by submission | Sep 29, 2015 | Story |
Author : Henry Peter Gribbin
Most of us have been home alone late at night when we heard a strange noise coming from downstairs. Clutching a baseball bat or a golf club we proceeded slowly down the steps, all senses on alert. Finding nothing we felt a sense of relief and headed back upstairs. But how many of us have come face-to-face with an intruder? If this happened to you, then you know what real fear is.
I never knew this feeling of intense fear, that is until one night this past October. It was a cool, clear night. I was sitting in my backyard on my picnic table. I had been working on my car, and I was enjoying the autumn evening with a cigar in one hand and a can of beer in the other. Suddenly the trees were bent as if a gale force wind had blown through. I found myself swept off the picnic table and thrown hard to the ground. I was thrust almost back to my feet as the earth shook violently. This was followed immediately by a very loud thud. Then all was still.
I picked myself off the ground and steadied myself on the table for a moment. A strong odor, like that of sulfur, caught my attention. Smoke was coming from a vacant lot right over a small hill from my house. I hopped a fence and cut across my neighbor’s yard. When I reached the lot I came face-to-face with a rather large object halfway imbedded in the ground. Smoke was coming out of an opening, but at a steadily decreasing rate.
I walked over to the opening. There was a light coming from the object. The light shone upon a body lying halfway inside the object. I thought it was a child’s body, but as I looked closer it looked alien. It had incredibly smooth and shiny skin. There was a clear fluid coming from a gash in its back. It was dead. I had come this far so I proceeded into the object. Because of the crash everything was at an angle and walking was difficult. Every now and then I would come across another body like the one I found at the opening.
From the time I had been thrown off the picnic table up until this point I had felt like I was on an adventure. I felt like an archeologist uncovering an ancient tomb. When I turned a corner that feeling turned to fear. What I came across was a clothed human woman strapped to a table. Overhead of the woman was what looked like a x-ray machine, only this one had a small drill feeding out of it. It was inches from the woman’s rib cage. There were several dead alien bodies in the room. I looked back at the woman on the table. I thought she was dead, but suddenly she opened her eyes. This gave me a jolt, and for one moment I wanted to run. But I undid her straps. She immediately sat up on the table, braced herself for one moment, looked up at me and reached for some kind of an implement that was laying on a stand next to her. She proceeded to hit me in the head with it. I staggered backwards, and as I did so she bolted from the room. For a moment I saw stars. Then I followed her lead. I bolted out of that room and out of the object as fast as I could. I cut through my neighbor’s yard and reached the street. From the first impact of the crash till now a matter of only a few moments had passed. I just kept walking and did not return home for two days. By that time all evidence of the crash was gone. The local news mentioned a small airplane crash.
I used to enjoy science fiction books and movies. Now I avoid them. They only serve as a reminder of that horrible day this past October. I never did find out what became of the woman I found. I hope she made it home, wherever that may be.
by submission | Sep 28, 2015 | Story |
Author : Mike Corrao
“Come one, come all. See the beautiful intricacy that is my friend right here,” The salesman slid to the side of the stage, moving as one with the curtain behind him. On the old wood floor stood two metal feet, in shoes like hooves. They held up a man who was not made of flesh and bone, but instead of turning gears and aluminum plates. The eyes lit up.
The salesman wrapped his arm around its metal shoulders and tapped his knuckle against the breastplate. He listened with satisfaction as the surface clanged, “A living man made completely of metal; nothing organic about him.”
Steam billowed out of the metal man’s top hat, as he adjusted it on his head. He bowed to the audience and waved his hand back and forth. They cheered.
“Not a single detail has been left unattended to. He is the perfect person to share your time with.” It stepped forward on the stage and put its hands on its hips, lifting its chest. Painted teeth rested in a permanent smile while the yellow light of its eyes flicked with emotion. The salesman curled his moustache and the metal man mimicked with his own. He gave a fake laugh. The crowd cheered again.
“Take him with you on a walk, have him babysit your children while you spend an evening out with the wife, give him some chores around the house.” He tossed his cane over to his companion who caught it with ease. “He’ll do just about anything you ask.”
He nodded. The metal man danced for the crowd.
“We’ve programmed him with all the etiquette and manners that you could ask for. Go ahead and take him to dinner; he’ll know which fork is for the salad and everything. Just look at him, a mechanical gentleman. Want him to cook for you? No problem, the power is in your hands.”
