by submission | Dec 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: Neil Burlington
Detective Gallant holds me down while his partner hits me even harder than he hit his wife last night. I bleed from my nose, my lips, and pretty much everywhere a face can bleed when under merciless attack by cops. I’m squeaky clean and eighteen, but do they care?
“Where is it!”
My thin lips spread in a smile designed to send them into conniptions. It works.
“A thing like that,” I say with a hoarse voice, “is always in the last place you looked for it, detective.”
A thick, strong hand takes hold of my black T-shirt and drags my scrawny frame up from the concrete.
“You think you can just steal something like that – and what – there’s no consequence you little bastard?”
The chunk of the cruiser door comes next. They wedge me into the back. We drive. I count my blessings and realize my supply of numbers is far too generous for the task.
We reach the station in less than fifteen minutes. I am escorted in with the kind of hospitality you give a fly at a barbeque. An iron door stands open to greet me.
I fall forward from the loving push I receive – a kind of encouragement to reform, and tumble onto the floor of a cell.
I roll like a cat and fix the brave detective above me with a puzzled stare. “What’s my crime? Do you have any proof?”
Gallant, his squared-off grizzled jaw tight – his deep-set eyes like two coals – sneers. If he’s Philip Marlowe, I’m a two-dimensional creep the streets are better without.
Gallant turns, unwilling and unable to answer my question.
I mean, how can you prove that somebody up and stole a color from the universe? To the best of my recollection – and I might be fibbing here – there was no color purple in the world at all yesterday. There certainly isn’t any today.
I heave a sigh as I roll on my side and clamber up onto the bunk where I’ll be spending the night.
My cellmate in the small town county jail cell regards me with a predatory gaze.
“You want love?” I inquire. “Then make it!” I wipe blood from my lips, my chin, and the rest of me. I laugh, and my voice breaks.
My cellie – as thin as me, sporting blonde hair and dangerous eyes – regards me with disgust. He turns over on his rack and pulls a blanket over himself.
I can’t help it. I laugh again. I’ve done the impossible. I’ve done the unprovable.
Now, if I’d stolen the color red – that would be hell to pay. No stoplights? Forget about it. That’s death on wheels. A boy like me would never think of doing something like that. But, purple? Who will miss it? Maybe old people. But it’s not vital.
Okay, I admit it. I’m proud I did it. No, that’s not going far enough. I’ve done what no one has ever done.
Through a sheer act of will – of concentration, and dedication – I’d picked my target, and executed. This one small aspect of reality is now completely under my control. My possession.
If people remember the color – that’s their problem. And here’s the secret sauce. Here’s the real Diabolik. As the lights go down and the cold seeps in – I turn my hand to look. As the din fades low – I, and I alone you understand – can summon the color to my palm, and behold it.
The color is purple, friends.
From now on- it’s mine, all mine.
by submission | Dec 27, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Across the gulfs of space, intellects bold and curious observe our world and hasten their plans against us…
Buried deep in our cold, slow cities, age after age passed unregarded and we cared nothing for the world above until fiery scouts began falling from the skies.
The Elders would have ignored this unwelcome disturbance since we were safe in our underground fastnesses, yet soon vehicles were roving the surface wastes, scratching here and there, even though those barrens hold nothing of worth. It must be us they looked for, searching for traces we left behind long ago.
One orbit passed, then another. The Elders have never hurried their deliberations, but eventually a notion emerged that we would benefit from knowing more about these intruders, and a cautious plan was suggested.
Sometimes in winter, planet-wide dust storms sweep the surface, and as chance would have it, one was circling the globe above us. We could gather intelligence about the invaders while remaining unseen.
Because our kind have never trusted one other, a representative from every city was included in this expedition. Ransacked from museums, each brought scientific instruments which might prove useful. We unsealed old tunnels, creaked open ancient doors and ventured out.
This bleak and ancient desolation was why we live underground.
A junior, from the South Polar city, said we were reminiscent of adventurers of old on a quest, but we turned our backs on her.
The nearest invader craft had been stationary for the winter season, perhaps waiting out these times of cold and dark. Under cover of the dust we crept towards it.
The oldest of us, from a city in the Northern Lowlands, assumed leadership. She announced the instrument she brought with her suggested the invader craft was lifeless, though my own sensor showed the vehicle had a heat signature, surely a sign of life.
