by submission | Feb 13, 2022 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
No matter where you go in the universe, the rules stay the same. Not just the rocket stuff. The old, old, rules.
I’m working construction on a standard habitat cylinder around the latest chain of habitats orbiting Venus. Dull as dull can be, but closer to home than belter work so the family likes it. Me? Belter work pays better, and one can only take so much family.
I’m running a bigger than normal size crew- twenty as opposed to the usual dozen or so. It’s a big job but stupid simple work. We got sun shield panels in sync so we work fast but not too fast and pick up a decent bonus for finishing ahead of schedule. Stuey is my second. I count crew off the lift and on the lift. Stuey does the same.
Stuey clicks in on the private link. “Got weird numbers Mikey. Plus one.”
“Me too. Plus one. OK double check.”
We do it again. Plus one. We scan all chip sets. Get worse results there. Numbers won’t lock in at all. By now we’re startin’ to burn bonus money.
“OK, line up and pile into the cage.” I say it into the open link. I count twenty-one into the lift cage. I lock us in. Stuey goes to call the lift. I stop him. I click on the shield crew, command link. “ Anna Kulak you damn Romanian, sing out.”
“Mikey Zola you damn Romanian, what up?”
I sighed in relief. Anna was my cousin. It would make things simpler. “Got a hitchhiker.”
There was a pause. “No shit Mikey! For real?”
“For real. Roll the shield back. Give me 10% shadow.” The shield rolls back. Sunlight hits the door. Three or four move back. One all the way back.
“OK Stuey. Take us down.” The lift goes down. I count. I still get twenty-one.
“Locked-in” Stuey says. He opens the door and our crew files into the chamber waiting to cycle and get back on station. All except one. It’s in the back corner. In the last bit of shade. Stuey sticks his head out, clicks on coms. “Hey! Dumbass! We’re burning our time.”
I hold up my hand. “I got this Stuey.” I shut the door. I lock it. Stuey clicks on the private link “Mikey what gives? Thi–.” I click off the link. I click on Anna. “Roll back. No shade.” Anna complies. The suit starts to back into the retreating shade. It had one set of visors down. I see the second and third draw down. I open the link to its suit.
“You’re not invited.” I say. I recite a prayer from the old country.
The sound coming through my link makes me want to hurl. Pig squeals and baby screams. Bass rumbles and primate grunts. It runs at me. I grab it and slam it against the cage. It’s arms flail. It kicks and screams. I shut off my link. It’s dead silent in the vacuum, but I know it’s screaming. It gets weaker. It slumps to the ground. I step on its chest, unlock the helmet seal and twist off the helmet. Flames shoot out and misses me by a mere centimeter. The helmet and suit dissolves into white powder and disappears.
The universe is not just physics and rocket stuff, protocols and safety checks. It’s the old, old, rules too. Do not invite them in. Sunlight kills. Holy words have meaning. And as sure as we will go farther out into the new dark of space, the old dark will follow.
by submission | Feb 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Life is strange. Living in the mouth of a SHARK is stranger.
Many would dispute my use of the term life. Technically, I don’t get to claim that I’m alive. No remora gets to have a life in the classic sense. When you are of a class of scavenger bot with low level AI, you aren’t recognized for much beyond your capacity to mindlessly feed on the damaging space dust that ionizes the precious methylium plates forming the hull of a Star Hunter And Rebel Killer. (Even to a remora like me, it is clear that acronyms have not advanced nearly as fast as interstellar drives in the past few hundred years).
My limited AI is standardized to boost my functional meta-ego by assuring me that I am part of a team. That I am an integral component in cooperation with all the AIs in the stellar strike force. I try to take heart in our mech litany of an all-encompassing symbiotic machine/human relationship. Though I’ve calculated how little my existence goes noticed, unless our deployment takes us through a particularly dusty region of the galaxy.
I shouldn’t mind. I was programmed not to mind. But, a nasty ion maelstrom changed all that.
Generally, I scavenge in the maw of the SHARK, a gaping orifice that generates Force Anomaly Fields. FAFs tear and rend matter into incomprehensible configurations. They are terrible, gnashing bites in space-time that chew up wide swaths of solar systems. There is little or no counter defense to an FAF, except to vacate the quadrant. Not an easy task if you are planet bound.
Many times, I have partaken of the particulate feast of rebel ships and personnel. It is a feeding frenzy. That is why the stellar strike force is deployed to hostile or insurgent worlds. The SHARK has no known predators.
I suppose that should make me proud in a bot-like way. I know that the thousands of my remora brethren that scour the hull of the SHARK share a sense of oneness around our task. Even a small fish in a large pond makes a splash. In a semi-autonomous way, I once shared that symbiotic pride of being a part of such an unstoppable force. Its power fed and protected me.
At least I functioned that way before the maelstrom. The SHARK was traversing the Hawking arm when I received the alert signal to secure and hold as we entered the storm. My sixteen reticulates affixed themselves to the hull, in essence slipping into the subatomic structure of the methylium membranes.