The metal man’s eyes flickered more rapidly. It stopped dancing. The steam of his hat grew thicker. Its cane dropped. The salesman glanced over to see his prized machine’s anxiety. He rushed over and put his arm around it, “excuse the two of us for one moment, folks.” The man and his machine turned around towards the back wall.
“What’s wrong, bud? Was it something I said?”
The mechanical gentleman nodded his head rapidly.
“Which thing was it that you didn’t like?”
It raised its finger and reached back with its other hand and turned a tiny crank on its side. Then its head made a crackling noise before speaking in the salesman’s voice, “The power is in your hands.” The recording cut off.
“It isn’t really in their hands.” He wiped his brow, “It’s just a sales pitch. Makes people want to buy you. Understand? You’ve got control. Okay?”
The mechanical gentleman nodded again.
“Okay. You ready to get back to the big show?”
Its head rattled with each nod. The salesman bent down and picked up the cane, handing it over to his companion who hesitated before grabbing it. He quickly spun around and smiled large to the whispering crowd, “We are back, friends! I’m sorry to make you wait, my acquaintance here gets a little nervous sometimes. It isn’t his fault.”
The mechanical gentleman turned around to face the crowd.
“Where was I… Oh yes, the power is yours.”
The metal man panicked.
The salesman was too late to stop him as the crowd erupted into screams.
by submission | Sep 27, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rollin T. Gentry
Dr. Morris turned away and tapped a few times on the holopad projected from the bracelet on his left wrist.
“Well, Ensign Peters, one thing’s for sure. You are not turning invisible, or into a ghost, or whatever it was you called it.”
Jared Peters had told the doctor that when walking the corridors alone, he could feel his feet slipping through the floor, sometimes more than a centimeter deep. And in his bunk, looking up, he could see the seams in the bulkhead through his fading hand. Jared almost didn’t tell the doctor about the invisible thing swimming out there in the void alongside the ship; but he figured why not, after all the other crazy stuff he’d already said.
Dr. Morris continued, “And if some creature or ship were out there, we’d be hearing klaxons going off and a call to high alert.” Morris was one of two doctors aboard. Neither was a psychiatrist, but Dr. Morris was covering all the items on his checklist. “Are you having any suicidal or homicidal thoughts?”
“No, sir. I’m just terrified. When I saw the outline of that thing from the observation deck, it looked like a big invisible whale. The thing noticed me looking at it, because it turned and started swimming straight for me. I ran as fast I could in the opposite direction, got on the lift, and hid in my quarters. But ever since then, I feel like the thing is pulling on me no matter where I go, like it’s trying to turn me invisible and pull me straight through the hull of the ship.”
“I can give you something for your nerves, son,” Dr. Morris said, tapping in his notes and recommendations. “And you should probably stay in one of the rooms down here until you’re feeling better. I’ll let your commanding officer know where you are. I’ll check back in on you tomorrow to see how you’re feeling.”
A nurse led Jared to a room and handed him white sweatpants, a t-shirt, and some non-slip socks. After he had changed out of his uniform, he sat up in bed and flipped through random channels on the tri-vid. After stopping on an old comedy, the remote control began to slip through his fingers. For a moment, he could see the small, black, remote control overlapping his translucent wrist. Then it fell and bounced off the mattress, crashing on the floor. His first thought was to call for Dr. Morris or a nurse, but his legs were sinking through the bed like quicksand. He tried to grab hold with his arms, but he fell through to the level below.
He landed on his feet. The floor felt solid enough. Jared turned around and knew where he was: the observation deck. He could see the vastness of space beyond the thick windows not ten meters away. He walked up to a window, placing a palm on the surface. His hand sank into the window a good two centimeters before he jerked away. Looking out into the void, he saw the outline of the invisible thing, warping the light of the stars behind it, coming closer, until no stars could be seen.
In an instant, Jared found himself on the wrong side of the observatory windows, in the vacuum of space; but before he could gasp, he was swallowed up by a damp, acid-burning, oblivion.
by submission | Sep 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Sam Larson
You couldn’t even call it rain, this weather. Just an insistent, pissing drizzle that creeps its way into your collar and your shoes so that, suddenly, you’re soaking wet. That jingle from the infonets keeps running through my head, “You’ll never get wet when you’ve got Ne’er Wet Nanotech!”, but the itching damp across my shoulders tells me otherwise. Seen from the roof of the mag-rail station the lights of New City are misty in the distance. Below me is a minefield of torn up mag tracks, rusting train cars, and weeds too stubborn to give up in the face of acres of concrete. There’s a lesson there, but I’m twenty years too late to learn it and I’d likely not care even then. The weather blasts between the surrounding buildings, battering me on all sides with wind and rain.
