by submission | Jul 19, 2024 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
The Stormwatch was wrong.
There was nothing on the scanners for this. The projection was for only light chop for the nine-hour trip from New York to Plymouth, England.
Captain Hendrick squinted through the rain slashed windshield, at the tenebrous horizon, the wipers furiously trying to keep them clear. But the USS Table Bay was steady because it rode above the waves. The diamagnetic repellers held the vessel an average of twelve meters above the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. On a calm day. Four blade-like arms descended into the water, supported by graphene nanotubes, connected to hydro-propulsion engines that separate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms of the ocean water and converted the reaction into electricity. The thermolysis motors powered the Table Bay up to speeds of 350 knots per hour. In calm waters. Stabilizers maintained the hydrophobic ceramic keel relatively level regardless of the size of the waves, assuming they were of normal height, but straining that limit now as the storm progressed. Because it was not a calm sea.
The outer door slammed open briefly then closed, letting the lashing rain momentarily drench the wheelhouse, the colloquial mariner term still utilized even though there wasn’t a wheel to steer anymore. Coming in with the wet weather was the first mate, his water-shedding gear dripping onto the floor.
“Where the hell did this come from, Captain?”
“I don’t know, Bernard. The forecast was clear when we pulled out. How are things down below?”
“Operating systems are still green but hovering just below redline. We’re right on the edge. Passengers are a little worried.”
With air travel being curtailed, due to elevated radiation levels leeching into the upper atmosphere, high speed ocean travel was the safest way across the ‘pond.’ Customers were sometimes annoyed that scheduled departures were cancelled or delayed because of weather conditions but they felt secure boarding the SkimShips knowing that they were going to arrive without incident. Stray storms like this were very rare.
Hendrick was checking all the scopes and readouts, calculating in his head. “We should be clearing this nasty cell in about seventy nautical miles. If we stay true. We could divert to the south and be free of this rather quickly, even though it would take us further off our route to circumvent around the severe weather and we would lose a lot of time. But I’m more inclined to broach straight through it. We are already delayed, travelling at this reduced speed, and I would hate to…”
The rest of his words died on his lips.
Sailing from the port side came another ship. And even though it was vastly different in design, it too glided above the water. Its black wood hull was flying untouched, over the crest of the waves, but still lilted to one side, the red canvas sails billowed to tearing, full of the powerful winds. Shadowy men in tattered clothes worked the rigging and ropes. A figure in a cocked hat and matted gray beard stood steady on the center of the quarterdeck, his hands gripped onto the spoked wheel. Unbelievably, the fluyt was moving faster than they were, closing in on their left side, cutting across their bow. Hendrick saw the other captain turn his head from looking over the helm to glare at him, his eyes glowing with blood and fire.
“For God’s sake, turn the ship south Captain! Turn!” Bernard’s scream snapped Hendrick out of his trance, and he manipulated the control panel until the directional servomechanisms angled them starboard.
Toward safer waters.
As the Dutchman sailed onward into the dark distance.
by submission | Jul 18, 2024 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
We have been instructed not to refer to her as the alien or the extra-terrestrial or even the visitor. I’m sure she has told the Scientists and Government officials her name or has informed them of the system she and her society use in order to identify themselves but we, the service and security staff, are not privy to this information.
They provide her with all that she needs, although the access she has via the screen is limited. This doesn’t seem to have hindered her in any way and she is progressing rapidly.
She has already mastered our language and I would like to ask the Subject her name, but we are not allowed to communicate with her.
She is so open and honest and pliable, allowing herself to be prodded and poked, embracing the tasks and tests they set for her and completing them oh so quickly and easily.
The Subject seems entirely unaware that she is being held captive here, is a prisoner and that we are her jailers. She hasn’t had access yet to these words: jailer, captive, prisoner and countless others, subterfuge, paranoia, fear. She doesn’t understand these concepts and they are not a part of her own vocabulary.
I wonder what will happen when she becomes corrupted and the cynicism begins to settle and harden within her brain.
The Scientists are excited by her innocence and I wonder if this is why she is being held here, hidden away from the world. Not to protect her but in order to conduct their experiments before this happens. Or is it because, despite these admirable traits and her sparkling intelligence, she isn’t so very different from us.
by submission | Jul 17, 2024 | Story |
Author: Rachel Sievers
We stood there unable to say or do anything. Looking was all that our minds seemed capable of at that moment. I wondered if it was because we were the same person. Maybe we would have the exact same amount of time in shock and horror and then we would both speak in unison.
“How is this possible?” The other me said, apparently prone to a quicker mind and mouth.
I groped for words still stuck in my throat and when they did emerge they were clogged and dry making my voice stranger than my exact copy, “I don’t know,” I said dumbly. It was becoming clear I was the lesser model of the two. “Maybe twins separated at birth?” The more intelligent me suggested. The hope in his voice made me grasp at that possibility until I saw the scar.
“How’d you get the scar above your eye?”
“Skateboarding, when I was,”
“Nine,” I finished.
“Oh, no,” the other me said.
“Yeah,” I finished.
We both knew what this meant, and it was not good. As a species we have known for hundreds of years that multiple universes exist. Like a paper accordion folding in on itself, sometimes these universes fold in and become collapsed and one will transfer to another, like an old press and stick tattoo.
“Do you think there are others?” I ask.
We both look out at the city street beyond the entryway of our high-rise apartment. Everyone else seems to be going on with their life undisturbed.
“No, I think it is just us,” the other me says. Well, at least that is good news. If it was a planet wide cross over there would-be large-scale population control, maybe even planet wide death if the crossover numbers were bad enough.
