by submission | Aug 19, 2021 | Story |
Author: Joe Prosit
I didn’t do much, really.
Well, I learned some German.
Sorry. Ich lerne Deutsch. See?
And I learned some Karate too.
Well, not Karate. Kendo.
I kind of had to do that because of the Time Nazis.
And I suppose you could say that’s why I learned German too.
Sorry. Deutsch. Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch.
See, I wanted to learn Karate but…
Kendo uses swords,
and with all the Nazis coming through the Time Portal,
Sorry. Die Zeittür,
With all the Time Nazis coming through the Zeittür I needed swords.
Sorry. A katana and wakizashi, and the years of kendo training needed to weld them.
See, the Zeittür goes both ways, and I figured my trip to ancient highland Japan and the harsh tutelage under Master Masamana Yojibo, learning to dance the Ashi Sabaki, and the months spent in his mountain forge birthing my blades from raw ore and shaping them into the gleaming teeth of revenge I needed to right all the wrongs that had beset my city since the Zeittür appeared was time well spent.
And the German lessons.
I mean, Ich lerne Deutsch und ich lerne die Klinge.
But really, those things didn’t happen this summer. That was years in the past.
See, the only way the Nazis could escape their fates on the dusk of the Second World War,
Was to escape the timeline all together. And when they emerged through the Zeittür,
Filed hard from years of a failed war, full of the kind of hate that fuels genocides,
Strung out and desperate for meth, leaderless and displaced,
They came ready… fertig… for a fight.
I wasn’t.
Fertig.
That means “ready.” I wasn’t ready.
Didn’t even know what they were screaming when they stormed through the city,
Waving their guns, executing families randomly in the street,
Executing my family in the street,
And saying something to me,
I didn’t know what,
When they shot my mother and father but let me go.
Some of the first words I picked up?
Dein Vater und deine Mutter.
My father and mother.
I learned others.
Out of spite.
And I learned weapons other than the gun.
Because guns didn’t work for me. Zu schnell und billig.
Entschuldigung. Too quick and cheap.
I wanted them to know my words,
I wanted them to see my face,
When I killed them.
So I went through the Zeittür,
And when I realized what it was, I took full advantage of it.
Ich lerne Deutsch. Ich lerne die Klinge. Ich suche Rache.
Days learning German.
Weeks traveling.
Months forging my blades.
Years spent training. Getting ready.
But, wirklich, that wasn’t this summer. That was back in time.
This summer? I came back to this summer just before the Zeittür opened.
And I waited for them.
When they came through, still covered in the dust of their bombed-out city,
Still running in fear, still bloodied and drug-addled and strung out,
The first thing they saw was me and my blades.
The only thing they heard was mein Deutsch.
Kommt, mein Shatz.
Kommt mit mich und ich zeige dir deine Zukunft.
Ich werde dir den Tod zeigen.
Ich bin fertig.
It only took a few minuten.
I spent most of my summer just laying around.
Not doing much, wirklich.
Besides killing Time Nazis?
The rest was pretty…
Sheiße.
by submission | Aug 18, 2021 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
The hyoum had left after his four-and-a half-year visitation. He had not been entirely satisfied, though in the beginning, he had a broadly favorable impression.
Disembarking on the southwestern region of Otoa, he had appreciated its warmth and the colorful suns, which he believed would heal his physical and internal pains. He did not know why he was ailing, even with prescriptions, for he maintained a generally healthy diet, and he regularly exercised.
But the pace of life on the sphere, while a welcomed change, was increasingly too sedate and monotonous for him, being one who had lived and worked all his years on fast-paced, super-city worlds. Otoa, despite its normal size as a habitable planet, was rather like a widespread small town, something out of a bygone age, though Otoa had been a member of the United Interstellar Territories for almost two centuries.
Surely, a hundred and sixty-eight years was enough time to catch up with modernity, he once thought. However, the reality proved otherwise.
The Otoans were a communal, outwardly decent, hierarchical population of hexapoids, divided into two caste-like classes of monitors and workers, something like Old Planet ants, termites, and bees, but not quite. After all, the Otoans, despite appearances, were self-conscious, rational, and deliberative, yet they reasoned and emoted in manners unfamiliar to him in spite of his many travels.
A few individual Otoans were approachable, even if briefly, but they were mostly unremarkable. They accepted duties as they were and never openly questioned routines. And they worked in allotted, designated roles with intense specialization. Indeed, outside specific tasks, the Otoans had difficulty generalizing, and they usually did not know what others were doing.
When the hyoum had concerns and spoke, they became panicked. When he sought reasons, they responded in circles. When he maintained principles, they thought he was indifferent. Yet, for all the divergences, the Otoans never terminated his visitation, but renewed his obligations every year for the full duration of his invited training lectures.
Might it have been better to have left after a year? he contemplated twenty-four months after experiencing the conceptual chasm separating the Otoans and himself.
To his discontentment, and despite his credentials as an educationist and a poet on four UIT territories, the Otoans regarded him as plain, or so his Otoan monitor spontaneously articulated in a gurgle, with its flat beak, carapace plates, and segmented form. What a bizarre place, he thought. Not knowing what else to do, he decided to make expressions of goodwill and maintain consistent actions, which, to his perplexity, seemed to drive his monitor and a handful of Otoans a bit mad.
The other hyoums on Otoa, a small grey tribe who had made home there two to three generations ago, hobnobbed under the multicolored suns, assuring him, “It’s not a bad place,” and, “They will take your side.” Did the tribe really know, or had they grown comfortable living with hexapoid partners on an isolated, provincial world?
