by submission | Nov 7, 2018 | Story |
Author: David Henson
I go to the woman at the check-in of the Identity Bureau and touch the space where my right eye used to be. “I’m Roger Sanders and —”
“Look at the scanner to verify.”
I clear my throat and swirl my finger around in my empty eye socket.
The woman frowns. “Oh, dear. Take a number, please.”
After several minutes, a small, drab-looking man calls my number, and I go to his station.
“I’m Mr. Rire,” he says. “How can I help you?”
“Somebody stole my identity eye.”
He looks at me closely and makes a face. “Get away from me, kid, you bother me.”
I turn to leave.
“Don’t go. Sorry. It’s Open Mic Night at the Anti-Gravity Club. The classics are trending.”
I shrug.
“That was WC Fields. I hear a big-time talent scout’s going to be there tonight.”
“Yeah, sure. How about this hole in my head?”
“Oh… certainly. Your retinal pattern should be on file. You need to get it imprinted on an artificial implant.”
“How? I can’t prove to my insurance company who I am or access my bank account. I can’t even get through security at the plant where I work.”
He stares at my eye socket. “Did it hurt?”
“A guy lurched at me in broad daylight and shlupped it out with a vacuum-thingy and cauterized it all at once. Felt only a pinch.”
“They’re getting more brazen and sophisticated. You’re my second today.” Mr. Rire nods at a woman seated in the back of the room. She has her head turned slightly to the right and is tapping a pad. He hands one to me. “Complete this identity questionnaire. We’ll use it to confirm you are who you claim.”
I scroll through the form. “You’re kidding. All this?”
Mr. Rire smiles. “Lucy, you’ve got some splainin’ to do.”
I shrug and glance back at the pad. “How am I supposed to know the name of my great grandmother’s favorite pet?”
“All that information’s been previously uploaded. So normally you confirm your identity, and the form auto-completes.”
I turn my head to the left and lean close to his face.
“I know. Kind of a catch 22 for people like you, isn’t it? Fill in what you can. I’ll see what I can do.” Mr. Rire waggles his eyebrows. “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others.” He looks at me expectantly.
I shake my head.
“Julius Henry Marx.”
“The Communism fellow?”
Mr. Rire sighs. I take a seat next to the one-eyed woman and spend the next two hours working on the form.
***
Mr. Rire turns out to be a good guy. He gets the one-eyed woman and me temporary ID codes synced to our left retinas. He also gets us jobs waiting tables at the Anti-Gravity Club. Neither of us makes much, and I’m becoming way too familiar with old, corny humor. But at least we’re paying our rents and not starving. Ethel and I should both have implants with our real IDs in a few months.
Ethel talks constantly about returning to her holo surgery practice when she gets her validated identity back. I go on about how much I miss my work as a geologist on an interplanetary explorer. I don’t know why I lie. I guess the good thing about being nobody is it gives you a chance to be somebody.
