by submission | Apr 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
It’s time I let you in on my secret, doctor. You deserve to know, because you made me what I am.
After all, you were there when I was de-tubed; it was you that called me Jane, though it was years before I found out that my surname was Doe. Of all the newborns in the nursery, you chose me to be your model, your canvas, your masterpiece. I will never forget that.
Like any artist, you tinkered for years in pursuit of your ideal. There were growth accelerators, drugs to make my bones stronger, changes to make my reflexes faster, a chipset in my brain, a thousand body mods, minor and major upgrades along the way.
Sometimes, your surgeons removed an ability I’d thought was innate; I can’t twitch my nose like Samantha and pretend I’m Tabitha any more. And I only dreamed when you sent messages to my subconscious; no relief in fantasies, but no nightmares beyond what happened in the daytime.
Other blessings were mixed. I remember that when they replaced my eyes I couldn’t even cry, because they’d taken the tear ducts too. But I see more colours now, and my peripheral vision is extraordinary.
You gave me an education and an exhaustive, intricate knowledge of the Megacity. I’m an expert in biology, physics, motion and dynamics. Your staff showed me how to evade society’s ubiquitous watchers, using makeup and prosthetics to avoid facial recognition, and dressing to fit in. “Plain Jane,” you said, never allowing me to be pretty in case I stood out in a crowd.
You provided expert tutors in physical fitness, self defence and use of weapons for me to test myself against; I bettered them, becoming proud of my body and what it can do.
Of course, you also taught me to kill. Insects first, the images sent into my sleeping mind to be made real the following day. Later small rodents, gassed and crushed and cut up as training progressed. After that, we moved on to cats and dogs, then when I was older, monkeys in cages. Ultimately, people in cages too; I remember how you called them “dregs”, and made sure I had no respect for them. They were my inferiors.
Now I remove the people that come into my dreams. Last week it was the woman in the park, the needles under my nails scratching her as she jogged past, the neurotoxin taking her down. A fortnight ago it was the banker and his entourage, a flechette gun turning a bar into a charnel house. Before that, a journalist in a café. And so on, back through the years.
I don’t even know who you work for – the government, a corporation, freelance. Someone watches my targets, so my dreams can tell me where to find them, but who, or why, I have no idea. I understand: I can’t tell anyone what I don’t know. And of course, I’m a deniable weapon: even under truth drugs you could say that nobody ever gave me instructions.
But now we come to it; recently, I’ve started dreaming for myself. Flowers, vistas, visions of things I’ve only seen on screens, and which I know you’d never allow me. I never expected anything, was never encouraged to imagine, but now I can.
Telling you this is a weight off my shoulders. I know what’s going to happen next. Your blue eyes have already turned thoughtful, like they always do for the unpredicted, but this time it’s too late; you see, doctor, last night, I dreamed about you.
by submission | Apr 3, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jude Curtis Greaves
I stared in disbelief at the fracture, in reality, contemplating its sudden appearance in my apartment. Hypnotized by the apparition, my muscles moved in the direction of the fortuitous scientific hypothesis while my consciousness told me it might not be a good idea to do so. However, my body was an unresponsive wreck and I found myself twenty feet in the air, above a large pond.
Like an osprey that suddenly lost its wings in the middle of a ferocious dive, I plummeted toward the ground. The force of my body hitting the murky pool knocked all of the air out of the interior of my now-bruised rib cage. For a few dazed seconds, I thought I was dead. Then the pain came back to my lagged nervous system in a ferocious forest fire of agony. In my suffering, I managed to surface and expel the water that had been previously trapped in my lungs.
Bruised and scraped, I trudged out of the muddy pool of water and surveyed my surroundings. I was in the middle of a grassy plain dotted with wildflowers and distorted with the occasional knoll. About a mile away, I perceived what looked to be a small town. Wandering over to this single sign of intellectual life, I realized that it wasn’t just a town, but the beginnings of a city.
Entering the outskirts, I discovered that I was in The same town that my dad had resided in over thirty years ago. Since my dad had recently passed away, I ran to where I thought the location of my father’s old home was, full of excitement. Strutting down the streets of the conurbation, I tripped on some badly-set pavement and crashed into the cement. Because of this, I hit a rather unassuming red skateboard and watched it woefully as it tumbled down the street. Quickly, I got up and tried to get away from the place as fast as possible hoping with all my might that the owner wasn’t nearby.
Continuing on my travels, I witnessed a red skateboard soar into the air and knock a primitive chachalaca out of the sky. “What in the name of…” my sentence was broken off by the sudden occurrence of the unfortunate bird landing on a jackhammer, activating the powerful device and sending it haywire. The jackhammer shredded the base of a telephone pole, cracking the aged wood and causing it to fall on top of a building.
