by submission | Sep 1, 2016 | Story |
Author : Callum Wallace
“Forward! Move forward!”
I duck the humming blue blow as the throng presses me onwards.
“How much further?” Davos looks afraid, scared of the dark, frightened of the ubiquitous pressing weight above.
I grip his hand, “We’ll know soon enough.”
The ceiling thickens. Air becomes thick, nasty, hard to swallow.
Sallow lanterns joke about light as the darkness squashes us, making us formless, one, a huddled mass, the underclass, alone in our multitude.
“What’s going to –” His whisper is cut off by a booming voice that echoes around the tightly packed space, ignoring the bodies trapped there, strong, powerful.
“Friends! Fellow slaves! Urchins, off casts, dregs. I’m sure you’ve been called them all. But listen now! We are mistreated, pushed about, abused and used, only to be cast aside and discarded when it is no longer appropriate for us to be seen above ground, broken and useless!”
There is a heavy pause as the voice soaks up the eagerly listening air around them.
“It is time for this to end! It is time for us to rise up! Look at us! How many of us are sent underground to await death? Ten-thousand? Twenty?
“More than enough. With this number, we could –”
I turn away, pulling Davos close. His eyes are still wide, still deathly afraid, but I note the dangerous gleam, the spark that leads to violence. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We can still find a hab-shelter, I’m sure.”
“No. He’s right. This is too far.”
Grimace. “This is your first ramp?” He nods. “I’ve lost count, Davos. It never changes. Every time, it’s the same. Trust me. Now come on.”
He pulls his hand from mine, eyes wide as saucers in the gloom. “What do you mean? There are other ramps? They’ve sent more of us down? That means there are more of us to fight!”
I shake my head. “No. One ramp at a time. They send us down the ramp, wait for the inevitable fight, wipe you out and start all over. Do you recognise anyone down here? Ever seen any newscasts, any footage of any rebels at all? Think about it.”
“Only Archangel.”
Shudder. “She was the first. And one of the first to die, or go missing. Every rebellion happens because of her, and thousands of humans have been culled because of her.
“Please, Davos, come with me. It isn’t worth throwing your life away. Do an old woman a favour.”
The speech overhead is raising the crowd to a fever pitch. You can taste the metallic quality of the peoples’ excitement in the rank air.
“I have to do this. You would agree if you weren’t a coward. If you cared.”
He pushes away and into the swarm, one of the chosen, a hero in the making.
I shrug sadly, and go the other way, heading deeper down into the oppressive black of the ramp.
I know I should try harder, but it’s happened so many times before. I know it’s pointless, and I know what’ll happen. Davos will be dead by morning.
The Tregeél communicator vibrates silently against the inside of my skull, and my vision blurs.
They’re waiting.
“This is Twelve. It’s happening again. You’ll have to kill them all.”
Another buzz that shakes my teeth, and I find a hidden alcove where I can watch, safely above the surging idiots below me.
And I sit.
Archangel sits.
Waiting.
by submission | Aug 31, 2016 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
As the sun went down over the giant dome that covered Mesogaea on Mars, moisture condensed on the dome’s inner surface. Soon, it was raining over the enclosed metropolis. Detective Vogt had read that rain was common on Earth before the Great Asteroid Collision. But he knew the cities of ancient Earth had been opened to the sky and so he felt certain that terrestrial rain was just another of the thousand myths that existed about humanity’s ancestral home.
Vogt marched down the hall of the police station to the interrogation room. At last, they’d captured one of the militant Gagarinists. Two police officers handcuffed a thin man to a chair and left Vogt in the room alone with him. Vogt sat down in the chair opposite the man.
“So, Mr.” — Vogt glanced at the datawriter on the table — “Corlew. I understand that–”
“I won’t tell you anything!” the prisoner interjected. “I won’t be here very long anyway.”
“You’re being detained without bail,” replied Vogt. As soon as he’d said it, he realized he had misinterpreted Corlew’s statement. “Oh,” continued Vogt, “you meant you won’t be on Mars very long.”
“Today is the day!” Corlew said giddily. “It’s been a thousand years!”
“A thousand Earth years?” asked Vogt.
“A thousand years!” insisted Corlew. “Today is April 12th, 2961! One millennium to the day that the Blessed Gagarin ascended into space.”
“The date is 21 Libra 718,” Vogt said flatly.
“The Martian calendar doesn’t matter,” replied Corlew defiantly.
Vogt ignored that. “Only archaeologists go to Earth. It’s uninhabitable.”
“Unbeliever!” screamed Corlew. “The Blessed Gagarin will renew the Earth and his acolyte, Neil of the Strong Arm, will transport the faithful there in a giant leap!”
Corlew struggled in vain against his restraints.
“I don’t care about your Earth cult, Corlew,” said Vogt. “I care about the claims some of your fellow Gagarinists made about planting bombs in several cities around the world.”
