by submission | Nov 16, 2017 | Story |
Author: Chris Stewart
In the Spring of 2028, a press conference was held announcing that the Phanes Project, the largest database of human DNA ever gathered (some samples going back many centuries), was joining forces with The Coeus Computing Collective in a bold effort to seek out new and exciting patterns in our genetic movement as a species.
With the flip of a switch, Coeus Array One went to work comparing billions of individuals against tens of thousands of tell-tale indicators programmed in by academics around the world. The doctor leading the press conference had barely returned to the podium when CA1 beeped, alerting everyone it had found something (a historical trail for a particularly rare leukaemia going back a dozen generations).
And the world cheered.
By the end of the day, it beeped four more times. By the end of day two, it beeped eleven times. Already two new royal lines were discovered, which caused a bit of noise in the press, as you’d imagine.
By the end of day three, evidence of a time-traveler rose out of the chaos of data.
Beep.
And the world gasped.
Immediately world governments demanded access to the data. They wanted to know everything. The project leaders tried their best. When the traveler appeared in the historical record could only be estimated and where they appeared was just as hazy. Unable to tell if they should be looking at their own histories, nations turned their eyes to each other and demanded to know where the traveler began and when. Expert after expert could only shrug. Predicting that was itself at best a guess. Each DNA profile of living individual (and most of the recently deceased) was anonymous. Those few experts willing would only say within the next hundred years and nobody would hazard where.
Finally, someone thought to ask how Coeus knew to look for a time traveler. Sure enough, there in the haystack of algorithms was one set specifically to look for a genetic line turned back in on itself. And out of thousands upon thousands of entries, this one was the only one without an author. Or any record of revisions. It appeared in the files one day in 2025 and was never touched again until CA1 was turned on for the first time.
And the world lost its shit.
by submission | Nov 15, 2017 | Story |
Author: R.J. Sadler
Herman sat at his cubicle nervously waiting for the next round. He could hear the wheels whoosh along the carpet tiles.
“Here ya’ go jack.”
The forms fell on his desk with a splat. Herman stared at them.
“Need’em done by 2.”
He looked up at The-man-with-the-cart. He nodded and the-man-with-the-cart whooshed away. He picked up his pen with shaking hand and began to fill in the forms. By the third page he felt an immense pain consume his entire body. It started in his feet and climbed up to the top of his head. He was sweating. He took a deep breath and continued.
He made it to page four, but then dropped the pen. It rolled under the desk. Getting on all fours, he crawled after it into the dark recesses of the desk. He could faintly hear what sounded like carnival music. A woman called to him in foreign tongues through the dense wilderness leading him deeper into the eternal woods that now surrounded him. The owls watched from the moonlit silhouettes above.
He emerged with the pen and returned to his seat. The forms were waiting. He began to sweat. He continued to shake. From a distance he heard the swoosh returning.
“What’s taking you…” The-man-with-the-cart stopped talking and looked at him.
Herman looked up, “ I’m not well…I cant…I’m…”
At the doctor’s office Herman sat waiting. Already the placebo of distance made him feel better. He noticed an art print hanging on the wall depicting a dense forest. He stared at it.
“Herman?”a woman called from beyond the reception window.
As he approached the desk he saw a clipboard loaded with forms as the room tipped to its side. He staggered from wall to wall like on a ship in heavy wake.
“Sir, are you alright?” she asked in a garbled voice that became more difficult to understand with every word spoken.
He fell through the floor and into the dark forest. He heard her voice again, and he followed it to a bed of pine needles.
When Herman awoke, he was on the examining table with a pillow behind his head. There were two people in the room; a room which slowly was coming into focus. He sat up.
“I’m going to prescribe you…” the doctor said while filling out a prescription.
Herman’s face winced in revulsion as he watched the doctor complete the form. He had to look away barely listening to the doctor’s instructions.
“…And you’re going to stay out of work for at least a week,” said the doctor.
Herman heard that and felt complete. He felt like someone picked up all his pieces and put them back into the box. His nerves subsided. Then the doctor handed him the script. Herman looked at it for a long time before taking it. It felt dirty in his hand.