by submission | Nov 4, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock
“They all came to see me: the man who could age — or de-age — at will. They all thought it was a trick. When you reach one hundred years of age, the body becomes elastic, the flesh conforms to the soul. If I thought myself a ten-year-old, I became such again, as I had once been. The body remembers its past, catalogues its every phase for later retrieval. If, boy, you know how. That’s why I’m tellin’ you all this: to teach you. You can’t learn if you don’t believe. So believe. The universe won’t let me die until I pass on its secrets. There’s a train coming at midnight down the celestial tracks. I mean to be on it, boy. So time is short. Listen again. They made me the main attraction. Even my fellow performers said I had six relatives, stashed in the wings, poppin’ up on cue. They didn’t believe, either. Happened right in front of them. They thought they were hypnotized somehow. The real secret to the transformation is in grabbin’ a memory, not lettin’ go. Fear attaches itself to failure in all human endeavors. Just don’t be afraid, boy. Let old Malcolm Manchester perform for ya’ one last time. Here it goes… I’m thinking of springtime up on the roof. Suburban beginnings, before I ran away to join the circus. Thirteen years of dreaming ready to explode its seed, shower the landscape of this crummy town. And… voila! Presto chango! Look at me, boy. I’m younger ‘n you. Soprano again. My body ain’t forgot. Time unwinds, before the power of the human will. Wait, now. Feel those tracks, gettin’ up a vibration? I can’t miss that train, boy. Won’t be another for some time. Heaven’s Own Special. ‘Course you can’t feel it comin’. You have a century plus before your train arrives. I hit a hundred and discovered my talent. Thought about quitting when I was ninety-eight. A long time to wait for something to happen in one’s life. Hey, look at me now. I’m seventy-three. Still a child, though, in the places it counts. At seventy-three I clambered back upon that same suburban rooftop over my family home. The world gets older if you live long enough to perceive it. The eras try to leave you behind. Don’t fall for that linear nonsense, boy. If you lived in outer space, what time would it be? What seasons would change? I’m hearin’ a hum. Lucky thing, got my bags packed. Before I go, you’ll have to show me. Demonstrate that you’ve learned, mastered my elementary parlor trick. Try it now. Pull down your courage… and show the world your wonder. Hurry up. Once the moment passes, you never get another just like it. I put in a word for you under the big top. Gave you a recommendation as my protege. Let’s see somethin’ I won’t believe. Wait, I’m thirty-nine now, playing with toys on the floor. I just saw Santa Claus. What’s that, boy? The power to set wishes free? Good choice. Wishing is half of reality. My wish? To bring out the children inside of us. Children of all ages. Stand back, here she comes. I’m ten years old. I’ll never get any older. I can roll like a boulder down a hillside and never break a bone. The train doesn’t stop, boy. You gotta run to catch it. You gotta leap on board and never miss. My legs will carry me anywhere. See ya’, boy, at the end of the line.”
by submission | Nov 3, 2018 | Story |
Author: J. H. Malone
“Happy Valentine’s Day!”
“Oh, Honey, for me? How sweet!”
“Open it. Then I’ll take you out to dinner.”
“Ok, just let me… What could it be?… Wow!… A CRISPR valentine…”
“I taped the pills to the back. Let’s take them now and in a month, every cell in our bodies will contain a swatch of the other’s DNA.”
“Are the pills homemade? They’re kind of…”
“My cousin has a setup in his garage.”
“Leonard?”
“Don’t be mean. Leonard is a smart guy.”
“Hmm…”
“Come on, Baby.”
“How did you get my DNA?”
“Uh…”
“Oh… Right… Ok, then. Down the hatch!”
“Here goes nothing!”
“Together forever! I love you, Peter… and I don’t think it takes a month once we swallow them.”
“What? Leonard said…”
“No, never mind. You’re right. In a month.”
“Why would you say it doesn’t take a month?”
“I just… I probably heard…”
“Wait a minute. Have you done this before?”
“Listen…”
“It was Fred, wasn’t it. That bozo. All your cells are polluted with Fred DNA, aren’t they? I don’t believe it. I’ve shared my toothbrush with you.”
“I’m so sorry! I was young. I was innocent. I thought I was in love.”
“I’m just… I can see him in you. That skunk.”
“No, no, Peter. His pill didn’t change me at all… I can tell when I’ve eaten asparagus, but that’s about all… and I’m allergic to peanuts…”
“You can hold your liquor too, for a girl. I’ll bet that came from Fred.”
“Forget about Fred. What am I getting from your DNA? Your jealousy?”
“Hey, don’t blame the victim here.”
“It was after Fred’s valentine that I started getting a yen for you, out of the blue. Maybe you ought to be thanking him.”
“Fine, Janice. Whatever. I just wanted it to be a surprise, is all.”
“It is totally a surprise. Actually, I’m honored. You’ve had so many girlfriends, but now I’m the special one.”
