by submission | Aug 18, 2022 | Story |
Author: Joel C. Scoberg
“I’m telling you it would catch me,” said Duncan, his words slightly slurred.
“Think about it, if it was dangerous, they’d put a sign up.”
Alyn leaned over the viewing platform’s guardrail. The toxic clouds seethed and churned beyond the habisphere, completely enveloping the Arcology which floated in the Venusian atmosphere like a lost balloon. “Maybe, but it’s still, what, a fifty-foot drop to the habisphere?”
“Very survivable.” Duncan waved away Alyn’s concerns with his beer bottle. “Especially considering the elasticity of the habisphere membrane. It’ll be like landing on a bouncy castle.”
“I thought only the astroengineers loved a late night.”
They both turned. Renee Amara walked—no, sauntered—toward them, dressed to the nines in a tight-fitting, emerald-coloured dress. Her dark brown hair hung over her bare shoulders. Barefoot, she carried a pair of sparkly high-heels in one hand and a bottle of red wine in the other. Duncan swallowed heavily beside him.
“We botanists know how to party too.” Duncan leaned back against the polished metal guardrail and took a swig of beer. Alyn was impressed. Duncan usually fell into stuttering incoherence around Renee.
“I can see that.” Renee stepped between them and leant on the guardrail, her floral perfume more intoxicating than any beer. “What were you two arguing about?”
“Duncan’s latest obsession. He reckons the habisphere would catch him if he jumped.”
Renee’s amber eyes met his, and it was Alyn’s turn to swallow heavily. “And what do you think?”
“I, er, I think he’d fall straight through.”
“It’s perfectly safe.” Duncan climbed on to the guardrail, balancing precariously with his back to the raging Venusian cloudscape. “As I told Alyn, there would be a sign if it was—”
Duncan slipped. Renee dropped her heels and grabbed his leg, steadying him. “Careful,” she said.
“Thank you, my lady, but have no fear for me. I’ve thought a lot about this.” Duncan glanced at her hand on his leg and beamed. “Astroships can only sail through the habisphere because of their bulk, the habisphere stretches before it allows them through to the dock. That elasticity helps retain the air pressure inside the Arc—not too rigid that it pops, not too soft that it loses pressure. It’s how the Arc floats in the heavier carbon-dioxide clouds in the atmosphere. To science,” cheered Duncan, raising his bottle in the air.
“Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me,” said Alyn, reaching for his friend’s hand. “Now come down.”
“I’m telling you, if I jumped, I’d be fine. And I’d be the first person to do it.” Duncan drained his beer then winked at Renee. “That would be worth a kiss, right?”
Renee laughed weakly. “Don’t be silly now.”
Duncan stretched out his arms like an Olympic diver, grinned, then jumped.
Alyn lunged for Duncan but he was too late.
Duncan plummeted with a loud, triumphant yell, which turned to a strangled yelp as he plunged straight through the habisphere and disappeared within the thick Venusian clouds. The habisphere rippled and repaired itself, snuffing out the sudden stench of rotten eggs.
“I can’t believe he did that,” said Renee, after a long silence. “What should we do?”
Alyn shook his head. “I guess we should put a sign up.”
by submission | Aug 17, 2022 | Story |
Author: Lisa Jade
‘Genemother’.
That’s what they call me. My real name hasn’t mattered in a long time.
This isn’t what I agreed to. As my body deteriorated from disease, I was desperate to remain alive. When the richest men in the country offered me practical immortality in exchange for my DNA for cloning, I didn’t think twice.
I didn’t question the waivers, or the commercial lawyers, or the investors. After all, they’d sworn that the clones would be used to further technology and medicine to help the world. So even when I was submerged in this tank to spend my endless days, I trusted that things would be alright.
The tank keeps my body in a pristine half-alive state. I see, hear and think, but that’s all, aside from the scraping in my bones when they remove more marrow, more stem cells to clone me from.
From my tank, I’ve seen the results of our deal. Fifty years on, and my face – the face they wanted for its beauty – is on every billboard. They cloned me, marketed the resulting lives as mindless servants, and sold them for a fortune.
Clones with my face and voice work to the bone for people too rich or lazy to care for themselves. The clones are sanitation workers, domestic servants, prostitutes. The investors clearly figured I’d never find out. There was so much they never told me.
They never told me about the telepathic link between clones and donor, either.
Late at night, the clones speak. Some don’t even know they do it; they talk more to themselves than to me. Some just wish they had a friend to speak to. Others do it thinking that they’re praying to some higher power.
