by submission | Dec 8, 2021 | Story |
Author: Martin Barker
The morning sun creeps above the horizon in a sulphurous ochre sky. My spacesuit shields me from the radiation but eventually this desolate, wasted, planet will claim my bones for dust. I miss blue skies and birdsong.
Our mission to Mars was supposed to mark a new beginning for the Human race. We were to establish a community, exploit the vast underground lakes we discovered on our last mission, set up the biospheres, lay down roots. I spent three years preparing in a specially designed bunker in the Nevada Desert, learning how to survive in the most hostile of environments. Events on Earth gave our work an urgency.
The long predicted climate catastrophe was playing havoc across all continents. The droughts in Africa were driving mass emigration on an unprecedented scale. Europe had just endured the longest and coldest winter on record, with large parts of Greece, Spain and Southern Italy spending months under snow. North America suffered a third successive year of extensive wildfires and devastating hurricanes, Asia’s food crops were blighted by disease. It was estimated that half the world population no longer had access to clean water. All things considered, all of us on the Mars mission were glad to get away.
Once we had arrived on the red planet our work went extremely well. We were a team of twenty, from seven different nations, selected for our skills in construction, engineering and agriculture. Within a year, through selfless endeavour and the most cordial co-operation, we had established a fully functioning and amicable community. It was different back on Earth.
As the global climate crisis deepened the superpowers flexed their muscles. Proxy wars escalated, fuelled by food and water shortages, exacerbated by a collapse of the world economy. We followed the news with mounting horror as the first nuclear missiles were fired. China had invaded India, Europe was at war with America. My companions were keen to return to their loved ones, I was the only one reluctant to make the journey home, not having family to worry about.
Isolated and alone, I spent my days searching through the satellite channels for news, reception became ever more erratic as war escalated. I saw images of vast cities around the world being laid to waste in the nuclear holocaust, entire countries disappearing in fire and flame, of oceans dying from biological warfare and nuclear fallout. I wish I hadn’t returned. I’d come back to Earth with the others, back to Nevada, and stayed here, at the bunker, when everyone else left. I’ve heard nothing from the outside world for nearly five months, my air supply is almost exhausted.
The morning sun creeps above the horizon in a sulphurous ochre sky. My spacesuit shields me from the radiation but eventually this desolate, wasted, planet will claim my bones for dust. I miss blue skies and birdsong.
by submission | Dec 5, 2021 | Story |
Author: majoki
Arvidas stared at his radar screen trying to see the clearest path through. But the Kessler Run was Scylla and Charybdis resurrected in space. Unspeakable horror. And no way out without terrible loss.
Still, that was Arvidas’s job. His lot. To pilot the crew through knowing they were going to take hits. Maybe enough to kill them all.
Less than ten years ago, there was no Kessler Run. There were just launches. Still risky, but not ridiculously so. Rockets and satellites went up in droves to blanket the earth with connectivity and convenience. An all-encompassing orbital network: an ethernet for real.
All great. Until it wasn’t.
Until terror and sabotage and the exponential collateral damage satellite warfare produced turned low earth and geosynchronous orbital space into a hypersonic shrapnel cloud. Knives and daggers from horizon to horizon. The ablation cascade of space debris that NASA scientist Donald Kessler in the late 1970s theorized could render spaceflight from earth nearly impossible became harsh reality.
The Kessler Run. A zillion-headed metal monster circling the earth.
And Arvidas was facing it in T-minus ten minutes. He had that much time to plot any last minute changes to the launch plan. Their rocket had been hardened with additional shielding, and their flight suits were reinforced with Kevlar, but even micro particles traveling 17,000 miles an hour could do devastating damage to the ship or crew. And the odds were not good.
His co-pilot Teliva kept telling him the potential number of hits the ship would take and what that would mean for their survival. But survival mattered less to Arvidas than success.
Their ship had to get through. It had supplies for the moon base. It held all hope for humanity not being marooned on Earth for generations.
Yes, human avarice and hubris had made voyages to other worlds much more perilous. Yes, it was a self-inflicted wound. But that did not mean we couldn’t recover and move forward. That’s what this was really about. Moving forward.
To Arvidas, that was the only flight plan that mattered. One small step in front of the other. Even when mankind took giant leaps backward. It was sink or swim in this new ocean of space debris we’d created. These new monsters we had to face. Arvidas was for diving deep back in and taming the new beasts.
