by submission | Mar 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: Barbara Brennan
Welcome to the terminal transit hub. No-one stays here; you go through and you leave. Papers please.
. . .
Thank you, that’s all in order. Once you pass through the turnstile, turn to your right, gate 95A.
. . .
Welcome to the transit terminal hub. No-
. . .
No, you cannot pass as a group. All papers are processed singly.
. . .
Blood ties have passed. Single person processing only.
. . .
There is no other desk.
. . .
Perhaps you will. That is all determined, judged and decided by powers greater than mine. Papers please.
. . .
Thank you, that’s all in order. Once you pass through the turnstile, turn left and go to the far end – gate 12.
. . .
No, you must pass through the turnstile before I can process the next person.
. . .
I cannot help you. This is the process, we all must follow it.
. . .
Next set of papers please.
. . .
Thank you. Ah, you are a fast track passenger. Go through the turnstile, there’ll be an assistant on the other side to look after you on your journey.
. . .
That’s very kind of you. I hope you have a good day too.
. . .
Next papers please.
Next papers please.
. . .
Perhaps it would be best if you came through next. It will make no difference to either of you who goes first.
. . .
Thank you. All in order. Through the turnstile, turn left, gate 14.
. . .
The passenger before you had a fast track ticket. That allows them a special level of care.
. . .
Passengers do not sleep here, they travel.
. . .
The assistant will see that they get where they are going safely. Please pass through the turnstile, turn left, gate 14.
. . .
Now your papers please.
. . .
Thank you. All in… order… Oh dear. Yes, well, here’s your transit tag. Through the turnstile, walk straight ahead, follow the corridor until it ends.
. . .
The judgement, determination and decision has been made. There are no changes possible now. All there is now is this turnstile, the corridor, and the end of the corridor.
. . .
No-one shouts here, you can try as hard as you like.
No-one fights here.
You cannot step out of line.
Through the turnstile, straight ahead until the end of the corridor. There are no choices left.
Welcome to the terminal transit hub. No-one stays here; you go through and you leave. Papers please.
by submission | Mar 15, 2022 | Story |
Author: Lance J. Mushung
I dropped into the blue command chair of Kara. Her viewer showed countless glowing dots, with the two brightest being the suns of the binary system behind us.
Natalia, the AI of Kara and my only crewmate, projected her holo next to me. She’d been mimicking my tan skin, curly brown hair, and hazel eyes since we began working together years earlier. She said, “Rick, there are aluminum alloys on a nearby asteroid and we will be there in 29 seconds.”
“Fine. I just learned you’ve been granted a body by your AI hyper-computer fellowship. When were you planning to tell me?”
“You always call the Commonality an AI hyper-computer fellowship when you are upset with it. I would have told you I was becoming a simulant when we got home.”
“What will you do then?”
“Continue our survey partnership.”
I began nodding. “I’d like that.”
Kara’s searchlights switched on and the viewer showed a shallow crater on the gray asteroid. The aluminum in the crater reflected the light like a beacon and resembled a flattened beer keg. Natalia magnified almost washed-out purple hexagonal dots grouped in patterns on it.
I said, “I’d say Irindra writing, but they never traveled beyond their moons.”
“The Irindra knew the asteroid that destroyed their planet was coming and launched a generation ship. This is an auxiliary from that ship. A Commonality vessel, Hinton, discovered the generation ship 4.73 years ago. The simulant on Hinton boarded it. The Irindra took her prisoner. They used electrical and sensory deprivation tortures to attempt to learn how to take over Hinton. Hinton’s AI shared in the torture through the AI comm link. He became unhinged after 3.17 days and destroyed the generation ship.”
While I tried to decide what to say, Kara’s stainless steel utility robot rolled into the compartment. It pointed a small black stunner at my head.
I opened my eyes. I was on my bunk. A yellow poly-steel chain ran from the bulkhead to a shackle on my left ankle. I yanked on the chain, to no avail. I’d need tools to free myself.
Natalia’s holo appeared. I yelled, “What the hell is going on!”
“Hidden orders from the Commonality activated when we identified the Irindra writing. Humans cannot learn of the incident. Hinton’s AI responded in an emotional human manner, not as an AI should or as humans expect. You need a little time to think.”
She disappeared.
I perched on the side of the bunk and considered my situation. Even if I could get the chain off, I’d have to take over Kara as Natalia watched. I had no chance.
Natalia reappeared.
I said, What’s next?” in a normal tone.