“Yes…”
“Oh my God! The guilty look on your face! Your lying gene is lousy. I hope that one isn’t in my pill… You’ve got some Lucy McGowan in you, don’t you? That tramp. She lies every time she opens her mouth. And Vanessa Pazzoli. How could you? And Mai Lei Sook? Afrina Bokadella? I’ll bet you’ve swapped DNA with all of them. Peter, you’re not the man I thought you were.”
“At least I’m not allergic to nuts. Plus, I’ve still got the old Y chromosome. I’ll prove it after dinner.”
“Ok, that’s it. I want you to leave. Please. Take one of your other valentines out to dinner. I’m just another girl to you.”
“No, no, Janice. Listen. This is a CRISPR PLUS valentine. First time I’ve ever given one.”
“What’s CRISPR PLUS?”
“The pills include the CRISPR gene drive, so our babies are gonna get extra me and you genes.”
“Our babies?… Oh, Peter… Are you saying…”
“Yes. And these pills will also swap our love genes.”
“Huh? What’s our love genes?”
“Leonard didn’t say, exactly, but he said now we’ll love each other forever, guaranteed. The divorce lawyers tried to get it banned but they couldn’t. So will you marry me?”
“Oh my God, Peter. I… I don’t know what to say… I think the pill’s kicking in. I can feel the love… Yes! I’ll marry you!”
“Excellent! So where do you want to go for dinner?”
by submission | Nov 2, 2018 | Story |
Author: DJ Lunan
Earth’s first extra-terrestrial visitor for 500 years is a peace offering and a miscalculation.
Intended for a swift twenty-year journey through its own solar system in the Monfix Galaxy, the visitor that breached Earth’s atmosphere had voyaged for almost 4,000 years from Urabia.
The visitor is a Fexil Box. It is tiny, no larger than a human fist. This Box contains a graphene alloy 3D printer, with Yttrium salts for energy and Lithium trioxide for connectivity. The printer is remarkable technology to humans, while for Urabians, it is a veritable antique that we only use to teach schoolchildren the value of inter-species communication. Indeed, Earth’s visitor is a peace offering from Class 5Vx of Vihin Primary School. Of course, they are all long dead.
“My Great-Grandfather was in Class 5Vx”, began President Monbieux, barely holding back tears, standing in front of footage of the long-forgotten Fexil Box falling to the blue planet.
When it lands on a remote beach on the Skua Islands, it barely disturbed the hot white sand. First, an umbrella emerges for communication and shelter. Next eight limbs sprout and the voyager struts into the forest, where it has identified the crucial mix of basic grapheme, terbium, and fresh water. Here, it extends a drilling syphon into the forest floor and quickly begins extraction. Then, silently, the visitor begins printing.
Under the umbrella, the production line is efficient, with newly-printed parts neatly stacking and self-assembling.
Meteorological tempests on Skua are violent and punctual. Beginning at 11 pm each day, wind and heavy tropical rain lash the island. Every living thing does its best to hide.
The first Limax maximus – a large slug – finds the Fexil Box at 1 am, and shelters happily under its communication umbrella, overhanging the efficient, silent industry of the printing press. Like all residents of Skua, Limax dream of unreserved shelter, and being gregarious, this first slug uses its happiest pheromones to signal to its family scattered across the forest.
Bliss proves an overwhelming draw, and within an hour, forty slugs are clinging to the underside of the umbrella, sleeping, mating and defecating.
Little did the slugs, Urabians or humans know that those specific mucous secretions from the sheltering slugs are caustic to the printer’s bullet-proof graphene alloy. By 3 am, the printer structure was visibly corroding, slowing production. Soon the printer begins malfunctioning and emitting sharp industrial noises. Its newly-minted components began disintegrating.
“This barbarity is obscene, criminal!”, announced President Monbieux to the transfixed Urabians watching the disintegration.
