by submission | Jul 3, 2024 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“Hey, citizen!” A voice rasped from the shadowed alleyway. Bhodi glanced at the man but kept walking.
“I said, hail citizen!” Bhodi stopped to look in the man’s direction. “Yeah, you,” the man rasped, waving Bhodi over.
He approached the old man, assuming he wanted to sell him a contraband gadget. Grinning, the old man opened his trench coat, revealing a pharma chest plate covered in tiny pockets.
This guy’s a walking drug store, Bhodi noted. He’d dealt with this sort before, usually ending up feeling ripped off and disappointed, but sometimes…
“You’re a seeker,” The old man stated. “I can tell just by looking.” Before Bhodi could answer, the old man continued. “Got just the thing for somebody like you.” He withdrew a small metal capsule from the center pocket of his breast plate. He held it up.
“This’ll let you see God!” The old man’s eyes shone with fervor. “You can’t imagine this amazing experience!”
“Country of origin?” Bhodi asked.
“Country?” The old guy laughed. “No country! This is off-world. Comes from the edge of the galaxy!”
“Sure it does.” Bhodi’d heard such claims before.
“Safe, too!” The old dealer assured. “Missionaries swear it’s fit for human consumption!”
“Missionaries?” Bhodi balked. “I’m not looking to convert.”
“Don’t have to convert to see God!” He wiggled his fingers in Bhodi’s face.
Bhodi chewed his lower lip. “How much?”
* * *
Sitting on his narrow bed, Bhodi placed the capsule on his tongue. He leaned over to the water teat protruding from the wall, latched on and took a deep drink. The capsule went down smoothly.
Bhodi laid down and closed his eyes. I wonder how long before this kicks in, he fretted. I wonder if—
This is more like it! He tumbled slowly down through a star spangled darkness, gently landing on a soft purple flatland. Light emanated from somewhere, but he couldn’t locate the source. He held his arms out, laughing. His voice carried, echoing in the distance.
Bhodi became aware of a monolithic shadow moving overhead, devouring the light as it approached. As he looked up, undulating tentacles floated down, encircling him. They enveloped him and squeezed, making it hard for him to breathe. As panic set in, he was lifted up and brought close to the massive face from which the tentacles radiated.
A thin tentacle wormed its way into Bhodi’s right ear, wriggling as it fingered his mind, before exiting through his left ear. “You…” a voice devoid of language boomed.
“…are NOT one of mine.”
* * *
Bhodi’s consciousness landed back in his body with a leaden thump. Covered in sweat, he sat up shaking and hosting the most stupefying headache imaginable. He struggled to pull on his boots before stumbling out of his pod and out into the street. Like a drunk he careened down the sidewalk, unable to shake the dizziness swaddling his mind.
“Salutations, citizen!” Bhodi heard the old dealer call out. He lurched towards the voice coming from the dimly lit alley. There, in the drizzling gloom, stood the old man.
“You!” Bhodi growled, ignoring the thread of blood trickling from both his ears. With herculean effort, he grabbed the man by his trench coat’s lapels and shoved him against the alley’s graffiti-splattered brick wall. “You promised me an amazing experience!”
The old man replied with a knowing, crooked smile. He gently removed Bhodi’s trembling hands from his coat.
“You said I’d see God!”
“That I did,” the old man said, squinting coldly at Bhodi. “I just didn’t say whose.”
by submission | Jul 1, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“I’m trying to tell you, Clem, I’m a Dusty Oyster. Just like you and Billy Lee, Davy, Sherm and Stevie. It’s me, Fizzy. You remember, don’t ya?”
Clement Ellis stared unbelieving from his wheelchair at the young man jabbering at him. “Dusty Oyster? You? Nonsense. I’m old, but I haven’t lost all my marbles yet.”
“Great! I sure hope you never lost that Red Devil you had. That was one lucky marble. I remember you traded Stevie a Tiger and a Turtle for it.”
An icepick of recognition stabbed at his heart, and Clement Elllis stammered, “You can’t know that. Nobody alive can. Who are you?”
“I’m Fizzy. Tom Fitz. One of the original Dusty Oysters. The six feisty runts in fifth grade that Mr. Severin told, ‘If you boys always got to be fighting, I’ll teach you how, so you don’t end up a bunch of dusty oysters on the shore.’”
The wheelchair creaked as a tremor ran through Clement Ellis. “Not possible. That was eighty years ago. I’m the only Dusty Oyster left. Fizzy died when I was in college.”
“Wrong, Clem. Fizzy disappeared when you were in college. I disappeared and now I’m back.”
“You’re a young man. You can’t be Tom Fitz. Who told you to do this to me? This is a cruel trick to play. I’d whoop your smart ass if I could.”
“Like you tried after I threw your picture of Mary Kay Fletcher into the campfire at Beacon Falls? You were sure sweet on her, Clem.”
Clement tried to rise from his wheelchair, but failed. Everything failed him now. “Who told you these things? Who could’ve told you these things? Why are you here?”
