by submission | Jan 21, 2022 | Story |
Author: Deborah Shrimplin
Ben and Evelyn watched as the rescue spaceship sent from Earth punched through Planet Exos’ orange atmosphere without them. The spaceship was scheduled to return in two weeks. In three weeks, the damaged life support systems in the experimental habitat would fail.
Evelyn and Ben had volunteered to be the last passengers to leave the habitat. After the launch, they huddled over the computers and recalculated the amount of food, oxygen and energy left in the habitat. Their initial calculations were accurate. There was enough for three weeks. Evelyn thought that was cutting it mighty close. Ben, being a stoic, wasn’t worried. He thought a week’s margin was plenty.
Two days before the spaceship was scheduled to arrive, the habitat’s ambient lighting shut down.
“Ben, the electrical is shutting down.”
“It’s the environmental lights, not the computer feed. We’ll be OK. We’ll have to work in the habitat by flashlight. It’s just for two days. We’ll make it as long as the electrical is working on the computer grids.”
During the cycle that imitated night, Evelyn tossed and turned in her hammock. She tried to control her anxious thoughts but her self-induced mind games were not working.
“Only two more of these imitation night cycles and I’ll be home. I might as well enjoy the night sky here. I’ll never see twin moons creating orange moonlight again.” she thought.
Evelyn grabbed her flashlight and turned it on. To find her way to the window overlooking the striated rock formations, she aimed the light beam at the floor and the beige wall.
Something was wrong. Her hands shook. She placed the flashlight on a ledge and stared at the circle of light the flashlight had created on the wall. Enclosed in the white circle was the silhouette of an elephant. There was no doubt. The black outline of a long trunk and tusks contrasted with the white light. It disappeared. The black silhouette of a rhinoceros appeared. Then, it moved out of the light circle. A sea turtle shape came next. A whale’s outline appeared. Then, a woolly mammoth’s shadow walked in and out of the bright circle.
“Ben, wake up! Come here.” she cried. She didn’t dare move the flashlight. The animal’s silhouette’s were moving in and out of the light circle.
Ben hurried to her side and stared in disbelief. “Those are the animals that are extinct on earth. It’s the shadow of their spirits. Oh, my God. Evelyn, don’t touch the flashlight. Leave it alone. This is unbelievable.”
Then, the last two passengers in the habitat on Planet Exos heard the electrical pulse for the computers sputter and click off. Evelyn grabbed Ben’s hand. The black silhouettes on the wall changed into that of a man and woman.
by submission | Jan 20, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Two hundred and eighty-five years earlier, the generation ship Pilgrim had set out for the worlds of Centauri, before such missions were abandoned by the nascent Steady-State. A century into the voyage, faint messages spoke of breakdowns and conflict. After that, only silence.
While the Consensus then had decided extra-solar colonies were precious resources wasted, the mission was not forgotten. Technical progress in the meantime made a second expedition more feasible.
So it was that the c-ship Unity arrived in Centauri space and began thawing the first of its sleepers.
The tank birthed him in a gush of fluid, slopping him naked and slippery onto the steel deck, while a recording repeated he was Jan Pavel, they had arrived safely and he had a duty to the Steady-State.
Eventually he rolled onto his knees and retched emptily. Later, he managed to stand.
As he sipped nutrient, the voice of Unity explained he must be ready to deal with emergencies.
To avoid overwhelming the Unity’s limited life support, only Pavel was thawed initially, and his solitary footsteps echoed in Unity’s cold metal spaces. He preferred being alone. It was the reason someone so tainted with individuality had been included in the mission.
His first glimpse of the beautiful green and blue planet made him impatient to take down a lander, but Unity refused. Landers came later in the decision tree formulated by the Steady-State, after remote sensing and mapping from orbit.
“I have decided otherwise,” declared Pavel, only to find Unity stubbornly clung to the judgement of the Consensus.
“Would half the sleepers form a Consensus?” Pavel argued.
Unity agreed, but reluctantly, as if it saw where this logic was heading.
“I am the only one awake, therefore I represent the Consensus.”
The vessel fell back on what it knew. “Jan Pavel will never be part of the Consensus.”
He stared at the display.
“Explain.”