Dawn broke the storm. The Limax secretions had corroded tiny holes in every hinge, joint, pivot, and fulcra which were perfect for early-rising Neuroptera – net-winged flies – to lay their eggs. The larvae hatch within an hour and gorge on the nutrient-rich cocktail of love mucus and base minerals abandoned during the ongoing corrosion of the graphene alloy. The hungry larvae devour for the morning in the shade of the umbrella, before transforming into winged giants and flying to their nocturnal feeding grounds.
The larvae albumen provided the final fatal ingredient to the chemical cocktail, rendering the printer inert. By dusk, all components new and old stopped communicating. The unstable umbrella detached with that evening’s first winds, and communication with Urabia was lost.
Across Urabia, pictures loomed on screens around Urabia of Limax and Neuroptera tag-teamed destruction of the Fexil Box and its printers. Nostalgic Urabians wistfully remembered the innocence of their schooldays, and the midnight launches of the homemade Fexil Boxes promoting peace and love across their solar system.
“This aggression cannot go unpunished! What sort of race deserves to live that would destroy a child’s toy!”
by submission | Nov 1, 2018 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“Wally, do remember what they used to call us back in fourth grade?”
Wally bobbed his head up and down “Uh-huh, sure do. You were Adrian the alien and I was Wally the werewolf.”
Adrian chuckled. “I was a bit strange back then, before I learned to fit in.”
Wally shook his head. “And I didn’t help things by saying you didn’t smell human. But it didn’t slow you down. Yeah, you learned how to fit in, all the way to prom king. Me- it just got worse until, well, I never fit in. Except for the church group. I wouldn’t have fit in anywhere if it wasn’t for them.”
Adrian sighed. “Whatever.” He shook his head. “But I remember you actually thought you were a werewolf. Your parents came in, psychologists…”Adrian’s voice trailed off.
Wally shrugged his shoulders. “What can I say, Adrian? I was a weird kid with a lot of issues. Didn’t get things sorted out until later in life. Found my true purpose so-to-speak. Got saved.”
Adrian nodded. At least Wally had the good sense not to try to preach to him. Adrian cleared his throat. “Well, why I asked you out here tonight was to tell you something about all those years ago,” Adrian motioned Wally to come closer. He leaned in to Wally “I really am an Alien.”
Wally took a step back. Adrian blinked his eyes and then the protective second eyelid that made his eyes look all golden. He smiled. “In two months, after hundreds of years of planning, we will take over your planet. When the dust settles, I’ll come find you and offer you my protection. We’re allowed a quota.”
Wally shook his head. “And I’m a real werewolf Adrian.”
Adrian shook his head and sighed. “This is no joke. In two months’ time, we take over.”
Wally sighed. “No Adrian, you won’t. You ever wonder how such a choice morsel like the earth has avoided invasion for so many thousands of years, Hmm?
Adrian chuckled “I don’t know what you think-”
Wally held up his hand for Adrian to stop talking. “It doesn’t matter now, it’ll be over soon.”
Adrian looked bewildered. Wally went on. “36 different species have tried taking over the earth since the age of the pyramids. Thirty-six that vanished overnight. Why? Folks like me. Me, my church group. See, according to our church doctrine, God put us on this planet to guard the flock. We protect earth from the likes of you.”
Adrian looked even more bewildered. Wally smiled sympathetically “I know. It was a lot for me to come to grips with which is why I had such a bad time at school. But once I got in synch with the pack, well, it all made sense.”
Wally finished his drink, stood up and flexed his hands. “Being in synch, that was the key. See, we of the pack then can all strike at once- three to one odds at a minimum, no prisoners, as few witnesses as possible.”
Adrian noticed the bartender locking the door. The elderly couple in the corner stood up and began walking over, the barfly two seats over smiled in a not too friendly fashion.
Adrian shook his head and laughed as the circle closed around him. “We never saw it coming.”
Wally sighed, as he extended his canines and claws. Deep throated feral growls bubbled up from his confederates as they closed for the kill. Wally shook his head. “You never do.”