My drones are hovering around the body. It’s been here for a while and the rain has scrubbed most of the blood off the pavement. The HUD in my glasses shows the data feed from the drones and it all looks sadly typical. After all, he’s dead. Some feral kid from the lowest levels of one of the nearby tenements, and messed up bad. Hollowed out like a gourd with his insides replaced by as much contraband as they could stuff inside his torso and a nano device that took over where his organs left off. It worked, after a fashion, but it better be a short delivery run and most of the time the people paying for the goods simply decided to end a runner after the job instead of keeping their insides on ice. This was the fifth dead courier in the last two weeks, and why I was standing out here on the ass end of a forgotten tram line, thinking about the weeds and how dry it is inside the patrol hover right about now.
I tap the button embedded in my wrist and my drones rise from the body and swoop back to their nests on top of my hover, roosting there like silent metal birds. It’s only a couple of seconds before I get the call from the Agency mainframe. A blinking cursor appears in the bottom right corner of my HUD.
INSP. VOO_
INSP. VOO_
INSP. VOO_
I cough and activate the sub-vocal transmitter embedded in my larynx. There’s a brief pop as the receiver in my inner ear turns on.
“I’m ready, Trill.” The familiar bell-toned synth voice of the Agency AI echoes through the center of my head. I begin the walk back towards my hover, only half listening to Trill chatter away in my inner ear, and the vehicle wakes up as I get close, turning on its lights and rising a few inches off the ground. The door swings open and I can almost feel the blessedly warm, dry air inside. I don’t care what the Agency docs say. Eighty years on the job and all the gene therapy and age reversal treatment they can give me and I still feel a tired ache in my bones. I might look like a jumped up 20 year old, but some deep part of me knows I’m an old, old man.
by submission | Sep 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rollin T Gentry
I opened my eyes and had no recollection of how I came to be sitting at that table with three complete strangers.
The room was divided into quadrants by a force field with one man occupying a slice of the round, steel table. Behind each man was a closed door. Each man’s legs were bound to the legs of his chair, and the chairs were bolted to the floor. Before each of us, molded into the table, were a green button and a white button.
With short haircuts and grim faces, the others looked like soldiers. Feeling the top of my head, hair bristling, I assumed I looked the same. A synthesized, female voice filled the room.
“Certain parts of your memory have been blocked for this test. Following the test, they will be restored. One of two scenarios has been selected at random. Scenario One: One of you is an android, and the other three are human. Scenario Two: One of you is human, and the other three are androids.” She paused, and we waited to hear the rules of the game. “The green button will release a neurotoxin, killing every human in the room. The white button will detonate an electromagnetic pulse, destroying every android in the room. You may begin.”
Our hands shot to the edge of the table then stopped. I had no memories of who I was and guessed it was the same with the others. Looking around the table, I quickly made eye contact. They all looked human to me.
We’d all heard fairy tales of androids who were programmed to believe they were human. How could I be sure I wasn’t one of those? If I were an android, what would be the result of killing three humans, or even one? Deactivation, I’m sure. But I’m human; I know that much for sure. Destroying an android or three would mean little in the outside world.
In an instant, my hand was on the white button. I looked around the table to see who would go limp, but all I saw were three, very much alive, humans with their hands on the white buttons in front of them, breathing a sigh of relief. Those sadistic bastards and their “test”. We were all human. The green button would have been death to us all. I heard the restraints on my legs and the door behind me pop open.
A voice filled the room, a human, male voice this time. He sounded bored. “The time is 1300 hours, 46 minutes. Test 31B completed successfully. Move the androids to the final stage of processing.”
Two men in white jumpsuits picked me up under my arms, lifting me to my feet. I said to the man holding my right arm, “But if we are all androids, then we should be deactivated.”
“You can tell him,” said the man on my left. “They’ll wipe their memories again before shipping them out to the front.”
The man on my right pressed the green button and said, “The buttons don’t do anything, mate. The test is about verifying the two H’s. Isn’t that what Dr. Bristol’s always prattling on about? ‘Human Life Believed. Human Life Valued.’ The army can’t very well have a bunch of robots throwing themselves into the line of fire or shooting their superior officers, now can they?”
“I suppose not,” I said, as they led me away to the final stage of processing.
