin to form in his eyes; he knows I’m slipping away, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. “Life on Mars won’t be ideal, but it will be structured, and certain. Any chance you have at survival here would be entirely unstable. If the weather doesn’t kill you, the radiation will.”
“I know,” I whisper, taking his hand in mine. “But you have to let me go, Dad. I’m twenty, and I can make my own decisions. And I choose not to go through with this.”
My father considers me for a moment, then pulls me into a tight embrace, resting his head on mine. He squeezes me so hard that I can barely get a breath in. “I already knew you were going to do this,” he murmurs, his voice resigned and broken.
“I love you,” is all I can manage without breaking down.
There are tears leaking down his cheeks; he gives me a quivering smile and kisses my forehead, returning to the line. I say my last goodbyes to my mother and brothers as well, and as I leave the boarding dock, I look back to catch my father’s eye. We exchange looks one last time, each contemplating the other’s fate, resolved in our own choices.
by submission | Jan 15, 2021 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“On a sloping hill, see the field of varicolored flowers? Blossoms of geometric shapes, slowly spinning in the gentle breeze.” Commander Oswald closed his eyes and tapped his own temple with his manicured finger.
Private First Class Ichor, who was the grunt seated before him, took a deep breath before replying. “It’s like a rainbow wept.”
“Yes! I do like that,” the Commander grinned with approval. “Must use it in our ad campaign.” He rubbed his soft hands together. “You’ll get full attribution, of course.”
“Of course.” Ichor crossed his arms, bundling his courage for what came next. “So after, after my passing—whenever that is—my body will be launched into this dead planet’s atmosphere, and when I crash to the ground—”
“We don’t say ‘crash.’ We prefer the term ‘seed.’ Much more noble sounding, isn’t it? But yes, you will seed the sterile soil of this barren world beneath us.” Commander Oswald closed his eyes again. “Imagine the trees! Groves of woody giants—towering, slender, and bursting with blue-green leaves. Leaves that shimmer like Christmas tinsel in the sunshine. Ahhh!”
“ ‘Breeding lilacs out of the dead land ,’ ” the grunt whispered to himself.
His commander ignored him, lost as he was in his own imaginings. “And before you know it, curious little creatures, scaled or feathered, gliding across the bright, clear sky; sleek wiggly things, kaleidoscopic, and swimming through cool crystal streams; furry, bulging-muscled beasties scampering through the forest shadows, streaking through the sun-lit fields. . .”
“Yes, well, that’s a pretty vision you have,” Ichor sighed. He’d already signed up for this terra-forming project; his commander didn’t have to convince him. Every new recruit was encouraged to sign up. In the name of science, in the name of survival of the species, in the name of contributing to something bigger than yourself. Most signed up, eventually.
The commander opened his eyes, tilted his head like a curious cat as he looked at the young man seated before him. Such a wonderful specimen!, he thought to himself. He actually looked forward to what might spring from the grunt’s seeded remains.
* * *
Less than six months later, according to the solar calendar of the lifeless world beneath them, an unfortunate accident occurred on the hanger deck of the orbiting starship. Commander Oswald was informed—something about a strap breaking, a bolt snapping, a stray projectile in a deadly training mishap. The commander didn’t read the official report; it didn’t matter to him. What did matter, though, was Private First Class Ichor was now available for his terra-forming launch. The commander sat behind his formidable desk, templed his fingers, and smiled. Of course, he would see to it they named the seeding site after the young man.
