by submission | Oct 7, 2020 | Story |
Author: Samuel Stapleton
For a long time, we have dreamed of finding our next home planet. And yes, we know the probability is that it’s out there already, but you see it’s finding them that’s the difficult part. I mean have you seen how big space is? No, you haven’t, because it’s literally, unimaginably big. Stupid big. So we came up with a better plan. We would build our next home planet.
It’s really not that complicated. Collect lots of debris and space gas containing the elemental composition you need. Do some mathematical simulations, ensure the initial bang will mimic a supernova, and then wait! The natural physical laws of the universe take care of the rest (as they tend to do in solar system formation). Then all that’s left is to, well, zoop the ingredients to an empty section of space and start the process. With a really big, bang. Bam, a nebula is born and a star or stars and other planets will form like clockwork. We’ve done it many times now.
Of course, we don’t have the time to wait around for them to form, but then again time is relative. A few superlight speed trips around the edge of the known universe and then bang, 10 billion years feels like a nap, and our solar system is done cooling!
We came back to a wonderful outcome this time. Incredibly ideal, even Goldilocks would be impressed. Everything had glued itself down into a nice little solar system. There was a main-sequence star, stable, good mass, a nice mix of terrestrial and jovian planets…with atmospheres (score – it’s more work if you have to make the planet’s atmosphere too) and some cute little moons to boot! We were ecstatic.
Only one problem. We came back just a little later than optimal. Honestly, we missed the perfect time window by about…15 million years or so. One blip. An iota. But in that little time span, a significant amount of life formed and advanced. The problem is that…they’re highly intelligent. An entire civilization. We’ve been watching them. And we honestly don’t know what to do. There’s almost 8 billion of them. We can’t wipe them out. That would be immoral. But we’re not sure they would accept us, and let us live along beside them. They are still so young and unaware.
We are running low on power, time, and materials. We could try the re-creation again. But this planet…it’s better than a dream. How can we possibly let it go and still save ourselves? This place they call Earth. Our next home. It’s almost a dream come true, if it weren’t for you.
by submission | Oct 6, 2020 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
Justin clenched hist fists, then slowly unfurled his fingers. “See, the little finger of my right-hand sticks; it’s not as flexible, as quick, as my other fingers. These gloves are no good to me if one finger lags.”
The technician stared down at his tablet, rapidly entering data with his stylus. He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Looks like your warranty has just expired. Sorry—but we can either take those gloves on discounted trade for new ones, or we can send them back to the factory for custom repair. Which will be expensive. I suggest the trade-in option.”
“Naturally.” Justin crossed his arms to tamp down his rising frustration. “Listen, I’m a working composer and I need functioning gloves—I don’t have time for repairs. Trade these busted gloves in for a pittance towards a new pair? Yeah, that sounds like a great deal, all I have to do is mortgage my piano to pay for it.” Justin turned on and stormed out.
Once home, he peeled off his gloves, and threw himself down on the sofa, looked around his tiny townhouse—what could he sell to raise money? How could he compose when his glove was busted? For the first time, he regretted buying the things. The technology behind them was brilliant, he admitted—slip on a pair of sheer, clingy smart gloves, merely think of your melodies, your harmonies, your chord progressions—and viola! your fingers danced over the keys (or strings) before you! You didn’t even have to know how to play the instrument! And the gloves recorded the music, as well, then uploaded it to your personal account in the ether.
The downside? Now everybody and their dog was a composer. Some of these ‘dabblers,’ as he called them, were good enough to compete with him for work, threatening his livelihood. How dare they! In a sudden decision, he called his cousin Morey—who was a bit shady, but would have a notion as to how to raise some quick cash.
“Yeah, Cuz, I can connect you with a guy who’s looking for a piano player at his club in Vegas—”
Vegas! Justin sniffed to himself, that white trash paradise! He took a deep, calming breath. “Okay, hook me up.”
