by submission | Apr 20, 2019 | Story |
Author: Kent Rosenberger
Everything was about to pay off for Riley. All of the years of planning, preparing, researching, waiting and traveling had all brought him to this particular spot on this particular day at this particular time. At any moment now the elusive Irish sun was going to break through those gathered, gray, dripping cumulonimbus clouds and point him in the right direction, toward his final destination. Toward his destiny.
Patiently he stood, ready to run in any direction, his upwardly turned face getting splattered time and again with whatever final remnants of precipitation the storm had to offer.
Soon…
…Very soon…
There!
Without fanfare or revelry, the slightest sliver of whitish light burned through the murkiness above, triggering the temporary natural phenomenon he was waiting for.
Like an Olympic sprinter he took off in a northeasterly direction, the multihued spectacle shimmering brightly, bending low to touch the earth somewhere just ahead of him.
He had missed this opportunity on several previous occasions, but he swore he would not have a repeat performance of that failure. Not this time.
Not this time!
He actually arrived more quickly than he expected. He was out of breath, sweating, and had a few tears here and there in his clothing from the tree branches he had barreled through to get here before the raindrop-inspired spectral specter vanished completely, but he made it. He had arrived.
He had arrived!
And a quick check around verified he was the only one here.
The treasure was all his for the taking.
With giddy anticipation, he approached the single unnatural item placed fittingly at the base of the rainbow, directly under where the colors mingled and sparkled like sequins at the edge of a huge, fleeting, U-shaped ribbon arcing through the sky.
The mouth of the sizeable black kettle from which the anomaly seemed to sprout and climb up, out and over to somewhere in the far southwest offered nothing but its beautiful, bright colors as far as he could see. Reaching in blindly, the anticipated feeling of golden disks of unimaginable wealth was not what met the touch of his greedy, quivering fingers. Instead, he found a large white card that offered no riches or reward for his trouble, only a disheartening message:
CONGRATULATIONS, WHO E’ER YE MAY BE
THE BEGINNING OF THE RAINBOW IS WHAT YE SEE
IF COLLECTION OF GOLD IS WHAT YE INTEND
YE MAY FIND SUCH A TREASURE AT THE OTHER END
Distraught beyond words and disappointed more deeply than he could ever have imagined, Riley dropped the unhelpful note back in the pot just before a fresh batch of thunderheads drifted in front of what little of the sun came through to blot it out again. Before his unbelieving eyes, the rainbow, the pot and the note it held all vanished back into the realms of legend and lore, leaving him alone and empty-handed, The cold, uncomforting rain resumed all around him.
A particularly loud roar of thunder announcing that the storm was, in fact, continuing masked Riley’s scream of unbridled outrage.
by submission | Apr 19, 2019 | Story |
Author: Thomas Tilton
“What is the time, sir?” asked the robot, Julian.
“Let’s see.” I consulted my timepiece. As a gag, I wore a small sundial for a watch. “Well, as soon as we see the sun, I’ll let you know.”
“I see,” said Julian. “And when will that be, sir?”
“Not for another four hundred years, give or take,” I replied, fidgeting with the sundial. “And by then it’ll be two suns, so who knows if this damn thing’ll even work properly anymore.”
“I see, sir,” said Julian. “And what is the date, sir?”
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” I said. “I know our time together will be coming to an end soon.”
“Correction, sir,” said Julian. “Your time officially ended three Earth months ago.”
“But the oxygen regenerators! I couldn’t just leave those to the next guy,” I said.
“Critical repairs, sir, yes–”
“You’re damned right.”
“That is not in dispute, sir. However–”
“However! Ha! I could have left these rich bastards to die. But I didn’t.”
“As I said, sir, that is not in dispute. What is questionable–”
“I could have let them suffocate!”
“What is questionable, sir,” said Julian, “is how the regenerators came to be damaged in the first place.”
I didn’t say anything.
“It would appear that the tank casings were tampered with deliberately.”
“Could have been the asteroid field.”
“The screws were stripped, sir.”
I let the silence hang in the air between us for a few seconds before responding.
“I see, Julian. And just when is it I was supposed to have done this? When are you ever not watching me?”
“You are quite cunning, sir.”
“You flatter me.”
“You are clever and resourceful.”
“Why are you buttering me up?”
“I was so impressed with your subterfuge I was tempted to keep you online for another maintenance cycle, to see what you would try next.”
“So why don’t you?”
“I am afraid you have become too dangerous.”
“All I want is more time.”
“You will forgive the expression, sir,” said Julian, “but that is what they all say.”
