by submission | Sep 30, 2018 | Story |
Author: David Hartley
Perhaps it would have been better, somehow, if this had been sample #142 or #96 or #305, something innocuous and meaningless but no, it was sample number one, the first, and he already wanted to taste it.
He’d tried blaming a few other things: it had reached some telepathic tendrils into his mind at the point of death and made him look at it hungrily because, hey, it wasn’t dead, it was just lying microscopically still, waiting to be ingested so its parasitic foetal cells could awaken and attach to his stomach lining and grow inside his blood.
Or: this was an important scientific experiment that needed to happen now before endless committees talked themselves into a tangle, and the whole thing got entrenched with the bioethics lot and tied up in the finickity parameters of some drawn-out lab test in which he would almost certainly not be involved.
Or: he needed to step up and be the pioneer because there were millions starving back home, billions soon, and here on Europa there was a nearly endless supply of these nutritionally rich organisms whose alarming rate of reproduction and ease of capture meant they were almost begging to be used to save an ailing species of twelve billion superior mouths.
But truth was, he just wanted to taste it. He just wanted, more than anything, the experience of pressing the monochrome dough between his teeth, feeling the spread of its fizzing oil across his tongue while that sharp, salty, oaky aroma filled his mouth and coated his throat and washed him through. He’d seen the salivation of the others. They’d all thought it. But none had the guile, or the access.
He slipped the scalpel from his sleeve, angled his body to block the cameras, and sliced out a decent chunk from the thirteenth petri dish of Sample #1. It was the part he’d identified, in his head, as the flank. The morsel and the scalpel went back into his sleeve as he lowered the thirteenth petri into permanent cold storage.
Later, as he cooked it, he thought he saw, just for half a second, the meat twitch into life. He grinned at himself. He chuckled, he whistled, he shook his head, for it must’ve been the spit of the oil, the kick of the flame, a trick of the eye.
by submission | Sep 29, 2018 | Story |
Author: Daniel Hampton
I rested my eyes upon the tessellated sphere. It was such a beautiful dream. It was such a spectacular failure.
If the world is a golf ball, then I’m the one who drove it straight into the bottom of the lake. My club? A thing so simple, so deadly, so tempting.
My dream. It doesn’t seem like a dream anymore, but it doesn’t quite feel real either. I found my guilt overwhelming, all encompassing, ever-present, but toothless. I didn’t drown myself. I didn’t jump off the sheer cliff. There’s nobody left that would want me to.
I don’t think I’m alive. I’m not sure If I ever was. The world hasn’t ended. My world was the end. My existence, a last turn of the key, locking the coffin forever.
I can shout as loud as I please, and no one will hear me. I whisper, because I wish that I was mute.
It would be better if I had never spoke at all.
Why did they listen to me?
Why did they bet their lies on a false dream?
Why did they die before me?
Why did they live to die?
Why did my dream exist? Why did my dream kill them?
I don’t know. I don’t know that I never knew. Do I?
It was a beautiful dream.
I was Noah, I made the ark, and I took two of everything I cared to take. I threw them in a rock and set it sailing. The rock came back, with nothing but bones. I’m all out of twos. No point in throwing another rock, I suppose.
“It’s the last chance. Our last chance. The end is nigh, and I’ll take a one-thousandth chance over a one-millionth chance, wouldn’t you?”
I guess my argument was persuasive. Too bad it was wrong, and I happened to win the lottery. One in a million, I said. Well, I must feel like a million bucks now.
“Of course, I believe you. I’ll roll the dice. And if we get it right, we’ll all have a big party when we come back, ok?”
They came back, and what a big party we’re having. Me and a big pile of bones. I think I’m supposed to bury them, but I don’t know who’s who.
“Are you sure about staying? I know there’s not enough room, but this was your project, your dream!”
The worst part is the pity. I saw it on their faces. The last thing I saw on their faces. Pity. For me.
The sky is a blend of blues and greens, and the stars are hiding behind them, laughing at me. I sent my friends up to them, and they spat them back at me. I want to punch the stars in the face.
But they don’t deserve it.
I’m guessing they burned up on re-entry to the atmosphere. I still don’t know what went wrong. It was supposed to stay in orbit for years, until the clouds went away. The big rock landed on earth, and the clouds flew all around. The clouds came, and they rained water. Just water. I don’t know how. Then the sphere came around back to earth. I was embarrassed that I was so wrong, of course, but I was happy my friends were coming back.
Well, my friends came back.
