by submission | Sep 4, 2015 | Story |
Author : S T Xavier
“Peter! I’m taking the kids out to dinner! Remember our meeting with the school in the morning!”
The yelling of his wife snaps him from his mindset, and he grimaces. With a sigh, he turns to the staircase and yells back, “Thank you, Marsha! I promise to come to bed at a decent hour!”
He turns back to the board and looks over the numbers again, but has completely lost his place. With a shake of his head, he turns his attention to the circuitry, giving it one last once-over. As he does, the basement light flickers once, then goes out, plunging his workshop into darkness.
Peter chuckles a wry chuckle as he stumbles through the darkness toward the flashlight on a shelf. Of course the light would burn out right before I’m ready to flip the switch, he thinks with a crooked grin.
Two steps away from the shelf, his foot catches on a stray cable. As he falls forward, he thinks it must be the cable connecting the doorway to the control panel. That’s the only cable running across the room. Sticking his hands out to catch himself, he reasons that he might need to cover it with something so he doesn’t trip over it again.
In the total darkness, he’s surprised when his hands collide with switches and knobs instead of the concrete basement floor. The feel of the control panel is immediately recognizable, but he’s surprised for a second that he was falling this way. He hits the control panel hard, grabbing it to steady himself from his fall.
As Peter hopes he didn’t mess anything up too badly, his thoughts are drowned out by a hum of power. He scrambles to collect himself as he realizes he must have flipped the switch! But, all of the settings, he thinks as he moves his hands over the darkness-shrouded control panel. The settings are all wrong! What have I done!?
A single flash from the doorway behind him illuminates the room briefly, then plunges it back into darkness. He looks at the control panel as his eyes adjust, waiting until he’s able to see it clearly to check the settings. A blue glow slowly settles over the controls, and he focuses on noting the changed settings.
It’s a full minute before he realizes the blue glow isn’t from his eyes adjusting, but from the doorway behind him. He stands slowly and turns, bit by bit, until he’s facing the doorway, which is now surrounded by a blue glow.
Looking at the doorway is like looking into a mirror. The basement on the other side, covered in the same blue glow, is exactly the same. The cable he tripped over is lying across the floor in the same place on both sides. The control panel is the same distance away. The person standing in front of the control panel is wearing the same rumpled red shirt and gray sweat pants as he is. The dirty brown socks and messy black hair are also the same. As he reaches up to remove his glasses, the person in the doorway also reaches up to remove hers.
And that stuns him into motionlessness, as it does to the woman who looks just like him on the other side. He works his mouth to say something, as does the woman. Finally, he’s able to speak, and the words come out of both mouths simultaneously. “Holy crap. You’re me. But, you’re not me!”
“You’re a woman!” he finishes his statement with.
“You’re a man!” she finishes her statement with.
They stare at each other for a few more seconds, then step forward and reach their right hands to each other. Both hands pass through the doorway to the other side before they realize they missed a handshake. Both shrug as they instead clasp wrists and shake up and down once.
Looking in each other’s eyes, they smile, then shake their heads in wonder. “Marsha’s never going to believe this.” They both say, to each other’s surprise.
by submission | Sep 3, 2015 | Story |
Author : Selso Sam Zaghloul
Cherry woke up at three o’clock local time, sweating and panting. She turned and looked out the window as the light from the smaller moon dripped into the room.
She had the dream again. The same dream she had nearly every night since the colony group had plopped their dull-gray prefab houses on this world. A dream of music, of an unearthly song bigger than everything, and of a light that would consume the heavens.
She trudged out of bed, dragging herself to the sink. She splashed ice cold water onto her face, as if trying to wash out the vision from here mind. It didn’t work. She could still hear the song echoing in here head, and the light dance before here whenever she blinked. She sighed. Cherry wished she had someone to talk to. But the other colonist lived in a compound about ten minutes away; a home to herself was supposedly Cherry’s reward for her work on the soil survey.
But the truth hung there, unspoken. They wanted Cherry and her dreams of heavenly music and all-embracing light as far away as possible, as if she was a useful, but dangerous animal. And maybe they were right to do so, she wondered in despair, maybe she was a ticking time bomb, waiting to go off.
Then she heard it. The same music from her dreams rose faintly into her ears. Cherry listened, at first in fear (this was it, she thought I’ve had finally lost my mind) and then in longing, greater longing than anything she had wanted in her entire life, until she could stand it no longer and ran out into the night, the melody pulling on her soul like a fishing line .