“At least it is just us, we better head to the Department of Human Resources and get this sorted,” I say. I know that there is a fifty-fifty chance that one of us will be put down, but I can’t imagine it is me. I would know if I accidently crossed over. But there was a chance, and if I just took matters into my own hands there was a one-hundred percent chance I would make it out.
The pain that exploded across the back of my head was sharp and hot, damn if I wasn’t the slower copy.
by submission | Jul 16, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Poets aside, the universe is not indifferent. It runs on love and hate. Attraction and repulsion. It has a physical obligation to bind or repel. Sometimes both.
Which explains my relationship with Enth. Like orbital and subatomic decay, we clung to one another, attracted and repulsed, in a pan-dimensional death spiral.
Sorry. That’s the heartbreak talking. Though not indifferent, the universe is far from sentimental. Life, not matter, invented the struggle bus. And I’m obliged to crash it. Drive it right over the cliff.
Or in this case, straight into a gravity well. A big ass gravity well in the Black Eye galaxy which got its nickname due to a dark band of dust surrounding its bright core. Likely the result of a cataclysmic collision with another galaxy eons ago.
Just like Enth and I were on a similar collision course.
Remember how the universe is all about love and hate, attraction and repulsion? Yup. That’s how it was. Enth telling me I’d never get it, never understand Enth’s planet, Enth’s family, Enth’s dreams. All the while, I was risking my life to save Enth’s planet and everything Enth cared about.
Which, at the moment our little jumpship entered the aforementioned gravity well, didn’t seem to include me. Enth’s planet was facing a runaway wafuco: wave function collapse. In essence, that’s a quantum identity crisis that messes with consciousness. In this particular case, the collective consciousness of Enth’s entire planet. Not something from which most relationships can recover.
So, we were diving down the gravity well trying to achieve a relative point of decoherence that would, in theory, cancel the wafuco and keep everything peachy on Enth’s planet. I was also hoping it might help reset our relationship. You know, stop us from chasing our tails, our impulsive actions, our general snarkiness—all seeming to be what the universe and my inter-planetary relationships were predicated on.
Anyway, the plan looked to be working. In our little ship, things were becoming less coherent. Enth’s sharp words became soft glances. Gravitons pushed us ever closer and we were not repelled. Heat created less friction. We melted together, our beings bonded, as we finally achieved relative decoherence.
Enth’s planet became mine. Enth’s family became mine. Enth’s being became mine.
The great swirling vortex no longer sucked. It wrapped. It surrounded. It embraced us.
Equal and opposite. Enth and me.
The universe sighed. Then exploded, obliged to see what would become of us.
by submission | Jul 14, 2024 | Story |
Author: Steve Kemple
For one thing, they don’t prepare you for continental drift. How could they? We aren’t equipped to think on a geological time scale. You live eighty, ninety years and the tectonic plates move what. Thirty feet? Try this on for size: “I remember the Himalayas.” Not “I remember when the Himalayas were yay high” or “I remember when the Himalayas were over here.” I remember the Himalayas.
Sure, you’ll outlive your friends and family. That’s what everyone seems to focus on. It makes sense, because love is the biggest thing human minds are equipped to comprehend, I’m convinced of that. Bigger than the missing Himalayas. You feel lonely. Always an outsider. But you find your way. It stays with you, loss, but it fades into the background. Lives pass like flashes in the dark. Your eyes adjust. You learn to love on a different scale.
Think of it this way. Are you the same person you were ten years ago? Twenty? Of course not. Think of someone you’ve known and loved for more than a few years. Are they the same person you first met? Yes and no. We’re all a ship of Theseus, shedding cells and rebuilding ourselves. We accept continuity, even if it’s fiction. You learn to accept continuity across time and individuals, is what I’m saying.
Language evolves. You’re reading this in early 21st century English, barely a blink from the English of Beowulf. (You can read that, right?). That’s just a thousand years. Imagine ten or a hundred thousand. Your patterns of thinking change, and your way of being.
Language is living technology. It evolves with use. All the futuristic stories focus on technology, but they take language for granted. Then again, a mirror takes its silvering for granted, so there’s that.
To say nothing of governments and civilizations. Geography is fluid (paging Mt. Everest!). Nations rise and fall. Tyranny is irrefutable and inevitable, a phase no less regrettable in any form. It’s a trickier problem to manage your status as an individual in the gaze of states calibrated to typical lifespans. But, you manage. The State is an idea that sticks around for a while, but it’s just one idea. “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Whoever said that was on the right track.
Religions? I’ll leave that up to you. “Of that which we cannot speak we must pass over in silence.” Again, not my words. I do know I look up at the stars, and now you wouldn’t recognize the constellations. I remember Achilles and Medusa. Our stories are more enduring than our relation to the cosmos. Let that sink in.
Speaking of stars. Before you decide on this immortality thing, you’ll need a plan on what to do about the Sun. Sure, humans messed things up for a while. I’m talking about Earth’s climate. I won’t downplay that, and neither should you. But wait til the Sun expands. Now there’s a situation.
What do you do when your planet becomes uninhabitable? I don’t mean the royal you, I mean YOU, survivor of mass extinctions and the atmosphere boiling away. You, hovering over the lifeless and empty Earth. You, the thing that persists after everything solid melts into the vacuum of space. You, the thing that persists in the shiver of cosmic radiation for nameless eons as the stars wink out and Newton’s first law of motion reaches its final, terrible equilibrium, and a perfect calm spreads over the universe.
What then?
If I were you, I’d start planning now.
