by submission | Nov 5, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rosalie Kempthorne
Gerald stood in his green-walled study surveying the view-screen with interest. The screen itself was state-of-the art, thin-holographic, with life-like resolution, and convincing 3D effects. But what it displayed was far more interesting. Gold along much of the top; with threads of green burrowing into the gold and stretching out into the blue-grey that occupied much of its surface. At the bottom it was ice-white, striated with the same deep gold. And all of it covered by a fine white veil of cloud.
His agent was speaking: “J-Ibius 4. It’s located in the Whirlpool Galaxy” – a star-chart flashed up in one corner – “fairly deep in on the near side. The stars will be twice as thick as they are from earth.”
Night as if it were day. Very nice. Keep talking, Arnold…..
“There are two suns, and six other planets. You’ll get about sixteen hours daylight for most of the year. If you look at the mineral table here,” – it popped up on screen – “you’ll see there’s a lot of methane locked up in the polar ice. The surface is about 60% ocean, 20% ice-caps and 20% landmass. It looks as if there’s some vegetation growing over a lot of that landmass. The gold stuff you see all along here,” – he gestured with a little blinking cursor – “that’s a kind of plant-life. It flowers every three…”
He said “I’ll take it.”
“Sir?”
“It’s beautiful. I’ll take it. How much do they want for it?”
“30 billion g’los.”
“Done. Make the deal.”
“Sure thing.”
Gerald played around with the viewer, letting the planet spin around from different angles. It really was beautiful. The golden vines that covered the land – and much of the ice – would be amazing to see up close. The green-grey fissures he’d noticed around the outside were likely to be valleys, maybe lush and full of flora. The ocean: it might look like silver when the two suns shone on it together. Gerald was willing to gamble that that ocean might have islands. And if not – well, he’d have islands made. He would just have to think up a name for the place….
His agent was back on – a face in the left corner.
“Well?”
“It’s yours.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Arnold smiled, “Ever glad to help.”
Ever glad of that fat commission I pay you. But, well, the guy did earn it.
“I have to say, sir, I admire your courage.”
“Oh?”
“It could be hundreds of years before the technology exists for you to even visit that place, let alone settle there.”
“I’m a patient man.” And look where that’d gotten him. So now he intended to have the best of everything; the best clothes, the best house, the best longevity this modern world could offer one of its wealthiest citizens. Since such extravagances now included the purchase of planets in other galaxies, he fully intended to have his share of the pie. He could only view it now, only saviour the image, and know that it was his. But that was enough for the moment. He played his new planet around a few more times on the screen, zooming in on some of its barely-glimpsed features, allowing himself to imagine what some of these shapes and colours might reveal when that world could be properly explored by drones. He zoomed in for a moment on a cobalt-blue lake, edges surrounded in terracotta-rose.
Yes, this was going to do very nicely.
END
by submission | Nov 4, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
It was a typical day in the year 2841. The Lunar Stock Exchange, said financial analysts, was overvalued and a harbinger of an imminent economic crisis. The newly independent Mars was moving toward a civil war. The Union of Canada and New England announced they would accept no more American refugees. I had downloaded these and a dozen other news stories into my wetwork when she entered my office.
The woman was human, not transhuman, AI, or synthorg, something of a rarity in the Asteroid Belt. That meant she’d have to communicate verbally. I adjusted my subjective time perception down so our conversation, which might stretch on for minutes, wouldn’t feel interminable.
“You’re a detective?” she asked.
Detective, I thought. A rather antiquated term for a discloseur. “I am,” I replied. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for my husband. Five years ago he left me. He said he was going to Proxima Prime to start a new life.”
“He was an Archaic?” I winced. It’s not good business to insult a client with a racial slur. She divined my embarrassment.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I take no offense at the term. And, yes, my husband was a natural, unaugmented human.”
“No unaugmented human has ever left the solar system,” I said. “In fact, few natural humans live or work off Earth. The physical and psychological rigors of extraterrestrial life usually prove to be too much for them.”
“My husband cleaned out our bank account after he left me. I suspect he had himself reengineered.”
“That would be expected before trying to migrate to Proxima. But if he did that five years ago, he would still be en route there. I can see if he booked passage, but you could do that yourself.”
“I have,” she said. “He bought a ticket on an interstellar transport five years ago.”