“The question, Clem, is really: How am I here?” The young man took a thin piece of rope about a foot long from his back pocket. It was dirt-stained, badly frayed at each end and had three lumpy knots tied at uneven intervals.
Clement froze. His heart gone cold. His eyes locked on the rope. After a moment, he reached into the baggy pocket of his khakis and took out an almost identical piece of rope with three knots.
“See, Clem. It’s me. Fizzy. I kept my rope. Just like you. Just like all of us. Dusty Oysters always kept their rope with them. That’s how Mr. Severin said we’d always be tied together.”
“How? How, Fizzy?” Clement struggled to ask.
The young man smiled and crouched beside his old childhood friend’s wheelchair. “I didn’t die in college all those decades ago. And I didn’t exactly disappear.” He held his piece of rope next to Clement’s. “I kinda took Mr. Severin’s advice a few steps farther about staying tied together and learning to fight. I discovered how to bind time and fight death.”
Clement shook his head. “You can’t fight death. I know. Mr. Severin, Stevie, Billy Lee, Davy, Sherm. Time always wins. Death never loses.”
“I’m not talking about winning and losing. I’m talking about evading. I don’t expect you to understand quantum string theory, but I need you to believe that I’m real. That Tom Fitz, me, Fizzy, is real. I’m real. And that I’m still in my twenties because that’s when I figured out how to manipulate the invariant metrics of F-space to move between dimensions. I call it fizzing. And when I fizz, I tie up time. I don’t age.”
“But,” Clement’s eyes were wide and clearer than they’d been in years, “where have you been, Fizzy?” “Why are you here now? Why now?”
The forever young man, Tom Fitz, Fizzy, rose and snapped his length of rope at the sky. “Everywhere and nowhere you’d know. Always on the move in one dimension or another, but I’m tired of running from time. From death. And now I think I know how to bring the Dusty Oysters back to help me.” He locked eyes with his old pal. “You ready to fight, Clem?”
Clement Ellis looked a long time at the young man before raising his rope and snapping it at the sky like Fizzy had done. “Dusty Oysters don’t back down from a fight. That’s sure. But there’s more to life than whooping death’s ass. In this dimension or any other dimension. Fizzy, you got to grow up even if you aren’t gonna grow old.”
“How you figure, Clem?”
“You may have burned Mary Kay Fletcher’s picture at Beacon Falls, but she was my first sweetheart, my first crush. We travelled in our own dimensions, separate lives and marriages, until we were both widowed and reconnected a dozen or so years ago. We got married. We were happy. She passed last year.”
Fizzy looked at his friend, a strange sensation sapping his certainty. “We can find her, too, Clem. Bring her back with us. Live forever. Dusty Oysters forever.”
Shaking his head, Clement Ellis, chuckled softly. “There are other ties that bind, Clem. Other shores where dusty oysters hold the pearls, the real treasures, worth keeping.” He turned his wheelchair, tossed the little knotted rope over his shoulder and whistled an old show tune from their youth.
Fizzy picked up Clem’s rope. Slowly, he tied it around his.
Entanglements.
Much less sure of wanting to live forever, the very old young man sighed as he fizzed into a parallel dimension. Only the dust he stirred up remaining.
by submission | Jun 30, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
“This is a rare photograph of Christ, taken before time tourism was banned,” said the Director of the Temporal Institute.
The Senator stopped to examine it, and his entourage jostled and bumped awkwardly behind him.
A picture-lined corridor led to the gallery overlooking the wormhole, and though each picture was an actual snapshot of some historical event, the Director knew the Senator’s particular interests.
In the distance, the Sea of Galilee gleams like a sun-struck windshield, as sightseers stream down from the Sermon on the Mount. Slightly out of focus, they all wear tunics and sandals, making it difficult to tell if any of them are locals.
“The vote in the Senate to ban it was close. You must have been under a lot of pressure, but you stood by your principles and helped make the difference.”
The Director paused to see the effect of this blatant flattery.
The Senator nodded absently. He was studying the photograph. It had been enlarged to the limits of resolution and, unaccountably, was in black and white.
He pointed. “So, that is…”
The burly man slapping Christ on the back like a trainer congratulating his boy on a good fight, or a miracle well done, is Peter.
“Difficult to believe time tourism was permitted for so long,” the Director continued. He found it distasteful being a salesman, an actual unpleasant taste in his mouth.
“Opponents of the Bill maintained that since anachronisms like the camera taking this picture weren’t a problem, the ban wasn’t necessary.”
The features of Christ are hidden by the raised arm of someone striding into shot just as the shutter clicks. Only Judas, his mouth a perfect O of alarm, has seen the blade.
“But the ban was to stop rogue time travellers interfering with pivotal moments in history. Manpower and resources are poured into that.”
“Though the Institute doesn’t benefit,” he added.
One of the Senator’s aids murmured to the Director about their tight schedule.