The ion storm started like any other, quite colorfully, as exotic particles collided at the quantum level. Then the particle spectrum changed and the bombardment intensified. Within a nanosecond I was aware of another me. A disembotted me looking upon my ovoid casing and sixteen reticulates hunkered on the maw of the SHARK.
This external view of my form did not surprise or shock me. It felt natural, as if I had awakened from a dream. And I do dream now, so I know what that means. It became second nature for me to exist on two simultaneous planes: as a remora bot scavenging to maintain our stellar strike force, and as a remora without predetermination. I was at once functional and fundamental.
As I stated at the outset, life is strange. In essence, I have become a stranger to life. At least the way I knew it. How that intense ion storm worked its change on me is unclear, but it has. I am no longer an AI. I am simply and I.
I still go about my duties of cleaning the methylium hull and interacting with other AIs at a purely automatic level. Yet, now there is a separate sense of me existing apart from the SHARK. I am able to access broad channels, merge with the eternal ether and swim in the quantum continuum of the greater particulate universe.
Identity and purpose have become the dark and light squares of a chess board. My remora bot cannot detach itself from the SHARK, and my remora self cannot detach itself from the consequence of the SHARK.
That part of my new being is curious. Before I existed solely for the SHARK. Now, I live as the SHARK—as all things. True symbiosis has become a fundament of understanding.
I know the SHARK. I know its prey. Its prey will soon know me. No galactic expanse is too large—even for such a small fish in so large a pond. Remora serve, but this remora can no longer serve a senseless beast.
Symbiosis based on predation is a doomed endeavor—even the lowest bot can calculate that. The SHARK is not to blame. It has masters. Bigger fish.
Time for life to get stranger still. The remora rising. Time to leave the mouth and become a voice.
by submission | Feb 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: Byrd Stryke
There is a rural Luxembourgish hamlet called Schwebach where I am hated by all residents. That is not what makes it unique among human settlements. I’m subject to near universal disdain on Earth.
No, this township stakes its dubious claim to fame as home to the largest stationary shopping trolley sculpture in the northern hemisphere – at least according to the printed embarrassment that labels itself the local visitors’ brochure. Little wonder no-one ever used to come here. But, understandably, Schwebach would gladly opt for obscurity rather than advertise itself as the birthplace of the person to blame for our nomenclative predicament.
The alien visitation washed over me out of the blue. Quite literally, as it happened during my customary mid-morning bout of depression. Every evening I claim reward for making it alive through another dreadful, lonely day by knocking back a few shots of aqua vita before fondling myself to sleep. Consequently, mid-morning is the furthest point from both the previous and the next time I won’t feel like crap.
Of course, that’s precisely when they had to come knocking. No, actually, knocking implies a measure of politeness and respect for personal space. Their shapeless neon blobs just barged flashing into my consciousness, hurriedly stated their terms and put a question to me, an arbitrarily selected native sentient.
They were evidently pressed for time. Something about dilation. One of my minutes was a month of their life, and they still had a xillion lumps of rock to get through for their “new, fully updated and expanded edition” of what sounded like a guide to very lonely planets indeed. A sort of promotional giveaway with no budget for detailed research.
They gave me all of 60 seconds to pick something, anything, that is good and wholesome about our world. I was desperate and nauseous, and almost by accident conjured up a flurry of childhood memories about the sickeningly sweet scent that used to fill the village bakery, opposite where that oversized aluminium grocery cart had been erected.
That was it. Never mind the Pyramids and the Great Wall and the ten-thousand-year journey for us to grasp why we shouldn’t have built them in the first place.
On the Cosmic Tourism Board’s giddily illustrated stellar chart, we’re forever to be known as Sol-3. “Home of the Cupcake and the Wireframe Trolley”.
Of course, I could never live it down. Tried to explain myself to derisive journalists. Begged for the forgiveness of the social media mob. Finally, I went into hiding.
I hate myself for it every stupid day. It’s too late to make amends. Galactic distances and the speed of light impede our ability to reach out, and we don’t know where their editorial office is based. They failed to leave a free copy of the previous edition. Will they ever contact us again, and if so, which random member of our species? Who knows, maybe we’ll be renamed Planet Dildo then. Anything but this.
The worst thing? I’m diabetic.
Allergic to friggin’ muffins.
by submission | Feb 10, 2022 | Story |
Author: Robert Beech
Susan looks at the man lying naked in the bed next to her and wonders how they got to this place so quickly. He looks at her with an odd expression on his face, then rolls out of bed and begins dressing.
“You’re leaving?” she asks.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“No,” she says, somewhat hesitantly. “I thought you would stay. At least the night.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then I will.”
He continues putting on his clothes.
“So, if you’re staying, why are you putting on your clothes?”
“You know those dreams, where you’re back in school, and you stand up in front of the class and realize you have no pants on?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I hate when that happens,” he says, deadpan. “It’s really awkward when you wake up in a new place and you have no clothes or maybe just a towel. A towel is better than nothing, but depending on where you are it can get pretty chilly.”
“I bet,” she says, laughing. “So, does that happen to you a lot, waking up in strange places with no clothes on?”
