by submission | Sep 25, 2020 | Story |
Author: Denise N. Ruttan
It wasn’t that Grady had an objection to the Watch, per se. She didn’t even remember the implantation procedure; she had been a baby. The procedure had left a scar, a box of raised skin on the inside of her wrist.
She’d watched film of the procedure that her mother had saved, and it was uneventful: a baby, face scrunched up in blue and purple, screaming its lungs dry like the world was ending. She had squirmed, dancing, so that the surgeon was less careful than usual. Her parents said, “How cute.” She thought “cute” was another way of saying “obnoxious.”
Grady was given the option of tattooing over the scar when she was sixteen. Most of her peers did. They chose peace signs, or butterflies, or dolphins. The hippies chose bar codes. Grady chose nothing. She didn’t mind the scar. She liked how it made her different, even if people made fun of her for it. “Your Watch is showing,” they would sneer, grabbing her wrist, kneading her skin, digging their sharp fingernails into her soft flesh. “Don’t you know that’s rude? Of course you don’t.” Then they would laugh, the laughter peeling off like dry skin, scarring Grady’s ears. Grady didn’t mind the laughter. She wanted to be different.
It was hard to be different these days. Insurance oligarchs didn’t want you to be different. Grady couldn’t say she blamed them. In the old days, before the oligarchs, people wore fitness watches that they used to track their sleep and monitor their heart rate and remind them when to exercise. They had social media pages and documented their lives with a tweet or a Facebook post. “Ate lunch at McDonald’s,” they would say, sacrificing their GPS coordinates gladly.
So insurance said, after it became an oligarch, people do this willingly, sign away their privacy for the pleasure of the group, so why not mandate it? It made sense, to Grady. It was the way an oligarch would think. It was the way they were taught in school.
At first, she tried to be different by smoking cigarettes. Smoking wasn’t outlawed, per se, but because of the Watch, virtually no one smoked anymore. The Watch reported back to the insurance oligarchs, and you got in trouble. Grady didn’t mind a little trouble. She knew a guy at school named Warble who knew black market stuff. They met behind the bleachers. He gave her a cigarette and a lighter. He smelled like cinnamon. Grady wanted to be alone.
The air froze on her skin. She smelled the cigarette. Nicotine. It was forbidden. It smelled so sweet. She held it under her nose. Then she lit the cigarette, like Warble had shown her. “It’ll hurt,” he told her. “Because of the Watch.”
She inhaled. For a moment, she was free. She was different. Then her skin burned. The scar on the inside of her wrist crawled. She dropped the cigarette. The pain radiated through her nerve endings. She curled up into a ball in the dirt and whimpered. She could take it. You can’t be different without pain. The scar on her wrist taught her that. Tears smarted her eyes. She felt weak. She didn’t like feeling weak.
Then the pain subsided. She picked up the cigarette again. It burst into flames, ash scraping her fingers. Her hand trembled.
She thought of how else she could be different. The pain was exciting. The pain numbed her skin and seized her heart. That pain could be useful. Her eyes glittered with a new resolve. The oligarchs didn’t count on that.
by submission | Sep 24, 2020 | Story |
Author: Ashwin Dayal
Notification. And so, rings the phone. Pounce on it and check. The Writer gritted his teeth. Darn insurance. Where was it? He had thrust his finger on the ‘Submit’ button six months ago and They could not thrust their ruddy fingers on the Acceptance. The Writer scoffed. Hell, even Second Round would be heaven. The Writer’s room, you know it. Bottles and clothes and rubbish. He took a deep breath and walked to the big bag lying in the corner of the room. He bent down and pulled the zip. Inside the bag lay the metal body of A.P, rolled up.
At first, the Writer thought it was dead.
They sent a defected piece.
He grabbed its arm. The machine sprang up. “Function,” the Writer said.
“Func… Functioning, sir,” A.P said.
“Task list.”
“Your order is my task, sir.”
“Good, that’s the answer I’m looking for. Do you know how to write?”
A.P nodded.
“What can you write?” Writer asked.
“Reports, files.”
The Writer raised his eyebrows. “Can you write stories?”
A. P’s shining, silver jaw shook and it looked curiously at its hand.
“May… Perhaps, sir.” The Writer closed his eyes. He gulped and left the room. A.P looked around, scared out of his circuits.
The Writer entered his small room and bit his lip. He didn’t like it, not at all. He picked up a rod lying on his bed. He returned to the drawing-room. A.P stood exactly where he was moments ago, frozen. It looked at the rod in the Writer’s hands. Lethal, could damage the system. It stepped back.