The term limit was nearing, and another hyoum urged him to apply for a renewal, even if for one year. The prospect was somber, but after a month, he messaged his Otoan monitor with a pro forma expression of interest, and the hexapoid referred him to Otoan workers. The visitation ended seven months later as scheduled, and he was fortunate his health had improved in the final year. Discreetly, he departed, taking an assignment off world, which he had planned two years in advance, and sent gifts of gratitude to one neighborly Otoan and seven of the old hyoums.
Overlooking glassy waters and the panorama of a super-city world revolving on the shoulder of Sagittarius, he breathed in deeply … and exhaled.
by submission | Aug 15, 2021 | Story |
Author: Amy Dusto
Excerpts from the Times-Gazette daily puzzle, September 5, 2061
7 down, 5 letters
-A writhing, flying group of insects or nanobots
(Hint: together they’re like a friendly cloud that eats carbon! Be assured they don’t bite people, though.)
28 across, 11 letters
-A fundamental principle of particle observation
(Hint: the gut feeling one has just before turning on a brand-new technology that, once going, will be hard to stop.)
15 down, 6 letters
-Nonzero possibility
(Hint: some might even say this was our last one, as a species. So cut us a break?)
40 across, 5 letters
-Where the billionaires fled to
(Hint: they deserve a vacuum, don’t they?)
13 down, 4 letters
-Where the rest of us are stuck
(Hint: Starts with an h… oh, come on, there’s a less pessimistic option! “Stuck” is really a state of mind!)
Solution: Please contact Drs. Morena-Huber and Carvell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration if you have one. Unhelpful messages will be deleted without response.
by submission | Aug 14, 2021 | Story |
Author: Michael Dempsey
Peter, standing in the bathroom, heard a voice crackle over the intercom. “Mr. Walker, you have five minutes to leave your apartment. If you go on your own volition, you can remain free. If you do not, we will forcibly arrest you and take you to the authorities.”
Peter froze. Who was that? What was she talking about? He rinsed his hands and looked up at the bathroom mirror. He smiled, and wished that his smile was more symmetrical. It had always bothered him. He tried smiling again, but it didn’t improve.
The voice from the intercom spoke again. “Four minutes and thirty seconds.”
This is crazy, Peter thought. I haven’t done anything. He started pacing around his studio apartment. Someone had said that walking was good for thinking, so Peter walked when trying to concentrate.
“Four minutes.”
Peter tried to think of his worst moments. There was a time that he had pulled a chair out from under a classmate in elementary school. She ended up breaking her wrist. His shoulders tensed as he remembered it.
He stopped in front of the living room mirror and smiled. He shook his head at how uneven the smile still was and resumed walking.
What else? Just last week he had taken credit for someone else’s work. A colleague of his said they should start a subscription service with monthly billing and make it complicated to unsubscribe. The department head couldn’t hear her so Peter repeated the idea. The boss thought it was Peter’s suggestion and loved it. Peter was embarrassed about the confusion but was happy that the boss was pleased with him.
“Three minutes.”
Peter kept pacing. He noticed some grime on the floor and wondered when he had last mopped. Months, probably. He was disappointed in himself. His mom had always kept the floors clean when he was a kid. The last time he had seen her was three months before she died. She talked about how cute he had been as a boy, especially when he played Superman in the treehouse. She told him how much she loved being his mother. He just nodded and smiled, wondering how his smile looked.
Peter stopped in front of the mirror again and asked himself why he didn’t tell her how it felt to be her son. He was surprised to see a tear roll down his cheek.
He turned to the closet and packed a small bag with a few sets of clothes. He walked out as he heard the voice from the intercom say, “One minute.”
A woman wearing all white greeted him in the lobby. “Mr. Walker, thank you for complying. This was just a drill. You may return to your room.”
Peter shook his head. “You were right, I’m guilty. I always have been. Take me wherever you like.” Behind the woman was a large mirror. Peter smiled and looked at his reflection as the woman led him outside. Better, he thought, as he kept smiling.
by submission | Aug 13, 2021 | Story |
Author: Ryan Watson
853 is a rather unremarkable number. It is the approximate weight of a male grizzly bear in pounds. A sloth will travel at approximately 853 feet in an hour. It marked a central year of the Danish Viking raids of Europe, resulting in a Swedish Viking raid reply.
Robert Mattheson knew none of these things however.
Robert Mattheson was doing laundry in the basement of his Minnesotan home when a stuck pant leg, caught at the bottom of the basin, had him lean forward overtop of the machine.
It was simply bad luck that at 8:53 pm Robert Mattheson found himself tumbling through the hatch and into the past.
Robert Mattheson was not a scientist; he had not been previously experimenting with time travel. Neither was he an engineer, making untested changes to his washer. He was an accountant. Just a man dealing with an extraordinarily uncommon occurrence in the confines of his laundry room.
One might imagine that the act of traveling backwards through the stream of time would be a dramatic experience, but it is not. One minute Robert was tugging gently at the hem of his work pants and the next he had found himself falling flat on his back on the grassy floor of a Red Cedar Forest.
“This is certainly strange,” Robert thought from the ground. He checked his watch, finding the time to now be 8:54, and stood up. He looked around, confused at his sudden change of scenery. Still holding the wet trousers that had miraculously accompanied him on his journey, he wondered how it came to be that he was now in the woods.
Robert had no way to know that he had not travelled any distance whatsoever, that he was, geographically speaking, exactly where he had been standing 1400 years in the future. But he also had no way to know, or reason to suspect that he had travelled into the past. It simply made more sense to believe he had had an episode, and lost track of the previous day. He had never had an episode before, but to him this must be what one must be.
Draping his damp pants over his shoulder, Robert set off into the woods in the direction he believed to be his home. He would never make it back, and was subsequently fired from his firm for his sudden and continued absence.
