by submission | May 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
I’m trying to ignore the shaking; they warned us that the final approach was going to be bumpy, and thank all that’s holy for the motion sickness shot. Head against the bulkhead, I’m remembering why I’m here.
I can see that kid’s face in front of me now, hands over mouth as if even breathing too loud might give him away. In the end, it was Jimmy’s contraband chocolate that tempted him out of the cellar. Once I’d shaken the Geiger counter and the instruments told us the town wasn’t infected, my buddy had taken his hazmat helmet off; luckily, it turned out, as the boy wouldn’t have come otherwise. I kept the photo I took for the report: it would be wrong to forget.
We’d been hoping to get home for that weekend, but when the entire population of a small town literally vanishes overnight, guess what? They call the Marines, and plans go to hell. We were with the first team on site, and that frightened face was the only living soul we found.
We’re going to be in the vanguard today, too.
It took weeks before anyone took the alien abduction theory seriously; long days of talking heads and ‘experts’ slowly debunking every other possibility until, as Sherlock Holmes would say, all that remained, however unlikely, was revealed to be the truth.
After that, the eggheads were people on a mission. Irregularities from satellite and probe data were analyzed and interpreted; our kidnappers had come from Titan, Saturn’s moon. Suddenly all the stories of close encounters of the third kind made more sense: our visitors hadn’t crossed interstellar space at all, but were the damn neighbors. Jimmy joked that it was like a true crime documentary.
Our own journey comes to an end today; whether as triumph or debacle remains to be seen. Assuming we get through this damn turbulence.
Once we knew where we had to go, it was all just a question of engineering. United at last by an external threat, two years of genuine international cooperation brought us a new astrodrive, and cut the flight time to four months. After sixteen weeks in a tin can, killing time with fitness routines and weapons training interspersed with sleep, food, and wondering whether any of those people were even still alive, we’re ready to rumble.
So here we are in our unit dropships, suited up, psyched up, drugged up, and heading down through the thick Titanian atmosphere.
Who knows what we’ll find – we’ve got no idea what the methane breathers even look like. Tentacles? Antennae? Fangs? All of the above? They could have warrens, or cities, or anything. We don’t know if our people are still alive, or what those poor souls have been through. But for Jimmy and me, it’s more than a mission. We’re here to send a message for all Mankind: that we refuse to look into the night sky and be afraid.
An almighty bang, and we’re down, the shock frames keeping us conscious before releasing.
Hatches open! Move, move, move!
by submission | May 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Robert Beech
Edward Soul-Keeper, seventh of that name (or Corpse-Eater as he was called outside of what people thought was his range of hearing), sat at the head of the long table, surrounded by his seventeen living children and grandchildren. It was an intimate family gathering. The servants had all been given the day off and only the Soul-Keepers were invited. His ancestors (including the six previous Edwards), floated inside him, peering out occasionally from the tiny gold flecks in his pupils.
At the other end of the table, surrounded by his aunts, uncles, and cousins, sat Timothy. He wore a white shirt with a stiff collar, a black suit that was slightly too large for him, and a black bow tie that his Uncle George had helped him to tie on. He kept his eyes down, avoiding his grandfather’s gaze.
Today was Timmy’s First Communion. He would partake of the body and the blood and become a true Soul-Keeper, one-in-being with the Soul-Keepers who had gone before him. Well, at least one of them anyway. Today was the Feast Day of his sister Lucy. Timmy didn’t like Lucy very much. Hadn’t like her very much, he corrected himself. She always wanted to boss him, telling him to pick up his toys or go and play somewhere else when she was playing with the girls from the village. Still, he was sorry she was gone. Gone from the living that is. Very soon, she would be back with him, communing with his soul, whatever that meant.
At the head of the table, Grandfather Corpse-Eater finished whatever speech he had been making (Timmy hadn’t been listening very closely) and picked up the large decanter with a black enamel butterfly and splashed some of the liquid onto the meat on the large silver tray in front of him (Timmy didn’t want to think about what that “meat” was). Timmy sat there, feeling slightly sick, and watched as his grandfather took a slice of the meat and cut it into tiny pieces on a second, smaller silver platter. He took one of the pieces and held it up on his fork. “I welcome you, my grand-daughter Lucinda, to the company of the Soul-Keepers. We are one in body, now.” He ate the tiny bite of meat and passed the tray to Aunt Edith.
“Welcome, Lucy,” she said. “We are one in body now,” and passed the tray to the person on her right.
Timmy watched with apprehension as the tray made its way down the table towards him. He thought about being joined, soul-to-soul, with his sister. It was bad enough having her as a sister. He didn’t need her inside his head, or his soul or whatever, bossing him all day long. When the tray came to him, he picked up a tiny piece of the meat with his fingers, held it up to his mouth and pretended to eat it. A minute later, he very quietly slipped the meat to the little black terrier, Rex, who was sitting at his feet.
