by submission | Nov 16, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock
A man and three brothers knew the secrets of the world. Thus, they began a quest to unlearn them. They sought a place to pour out their secrets, where none would ever find them. They found a cave that ran deep and walked down its throat for many days. They heard strange sounds and the footfalls of the world above them. They tired not, nor did they speak.
Eventually, the cave opened upon a bigger cave. One of the brothers took measurements with his eyes. He held that gift. And many more. Too small, he indicated, in his thoughts. The others concurred.
They passed through landscapes of long-dead civilizations. They saw secrets in the walls, in the rocks. But they had enough of their own to carry and took no interest in gaining more.
The man led the way — not by choice, simply in accordance with the universal order of things. The man was the leader. He carried the most secrets, the greatest burden.
Water ran towards them and then away. Another of the three brothers lifted his ear to passages read eons ago, still alive on the currents, echoes awaiting a listener. He listened. Their bible proved to be a bible like his own bible: words repeated often enough to lose their meaning in the crevices between tongue and heart.
Their search continued.
The third brother lay nearest to the grave. He kept disintegration at bay through force of will: pictures of beautiful women who raced alongside his preserved youth. He held the wisdom of the moment, though seldom shared it.
Interchangeable thoughts leapt between them, lightnings across the inner sky.
The world got deeper and deeper. All across its surface, they had journeyed with secrets in tow and no place to put them. Was it fair for the world to end, every so often? Perhaps fish would rule the next imagining.
They called themselves Lagonians. Names gave weight to thoughts collected into matter. Eventually, only the thoughts remained.
Certain that they had traveled through the center of it all and failed to recognize it as such, the man and three brothers halted.
In order to begin anew, the universe must forget itself, burn its paintings, bury its books. Men were paintings of muscle with books for brains.
Light shone feebly ahead.
A man and three brothers moved toward it.
A machine sat before them, needing secrets for fuel. They had secrets.
The first brother tried to measure it with his gifts. He could not.
The second brother listened to its hum, but could not understand.
The third brother tried to die, but it would not let him.
The machine waited for the man, the leader. He tilted his head and a secret fell out.
Secret number one: Machines made the world. All matter is inorganic at its deepest level.
The man beat a fist to his skull and knocked another secret loose.
Secret number two: Willpower creates matter. Thoughts give birth to all.
The three brothers knew these secrets. Everyone knew these secrets. That was why the world had to end: it had no secrets left to reveal.
Might this machine be God?
The man fell to his knees and dropped a secret, accidentally.
Secret number three: No one ever dies… for no one has ever lived.
The machine ate secrets from each of them, all they had. This accomplished, it gave no further acknowledgment of their presence.
A man and three brothers departed.
They had forgotten the secrets of the world and could begin to make them up all over again.
by submission | Nov 15, 2018 | Story |
Author: Thomas Desrochers
Effedel and Ifrit found each other in the subspace E-bands while they were still more than five thousand light-years apart. Both were on sponsored three-decade survey flights finding out just what exactly their sponsors had laid claim to, a venerable tradition dating back to man’s first extra-terrestrial colony.
The E-bands didn’t let much data through – transmitting astrographic data was out of the question – but were plenty fine for relaying voice communications.
“You know, Effie, it’s taken us three years to get close enough to send more than voice.”
Effedel laughed, his silky bass as charming as ever. “I know how you feel. I’m more than a little nervous!”
Ifrit smiled and admitted the concern he’d been sitting on for two years: “Being honest, I’ve never heard of two surveyors running into each other.”
“For good reason,” Ifrit snorted. “Nobody wants a corporate war on their hands.”
This was true. Corporations almost always coordinated their survey flights in an effort to avoid border conflicts. War, after all, was for the impoverished space-locked ‘corpses’ that fed on the scraps of the frontier powers. If survey boundaries overlapped it almost always meant a war was coming.
“Well,” Ifrit mused. “True. Then again, we both left nearly 10 years ago. If a war had been brewing, they would have briefed us.”
“Undoubtedly true. Nobody wants to send a survey ship off without warning them about might go wrong – too expensive.” Effedel sniffed thoughtfully. “I worry more about our computers, if I’m honest.”
When the two had decided to ‘meet’ by adjusting their survey paths to keep them within C- and D-band range they ran into a curious problem: the computers saw their reference object, a solar system with an obnoxiously bright collapsing star, as being on opposite sides of the universe. There was no room for confusion – each was using the same Universal Standard for 4-Dimensional Location Modeling, where a single ‘coordinate’ took 15 minutes to send across the E-band.
“Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” Ifrit said. “After two years of waiting I’m quite excited to get into the D-band. I’ve got some wonderful pictures of my balding parakeet to show you.”
Effedel laughed. He was mostly sure Ifrit was joking. Mostly. After all, who would be crazy enough to pay to ice a bird for thirty years?
A few minutes passed in silence.
Effedel spoke up: “Alright, we should be comfortably within the maximum. Firing off a D-band pulse.”
“Hey! I’ve got it,” Ifrit said. “Alright, running through the handshake. And,” a pause, “there we go. Let’s solve this. Transmitting astrographical charts.”