“There are instructions to that effect. According to the First Man Hypothesis, you assume command only in unforeseen circumstances,” Unity clarified. “This is your function on arrival.”
“Search for First Man Hypothesis.”
It was the Steady-State’s acknowledgement that its citizens fared badly when isolated. Pavel was the backup in case of events not anticipated by the Consensus.
He learned that while his faults made him uniquely suited to be woken first, he would be grit in the colony’s smooth working afterwards. If the Steady-State had not predicted his concerns, it was because it was losing its grip on what it was to be an individual.
A purely hypothetical question, inquired Pavel. Could the sleepers remain safely frozen for, say, another fifty years?
Unity confirmed it was so. Had this world proved uninhabitable, they would have voyaged onwards.
When Pavel finally took a lander down to the planet – a final test of its habitability before crew and colonists were woken to followed him – he radioed back a warning.
“There is an unforeseen threat,” he told Unity.
“No threat is detected.”
But Pavel had studied the First Man files. “Define an unforeseen threat.”
“It is one the Consensus has not planned for.”
“Exactly like a threat undetectable by your instruments.”
Unity was silent.
“Do not wake sleepers until it is safe.”
Jan Pavel made no speeches when he stepped from the lander. The colonists were welcome to this world one day and it would be theirs to name.
It was not grass beneath his feet, but it was wispy and green and the wind’s hand stroked it. The land rolled away to horizons that were distant and wonderfully empty
by submission | Jan 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: Roger L. Wang
Erik fumbled about in the bed of his echo chamber, knowing it would be a restless night. He eventually got up–not literally, but rather with his mind–and entered the studio.
There, he obsessed and went through every detail of the dream he would later submit in the Test, which was overseen and administered by the high council. His submission would be heavily scrutinized before a final verdict determined his fate: he would either be deemed worthy enough for the title of Crafter or he would be cast away alongside the rest of the Insipids. It wasn’t a literal death sentence, but he knew the rest of his life would be utterly miserable. The Insipids were in charge of menial maintenance tasks upkeeping the facilities, where contempt for them was anything but concealed, their prospects bleak and hopeless. Erik shuddered as he imagined himself hidden down below the depths of society, the glares of guards watching his washed-out jumpsuit silently mop the floor until the day of his death. The worst part was that since Insipids were labeled uncreative, protocol forbade them from ever dreaming. Never mind the constant surveillance, he had no idea how he would survive the shameful nights of fitful, empty rest.
In a futile effort to stop catastrophizing, Erik used a state-sanctioned breathing exercise to no avail. When that didn’t work, he desperately loaded up his rankings to convince himself he was too high up to worry about being sent away. He tried not to notice the fact that he had fallen four spots since the last time it updated, nor how his placement was average at best to begin with. Erik lifted his hand and began the starting sequence of his dream. A few seconds in, Erik frowned and began revising. No, no no, how did I miss this before? he thought, I will surely be deemed unworthy with such banal blues. He shrunk the bed of flowers to a vibrant violet, but after a moment of deliberation decided it was too pedestrian and opted for a prickly purple instead–hoping it would evoke the intended mystique and ambiguity in the eyes of the high council.
Opening one of the expensive hologuides he recently purchased, Erik skipped through redundant and platitudinal advice before landing on a helpful list describing what the high council is likely to find original; he checked through half the symbols but worried any more would make his craft appear trite or gauche. He then proceeded to spend an hour and a half redesigning the garlands in the girl’s hair and perfecting the way they twirled in the wind, eager it would all come together to accentuate the irony and subversion in the end. Finally satisfied, Erik stretched and yawned, beckoning himself to sleep after all he had accomplished–lest he allow poor rest squander his performance for the remaining portions of the Test.
Lying down, Erik smiled as he envisioned himself at the Creative Ceremony, acolytes esteeming him with the title of Crafter. “Creative Erik…Crafter Erik,” he whispered, delighting himself with how it sounded as he drifted off into the darkness.
by submission | Jan 15, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rachel Handley
“Ok, now, before you see it, just-”
“Just what, Terry?”
“Just stay calm, be calm I mean.”
Terry opened the door and pointed at a pink creature on the lamppost.