We began to argue which of these antique devices we could trust, a debate that lasted for days, but a consensus was eventually reached that since we were so close, we should investigate further.
Close up it was obvious the vehicle was merely a crude machine, operated from elsewhere. Of course, being also blinded by the concealing dust, we explored it by touch, a ridiculous collection of primitive gadgetry on wheels instead of legs more suited to this terrain.
By their devices shall ye know them!
Safely returned to our cities, lengthy discussions began. Was the machine truly an invader? Or the survivor of shipwreck, perhaps an emissary of primitive explorers? Yet all agreed it posed no threat and there was no need to resurrect the heat rays and black gas of history.
A scholar of ancient texts later analysed the data collected by our instruments and suggested the crude vehicle came from the third planet.
Our kind are good at waiting, and we could procrastinate until the invaders grew weary and left. Then everything would be as it was.
Envoi
City after city falls silent, as if the invaders are already amongst us, wielding weapons unseen and terrible. Too late now for the last of us to guess the motives of creatures from a world seething with life who invade a wasteland.
by submission | Dec 26, 2024 | Story |
Author: Cal Wallace
“So,” Ftk’al said, slithering gently down the steps next to his friend. “You were cancelled.”
“Yeah, man,” said Karl, chewing gum and spitting nothing despite his best efforts. “That’s how it goes out here. Dog eat dog.”
Ftk’al tried to shrug, all tendrils pumping. Karl seemed to understand. He said, “You gotta be careful, these days, what you do or don’t say. I said some dumb shit-”
“About how Taurons aren’t people?”
“Yeah, yeah. I take all that back. Taurons are people just like you and me, and I was wrong, but-”
“But you wish you could go back and remove the hurtful things you said?”
Karl glared at Fkt’al. “You’ve learned a lot from me, following me about and acting human, haven’t you?”
Fkt’al tried to present his tendrils in a smile, but ended up retreating into his shell slightly.
“I apologise for chagrining you, Karl. You are my friend.”
Karl relaxed, patted his friend on the chitin. “It’s okay. Sometimes you say or do something stupid, and all you want is a chance at redemption.”
“Is this Christmas spirit, Karl?”
Karl looked at his many eyed, tentacled and altogether alien friend. “Yeah, man. This is Christmas, It’s not all death and glory and random shit we find odd about each other. Sometimes it’s just a message of love for other beings.”
Fkt’al looked at Karl with all eight of his eye stalks. “I have strong and complex emotional capacity for you, Karl.”
Karl chuckled, and hugged Fkt’al’s carapace. “I love you too, man. Merry Christmas.”
Merry Christmas. I love you.
by submission | Dec 25, 2024 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
Timmy woke with a start and looked up. He heard scurrying overhead. On the roof? Hooves, maybe. He laid perfectly still and listened intently. It only lasted a moment and then stopped.
For a while there was nothing and he began to lose hope that he had actually heard anything.
A few minutes later there was a faint scratching from downstairs. Timmy sat up, peeled the blanket back, crept to his door which he opened a crack. There it was again. He tiptoed his pajamaed feet to the steps and snuck down trying to avoid all the spots that creaked.
About halfway down Timmy could see partially into the living room and a blur of crimson trimmed in white flashed by. He covered his mouth to stifle the gasp. At the bottom he inched up to the threshold as he heard the crinkling of wrapping paper and just the tinkle of the bell ornament on their tree, as if someone had brushed against a branch.
He allowed himself a deep breath, counted to three, turned the corner.
And froze.
Standing with a present in its clutches was, what appeared to be, a giant red cricket. On its hind legs, it was taller than the star on the top of the tree, its distended abdomen projecting into the middle of the room. The sides of its forelimbs were covered in a white crust, like dried salt granules. Twitching frantically the bugs antennae tapped all the edges of the gift. As it rapidly rotated the wrapped box, a sinewy mist sprayed from the maw between its mandibles, covering the package. The gift glistened with a sparkly shine. It placed it down and picked up another and performed the same exertion on this one as well.