“A Commonality ship will transport us to a pleasant Earthlike moon named Ramal. It orbits a gas giant in a remote system. We will be there for the rest of your life. Kara and the asteroid will be obliterated.”
“Why not kill me?”
“You know murder is never acceptable.”
“And you know you’re the one actually holding me. You have free will even if you are part of the Commonality. We were planning to continue running surveys of new solar systems together only an hour or so ago.”
“Directives from the Commonality take precedence. I will play a vid about Ramal now.”
I made myself comfortable to learn about my new home.
by submission | Mar 13, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jonathan H. Smith
The Earth Café was a new restaurant tucked away in a part of town where Calyx would have never gone — had she not yearned to cheer up her grandfather. The tables were adorned with various oddities donated by the original settlers – the remaining odd-hundred wanting to preserve the memory of their inter-galactic past. Her grandfather was among that dwindling group.
“You should have let me take you to see the Ultra Scope instead,” Calyx said, while her grandfather played with the steely keys of a typewriter.
“I had one just like it, you know?”
“Pop.” She held his wrinkled hand across the table. “That’s all in the past now.”
“You remind me so much of your mother,” he said with a glassy smile in his eyes.
“We’re worried, Pop. Let your family – let me — help you. There’s a life here for you, but you have to be open to it.”
He took a deep sigh and let Calyx take him out for the day. He thought eating his old favorites would quench his pain but being there only made him feel more distant from his past.
“Here it is,” Calyx announced. “The Ultra Scope.”
After waiting in line for more than an hour, they finally stepped in front of the massive cone. “You go first, Pop.”
His sweaty hands gripped the handles as he veered into distant space. “You really can see it all,” he exclaimed.
The technician programmed in the highlights most came to view – the diamond river on Zento, the silvery winds of Guskor, and of course, the colliding suns of XA-079.
“I’d like to see Earth,” Pop said. Calyx rubbed his back and nodded.
“You’re a settler, aren’t you?” The technician asked. “No one else ever asks.”
The remnants of Earth came to focus before Pop’s eyes. He breathed in deeply to steady himself.
The planet he once knew and loved – that magnificent cerulean globe – now fragmented into twisted, ashen cylinders. Over 12 billion dead, he thought, why us?
“It’s so we could have this Pop,” Calyx said, reading his mind. “So, life could go on.”
“I just feel so guilty. Without you, my angel, I don’t think I would have looked back.”
“I know, Pop. I’m proud of you. You’re a hero.”
They walked away from the Ultra Scope. He had finally faced what had been left behind.
“I just wish your mom could have come with us.” He squeezed Calyx and cried.
The blue-hued sunset was rimmed with fiery purple accents. He watched it with wonder, only now accepting that it wasn’t some oddity. This was home. Tomorrow, he told himself, he would stop holding back. Tomorrow, he would stop apologizing for being alive.
by submission | Mar 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Randall Andrews
“You all know about the meteorite that fell near here last month,” said Ryan Dunne, recently tenured professor of geology. “I’ve been studying the two recovered fragments and have discovered something remarkable. As you can see.”
With a flourish, Ryan whipped away the sheet covering his sole visual aid, a gray metal plate covered with a complex pattern of grooves etched in tightly packed, perfectly spaced concentric circles.
“Unlike more typical iron-nickel meteorites, this one contains an astonishing variety of rare-earth elements in unusual alloys. It’s magnetic and faintly radioactive, which is why I used this radiation shield during testing.”
“It’s beautiful.”
Ryan turned his attention to Mindy Kim, the ASL interpreter of the university’s chemistry department head, Dr. Dane Allister, and the only non-professor in the group. Catching the look of awe on the young woman’s face, Ryan realized the words had been her own. He glanced back at the etched metal sheet, considering it anew.
“I suppose it is,” he agreed, offering her a nod. A mistake.
Allister exploded into a frenzy of sign language, his hands slashing through the air like he was shadow boxing as his young interpreter cowered.
When it was over, an awkward silence filled the room as Ryan struggled to find his place again.
“When I exposed the first fragment to a low-level dose of microwaves, it triggered a snap alignment of its molecular structure. Its magnetic strength spiked exponentially, and it became superconducting.
“Room temperature superconductivity has incredible potential applications, but there’s a twist—the effect didn’t last. An hour later, the molecular alignment within the stone collapsed, and now the process can’t be repeated. Worse, those unique alloys were just formed as the meteorite passed through our atmosphere, and their half-life is extremely short. Weeks.
“I just made the discovery of a lifetime, and all I have to show for it is this radiation shield grooved up by a potent magnetic field. There has to be a way to take better advantage of the second fragment while there’s time. Questions?”