“There’s nothing there, where is it?”
“Look up” Terry said, jabbing his finger in the exact same direction as if that was helpful.
Adam moved closer to Terry’s arm, “I see it. You absolute bell end, how did it even escape?”
“Well, the specimen seemed inert, so I just popped to the kitchen for a coffee”
“For a coffee.” Adam was expressionless.
“For a coffee. And before I knew it the bloody thing was crawling up a lamppost.”
“Well. What did you get me here for? Just capture it!”
“That might be a bit tricky” said Terry
“Why?”
“Because, well, um, it’s eaten already.”
“You let it eat. You let it eat?”
“I didn’t let it do a fucking thing, it scampered past me like a shitty little rat ok?”
“OK.”
“So, it’s eaten a few lampposts already.”
Adam looked at the specimen. Its pink gelatinous body, now bloated and round, was starting to curl around the lamppost and nibble the top of it.
“We are fucked” said Terry
“No” said Adam “You’re fucked, I’m off for a pint”
“It’ll eat your pint!”
Adam walked off; the single finger raised on his hand signalled his goodbye.
by submission | Jan 14, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jolie Lindholm
Broque’s earthly ensemble fit like a glove, so comfortable, in fact, that he decided to leave it on for the entirety of our rendezvous. I followed suit. Feeling green and anticipating my first report, I’d already begun peeling at the pale flesh covering my left index finger. I hoped he didn’t notice.
My eyes settled on cheaply painted black bedposts as he spoke, chosen in lieu of real wood.
“Aza? Are you listening?” Broque said.
The aroma of a potted palm tree crept like a vine from behind him. “Yes — yes, I heard you,” I said. “Have you brought it?”
He slid an oversized, tanned appendage into the pocket of his loose powder blue slacks. His greased bangs sprang forward as he leaned in – his right arm outstretched.
There it was. A tiny, unassuming vial that glowed violet from within its glass. It was the Extinction as it became known to us.
Its chill shocked me. I secured it under the elastic of my platinum bouffant wig. I sipped Scotch Whiskey and winced, glad it affected me the same as it would the natives, dulling the blow of what came next.
“You’re on your own now,” Broque said. “I’ve been ordered home. You’re to do this singularly.” The aluminum chair frame bent and creaked under his weight.
“You what?” I said. “This was to be a dual mission. I was promised a partner to help see it through.” The bottom of my khaki bell-bottom caught on the leg of the patio table for a moment.
He squirmed and loosened the galaxy-patterned fat noose around his neck. The white blazer he chose may as well have read “Dr. Broque”, but his bedside manner was terrible. “This wasn’t my choice, but you’ve been prepared for this.”
“I simply refuse to do this alone,” I said.
“Mrs. Beauregard will be the wick,” he said. “Her next office joe will come with a dash of death. Let her gabbing start the spread.”
The scratchy, pink and pottery bedspread was strangely inviting.
“You left for a moment,” he said, tapping his fingers rapidly on the tabletop. “Do you think you can handle this?”
“I—this wasn’t part of the program,” I said. I could feel the words exiting slower than intended. The second glass made things easier to swallow, but I didn’t like my options.
“It’ll have to do. Guard ‘The Extinction’ with your life,” he said. “You have just one chance to lay waste. Think of our kind and what we can build here. Shirley is the perfect host.”
Broque stood abruptly to leave, and I joined him, but my beverage caused the watercolor clouds to shift. He caught my arm as I felt something slippery hit my cheek. We watched in slow motion and gasped in unison as it crashed against the concrete, spilling my one shot at this.
My aqua, saucer-shaped eyes met his, void as night, as I uttered my favorite human expletive, “fuck!”
The sun instantly went out. An alarm blared. My skipping heart was dunked in bile.
“Aza, next time make sure the elastic is tight enough to hold,” Xam said, reduced to a brassy voice in my earpiece. “We may need a smaller wig for that tiny head of yours. Solid, Broque, but more confidence for the next one. There won’t be second chances for the real thing.”
I tore the skin from my natural form and yanked the itchy locks, tossing them aside. I downed the rest of the foreign amber liquid, stars circling, hoping it would help me dream. Tomorrow’s dry run would have to be just that.