“Are we go?” Teliva asked at T-minus sixty seconds.
“We’ve gotta go. Even if we’re goners in sixty seconds.”
Teliva nodded. “I can tell you the odds of that…”
“Let’s just beat ‘em. The damn odds. Our damn beasts,” Arvidas cut in. “Let’s be that one in a million.” He initiated the final launch sequence.
Even gods are wary of the odds. High in orbit, Scylla and Charybdis feasted on Arvidas.
by submission | Dec 4, 2021 | Story |
Author: Lance J. Mushung
I stayed on my feet while waiting in a beige room. The Boves hadn’t provided any chairs for a human, and didn’t use chairs themselves.
I’d been waiting almost half an hour when the First Assistant to the Chief Herd Leader walked in. She stopped in front of me, but said nothing. Like all of her species, she resembled a small bovine, except for having green and gray scales and two arms.
I said, “Good morning, First Assistant.”
“It is not so good for you, Erik Conrad. The Chief Herd Leader has rejected the proposal. We will not increase production of our drug for the Avians. It would change our agriculture and economy.”
“As I have often explained, the drug will help another sentient species.”
“The drug is for an Avian food animal, not the Avians themselves.”
She turned and walked away.
Aloof and uncooperative described Boves, but I’d been optimistic. The deal benefited everyone. Paying the Boves a high price for the drug was still over 100 times cheaper for GalaxMed than synthesizing it for the Avians.
I gritted my teeth and left before I created a diplomatic incident. Novara had landed nearby and could have me off the planet in minutes.
From high orbit, the viewer in Novara’s control compartment displayed an attractive blue and white ball. The Boves had a pleasant Earthlike world, but I wouldn’t miss them.
I recorded a brief message for the Avians. They wouldn’t like it. It said the Boves would not sell GalaxMed the drug and that I’d remain in orbit for one Avian day in case they had any ideas.
Novara launched a courier drone to deliver the message. The Avian home planet was only one hop away and the Director of Husbandry would receive it in minutes.
While I composed a detailed report for GalaxMed, a klaxon announced a large Einstein-Rosen bridge opening nearby. An indigo-colored ovoid came out of it. Twenty ships the size of Novara would have fit in the ovoid with room to spare. Novara identified it as an Avian heavy destroyer with the translated name Talon.
The idea of gun boat diplomacy hadn’t occurred to me.
Talon’s captain requested an audio-only comm. I accepted and said, “I’m Erik Conrad.”
“I know. I am Captain Flint Eyes in command of Talon. I will persuade the Boves to accept your deal.”
“I didn’t expect such a quick response, or a warship. You realize they have nothing that can do more than singe your ship’s paint?”
“Yes.”
Flint Eyes cut the comm. Avians seldom spoke much.
Novara put the tactical display on the viewer. Talon maneuvered to a Bove comm satellite in geosynchronous orbit. She stopped within a klick of it and began broadcasting vid, which Novara played on the viewer.
The vid showed the satellite floating over the planet for about 15 seconds. It looked like a dull silver box covered with antennas. Then, in an instant, it disappeared. Novara reported that Talon’s weapons had turned the satellite into little more than gas and small bits of debris.
Flint Eyes next broadcast a brief blunt statement. “The Chief Herd Leader has 15 human minutes to accept the GalaxMed proposal before I take firmer action.”
The First Assistant contacted me 12 minutes later and said, “Erik Conrad, the Chief Herd Leader requests you return to finalize the arrangement.”
When I stepped into the beige room, the First Assistant was waiting and I had a chair.
by submission | Dec 3, 2021 | Story |
Author: Xiaochen Su
Wolfgang wiped off dripping sweat from his forehead as the bell rang across the factory to signal the end of the working day. Thus marks the end of Day 153,168 at work, just another busy day repairing industrial equipment, like many days before and many more to come.
Wolfgang doesn’t feel particularly tired. Despite being over 500 years old, he feels like he still has the energy of a 20-year-old. Or so he thinks, if he can still recall what it was really like when he was still 20. It has been too long. Maybe he is glamorizing a youth that he hasn’t experienced for centuries.
But Wolfgang does feel bored. He knows that the state’s decision to invest in continuing his life by centuries shows his skills remain valuable. But no matter how many machines he repairs in the name of helping his country, he cannot help but feel that he is becoming just like the machines he is fixing, a tool to get things done, not a unique individual to be cherished.
