by submission | Oct 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I extend my hand to Jerry. He decides a handshake won’t suffice and gives me a hug. I return his embrace while I roll my eyes.
“Will I see you again, Chris?” he asks.
“Of course you will,” I lie.
Jerry turns and walks through the entrance to the hospital. They’ll take good care of him. They specialize in NAFAL Depression. As the car drives me back to the spaceport, I think about all the people like Jerry I’ve known over my career. I’ve never understood why they decided to become space jockeys.
Shortly after Kern Drive was perfected, the first case of NAFAL Depression was diagnosed. The patient had been an astrophysicist who had made the short trip from Earth to Proxima Centauri. From his perspective, he’d traveled under Kern Drive for about 12 hours, conducted his research in the Proxima system for three weeks, then travelled back for 12 hours. Of course, each subjective 12 hour leg of his journey, due to relativistic time dilation, was actually about four years and two-and-a-half months back on Earth. Naturally, he knew this would happen. But returning home nine years later and actually seeing his “13 year old” daughter now 22 years old and married was too much for him. It didn’t help that his wife had taken a lover and had a child, now five years of age, during his “three weeks” away from home.
The mission I’d just completed had been Jerry’s first. He was okay as we flew out to Kappa Ceti. And he was fine during the six months we helped set up the research base there. Then as we flew back to Earth, something happened. After the first couple of days under Kern Drive, Jerry would sit and stare at the relativistic chronometer, watching the time from the point of view of someone on Earth zoom by. He’d occasionally remark about a missed birthday or a forfeited anniversary of a loved one. After a week of travel, Jerry would do little more than sit on the edge of his bunk and mutter “sixty years” over and over. Sixty years was our round trip travel time.
It takes a special kind of person to do this job. Some people say we’re sociopaths. They’re probably right in a way. If you value friends and family, if you can’t accept that you may be away for a few months and return to discover that you’re a hundred years out of date or that the infant grandchild you kissed goodbye now has his own grandchild who’s older than you are, then this isn’t the job for you.
The car pulls up to the curb and the door opens. A young woman wearing a crisp grey-green uniform stands waiting. Jerry’s replacement. She looks to be about 23 years old. The next mission is to the Algol system, 93 light-years from Earth. Everyone she’s ever known will have been dead for decades when we get back. I hope she doesn’t have a friend in the world. I hope she hates her family. It’ll make things easier for her. I’ve been doing this job for 20 years. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way 900 years ago.
by submission | Oct 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Zach Williams
Alex felt his eyes blink open before he realized he was awake. The window peering into the speckled darkness outside was the first sight that greeted him as consciousness reasserted control over his mind. He yawned and stretched out his arms as he glanced around his small room. The Spartan living space had not changed at all since he’d fallen asleep. Control lights blinked their various states of activity and repair. The white walls continued to keep the vacuum outside at bay. Alex supposed he might as well get things over with.
He reached down and untethered himself from the black bungee cord hooked to the wall, allowing his body to drift unimpeded. Alex reached out to the cold metal handhold and nudged himself over to the only door in the room. Both thick slabs of metal were closed in a hermetical seal. He reached out towards the blinking controls on the left hand side that would open it.
…Nah, not just yet. Alex pulled his hand away and spun himself back around. With the ease of years of practice, he stopped his spin by reaching out and grabbing the handhold, then gently pushed along the right hand wall towards the window. He smiled as he recalled some of his early misadventures with zero gravity. It had been so easy to forget how long his limbs were and how much power even a small push could have.
When he reached the window, Alex grabbed onto the handrail that surrounded it and gazed out into the silence. Lots of people said that space was empty, just a blank void. They were wrong, though. Space was filled with silence. Even the minor amount of tinnitus softly ringing in Alex’s ears seemed like an ungodly racket in the absolute quiet. Movement out of the corner of his right eye caught his attention and he turned his head.
An intestinal mass of wires and shrapnel floated through the void, spinning and dancing around each other in a silent ballet against a backdrop of twinkling blackness. How long had it been since the disabled satellite had miraculously knocked his room off of the space station? Apparently not long enough for his air to run out.
