by submission | Apr 25, 2019 | Story |
Author: Timothy Goss
Washed up, lifeless, the thing was battered and scarred by the ocean. Seagulls pecked and pulled at the meat squawking and cawing. Things had nibbled its extremities and something big had taken its lower half. No appendages were obvious, but there were bone-like protrusions bursting from its leather-like shell. Gulls feasted as a cast of crabs busied themselves away from the birds. Where they ate the sand was Spanish blue.
The horseshoe cliffs witnessed the bright lights in the sky three days before. The lightning produced a halo of prisms through torrential rain, and then something else, something unexpected. It scarred the sky for an instant, an incision through the storm and clouds to expose the void, and then it vanished.
An almighty splash on a turbulent sea and green-blue sparks followed flashing like superheated copper filings. The wind whistled long and low as it skimmed across the water disturbing the waves, then upon reaching the cliffs changed its pitch and ascended.
It took three days to reach land but the gulls spotted it immediately, adrift amongst the waves. A momentary snapping of jaws took its lower half in an instant, maybe a shark, maybe a pod.
It had no perception of the Earth, in the void all function ceased. It is the space between spaces, the smallest place between this and that, vacuous, devoid of physical properties. Exposure to the momentary rift between places sucked the living essence from everything before spitting it into the ocean.
Older scars stretched around the barrel-like shell, scars with seven talons around a centrepiece mimicking the rays of the Sun. Scars with no terrestrial association. These marks originated from the thing’s past, before the ocean and the beach, before the sharks and the whales and the crabs and the fish; before the void.
Over millennia the cliffs at St Mary’s witnessed these events unnoticed by human eyes. Expulsion from the void was nothing new. During prehistoric times detritus cast adrift would have been decimated by gigantic sea creatures. With humanity came the marvel of monsters and myth, strange fruits for human minds: Sea Devils, Marine Sows and Hoga – a monstrous fish indeed.
The thing had its place in this grand assembly. There was no evidence it was independently capable of interstellar travel. It did not reveal any secrets about its origins or its knowledge of space and time. And save for its scars the thing had no discernible markings, nothing to personalise it. There were no obvious signs of civilisation yet this thing had traveled a greater distance than any human ever created. It did not belong with the crabs and the gulls; it did not belong on the land, in the sea or in the air. It did not belong.
So, it was the crustacean and scavenger who became the first of earth’s explorers unto the unknown. Gulls cawed noisily and scavenged what they could. Crabs had better luck at the blue end and the equipment to split and pry the semi-broken bones exposing a richer bounty. Within the cavity of the things shell the explorers found other sea creatures feasting quietly in their minuscule fashion. These provided an earthly delight to the otherwise alien cuisine.
by submission | Apr 24, 2019 | Story |
Author: Alex Z. Salinas
It was the 4:30 p.m. moon, clear as a piece of holy bread on a bright blue carpet, that led him—thinking on it much later, “led” was the only word he could come up with—to kneel down and scoop baseball field dirt into his palm. He then pulled out a scrap paper from his blue jean pocket, reread the “Yes” circled in pencil by Liliana Howard—her response to his asking her to be his girlfriend—then released the dirt onto the center of the paper. He folded it into a ball and, with all his might, threw the wad as hard as he could toward the unusual afternoon moon. Whether it was a strong gust of wind, God’s miracle, something else—his wayward imaginings—the paper ball flew, ziplined, rocketed, blasted toward the far-away rock known by ancient prophets. It disappeared, never seemed to fall, defied law. It was in this moment that the boy’s head was crudely struck, popped, cracked open by a ball—a flyball—punishment for not paying attention in the outfield. Backyard baseball was a game he’d never wanted part of, never enjoyed, and as fate had it, concussed him to a dark place, a shadow prison with its own terrifying logic and black magic.
*
When they released the image, the first picture ever taken, I texted Danny right away. How could I not?
Yo, this shit is crazy. Just like you predicted.
Two minutes later, he responded. Three emojis, zero words.
I couldn’t believe it. When word spread that a picture would be coming, Danny and I somehow got talking about it during a break. One way or another, he mentioned this crazy story about being hit in the head with a baseball and then already knowing what the black hole would look like, having seen it a long time ago. “There are things we know but have forgotten,” Danny said, “even things we’ve never seen,” I told Danny he was tripping like a motherfucker. I didn’t know the extent of his crazy.
Danny smiled, all creepy, but that made me believe him somehow. I had no choice. Had there been other dudes there, an audience, I’d have known Danny was fucking with me. With all of us. But no.
That’s the thing with certain people. Spend some time with them, nobody else around, and you realize later what they say to you comes with nothing attached. No strings. No stakes. Nada. Just straight-up talk. Shit that sticks in your head and rolls around, keeps you up at night, especially when you sleep alone.
*
Danny spent his whole life at first drawing, then painting, black circles with white, sometimes yellow or orange rings around them. He didn’t know why he painted them, didn’t understand the urge or force or what some call higher calling that “led” to his peculiar art. All Danny knew, better than his family history, better than the Bible, better than his three-year-old’s birthday, better than his cheating heart, were the rings. The rings. The black circles with light rings. He sold them, people liked them, hung the canvases on their bathroom walls, but he’d’ve painted them anyway.
April 10, 2019, the release date of the first image of a black hole, was just another day for Danny. As the world at large collectively gasped, shared on social media, talked around water coolers, Danny smiled.
They’d look back at his work later and say, Thief.
But Danny was cool. He knew. Another person knew.
One person is all you need.
by submission | Apr 21, 2019 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
This was bizarre.
He hovered over the planet and examined it.
During the last check of this planet, there were more than eight million different species. Most were instinctual but others were fairly intelligent residents. Some of those species had billions of inhabitants, some of the smaller ones even had trillions. Now there was just one. And not just one species but only one single entity of that one species.
True, there was a gap of time. He hadn’t been back here for a couple of thousand years but what could have gone so wrong, so quickly?
More importantly what was this individual essence? How had it survived on a planet by itself? And what happened to all the rest?
Was it just lucky enough to be the sole survivor of a global disaster? That seemed far-fetched. Maybe this one ‘thing’ had enough energy to destroy everything else, including every little bug and tadpole. That would make it pretty damn powerful but again, highly unlikely. Or was this an enormous blob like presence that was not indigenous to the planet and methodically sucked all of it up, absorbing all other life entirely into its own massiveness? None of these prospects were really feasible. Yet it was all just a little bit scary.
The last time that things had gone this haywire, an incident needed to happen; to make a correction. Bulky little-brained beasts meandering around for millions of years and not developing as they should and not making a substantial contribution to the higher cause. So, a big rock was redirected, and the impact blotted out the mistakes. It took a while but when things were back on a more congenial path it was time to move onto bigger and better things.
Now this. This planet was becoming a real pain. Time for another correction.
A smaller rock was meticulously nudged into a bigger rock which was now perfectly aligned with the singularity that harbored down there. The ball of destruction screamed through the atmosphere and lit up the sky. This should take care of things. Then there would be the waiting for the whole process to become reestablish and hopefully progress into a more acceptable design. That could take another million years or so. He’d have to be persevering. Maybe third times the charm.
He waited for contact. The ground shaking divot into the crust. Waited for the tremendous plume of dust, billowing out until it covered the majority of the planet. He waited. But there was none of that.
Instead, some ‘thing’ threw the rock back at Him.
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.”