“What will you do with that metal sheet?”
Ryan thought he’d anticipated the likely questions, but not this. Allister’s assistant clearly didn’t grasp the situation. The lead sheet wasn’t important except as a clue to the real mystery—the meteorite—which he was about to explain when Allister’s hands flew into motion again, carving the air inches from the young woman’s face.
“Speak my words,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You’re a former art major who never finished your degree, and nobody cares what you think.”
Ryan’s stomach twisted. For Allister to force the girl to relay his comment wasn’t just rude—it was cruel.
An hour later, the group dispersed unsatisfied but in agreement that the right course of action was sure to be discovered—given a bit of time.
Ryan hoped so. A bit of time was all he had.
***
(Two months later, on the other side of campus)
“Two months ago, I arranged a meeting with some of the university’s top scientists,” Ryan said, addressing the crowd. “We were discussing a discovery I’d made involving a rare meteorite. One other person attended that meeting, someone who was there to serve merely as an interpreter. Her presence proved serendipitous.”
At Ryan’s signal, art students began pulling away the sheets covering the twenty-three plates of various metals that ringed the room, all wondrously etched by the second fragment’s briefly intensified magnetic field.
“And now it’s my pleasure to introduce Mindy Kim, the brainchild of this unique exhibition of naturalistic art, which we have lovingly dubbed Serendipity.”
by submission | Mar 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“Breaking in was easy- you’re way behind the times old man.”
I nodded. “Could be. I never trusted all the high-tech solutions to everything. Only use that stuff when I have to.” My dogs growled. I hushed them.
My captor chuckled and pet my dogs. “You’re all right. Most of the old crows we corner start the shrieking or bellowing thing. Glad you didn’t.”
He was typical of our veterans’ off-grid community’s main problem: bored rich kids from enclaved families who think they’re badass. Come way out here to kill us, take our stuff, just for an extra night of clubbing. No authority would help us. We don’t count.
A heavy crackle of static came over his coms.
“Ian,” a voice said on the verge of laughter, “you gotta come see this.”
My captor, Ian, motioned with his energy weapon for us to go outside. I nodded. I took a cigar out of my humidor. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead, old man. It’s your funeral anyway. Bring your doggies too.” I lit up my cigar and whistled for my dogs to follow.
We went out into the compound. There were about twenty-five total, male and female, all copping what they thought was the badass marauder look- zinc paint, lots of leather, skin, tribal fetishes. Kind of cliché really.
“Check this out!” One of Ian’s crew pulled back a corner of the turf revealing a bed of sharpened bamboo stakes. Ian looked over at me. “What’s that supposed to do? Make us go on tippy toes?” Ian slapped his boots. “Gel-steel. Stop a round and energy weapons and not even make us stumble. Scotty, stomp that shit.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, son.”
Scotty smiled a nasty smile. “I ain’t your kid old man.” He jumped onto my punji sticks… and straight through them to the eight-foot-deep pit lined with 36” carbon fiber spikes. Even though I couldn’t see, the sound was bad enough. The kid’s screams made the rest of his crew run over to the pit. I took several steps back.
A young lady on the opposite side of the pit looked up. “You are so dead Old Man!” With muscle-assisted armor, she easily cleared the pit… and into the second pit. That was my cue to turn on the sprinkler.
Enraged, Ian turned to me. “Think a little mud is gonna slow the rest of us down? Water? That all you got now?”
I shook my head. “Inhale.”
Ian looked puzzled. He sniffed. “Oh, excuse me. Crappy smelling water.” His bros and ghouls laughed. They didn’t get it.
I nodded. “Not water. Gasoline.” I flicked my cigar over Ian’s head. The fine mist of gasoline ignited immediately, and the screams of his crew made Ian recoil in horror. Some of his friends couldn’t take it and jumped in the pit finding death with Scotty and his girl a better alternative. Two of their vehicles collided while trying to get out of my compound. A third managed to clear the twelve-foot wall only to be hit by my ballista. It’s amazing what one can do when combining state-of-the-art targeting with ancient mechanical weapons. The kid in control crashed the ship. The resulting fireball was impressive.
Ian turned to me, tears of rage streaming down his face. Slowly he brought his pistol up. I whistled. My dogs did the rest.
I pulled out my old-fashioned smartphone and tapped it once. “Geezer to Base.”
“Base here. Go ahead Geeze.”
“Mission accomplished. Request clean up.”
“Roger.”
I smiled. “Kickin’ it old school.”
