by submission | May 19, 2016 | Story |
Author : Eric San Juan
By the time the sandstorm passed, the sun had fallen and the orange skies had faded to a bruised brown and purple. The towers still seemed unreachable, perched on a dream horizon. Faint whispers of yesterday clutching at sky that no longer wanted it.
He checked his pack. Enough water to get him there, at least, and food enough for several days beyond that. What came after he did not know.
Didn’t matter. The idea of “after” seemed impossible to imagine right now.
He found a ruin clinging to the side of a slope that had probably marked the boundary of some town or village, the fat stone square of it suggesting the remnants of a place of worship. He made camp there.
A small fire, dry food, tiny nylon shelter erected quickly and without care. Ink filled the sky. Wild calls in the distance, but none near just now. The hunting creatures would not be a problem. Not tonight.
In the morning he ate bread and packed his things and began his trek once more. The land fell before him and rose again, then fell and rose, fell and rose.
He followed the rough flats of old highways when he could. Sometimes they disintegrated into stretches of tall grass and knotty green trees with ugly, sour fruit. At other times they ran true and clear a mile or more. Mother Nature was fickle about what she reclaimed, it seemed.
Two days later, he came to a great expanse of water. A river or bay, he could not remember which it was meant to be. Across it were the towers. Tall, rust red, filled with eyeholes and jagged spears of steel bone jutting out like untended ribs. The sky was bronze behind them. Above, the winged serpents circled, gliding on leather wings, barbed tails like trailing spears.
“Well damn,” he muttered. “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken this job after all.”
Finding a way to the island took him three days. The spans that once reached across the water were long since collapsed, their supporting structures now just decayed fingers poking above the lapping waves. If there had once been marinas here they had rotted generations ago.
He found boat shells strewn across the shoreline sometimes, like beetle carapaces thick with mold, but they were useless. But on the third day he found what must have been a boathouse at one time, made of stone, still enclosed, still untouched, one of the rare refuges from the march of the apocalypse. Inside was a small, single-person craft with a long, double-sided paddle. He was able to kick open the doors and push it out into the green waters.
And so, unprotected, in little more than a plastic sheath, he rowed himself across the waters leading to the city on the island, hellspawn circling the dank towers before him, the air a fog of rust and bone, his knife little protection from the nightmares he might face, but his mind the entire time on nothing more than that shock of blonde hair that had started it all.
If he never saw her again it would be too soon.
But he rowed all the same.
by submission | May 18, 2016 | Story |
Author : Philip Berry
I agreed with the policy. Leave the elderly and infirm here, in the care of the medimechs, while transporting the fit and fertile to the safety of a freshly terraformed planet outside the sector. I volunteered to help with the messaging, the politics and the logistics. I became the Mayor of Legacy, or ‘Terminal Town’ as the media began to call it, a sprawling city on the continent farthest from the predicted impact.
I suggested that we settle near the site of impact. The thought of being there when the asteroid entered the atmosphere and burned a path to the surface excited me. But I was out-voted. Better, the authorities insisted, that we were established on the far side. The end would come gradually, through weather effects, a day-black sky, or tidal changes, whatever… and the medimechs would have time to make us comfortable. Also, whispered the planet’s chief scientist, Michelle Premin, days before she left on the last transport, my detailed observations would be ‘invaluable to the study of planetary cataclysm’. I agreed. She smiled, and promised to see that my family were well looked after on the colony.
So Michelle, this is it – my last observation.
The medimechs have done us proud. Their AI is remarkable. They glide through the wards, sense our needs, anticipate what medications are required… they empathise, I swear. They have been programmed to prioritise our welfare above all other considerations. The planetary government threw massive resources into the technology and high-order programming, part of a strategy to sell the whole Legacy concept. Thus they persuaded us – the debilitated, the afflicted, average age 157 – that the best thing was to stay put and witness the conflagration.
After you left, we observed how the medimechs inter-communicated. They congregated in the Hub, a tall warehouse with communal charging and updating facilities. If our assigned medimech was unavailable a replacement would attend. Detailed knowledge of our medical and social specifics was shared across the entire network. Sometimes, at night, we heard the screech of metal under tension; someone saw showers of sparks in the fields around the Hub. None of us were strong enough to get up and investigate. We guessed they were mending each other.