She didn’t care that it was the middle of the night, or that the song emanated from the untamed forest, or even that she was as naked as a newborn. The music made its siren’s call, and Cherry would answer, no matter what.
As she dashed through the spiral pines she nearly ran into pack of gecko-wolves, one the planet’s most vicious predator, who could strip a man to bone in seconds. She barely noticed them as they parted before her as if they were bowing before some sort of holy woman.
She exited the forest near seaside cliff. The Song was coming beneath her, from within the earth. She got on her knees and began to claw at the ground like a dog searching for the last bone in the universe. Hours later, she hit something.
The music stopped.
She had uncovered a black metal surface, barely visible in the light of the second moon. Cherry held her breath, and slowly reached for it with here index finger, trembling in both fear and excitement. The second she touched the metal’s cool surface, veins of light appeared on it, spreading quickly. The structure, a sphere the size of Cherry’s head, bursts out of the ground, knocking her on her ass, and floated over the clam sea.
The sphere disassembled itself into five pieces, like a puzzle in reverse. The floating pieces were still connected by the light, and from that light emerged five new structures, rectangles this time, and they too disassembled, and reattached themselves to the ends of the sphere-pieces. The process repeated-metal structures would come forth from the light, take themselves apart and attach the new individual parts to the ever expanding super-structure that had begun with the sphere.
By the time the larger moon rose, Cherry was no longer sitting before open space.
She was standing before a city.
by submission | Sep 2, 2015 | Story |
Author : Hillary Lyon
Sheila opened the door to her grandmother’s house, flooding the dusty entryway with sunlight. She walked through the little house opening shutters and raising blinds. She put the fresh flowers she’d brought in a vase.
In the kitchen she washed two tea cups and their matching saucers. She rinsed a kettle, filled it and set it to boil. Sheila looked through the cupboards until she found a tin of oolong tea, her grandmother’s favorite. She also found the sugar bowl. From her bag, Sheila pulled a plastic container with the finger sandwiches she’d made that very morning.
Moving into the breakfast nook, Sheila arranged the setting for afternoon tea on the highly polished little table. Cups, tea, sugar, finger sandwiches. Curtains pulled back on a beautiful Spring day. Flowers from the garden in a hand-painted vase. Linen napkins. Sheila smiled.
From her bag, Sheila withdrew a small chrome box with a black button along one side and a gray glass lens on its top. She set the box down at her grandmother’s place at the table, pushed the black button and held it for three seconds. She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, her grandmother was smiling at her from across the table. She was wearing her Sunday best, with her hair styled for church. Just as Sheila remembered, her gran was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, and the cameo pin that Sheila had given her for her last birthday. The old lady motioned for Sheila to pour the tea.
“Tell me, dear,” her grandmother began in her soft, warm voice,”do you still enjoy your work? What are you reading these days? Are you still writing poetry? Oh, and are you still seeing that nice young man? I want to hear all about it!”
After first taking a sip of tea, Sheila launched into an account of her life so far. Periodically, her grandmother nodded, or inserted a question when there was a pause of more than 15 seconds. Several times, her gran offered up an amusing or poignant story from her own life.
As she spoke, Sheila nibbled at a finger sandwich, happily absorbed in her beloved’s gran’s reminiscences. In the pale blue light of her grandmother’s flickering hologram, Sheila’s world softened and became a sheltering space; a safe place, far from the noise and cold chaos that waited outside.
by submission | Aug 30, 2015 | Story |
Author : G. Grim
Do I know you? Maybe. Let me think.
I think we met on Betelle.
When I look at your face I remember tasting strange fruit. Like persimmons, but wetter. Sweeter. Like water falling in a garden. They don’t have fruit at home. I remember that. Something to do with pollination and bees and … something. There is a word for that fruit, but it’s gone now. Like the apple trees are gone and I can’t remember why. I can’t remember why I’m not at home.
No, it wasn’t Betelle. It was Lastly, and the fruit came from Betelle. The fruit seller looked old, but someone told me that she wasn’t. The journey changed her.
Was it you who told me that? Or was it you who handed me the fruit?
I’d love to have just one more mouthful of that fruit. I remember that people used to hate the rain, and now I’d give anything for that fruit because it tastes like water falling from the sky.
Do you remember the sky? I do. It was a blue so intense it was almost purple. Not the sky at home, of course. The sky on Betelle. There was something wrong with the sky at home.
Stop interrupting me. It’s very rude. You can’t make a memory wake up, you know. You just have to wait until it’s ready. Sometimes if you push it goes away and never comes back.
