by submission | Nov 20, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The spaceship’s aerodyne engines groaned as the vessel entered the upper atmosphere of Venus. Even after 90 years of terraforming, the air on Venus was still thick and hot. The ship banked to divert around an immense atmosphere processor. The machine was as big as a skyscraper and was held aloft by cables running up to gigantic vacuum balloons. The processor’s fusion reactor kept powerful ultraviolet lasers working around the clock to photodissociate the air’s carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon. There were tens of thousands of such behemoths sailing through the skies of Venus.
“The air is 200°C and 30 bar,” said Fenrin as the Sleipnir descended roughly through the turbulent atmosphere. Fenrin kept his hands on the controls even though the ship’s computer was piloting the vessel. It made little sense. No human being could successfully manually navigate a ship to the surface of Venus. Not in one piece anyway.
“That’s why we have environment suits,” replied Tarrol. The aging but serviceable robot’s use of “we” was not a figure of speech. He, too, would need to don an environment suit.
“I’m still not sure about this,” said Fenrin. “The cost of refitting the Sleipnir to withstand Venus’ atmosphere, the cost of the environment suits, the cost in fuel coming out here.”
“Things will work out,” said Tarrol. “What’s down there is worth a lot of money.”
“Then why doesn’t the current owner of the item sell it to the Academic Consortium and cut us out of the deal?”
“Because the current owner is a roustabout machine. He doesn’t have an advanced metaprocessor. An excess of abstract thought would be a liability for someone working on Venus. The robot that found the item is a tunneler. All he does is dig into the crust so enormous cables can be run underground.”
“For what purpose?”
“Venus has virtually no magnetic field. Not enough convection in the liquid outer core of the planet to generate a field that can protect against cosmic radiation. So they’re having to construct huge underground coils to create a field. Giant thermocouples running deep into the planet will eventually power it. It was while digging that the robot got into the chamber that housed the object.”
“And he has no idea of its potential value?”
“No. All he understands is his job. I told him I could sell the item and get him more advanced disc cutters so he could tunnel faster.”
The Sleipnir landed and Fenrin and Tarrol disembarked and met their contact. The robot was the size of a house and it had no name, only a number: TR717. Tarrol and TR717 silently negotiated via radio for a few seconds. Then, the large tunneling machine turned the item over to the pair. They climbed back into their ship and lifted off.
After they were back in space, Fenrin examined the object with gloved hands.
“We probably shouldn’t handle it too much,” advised Tarrol. “It’s around two billion years old and likely fragile.”
Fenrin nodded and put the metallic ball back into a receptacle. He tried to mentally reconcile the sphere’s blue global ocean with the seas with which he was acquainted. He attempted to recognize a continent or a coastline from the strange land masses depicted in brown on the object’s surface. At last, he decided he could do neither.
“Proof of an ancient civilization on Venus and a picture of Earth’s surface around the advent of photosynthesis,” Fenrin said to Tarrol. “I say we ask the Consortium for an even trillion and negotiate from there.”
by submission | Nov 18, 2015 | Story |
Author : Kellee Kranendonk
I’m not crazy. Really, I’m not. But since they put me in this cracker-box palace and started giving me drugs, I’ve been able to handle the visions much better. They’d like me to tell them I’m not seeing things. But I am.
And I remember the first time it happened – when my team and I first came back from planet W1.3, otherwise known as Alusinar. Strange events that play out in my mind as memories. But they never actually happened. At least not in this. . . reality. I’ve figured that out now.
It’s like seeing your reflection in a broken mirror.Each shard reflects a version of you. You see, for every choice we make, there are alternate paths we could have chosen, each one having a different result, sometimes a drastic one. I see all the alternatives, as if each person in each piece of glass is real and living my life only making different decisions. Hundreds of them. Every variant of every option fast forwarding in my head. Me, stuck in a career I hate. Me, married with kids. Me, planet-hopping and loving every minute of it.
They won’t let me – or anyone else – go back to Alusinar. Not until they find something to cure me. But only those beings on W1.3 can help me. Sometimes I hear them calling to me. They want me to come back. I think they made me one of them somehow. The sound is only in my brain but it’s as real as I am. I can’t explain how I know it’s real. It exists like the wind. You can’t see it but you can hear it and feel it.
Not all the visions I have are bad, but those are the ones I remember best. Like the one where my team and I decide to go to W1.1 despite the black screen on the probe.
In that reality, tiny creatures jump out of the darkness and attach themselves to the back of your neck. I remember their razor-sharp teeth cutting into my skin. Their tongues slithering into the incision and sucking my
blood until my life-force is gone.
Then there’s the one where no peace talks are held with the giants of W0.3 and they destroy T’Rauy, my world. I remember giant people with giant weapons dropping in from an enormous ship in the sky and taking no hostages in the massacre.
But we did hold peace talks and I didn’t die on W1.1. I’m still here, real and alive, hostage only to something I can’t explain.
