by submission | Oct 1, 2021 | Story |
Author: Shannon O’Connor
We met at a Star Trek convention in New York. I was dressed as Worf; she wasn’t dressed up, but she was wearing a Quark T-shirt, and she looked out of place.
“Have you ever been to a convention before?” I asked her.
“No English,” she said.
“What do you speak?”
“Deutsche.”
I didn’t know any German.
“Vjljathl!” I said.
She smiled. “Vjljatlh!”
We continued speaking in Klingon. It was the best day of my life.
Her name was Greta and she was a study abroad student. She looked up words in her English dictionary, but we liked speaking Klingon better because it’s a powerful language. She told me it’s a lot like German, people speak vehemently, emphasizing what they want to say. We decided English lacks strength that Klingon has.
We moved in together after six months. We watched Star Trek every night before we went to bed. She liked sex the Klingon way, and it was difficult to keep up with her, but I did my best.
There were some strange things about Greta. She didn’t like to eat American food all the time, sometimes she liked to eat worms that she dug up in Central Park. I asked her if that’s what they did in Germany, and she said in Germany things were different, and they ate live animals. I had never heard of that custom in Germany, I thought they ate sausages and drank beer. She said she and her Klingon-loving boyfriend ate live worms and bugs back home. She didn’t tell me if everyone else did such a thing.
And she could fight! One day a woman gave her strange looks when we were out at a bar, and she took out a bat she carried in her backpack and hit her with it over the head. I had to pull her away, but the woman screamed that she was going to sue her, so we ran out of the bar.
“Those pussies know nothing of honor!” Greta screamed in Klingon. “She would sue me because she cannot defend herself. Coward!”
“I agree.” I thought Greta might take the Klingon culture a little too seriously. I wanted to explain to her that we didn’t live in the Star Trek universe, but I wasn’t sure how she would react. I didn’t want her to think I didn’t have any honor.
Greta, with all her strange habits, was irresistible, but I had a feeling something terrible was going to happen.
“This is it,” she said. “I’m going home.”
“Are you going back to Germany?”
“No, stupid, I’m going to Kronos, the Klingon homeworld.”
“But that’s not real, Greta.”
“Why don’t you think it’s real? This is our culture, our passion. Don’t you have any honor?”
“Of course, I have honor, but sweetie, it’s only a TV show.”
“That’s what you think. It’s time for me to leave.”
“But how are you going to get there?”
“I will be energized, and then I’ll get to the ship! Do you think the ship is actually going to land here?”
“Greta, I think you need help.”
“I don’t need your help anymore. I’ve learned all there is to learn. Thank you for everything.”
She stood straight up. A light beamed on her, and she disappeared.
“But how could this be true?”
I thought it was a joke. She couldn’t be gone.
Was she Klingon, or was she crazy? Greta disappeared in a beam of light, and I knew I would never forget her.
by submission | Sep 30, 2021 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
Unlike what most people were used to seeing, the “Squirmers” were nothing like us. To begin with, though about our size, they were horizontal, flexible, and a deep murky grey, with tufts of neon green fur. They had twelve eyes and a mouth like a sideways S, and they were generalist omnivores. Originating far outside our system, they were adapted to a relatively temperate, high-gravity super-Earth. And they came to our terrene orb on unique vessels shaped like spirals, designed entirely to their form and build. Instead of seats, they had tubes. Instead of controls for five-fingered hands, they had ergonomic panels and smart screens for four hooked forelimbs.
The “Squirmers’s” purpose for visiting was much like our reasons for searching for new asteroids, planets, and stars: curiosity, exploration, habitats, resources, self-preservation, etc. What was really intriguing was that, unlike many who were petrified by or repulsed at the sight of the “Squirmers,” they were fascinated by and fond of the lanky, upright, walking reeds they found in our corner of the cosmos. Indeed, from the point of view of the “Squirmers,” human beings were adorable and cute looking, like pirouetting larva infants and babies.
Communicating with the “Squirmers” was initially difficult and sometimes impossible. Not having arms, bodies, and mouths like ours, they gestured completely differently, and also not having vocal cords or hearing organs, they “spoke” and “listened” by signal odors, which smelled like uprooted grass weed. They had a writing system resembling blotches, but it was actually a series of abstract pictures, each representing a full sentence, whose senses and tenses depended on context. Needless to say, without a spoken equivalent, the script was and remains extremely hard to learn.