We went away, didn’t we? We left home because the apple trees and the sky were gone. And we’re never going back. But you were with me. I remember your hands. I remember squeezing them as the engines roared. Ripping apart what was left of the sky. Crying because there wasn’t any rain left.
Why aren’t you old? If the journey made her old, why aren’t you if we took that journey together?
Am I old?
Am I?
Who am I? I don’t remember. Do you have any fruit for me? I miss the taste of raindrops.
We stopped on Betelle. That’s where I tasted it for the first time. Oh. Oh yes. They grow it there, the rain-fruit, and then they send it to other places. All the places where people remember apple trees and skies.
You were there. I remember that. You held the fruit for me as I ate it. I remember the taste of sweet juice on your skin.
Why are you sad? It’s a lovely thing to remember and you look so sad. I was so happy.
Why aren’t you happy? Aren’t we safe here together?
I remember…
I remember I offered you some. You liked persimmons, back when they still grew at home. But you refused. You were so angry. I don’t understand why you were so angry. A whole world that smelled like rain and flowers and you hated it. And I was angry.
I don’t want to remember being angry. I was happy before. Why did you come here? This isn’t your home.
This isn’t my home, either. I want to go home.
I want to go home.
I want to go home!
Oh, Lastly. Lastly isn’t home, but it’s all there is now. I remember that. I remember the day we came here, ripping another hole in another sky. I had my hands in my pockets that day. I would have held your hands, but I was holding my last fruit.
You were so angry. You took it away. You threw away my fruit and brought me here.
I remember you.
I hate you.
I love the fruit that tastes like rain.
by submission | Aug 29, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rachelle Shepherd
He came into the house throwing looks back over his shoulder. He had the shuffle to his step that suggested less than legal activities.
“You have something?” I asked. He gave me a quick nod and shut the door. He slid the bolts, city lockdown style.
Barrel pulled something from his pocket. It was a tangle of wires around bottle green plastic.
“Are those headphones?” I asked. Maybe I whispered. Maybe I even choked.
Barrel brought me the bundle and laid it in my lap. We both looked at it, full of wonder and paranoid fear.
“Bring me the console.”
Barrel went into the closet and came back out with a box made up of processors, audio chips, memory chips, and software. He placed the black box at my feet. It was smooth except for one jack. It had no logo or label and it was fashioned with the old kind of power plug that went straight into the wall.
Interface unnecessary.
The one jack was a headphone jack, phased out of legal electronics before I had hit puberty. It produced sound. It ran voltage across its circuits to create the cold electronic beats of a constant current. Auditory hallucinations.
It was the kind of drug you bought from the back of pawnshops.
We tackled the process of untangling the wires, uncoiling the dusty knots of a decade, relaxing the tension behind stiff black rubber sheath.
Headphones are a method of injection. I could feel the straightened wires vibrating in my hands, heavy with a history of music. Emotion, straight to brain, quicker than the fastest intravenous hit. Humming with the potential for overdose.
“Do you think they work?” Barrel asked. Headphones are brittle things, prone to sound in one ear and static in the other. Familiar with abuse. Close relatives with silence.
I sent him stumbling around with the power cord looking for a plug in, that vacant expression made up of what goes into it. While empty it represents nothing but potential.
Barrel plugged in the console. With a spark, it lit up its circuits.
The console couldn’t be commanded. It couldn’t be controlled or directed. It could only be trusted. I put the headphones on, let them settle comfortably around my ears.
I plugged them in.
Silence.
I let the console work, let it figure up the complex algorithm behind the method of creation. Barrel was in my line of sight, asking questions. I couldn’t hear him beyond the mute sensory deprivation but I saw his expression, his excitement and anxiety visible in the shifting focus of his eyes.
The console heated up long cold components and pumped lifeblood electricity through stiff circuits. Within the headphones I heard something building. Something creeping up the wires. I heard sound.
Not the sound of language but the sound of expression.
I handed the headphones to Barrel. He slipped them on, slid into pure ecstasy. Sunk to the floor and closed his eyes, opened his mind.
There was a heavy pounding on the door. They were here.
I stood up, shaky and nervous. Altered, like an executed program, unable to erase the data log of my experiences, unable to close those forever open logic gates.
I knew who they were. Towering figures of authority, coming to investigate the electricity spike. Coming to sniff out the outdated illegal electronics of an era of art. I kissed Barrel on the cheek. He never opened his eyes, again. Then I answered the door.