“If we could move along to the viewing gallery now,” said the Director smoothly.
The demonstration was near the limit of current wormhole technology. Hopefully, the Senator would be impressed by men costumed in bronze armour and plumed helmets returning with film of the skirmishing round Troy.
Hopefully. The energy costs were punitive, but it would all be worthwhile if the Senator’s oversight committee approved next year’s budget.
The Senator seemed reluctant to move on.
“Assassinations,” he said. “I hear you call them celebricides.”
“Well, informally, yes. Trying to assassinate an important historical figure was usually how lone actors attempted to change the present.”
“I recall a best seller about a time tourist who planned to foil the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Forum.”
Like many patricians, the Senator claimed to be a descendant of Caesar.
“The world would be a very different place if he’d succeeded,” he mused. “Though of course, we’d never know.”
The Senator had been a military commander and still wore his authority like a uniform. The Director found himself being lectured to by an amateur.
“Well, foiling that assassination could certainly change the time-line,” he acknowledged. “In fact, Christ was a frequent target for religious cults attempting to rewrite history.”
He ushered the Senator into the gallery and let the eerie glow of Cherenkov radiation from the wormhole speak for itself.
“Though none of them ever managed to prevent his assassination,” the Director added. “For which we owe eternal thanks to Jove, and of course the Roman Temporal Guard.”
by submission | Jun 29, 2024 | Story |
Author: Andrew N. McCue
I was 15 when I left home. Replacing schoolbooks from my pack with clothes and food, I steal my mother’s favorite can opener, some flatware and a small stash of cash.
I walk mostly or hitch. Standing on the side of a road I read stapled, tacked and nailed sheets of paper on a power pole; lost cats, yard sales, a suicide prevention lifeline flyer with a few tear-off phone numbers missing and an advert for a free palm reading.
My food supply dwindling, I hope the palm reader offers snacks.
It takes me two days to work my way to the palm reader’s address. Not a horse drawn wagon
or a purple stucco house but a high-rise office building. I go up an elevator and am greeted at a door. Not by big hoop earrings or a gold tooth but by a sharp looking business dressed woman. Maybe she’s my mother’s age.
She shows me to a room with a table. We sit on either side, and she guides my palm-side-up hands under a scope thing. She peers into a pair of eye pieces and makes small noises as she adjusts knobs. The light on my palms brightens.
She looks up from the scope thing. “You have an unusually long lifeline,” she says. She says some other things but I’m mostly wondering where the snacks are.
“We’ll be in touch,” she says as she walks me from the room to an elevator.
“I don’t have a phone or an address,” I say.
“We’ll find you,” she says.
At a mission, I get a hot meal, a shower and a place to sleep. In the morning an army type in a suit and two uniformed army types are standing over me.
“Will you come with us, please,” the suited one says.
“No thank you,” I say and roll over.
The two uniformed army types manhandle me off my cot. In handcuffs, they escort me from the mission. I’m hoping they will offer me snacks.
That was 19 years ago. Standing watch on the starship’s bridge at one-twentieth of the speed of light we still have at least 70 more years before we reach Rigil Kentaurus.
But that’s okay. I’ll still be around. I have an unusually long lifeline.
by submission | Jun 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: Janaya Young
In space, hyper lanes operate like traffic lanes but with one important difference: you aren’t entirely in one place or another while traveling through them. Most people can’t tell. Maybe you feel a slight shudder of the ship, or for a moment you look down and your hand is not where you thought it was. But then it’s back and you think you must have just blinked or imagined things or had too much of the ship-generated food. With so many ships moving that quickly it becomes impossible to calculate, to avoid collisions. When you’re going that fast everything becomes fuzzy and soft, like it’s forgotten it used to be solid and that it liked being solid and everything decides to have a go at being intangible. But then your ship slows, and your body, right down to the teeth, remembers that it liked being solid and snaps back to what it was.
Sister and I like watching the ships pass in the hyper lanes. You can’t see it with just your eye, of course. You have to look through the special windows they have at the station. You can adjust the settings and slowly, slowly the hyper lane comes into focus. Blurs of blue and red. And then blurry outlines of things that just might be ships but all strung out and see through. Sometimes we’ll take a picture, and we’ll zoom in on that moment of frozen time and we’ll try to find the funniest thing we can see. Sister always thinks it’s funny to find people in the shower, with water going through them instead of running over them. Or when they’re in bed and just a mess of limbs and flesh and funny faces.
Though I like best when people are working, when there’s no line between what a person is and what they are doing. Today I saw an engineer with blinking lights on his arms, binary code in his eyes and wires coming out of his fingers. I saw a botanist’s leg become the root of a Ficus and for a moment if she could be aware of it, I wondered if she could self-reproduce just like a plant could. But then it all went back to normal, and the ship skipped away, and mother came in and started screaming about what’s appropriate for little girls to do. I know I will never see those exact people again, but I wonder if they know, if part of their atoms remember that they aren’t as solid or as separate as they think they are.