He left the doctor’s and went straight home. The doctor called Herman’s office, and notified The-man-with-the-cart for him. Herman didn’t fill the prescription. He didn’t need the edges removed. He needed to be removed from the edge.
At home, the couch was soft. He dusted off one of his old favorites and dropped the needle. He felt 10 years younger instantly. Humming along and tapping his foot on the arm of the sofa, he decided to order a pizza. 5 minutes later the doorbell rang.
“Damn, they’re not kidding about being fast delivery.”
But as he approached the door he could see it was not the delivery driver. He opened the door enough to peek his head through.
“Yes?”
“Hi, I’m from the messenger service. I have a delivery for you. Please sign here.” said the messenger holding a large envelope and a clipboard. Herman’s head recoiled in disgust. He pulled his head back and stared at the messenger.
“No that’s ok, “ he said snatching the envelope and opening it.
He slid the papers out of the top. There was a note attached with a paper clip: “Hope you’re feeling better. Get these finished so we don’t fall too behind. We’re counting on you!”
It was signed by The-man-with-the-cart. Filling with rage, Herman looked up at the messenger. In the background, the record began to skip. And skip. And skip…
“Sir, if you can please sign h…”
Before the messenger could finish, Herman grabbed him by the throat. He squeezed and and squeezed. He blinked, and it was the doctor’s neck. He blinked again, and it was The-man-with-the-cart. He closed his eyes again returning to the dark forest. As he walked through, the woods became thinner and thinner. The owls were more distant. The path grew wider and harder. There was a flatness to everything. The music faded. Her voice was gone.
When he opened his eyes he was back in his cubicle, but it was ok. Everything was softer. He could even faintly hear music. On his desk in front of him was a small orange bottle with a white lid and his name printed on it. Next to the bottle were the forms. He clicked his pen engaging it. His pen strokes were smooth across the forms. They were finished in no time.
by submission | Nov 12, 2017 | Story |
Author: David Covington
Thousands had died, cities devastated, but the war was not real until that day. It had been fought at a distance with drones and missiles. None of the fighters ever saw the others. Weapons were fired and the results of the firings were seen: in real-time, through a camera lens, over radio waves, on monitors hundreds of miles away.
The initial military engagements had been indecisive. Drones were built in the hundreds of thousands. They flew, crawled, and swam their way towards the enemies. They blasted each other into expensive pieces on countless battlefields. The generals moved their pieces with complete abandon, throwing great masses of machinery at each other, hoping to wear down their enemy’s pocketbooks.
When the fighting did not stop other means were taken. Drones slipped across borders, up rivers, along canyons; they struck bunkers, airfields, roads, bridges, power station, factories, dams, government halls, town halls, county courts, assembly halls. The list goes on.
Still, the bombs and rockets fell. Yet both sides kept calm and carried on, despite the mounting deaths and the devastation to their lives. The war became real in one sudden violent second. A general had been killed. Hundreds of commanders, pilots, mechanics, and even generals had died in targeted strikes on both sides. Their hiding places had been sniffed out by satellites or drones or through cyberspace and a missile or bomb had been duly dispatched with the expectation that this one strike would turn the tide. Nothing had changed in those strikes, but this was different. The general had been giving an announcement on social media. That was how these things were done now, everyone was connected to everywhere. Even the generals had to maintain a public presence to ensure that the public was reassured that the war was going as planned. War-watching was a growing past-time for the people huddled in their bomb-shelters. The general was speaking on the significance of some territory that was being fought over by the bold drone operators and fearless machines of their glorious nation.
The sudden flash of a knife. A scream. The blood.
A knife; bright and polished. One of the oldest pieces of machinery, the first manufactured tool.
The suddenness of it, the surprise, the shock of the viewers.
The blood speckled on the assassin’s face, a face frozen in a look of determined, visceral rage. That look on their face, of an enemy’s face, that is what made the war real.
by submission | Nov 10, 2017 | Story |
Author: Janet Shell Anderson
The reason I haven’t heard from my brother Jonathan is he’s dead.
I made a mistake.