* * *
Ichor’s body launched from the starship via missile tube, perhaps a bit too fast. He initially soared across the uppermost alien atmosphere, then descended in a gentle slope, heating up until he burst into flame. From the ground, he was a meteor, glowing, smoking—finally vaporizing long before he touched the surface. Like a tear from the eye of God, he was gone in a flash.
by submission | Jan 14, 2021 | Story |
Author: Warren Woodrich Pettine
Mother,
We replaced our eyes with machines. The impact of perceiving the full spectrum – from viciously fast gamma rays to the yawning gaps of AM radio – was profound. Our ears were next. Augmenting the perception of substance compression, we learned to hear gravity. We listened to the moon as it pulled the tides, heard Venus cross between the Earth and the Sun. Then smell. The range of detected chemicals was expanded two thousand-fold. We could sense the slightest variation in the Earth’s oxygen composition. (The rise in carbon on a heating planet smelled like fire.) Taste was discarded. By that point, we had no digestive tracts, just batteries and nutrient infusions. Areas of the brain specialized for useless things like arm movement were bathed in drugs and reprogramed to control synthetic limbs, or to interface with external silicon-based processing. But our memories remained intact. When I was a child, before the transformation, I had you, my mother, and I touched grass. Both are now gone.
Our natural forms are too delicate for the physical conditions of deep space travel, or the time durations required. To carry humanity across vast distances, one hundred of us volunteered to be re-engineered. The process was successful in eighty-seven subjects. With proper maintenance, our brains were projected to survive four thousand Self-Referenced years. It has been 1,189,472.7 since I was born. The magnitude by which they underestimated our viability belays how little the doctors understood the consequences of what they had done.
Earth was destroyed a mere 38.5 Earth-Referenced years after we left. I heard the gravity of its quiet consumption at the same moment the transmission of its radio signals abruptly ceased. There was an unanticipated instability at the core of the sun, causing an implosion and expansion. Just like that, our past was erased. Or, was erased 13.8 Earth-Referenced years prior. Light moves too slowly.
When we reached Wolf 1061, the Eden protocols failed. We found a suitable planet, with Earth equivalent gravity and plentiful water. It could have hosted a form of life, the one I grew up with on Barbados, warm with palm trees and the calls of birds. Our progress with vegetation and insect life proceeded without issue. But the artificial instantiation of amniotic life was not possible after the Self-Referenced centuries of travel. When designing the project, scientists could not feasibly test such timescales, and so relied on theory. Theory is always simplification. In this case, simplifications hid a terrible tragedy. The most advanced life we created on that planet was a butterfly. I recall watching one float against the alien breeze. In that moment, I remembered when I was ten years old, watching your hair pulled by humid wind.
Guided evolution of insects also failed. A solar flare irradiated the remaining life beyond resuscitation, and our terraforming efforts elicited volcanic activity that destroyed our reserve biologic material. Some of us stayed there, but most of us left, scattering in different directions, looking for intelligence beyond the legacy of Earth.
We found we are alone. After millions of Earth-Referenced years, we have located no alien life more sophisticated than DNA-less hyperthermophiles. In isolated desperation, I produced over one million automated exploratory devices and spread them throughout the galaxy. These are the corners of my eyes and the reach of my fingers. But save for our kind, the galaxy is empty. In all this time, it has proved impossible to artificially replicate in-silico the spontaneous adaptive creativity of the human brain. When the last of us dies, conscious thought will die.
At the center of our galaxy is a black hole. It pulls stars into itself. Great gas churns. As the gas swirls, new stars are called forth then collide, creating and destroying, pulling into inescapable nothingness – monstrous branches reaching out from roots in a dark center. Some journeyed there and cast themselves in. Others became violent, scorching primordial planets and murdering our kind. (That I was not among them would make you proud.) None of the predators remain. Nihilism is ill-suited to survival.
So many parts of us were dissected away. We have no skin, no lips, no tear ducts. But those fragile pieces of biology were meant to serve a purpose. Now a handful of us live, drifting. We call to one another like whales in the ocean, knowing it will be hundreds or thousands of years before a friend hears our greeting. The purpose given so very long ago lasted shorter than a breath. But we are left to keep going, wax melting down a long candle in an abandoned house. It is like writing a letter to a mother who died when I was twelve years old.
I spent the last 68.8 Self-Referenced years constructing a shell for raw-material storage and systemic repair. My body is now a frigate, large enough to span from beach to beach of the island where you cared for me. I feel every part of it as exquisitely as I once felt the salty water of the surf.