All of the possibilities, good or bad, mash and mingle with each other until I can’t make out one from the other, can’t single out one memory, actual or optional, and all I’m left with is my own sad reality here in this white, round room. Later, I remember some of them as dreams, but I know they’re real.
Unless I take the drugs. Then I see nothing but spectral images of people floating around me, talking and giving me things to eat and drink, and pills to keep me in this haze. Then I remember nothing but the food, water and pills from the day before. The sounds in my brain are reduced to a hum, like tinnitus in my ears.
But I don’t always take the drugs. Sometimes I want to see the possibilities, to remember the few I can and tell my story to anyone who will listen.
It’s like being a voyeur and watching other people’s lives, except it’s my life. All those images. Hundreds of possibilities every time a choice is made.
Maybe they’re alternative realities. Existing lives I’m leading in other actualities. Maybe that’s what the voices want to tell me.
Why can’t I just take my team and go back to W1.3? I’ll make them take a closer look at the viridian luminosity. I’ll make them see it wasn’t just noxious vapours.
I remember now. It touched me. Reached out to my mind, my soul. A peaceful life-form trying to connect.
With me. With humans.
They’ll see that I’m not crazy. Really.
Is anyone listening?
by submission | Nov 17, 2015 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
Our first return mission from Mars was a complete success. The journey to the red planet, the orbit to surface transfer, the vast exploration and the return trip – all went perfectly to plan. The astronauts returned to ticker tape parades and talk shows across the globe.
However, microscopic stowaways on board the return spaceship proved to be resistant to the standard decontamination procedures and once a full understanding emerged, they had already begun to flourish and spread. Earth was the perfect nursery.
As soon as it was discovered they were asexual and were constantly ejecting offspring from pores along their carapaces, the nukes were launched. The shockwaves from the detonations only served to disperse them further and within 18 months, technology began to falter as their preference for anything electronic became evident. The tiny invaders excreted iron dust, which rusted immediately and coated everything in red – earning them the name Rusty.
Year upon year, Rusty grew larger in size and by the third year, though kitten sized, Rusty’s omnivorous appetite was insatiable. State funding, rewarded citizens with food for dead Rustys and freely issued barbaric clubs. However, as soon it was thought a zone had been cleared, Rusty would emerge from the cracks.
After six years, only a few insular island communities remained clear of Rusty. Rusty always found a way in though. When the mobile incinerators – eaten from the inside out by engorged dog size Rustys – began to litter the streets, martial law came into effect. Piecemeal repairs became the new street appeal as homeowners did what they could to patch the large holes in their houses. Horror stories emerged of pets, small children and itinerants vanishing overnight.
A decade had passed and as soon as the army’s arsenal ran out, soldiers simply dispersed. Sofa sized Rustys were now favouring concrete, causing high-rise buildings to collapse without warning. Cities became too dangerous and with the countryside barren after Rusty’s first wave, suburbia – with its enclaves and community driven action teams – became the last hope. A place where vigilant eyes came together on the street to promptly defend what little remained. A tribal society.
Fifteen years passed and we ceased to care what year it was and just tried to survive day to day. The air tasted like gritty blood as Rusty continued to transform our blue planet into mining town red. Rusty’s hunger turned to suck the marrow from what remained on our planet’s surface. Survivors clung to life in make-shift castles made from detritus.
Twenty years on, we learnt to build from Rusty’s excreta. It was the only thing Rusty wouldn’t eat. With food scarce, we learn that if you pried apart Rusty’s hardened outer shell, deep within an intricate biology, there was a purple organ, that didn’t kill you. It tasted like chalky escargot.
With the land all but barren, Rusty headed to the seas. Like a receding blood tsunami, Rusty dined at the tidal break, ingesting seawater and sea life alike until he digested the ocean to the horizon. In time, the world’s deepest underwater trench became the last river and was filled with engorged whale size Rustys.
Three decades on and there were few of us left. Having eaten all food sources, Rusty began to shrink. When we thought harmony had been reached, the spaceships arrived to reveal the true masters. It took them very little effort to finish us off. The Mars-forming biology they planted three decades earlier had worked perfectly.
Here in their zoo, there aren’t many humans left.
by submission | Nov 16, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“Everyone remembers their first time—the feel, shudder, anticipation, sweat and wonder if you would die in the middle of penetration.” Emanuel Mumford stared into Stacy Croft’s face, watching for twitches or blush.
“What was yours, Captain?” She moved closer, ensuring live audiences would miss nothing.
“It was a blue giant we can’t see from Earth. That’s not important, but watching fusion balls freeze in globular time warps, like blue goldfish suspended in a bowl…exhilarating.” Mumford held his hands out in a circle for emphasis.
“And core entry? The danger is always there, so you’ve told us. Didn’t we lose a ship ten years ago?” Emanuel’s neck reddened. His face paled.