The building collapsed in on itself as I realized in horror that the building was the same one that my dad lived in. As the realization of this event made contact with my brain’s processing unit, I Ran over to the foundations of the building and located the dying body of my dad. In despair, I climbed over to him. “Dad!?” I called out to him as he lay there paralyzed in his near-lifeless body. “I’m a dad?” A cracked voice answered in confusion as I witnessed my soon-to-be dad die. Again. Reality blacked out around me as my mind went into a turmoil of anguish.
I stared in disbelief at the fracture, in reality, contemplating its sudden appearance in my apartment. Hypnotized by the apparition, my muscles moved in the direction of the fortuitous scientific hypothesis while my consciousness told me it might not be a good idea to do so. However, my body was an unresponsive wreck and I found myself twenty feet in the air, above a large pond.
by submission | Apr 2, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
It was fiction to be sure. High fantasy even. A hinter world, Malazan. And, yet, there it was: children are dying. Simple. Direct. A plea, a dire call to action, a binding recrimination.
What manner of world fictional or otherwise would deny these three words with the shrug of shoulders or stammering prevarication? We know that there are those who would walk away from Omelas. We know of those that would take up arms on Arrakis. Or sacrifice themselves on Hyperion. Still, children are dying.
Here, too. Mariupol. Aleppo. Homs. Taiz. Bamako. Port-au-Prince. Lahore. Dhaka. Sao Paulo. Detroit. Our hinter worlds. Children are dying. And we let it be.
But deathdouspart did not. When the three words children are dying flashed on the megatron of Super Bowl LXII—and stayed on. When every electronic transmission from that moment on included the tag children are dying. The world uproared and tried hard to ignore those three words, much like once-printed glossy, guilting images of innocents with bloated bellies and cleft palates.
Deathdouspart gave no succor. They were relentless and their message pervasive. The words children are dying were burned into humanity’s collective retina.
And words have meaning.
Worldwide, electronic media almost collapsed, but deathdouspart, the secretive holocracy that engineered the global campaign, would not let it. They provided a tool to act. Dubbed freeagency, the device was made freely available to be implanted in willing adults over the age of 30. The freeagency device was designed to release a deadly toxin when activated.
That activation was random.
When a child anywhere in the world died a wholly preventable death—as clearly defined by deathdouspart—a random freeagency device released its toxin and killed the “agent”.
Deemed ridiculous and suicidal by the establishment, freeagency nonetheless caught on. Look around: life is cheap while martyrs are chic. Not surprisingly, deathdouspart’s martyrdom got results. A lone child’s egregious death in Ukraine or Syria or Haiti, once local and virtually unnoticed and unsuffered, now had adult collateral damage.
Swift and random.
Sometimes high profile. Sometimes in dramatic fashion. A newscaster in Sydney keeling over on air. A world-famous athlete expiring mid stride during a game.
Freeagency didn’t solve the immediate crisis. It didn’t get at the root causes of why children are dying. But it called attention. Caused second thoughts. It slowly changed decision-making and behaviors. Every child’s fate was being linked to a greater network of adults, their destinies intertwined in a most tortured sense.
The stakes had been raised. And that’s how the hand was now played. With caution. With a good deal more intentionality. Wild cards were buried in the deck and gamblers didn’t know the odds—and they didn’t know whose numbers (or whose money) they were playing with anymore.
Children are dying, though not as many. Not as carelessly. And free agency is always ours to commit to until death do us part.
by submission | Apr 1, 2022 | Story |
Author: B.K. O’Brien
Her breath fogged before her, a small ghost in the air. She walked slowly, each step precious, eyes roving as she continued to take in the unfathomable.
Every now and then she’d stop to watch as flakes danced in their slow amble to the ground, already thick with their kin. She jumped in a nearby drifted pile and a laugh escaped her. She stomped her feet, marveling at the muffled sounds her shoes made. Everything around her was a novelty, and it almost made her breathless.
Spruces rose through the gray thicket, and she ran fingers along the borough nearest her, reveling in the feeling of needles against nearly numb skin.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” She asked, unable to tear her eyes from the landscape before her. The snow was exactly as she’d always pictured, though the cold nipped at her more viciously than expected. She drew her arms in tight against her chest, but still shivers racked her body and rattled her teeth.
She waited a few more moments. “You’re really not going to talk to me? Look at this place. We can forget we’re even here.”
A dry laugh huffed behind her, “I can’t.”