“Then if you know he went there…”
“He didn’t. Two hundred people purchased tickets for that flight. Only one hundred ninety-nine passengers were on board when it left.”
“You think he remained in the solar system? Buying a ticket to Proxima would be a very expensive way to divert anyone trying to track him.”
“We had quite a bit of money at one time.”
“I see. If he had himself augmented, the facility where it was done would be the logical place to begin.”
“I agree. And I did that. That’s how I was able to finally track you down.”
“Track me down? I don’t under–”
“You got a partial memory revision with your wetware. All recall of your having known me was deleted and a memory patch implanted to cover the gaps.”
“That preposterous! I never–”
I grab the desk. For a moment, I think the asteroid’s rotation has become destabilized. It hasn’t. I have vertigo. My vision starts to blur.
“An enzyme that degrades the myelin sheaths of synthetic neural nets,” she says, “delivered by nanobots I’ve been exhaling the whole time I’ve been in this room.”
I collapse to the floor.
“They’ll be able to get you back to where you can walk and talk and not be incontinent again within a year or so,” she says as she walks out the door. “But if I were you, this time I’d skip the memory wipe.”
by submission | Nov 1, 2015 | Story |
Author : J. Henry Dixon
To them, I’m already space junk. The captain, the crew watching the broadcast, the two security guards strapping me into the deep suit.
“Mutiny,” the captain spat, “is the vilest form of treason. A special hell is waiting for men who betray their oaths and their people. The seriousness of this crime can’t be overstated, especially when everyday could be humanity’s last.”
He smiled knowing that his madness and bloodlust would, for now, continue to flourish. “Lieutenant Banks, you are sentenced to death by walk. You will serve 270 years, one decade for each crewmember you poisoned with lies.” I thought of my brothers. Their executions were swift, I had to witness each.
The medical officers checked the count of oxygen recyclers, sustenance injections, and health fluid levels assuring my existence out there. The innovations that made our survival possible would be my eternal prison. They didn’t add the mental health chips with thousands of books, vids, music, and pictures that walkers are allowed for some grasp at sanity. This luxury I don’t have. Just my thoughts. My rage.
The security officers clasped on my helmet and attached me to a cargo-pack four times my size that contained the bountiful stores of my life preservations. They nodded at the captain.
“Last words are not afforded to mutineers,” the captain said unceremoniously. He then worked the console. I was lifted by the robotic arm as crystalline inner doors closed separating me from what was left of humanity. The airlock alarm blared as the artificial gravity disappeared. I started to feel my unit mechanically twist towards the hatch. The last person I saw, and would ever see, was the captain. He sauntered out not bothering to watch his judgment come to fruition. I was locked into place. For one moment, I was entranced by the vista that I would enjoy for centuries.
Then a gentle force guided me away from the vessel, my home, into the blackness. It wasn’t eternity, but it was bad enough.
*
At a constant leisurely pace, I floated. Just emptiness and I waltzing down the coil forever. In all the time gazing at the infinite galaxies, I knew the ship would still be in sight. Probably just a few hundred kilometers away. I figured I’d been adrift for about seven days. The ship’s skip was scheduled for 12 days from my walk. I wished like Hell I could know for sure. If only I could just get a glimpse of that hunk of technology that housed the last of our species.
I hadn’t decided for sure when they first sent me walking. Honest. But I’ve made my choice now. It isn’t for revenge, though certainly there is a feeling of retributive joy. Of permanence and closure. I have never considered myself as the grandiose type. I’m a worker. An engineer. I like to see processes that achieve results. I believe people deserve to know truths. Decide fates with facts. When self determination is not possible nor allowed nor desired, life is a futile burden.
I gnaw my teeth hard through my cheek, through the fleshy insides of my mouth. Compared with what’s ahead of me, the pain is good and I finally retrieve my bloody prize. My teeth fish out the powerful transmitter. The receiver is connected to well-hidden explosives on the thirteen life function generators and backups. I take another look at limitlessness ahead. We had a good shot, but we aren’t survivors. Always runners. Every walk ends. I bite down hard.
I’ll have 270 years to wonder if it worked.
by submission | Oct 31, 2015 | Story |
Author : Ashley Spinelli
Brittney was crouched in the corner of her bedroom. Her mouth trembled. She couldn’t deal with the thought of not having it. She looked like she hadn’t shower in days. Brittney slowly got up from her crouched position and walked over to her desk. The clock read 5:45 p.m. Her stomach rumbled like a lions roar.