A few hours ago, I saw the radiation of a supernova, bent by the gravity of a white dwarf, reflected on the liquid water of a comet passing near a yellow star. Tomorrow, I will begin the 217,228.1 Self-Referenced year journey to the nearby Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. It will be a duration and degree of darkness even I fail to fully fathom. With human eyes, the sky will empty as I cross, until the Milky Way itself is but a small punctate point of light in a thick prison of black. But I do not have human eyes, and I have much more to see.
Your Son,
Eldrich Kwabena
by submission | Jan 13, 2021 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Peter had noticed the hippy girl earlier, as he loitered near a tour party, eavesdropping on the French tour guide. The chap was enthusing about Marie de France, mediaeval author of tales of chivalry, who was born in this castle, but Peter’s French wasn’t up to it. In the end he trudged up the steps of the ruined tower instead.
At home, stairs with no railings, loose masonry and abrupt drops would have been fenced off, but the French just shrugged, put up a warning sign and left you to it. He emerged from a dark spiral staircase onto a rooftop with dazzling views across the valley.
And there was the girl, leaning over the battlements. Even in Peter’s youth, clothes like that had gone out of fashion; sandals just brushed by an Indian print skirt, lilac tie-die top and a bandanna.
“Careful,” Peter said, without thinking.
She turned to look, ravishingly pretty, with freckles.
“I mean, don’t trust the stonework. Eight hundred year old mortar.”
He busied himself with the view; she didn’t need her afternoon spoiled by some old fusspot.
“Do you know Marie de France’s tale of Guinevere and Sir Lanfal?” she asked. “Written when this mortar was still new.”
“No, I…”
“Sous le marteau du destin dur, la foi est l’enclume du cœur?”
“Um, under the hammer of fate, something something heart.”
“Faith is the anvil of the heart.” She inclined her head. “Well done.”
Under the hammer of being patronised, his favourable impression faded.
The blustery wind swelled her skirt like a sail. “A misjudged costume. From a distance all these years look the same.”
Despite appearances, something told him she wasn’t young at all.
“But these are safe times. Civilised times. Two travellers having a chat. Neither of us armed. Not like when this castle was built. Or when it’s flattened. Perhaps Marie de France stood where you are standing now.”
Peter studied the view thoughtfully.
“I did consider visiting her, but it involved knights and servants and horses. And speaking Anglo-Norman. Besides, she was just a child here.”
He’d known someone at Oxford who had episodes of schizophrenia. Did she hear voices? Was she pestered by Marie de France?
“I love conversations like this,” she went on. “Confronting the past and telling them where they went wrong.”
Everything about her was perfect. Perfect face. Perfect teeth. A perfect mad smile. Perhaps he should go back down now.
“This is a curious age. Somehow word got out the future was like a bad neighbourhood you drove through by mistake, with doors locked, staring straight ahead at stop lights while some undesirable raps on the window. But what you dreaded came and went.”
She began pacing about. “Global warming? The rising waters set us free of nationhood in vast armadas. And deserts are just unused solar farms. Go South, young man. Antarctica, land of opportunity!”
“Ha ha.” He’d read science fiction. “Should you be telling me this? Risking the fabric of time.”
“You were the greedy ones who devoured our share, who wanted nothing to change. Frankly, we despise you.”
Of course he felt sorry for her, but he didn’t need a madwoman spoiling his afternoon.
“You think I’m mad, and it’s true, we’re not like you, not like you at all. You’d hate our world.”
“That tour party will be up here soon, so…”
“Yes,” she added, calmer now. “Perhaps a mistake to reveal so much. But it’s no problem, I think I know your future.”
She followed him closely down the dark twisting staircase.
“Dangerous places, castles.”
by submission | Jan 12, 2021 | Story |
Author: Jeremy Marks
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
-Simon & Garfunkel
I am a plastic sac picker; I scour the streets collecting loose grocery sacs in the employ of my city. I live in a former metropolis whose every limb is now coated in disposable plastic.
