by submission | Apr 29, 2016 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“You’re gone, aren’t you, Pete?” I ask my beloved dog who now stares up at me without recognition. His breathing is fast and deep. There are flecks of blood around his mouth. I’ve been coughing up blood, too. So has every surviving member of the human race, I imagine. I caress Pete and tell him I love him.
I return to the rare and antiquated pen and paper. Computers no longer function reliably. It’s questionable whether my record will physically survive. And in the unlikely event it does, who will remain to read it? I resume writing nonetheless:
I wonder if Joseph Weishan is still alive. If he is, what could we do to him? Imprisonment? Torture? Execution? What punishment could balance the scales of justice in retribution for the ultimate crime? If there were still judges and juries and courts, what penalty would they impose for the first, last, and only case of cosmicide, the killing of the universe?
It was on January 18, 2271 that Joseph Weishan murdered his parents nearly two years before he was born. He’d used the equipment at the Temporal Studies Institute in Indianapolis to travel back and commit his crime, reappearing in the present a moment later before leaving the Institute and eluding the authorities.
Initially, the effects from this flagrant violation of causality were more curious than alarming. Joseph Weishan’s parents were found in their home very much alive and well. But fifteen miles away, the graves of the Weishans complete with headstones documenting the date of their demise were discovered in a local cemetery. The bodies were exhumed and subjected to forensic analysis including DNA testing. The cadavers were the younger deceased bodies of the very same man and woman who were still alive.
The Weishans themselves reported confusing memories, recalling the lethal attack by the man who their son came to resemble as he aged, but inexplicably also remembering their lives continuing uneventfully despite their having been “killed”.
In the weeks that followed, as the world’s scientists puzzled over the effects of the temporal paradox, astronomers and astrophysicists witnessed the stellar spectra change. Every observable star including the Sun showed an inexplicable and unprecedented shift in their absorption line characteristics. At the same time, a global pandemic developed. All living organisms on Earth from humans down to bacteria began to show cellular deterioration. Medical science had neither an explanation nor a cure.
Eventually, scientists recognized what was happening: The physical constants of the universe had subtly changed. The speed of light is now very slightly faster than it had been prior to Joseph Weishan’s parricide. The weak nuclear force has become infinitesimally stronger. Chemistry — including biochemistry — doesn’t work quite the way it did. Reality itself has been broken.
I suddenly find myself on the floor. My muscles ache and I have apparently urinated on myself. Tonic-clonic seizure. Late stage of the disease. The human central nervous system wasn’t designed for this revised universe. Pete lies next to me, dead.
A final thought occurs to me: Fermi’s paradox. Why are there no signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life in the universe? Where is everybody? Could it be that when a civilization becomes advanced enough for time travel, someone causes a temporal paradox and makes the universe hostile to that type of life? Are we perhaps just the latest species to paradox itself out of existence? Darkness and silence are the only answers I receive.
by submission | Apr 27, 2016 | Story |
Author : Kristin Kirby
Monday, March 7:
Hi, loyal readers! Remember last week how I blogged about that guy in front of me at the salad bar who held the tongs hostage so long they developed Stockholm syndrome? Well, today he must have spent fifteen minutes arranging his cherry tomatoes on their lettuce bed so they would artistically complement the shredded cheese and croutons.
Slow people in the salad line, please: you’re not painting the Sistine flippin’ Chapel! You’re throwing vegetables on a plate to shove in your craw—-then they’re all jumbled together in your gut anyway before bobsledding through a mile of intestines toward the inevitable finish line. So move it—-there are people behind you!
Now to the coolest news in the galaxy, literally! Triffitz Corp., everyone’s favorite interplanetary wholesaler, has finally introduced their new meat into stores and restaurants. And our downstairs cafeteria too! We’re not talking the lab-grown stuff, synthetic meat, shmeat. No, sir—-this is real animal, direct from Titan or Io. Or Callisto. One of those moons of Saturn. Or Jupiter.
So I skipped the salad bar and had an alien burger, and it was uh-may-zing! Tender. Juicy. Waited in line there, too, but it was worth it! Triffitz Corp. promises the end of boring meals, and boy do they deliver. It’s just like any other meat, so you can cook it however you like. And the best part is they claim it tastes different to everyone who eats it!
I thought my burger tasted like bacon meets chocolate meets the best steak I’ve ever had. My coworker Brian said his tasted like his mom’s home-fried chicken. A woman in the elevator compared hers to pepperoni pizza. Gonna have to pick some up for dinner!