* * *
“You start tonight,” the sweaty man in a tuxedo two sizes too small said. “Put these on.” He slapped a pair of scarlet gloves onto the bar between them.
Justin pulled them on. “I’ve not seen gloves like this before.”
“That’s because they’re, ah, custom made.”
Justin shuddered. The tuxedoed man chuckled, “Sting, don’t they?”
Justin pulled at the fingers on one hand, trying to get the glove off. “Nuh-uh, won’t happen,” the man pointed out, “not until you’re through working for me. Now, get over to that baby grand. Tonight I want to hear the great love songs of the 1970s.”
Justin sat down on the padded bench and raised his hands—which were immediately yanked down to the keyboard as if by a great magnet. He scowled. “I don’t know any love songs from the ’70s, so why don’t I—”
But he was interrupted by the movement of his own fingers gliding over the keys, playing a voluptuous version of Captain and Tennille’s “Muskrat Love.”
“Atta boy!” the tuxedoed man chortled, looming behind Justin. “Ya know, including tips, you’ll earn enough money for them fancy composer gloves in about, oh,” he straightened his back, stuck an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth, and scanned his half-full nightclub, “ten years.”
by submission | Oct 4, 2020 | Story |
Author: Joseph Sidari
“Is that a Shih-Tzu?” She reached down and petted the puppy.
It sniffed her hand, looking up with intelligent eyes.
“Kind of a mix,” he said.
“Oh, right. So many genetically engineered breeds these days. Maybe a Shih-poo?”
“No. That’s Shih-Tzu bred with a poodle.”
“Or a Shorkie?”
“No. That’s with a Yorkie,” he said. “For this pup, we spliced in human DNA.”
“Ha!”
“No, seriously. We recovered it from a seventeenth-century poet. It’s a Shih-Speare.”
“You must be kidding.” She laughed. “Will you have it write plays?”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Sonnets first. But if those sell…”
by submission | Oct 3, 2020 | Story |
Author: Bryan Pastor
Far from the city center, where the lights are so dim that stars can be seen, lies a rare view, a stand of trees. The trees, of which kind had long been forgotten, poked their yearning branches high above the squat gray monotony of the surrounding tenements, tendrils of living fire that suggested life could thrive, even among the concrete and asphalt.
To the locals, the trees were a source of great civic pride. The sheltering branches provided everything they needed. During the summer, it was a cool place to gather. In the winter, it was the setting for great snowball fights. Regardless of the time a day, people could be found, meeting, discussing, playing cards or chess. As heated as any discourse may have run, always, always it was followed by a handshake or a pat on the back. Not the least amount of romances began beneath the gentle boughs; the trees heard many voices whisper sweet nothings, though not a single tree was blemished by initials carved in a moment of passion. Under the trees was where people gathered when one among them passed. The trees were the heart and soul of the community.
“What took you so long, where’s your crew?” barked the dark-haired man in the blue suit, despite the sun being hidden by the surrounding building, he wore sunglasses.
“No crew.” The foreman announced, holding his hands up.
“What do you mean no crew?”
“None of the locals are willing to do the work. Say the trees done belong to anyone.”
“They belong to me.” The man in the suit barked back. “I have a deed right here that says so.”
He stomped around for a few minutes.
“Fine get a crew from out of town.”
“No can do.” The foreman replied. “The union rep told me he would make our lives very difficult if we tried to go around him.”
“Get me a chainsaw. I will do it myself.”
The foreman retrieved a chainsaw and a can of gas. The man in the suit snatched it from him and skulked off into the trees.
The moment he stepped beneath the swaying leaves the noise of the outside world faded to silence. A car passed on the street beyond, but for all he could tell it was a ghost. Undeterred by the sudden change, the man in the suit marched on until he found a small tree, barely a sapling. All he needed was one. Once the community understood that he meant business about putting up the off-tracking wagering parlor then they would play.
He took off his jacket and hung it on a branch, before kneeling over the saw.
“Can I help you?” A voice asked, it seemed to come from every direction.
