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!”
by submission | Nov 9, 2018 | Story |
Author: Ken Carlson
The pain in his side was a steady series of jabs. Alone it wasn’t enough to knock him down; no, the bill from the hospital was good for that. Six months of security work on this mining colony might just cover it if Murphy didn’t worry about food or shelter.
The lights flickered and the jingle of his doorbell interrupted his misery, startling him as he had never received a visitor. He gripped his side and lumbered to the door. It slid open, revealing a doctor he recognized from the hospital. The man was wearing a suit now, instead of his hospital garb, carrying a briefcase and a small computer screen.
“Mr. Murphy? Brian Murphy?”
Murphy nodded.
“You may remember me, Mr. Lewis, from the hospital? May I come in?
Before Murphy could respond, Lewis swept into his quarters and took a seat in Murphy’s recliner, humming quietly to himself. Murphy slowly eased onto the couch, grabbing at his side.
“So, Mr. Murphy, the hospital has completed quite a bit of work on your liver and kidneys, yes…quite a bit, and at no small cost, I must say.
Murphy cut him off. “You did say, Mr. Lewis, not Dr. Lewis?”
“Correct. I’ve only got a few minutes before my next appointment. Now, you’re working this week outside Parsec 5, guarding the energy station, correct?
“What about my work, Mr. Lewis? Am I going to be all right?”
“Let’s talk about your condition.”
Murphy was getting angry and confused. “Stop! What is my condition? Do I have cancer? Is this about the surgery?”
Lewis paused, hummed again, rummaging through his briefcase. “One of your kidneys was removed in surgery, and a continuance energy source, part of the Rawplex series, good brand, was attached to your remaining kidney and liver.”
“Was I shot?” Murphy asked. “Is this part of the plague?”
“There’s no plague, Mr. Murphy. Your kidney was healthy and is helping one of our party leaders to guide us toward a better future. The plague is just something we, uh, well, it’s nothing you need worry about. Now about your work schedule. You have been selected for a very special, and may I say patriotic venture which will benefit you and your family.”
“I have no family. My wife left.”
“No matter. Next Tuesday, at 17:45 you will receive a visit from two gentlemen dressed as repair engineers. When they arrive at your station, you will approve their identification and let them pass. Done. For this task, we will provide you with a small token of our appreciation. In the future, should we require assistance, we will contact you with those opportunities.”
“What? I’m calling the Head of Security. I don’t know what’s going on here.”
“Or,” Mr. Lewis reached into his briefcase and produced a small box, like a thick calculating device, and clicked a button. Murphy cried out in pain, throwing himself to the floor.
“You see, Mr. Murphy? This Rawplex series is quite a machine, efficient, yes?” He collected his materials back in his briefcase. “It has been connected directly to your liver and remaining kidney, important organs for you to survive. As long as you follow instructions, they will have no impact on your life. If you don’t, well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”
Lewis rose to his feet, stepping over Murphy. “Don’t forget! Tuesday, 17:45. Thank you for your assistance.” Lewis exited into the hallway, checking his schedule for his next appointment.