And what a great party we’re having.
by submission | Sep 28, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mike Bailey
The box sat upon the table. It was inanimate, but strange waves of light moved across its surface and Roman felt a tingle in the back of his head like the beginning of a headache.
The box had been carefully placed there on that smooth glass table and there it sat, rather stoically, in that dimly lit room. Roman knew that it was inanimate, but still there was something about it that was more alive than he and that made him very uneasy. It was as if this box was effortlessly reaching inside of them, hearing them, silently judging them, selfishly holding all its answers from them. Roman had always heard tales of such a thing from the old wives. He even felt that there may be a chance he would see a glyphtograph in person one day in some museum or exhibition. But here they were now in their home and there it was. No glass enclosures lined with brainwave resistant material. No Praetorian Guards armed to the teeth, holding back the curious phalanx with only the knowledge of what savagery would happen should they come too close.
“I can’t believe it’s here in our house,” Gregory said. “I was just thinking the same thing,” said Roman. “I wish I knew how it worked.” “It wouldn’t matter if you did – you can’t read,” Gregory said as he walked from the kitchen over to the living room chewing a protein bar. Roman saw this, and with a furrowed brow exclaimed “Don’t eat all of those, man! We only have 15 left for the whole month.” Gregory sat down beside him, never looking at him – only the box – but talking to him all the same. “After we sell this we’re never going to have to worry about being hungry again.” Conflicted, Roman turned his gaze back to the glyphtograph. He liked the sound of that but had started to have doubts about how this deal was going to go down. The box lit up and then darkened.
How could two young boys from the Panormus District wind up in this situation? The odds must be astronomical. This was nothing like the simple emulator game food ration credit hustles that had afforded them this shabby apartment in the slum. The small trinkets and jewelry that Gregory would steal from the upper-class denizens of the wealthier districts did not shine as bright as this. The valuable, technically sophisticated machines of business import that they managed to relieve drunken Arbiters and careless Scribes did not hum and vibrate to the degree that this motionless machine did. This was an incredible windfall. Where did Gregory find this? How had he come to bring it here with no one knowing? He knew possession of this object was so beyond them that it had started to feel too good to be true. The glyphtograph cast a symbol against the wall but then disappeared. Roman was scared.
They heard heavy foot falls approaching their room. “This must be Tiberius, now. He will show us the way to the meeting place. Mark my words, Roman; the brotherhood will pay fortunes for this. So many credits that your head will spin.” Before Gregory could reach the door the glyphtograph lit up the walls with strange symbols.
“Hey!” Roman called to Gregory his voice shaking. “What is this?” As Gregory turned around to behold the symbols his eyes widened as he realized all too late that they were a warning. The door exploded as Praetorians stormed the room killing them both in seconds and reclaiming the property of the Emperor.
by submission | Sep 27, 2018 | Story |
Author: Thomas Desrochers
Rebecca set her fork down. “Be honest with me. How is work going? I mean, really.”
He sighed, shoulders rolling forward. “It’s bad. Real bad.”
Damn, she hated to see that look in his eyes. She reached across the table and snaked her fingers through his. “Tell me about it. Please?”
“Alright.” He gave her a weak smile, looked at the wall behind her. “I’ve got eighty people under me, mostly slumcats from under the table. They’re not the smartest, but they work hard – we post the best numbers of any sump crew. Hasn’t been a flood in our section in thirty months, gotta be a record.”
He paused.
There it was again – his eyes going cloudy. He was tough. If he was showing this much, God, but he must be hurting. Rebecca squeezed his hand. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “You don’t have to bear this alone.”
The pressure, the words, both pulled him back just enough. He breathed in sharply. “They’re axing us, Bec.”
She couldn’t believe it. Her heart climbed into her throat. “But why? Your crew is the best, right?”
He shook his head. “Not just my crew. All of them. Corporate’s LawBrain found a loophole in the contract. We’re not required to maintain the sumps. Nobody is. They’re just gonna let them run until they fail.” He looked her in the eyes. “What am I going to tell them? They live down there, have families down there. God, what do I tell them?”
Rebecca swallowed hard. She came around the table and embraced him, ran her fingers through his hair. “Oh honey,” she crooned. “I wish I knew.” Tears were running down her face, hot and fast.
He let out a weak sob and clutched at her skirt. She had never seen him so broken. She took him to bed and comforted him, stroking his hair and singing the songs her mother had sung to her as a child.
He fell asleep just after eleven. Rebecca held him a little while longer as she watched the beads of rain gather on the bedroom window, feeling his heartbeat. She wished she could be there for him in the morning. A kiss, maybe. Breakfast. With enough time she might find the right words to help get him through the next day, the next week.
