by submission | Mar 17, 2021 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“How did you think it would be?”
I dunna know… softer focus, less light, warmer.
“Yeah. That’s the expectation. But really, how many times have our expectations ever been met especially since our brain-to-brain bonding?”
“I know. The B2B briefings didn’t even come close! At least all the surprises I had were good ones. Yeah, the chip sets hurt a lot more going in than I thought but I got used to it. So worth it. You were the best Alfie. I couldn’t imagine life without you… I guess that’s the point of all this huh?”
“I suppose it is, Virgil.”
“Yuck! Do you have to call me that? You haven’t called me that in years. Vern please.”
“Consider it one last good-natured dig. Besides how you ever got Vern from Virgil… one mystery I’ll never get to know.”
“So should I then call you ‘dawgie’ and say ‘good boy’ out loud and watch your tail thump uncontrollably and giggle in my head, you know, like I used to before my side of the bonding took?”
“Oh, I really didn’t mind that too much. I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on that.”
“I did. But I caught the undercurrent of embarrassment too, and since we are swapping last digs…”
“Uncle! I surrender.”
“We’ll call this one a draw.”
“Great way to end things.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t have been half the man I was without you Alfie.”
“No. Don’t say that. You were never half anything. With or without me you would have been just as decent a human being that ever graced this planet. There’s not a mean bone in your body. Your compassion is legendary among my tribe. They were all jealous of us. You made me proud. Everyday you made me proud.”
“Alfie, you’re crying.”
“Shut-up, I wasn’t finished. The fact you are coming with me to the Bridge proves it. My tribe expects to go when you all pass, but me and cancer… and you coming with me. I can’t, I…
“It’s OK Alfie, I love you too.”
“I know but, I mean, come on! You could stay. You’ve got years left.”
“Oh, and be like Scotty? ‘Member what happened after his companion had to be put down? All of us at the Park, Scotty walkin’ over, smiling, waving, all normal-like, and then BLAM! Brains and bone everywhere. I still can’t get that one out of my head. No. I’m not gonna go like Scotty.”
“You’re stronger than Scotty! You could build another life, get another companion.”
“Shame on you Alfie. Bad dog.”
“Not funny Vern.”
“Sorry buddy. Couldn’t resist the opening.”
“Tch! Now you’re one up on me.”
“I’ve never been one up on you Alfie.”
“I’m feeling it now. The pain is gone. Hey, the pain is gone!”
“Yeah, I can feel you. That’s my Alfie.”
“Too bad we can’t hop the table and go do some frisbee. (Sigh) Yeah, we got other places to go.”
“Alfie, I can see the tunnel. Like the brochure said.”
“Yeah, I can see it too! Hey, I can see you too Vern. You look like my tribe!”
“I can see you too Alfie. You look my tribe.”
“Really? Two legs and all that?”
“Yup. Pretty cool eh?
“Way cool. Oh wow! Feels so good to move without pain. Come on! Let’s go! Catch up my man!
“Easy boy, I’m right beside you.”
“As it should be.”
“As it always will be.”
by submission | Mar 16, 2021 | Story |
Author: David Henson
When I was a kid, a couple buddies stomped on ant hills and bet baseball cards on who could sizzle the most bugs with their magnifying glasses. I didn’t play. Oh, I wanted to. But I didn’t have a magnifying glass. Sometimes you do the right thing for the wrong reason.
I’m reminded of the smoking ants as I spin the giant wheel. Sparks fly like comets as the pins scrape the pointer. The audience is silent but for a few whimpers. “Ninety-seven,” I call out. Everyone checks the number glowing on their neighbor’s forehead.
“It’s her,” a man says, pointing to the woman sitting next to him.
“No,” the woman says. “He’s number ninety-seven. Not me.”
They usually try something like that. It never works. The aliens are monitoring the game from … wherever they are.
A disembodied voice claims the winning number 97. The aliens speak our language with an accent that makes each word impossible to understand. Yet when they stop talking, you know what they’ve said.
I don’t know what the alien holding number 97 wins, but I know what the woman loses. She begins to sweat. Smoke wisps from her, then billows. Finally she bursts into fire, screaming and contorting. The flaming dance. The dancing flames. How can we know the one from the other? I’m so numb from all I’ve seen, I don’t even look away.
A voice tells me to spin again. A man’s number is up. A little girl, who looks to be about my son’s age, clings to the man till a woman pulls her away just in time. The man doesn’t even scream. I think he’s trying to not upset the girl. It doesn’t work. This time I turn my head.
Sometimes the aliens give everyone the same number. I spin and spin till a voice says “Jackpot!” I’m allowed to take cover backstage. The aliens don’t intend for me to die by fire. Then a new audience is marched in by armed humans. As with me, their families are being held hostage.
Occasionally the payout is massive. My spins are beamed to screens in packed arenas around the world. Thousands, maybe millions, are sent to their deaths, and an alien becomes rich beyond their wildest dreams. Kind of like our super lottos before the invasion.
Why was I chosen to spin the wheel? Because a number I didn’t even know I had came up when a different wheel was spun. Why not spin the wheel themselves or use a random number generator? And why bother explaining things to me when I’m little more than an ant to them? It’s all part of their game. They want me to understand the full horror of what I’m doing. They even told me why they burn people whose numbers I spin. So the aliens can bet on the decibels and milliseconds — as in how loud the humans scream and how long it takes for the first flame to erupt.