She didn’t want to turn around to face him. Doing so would mean leaving this small place carved out in time, where the needle to come didn’t exist. The hulking mass of steel and gray in which they lived was instead a world of deep green and winter chill. Turning back meant seeing his uniform, seeing the long gun cradled securely against his body. Bumps had risen uncomfortably across her skin, fighting desperately to keep her warm. She’d forgotten what they felt like after years in the climate-controlled ship.
She whirled around suddenly. “Did you know how cold it would be?”
He looked taken aback, “Yeah. We’ve done a few simulations in the snow before. My class had to train in a blizzard once,” he shrugged at her raised eyebrow, “just in case.”
“And no one thought I might need a jacket or anything?”
He laughed then. “You’re nuts, you know that?” But his smile wavered as she stared, until his expression was rewritten in solemnness. “It’s your last hour, Girl. I don’t think they really care if you’re comfortable. Even this is more of a tradition than anything.”
It was what she expected to hear. But seeing the sudden sadness in Guard’s face hit her in a way she didn’t like. She didn’t refer to the other guards as anything at all, even in her own head. Their existence morphed more with monsters, if she did give them any thought. But Guard had always been kind to her; had always been ready for a robust skirmish with sarcastic words. His humanity had kept her sane.
She turned back to her forest, unable to look at him any longer. The spruces seemed sympathetic in their stoic, snowy haze. They understand, she thought. They’re bigger than the petty misdemeanors of humans – they forgive. She wished for nothing more than to be able to slip between the depths of their trunks, lost in the darkness of their chilled family.
She’d already served her penance in her years here. She would view this only as an escape, even if it was not of her design. She raised her face to the falling snow, and sighed.
“That’s it.” The melancholy in Guard’s voice made it almost unrecognizable.
She nodded, turning slowly, memorizing the scene around her. She’d be back in a few minutes, she told herself. She’d be able to stay forever.
by submission | Mar 31, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jayne Wadsworth
Even now, I still have memories. The sweet soft wind whipping through my hair and the music of the rustling leaves up above. We had a good life. A simple one. When the zones ambushed our farm they took my father to undergo something called conversion. With nothing left, I knew my only hope was to move to the capital city and make enough money to be able to get to sea-scape, a nature conservatory, the last place I knew I could be happy.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I stepped out of my apartment prepared to get a nose full of the smoky exhaust cloud that seemed to never leave downtown, but was immediately stunned to see a familiar face walking in the opposite direction. I couldn’t move. I turned to watch as my childhood best friend walked past me. For a moment I just stood there watching, then reality came back and I let his name escape from my lips..
“Orion?”
He stopped immediately and turned. His face had changed. He had matured. His family had been ambushed and taken by zones. He filled out and looked strong. The only thing that hadn’t changed were his sparkling aspen eyes that always drove me insane as a child.
“Orion, is that you” I breathed. “Chimera? Chimera! Oh my goodness I.. I can’t believe it’s you.”
He started to walk towards me and then broke into a run as he got nearer. He grabbed me in his arms and hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe.
“Chimera what happened? I miss you so much but prayed I would never see you again. I never wanted them to do what they did to me. Is your Dad ok?”
I flinched and stood there as he watched a flash of pain stream across my face.
“On no.. I’m so sorry Chimera.”
“Orion, how are you here? How are you alive? I thought that they killed you.”
“I thought they were going to, but last minute they decided it would be a waste to dispose of such a young mind, released me in hopes over time I would learn to accept and support their advancements”
Suddenly I had a realization.
“Orion, you need to come with me. Come with me to the sea-scape.”
I hoped he could see the pleading in my eyes. He was my last family, I had no one else.
After what felt like years he answered.
“Of course, I’ll go with you Chimera.”
The rest of the day was a blur. After hours we finally entered what supposedly was the city center. To my surprise, there were no people at all. I didn’t expect to be let into the courtyard but the security didn’t even question us. I watched as Orion peered down at me and suddenly, in one swift motion slammed my head against his knee. All went black.
I woke up in a bright white room. My blurry vision cleared to reveal Orion standing robotically to my right. Orion dropped the letter he was holding onto my lap. With trembling fingers, I opened it and read ‘Candidate for Conversion found. Mission completed’. My heart stopped. There was no sea-scape. Society had created the idea of ‘sea-scape’ to trap those who did not fully support the advancement of AI. Orion, my long-lost best friend, had gone through conversion, just like everyone else. Now it was my turn, my turn to become what the world wanted me to be. To conform to the realities of society. I thought I had a choice but no. There was no choice.