“People don’t belong here,” Corlew replied. “Is it natural to have to live under giant domes or underground? Is it right for children to grow up in a world with a pink sky instead of a blue one?”
“A lot of those children won’t get to grow up at all if your friends succeed in carrying out their threats.”
Corlew seemed to consider Vogt’s words. He ceased struggling against his restraints and sat back in the chair. “Alright,” said Corlew at last. “It won’t make any difference.” He looked at the clock on the wall. “The faithful will be on Earth any moment now anyway. I overheard Costa and Reddy talking about planting a–”
There was a low rumbling sound in the distance. The rain was now falling at a sharp eastward angle instead of straight down. The building’s centuries-old emergency bulkheads slammed down as the sound of dozens of decompression alarms overlapped each other.
Vogt tapped furiously on the datawriter. Pavonis Mons, Schiaparelli, Solis Planum, over a dozen others: the ring of domed cities that belted the Red Planet was bleeding atmosphere from a score of wounds.
Corlew turned pale. “I shouldn’t still be here,” he muttered.
From out in the corridor, a hundred voices roared. A few were police officers trying to restore calm, most were enraged civilians demanding that the Gagarinist be handed over to them. There was a violent pounding at the interrogation room door.
Vogt drew his pistol and aimed it at the door. “You didn’t want to live on Mars,” he said over his shoulder to Corlew. “Looks like you’re going to get your wish.”
by submission | Aug 30, 2016 | Story |
Author : Perry McDaid (Falcon)
Revelation did not come as a rosy warm feeling of wonder, but a rending, ripping divestment of accepted resentment. It left a vacuum: a void greater than that between his adopted planet and the existence into which he had first … ‘been born’. This space would admit new love, but it was an icy cold void nonetheless.
Dizzying. There had been no great love affair; only need, deception and delusion. He’d been hanging on to those to hide from the shame and injured pride of having wasted precious years, and fear that there was no time for rebuilding.
“It’s cold.” It was that time of year. His eyes watered.
In the dream she’d told him that she was a different person. In the dream a tsunami had separated them and her life had been saved by another. He had tried to tell her that he still loved her despite being human: that she couldn’t have changed so much, but the unspoken words rang hollow even there.
He had tried to deny the hate he’d felt for anyone who touched her, anyone who had stepped between them, but those words too carried their own echoing falsehood.
Her accusations of sending threatening letters were hurtful in their ludicrousness, and he hated whoever had fabricated these lies.
He got out of bed and shuffled along the landing to the bathroom, did his ablutions and stepped into the shower.
“Ahhhhh!”
The water was at the perfect temperature to counteract any sort of chill. He felt his muscles relax and the miasma of the emotional nightmare slough from his body.
“Damn, forgot a towel.”
He turned the shower off and stepped out, leaving wet footprints on the non-slip tiling and dripping on the landing carpet as he retraced his steps to the bedroom, stopping short of the beckoning bed to open the wardrobe: side-stepping the PGM 338 rifle case as it sought to crush his toes.
He pushed the deadly weapon back into its nook, berating himself for not having stored it more carefully. He grabbed a shirt and pair of trousers from the hangers and clean briefs and socks from the shelves and drawers respectively. An accidentally displaced woolly jumper revealed his old Walther.
“So that’s where you got to,” he admonished the matt black piece of craftsmanship. He loved the brutal brashness of Earth weapons.
The frequent trips to the secluded forest seemed fruitless now. The whole appeal of blending with the winter’s night the following week to snag another trophy dissolved in the face of aimlessness.
The image of mocha and a pack of chocolate digestives before a roaring fire shouldered their way in. The smile was a crack across his reptilian face.
It burned that he had gone to such expense and effort to become the marksman he was, only to have the driving anger expunged in but a dream.
Revenge had kept him company through the lonely decades, and now – like some fickle lover – had left him hanging. The wry grimace at the ludicrous vision of gunning down anthropomorphised Revenge proved an easier facial expression to manage.
Knock. He buttoned the shirt and opened the door.
“How do you feel about plushies?” the squirrel costume asked in a muffled version of her voice.
The dream came back to him. A different ‘person’? He imagined a ‘Psssst’ coming from the Walther cupboard.
On the dinette table, the wick on the Molotov cocktail he had fixed earlier to flush out targets wagged like a disapproving finger in the draught of the air-conditioner.
He was a hunter.
by submission | Aug 29, 2016 | Story |
Author : Travis Gregg
Indentured servitude has been illegal for centuries, at least on Earth. Mars though, Mars is the new frontier. The Wild West. On Mars a lot of things that used to be illegal are being revived.