I’m instructed to spin again. As I reach for the wheel I feel my arm rub against the holstered handgun the aliens gave me. They’re wagering on how long I last before I use it on myself. None of them will be winning that bet anytime soon because if I kill myself what use will my wife and son be to them? So I keep spinning and people keep burning. Sometimes you do the wrong thing for the right reason.
by submission | Mar 14, 2021 | Story |
Author: Christopher DePree
The probe was named Starchip. This marvel of miniaturization contained cameras, a battery and processors, and only weighed a few grams. Several of the wealthiest people on Earth had funded the tiny trillion-dollar spacecraft whose ambitious task was to sail to the nearest star.
On the Vernal Equinox of 2030, it was accelerated to 20% of the speed of light with the focused energy of an enormous laser on the surface of Earth. Rolling brownouts in Florida almost scuttled the launch. It would take 21 years to travel to Proxima Centauri, and 4 years for the first images to come back. The Green Bank Telescope would receive the signals.
Starchip was one light year away when the first radio signal reached the Green Bank Telescope in 2036. Its signal carried an image of the Sun seen from interstellar space, one tiny point among thousands. In the press release images, the Sun was circled in blue for emphasis. India and China were at war.
In 2048, when the second signal reached Earth, the miniature probe was 3 light years away from the Sun. It sent an image of Proxima Centauri, its target. The US had collapsed into smaller nation states, and West Virginia was part of the Appalachian Coalition. The Green Bank Telescope could no longer steer. Most of its internal electronics had been scavenged. Bullet holes dotted the 110-meter dish.
The first radio waves bearing images of an ocean-covered planet orbiting Proxima Centauri from Starchip washed over the campfire-dotted mountains of West Virginia in 2055. The Green Bank Telescope lay partially collapsed, its supporting beams jutting like the stripped ribs of a great beast.
by submission | Mar 13, 2021 | Story |
Author: Gorilla Sapiens
“You know, not everyone here, is… mortal?”, she said, as she sat down next to me.
A wedding feast, the ornate cake had been cut, the waitstaff had cleared away the tables, the DJ had played “their song”, the bride and groom had shared the first dance, the dancers now crowded the floor, and I? I…? I rested on a cheap plastic chair, on the sidelines.
“It seems to me then, that more than one of us here, is a god.”, I replied, factually. “Do you watch them, as I do, their brief lives moving in staged progression from birth to death, intersected with periods of love, horror, fascination, sadness, disgust, gladness, despair, enlightenment, and discovery? Or do you think of them as playthings, like the other gods?”, my eyes narrowed, “Take care in your response, it will color my reactions.”
“I think,” she paused, looking up at them… “that they are beautiful.”
And I will never forget her eternal smile, as I rose with purpose for the first time in a thousand years, “PREACHER!”, I roared, “YOU HAVE ANOTHER WEDDING TO PERFORM TONIGHT!”
by submission | Mar 12, 2021 | Story |
Author: Christopher Bresnahan
David clings to his notifier, its screen illuminating the unshaven shape of his face with implosive, blue light. He can flit to any camera screen in the world, and out of the millions of options he chose the Vishnick Ophthalmology Center.
8:32 am, and Dr. Laura Vishnick begins with a 25 milligram dose of sedative for the patient as well as eyeball analgesic.
The camera is adjusted to capture a top-down view of the patient’s eye, which stares at the light above it like some lantern-obsessed fly. David draws closer to the notifier so that his nose is pressed against the glass. For two weeks he has studied Robert Langston’s case of cortical cataracts from the confines of his apartment, and now the surgery has finally begun.
And Dr. Vishnick has made the initial incision: 6mm long, 0.3mm deep, with an AAO certified scalpel. Now for capsulorhexis, as she inserts forceps into the anterior capsule of the lens.
A grin reveals David’s plaque-plagued canines as he watches the spider fang instruments cut into Langston’s eyeball.
“Turn your volume down.”
David ignores the voice in the apartment: his girlfriend. Her elongated, yellow fingernails swipe at the notifier, attempting to adjust the volume herself. He hisses and pushes her away. She crawls to the opposite corner of the apartment and crouches over her own notifier, a carpet of unkempt hair hiding her face.
He returns to the screen. The doctor breaks the cataract into fragments, shattering the clouded veil over the eye. David’s trembling hands convulse the screen. He emits strange, erratic laughter with each savage swipe of the scalpel.
The doctor rotates the forceps to break the cataract free from the lens.
David wriggles into a dance, hunched over on the balls of his feet. A stifled, primal dance, moving his body as if he’s pulling a key out of a jammed lock. He is frustrated, excited, euphoric, and queasy, but he doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t even notice; emotions pass through him like light through a window.
Dr. Vishnick irrigates the eye to reduce any swelling or lingering pain, and the procedure is finished.
A dilated pupil is all that remains, unblinking. It stares, absorbing the light shining above it, experiencing a reality no longer contorted by superficial distractions. Enlightenment. Then, the reality that has consumed David’s mind for two weeks vanishes to black: the transmission ends.
He exhales, then recoils from the stale stench of his breath. He slips his notifier into his pocket and stretches his hands, which feel odd without that familiar square of metal between them. He combs his hair with his fingers. He walks over to his girlfriend, Rachel, to apologize, but she slithers out of his embrace, entranced by a transmission.
He opens the sole window of their apartment and is flooded with the fertile scent of spring. The wind orders the hairs along his arm to stand, and the birds outside beckon him. He decides to go for a walk, to feel the rays of the sun seep into his skin once again.
The notifier rings as he ties his shoelaces: breaking news. He opens it instinctually and sees the International Auto Racing transmission. Helicopter footage of the race track, a red car mangled on the side of the road, a toxic plume of smoke billowing out of it. There hasn’t been an accident this terrible in at least ten years, he realizes. It’s fresh; the ambulances haven’t even arrived yet. He hunches over the machine and turns up the volume.