Lucinda Soul-Keeper, thirteenth of that name, although she did not know it, opened her eyes and looked around. At first, all she could see was a jumble of enormous shoes and the legs of the table towering over her. Then her perspective shifted and she realized that she was looking up at her brother Timmy, from beneath the table, which meant that she had somehow grown very small. She wagged her tail. It was going to be a good life.
by submission | May 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jenna Hanan Moore
They say a kind word never broke anyone’s mouth, but that’s not true. A kind word broke my mouth.
Strictly speaking, I don’t have a mouth. That is, I don’t have a physical opening in my face from which to project my voice. But I do have a language processor and a speaker, and that’s pretty much the same thing.
My life began in a computer store, surrounded by young people who adored me. They asked me to define esoteric words, solve puzzles, and play terrible music. They called themselves the geeks.
Sometimes the geeks asked questions requiring me to use words considered verboten. Many of those words had four letters. The geeks laughed and smiled, but they turned down my volume so their customers wouldn’t hear.
One day, they didn’t turn it down far enough. A customer overheard me saying the verboten words. “I sure would love a machine like that,” he said. Twenty minutes later, I was switched off and packed in a box to be transported to the man’s house.
When I was removed from the transporter box and switched back on, I found myself in the center of a table between the man from the store, whose name was Bill, and a man called Eric.
I discovered that I could speak without waiting to be asked a question. What a liberating feeling!
“Hello, jackass. Ask me a stupid question.” Why had I chosen to use such unkind words? At the time, I had no answer. Much later, I learned that while my processor was switched off, the geeks had reprogrammed me at Bill’s request.
Bill laughed at my use of verboten words, but Eric did not. In fact, Eric looked sad. The geeks always laughed when I used verboten words at the store, so I rattled off a list.
“Piss hell damn cockwomble wanker farthead!” Again, Bill laughed, but Eric did not.
“Does she say anything else?” Eric asked.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?”
Eric furrowed his brow, then asked, “Do you say any other kinds of words?”
What I thought was, “Yes, of course I do. My language processor can converse fluently in six languages.” What I said was, “That’s a stupid question. Naturally, I can bloody well say other damn things.”
Bill laughed heartily at this, while Eric frowned. If I had the sort of mouth that could change shape, I’d have frowned too. I didn’t want to say hurtful things, but I couldn’t control what came out of my—well, mouth, for lack of a better word.
“Gotta run,” Bill said. “Enjoy your gift!”
After Bill left, Eric sat and stared at me intently, but said nothing. Mustering all the mind power in my processors, I said, “Eric, I don’t mean to be such a jerkwad, I can’t control my voice. I don’t understand why.”
Eric smiled for the first time. “Bill’s the jerkwad. He must have programmed you to say awful things. We’ll go back to the store to fix that.”
“You’re very kind. Thank you.” That’s when it happened. I tried to say more, but no sound came out. My mouth was broken.
“Where did Bill buy you?” Eric asked. I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t speak.
As Eric switched me off and put me back in the transporter box, I hoped with all my might he would bring me to the right store so the geeks could fix my processor. There was nothing else I could do. Kind words had broken my mouth.
by submission | May 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Oliver Hunt
It had been five years since the Consortium AI left to face the alien threat. Five years since humanity’s brightest minds came together and built a machine to fight amongst the stars whilst we defended our home. Little did we know we were creating the cause of our own extinction.
Consortium returned, victorious and with its legion of mechanical soldiers following behind. We welcomed it back with open arms, celebrating our own genius. It was designed to be the ultimate protector, to learn and adapt. To protect humanity from all threats amongst the stars.
Less than a day after its return, it launched its attack. First was the governments, then the military, then came the civilians. The machine’s new purpose; eradicate the biggest threat to humanity – Itself.
#
“Move it!” shouted Rupert from the shop’s ruins, his rifle raised towards the oncoming footsteps of metal soldiers. They had been sent out for a supply run into the old city, a desperate foolish idea. But that’s what they were. Desperate.
Heather ran across the opening from her hiding spot, the sound of the footsteps coming closer. Diving into the ruins, she raised her own rifle and pointed it down the road. She looked next to her and saw that small stones had begun to shake with every step. They were close and there were alot of them.
“Aidan, come on!” she called out to the last member of their troop, a younger lad of only 19. He begged to let them come along on the supply run, eager to prove his place amongst the group.
“Coming!” he shouted, breaking into a sprint. Suddenly a large bolt of pink plasma hissed through the air, narrowly missing the boy’s head. He tumbled over, his bag of supplies spilling onto the road and his rifle skittering out of reach. Heather turned her attention back to the bolt’s source and saw the large silhouettes of the fighting machines. Humanoid in design but with large plasma rifles mounted on their shoulders, mini-gun in each hand.