His endlessly continuing life has made him numb to human emotions. Too many family members and friends, of less value to the state, are allowed to die of natural causes, as humans normally did before the advent of manmade immortality. Watching them age and perish has made Wolfgang unwilling to open up to a new crop of humans in his midst. What’s the point, he wondered, if he will just outlive them all?
He is not even interested in making friends with the new crop of humans anyways. It isn’t just that conversations are difficult with those with much less life experience than him. Most of the youngsters these days are just so lacking in ambition. They know that the skilled jobs will go to the immortals who have been doing the same thing for centuries. So why try hard? They’d rather enjoy the fruits of the immortals’ labor and skills, going through a regular life of growing up and getting old.
Wolfgang doesn’t blame the passive attitude of today’s youngsters. If he was born after the age of immortality, he too would have just given up on his studies and enjoyed life to the maximum. It sure beats having the government dictate that the sole purpose of your still being alive is to provide your skills for an eternity while new generations don’t even see the need to take over from you.
As his life grew longer and longer, he became less and less in control of it. Fellow immortals have tried to kill themselves, only to be brought back to life. The state stipulated that they are just too valuable to die, and medical technology is too advanced for any grisly means of death to be fatal. Wolfgang has already resigned to his fate, knowing that he cannot die even if he tried.
“See you tomorrow, Wolfgang.” A coworker blurted out as they both walked out of the factory’s front door. See you tomorrow indeed, Wolfgang thought, and the days after that, until the end of human civilization.
by submission | Dec 1, 2021 | Story |
Author: Emma M.Murray
The sound of the zipper closing echoes around my pristine kitchen. I notice, not for the fist time, how eerily quiet our home is. My opulent floor to ceiling windows, overlooking the Atlantic, lack any real substance… or fingerprints.
“Did ya remember the Merlot?” Tom shouts in. He has meticulously packed the jeep with everything we need for our camping trip.
“We’ll drink it watching the sunset on the ridge, it’ll be spectacular.”
I have no doubt that it will.
It always is.
But there’s always something missing.
“Tom… I’m thirty-nine next month, don’t you think it’s time…” I can’t even finish the sentence.
“Oh not this again! Look at how great our lives are! We said we’d wait.”
“I know, I know,” even though I really didn’t know when I’d agreed to that.
“I’m just afraid, I’m getting older…”
“Don’t worry about that, you’re fit and healthy… let’s go!”
Dismissing the conversation, and my unimportant feelings.
We begin our hike to The Poisoned Glen from the valley below.
A botched translation of our mother tongue turning heavenly to poisoned, in days gone by.
He walks ahead of me.
I pause momentarily, absorbing the beauty of our surroundings.
Lowering my shoulders.
“You OK?” he calls back, observing my reflection.
“Just taking a break.”
He retreats to where I’m rooted.
Encircled by miles of lush greens and towering mountains.
Pops of yellow ragwort scatter the countryside, like sprinkles of sunshine.
“Why do you need a break? They’re new boots! They were expensive!” he declares.
Constantly judging…
Never letting me just…breath.
“C’mon, I want to pitch before dusk.”
Persistently nudging…
Head down, I trek behind, following his footsteps.
Wondering if I’ve always been her.
The ‘yes dear, no dear, anything you want dear’ kinda girl.
Standing on the summit, I see a rocky plateau jutting out from the face of the mountain.
This is the spot.
Slowly we descend the treacherous terrain.
Scree loosens beneath us with every step.
Without warning he loses his balance.
Cruel arms flail helplessly as he falls.
His head strikes a rock, hard.
Coming to an abrupt halt.
Instinctively I run to him…
One look, diminishes my concern, and cements my inferiority.
He’s OK.
We pitch the tent, through stubborn dizziness and a pounding headache.
The sun throws a kaleidoscope of oranges and reds across the sky.
A fire’s seemingly indistinguishable flames.
The pain in his head intensifies.
I pour the wine, convincing him it will help.
Knowing it won’t…
I watch as the flames turn to dancing embers.
He lies down behind me.
Unearthly gasps ring out.
He judders, knocking the wine from it’s flimsy plastic glass.
I watch as the red liquid forms a pool of betrayal at my feet.
Moments pass before the air stills.
An unknowing darkness creeps in, quietly enveloping me.
I look to the night sky, for a glimmer of hope? A twinkling of redemption?
Grey clouds conceal my fate.
I don’t need to touch him to know he’s cold.
…but he always has been.