“Stay right where you are!” The Writer bellowed. His pace quickened and he stood close to A.P. He raised the hot iron rod. He said,
“The next time you spit out a word, spit it out completely. Don’t murmur.” The heat conducted from the rod to the metal arm of A.P. Its mouth opened. The Writer said,
“Now, tell me: can you write stories?”
“Yes, sir,” A.P said. The Writer nodded lightly and turned.
“So, write a story for me.”
The Writer was just about to leave the room when A.P said,
“The story, sir? What do I write?”
The Writer looked at A.P. He blinked and left the room.
The Writer did not return to that room for a long time. When he did…
“Is it done?”
A.P was still sitting at the desk, staring determinately at the page lying in front of him. It looked up and its eyes widened. The Writer approached it. A.P fixed its hydraulic fingers on the page. The Writer snatched it. He smiled and smacked his finger on the page. There it was, the trigger for the Writer. The truth, revealed.
Every day, he picks up that page where it all started. The page with that one sentence:
Once a Robot was a slave.
By A.P (ADVICE PROVIDER)
by submission | Sep 23, 2020 | Story |
Author: David Barber
“And did they put up a fight?” the Dread Emperor asked.
Around the vast ill-lit throne room, flatterers, sycophants, and the rest of the nobility tensed. After another long day – it was forbidden to eat or drink in the Emperor’s presence, or to leave it – they were hoping there would be no bloodshed tonight, no risk of it getting out of hand again.
The Conqueror of Earth cleared his throat. “At first they would not admit the superiority of Your Imperial Majesty’s Space Navy. There was much slaughter. But the remnants offered their throats to the claw.”
The Emperor savoured this. “Describe my new planet.”
“Barsoom is an arid world, though home to numerous and varied races. They are a warlike folk…”
“Earth.” The Emperor leaned forward. Survivors say it is a terrible thing to be fixed by those eyes. “You said you conquered Earth.”
“I, I beg Your Imperial Majesty’s patience,” said the Admiral. “Some natives call it Barsoom, others Earth. It was one of the things they fought over.”
Others had sweated where the Admiral now stood.
“Continue.”
“The inhabitants of ah, Barsoom are divided by their colour. There are Reds and Greens for example. Some have four arms, some two. The females lay eggs…”
At each day’s end, the Dread Emperor summoned the military to tell him about the latest addition to his Empire. He had decreed it would expand by one planet every day, without end.
Terrifyingly for those who waited upon the Emperor, the discovery of new worlds to vanquish lagged far behind schedule. Instead, desperate Space Admirals announced the conquest of barren moons, or primordial worlds like peaches bruised by mould, and were executed while the Emperor ate a light supper.
By tradition, no two executions were alike, the Blood Guard being famed for its invention.
And then Earth was discovered. There was no great slaughter. The Conqueror of Earth never even left the home world. A lone scout venturing far beyond the edge of Empire had harvested Earth’s rudimentary datanet in a flyby and it had proved a treasure trove.
The military learned its lesson, and inhabited worlds were now conquered daily without fail. The court held its breath as Admirals answered the Dread Emperor’s enquiries into the culture, history, and sexual habits of wholly invented planets.
The Conqueror of Earth was back in the dressing room hanging up his costume. A Five Claw Space Admiral with Radium Cluster. All paste. The door banged open.
“What were you thinking?” shouted the director. “Barsoom was scheduled for tomorrow. I’ll have to move Dune forward.”
True, the actor had forgotten some lines, even so, it was the performance of a lifetime.
“You know we’re running out?” If the director had hair instead of scales, it would have torn it in frustration.
“You said there was a feast of tales.”
“Turns out most novels consist of Earthlings having a chat. Outer Space is hardly mentioned; even then we can’t mention rival empires. They’re mainly obsessed with terrible things happening to Earth. What’s wrong with them?”
“But we’ve still got Mongo? I’ve been rehearsing Mongo.”
“And Mote Prime and Perelandra and Skaro, but they don’t seem to be writing them like they used to. All this later stuff…”
“Dear chap, you have the resources of the Space Navy at your disposal. If the Earthers won’t write what you want, perhaps we should start knocking them out ourselves. Try world-building instead of world-conquering.”
It was rather pleased with that.
“I mean, how hard can it be?”
by submission | Sep 22, 2020 | Story |
Author: Shon-Lueiss Harris
You expect the world will fall apart. It’s the one thing scientists, evangelicals, and politicians seem to agree on. One day, maybe in our lifetimes, it’s all going to end.
Except it doesn’t just end.
It starts with a kid, a bag of firecrackers, and a particularly dry Saturday afternoon. Not exactly what the eggheads in D.C expect to move the doomsday clock to midnight, but life can be surprising like that.
It gets worse, so you get ready. You go to Amazon, order an air purifier, and congratulate yourself on being prepared.