She went down to the kitchen to try to make some food. Her hands fidgeted with the knife that she was holding to make her sandwich. She realized she was too sick to eat, so she threw the sandwich out. The house phone rang.
“Hello?” she asked.
“I have it. Do you need it now?”
“Oh my god you have it? Yes. Yes please! I need it,” she exclaimed.
“Okay I’ll come by soon to drop it off,” he whispered into the phone.
“My address is 42 Smithson Street,” she said and then hung up the phone.
After she got off the phone, she became even more anxious. Her cold sweats got worse. Just think happy thoughts. She paced the room because she could no longer sit. This is what her life had come too. It was the drug she needed and nothing else.
Just the thought of it in her hand made her go crazy. Going on the computer didn’t help, neither did watching TV or calling up friends. This man was a savior. She would owe herself to him. He was the only person she could think about.
Her prayers were answered when the doorbell rang. It has to be him. She opened the door and there was a man, dressed in ripped blue jeans and a black t shirt.
“Brittney?” he asked.
“Yes that’s me,” she said.
“Here you go” He extended his arm and held out his hand. In it was the white heaven she’d been waiting for.
“Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I owe you big time,” she told him.
She took the phone with the white case out of his hand and closed the door. The cold sweats stopped, her hands stopped trembling and her blood pressure decreased. She headed back to her corner where she was perfectly okay.
by submission | Oct 30, 2015 | Story |
Author : G. Grim
Jim could hear chanting over his headpiece. “Blessed Saint Elmo, who walks in the high places, defend us from being cast down into the darkness of the void…”
Bunch of superstitious crap. Didn’t they outlaw shamanic religion a few cycles back? It wasn’t like some dead Homeworlder was going to protect any of them if their tethers failed. And besides, if there really were gods none of them would have ended up here, sentenced to spend the rest of their lives scouring grit off the side of a remote observation float.
“Why here? Damned space dust gets everywhere,” he muttered.
“Buckle up and blast out, lads. Pels, quit with the praying. If you’re so scared of space, maybe you shouldn’t have defaulted on your loan.”
Pels finally shut up. Jim felt bad about it – it’s not like selling disposables pays enough for surgery – but he was glad not to have the chanting distracting him. Blast out was always the worst part. Miss your tethering window and you’d be stuck for ten hours holding on with one hand and scouring with the other. And if you fell off, it was a long, cold fall.
Too soon he was at the airlock. The foreman made a perfunctory check of his suit before pushing him out. It wasn’t like they were too concerned about losing him, and the suits were as expendable as the scouring men, but it’d be months before Homeworld would ship out a replacement for either. One… Two… NOW. As he drifted out, he reached for the frame and clipped his tether into place, nice and easy.
If he could just get through this shift, they’d be off for the next five rotations. The techs in their shiny new suits needed to recalibrate something outside the float, and they sure as supernovas weren’t going out while the scouring men were. They could be clipped onto their tethers while Jim had a break for once. Maybe even a hot meal. Maybe even a shower.
He scoured as he thought about getting all the way out of his suit, paying little attention to anything outside his own head. Then he heard Pels start up the chanting again. It was different, though. Faster. Urgent. He looked over and saw a chunk of debris floating towards him. He looked around him for a handhold and realized to his horror that he’d drifted away from the frame, leaving nothing but his tether holding him in place. He reached for the tether, pulling himself hand over hand to the frame as fast as the clunky suit would let him.
Too late. He ducked instinctively as the debris passed by him, but he couldn’t pull the tether out of the way. It was crushed briefly between debris and float, the vibration of metal on metal transmitted up the wire to his hands. And as the wanderer bounced away, Jim felt himself drifting, carried away from the float by his own momentum.
He reached out for something, anything, hands flailing in a desperate attempt to stop the endless fall. Then, just as the float passed out of his sight, his tether jerked. He looked back to see Pels, chanting in earnest as she pulled him back by his broken tether.
Jim grabbed the frame tight. He’d worked without a tether before. He could do it today, cold sweat notwithstanding. He nodded his thanks to Pels, and as he started scouring again, he whispered, “Blessed Saint Elmo, who walks in the high places, defend us from being cast down into the darkness of the void.”
