by submission | Jun 22, 2015 | Story |
Author : Edward D. Thompson
What would you do with a time machine? Braydon knew HIS answer.
Sheila had been the love of his life. Sweet, supportive, lovely, and caring. But all those late nights in the lab perfecting the device took its toll. The day it finally worked he came home early. Actually, he worked all night and well into the next day without calling to let her know, but he was so SURE. And he was right, it finally worked. So he went back in time and came home early to surprise her.
Surprise them.
Sheila and his best friend Allen; her best friend’s husband.
The device was simple, small. It fit on his belt. He only had to grab and it took him and whatever he was holding wherever and whenever he wanted. He left Allen someplace in the late Jurassic; Shelia in an isolated plain in the early Cambrian.
The device made him rich: fame, a better life, bigger house, and lots of attentive women. And made it easy to manipulate evidence to show Sheila had run off with Allen. But there were always those late nights when the drink would get the better of him.
Other men would drunk-text an ex; Braydon went back to her:
###
It was warm, and the air was thick and over-rich with Oxygen, his breathing labored. In the clearing, a young women on her knees: the center of a crowd of men. A crowd of him. Some of him yelling obscenities at her, some begging her forgiveness. In places, versions of him fighting over her. And more than one of him curled up on the ground, sobbing. If he waited long enough, one of him would stab her and the crowd would close in around her and tear her apart.
This time he didn’t wait to watch. He thought about it though, wondering which of him would finally give in to that rage and pain that just wouldn’t die. For now though, he sat on a rocky hillside and quietly sipped a drink from a flask as several of him watched a large and sharp-clawed Allosaurus out-run a terrified, shrieking Allen.
by submission | Jun 21, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
It was July 20th, 1969 when Neil Armstrong made first contact with the Selenites. We’d known throughout history that the Moon had life. The ancient Sumerians had noted the satellite change color over time and they had theorized, quite correctly, that it was seasonal variations in vegetation. Galileo had first described the Selenite villages he’d seen through his telescope. The Europeans and the Chinese had erected gigantic structures of wood large enough, it was thought, to be seen from the lunar surface into geometric shapes and then set them ablaze in the hope that the Moon Men would reply. None did. Later, radio signals were beamed to the Moon. The Selenites remained silent.
Now, in 2015, America had six lunar military bases to the Soviet Union’s four. The Moon was the latest battlefield in a Cold War that was heating up. That’s why I was sent up here: to win hearts and minds before the Moon became yet another Korea or Vietnam.
“I do not understand,” said Tuluvnif. He was short for a Selenite: a mere eight-and-a-half feet tall. He looked like a vaguely anthropomorphic stick insect.
“Freedom,” I said. “The liberty to speak your mind. To worship as you see fit. To live the life you want to live. You’ll lose all of that if your world falls to Soviet imperialism.”
Tuluvnif sipped the sap of one of the native trees from a small cup. “I still do not understand, Mr. Fernandez. These concepts are alien to us. Even the strange habit of your people dividing into different groups with different names — Americans and Russians, Capitalists and Communists — is difficult for us to comprehend. You even apply this practice to us by referring to The People living close to the Soviets as ‘Red Lunies’.”
I put my oxygen mask up to my face and inhaled. The air is pretty thin here. “We’re concerned your people living in what we call Mare Serenitatis near the Russian military installation my be subjected to Marxist indoctrination. What would you do if you faced a revolution and had to fight your own people?”
Tuluvnif laughed. “Could your own right hand, Mr. Fernandez, be indoctrinated to revolt against your left hand? Are you not concerned that your vertebral column and your liver might stage a coup against your kidneys?”
“I don’t think you comprehend the gravity of the situation. If you could hear what the Commies are telling your people–”
“I can.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“At this moment, on the other side of this world, a Soviet officer is lecturing The People on the dangers of American imperialism. And at Mare Australe, as you call it, a Lieutenant Durst is telling The People about the War of 1812.”
I took another hit of oxygen. “How can you know that?”
Tuluvnif pointed at a bush a few yards away. “Do you like flowers?” he asked. The bush bloomed with a thousand petals. “Or do you find the fragrance overbearing?” The flowers all closed.
“How?” I asked.
“Our world is but a single organism. The People are just one manifestation of that organism. We have endeavored to be polite hosts. We have listened, Mr. Fernandez, to your rather narrow thoughts about freedom. Likewise, you can imagine our amusement when the Russians tried to teach us about collectivism. You’ll forgive me if I ask you how you might regard a talking amoeba trying to instruct you on the ways of the universe?”
“I can imagine,” I said, embarrassed.
“Well,” responded Tuluvnif, “at least that’s one small step for Man.”
by submission | Jun 20, 2015 | Story |
Author : Ian Wise
The children gathered in a cluster outside the gate. The light from hydroponics reflected softly off the tops of their heads, all turned to the large black and white animal a few feet away. It dipped its head down and took a bit of grass, a tail swaying back and forth as if in a breeze. The tour guide of the Lasker City Zoo stepped in front of the children and gestured to the animal.
“This animal is called a cow. They were domesticated by homo sapiens around 12,000 years ago and used to as a source of food. In the early 21st century, they became the first livestock animal to have a fully mapped genome, which made them an obvious candidate for a domesticated protein source here.
‘Most cows used for food are housed in a warehouse and are raised brainless. They spend most of their lives in a coma. The only time you will see a cow like this — active and grazing on its own — is in a facility like ours.”
The children had read about animals, but most of the nine year-olds had never seen an animal any larger than cat. Their homes were populated by sameness as all civilians had adopted pale, powder white skin and brown eyes. The children had learned that their bodies, hairless and stocky, were adaptations to a confined space and controlled temperature. They referred to homo sapiens as primates and meant it to mean more primitive versions of themselves. The children were raised to be analytical thinkers, and there was a brief pause before a child near the front raised their hand.