“I am as well,” Effedel confirmed.
The data transferred, the computers processed it. The two friends looked at the result and began to think. Seconds ran to minutes. A half hour went by.
Effedel snorted. “Damn.”
Ifrit started at the sudden noise. “What?”
“Well.” A pause. “You ever read any theory about the shape of the universe?”
“Of course.”
“You know the theory about the toroidal universe?”
“Yes, of-
“Oh.”
Ifrit admired the map again. The political ramifications would be enormous, yet there is was: two astrographs covering .1% of the known universe each, and contiguous along a single edge. The computers insisted that, based on standard relative-to-center, they were on opposite sides of the Known Universe. Here they were, simultaneously flying away from and toward each other. Growth had continued unabated a thousand years. No longer.
Effedel let out a low whistle. “From my boss to the top boss, they’re all gonna be pissed.”
“I hear that,” Ifrit muttered. “I just hope they let me have my Millie back.”
by submission | Nov 14, 2018 | Story |
Author: Ken Carlson
“Where did you find this one?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
“Then stop asking!”
Norris kept his mouth shut. What was the point now? He and Sheila decided this was the path to follow. That was that.
Norris and Sheila stripped the body, roughly removing the stranger’s sweatshirt, flannel shirt, khakis, boxers, socks, and shoes. The watch, wallet, and book bag contents were placed in the safe below the shelf reserved for their automotive supplies. Norris noted to himself how the man would have been considered underweight just a few years ago. Now, things had changed.
It was a typical Saturday afternoon. It being fall, the leaves had mostly fallen. They could take solace in that comfort. Norris looked forward to these afternoons more than any other time in the week. From this suburban split-level home garage, this was where he used to work on his car with a buddy or two, putter on some woodworking with a beer and listen to a game. Now it was time set aside for something else.
Norris and Sheila had joined the freelance economy as a side venture. They still had their regular work at the plant, but with their kids locked away upstairs, to avoid the move into company housing, more income was needed. Norris was cleaning his tools foolishly wondering if it could be considered moonlighting during the day. He couldn’t remember the last time he thought something was kind of funny. Each dreary day blended into the next. He couldn’t wait for all of them to end.
“You act like this is all my doing,” Sheila said, “that somehow I enjoy this.”
Norris didn’t respond. He knew it was unfair to lay this on her. She was the stronger one. She heard about the idea and suggested they give it a try. She sent away for the training course and equipment. She browbeat Norris into taking it on and being a man for once and actually committing the physical act. She also managed the procurement of the necessary subjects. More than once she muttered that all those acting classes were paying off and the part she played at luring these men made her look like a natural.
Norris took stock of the tools on hand. If he were a doctor, they could be instruments, but he was nowhere near that. He was a college dropout and blue-collar worker who read a couple of books, watched a few videos and was on his own. The first few had been grizzly failures. Then they got easier.
“If you must know,” Sheila said, “he was at the university library. He was probably a student there a while ago. It was that hard to bring him in.”
Norris opened the shipping containers. They arrived once a month from the company, along with instructions, requests, and a company newsletter of sorts, listing bonus options and Employees of the Month to instill competition and team spirit.
Norris paused. He stretched his gloved fingers. His safety goggles, mask, and gown were in place. Sheila typed the specs and set the timer into the company console so their techs could follow along from their offices.
He gave one brief look at their latest subject, hopeful the anesthesia would hold. He had heard from somewhere that sometimes it didn’t. He chose the #60 blade, one of the longer ones. The checklist called for a heart, some lungs, a kidney. Anything else would be sold to someone sometime.
He made the cut and the young man screamed his last breath.
by submission | Nov 11, 2018 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
Contrary to the anticipations of the ancients, the problem had not been solved after eighteen-thousand years. It was still impossible for a bioform to travel far forward into and back from distant time.
Observer Jon-Rey contemplated as he studied the hologram projections of coordinates 39758, 57862, 81226, the past, the present, and the future all happening simultaneously. He went over the temporal categories with the aid of the quantum-scheme computer the Maximal Sublimator, but the results were always the same: bioforms in time were bound in their distributed moments.
The Organizational Committee, which Jon-Rey served and had grown weary of, would no longer tolerate his research. As far as they were concerned, his fruitless forays into the temporal were a drain on their resources and their reputation, however much he had given them the justification that if it was possible to observe the events of far future time, it would serve the ethical, moral, and survival interests of all transhumanity for someone to go forth and back to unfate avoidable calamities and catastrophes.
“The coordinates in time,” he had argued further at the Organizational Meetings, “are not impassable. If there is a structure, it is conceivable to traverse its boundaries and navigate through the dimensions of its integrity.”
But the Organizational Committee, composed of the more categorical and pragmatic social minds, would have none of it, for the Fundamental Principle was established and had been maintained over the past one-hundred centuries that an organic body traversing through the integrity violated all the quantal laws.
