by submission | Feb 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Aaron Emmel
The King of the Ruins was perched on the crumbled wall of an old building. He appeared to have been sleeping, but jerked up like a startled bird when I approached. His overlarge, once-white tunic flapped about him as he turned to face me.
“A story about America?” he asked. “Or television?”
“No,” I said, handing him some bread, cheese and grapes in a folded cloth. That was the deal: we brought him food, he told us stories.
“The Internet, then. It was all the thing for a while. Still is, across the oceans.”
“I want to hear about The End.”
He unwrapped the cloth to see what he was going to get. He ate some grapes, smiled, and rubbed his narrow thighs.
“It was quick,” he said. “It’s amazing how fast the world can change.”
I nodded. “The politician. Frykes. Why did he do it?”
The King regarded the structure beneath him, steel bones jutting from concrete flesh. “Power.”
“But what about Democracy? Checks and Balances? All the reasons there would never be a revolution?”
He looked down at me. His pale blue eyes pushed me back a half-step. “Isn’t it your day for the gardens?”
“Yeah.”
“You should be with the Twelve group.”
“What’s it to you? You’re not part of the Clan.”
He rubbed his thighs again. “You’re fighting with Jupa?”
“He wants to be head of the group. He may be stronger, but I’m faster, and I’m smarter.” I growled the last words.
“Maybe,” said the King, “Frykes was like you when he was young. He was smart. He was fast. He knew his day would come. But there is a thing called Time, Jonathan, and it trumps Democracy, and all the Checks and Balances ever thought of. It’s the strongest, and the fastest, and the smartest, all rolled up in one. And one day Frykes realized his time was passed. It’s a thing that happens when you get older.” He looked back at the cavern where he slept, a dark well in the side of a fallen building.
“You mean he gave up?”
“He just said to himself, ‘This is no longer my time.’ And he decided to fight for his power. Like everyone does. Like you and Jupa will do. His enemy would not win. He promised himself that at the beginning. Frykes would win, or the whole continent would fall, but his enemy would not win.”
“So everything got destroyed. Frykes didn’t win, either. There wasn’t anything left to win.”
“But his enemy didn’t win.”
I stared at him. “Was it worth it?”
“No,” he said.
“Would you try again?”
“Are you still going to fight Jupa?”
“Yes,” I said.
He nodded. “Well, that’s the way of it, then,” he said, and began picking through the cheese.
by submission | Feb 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Amy Fogelstrom Chai
On the roof, at least twenty-five stories up, with LED party lights strung up over a cheesy bamboo bar jury-rigged from last year’s staff picnic get together we have a regular Tiki Town. The night sky is crisp and the lights twinkle from twilight triggered streetlamps below and the Ursas, Cassiopeia, and the whole milky arm of our own spiral galaxy above. And the drinks.
We like them neat, the real drinkers, because who wants ice to dilute that fine single malt anyway? And someone brought out a nice cabernet. Warmth brings out the flavor, they say. The hospital roof was not meant for socializing, and certainly not for drinking, what with the coping on the parapet wall not more than knee high. But Tiki Bob, the cardboard god with the hula grass hair and the sharpie smile, would smite us not. Or smite maybe—it was a long way down.
The orthopedic surgeon is still an asshole, and the internist still nebbishy, and neither can match the sergeant from the local National Guard patrol unit drink for drink. He’s a burly guy, and who the hell can complain about the way he knocks back the scotch since he was the one who commandeered it from what used to be the liquor store. But God, we all hope it doesn’t run out too quick. We still have the rooftop, and the astonishing starry sky.
The skinny x-ray tech has her scrub top rolled up to show off her tramp stamp, and she’s such a whore she’s flirting with all the orderlies. Or maybe she’s just drunk. At least she is better than that nurse by the stairwell who can’t stop crying and smoking and shaking like a leaf. Nobody can decide whether to tell her to shut the hell up or to push her off the roof or just to ignore her.
Medical records staff are shaking it to some rap from the last century, partying like it’s 1999. Who has a boom box these days anyway? The pharmacy tech wraps a grass skirt around his waist and does a Tiki hula dance. I wouldn’t have expected that from him, to be honest. Then come the CDC people, with voices like fucking Darth Vader through their level four positive pressure biohazard suits. Yeah, tell us something we don’t know.
Okay, sure, we expected that but the internist goes a little nuts and that sort of freaks us all out. Breathe in, breathe out, we don’t need the CDC to tell us that shit, because below us is twenty-five stories of exactly what we already know. The whole town? It’s quiet down there. But up here, on the roof, the party is just getting started.
From what I can tell from just the eyeballs, the CDC epidemiologist is kind of hot. How long? We have all night up here, and I hope you make it back to Atlanta. There, too? Damn. Overhead, Cygnus rises.
by submission | Feb 22, 2016 | Story |
Author : Frank Robledano Espín
“Process complete.”
Slowly, he opened his eyes, taking in the pure white light of the transference chamber, breathing in the antiseptic smell, feeling the excessive warmth of the room on his face. Apart from the ergocreche he was in, the space was bare. With a barely perceptible hum, his seat righted itself to a near vertical position and began to stretch out, gently cradling his body but firmly getting him to his feet. Within a minute he was standing and the apparatus was moving backwards and disappearing into its housing in the wall.
“Name.”
“My name is Richard Mechwright. I am not the same person I was when I entered.”
“Residence.”
“Neptune colony, Triton habitat, block seven. North pole cryovolcanic mining and study. I am not the same person I was when I entered.”
“Offence.”