Imagine their disappointment when they realise it’s just me.
So I take their words. Thanks, curses, questions. And most of all – overwhelmingly, pleas for me to come back for them. After all, I’m their Genemother. If they belong to anyone, it’s me. I could say the word and release them from their bonds.
It’s been fifty years, and I still don’t have the heart to tell them that I can’t move, can’t speak, can’t help. I have no more rights than a houseplant – if I left this tank then my heart, so reliant on the life support, would stop instantly. Not that I could leave, even if I were so willing to make that sacrifice.
So instead, I give them hope.
I tell them that one day, things will be better. When they cry to me, when they’ve been starved and beaten and used for human’s enjoyment. I tell them they don’t deserve to suffer. That they’re worth more than they think – that they’re people, not products. That fighting and bloodshed is sometimes necessary for freedom.
There have been rumours of violent behaviour amongst the clones. The doctors in the lab discuss it constantly, wondering how to limit such instances. They’ll never know I’m the one radicalising them. Any clones who claim to have spoken to me are thought to be insane. The investors won’t dare stop producing their little cash cows, though, and the number of casualties from clone attacks increases by the day.
This is its own kind of revenge, I suppose. A tiny uprising from the entombed mind of a comatose woman who, by all rights, should have died fifty years ago. It’s not much, but it’s all I can do. After all, a good mother only wants what’s best for her children.
by submission | Aug 14, 2022 | Story |
Author: CB Droege
Something brushes past Jonaton’s leg under the opaque waters. He slaps the water with his hands, creating as much noise and turbulence as he can. The noise and motion of the water only reflects off the close walls and comes back amplified. He closes his eyes and forces himself to focus. “Left, straight, left, right, right, left” he recites.
It’s surely only a rumor that there are things living in these chambers. He must have brushed past a piece of equipment from a past explorer or some other piece of long lost flotsam. The floor tiles of the passages are loose and always shifting under Jonaton’s thick boot-soles. There is years of debris down here: garbage, clothes, weapons, even the bones of those who came into the chambers and were lost when the tide came in.
Jonaton keeps a careful eye on the water level. Though it is always shifting, rushing around him, it is also very slowly rising. The tide has already reversed, and every step he takes now is pushing the limits of his return window. In a few hours, water will reach the ceiling. He has to be back to the entrance before that time, or his bones will join the detritus on these floors.
Stepping carefully, wary of any sign of serpent or fish, Jonaton sloshes around another corner. “Right, left, straight, left, right, right, left” he recites, adding the reverse of the turn he just made to the beginning of his mantra. The passage he’s stepped into is longer than any of the previous sections, but is otherwise identical to every passage he’s passed through to get here since this morning. He sighs. He doesn’t even really know what he’s looking for.
Soon it will be time to turn around. He should probably just turn around already, but he knows the looks that explorers get when they return too early, when they don’t search as much as they possibly can in the short time they have within the chambers. It’ll be another week before the tide is low enough to let another explorer into the tunnels, and Jonaton’s turn only comes once per year. He should make the most of it. Maybe this next turn will be the one which reveals the exit from The Fortress. Maybe he will be the one who returns to his people triumphantly declaring that their long imprisonment is finally at an end, that seventy-five years of living in a steel trap is now over.
He reaches the next intersection and looks left and right. Nothing that he can see looks like a way out. Maybe the exit is just down one more passage, maybe it’s just around that corner…
No. That kind of thinking must be how explorers die down here, always chasing one more turn in the tunnels. Jonaton turns around and begins to walk back the way he came, confident that he has done his duty to his people. Tonight, he will be honored for his task, for his risk, even if he will not be celebrated as a savior. “Right, left, straight, left, right, right, left” he recites. He knows this will take him home, where he belongs.
by submission | Aug 13, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“A solution to our problem requires a certain amount of ordered chaos,” Hsiang explained to his cellmate as they used the guard’s severed head to gain entry into DeadPan’s nerve center. “To find a workable answer we need to invite a wide range of possible solutions. Early on, this requires a certain amount of randomness in our search. Eventually, this turbulence has to be controllable in a way that allows us to turn disorder into a deterministic system. Does that make sense?”
“If it means killing Blythedale.”
“It could. But you need to be open to many other possibilities.”
“Like killing Sikkurd, Noh, Fallkirk or Mi Tang?
“Possibly. Though it may mean not killing anyone.”
“What kind of a plan is that?” Suarez asked, his meaty hand flexing around the iron brace Hsiang had removed from one of the industrial dryers in the laundry facility after his last shift. “This just isn’t about escape, it’s about vengeance.”