Alex used more of his dwindling air supply to heave a sigh. The window was facing away from the earth. If he wanted one last view, he’d have to go outside after all.
by submission | Oct 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
A problem philosophers have had for a long time is the difference between consensus and truth. In a court, for example. One can present evidence, call witnesses, and use common sense to confirm the perpetrator of a crime. But they will never really know. There is no possible way to determine who is actually guilty– unless you have a time machine. Which Mallory Thurson happened to have.
When time travel was invented, it was thought that the possibilities would be endless. You could fix all the mistakes you or anyone else ever made. Then anti-paradox laws were put in place, and the possibilities were somewhat limited. Next, people moved on to research and tourism; definitively discovering what took place in the past and just seeing it for kicks. Finally, man discovered its usefulness in law. From this point on, time travelers would solve crimes by going back and filming them, but preserve anti-paradox laws by never interfering. It was hoped.
This case was personal to Mallory; it had happened right in her own neighborhood. She was frustrated that she herself couldn’t find the culprit, but then realized that she was in the perfect position for this– a Timeroller (camerapeople who film crimes). She reported to work immediately, donned the suit, and used it to go back three hours, 21 minutes and 11 seconds. It was here she learned that, despite all our efforts, there will never be true justice.
She arrived just in time to see a masked murderer barge in to a young man’s apartment. She filmed from a window as your typical exchange unfolded. The murderer threatened, th man cried, the killer gave a middle finger to any Timerollers that may be nearby. All that time, Mallory couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew that voice. Somehow, she thought she had heard it before, long ago. Finally, she realized that this man, Ronald Azermov, was the man that had gotten her involved in Timerolling.
This man had killed her father.
She remembered walking down the alleyway, when this man jumped her father and shot him to death. Then he found all the Timerollers that had been summoned to the scene, and shot each one in the face. She understood why there were so many– each one was there to witness how the previous one was killed. That was also why they never found out who he was. Why her dad’s death remained one of the only unsolved cases in the world.
In surprise, she dropped the camera. Thankfully, it didn’t attract attention. But now she couldn’t present the film to the court. Damn!
Suddenly a shot rang out, and the window smashed. Someone had tried to shoot her because she was a Timeroller. But they had missed… and shot the owner of the apartment. Her father’s killer was innocent.
But why should that stop her? It was her almost-assassin’s lucky day.
“Mallory?” asked the judge. “Where’s your camera?”
Huff, “your honor,” huff, “the perpetrator,” huff, “shot it.”
“But you know who they were?”
“Yes, sir. Ronald Azermov. The same man who shot my father.”
by submission | Oct 23, 2015 | Story |
Author : Angie Gibson
An old man noted Grain’s uniform, tugging his elbow. Grain turned to the whittled, pockmarked, and radiation burned face, nose like a pointed finger. “Get me on.”
“I can’t.”
A woman, starved, ragged, children like clinging tumors to her body. “Please, get me on.”
“I can’t.”
A tug to his sleeve. “Please, please get me on.” A man, not holding a baby or pushing forward a sickly wife, just a single, healthy, thirty five year old man. But it was the fear that gave Grain pause, so raw in this man’s eyes. He, above all these broken, dying people, understood death. It was like looking into a mirror.
“I-I’m sorry.” Grain gripped Thomas’s hand harder.
The ships at the end of the dock were blocked from the surging crowd by a gate reinforced by soldiers. Every few minutes a ship would blast into the sky and the chaos would slack as all the heads lifted to watch it go. Then, like a blink, the pushing and shouting would recommence.
Grain saw friends among these tired solders. He would join them soon, but first he had to put his son on that next ship.
Stepping to the gate, a young soldier with a bleached white left eyeball (tale-tell signs of the I-bac infection, this one got lucky) rushed towards him, but when he saw Grain’s uniform, several ranks above his, he snapped into a salute. Grain saluted distractedly back, hugging his son even closer with the other arm.
“Sergeant Major Frances M. Grain, my son is getting on that ship.” Grain didn’t look at the soldiers as he spoke, he pointed to the purring vessel.
“Do—I’m sorry, sir—but, do you have a ticket?”
“My son is getting on that ship.” Grain looked at the solder this time, and the solder quaked, wringing his rifle like a teddy bear.