Not surprisingly, there was much misunderstanding after the “Squirmers” landed. Many people thought they were witless, though their technology belied the misperception. Nevertheless, despite the hostility the “Squirmers” faced in the beginning, they were benign. As a highly monistic species, they also did not worry about individual death. Revealingly, when the first alienist hate crimes against them occurred, the “Squirmers” literally did nothing, yet twenty-eight of their own had been mutilated and eviscerated. By their philosophical traditions, the living and the dead were a single mode of appearing and not clearly distinguished stages of corporeal existence.
The “Squirmers” certainly cherished life, of course, and strove to preserve their sentience in the violent, indifferent expanse, but mortality itself was never a source of heart sickness to them, in their ten hearts. Their lifespan was significantly long by human standards—five hundred and twelve years—and to be sure, the whole landing party that originally came was composed of some of the most venerable “Squirmers” around. However, physically, distinctions in age between grown “Squirmers” were not obvious, even among themselves. They could naturally slow down their aging process, and they had accelerated healing abilities as well.
So after coming in their spiral-shaped vessels, the “Squirmers” spent seven years introducing themselves around our world and establishing foreign missions for diplomatic relations, friendship exchanges, and inter-system trade. A full thirty years was needed for most people to get used to the “Squirmers,” but already in the ninth year after the arrival, the new generation did not see what the previous problem was about, and in fact, several kids wanted to be “Squirmers,” too.
The culture war between the old and the young seethed for a while, and today, there are still some rogue individuals and groups who revile the “Squirmers.” All the same, even though they look nothing at all like us, they never showed us any malice or harm over fifty-six years, so we last-remaining twenty-first-centurians may as well learn to accept their differences, as they accepted ours.
by submission | Sep 29, 2021 | Story |
Author: Peter Tittle
It was understandable, really. By far, most of the crime— 97% in fact—was committed by men. Prisons are expensive to build and maintain. Prisoners are also expensive—they don’t work while they’re in prison, so we have to support them. Then there’s the expense of the police forces and courts that get them there. And the emergency services that take care of all the gunshot wounds, the knife slashes, the broken jaws…
She pushed. And pushed. The hospital room was white and sterile. The attending doctor said something to the assisting nurse from time to time, but things seemed to be progressing normally. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t excruciatingly painful.
Her husband mopped the sweat off her brow, and encouraged, and reassured.
“And push again,” the doctor said.
“It better be a girl,” she grunted as she pushed again when the wave of pain struck her.
“Don’t worry about that now, honey” her husband said. “Just focus, you’re doing good…”
Then there’s all the environmental stuff. All those beer cans, empty cigarette packs, fast food cartons—most of the litter along the highways was put there by men. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What are they driving on those highways? Big cars and pick-up trucks. Gas-guzzlers with high emissions. And the companies that dump toxic waste, and clear cut forests, and dam river systems…? All run by men.
“But I want a girl,” she cried. With exhaustion. With worry.
“Oh come now,” the nurse said. “Boys are harder, I know, had two of ‘em myself. Holy terrors half the time, but you love ‘em just the same.”
“Another push— ”
The insurance companies opened the door when they implemented higher premiums for men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six. They were the ones more likely to cause an accident. Can’t argue with the facts and figures.
“No, it’s not that,” she gasped, “It’s the money.”
“Shh, honey, we’ll find a way, it’ll be all right,” he wiped her brow again.
“One more, I think—”
She gave one final push then fell back against the pillows, drenched, exhausted. She waited anxiously for the announcement.
“It’s a boy!”
They called it the Gender Responsibility Tax— a $5,000 surtax was levied on each and every male. Payable annually, from birth. By the parents, of course, until the boy reached manhood.
(Thanks to June Stephenson. It was her idea.)
by submission | Sep 26, 2021 | Story |
Author: Jason Graff
I was a child, asleep in a patchwork oxygen tent when he first appeared. Since I’d slept through it, my first encounter with him was in my imagination fueled as it often was by the ramblings of the others who shared the apartment with my family. He came out of the sky, people said. He came from Earth, they thought. He’d been sent to take us all back, save us; they were certain.
The first time I saw him was several years later. Despite his failure to do anything to improve our lives, he retained a messianic aura. It was thought to be an auspicious sign to actually see him in the, well, I guess it could be called flesh. Wandering an alley searching for a signal burst, I heard a noise from above. There he teetered several stories above my head, feeding on a metal blast cap while walking a copper wire between buildings — a monstrously oversized acrobat. Following behind him, the small army of rats that he’d amassed since his arrival formed an unbroken chain.