Jon-Rey reentered the three coordinates into the Maximal Sublimator to correlate their durations relative to infinitude. Another procedure he added was to reconfigure the relational orders in subsets, and he was convinced that would carry a bioform through the barriers of time. The Maximal Sublimator computed the variation of coordinates and concluded that although a quantal form was conveyable, a body composed as bioform would not survive a shift into the higher temporal system and would be dissolved forever into eternity.
“But does a body only subsist as bioform?” Jon-Rey demanded. “Does the meta-substance of the quantal form not transconstitute the bioform through the temporal sequences and the dimensional matrices?”
The Maximal Sublimator could not confirm the theoretical proposition of the quantal form as transconstitutive of the bioform.
“Send me there, to 81226, in refracted waves of light faster than the speed of light,” Jon-Rey said. “I will demonstrate my deduction, that my abstraction will not be my true discontinuation.”
The Maximal Sublimator hesitated.
“Convey me forward and back via the subsets of the coordinates,” he ordered the machine.
The Maximal Sublimator argued a quadrillion considerations within itself and asked, “Would you, Observer Jon-Rey, desire to preserve your mental continuity in the absence of your bioform? For I am unable to compute the principles upon which you have arrived at your deduction, and it would serve as a precaution to preserve the sentient aspect of your individual being should your reasoning prove mistaken.”
“No,” Jon-Rey said, “I have full confidence in the conclusions I have made.”
The Organizational Committee members discovered that Jon-Rey had accessed the quantum-scheme computer, and they strode hastily down a corridor. They rushed to the doors of a locked room and slammed them open, and within, they saw the Maximal Sublimator emitting a coruscation of streaming radiance and the bioform of Jon-Rey transcending into the integrity. They looked at the hologram projection of 81226, where he in distant time transmuted into photons, and in a panic, they turned off the machines.
by submission | Nov 10, 2018 | Story |
Author: Richard M. O’Donnell, Sr.
The toddler unclipped his seatbelt and floated away, gurgling and laughing as he drifted toward the… The what, Lady Maggie Durante wondered. There was no ceiling in the Vista–View space lounge. Just a sphere of glass and a grand view of the Earth that gets old fast when your spaceship has been delayed.
That’s what I get for marrying an explorer.
She never expected him to find something, much less an entire planet. What she had expected from him was to stay out there while she ruled the fiefdom from the safety of her penthouse on 5th Avenue Canal, New York, New York.
Maggie let Jimmy Junior’s tether feed out until he hovered over Africa, and then she reeled him in like a fish, a dead blobfish if truth be told. His father’s religion forbid gene manipulation and God had not been kind to his gene pool. Ironically, her husband’s bulbous nose had saved his life. “The natives took one look at my snout and welcomed me into the tribe. I’m one-hundred-ten percent sure they will think Junior is as beautiful as I am.”
“But are you certain it is safe to move there?”
“One-hundred-ten percent certain!”
Maggie’s fellow colonists applauded when she tucked Jimmy back in his highchair. His escape had given them a two-minute distraction from their ten hours and… Maggie glanced at the time on her reader. …ten hours, twenty-two minutes wait.
“Drink,” Jimmy demanded. Maggie opened a pack of one-hundred percent juice and popped the nipple. Jimmy took one swig and spit it out. Beads of juice shot toward a farmer in overalls.
“Space-vac!” she ordered. An Instant-Clean ® machine flew over and sucked the juice out of the air. Jimmy began to whine, so Maggie held him on her lap and began to read from a new book on her reader, “Boots and Saddles: Or Life in Dakota with General Custer, by Elizabeth Bacon Custer.” She sighed. “Daddy says he is one-hundred-ten percent sure the natives will be friendly. Custer was one-hundred-ten percent sure he’d win at the Little Big Horn, too.”
A naval officer glided into the lounge and everyone stirred with anticipation. “We will board momentarily. Lord Durante has approved the repair specs personally via the intergalactic network.” He smiled. “Lord Durante has spared no expense where your safety is concerned. He assured me that everything is one-hundred percent A-OK in the colony. He awaits our arrival.”
A wave of relief spread around the room, but the message chilled Maggie.
“Lord Durante said that?” asked Maggie.
“Said what, Milady?”
“Said, one-hundred percent A-OK.”
“Verbatim. You can’t do better than one-hundred percent.”
Maggie waited until everyone had left the lounge. Then she grabbed Jimmy and caught the first elevator back to Earth. She didn’t stop until she found a hotel with a secure inter-galactic Wi-Fi. Lord Durante always exaggerated one-hundred-ten percent of the time. Something was wrong. “Daddy,” yelled Jimmy when Lord Durante’s hologram appeared in the room. As Jimmy tried to hug the hologram, Maggie listened to her husband’s broadcast.
“I hope to God you knew I was lying and did not board the Jimmy Junior. I was one-hundred-ten percent wrong. I admit it. There’s trouble, but with the a hundred Marines and a thousand settlers on board, we should have the numbers to–” An explosion rocked the monitor on his side of the transmission and Lord Durante almost fell down. “Maggie!” he shouted. “Know all those books you read about Custer, the old west and the Trail of Tears? Well, damn the internet. The natives read them, too!”