“I enjoyed intimate congress with children. I took the lives of several so they would not incriminate me. I enjoyed causing them pain prior to ending them. The danger, the prospect of being caught was also titillating, another paraphilic source of pleasure. I am not the same person I was when I entered.”
“Sentence.”
“I have been reconditioned, of my own volition. My medial orbitofrontal cortex has been repaired to provide a nominal baseline of control. The temporal lobe has had several nanoshunts implanted, including four to regulate my malfunctioning amygdala. I have had extensive restructuring of the hippocampus, with dozens of key memories having been extracted, rerecorded, and replaced to provide a more stable moral foundation and eliminate most of the original trauma that led to my aberrance. I am not the same person I was when I entered.”
“Observations.”
“I opted for reprogramming rather than execution because I did not wish to die. I did not understand the extent to which I would be changed. Truthfully, I doubt that anyone that submits actually does. My perspective is different, now. I do not have the exact same memories. I can not brook the same appetites. I am not the same person I was when I entered. I understand this litany is supposed to empower me to leave here, that it is somehow supposed to comfort me, enable me to start afresh. I contemplate what I was and feel only deep revulsion, a primal disgust. As a sane, clear-thinking, reconditioned individual I feel I must opt for termination. I can feel the person I was through a thin, soiled gauze throughout my being. I feel as if I were sharing the same space with an ephemeral disease or invisible feces stains I can not scrub clean. I do not wish to live this way.”
“Granted.”
Several seals clicked in to place. The gamma wave emitters began to come to life with a soft hum. Relief washed over him as he thought of –
by submission | Feb 21, 2016 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
I have worked for eleven years figuring out how we lost everything. Anecdotes passed down from people who were alive before this War, I have discovered, have long since deteriorated into dimly remembered nonsense. I don’t know much about the time before, but I now know what ended it.
It was in the age of “Computers,” machines that held information in a complex mass of metal wires. There were still books, but much of what many of them said was outdated– anyone could contribute to the Computer library, or Internet, so it was constantly kept up to date. Some wrote down the wrong information, however.
The point is, no one could remember it all. No reasonably-sized group of people could, either. When conflict began, “Countries” started to take advantage of this and, instead of killing the people in their rival Countries, they would start erasing information.
Sometimes, operatives would be sent to physically destroy files, books, and the like in acts of arson. More often, though, they would create imperfections in the Internet, and destroy large swathes of information. Much of it was restored each time, but soon there were too many attacks happening to restore all the information that was lost that day. Soon, there was a net loss of information.
The attackers experienced this dilemma as well, as the victim and/or its allies would retaliate with “Book Strikes.” Countries banded together to try and destroy information in other places before theirs was all lost, but everyone failed. Everyone lost the War when it ended so many hundreds of years ago.
Which brings us to now.
No one can even access any data anymore, much less that of a rivaling Country. Soon Countries were irrelevant, anyway. We forgot what the stars are. What the Sun is. Why there is day and night. How the era of consumption we see in the massive landfills dotting the Earth were ever possible. We may have to rediscover all of that.
And we will. I know it. Because, thanks to my research, we already know not to do one thing.
by submission | Feb 20, 2016 | Story |
Author : Kristin Kirby
They’ve locked me in the device like they do every time. But this time I’m putting up a fight. I scissor and kick my cramped legs, wave my arms, and the device rocks a bit. That’s good. I’m stronger than before.
It was all a blur, my coming here. Images distorted and blinding, sounds loud and blaring. I was weak. Afraid. I could barely move, my limbs not used to the atmosphere, the weight.
I’ve acclimated a bit since then. Their language is difficult to parse, though, and so far I understand only a few words. With more time, I can crack it and communicate with them. Or maybe I’ll play it close to the vest, not let them know I understand what they’re saying. Keep the upper hand until I know what they intend to do with me.
I’ve been able to sit up, and once or twice make it to my hands and knees. I’m still unsteady; my strength soon fades and I collapse. But it’s a start.
I can’t clean up after myself, though. It’s uncomfortable and humiliating, but what can I do? I suspect the liquids and food they force-feed me, while just enough nourishment to keep me alive, are also designed to sustain my weakened, vulnerable state. They eat their own food in front of me, but when I reach for it, they pull it away.
The door to my quarters is frustratingly close, but bars on my cage prevent my getting to it. At night they hang a contraption overhead. It rotates and makes discordant tinks and squawks. I can’t figure out its purpose; I assume it’s to spy on my movements and alert my keepers of any attempts at escape. I find myself staring at it for hours, wondering how I can use it for just that. Like everything else, though, they keep it tantalizingly out of my ham-fisted reach.
It’s time. And right on schedule, here comes the airplane, which usually delivers a green mush substance. Sometimes it’s a train, accompanied by, from my main keeper, a hearty but unintelligible “choo choo!” But the mush never tastes like real food, and, as they don’t eat it themselves, it makes me suspicious.
I try to grab the airplane, to push it away, but my hands are clumsy balloons I can’t control. I bang on the surface of my device in frustration. My main keeper makes noises, waving its own long, spindly arms and baring its white teeth. It wants me to eat the mush, but I’m so angry all I can do is cry.
Eventually I get ahold of myself and open my mouth. I need nourishment, after all. This time the airplane delivers an orange substance, slightly sweet. Still only mush, but not as bad as the green stuff. I swish it around my mouth. Some dribbles down my chin, but I ingest enough to want more.
Okay. I’ll eat their mush substance. I’ll play by their rules. But only until I get stronger, until I can walk unaided. I’ll wait for them to slip up and forget to shut the bars of my cage. Then I’ll see what’s out there, what new world I’ve been dropped into.