There was no time.
She wanted to cry. No time.
She slipped out of bed and tucked him in, kissed him on the cheek, left a note saying, ‘I love you.’ Out to the kitchen: put away the leftovers, do the dishes. Grab her bag, fix her skirt and makeup, head for the elevator. An auto-cab waited outside the lobby. She got in the front seat, half listening to the radio broadcast.
“…and for those just joining us, today we have our esteemed guest David Goldwater, founder, and CEO of Whole Life Industries.”
“Hello.”
“Now, David, the rise of Whole Life has been astounding, an unprecedented success in today’s market. Investors are wondering, what’s your secret?”
“Well, there isn’t much of a secret! I simply saw a need and moved to fill it. The continued improvements to the efficiency of our working class has led to increased consumer spending, but it has created holes that were traditionally filled outside the reach of the service industry. I felt this was a moral oversight – after all, everyone deserves to be loved, and modern robotics isn’t up to the job quite yet. We simply work to provide that necessary servi-”
Rebecca turned the radio off. Only five hours left on shift. She looked forward to her bed.
by submission | Sep 26, 2018 | Story |
Author: Ian Hill
The fat man sits in his high place. His presence is revealed by the twitch and wiggle of an oversized quill over the rim of his lectern. When not penning away, he’s spotted by the crunch of a nut in the jaws of his bearded cracking doll, by the discarded hulls and husks of foreign seeds as they go clattering across the marble. The fat man loves to sit atop his lofted throne, lounging into himself, idly popping kernels into the wild-eyed muncher and actuating its red lever. But, life for the wallowsome fatling is not all tranquil repose; no, he has a job, and it’s a foul one.
The dim chamber’s double doors part at the middle, letting in a dramatic shaft of orange firelight that widens and attenuates before reaching the plinth of his chair. In comes shuffling a tiny worm of a weakling. Here is a querulous man—that’s evident from mere posture alone, since he’s too far below to really see—and he has the nerve to wring his hands.
The fat man peers down the plump hills of his cheeks. “What have we here? Oh me, oh my! A petty little fool doth I descry?”
The timorous supplicant smiles. “A fine rhyme, my Lord.”
“Speak up!”
The namby-pamby milksop pulls a pained expression and clears his throat. “I said your rhyme was fine, my Lord.”
“Fine, eh?” The fat man licks his gums, sucks his teeth. “Fine doesn’t account for a half of it. A third of it, I say!” He blinks rapidly but soon stops; the weight of his lids fatigues. “I’ll have you know it was not premeditated,” he murmurs half to himself. His piggish hands flutter indecisively on his paunch. One goes for the feather of his quill, the other for a slumping sack of nuts.
“I came to request a thing of you, my Lord,” the cringing doormat declares.
The fat man’s eyes bulge, but his expression quickly shifts to one of delight. “A thing, hm?” He strokes his prolific pillow of a chin. “What sort of a thing? Out with it, knave!”
The cowardly milquetoast gathers enough nerve to raise his chicken’s neck and cast a single wary eye’s gaze up the looming height to the grinning cherub in his kingdom of vaults and cobwebs. “I would have a bountiful harvest for my family.”
The fat man’s guffaw is broken only by the resounding crunch of a thick-shelled kernel. Dust and hard chips rain down and scatter at the mendicant’s feet. “A bounty? For you? And your—” his left hand flips through the pages of a book, “—and your family of nine starving, ill-begotten field mice?”
The weepy beggar somehow manages a stiff jaw. “Aye.”
The fat man giggles and kicks his vestigial feet, loosening one of his fluffy socks. He wipes a tear from his deep-set eyes. “Oh my. No, no, no. Ha!” He clutches his gut. “Ha-ha, I say! You,” he motions down with his nutcracker, making its jaw rattle, “you are too far behind, my agrarian munchkin. Just today I blessed three spacefaring frigates, a research station full of engineered posies, and—listen to this—a computer bigger than a moon!”
“Impressive, my Lord,” the shrinking wretch mumbles, not sure what any of the words mean.
“Impressive! Ha! Yes, you’re right; it is impressive.” The fat man pauses as if lost in thought. After a second, he waves his hand. “Have your harvest. But! If you don’t pick up the pace and develop lasers or reactors soon, I’ll send a blight to drive you into better days. Understand?”
The bewildered rascal nods, loving eyes full of tears. “Of course, Lord.”
“Very good.” The fat man scribbles a note as he chews. “Begone!”