The kid’s mistake turns into a natural disaster. Politicians across the globe offer imaginative connections between their opponents and the fire. They urge you to vote in an election almost a year away. They say they can save you, eventually.
You forget what shade of blue the sky is. The taste of fresh air and what breathing felt like before your chest began to burn. You remember to vote.
They say you made the right choice.
Smoke from the fire covers a third of the globe. Global temperatures drop. Farmers work desperately to grow enough food, but the ash of the dead poisons the crop.
They say the economy is booming. They call you resilient before a doctor helps them put the oxygen mask back on. If they’re trying to be subtle, it’s not working.
You catch the sunrise one morning and feel hopeful. As the day goes on that hope spoils. You realize those glorious streaks of red and orange aren’t heavenly rays. This is a new level of fear.
Somewhere in all this chaos you screw up. You hunker down thinking you’ll weather the storm, only to be Pompeiied. Maybe you decide to leave but fail to plan ahead, and instead of escaping a hellish fate, you’re baked alive in your car (you always said traffic was killing you). Then again, you could be one of the countless people who simply forget to put your mask on before running outside.
If you’re one of the survivors, congratulations. Thoughts and prayers are now on the way from an undisclosed, underground bunker. Or at least that’s probably the case. They’ve gone quiet as of late.
Something clicks. An epiphany, like scales falling from your eyes.
Nobody is coming.
And if you survive that thought — if you don’t find the nearest deadly object and end it there — then everything changes.
You get ready. A mask to protect your lungs. Goggles to keep the neighbors out of your eyes. A sturdy bag with water, food, and plenty of room for anything you find. A gun, because feeling the rubbery grip in your hand calms your nerves a little. These are the tools with which you’ll forge a future.
The outside world is unrecognizable. You see grey skies. Not overcast, but a blanket of smoke so thick that you wonder if the sun has abandoned you, too. A sickly haze looms over the scorched earth like an empty pan forgotten on the stove, left to burn. It’s all a muddy blur of black and brown shapes obscured by a warped, grey film.
It’s a cold, empty ruin of a place.
But you walk out anyway. Maybe you doubt everything could just burn away. Could it be you’re hopeful, despite all that you have seen? Whatever your mental state, you put foot in front of foot. You feel something under your boot.
One small step. One small plant.
You smile.
by submission | Sep 20, 2020 | Story |
Author: Ken Poyner
I start evenings at six o’clock. Delta is usually on her porch in her shimmering yellow superhero costume. I excitedly wave and holler, “Good evening, Delta. Good day in the City?”
She may not have gotten that day into the city, but she will say “Evening. Absolutely!”, adding the exclamation point whether she made it into the city or not. She carries a shield and two sets of bolos, and sometimes she just does not care to lug all that on the bus, so she hangs out on her porch and pretends she went in to work in the city as one of its superheroes.
I walk to work, since it is just a casual stroll to Forest Lawn Cemetery, less than four blocks down and one street over. Six to two, I walk the dead. Not zombies. Just confused dead who like to get out, but don’t really have their own plan for doing so.
There are not many who choose this profession. Most, like Delta, take an identity as a superhero, or supervillain, or some shapeshifter. Not much glory in walking the dead; but, if I did not do it, likely no one would. My other neighbor, Jim, is a deadeye sheriff. It works for him, but I have no envy.
Tonight, first on my schedule is a girl who died in the last yellow fever epidemic. Lucky to be in Forest Lawn, as so many died in the plague that they committed quite a few to mass graves. Walkers almost never get out to mass graves. A bit confusing. Sometimes not even the dead know who they are. Hard to tell everyone apart.
Just a quick light-hearted promenade around the block, a little small talk. After her, a recent internment: a real estate broker who died mid-real estate deal and who hasn’t finally gotten over not making that last sale.
I try to listen attentively. I offer confirmation. I nod in agreement. There would not be much to break their morbid monotony otherwise. It is a simple job – but, to them, I am some kind of hero, the essential number that allows them to have a viable mathematics. They know I could have chosen some other ego archetype – fought crime, solved mysteries, kept the world safe, plotted world destruction, whatever. But someone has to look in on the world’s less glamorous needs.
I get to the cemetery and the ground is just opening up. Seven appointments, with a break at midnight for dinner. Sometimes I sit with some random corpse while I eat, happily on the job even when I am not on the clock.
No, no costume, no appliances. Think shoes. Shoes. The salesman at Belmont’s who sold me on these low arch walking shoes: now, he is the real hero. Knew just what would work for me. No bright colors, but a good solid durable shoe that doesn’t cry after a long walk. Laces that stay tied, not those tubular ones that work themselves free after a few blocks. Good advice taken. I could never rely on Jim or Delta for those flavors of decision. You have got to give full credit to where a real value lies. Shoes.