“Yes, sir!” He pulled open the gate. Grain shouldered past him, getting ahead of the long line of ticket-wielders, moving in-between the two guards in charge of verifying tickets. They saluted Grain. Grain knelt in front of Thomas, ignoring the angry curses from the line.
“You must go.”
“I-I can’t leave you.”
“You will go.”
“But mama and Gracie.”
Tears like gritted sand filled his voice as he said, “You have to go.”
Thomas turned to the ship. He turned to the crowd. He turned back to his father. His son looked like Grain’s father, dark and deep, olden by wisdom, just a mini version of a man.
“They will die, all these people, will die.” There was matter-of-fact in Thomas’s voice.
“But you will live.”
Thomas nodded. He didn’t hug his father. He squeezed his hand. “Goodbye.”
“DON’T SAY GOODBYE!” The sudden anger filling his father frightened young Thomas. Grain shook him roughly. “Don’t say goodbye. Say…goodnight.”
Thomas didn’t understand, but the boy’s inherent wisdom took the wheel. “Goodnight.”
Grain nodded, hugged the boy. The child turned. Grain watched as he entered the ship. He watched as the solders sealed the door. He stood back and watched as the ship shot into the sky. His rank informed him that the vessel will move into outer orbit before blowing apart. But until that moment, Thomas, and every other passenger aboard, will enjoy chemical bliss. In their altered minds they will land on the Green Paradise. Time will be manipulated; his son will grow old in his mind. He will raise children. They will have children. They will be there when Thomas dies happy in his bed. He will never know he has only an hour to live.
“Goodnight,” Grain whispered.
by submission | Oct 22, 2015 | Story |
Author : Ray Burke
Maybe he was broken. It would certainly explain a lot. He always felt lost, hurt, angry even. It never mattered how many were around him, who he talked to, even when sleeping with them in the throes of romance. He just felt alone, detached, like none of it was real. He felt like he had woken from a dream, a dream where he could fly and go wherever he wanted yet on waking he was stuck, like he’d been clipped. He wondered at times do tamed birds that have been clipped look at their reflections and remember flying? Did it sadden them they couldn’t anymore? Were they tortured by this knowledge?
Always he felt a hunger to belong, he wanted to be with someone to escape, to feel that connection, that love, that interdependance. It all felt wrong to him, it was like a hollow life, a hollow world. He realized at an early age he felt different to everyone, no one seemed to be aware of the gap, the seperation. He was five when the world broke and the curtain dropped draining the magical shine from life.
Sitting watching people brought him some comfort though he never knew why exactly. To imagine their lives, to see their complexity from afar. He could sympathise, he had great empathy for them, going about their lives unaware, ignorance is bliss. That always made him smile. It explained perfectly why he was never comfortable. They all seemed so happy, the daily routine, family life, personal problems, relationships. He just couldn’t understand it all. Couldn’t they see they were wasting their lives? The nine to five rat race. Fritting away their energy, their talents and dreams, to make someone else’s life more comfortable.
He smiled as he felt him coming. The world seemed to slow down just for him, like their time was important, he could always smell his aftershave before he ever saw him. It was the one surprise he looked forward to in this seemingly endless term of detachment, the one thing that felt real. A hand squeezed his shoulder, “Good afternoon Kyo, how’re you today?” The cheeriness and optimism was almost infectious. Always he asked how he was doing, if he was ok. No one else seemed to care about him. He had only known Brian these last few years but he felt in him something that made all the pain recede, he felt something real, someone there behind the face.
***
Walking in Brian looked over the control room. He’d managed to slowly whittle his staff down to remain undetected. The main readout in his office still flashing red in warning beside the timer running on twenty six months and thirteen days. Everything seemed normal despite the error report compiling daily. Interface dilation was still on track hovering at seventeen hundred percent, response times were optimal, data exchange seemed to never deteriorate. He hadn’t dared shut the program down when the critical error occurred. Could he really have happened upon a virgin AI? Removing his lab coat he sat in the interface chair and reclined, adjusting the headset as he inserted the recording chip coded; Kryptic Estrangement Observation Program.
As the dilation effect wound down and the interface loaded in Brian materialized on a side street near a cafe. Was the program truly aware? Did it even know this environment wasn’t real? He could see the program avatar sitting watching people as it always did. He approached and squeezed its shoulder.
“Good afternoon Kyo, how are you today?”