It’s foggy, one of those autumn fogs that grow out of the Potomac and everything seems strange; our empty streets feel like someone’s there, but you can’t see them. I went downtown, wondering if maybe, over by Lafayette Square, I could get food from a crazy woman who says things she shouldn’t. She has apples, and I began to crave them, so I walked in the fog, smelling the river again after so long, feeling half safe, down from Rock Creek Park, thinking about how Jonathan and David, my brothers, have been gone too long. A lot of people are gone, except for military and some assassins on K Street. People disappear. But I felt half safe down near the river again and the Mall, like the old days. Kidding myself.
Now I’m back in the forest, north of the Zoo, and the fog’s deeper, no shadows anywhere, freezing. It’s like a wall. I’m in a place among fallen trees, invisible among big tulip tree trunks, holly bushes twenty feet high, kind of a nest, maybe a deer nest, if they make nests. A sanctuary. I have a nine millimeter, I’d starve if I didn’t, but even in this dense forest, the thousand beech trees, the sweetbriar, the holly, the blur of fog, I’m afraid.
I can’t stop shaking.
I went to Sixteen Hundred, and the crazy lady was there all right. Her head was on a spike on the black wrought iron fence around the WH. One of the old crazies who’s always out there shouting stuff about the Constitution was just screaming, looking at her. Her head looked shrunken, dark. And three spikes down, there was Jonathan. Even with his face black and his tongue out, I knew it was him.
I hear a fox yip down by the creek, but I can’t see it in this fog. Hunting maybe, something hidden.
by submission | Nov 9, 2017 | Story |
Author: David Henson
“I’m going to lay down and take a nap,” I tell my wife.
“You mean ‘lie down.’ ‘Lay’ is a transitive verb requiring an object.”
“OK, OK. You’ve been popping smart pills again obviously.”
“The etymology of ‘pill-popping’ is interesting, Walt. It goes back to…”
I quickly reach into my pocket and take out a bottle of Mozart I carry in case of emergency. I choke down a capsule and immediately one of my favorite sonatas is drowning out the sound of Martha’s voice. I love her dearly, but when she’s on smart pills, she’s a bit much.
A half-hour later, I wake up feeling refreshed. The Mozart has worn off, and I head into the kitchen to get a bottle of cold water.
Martha greets me with open arms and begins singing with a heavy vibrato: “I heard you humming in your sleep. It put me in the mood for music, so I took a couple of Andrew-Lloyds.” She reaches notes so high I fear my eyeglasses might shatter.
Two Andrew-Lloyds? I’ll bet she took at least four. Sounds pretty though. I wonder what that super soprano voice is called? I go to the medicine cabinet and find some Snooty syrup. I take a teaspoon and listen to Martha’s voice climbing the musical scale like a cat scampering up a tree trunk. Ah, yes, that’s it. She’s singing like a coloratura soprano. Wonder what coloratura means in English? Unfortunately, we’re out of Translator tabs. I’ll have to remember to pick up some more the next time I’m at the pharmacy.
“Honey, it’s my turn to cook,” Martha says, her voice returning to normal. “Why don’t you go relax for a while.” She takes an Epicure pill. I’m in for something special.
I go into the study and take a cheap cigar out of the box. Fortunately, I have some Pure Havana spray. I spritz it in my mouth and light up. Knowing it’s going to take Martha a while to cook this gourmet meal, I decide to read for awhile. I get my copy of Finnegan’s Wake, swallow a Lit Crit and have at it. I fill 10 sheets in my notebook after reading the first paragraph. Then Martha calls me to dinner.
“Honey, our taste buds are about to be ravished. We’re going to have …” Martha goes on for several minutes and concludes with “crispy passionfruit mousse made with mango and coconut extract.” Then she takes a deep breath. “But first.” She pours us an aperitif.
“I’ve been saving this,” I say, putting a few drops of Sommelier in each of our glasses, “for our drinking pleasure.”
After four bottles of wine and three hours of gorging ourselves, I can barely stand up from the table. “Martha,” I say, “you truly outdid yourself this time.”
And she did. My only complaint is that we ate and drank so much we didn’t feel like taking any True Porn when we went to bed.
