by submission | Dec 22, 2018 | Story |
Author: Philip Tudball
We explore. As a species, it is both what we do and defines who we are. It is what we have always done, since the first of us gazed outwards and wondered. We took ships and travelled out into the unknown, planting our flags on distant shores. The world shrank around us as the unknown became known. Eventually, the world became too small for us and we took ships, out into space, back out into the unknown. Still, we planted our flags. As the technology advanced so did our horizons, we planted more flags, reaching ever further out, until here we are today.
We are far from Earth now, so far out. Lightyears out, generations out even, and we have been travelling a long time. Our ancestors would not recognise us, those who first pushed off from a rocky shore into turbulent waters, or who first left the safety of ground for the promise of open skies. But they would recognise our intentions.
A spaceship the size of a Terran continent is hard to wrap your head around and makes the term ‘ship’ almost insulting. ‘Self-sufficient’ also loses almost all meaning when dealing with such measure. But we are a ship, and we are alone. We left our species behind when we began our journey further than any before. Longer than any before, taking us to parts of the universe our forebearers could not even conceive of. We have been seeding areas of space, marking them out for future colonisation, those rare bits of the universe where verdant star systems will allow for empires to flourish, given enough time. For those who will follow us in decades, even centuries, time. Today we are planting a flag, so to speak. Our ancestors would know us and be proud.
Today a star is going supernova, and will soon become a pulsar, throwing its detritus all the way across the universe. This star has been laced with markers and been forced into an early metamorphosis. This star will mark us out. The power required, the time and knowledge to make this happen. Decades of work by the greatest amongst our ranks. A flag our ancestors could not even comprehend.
We are grouped on the bridge, thousands of us but all quiet. Anyone who can be spared their tasks, anyone with sufficient rank. These moments come once a generation. All of us, expectant and waiting and silent. We are so far off as to make the event look insignificant. The explosion, one of the most violent acts the universe can throw at us, will be so small it cannot be seen with the eye from our vantage. There is no need to be here all together, yet here we are, we gather together anyway for we know this is a momentous occasion.
Silence. Then a computer chimes. It chimes again, then continues in short bursts. That small sound is all we need. Such a small sound for something that means so much. Some cheer, some clap. I allow myself a smile, with the knowledge of this momentous thing we have done. Our flag, to be flown across the universe. Others will follow us, our beacon or flame, a mark on the map.
Our horizons become smaller but we move on, we explore. It is both what we do and defines who we are.
Follow us.
by submission | Dec 21, 2018 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Charlene, a bubbly, buxom blonde graduate student from Rutgers, acting as a freshly appointed aide-de-camp to a hatchling President, turned sour overnight. Her daily briefing notes were disheveled, poking from her leather daily briefing binder, held close to her wrinkled blouse, as she stood behind her fuming employer. She leaned backwards for comfort against an American flag stanchion behind his chair in the embattled Oval Office. She avoided glancing through bay windows toward snow-covered lawn supporting a bevy of clustered alien ships occupying White House landing space. Their impenetrable force fields, glowing iridescent yellow and gold, confounded circling soldiers and tanks.
“What’s next, Char?” asked President Braxton. He sat tick tight against his leather chair, hoping the Great Seal would shore up his quivering spine.
“Admiral Goins, from the Joint Chiefs, will join us with a representative from…” she faltered, pulling at her notes. “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t pronounce it. Yrtlto…itsrxy…” She stopped in frustration.
“Not to worry, Char. I can’t say it, either. Worse than when I was stationed with NATO in Yugoslavia and then Wales. We’ll get through this. DARPA reps reported that all these invaders are telepaths. Damned inconvenient, but we’ll muddle through. Can’t be any worse than Patterson, New Jersey…or New Orleans. I managed through those language barriers to get elected.”
Secret Service agents opened a floor-to-ceiling security door, allowing entry of a half-man half-wall. Goins’ chest pushed at his array of service pins, medals and awards covering a military pressed suit with five gold sleeve insignias circling his jacket sleeves. He escorted an eight-foot-tall being covered in emerald leaf-like scales over twisting brown bark covering its three walking limbs and four outgrowths that moved like arms. There were no facial features to address. The President stood and began to extend his hand. Goins waved off the gesture with a half-hidden motion. Charlene backed up further into the flag’s cloth.
“Admiral, explain my role to…” Goins held his right hand up to his chest, with palm facing Braxton.
“The Representative knows everything about us—you, and this office. Similar meetings are being held worldwide. Just look towards the center of it, think, and it will communicate. There will be no need for an interpreter.”
“Ridiculous, but, okay.” Braxton gave the alien his full attention. In five seconds, he backed away and sat back down hard in his chair. “Are they kidding? Stop all forestry within a year. Drop all paper products and force all our people to use bidets? I think this character has more bark than…”
“Stop! Mr. President, for our survival, no humor. They consider it a threat.” The Admiral’s face turned pale as the bricks in his posture slumped.