The deal was seven years of labor, seven years of running excavators, tunneling, mining, building. Seven long years of constructing the domes and aqueducts and launch pads. Seven years and then you’re a citizen. You get a free ride from Earth, you do your part, and then you’re a member of the most exciting emerging society there has been in thousands of years. Easy as that. If you don’t have any money, and if you don’t have incredibly specific training or expertise, then seven years of labor is the only way to get in. Plenty of people vying for it, I was lucky to get selected.
Seven years isn’t even that bad, or at least this is what I’ve been telling myself. Most of my 30’s will be gone for sure but after that I’ll have a new start, new opportunities, and my kids, when I have them, will be automatic citizens. They’ll have opportunities I can only dream about.
The trip up from Earth was rough, and when we arrived at the lander site we were herded through a series of shoots like cattle. At the very end, past the inoculations, the delousing, and all the tests, we were given our bunk assignments.
The first thing I did when I got to my bunk was tape up the small scrap of paper on which I’d written The Date. Capitol T and Capitol D. I was calling it Freedom Day and it was exactly seven years from today. I’d taped the date up to the wall so I could see it every day, something to keep me motivated.
My bunk mate asked me what that was and I was surprised he’d asked. He knew what day today was, and could add seven to the current year as easily as I could. Still, I explained to him that that’s the day we’re done and he laughed. I asked him what was so funny and he laughed some more then asked if I read my contract. Of course I had, I pulled out my thumbed through copy to prove it.
“Right here, seven years,” I said pointing to one of the very first paragraphs. The contract was eighty-four pages long but the seven years bit was right on the front page.
He thumbed to the back and pointed at a phrase I’d glossed over.
All measurements and metrics are Mars standard.
Now a meter is a meter on Earth or on Saturn. Same for a gram and a liter. They’re universal constants based on atomic properties. A year though, a year is a rotation around the sun. Kind of arbitrary.
While I was doing the math my bunk mate had pulled down my note, crossed out the date, and written a new one.
So long to my 30’s entirely I resigned myself, and half my 40’s too. Should have read the fine print.
by submission | Aug 28, 2016 | Story |
Author : James Riser
Tetsuo kept a collection of five hundred yen and one hundred yen coins that was worth a lot of money to an antique dealer. Instead, he used them on a noodle vending machine set against the wall of a hollow, ancient building near, what history said, was Akita Port in Northern Japan.
The machine’s once colorful advertisements were yellowed and decayed by firestorms and nuclear winters, but still worked. It still dropped a small plastic bowl and a wax coated clump of noodles when prompted by the only working button. After the the bowl dropped, a stream of hot water poured down. It usually overflowed the bowl, diluting the flavor, but Tetsuo didn’t mind. He never saw the person who refilled the machine. It couldn’t be a vending bot, because the machine had a key lock and bots used infrared sensors to gain access and refill vending machines. New Light Technologies made everything from vending bots to Lovedolls, but could never bothered to make a robot that could use an ancient key lock.
He walked up to the machine, feet crunching over glass and gravel. Tetsuo pulled his windbreaker tighter over his body. Black smoke clogged the sky. The newspapers said that most of world looked like this. A gray metal bench sat around the corner of the building. He sat with his father there and ate noodles in the years before his father succumbed to thyroid cancer; Tetsuo watched his throat, swollen with cancerous tumors rise and fall. They sat at the bench and hated the government and the robots with infrared fingertips.
He took his first girlfriend to the vending machine to eat noodles and was also sitting there when he received the live text, sent to the Port connected to his brain, informing him of the termination of their relationship; it came from a third party service specializing in break up texts. He shrugged and ate his watery noodles.
This day, his back ached with the feeling of the weight of heavy factory boxes and the hard plastic chairs in the employee break room. The manager overheard him complaining to a co-worker. When the job termination text came, he wanted to be sitting at the bench eating noodles.
He inserted two silver, one hundred yen coins. The bowl dropped, but the noodles didn’t. The machine shook and sputtered out a small amount of cold water. Tetsuo took the bowl out and tossed it to the ground and inserted some more coins. The machine shook and sputtered again, no bowl dropped. Broken.
He produced a handful of coins and sighed. He thought of the antique dealer. A car pulled up behind him. Tetsuo turned to see a battered Honda civic, sighing in the streets. Every few minutes, the car coughed and threatened to die. An old man slid out from the doorless driver side. He took a box from the back seat and dropped the box in front of the machine. It landed with a dry thud, disturbing the dust on the sidewalk.
The old man came up to Tetsuo’s shoulders, and his entire body was wrapped in a parka and puffy black pants. Only his worn, leather face was exposed.
“Broken?” he asked.
Tetsuo nodded.
The man hit the machine and it shuttered.
“Broken.”
The pair stood there for a handful of silent moments. The wind howled and white dust washed through the streets. Tetsuo produced more coins from his other pocket. He forced the small fortune into the Noodle man’s hard, wrinkled hands. “I have more at home. Just fix it please.”