Thursday, March 10:
Miss me, bloggees? I was in bed with the biggest, ugliest stomach bug! Even missed work. But today I’m back, and my appetite’s back too. You know what lunch is gonna be, don’tcha? You got it!
Did you see the press release from Triffitz Corp.? There’s already a shortage of alien meat due to popular demand—-even with the European boycott (they think it’s GMO or some nonsense). But hang on! Triffitz reassures us that a ship full of live alien food animals is zipping its way to Earth right now. They’ve got farms set up across the country, cuz according to Triffitz these things breed like bunnies, despite being as big and plump as cows and not cute at all. So we’ll never have a shortage again!
Tuesday, March 15:
Lots of people out sick today. Rumors are flying that Triffitz burgers are just not agreeing with everybody. Sort of like a meaty Montezuma’s revenge. (And, yes, I know how un-PC that was.) I’ve had a few bouts of heartburn myself, but antacids clear it right up! Am headed out to lunch—-guess what I’m having!
Saturday, March 19:
Um, yeah, Triffitz Corp. should have studied the alien species longer. Maybe done a little more testing. I mean, just because you kill something and chop it up and cook it at 160 degrees doesn’t mean it’s dead. I’ve had like fifteen burgers in the past couple of weeks, so by now my insides are goo on their way to slurry. If you’ve eaten any alien meat, even only a bite of it, doesn’t matter—-it’s already taking its comestible joyride through your organs.
Yep. Turns out while we’ve been eating them…they’ve been eating us.
by submission | Apr 26, 2016 | Story |
Author : Farah Rahman
Intelligence on the ground was that insurgents from the Afghan border were hours away from seizing control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal with the help of North Korea.
So NATO drops the bomb on Waziristan and Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, a woman gives birth in the mountains. A blinding white light bathes the land as they carry her deep into a network of caves and put her down to rest.
‘PUSH!’ shouts the midwife,
‘NO’ she screams, fighting the wave after wave of pain.
‘PUSH! Your sister is coming! It’s not too late!’
Her lips turn grey and she stops moving so they have to go in for the baby. Black rain splashes the boy’s soft, creased face and someone in a radiation suit wraps him in silver sheets and runs, deeper and deeper into the caves, until a dot of light on the other side of the mountain becomes an opening. Pebbles and rocks cascade as the figure with the child skids downhill to a plateaux where there is a vessel covered in grey, black and white camouflage. The side door is open and another figure in a suit hurries down the ladder.
‘Quick! Hand me the child!’
Rain thickens as the child is raised up.
There is sweat, panic and a flurry of hands clipping seat belts shut. The boy grows quiet as his aunt removes her mask and reveals hazel eyes, light brown skin and tangled hair caked in dust. The child lies in her arms, curled up with his knees to his chest and his right fist in his mouth. She takes his hand away gently and replaces it with a bottle. She holds him so close it is as if she is trying to absorb him through her skin.
“Allaho sha allaho zama jana allaho (Sleep my love.)
allaho sha allaho zama jana allaho
(Sleep my love.)
khobe de dershi pa lailo (May you rest with the blessing of God…)
lale lalo lale lalo lale lalo” …as sleep falls over your limbs.)
She will carry this and other songs to their new home, which has been christened ‘Al Habib’ – ‘new hope’. It will be over fifteen years before the moon with its underground quarters can be purchased entirely from the North Koreans, but in space they will have less enemies and the costs have been reasonable.
‘I’m sorry about your sister’, says the nurse, as he hurredly checks and rechecks the life signs of the crew on his moniter. He is trilingual in Korean, English, Arabic and Farsi, as are all of the Project pioneers. The boy’s aunt shakes her head in silence, tears spilling onto her lap. She kisses the boy’s brow as they break through the atmosphere and the whole ship vibrates
‘We’re lucky that he’s stable and he’s lucky he has you. Hold on to that for now and sip some water. You’ll need to drink A LOT for the journey, especially if this is your first time.’
Aisha nods and presses her lips around a straw connected to the fresh water supply attached to her seat. Naseem’s eyes close as he nuzzles into his aunt’s chest and falls asleep. She leans in and barely whispers into one feather-soft ear:
‘You will grow up to know peace. You will grow up to know beauty. I promise.’
by submission | Apr 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Kate Runnels
Asker station orbited the now uninhabited planet of Asker II. Yun was the only one left on the station; the only one left in the system for all he knew. No one had responded to his distress signal, no one responded from below and the only craft were on the surface.