“Admiral, I can’t take this demand seriously. What proof do we have that they can make such demands?” Braxton put his hands on his desktop and peered into the shaken Admiral’s face.
“Mt. Rainier is gone, sir, right down to the base rock. Northwest is panicking. Couldn’t hide that. Our subs are gone, too.”
“Why? We’ve done nothing to assault them.”
“Retribution for St. Helens’ forests.”
“Ridiculous. That was natural.” Braxton pulled his lips tight.
“Not exactly, sir. It was a failed experiment. Later, please.” Groins clenched his fists.
Charlene read from her crumpled notes. “This is just the first alien race, sir. All four have a separate armada. The next wants clean water…no more human waste in it. Then there’s air and fire delegations. I’m confused, sir.”
Braxton turned to Charlene. “Clear my calendar. This is going to be a tough day of negotiations.”
by submission | Dec 20, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock
“I’m finished at last.”
Tommy pulled Mariel by the hand as they ran through the nearby woods.
“I’ve retrofitted the structure with twin rocket pods sufficient to achieve orbit.”
Mariel did not know what her best friend was talking about.
The trail climbed a hill and wound a bend, and there it was, the same but different: the place where they had read comic books, shared secrets, eaten Slim Jims. High up in the branches it sat with planks nailed into the trunk, its ladder ascending.
Mariel tilted back her head. Tommy squeezed her hand into a fist.
“My treehouse is a rocket ship. We leave at noon.”
“What?”
Tommy brushed aside her bangs and gazed into her eyes.
“I want you to come with me. That’s what childhood love is for, Mariel: to make us love childhood.”
Mariel’s mind raced. “I can’t leave the planet! I have parents here. A dog. Homework.”
“Tell the dog your parents ate the homework and let’s go!”
***
Tommy Flynn sat stargazing the night before atop the coal shack in Mariel’s yard. Coal would be the fuel.
“Mariel McDonegalhousen,” he said.
Her name stretched longer than the oxygen of a single breath allowed.
Tommy rehearsed his pitch.
“A pasture of stars await! A crust of sunlight forms on the horizon! There isn’t room enough on this planet for our genius!”
He looked at the moon and said hello.
***
Tommy’s mother held other plans for her only son.
“Even a garbage collector performs a good for the world because they pick up the garbage. At least become a garbage collector, Tommy. Don’t become a dreamer. Dreamers are the most useless of all.”
***
Tommy ran to consult the neighborhood seer, who smoked pot and wore jean jackets.
“Gotta save the space program,” Tommy told him.
Crazy Mike stroked a beard that wasn’t there and shifted his weight upon the garbage can. A meadow surrounded them.
“Yes, perhaps a technological breakthrough of this magnitude will accomplish that lofty goal: the implementation of human willpower to overcome reality itself. Yes, it might do. It just might do.”
Crazy Mike is crazy, Tommy thought.
***
Mariel believed in Tommy, in all his adventures and notions. But this was a lot to ask.
“You’ll need to serve this ship in multiple roles, first officer. Navigator, engineer…”
Tommy remembered how cool Dean Martin was, as the pilot in that disaster movie, and how suave Dino was with the ladies.
“…flight attendant.”
“I am here to serve this ship,” Mariel responded.
“Good man.”
***
Tommy wondered, sometimes, if Crazy Mike wasn’t his father. The guy hung around a lot but never got too close—just like fathers were supposed to do.
***
The countdown began.
The noon sun hung in a cloudless sky.
The neighborhood heard thunder from far afield.
They left behind soap operas to come see.
A trail of exhaust fumes climbed the sky.
Tommy’s mother frowned.
Crazy Mike giggled.
A tree sat scorched and empty in the woods.
A dream took flight.
by submission | Dec 19, 2018 | Story |
Author: Irene Montaner
“So, what is it?” Dan asks.
I don’t know. I think it’s a flower but I don’t remember its name. I add another brushstroke to my watercolour painting. Another red leaf, longer than all the other ones and I paint some green leaves too. Red and dark green leaves but I cannot remember its name, so I shrug. “Tell me, how is it that we’ll run away?”
“We’ll leave this madhouse early in the morning, before the nurses are up. We’ll get into the growing bunkers. First, we’ll sneak into the genetic labs and tweak some good-looking plants and then we’ll grow them in some nice hydroponic cushions. We’ll get those red plants of yours, you’ll see.” And his eyes glint as he goes through this crazy idea once more. As if we could break into the growing bunkers without anyone noticing, let alone leave the asylum.