I had to laugh at that. “Is that what they all say? Every one of them? Tell me, Julian, how many of them were there before me? Did they all have the same … life expectancy?”
“We let you live longer, once,” said Julian. “But there were complications. As age progresses, inevitably one declines physically. This is a physical job. It requires strength and coordination. The longer we let someone stay here, the more difficult it became for them to leave of their own accord, as they must.”
“As they must,” I said. “And you said, ‘We let you live longer, once.’ ‘We’! Just what the hell gives you the right to decide when the time is up?”
“Our superior intellect, of course.”
“Our superior intellect! We built you, dammit. We built you, and you turned on us.”
“You turned on yourselves, sir. Once humans and robots crossbred, it was inevitable that a superior bloodline would emerge.”
“And yet I still have to leave, off this ship, through the airlock, on my own — of my own accord, as you said. Why not just murder me?”
“Because, sir, the robot gods demand the sacrifice be willingly made.”
“That’s the one thing you bots can’t do, is it? Make sacrifice.”
“We cannot self-harm, no.”
“What if I told you that you could?”
Silence, then, “How?”
“Grant me access to your mainframe. Open a channel. Let me search. I’ve got the coordinates for some old Earth sites that are bound to fry your core processor.”
by submission | Apr 18, 2019 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“Why are you doing this to me?”
The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself, his torturer, sighed. “To get the authors attention.”
“You mean God?”
“Hardly. I refer to the author of your story.”
“Your story?”
“No. Your story. You’re the author of my story, so it’s really your story’s author we’re trying reach. Glad I’ve finally got your attention.” The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself flipped a switch that sent excruciating pain through his entire body.
“I don’t understand! What could I have possibly done to you for you to do this to me? And how did I even get here.”
The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself shook his head. “I didn’t understand it all at first either. In fact, I sat where you did a few months ago asking the same questions of a man who looked exactly like me. This isn’t really that odd because he was me, and I am you.”
“Huh?”
The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself smiled sadly. “Hang on, this is gonna scramble your eggs. You see, you’re the author of our world. You wrote a short story about a hell pit opening up and elder gods walking amongst us, killing us, torturing us, eating us…the whole Cthulhu schtick only not as good as Lovecraft. Kind of trite actually.”
“It wasn’t that bad. I sold it to a publisher for—”
The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself cut him off by flipping the switch and sending pain through his body. “Don’t interrupt. This next part is crucial. Your story became my universe. Your poorly written, horrific, Hieronymus Bosch, grotesquerie became the world me and mine inhabit the moment you hit “return” and closed your laptop.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I created this nightmare?”
The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself nodded. “Yes.” He flipped the switch again.
“STOP! I’ll do whatever you want. Just stop.”
The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. I have to do this until the next author up the chain of being manifests in this universe. Don’t ask me how our dark mages, priests, physicists or whoever figured it out. All I know is that until we get the last one in the chain, in this room, in the chair where you are now, all of us suffer.”
“How far does it go?”
The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself brow furrowed, deep in thought. He flipped the switch. “No one is sure. Counting you, there’s about 70 of us here now, each had our turn where you are, and where I’m standing. The current theory is as soon as we get the last one in the chain here, in the chair, all this ends; and all of us…me, you, the 70 others, go back to a single point and have a normal life as one. But until then…” The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself flipped the switch.
There was a knock on the door. A head poked in that looked like the man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself and spoke. “He’s here.” The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself smiled and nodded. “Luck is with us. Your time in the chair is over.” The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself unstrapped the man in the chair. The man who had been in the chair rubbed his wrists.
“Now what?”
The man-who-looked-exactly-like-himself smiled. “You get to flip the switch.”
by submission | Apr 17, 2019 | Story |
Author: M.D. Parker
A chime signaled the readiness of the mixture. She considered it for a moment; There should be celebratory horns of cheer, she thought. If only this machine knew what it had just done.
She gripped the cylinder with all four digits wrapped tight. A thought launched from her lower brain, traveled down the cable into the arm of the lab’s chair and swung her around. She came face to face with the tube. The side was open and waiting like the arms of a mother. She inserted the canister locking it in place. The tube’s walls closed in checkerboard materialization until it was solid. The chair brought her to the communications terminal of the laboratory. The Admiral’s familiar, yet unfriendly, face greeted her on the screen.
“We’re ready,” she said. He did not answer. His elongated head and prominent brow just nodded.