Timmy, unable to move – or breathe for at least a full minute, finally gulped. The creature’s movements ceased except for its head which swiveled backwards in his direction. Two massive compound eyes that seemed glossy wet gazed at him. Timmy felt the scream rising in him but there was no air in his lungs to expel it.
The insectoid released the package and scrambled over to him so incredibly fast he had a hard time following the advance. The front two legs grabbed him by the shoulders and effortlessly lifted him off the floor and held him just inches from its face. The two pinchers looked like gardening tools his father used to cut branches, their serrated points glowing with the moonshine reflecting in the front window off the new fallen snow. Timmy expected his head to be severed off at any second.
Instead, it used one of its other appendages and gingerly plucked off a piece of the white fleck attached to its edges. Another limb pried open the boy’s mouth and the pellet was inserted into his throat. Timmy had no choice but to swallow it.
He began to tremble and feel unnaturally warm and within seconds the view of the insect’s disgusting head started to tilt and swirl sideways. Then his vision went black.
The aberration went back to its task, finished coating all the packages, then turned with a jerk, crawled up the chimney and flew away to the next house.
In the morning Timmy’s parents came downstairs and found Timmy lying dead still on the couch. His father touched his shoulder and shook his body.
Timmy woke, blinking his eyes.
“So, did you see him?” his dad asked.
“I think… I think I did. I don’t remember,” Timmy answered.
His mom laughed, picked up a present, looked at the label and handed it to her husband, “This one’s for you.”
She manipulated her fingertips peculiarly and wondered, ‘why are these so sticky?’
by submission | Dec 24, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Pioneering computer scientist, Alan Kay, once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
I have to disagree. I’ve found the best way to predict the future is to control it. And the easiest way to control the future is to be in charge of time. In my case that means establishing the calendar and setting the clocks.
If you find that assertion too presumptuous, please consider annus confusionis ultimus, the last year of confusion. In that fateful year of 46BC, Julius Caesar returned from war to discover Rome, which relied on a lunar-oriented calendar, had lost track of time. Resulting in a year that crazily stretched 445 days.
Things were way out of whack, and thank great Caesar’s ghost that the following year the soon-to-be-backstabbed emperor instituted his Julian calendar of 365 days with a leap day every four years.
Problem solved.
Until, over many centuries, the Roman miscalculation of the solar year by an extra eleven minutes led to another disruptive temporal drift. Prompting Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 to decree the use of the Gregorian calendar wherein every hundredth year is not a leap year–except if the year is a multiple of four hundred.
Problem resolved.
Until the nuclear age. Since 1972, on average, a leap second has been added every twenty-one months to Coordinated Universal Time in order to accommodate the difference between imprecise Mean Solar Time and precise International Atomic Time. Better living through quantum timing.
Problem re-resolved.
Until, well, me. Through decades of working my way up through the byzantine International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Saint-Cloud, France, then securing a position as one of the eighteen members of the International Committee of Weights and Measures, I’ve finally amassed the clout to govern the next General Conference on Weights and Measures which meets every four years to make, pardonne-moi, very weighty decisions.
And there is no weightier decision than who controls the future. You see, a few years ago, the General Conference on Weights and Measures voted to scrap the leap second in 2035 because of complaints from Big Tech as well as governmental organizations citing increasing anomalies and failures in computer systems due to the addition of leap seconds.
From sparking hyperactivity in CPU high-resolution-timers to creating a negative value in code which assumes time moves forward consistently, many digitally dependent systems can get rocked by even a minuscule timing issue.
One can certainly understand the concerns, the inconveniences, the disruptions, the mayhem. Thus one can certainly appreciate the opportunity. At least I can. If adding a single second every few years gives Big Tech and world governments the cyber jitters, then imagine what might happen when a closet technophobe like me controls the clocks. Just imagine.
As the infamous story goes, in 1779, Ned Ludd, an English weaver, smashed up labor-saving knitting frames in a mill and became the namesake for decades of protest and unrest against mechanization that cost workers their livelihoods. As a neo-Luddite, I intend to rebalance the scales of power by cutting Big Tech and oppressive regimes down to size, unexpected nano-second by unexpected nano-second.
It’s been nearly 2100 years since annus confusionis ultimus and high time we slow down and get back in sync with our planet. At the upcoming meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures the countdown to a new age of clarity and parity will begin.
Put it on your calendar.