The days continued and he had to follow a routine to survive. The continued running of the station was priority and how to continue to eat and breathe were necessities. They continued. He continued. Alone. Always alone.
Day after day.
He tried to lose count of the days, but the stations system continued to inform him of the passage of days into months.
“Asker station respond. This is Captain Riddle of the Confederated Medical Response Vessel.”
It surprised Yun out of his routine when they arrived. He met them at the station dock. Three of them. Crowding him, the smells of other people assaulted him and he had to force his hands away from his face. And then the questions, non-stop questions and talking.
Like, “where were the others?”
And “how had he survived?”
Or “how long had he been alone?”
Over and over they asked him this and that and talked amongst themselves. They overwhelmed him and —
— It wasn’t his fault when one of them died in the fire, caused by too much oxygen building and all it took was a tiny spark.
Yun may have given the next a little help as emergency doors slammed closed from a malfunctioning sensor reading decompression.
The third and last would be harder. Captain Riddle was older and more cautious. Yun could almost forget the captain’s presence, he moved quietly, contained within himself. Almost.
He just wanted it to go back to the way it was before the noise and the outlandish body odors!
Yun crept into the station’s quarters during night shift. A knife in hand. The body of Captain Riddle faced away from him on the bunk. He reached out his free hand.
The captain moved so quick! He had hold of Yun’s outstretched hand. He froze.
Before he knew it, the tac-patch of tranquilizer took effect and blackness took him.
As the sad human sagged to the deck, Captain Riddle shook his head. He should have seen the signs; if he had, Callie and Matia would still be alive.
He picked up the thin body of the sole survivor and carried him back to the med vessel. As he left, he set the beacon to ‘do not approach Asker system, quarantined by order of the CMR Authority’. It would take more than his emergency response vessel to clean up this mess.
by submission | Apr 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Hillary Lyon
Casey waited in line for more than two hours when the rain started. A soft, misty rain that chilled him to the bone; he tightly crossed his arms and shivered. Even if he caught a cold, attending this event would still be worth it. Maybe, he wondered, he’d get an autograph, or even better, a photo with Candidate Sterling. Or better yet, shake his hand. Now that would be awesome!
He was glad he had the foresight to arrive early, to get a place at the beginning of the line. Not only did that guarantee he’d get inside the auditorium, but he’d be close to the stage. This rally–no, this entire election–was historic, and Casey wanted to witness it, up close and personal. He rubbed his soft pink hands together for warmth and scampered down to the front row seating. Yes! There was an empty chair right in front of the podium.
After what seemed like ages, the auditorium reached full capacity. The lights dimmed and a spotlight hit the podium. Without introduction, Candidate Sterling jogged on stage, to deafening cheers and applause. Casey stood up, along with everyone else whooping and stamping their feet. The candidate smiled a Hollywood smile and waved for everyone to be seated. The crowd obeyed.
“Thank each and every one of you for coming,” Candidate Sterling began.”For braving this wet weather to support me and the issues I stand for and against. . . ” His speech lasted exactly 22 minutes and 35 seconds; long enough for the audience to become fully engaged, short enough to end before they lost interest. Candidate Sterling was poised and beautiful and entertaining. As he left the stage, one of his handlers took the mic and pointed out where the meet-and-greet would take place. Due to the record number of attendees, only the first 10 rows would have access to the candidate. The handler apologized to those who wouldn’t make the cut, but rules were rules. Casey hardly listened; he’d made the cut. He’d get to meet Candidate Sterling!
In line again, Casey rehearsed what he’d say to the candidate. Did Sterling realize how amazing all this was? Distracted by his thoughts, Casey was surprised when a handler tapped him on the shoulder and nodded for him to move up to greet Candidate Sterling.
“Wow,” Casey whispered, awestruck. “This is such an honor, and I have to tell you–”
Grinning, Candidate Sterling stuck out his hand before Casey finished. He grasped Casey’s hand with such programmed passion, that he crushed 14 of the 27 small bones in Casey’s hand. Sterling’s handlers’ scurried between ushering Casey away to a nurse on staff, and re-calibrating Candidate Sterling’s handshake function. This was a beta-level event, after all; they’d work out all the bugs before the election.