I was on a patch job for the city when I came face to face with him. He wore a Hazsuit that looked newer and more advanced than the ones still seen hanging in people’s closets, reminders of the ruined world our kind had to leave. Not only rats but pigeons and stray cats were gathered around him. He was affixing what I took to be some sort of tracking device to each one.
The number of stray animals soon began to diminish. It reached the point that the black market became unaffordable. My stomach grumbled and growled as it did everyone’s but I didn’t say a word about what I’d seen. The simple act of survival had made us all rumor mongers. No one else was really talking about him by then.
The growing scarcity of strays grew more and more apparent. I figured the government was trying to thin out our numbers again by starving us. Yet, I still said nothing about my encounter, not that it would’ve made any difference. He’d come here to do a job and no one I knew would’ve been able to stop him.
By the time he finally caught up with me, I was weak from hunger. A stinging rain was falling that morning. My threadbare shirt had melted to my skin. He was above me, perched on a street lamp. He put a collar on me not unlike those I’d witnessed him putting on the stray animals. You’re not going home, he said, but to serve a higher purpose.
I next found myself in a holding tank with a number of others, many even thinner and more wasted away than me. Some cried out or moaned into the din but most of us kept silent. Gradually the collar tightened around my neck as shocks pulsed through me. I could smell my own flesh frying. I kicked out, my legs moving independent of me. The collar tightened against every motion I attempted to make. My body was no longer my own. Then, I fell into a paralyzed state.
When the animals were let through the gate into the tank, they began to feed indiscriminately. The rats fed in packs. While the pigeons pecked on people here and there, showing no sense of urgency. Only the cats showed any discrimination, plopping themselves down and sniffing at people. All I could do was close my eyes and wait my turn.
by submission | Sep 25, 2021 | Story |
Author: Andrew Dunn
Araceli’s stars sparkled like diamonds in a patchwork piece of sky, ringed by the edge of the caldera that towered over the city. Jennifer had a story about why she wanted that sky, and Araceli’s stars, inked into her skin, droplet after droplet of ink. Araceli absorbed Jennifer’s story as she freshened a palette of colors and maneuvered her machine-needle over Jennifer’s arm, while keeping a watchful eye on the window. At that hour patrolling orcs often bored of the bars and clubs where humans drank and danced. When orcs did, they ventured down alleys to enforce the Shadow Prophet’s edicts against magic.
The magic in the stars Araceli crafted was strong in ways she never felt as a child of human and elven bloodlines. Her life straddled two worlds, two divergent cultures – she was inexorably wedded to both, but she felt the way human eyes studied her cerulean skin with suspicion, and the way the elven spoke in ancient tongues Araceli had never learned when the elven worried her humanoid ears were spying on them.
Somehow, Araceli managed to apprentice under an elder who helped channel her duality – human instincts and elven magic – into a potent force she later learned to hide. Overhead, goblins in zeppelins were touring skies clothed in thick, industrial smoke, tending to ember-colored crystals and glass lenses to find evidence of forbidden magic. Araceli kept her trade quiet, and vetted each customer meticulously.
Jennifer checked out. She said she’d found an oracle’s voice on a radio for sale in a dwarven pawn shop. The oracle’s voice was sandwiched between the daily recitation of the Shadow Prophet’s dissertations delivered by some schlub of an acolyte, and dance tracks that hadn’t changed in generations. The dwarf sitting behind the counter snarled as Jennifer turned the radio’s dial back and forth to find the oracle’s voice. Listening to that voice carried a death sentence, but Jennifer didn’t back down. Instead, she took in every word the oracle said no matter how loudly the dwarf protested. Araceli had seen it all – hacking into the pawn shop’s security system was easy, and it was no problem to find archived audio-video footage that matched Jennifer’s story.
“I need your stars,” Jennifer begged Araceli, “but I don’t have a dime to my name.”
Araceli didn’t need money to ink her work into Jennifer’s flesh. Jennifer had listened to the oracle. That meant there was a chance she could take what the oracle told her, and wield the magic Araceli lent her in stars to drop goblins in their zeppelins out of the sky. If that happened, there could be more in the city that had never felt strong before, but would when they saw those zeppelins fall from the sky. If so, maybe they would rise up and run orcs out of the ghetto and then pull the Shadow Prophet down off his throne.