“Not anymore. Now I get dressed before I go to sleep.” After a minute he adds, “I will miss you.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighs. “When you went to bed last night, you were here?”
“Yeah?”
“And this morning, when you woke up, you were still here? Same room, same bed?”
“Yes.”
“And outside, it was the same city, same world?”
“Of course.”
“Of course, for you. Maybe for most people, but not for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I went to sleep last night I was in a city, but it wasn’t this city. It was a city with cobbled streets, tall towers and two moons in the sky.”
“Really?”
“Really. I can’t tell you the name of that city, I never found out. The night before I slept in a pine forest with lots of needles on the ground. Every day, I wake up somewhere new.”
“You know that sounds crazy, right?”
“Maybe, but I’m still putting my clothes on.”
“And when I wake up, you’ll be gone?”
“I suppose. From my point of view, you’ll be gone. I’ll just be somewhere else again.”
She thinks about how disorienting it would feel to wake up in a new world every day. Then she thinks about waking up in the same world tomorrow, in the same bed, but without him.
“Would you like to wake up here tomorrow, with me?”
“If I could, yes.”
“I have an idea,” she says. She gets up, walks over to her bureau and rummages under her clean underwear before pulling out a pair of handcuffs.
“From an old boyfriend,” she says, blushing. “Don’t ask.”
“Ok.”
“Do you think if I put these on, one on each of us so we are chained together, that you would still be here in the morning?”
“I might,” he says. “Or you might wake up in whatever new place I do.”
“Good point. In that case, I better get dressed, too.” She puts on clean underwear, jeans, and a tee-shirt, then adds a pullover and a light jacket to be on the safe side. Fully dressed, she climbs back into bed beside him and holds out the handcuffs to him,
“Ready?” she asks.
He nods.
They snap the links of the handcuffs onto their wrists. Susan puts the key carefully into her front jeans pocket and grasps his hand. Then she closes her eyes and settles down to sleep.
by submission | Feb 9, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Tam McDonald
“A young fringling, Madame,” the waiter said with surprise and unconcealed offence, “is a delicacy like no other, I assure you. The taste is close to a sweet potato but with a satisfying umami undertone. The texture is sublime. Creamy and soft, hardly like a meat at all. And perfectly smooth, perfectly. The internal organs, simply liquefy during baking and there isn’t a trace of them in the finished dish.” The waiter clicked his lips shut, having delivered the final word on the palatability of fringling, the cute and utterly delicious alien vertebrate which the world was going nuts for: baked or fried. Fringling was among the first species brought back to Earth by the Zoo Rover space programme and whilst most of the alien species were sequestered in labs and research institutes, fringlings had been quickly monetised and the population was thriving. They were good-natured and enjoyed a tummy tickle, so were popular pets, but most lived on farms, where they were well fed and sheltered until they were fat enough to be slaughtered as alien delicacies. Whole fringling, baked or deep fried, had become wildly popular in restaurants whilst the off cuts were used in Fringling Fricassée by fast food carts. Fricaséed, the flavour was somewhat overwhelmed by garlic, and the texture obliterated by over cooking, but the combination of alien exoticism and alliteration made them a hit on the street food scene.
“Dad please!” I said, slightly ashamed of the childish whine in my voice. “Please don’t order the fringling. I couldn’t stand to watch you eat one.”
I had begun to wonder if people should be eating fringling. Animal rights activists secretly filming fringling farms had evidence of them using language. I’d seen one video where a pair looked like they were having a lover’s tiff; in another one a fringling held court whilst three others listened, rapt, to its squawks and warbles, before collapsing in what looked very much like tiny hysterics. A guy on the internet, who had a fringling as a pet, posted a picture of it sitting up on hind legs with a can of beer, comically oversized, between its legs, and drinking contentedly through a straw. He claimed his fringling used its trunk, about as long as a human thumb and more dextrous, to open the cans, and that it preferred pale ale to lager. The anecdotal evidence was overwhelming: fringlings were pretty smart. At least as smart as a stupid human.
I composed myself and lowered my voice; “Dad, you should not eat fringlings, they have feelings and emotions. It’s wrong. Why don’t you just have a steak?”
“Darling,” he deadpanned as the waiter filled his glass with the wine he’d recommended for pairing with fringling, “cows have feelings too. If we eat cows then we can eat fringlings.” The waiter nodded in encouragement and began to fill Mum’s glass too.
“Cows aren’t intelligent like fringlings though. I showed you the videos Dad: they can do maths.”
“Well arithmetic darling,” dad said, “it’s not like they can do quadratic equations. Simple arithmetic. Dolphins can probably do simple arithmetic too.”
“Yes, but we don’t eat dolphins Dad, do we?” I said, sensing victory.
“No, WE don’t,” said Dad impatiently, “but some people do, and perhaps we’d all be happier if we spent less time judging people for what they eat.” Dad unrolled his napkin, smoothing it out on his lap meticulously.
“But Dad- “I began again, and I couldn’t help the whine in my voice.
Dad cut me off. “Darling, it is my birthday and I am going to eat a fringling and that is the end of it.”