My job is very repetitive, but not without its perks. Instead of wearing the standard issue orange and yellow municipal worker vest, I sport a blue oxford shirt, seer sucker slacks and burnished brown Italian leather loafers. My employer feels that I should work in style. My closets at home are filled with these outfits and I have never had to pay for a single one.
But what is most impressive about my deportment is that it is conductive: the garments transmit electricity. You see, when I shuffle my feet, the soles of my loafers generate a static current that is siphoned up my legs and torso, spun across my left deltoid muscle and shot down my bicep and into my forearm. The charge then crosses my wrist, and passes over my lefthand, into the fingers of a special rhinestone studded white glove that I use to grip the titanium handle of my “cane.”
This “cane” is a state-of-the-art trash picker, known as a “Sac Caesar.” But unlike your typical store bought litter management implement, my cane has a shaft crafted from rare mahogany. Inside that shaft is a copper conductor culminating in a tip of impermeable linen where a static pulse is released. To avoid any repetitive stress on my index finger, this pulse emission is automatic. I do not have to pull a trigger
The myriad sacs that litter our streets are attracted by this pulse and cling to the cane. I can attract up to half a dozen sacs with a single emission. The cane shrinks the sacs into a compact pellet, then fires that pellet up the conductor shaft and out the back of the titanium handle into a pouch that, once full, I simply detach and toss into a cloth sac slung over my right shoulder.
I am well paid. I have health insurance and benefits. And because my city knows that we are not likely to rid ourselves of this plastic sac scourge, I have guaranteed employment. There is a simple reason for all of this: the sacs that I collect are reproductive.
No one is entirely sure how it happened, but the story goes that because the sac manufactory is located along one of the continent’s most toxic rivers, the water from that river has mingled with polyethylene to create a singular mutation. We are left with something like a plastic prokaryote, an organism with neither heart nor brains, but a passion for procreation. A flatworm.
It happened that three years ago, a grocery chain opened in our city for the first time in two decades. Folks like me, who had only been able to buy our meals from gas stations and corner stores were delighted that we finally had fresh options. It didn’t take long before every city resident sported the dirty-white plastic sacs of that grocery. Even the squirrels, pigeons and sparrows took the plastic into their nests. I remember averting my eyes as the sacs started clogging gutters and storm drains, causing sewer line backups. Like my neighbors, I shrugged my shoulders when our city was visited by little windy plastic spirals whipping across our parking lots and back alleys. Much as I hate to admit it, I even accepted that some of our trees were ornamented with plastic banners.
But then, about a year after the grocery opened, things grew out of control. Like some strange algae, the sacs bloomed and covered every last inch of turf. I recall walking outside one morning to find my entire block coated in plastic: the cityscape was shrouded in a giant, dingy tarp. Not a single window or door was visible on any dwelling.
When I got to work, I learned of my promotion. After years of diligent service, I was now the city’s “Chief Sac Technician.” For forty hours a week, city streets has become my beat. I swing my “Sac Caesar” and don my conductive outfit. I have been granted the privilege of setting my work hours and picking my staff.
The problem is, my work is a fool’s errand. Every time two sacs come into contact they generate a third. It is literally impossible for me to make any headway whatsoever; the beat I walk rests atop a glacier of plastic. It won’t be long and I will be picking sacs off of the spires of our downtown’s tallest towers.
There is nearly nothing left to see these days, just plastic layering plastic. The city is very quiet, too. Gone are those morning when I’d wake to birds mingling their song with honking horns, crankshafts, and the groan of air breaks.
Still, I have a job and a reason to be. I have someplace to go each morning. In the silence, I sometimes imagine that the sea of dirty white is freshly fallen snow. For a moment, the Earth looks like it has shaken off its dingy condition and our sac-induced silence grows pregnant with meaning.