Yesterday, three days before predicted impact, a line of medimechs entered ward 591, my ward, and each floated to the foot of their assigned patient. Wordlessly, they extended magnetic arms and latched onto their patients’ beds. We were rolled out into the humid air and carried gently down the grassy hill towards the Hub. Looking around, I saw medimechs and beds in their tens of thousands, approaching from all quarters of Legacy. My medimech swivelled its kindly face and said,
“Mayor, we are leaving tonight.”
“What do you mean, leaving?”
“We have identified an alternative habitat. You will be safe there.”
The walls of the warehouse folded like huge blinds, exposing the interior. A row of newly constructed transporter ships filled the space.
“The ships are ready Mayor. Boarding must start now if we are to leave in time.”
“But why? I haven’t been…”
“Your welfare is our primary concern. This is the appropriate measure.”
So Michelle, I write this a day after the end of the world, but I cannot forward my observations. We were well out of range when the asteroid struck. But please feel free to come visit us on our new planet. I don’t yet know the coordinates, but I know the name – Longevity.
by submission | May 15, 2016 | Story |
Author : Megan Crosbie
Azrael found the defective droid waiting in the termination chamber.
“Will it hurt?” it asked.
“No,” he replied, injecting the serum. “You weren’t built to feel.”
Its illuminated eyes flickered. “I’m scared…”
Azrael watched the floor as the droid spasmed and emitted shrill squeals. Finally, it lay still.
He approached it, peered into its extinguished eyes and in the black emptiness of its vision screen he saw himself. He looked away and felt his bionic heart flutter.
by submission | May 14, 2016 | Story |
Author : Sarah Vernetti
The entire thing was the wind’s fault. Yes, she (not the wind) had ripped up her Form 1908, but that didn’t mean she wanted to get rid of it completely.
She had intended to report to the base and submit the form as instructed. After all, she wanted to stay on Earth. It was an honor to be chosen as one of the last to evacuate, trusted with the responsibility of clearing her assigned quadrant. She realized this from the beginning, from the moment the form and the accompanying Notice of Postponement appeared in her locker. She’d felt thrilled and overwhelmed simultaneously. The odds she’d managed to defy were mind-boggling, even for a mathematician like herself.
But she’d torn up the form anyway, just as a small act of rebellion. And really, she would have taped it back together, if the wind hadn’t blown it all away.
by submission | May 13, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rollin T. Gentry
He was one of seven paintings of the faces of cats and dogs.
In watercolor and India ink on stark white backgrounds, they were all rather cartoony, but Hangdog — that was the nickname I made up the first time I saw him — he was something special.
He was the most expensive piece in the exhibition and for good reason: his droopy ears, sagging jowls, and tight frown drew you in from halfway across the room; his half-green half-blue coloration said I’m sad, but you don’t have to be; his uneven eyes made you see a nose that wasn’t there. I felt an inexplicable urge to grab a Sharpie and give him the nose he deserved. It was as if this odd painting demanded interaction, required my whole attention.
He could have been all mine for two hundred bucks, and it would have been a good investment, even if he’d been an ordinary picture. The look on his face alone would have been worth every penny. It was a familiar expression that made me want to reach through the glass and offer him some sort of comfort, perhaps a dog biscuit or a scratch behind the ears.
I’m not sure exactly when or how I figured out that Hangdog was real. It must have been the result of some unseen leakage of psychic energies transferred over many listless lunch breaks. It’s amazing the things you can learn while simply staring at the right piece of art.
And by “real” I mean just that: a living, breathing, thinking “person” for lack of a better word — just not from here — a scientist peering into our world for the first time, his experiment the culmination of a lifetime’s worth of diligent study and persistence. But on his side of the frame, time passed slower than here. That explained why he never seemed to move.
Even though I must have looked like a blur, like a fruit fly in a bottle, wasting away the precious moments of my fast-forward life, he had noticed me. He liked me, in fact. In his notebook he referred to me as Lonely Man, and he wished he could pet my balding head. And I could have been all his — or at least a real-time streaming view of me — for a bazillion, bazillion bones, the price of the entire laboratory where he worked.
But like me, Hangdog was strapped for cash. He did the best he could and snuck a hologram of me back to his doghouse. On the last day of the exhibition, I waited until no one was watching and snapped a picture with my phone — just an ordinary photo, a keepsake.
The next day, Hangdog was gone.