“I know how to work a saw.” The developer replied.
“That’s what I am afraid of.” The voice replied, now right in front of him.
“Listen, pal.” The man in the suit started. He began to rise, but stopped. He was staring at someone who looked exactly like him, putting his jacket on. The man reached for the inside pocket and retrieved the deed. He looked the papers over and smiled.
“Hey you can’t…” the developer started, but was cut short as he felt himself lifted up into the canopy.
A few minutes later, a man in a blue suit emerged from the trees, carrying a chain saw and gas can.
“On second thought,” he explained to the foreman. “Maybe its better these trees stay here for a while longer.”
by submission | Oct 2, 2020 | Story |
Author: Liya Akoury
Names are strange things. Back on Earth, we inherited our fathers’ names, but there are no fathers here. We’re twelve women and twenty-four girls. So, we’ve done away with them. We also used to have ranks. Yael was “Captain”, then “Levinsky”. Now, she’s just “Yael”. I was “Officer Cohen”, then “Doc”. Now, I’m “Agnessa” when my services are required and “Aggie” otherwise. The others decided that “Agnessa” is their psychotherapist, and “Aggie” is their sister-in-arms.
Bafflingly, Yael still calls me “Doc”. I’ll spare you (“You”? Who am I writing this for exactly?) the psychoanalysis. Yael’s maintained her pathological distrust of “shrinks”. She’s the only one who’s never been my client. To her great credit, from the beginning, she’s trusted my ability to see the crew through the initial years. She simply, categorically, didn’t trust me to see her inner self. This told me more about her than any therapy session ever could.
Enough circumlocution! Granted, you, dear reader (a distant grandchild?), don’t know that I’m stalling. Yael came over last night, after putting the kids to bed. We often meet alone and usually in the evenings. When Yael was “Captain”, she needed to keep a pulse on the group, get input from me. By some inertia, we’ve maintained this habit, though she’s not, strictly speaking, our leader any longer. So we talked of this and that, the schooling of the eldest daughter-dozen (“DD-ones”, Hannah calls them, ever the engineer), and the teething of the youngest (“DD-twos”).
Yael joked, as she often does, about how deserving we all are of a nice, stiff brandy after a long day of building, harvesting, breastfeeding, and cleaning up various bodily fluids. I don’t disagree, but I can hardly remember the taste of alcohol, let alone the exhilaration. In a decade, we might have enough spare resources for wine grapes. We’ll be plastered from the smell alone, from the thought of it. Imagine the girls’ reaction to their twelve mothers, incapacitated, deranged by a fruity drink! I told Yael this, unabashedly. Despite her high castle walls with archers and a crocodile mote, we’ve grown close. She proceeded to feign intoxication, stumbling around my room, slurring her words, paying me bawdy compliments. It wasn’t half bad, at least to an audience of one. I laughed, she kept stumbling.
Then, she sat on my bed – a breach of protocol. We both felt it at once and froze, two fawns in the headlights of this unexpected, unprecedented proximity. Of course, we’ve been this close before. We’ve slept in the same tent, cuddling to fight off the desert chill in our inadequate sleeping bags. We’ve bathed from the same bucket, when the fog harvests yielded enough water. We’ve shat in the same latrine, when Reina fed us spoiled rations. But we’ve never sat on my bed, in my room, alone. The moment stretched out, heavy and charged. We sat, awash in its awareness. Yael met my eyes.
“Aggs…” she said.
That was all. Writing this now, I want to laugh. I’m a psychologist! I’ve carried all of these women through hell. I should be able to predict every word, every micro-expression. I treat them from the comfort of my little ivory tower, but not Yael, never quite Yael. With no apparent warning, she lowered the draw bridge (forgive me, dear granddaughter for these endless medieval metaphors, which probably make no sense to you!). She pierced through the walls with a single word. And not just any word, with my name, releasing it from her lips for the first time, carving it to be special.
So we made love.