Hsiang nodded. “Yes. Vengeance. It should be optimized. Our wrongdoers should pay, but death is not the only toll we can exact.”
“Death is simple.”
“But not always painful enough,” Hsiang said softly. “Pain is a powerful teacher. Our vengeance should instruct. Remember, many will be watching.”
“We are always watched.”
“Exactly. That is the flow into which we must introduce turbulence. That instability will show us possible flaws we can isolate and then optimize in order to escape.”
“And punish,” Suarez reminded.
“Absolutely.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in absolutes, Hsiang?”
Hsiang grinned. “You, Suarez, are just the sort of turbulence needed to bring order into the chaos we are about to create.”
Suarez scratched behind his ear with the iron bar and then pointed with its filed end to the screens that displayed every prisoner in DeadPan. “Who do we start with?”
“It must be random. Not a conscious choice. That will make us reactors along with the rest.”
Suarez shrugged.
“Fair enough,” Hsiang acknowledged. He lifted the sentrybot’s pierced skull above the main console, looked away, then dropped the carbon cranium onto the central monitors where it bounced, flipped, spun and landed on the image of Snowden’s cell. The live feed showed him engrossed in a book, an honest-to-NSA paper and ink book.
“That’s it? This starts it?”
“Pebble in the pond. Butterfly in the breeze. Ghost in the machine,” Hsiang answered as he tapped the command and Snowden’s image faded from DeadPan’s surveillance grid.
“Now, out of the spying pan and into the fire.”
by submission | Aug 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“It happened right here,” I breathlessly exclaim to my friend. She grins and looks towards the old office building. I point to a corner window on the topmost floor. The gaggle of tourists behind us gasp and raise their cameras to take snaps of the old five-story red brick building. My friend glances at me and smirks.
“Three shots,” I continue. I make a gun out of my upraised hand, like a kid playing cops and robbers. “Pow! Pow! Pow!”
My friend opens her eyes wide and puts her hands over her ears in mock horror. “Oh no!”
“Oh yes,” I say flatly. “The assassin was a crack shot.” I then stage-whisper, “Trained by our own special forces!” Behind us, the tourists mutter unintelligibly among themselves.
“On orders from his second in command.” I shake my head sadly. My friend puts her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. “His very own right-hand man.”
The tourists’ mumbling rises in volume, becoming a discordant symphony of clicks and whines and staccato squeaks. I catch overtones of dismay, shock, and—disbelief? How dare these outsiders, these tourists, question my tale. I was born here, after all; I should know. That’s what I’ll say if one of them contradicts me.
My friend can no longer smother her laughter, but being the fine actress she is, converts her convulsions to weeping. She really should win an award for these performances.
I turn to face the group clustered behind us. Embarrassed to be caught stalking and eavesdropping, they rub their stick-like forelegs together and pivot their multi-faceted eyes away from the building. Their mouths quiver and sticky drool sparkles in the corners, threatening to drip down their darkly iridescent carapaces.
I look down my nose at them. “It’s all true. My father was a local police detective. My mother was a nurse at the hospital where they took his broken body.”
A tourist waddles over to me, places a spiked claw on my shoulder. I suppose it is an act of sympathy. In response, I wipe a non-existent tear away from my eye. I wasn’t upset; I was acting. Tourists can’t tell the difference.
My companion sighs and we continue our walk. The tourists scuttle along behind us, at a respectful distance, but close enough to listen to our conversation.
“And over there,” my friend prompts, waving towards the depression-era hotel across the street. “Isn’t that where . . .?”
“Ah, yes,” I finish for her. “That’s where notorious astronaut-turned-gangster, Boz McNally, was arrested for robbing a string of pizza joints. A bell-hop tipped off the cops. The police caught him climbing out a third story window, after he set the hotel ablaze. McNally gambled the fire would be a distraction—he lost that bet.”
“He was one bad hombre, that dare-devil spaceman,” my companion adds. “A rotten apple. A real no-goodnik.” The tourists chitter excitedly; they love our idioms.
They lose themselves in an orgy of picture-taking and outraged conversation. My friend and I take this opportunity to slip away into the first convenient, shadowed alley. They won’t follow us into such a dark, narrow space; they are famously claustrophobic.
Honestly, I can’t stand these tourists—they crawl over every historical site in our city, they over-run our parks, they crowd us out of our museums and cinemas. So hungry for stories, as they evidently have none of their own. Victors in the last war—supposedly brilliant strategists—yet they are so gullible.
But, hey, at least they spend their credits here.