“I’d just transferred from Atlantis. She was my first assignment. We didn’t have the experience then to detect nova predecessors. There were no Q-wave monitors. Three hundred brave men, women and children lost.” He paused and then turned hard into the camera. “But I’m here to tell you all tonight, all of you on Earth…we, the Collectors, love our system, our planets, and our home world. We worship our Sol. It is our God of nourishment and survival. Returning live plasma to Her center through interspatial transfer elevators has kept Her alive for millions of years, long after the rogue dwarf star threatened to rip Sol apart in the First Empire.”
“Glory be to the First Empire,” Stacy urged, looking back to the audience.
“Glory be,” Emanuel repeated.
“And the plasma tube you showed us yesterday…it’s so much like a snake or some giant parasite reaching into the heart of a star. Do you imagine the star feels pain?”
“Hardly,” Emanuel replied, smiling. “It has no more feeling than your camera or a piece of space junk. Our own Sol is not conscious, but that we make it so in our love for its light and power. No, I sense no remorse when the plasma vacuum begins transporting the raw materials back home.”
“There must be some star systems that are advanced enough to resist. Can you discuss that?”
The Captain paused, considering his oath regarding classified information. He had been briefed. “Yes, there have been some cases of resistance. When the residents finally realize we are not destroying their source, but rather just taking a small part, they usually accept and leave us alone. After all, we learned about this technology from those who first came to Sol, before the rogue dwarf arrived. They gave us this ability in exchange for our Sol’s offering, in case we would ever need to restore our beloved.”
She pressed, “But haven’t there been encounters that were violent?”
“Stacy, I’ve come here tonight to explain that we are seeking new crews and new defense force volunteers to join our space families. That means risking much for our home system, but it is our highest calling. That may mean defending our ships and our purpose. We will always seek the peaceful path, but we will not have our path broken.”
“Captain, one of our viewers has asked me to have the name of your ship explained. Can you help?”
“Yes. Once a Captain has served five years, he or she can rename their vessel. I chose Nosferatu because I love the ancient myth of the vampire; however, in our case, we do not harm the one from whom we feed. We bring life to the one we love. Blessed be our Sol.”
by submission | Nov 15, 2015 | Story |
Author : Sam Larson
Dr. Oliver, tall and with thick, perpetually smudged glasses perched on the end of his long nose, leaned over Seth’s back and pushed the tip of his forceps into a gash on Seth’s shoulder while Seth, stripped to the waist and streaked with sweat, moaned and squirmed on the examination table.
“This is the last one, Seth.” Dr. Oliver placed a hand on Seth’s back where his latex gloves smeared the blood oozing from the boy’s shoulders. He gave the forceps a sharp jerk and Seth squealed. The forceps clanked loudly into a waiting steel bowl and, still holding Seth down, Dr. Oliver reached for the antiseptic, pouring it sloppily across the boy’s upper back and mopping it with a wad of cotton. Seth’s shoulders were pocked with a constellation of scars, some nearly faded and some fresh, red, and tender. Seth lay limp on the bed and waited, sniffling. Dr. Oliver bandaged Seth’s shoulders tightly and offered a hand to help the boy sit up on the bed. Seth snatched his arm away from Dr. Oliver and cast a furious glance up at the raggedy adult. Tears ran down Seth’s face and angry red rimmed his obsidian eyes, a rich solid black like India ink.
Dr. Oliver sat on a stool in front of the examining table, removed his stained latex gloves, and tossed them towards the waste bin. Reaching long fingers into the pocket of his shirt he dug out a crumpled envelope of tobacco and a collection of tattered of rolling papers. He carefully splinted the torn rolling paper with more scraps dug from his shirt pocket until he had a crooked cigarette pinched between his fingers. Dr. Oliver lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, the layers of rolling paper flaring and smoking in the still air of his office.
“You were very brave today, Seth.” The boy sat hunched on the edge of the bed, sniffling and wiping tears from his eyes.
“Hurts,” mumbled Seth, “Hurts lots.”
“I know it does, Seth. But we’ll make you better.” Dr. Oliver stood, flipped his cigarette at the trash can, and walked to a large wardrobe in the corner of his office. He rummaged through a pile of clothes and emerged with a large, faded men’s shirt. Back at the examining table Dr. Oliver handed Seth the shirt and helped him struggle his way into it, rolling the cuffs when they fell down past Seth’s wrists.
“Now, be careful with your bandages for the next couple of days. And come see me if you need my help. You know I’m always home.” Seth rolled onto his side and scrambled off of the table, catching his breath with a soft hiss when the impact with the floor made his wounds sting. He hesitated near the examining table, staring bashfully at his feet and fiddling with one of the buttons on his shirt. “Out you go, Seth. Tell your mother hello for me.”
Laying a gentle hand on Seth’s back Dr. Oliver ushered his young patient out the door and into the deepening evening, watching him walk down the street until the boy had rounded the corner. Dr. Oliver swung the door shut and secured it with a pair of heavy deadbolts. On his way back into the examining room he gathered up the steel bowl from its spot on the bedside table and upended it where Seth had been laying. Dr. Oliver picked up the forceps from where they had fallen and gently stirred the ragged fistful of white, blood-speckled feathers that lay scattered across the examination table.