“The cow looks just like the picture in our book. How come they didn’t evolve like us?”
“That is an excellent question. Animals are no longer capable of breeding, which means that any animal you encounter here is a clone. They essentially carry the same DNA they did a thousand years ago.”
“How many different kinds of animals were there?”
“Oh, thousands, I’m sure. A lot of records were lost, but I’m sure there were probably a few thousand. There are pictures of animals with horns on their faces and some documentation of entire civilizations of small creatures called ‘insects’ that built dwellings under the ground, like us. But it’s hard to say how much was fantasy.”
Locked in the archives, the library they had pulled down below, there were records of nearly nine million different species having inhabited the Earth. What was lost was where they all went, because when the lucky future citizens of Lasker fled the cancer and impending nuclear winter above, they shut it all out. 2,000 feet under ground; children of Lasker looked up to the ceiling and were forced only to wonder what used to be.
by submission | Jun 19, 2015 | Story |
Author : Jacob Mollohan
The Rocky Mountains arc across the skyline, visible for a few moments, before a vast dust cloud whips up blurring them into obscurity. Arid wind rustles through the foothills carrying the storm my way. Sweat runs down the back of my neck as the tepid air blows through my field, it won’t be long before the sky goes dark.
I reach out my hand and grab a piece of dead wheat. The withered head crumbles, falling back into the dirt of the earth. It’s a shame. A real damned shame.
“Come on Zeke.” Rachel calls from beyond the rows of wasted stalks. She is finishing up packing the truck, we can only bring the essentials. “We have to get going.” I turn away from the sea of brown and head back to her.
My wife leans against the door of the Basilisk passenger truck. It is a squat, blocky craft and the rust red paint is peeling, an ugly but practical vehicle. Rachel shades her eyes peering into the storm absently biting her lower lip, she always does that when she’s nervous.
“We’re giving up more than we know.”
“We have no other choice.” She looks from the sky back to me. Her voice is soft, lilting, just the hint of a southern accent that she never could break. “But, it’s for the best. Our children will have a better chance under another sunset. On another planet.”
I wince at this. We didn’t have children. I know she is being hopeful, but it leaves the emptiness of a dream deferred for pragmatism. It hurt her more than it could ever have hurt me. She always wished to be a mother.
“I guess I should be grateful that there was room for us at all.” I say, playing my part. It is different this time though, the wall of dust doesn’t subside. It keeps hurdling forward, swallowing the parched landscape.
“That’s a better way to look at it.” She smiles at me, lines creasing around her eyes and mouth; lines from her quick grin and ready laughter. “Besides, the Generation Ships really are amazing.” She attended New Harvard to study engineering, and followed the development of the program from its inception. She convinced me we needed to go.
We are some of the last to leave. I wanted to wait till the end like those people who choose to stay in the path of a hurricane because they don’t want to abandon their home. The human desire to take a stand against the overwhelming power of Mother Nature is a strange thing.
My heart starts to race as the gale comes closer. There is no fighting this.
“Time’s up.” I give her a quick kiss on the cheek before I open her door and she slides in quickly. Gritty sand stings my exposed arms and neck. The sound of our aged shutters banging in their frames hounds me as I watch the silhouette of my old family farm devoured by the storm. Gone forever.
I hop into the driver side and thrum the power up. The sound of the repulsor-lift drowns out the wind as we gain height. Muted light streams into the cabin. The sun dips below the horizon, subdued colors of wine and umber in the raging dust storm.
The last sunset we will ever see on Earth.
by submission | Jun 17, 2015 | Story |
Author : Holly Lyn Walrath
In the tree world where I live, trees are not substantive. Instead, they are doorways, two oaken lines with a dark, sparkling maw between. When I step through, I’m in the tree world, my world.
I’ve been making the pilgrimage to see you, though you don’t know it. Your world is so gray to me, metal and crushing weight of concrete all round. You sit on the bench under my portal, its green leafy wonder spreading out above you, and I watch you. I want to touch your strange skin, run my fingers through your strange hair, ask you questions. But I don’t know your language. I know what the wind says, what the running brook whispers, but I can’t even ask you your name.
They say I should forget you.
When a tree grows into or over something else, like a bicycle or tire or bones, it seldom feels the wonder of the thing. It’s merely an object which is slowly swallowed whole, becoming a part of the tree world, where its pieces go wandering, a bicycle wheel rolling away, with no particular place in mind.
In the tree world, everything is seen as if through the eyes of a tree. So when limbs knock on window panes at night, they are not trying to be scary, nor merely blown by the wind, they are just asking “Why did you build this building so close to me?” Trees don’t mind being close, but they prefer being close to other trees, and sometimes to human skin, which feels like butter scraped on toast to them. They have memories of their dead friends, because where there is one tree in the human world there were once a thousand.
When people see us, it’s our choice. We can be invisible, like lizards blending into the greenery. People used to believe that I was the spirit of the tree. I’m not the tree, I’m only living within its world, where it is easy to get lost. The edges aren’t defined, things meld together, I can’t touch water and feel its surface tension. There is no surface, which is hard to define.
I know that this won’t last forever. That I won’t be able to see you when all the trees are gone. The others will be glad. They’ll encourage me to settle down. I’ll stop going to the surface. Maybe I’ll die away, my body decaying into the space of my world. My world closed in.
When you cut down a tree, you are merely shutting a door forever. Despite the loss of comradery, trees are okay with this. They don’t want you in their world. They don’t like you. They don’t mind another shut door.