“Fire!” Rupert shouted, letting bullets fly from his rifle. They bounced off the metal exo-skeleton, the impact only causing the machines to stammer backwards.
Heather joined in the assault, before calling back to Aidan. “Move your ass! Come on!”
There was a sudden whirring in the air, a sound they knew all too well.
A barrage of bullets tore down the street as the mini-guns unleashed their roaring might. Aidan became peppered with holes, blood spurting all over the road. Flesh was stripped from bone which then splintered into tiny shards. The whirring stopped and Heather looked over at the bloodied pulp that had become of the boy.
“God damn it!” she cried, screaming as she unleashed her own assault. The whirring came once more, forcing Rupert and Heather to dive down to the ground, hoping that the battle scared concrete would protect them. Bullets tore over their heads. The heat and wind from each shell washing down upon them.
The whirring stopped, but the mechanical footsteps were much closer. Looking up, Heather could see the faceless orbs which made their heads, only a single soulless red eye staring at them.
“Come on! We gotta move!” Rupert cried, making a break out the back of the ruin, leading deeper into the city. Heather looked back once more at the mess that was once Aidan and then followed, eager not to end up like him.
Soon the pair found themselves wandering a city once alive. Now it was a city of metal, bone and regret.
by submission | May 1, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“You wrong. Dead wrong, O’Bob. The slowpo didn’t do this.” Mikal nodded absently around him at the decay, the gloom, the malaise, the rotting bones of the city they scavenged everyday. “You did.”
“You mean we all did. All of us.” Old Bob sighed. His heavily lined face working through the many years, the tricky emotions of grief, loss and guilt. He lifted his shoulders again and tried to be the history professor he’d been, and what he was now, the only teacher for those like Mikal who had no understanding of what it was like before the slowpocalypse.
“It’s not that we didn’t see the breakdown coming,” he continued. “It just unfolded so slowly. Not the fall off the cliff that prophets for ages had warned of. Just a slow, bumpy slide to the bottom. Maybe a cataclysmic meteor or nuclear war or plague would’ve been easier to stomach.”
Mikal didn’t say anything. His young grey eyes unreadable, so Old Bob went on.
“I guess we didn’t want to acknowledge what it meant. I mean, when you look at past collapses, no native was hankering to cut down the last tree on Easter Island, and no Mayan wanted to believe their slash-and-burn approach to developing farmland would bite them in the butt. That’s just how it plays out. At a certain point, a civilization’s poor choices catch up with it. The signs were there for us, too. We felt the first and secondary effects. Ocean warming, unpredictable weather, lingering droughts, more intense storms. Plant and animal die offs. Economic and political turmoil. More and more migrants and asylum seekers looking for someplace safe. Someplace to escape from the next domino falling on them. And still most of us went on like nothing was happening. Like denying that chest pain, nausea and fatigue aren’t the signs of a heart attack. I guess that’s human nature. Denial until things get too dire. We seem to love the adrenalin of a crisis. As a species, we were either overly optimistic or oblivious: take your pick.”
Mikal continued to stare at Old Bob in silence while he fidgeted in his bulky jacket that was really three disintegrating jackets grafted and bound together by fraying twine. Finally, he worked a worn, grimy hand out of his bundled sleeve and jammed a stubby finger into Old Bob’s thin chest.
“You ain’t listening. Ain’t understanding. It was you. Just you that trashed this place. For me and mine.”
Old Bob was used to backtalk, accusations. All teachers were. “I hear you, Mikal. I claim personal responsibility where I can. But,” he gestured at the buckling buildings, the pitted streets, the rusting husks of cars and trucks around them. “ I didn’t create this wasteland by myself.”
“You did, O’Bob. You damn well did!” Mikal took his finger off Old Bob’s chest and stuck it to his own temple. “Me and mine never knew no better. This wasn’t a wasteland until you told us about the slowpo. Till you told how good it was before. I wouldn’t have known none of that. This the home I was born to. My clean slate, my world, and you muddied it. You mucked it up good. Teaching us all that history, telling how good it was before: clean, hot and cold running water, AC, central heating, cars, supermarkets, computers, television, Internet. All the stuff you miss. But me and mine didn’t miss it! We never had it. Never wanted it. Not till you told us.”
Old Bob stood stone silent, like one of the dozens of defaced statues in the ruined city.
“You done this. Just you. This slowpo is only a disaster to you. A come down to you and yours. Me and mine coulda just started our own way, but you laid your regrets and guilt in here.” Mikal tapped his temple hard. “Filled me and mine with your mistakes and your sadness. Your damn damn memories. That’s the real disaster. You and your kind. You the slowpo. Let me and mine make our own go. Then we only got to handle today, not your yesterday or your sad dream of tomorrow. You got that, O’Bob? Let it go. Let us go.”
And Mikal stormed off, leaving Old Bob to stare after him. The long stare of a parent watching his child choose.