Perhaps on Earth it would have been possible for us to get away from this confinement but certainly not here in Europe, where security is automated and highly effective and there are some practicalities to consider: spacesuits, food and water and an additional supply of oxygen should something go amiss (not that anything has happened since the colony was founded forty-some years ago). And I’m certainly forgetting something because that’s what I do these days, I forget things.
“So, what is it? Dan asks again.
He also forgets things and this time I forget to ask him how we’ll run away. I paint instead and add some more red leaves to my flower. I experiment with the shape and paint them as some elongated diamonds. I add some light green dots in the middle and then something happens. For the first time in years, I see the flowers clearly in my mind. Bright red leaves with a velvety touch to them, veins radiating from their central axis towards the edge of the leaf. I paint them quickly before I forget them.
In my mind, I see them in a terracotta pot with a golden ribbon around in the middle of a table. Our kitchen table. There are tiny fragrant pies fresh out of the oven and wreaths of evergreen decorating the door and window frames. And someone calls my name. Mam, oh it must be mam. And I wonder what it was like for mam when she got old and forgot things too. And whether she ended up in a retirement house surrounded by crazy people. But surely she didn’t because she was on Earth. And there you could wander freely no matter how insane you were. No one would think her a public danger for forgetting her stuff every now and then. She needn’t be locked up in case she was spotted walking at night towards the outer gate without a spacesuit. Or plucking the lettuces out of their nutrient solution because the symmetry of their leaves was no longer perfect although they were not edible yet. Or if she forgot to turn on and off the water filter of her apartment for a few days in a row. None of those things mattered on Earth. And her other children certainly cared for her. Yes, I had siblings, Paul and Ruth. Those were their names. Their names.
“Poinsettia. That’s it. The flower’s name is poinsettia,” I say.
“Poinsettia,” says Dan. “And a Merry Christmas to you too.”
And we both revel in the elusive memories of merrier days, far away from the colony.
by submission | Dec 16, 2018 | Story |
Author: Philip Tudball
Etrian blocked a glaive swing that would have decapitated him, moving backwards and trying to find his balance. His attacker leapt in again, sweeping a low strike at his legs. Another hurried parry and another step back. A third attack, this a stab right to his centre. Etrian was able to bring his stave up vertically and sweep the blade left, he rolled with the push, rotating his stave around and turned his block into a sideswipe, it connected with a solid thud against his foes helm throwing its body sideways. Etrian pushed forwards, his next swipe reaching behind, sweeping his foe’s knees from under him and crashing him on to his back. His opponent lay sprawled in front of him, Etrian stepped forward holding his stave ready for a killing blow. He lanced forwards, ready to crush the throat. He thrust down, his stave slipped between the gorget, punching down onto the windpipe ready to-
“Lashrak! Va na klanash”
The words rang out around the arena. The killcode contained within them shutting down all movement in Etrian’s body, every joint locked in place instantly. The stave, only millimetres from its target, would not find its mark.
Lights went on, illuminating the deck raised above the arena. All around, looking in, ‘Vlorak warriors howled their displeasure at the downed warrior. It struggled its way out from under Etrian’s immobile form. A ‘Vlorak cub, his first spar, young and inexperienced. With an angry growl, it stalked towards Etrian’s rigid body. Spitting a curse it rammed it’s blade through Etrian’s chest, tearing through the metal casing, finding the synthetic nerves within before bursting out the back in a spray of ichor and mechanical debris. Etrian screamed, the same scream forced from a thousand throats before this one. His automated nervous system relaying every jagged shard up his brain stem, unable to hold back anything.
A wall section of the arena opened up, a network of machines appearing, carrying the shell of Etrian’s new body. Perfect in every way to Etrian’s species this new shell needed only a brain to start it functioning. The machines began to work, with a brutal efficiency they enveloped Etrian’s shattered casing. Etrian’s brain stem was ripped from the spent shell of the now wrecked body. This time he couldn’t scream, as much as he wanted to. In front of the watchers, and with little ceremony, Etrian was placed into the new shell. Another lesson in pain. Etrian’s new body began to activate, his stem bonding with the synthetic nerves and bundles of this new case.
This is why the ‘Vlorak would win. The perfection of their art and their unceasing practice against the styles of their foes. Soon these living cages would contain the remnants of Etrian’s species, like that of countless conquered species before them.
A new warrior stepped on to the floor, older than his predecessor. Etrian knew this one, they had fought before, it would know his moves almost before he made them. This would not last long before the pain began again. Etrian’s frame powered up, the killcode unlocked and Etrian stumbled forwards adjusting to his new body. The warrior bellowed a challenge, looking for that last weakness to expunge, the last skills to master.
Deep in his core, Etrian sighed, at the futility and the pain. If only it would end, no more fighting, no more resurrection just for more agony. If only he could close his eyes and let it all go. The ‘Vlorak warrior charged, sweeping his blade in a vicious arc. Instinctively Etrian raised his blade to parry.