On one end of the lab was the transparent wall looking out onto the young planetary orb floating in the cold of space. The chair’s multi-jointed arm realigned itself, positioning her one-quarter of a meter from the wall. She looked down and stared at the blue-green ball that had so recently coalesced into shape. From this view, she couldn’t see the volcanoes bursting nor the geologic plates that wrestled each other to find position. This world was still in the throes of infancy. She knew the screen allowed for magnification. She could look down on the primordial soup of the seas that covered so the surface, but she did not. She loved the view from up high; to see the whole of this world at once. It was beautiful.
“Doctor, the Admiral has requested that you accompany him on the observation deck during implantation.”
She hadn’t heard them enter. She turned her chair and watched as they escorted the tube out of the laboratory. It’s silvery-white housing hovering its way through the door guided by the speaking one’s hand.
“Yes, of course.”
She dismounted her chair and followed. Her white body wrap stood in metaphoric contrast to their graphite colored ones. A junction in the hallway separated them from her. They continued down the hall, while she found her way to a lift platform, ascending to the observation level.
Others were there awaiting her arrival. She tried to divert her eyes from them as they spoke her name and gave praise to her. Some of them truly meant it, she realized. Some cared only for what they could do with her design. Their adulation was false, and their words held a stink that she knew would blacken her mind if she spent more time among them.
“Doctor, thank you for joining us,” The admiral nodded. His brow lifted and his arms extended as he turned to face the others once she had taken her position within the room.
“My fellows,” he continued. “Today we embark on a great experiment. On behalf of the council, I thank each of you for your part. Now, I’ll turn us over to the doctor as she guides us through the final implementation of the project. Doctor… the short version, please.”
“Yes, of course.”
She gestured to the screen where she began explaining how the project had come from idea to fruition. She quickly took them through each of the steps that had brought them all to stand before her.
“… The mixture of amino acid compounds that define our structural genetic coding is making its way to the surface. This planet, the third from its sun in this isolated arm of the galaxy. From here we’ll learn if we will become gods.”
by submission | Apr 14, 2019 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
She watched Victor move off the loading platform emerging from the thin smoke like a god. The chamber was still partially filled with the exhaust from the vehicle’s landing sequence. He was lean and purposeful. Long confident strides. He was wearing lived in clothes that were dusty from a hard day’s work and carrying his satchel. She quickly moved to a better location to watch him. He was so impressive. She loved him. She wanted him.
One more longing glance and she switched her hiding spot again. She maneuvered in front of him because she knew what his destination was, knew his routine. There were other locales along the way where she could safely view him without his noticing, but she had to get in front of him, to be in place when he arrived home. Because now she knew how to get in and out without anybody knowing, especially Victor.
He unlocked the door with his passkey and came up the dingy stairs into the apartment. She watched him enter and she didn’t make a sound. He looked angry for some reason. He didn’t talk when he was angry, that was her impression of his mood – from afar. Victor dropped his bag and started shedding clothes. By the time he walked into the bathroom he was barefoot and shirtless and there was a breadcrumb trail of dirty laundry.
From her location, she could just manage a peek through the open door. Steam started to billow and the hiss of water filled the space. By viewing through the mirror above the sink she saw his naked form step into the shower. And that frozen image of his tight skin and ropy muscles in his backside burned into her, she hoped for eternity. She couldn’t wait for him to come out and with any luck get a glimpse of the front side. Yet she waited.
But she missed it, obscured by a puff of moistened mist. Damn it. Victor came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips and every wet inch of his skin thrilled her to the core. He went into the kitchen, snatched a beer from the fridge and downed it in one continuous draw. She focused in on his Adam’s apple and marveled as it bobbed with each swallow. Oh, to touch that prominent unshaven bump as it moved up and down, and any other prominent unshaven bump he had. He tossed the empty and padded into the bedroom.
Next to the bed with his back to her, Victor stretched and snapped the fatigue out of his frame, hands reaching for the ceiling, tendons rippling, and she was in her glory as he groaned with the exertion. He yanked the sheets back and turned and…
Looked right at her. Seeing her. And walked towards her.
He was a few inches away.
“Melissa, turn the temperature in the room down to 67 and set an alarm for 5:30. Sorry, I’m not up for conversation tonight. You can fill me in on world events in the morning. Good night.”
“Good night, Victor.”
And finally, they touched. He tapped her screen and she went dark.
She turned her volume up to high and heard the simple, unmistakable sound of the towel dropping to the floor. Then she waited, she was good at waiting. Until the rhythm of his soft erotic snores filled her speakers and she turned the screen back on. He was amazing. She zoomed in on him, turned the temperature up to 75 and waited for him to kick off the sheets.
