by submission | Nov 8, 2015 | Story |
Author : Lester L Weil
We were twenty years into the journey to our new planet. The ship required very little maintenance and all of us slept in our pods. The computer detected that one of the pods had malfunctioned, an unheard of occurrence. Protocol was that as Captain, I was to be awaken in the event of any problem to assess the situation. I woke to find a very confused young boy wandering the pod area. I put him to my pod and activated it and notified the computer to update the pod assignments.
Then I set about trying to correct the malfunction. With help of the computer, I discovered that the core mechanism was irrevocably broken, and without a replacement the pod was beyond repair. Almost all parts that needed replacing could be fabricated in our shop, but the pod core wasn’t one of them. There were no extra pods; there was not the space on the ship for ‘extras’.
So there would be no hyper-sleep for me. I would have to stay in real time. I would captain my ship while the rest slept in their pods, waiting to wake to a new world. They would be young and ready to start afresh. I would be an old man, irrelevant after the voyage has ended.
But I’ll be ok I told myself. I’ve always preferred living alone and the quiet days and years in space will give me plenty of time to read and play the piano, although the computer simulation is a poor substitute for my old Steinway.
So I read, thousands of books about everything. I studied history using the computer’s vast library and wrote treatises on various historical events. And what could be more useless on a new planet than an old man: esoteric earth histories. I composed not very good piano music. I wrote a novel and a book on philosophy. I played untold games of chess against the computer.
I got to know most of the passengers by name, and also their life histories by reading their files. I think of the pod rooms as my ‘neighborhoods’. The sleepers are my neighbors and I sometimes have imaginary conversations with them.
And so the years flowed by and another birthday came around. If I subtract the ‘pod’ years I am 86 today. If things go right I will spend my 87th on planet SR6973, our destination.
On this morning’s walk through the pod rooms—It’s odd that even after all these years of artificial lights I still think in terms of day and night, morning and evening. I linger in the section with families, looking at the children and again wonder what their young minds were thinking when starting this voyage. What wild and strange imaginings of their future world?
But enough of this. Today I wake the crew and we prepare for the final descent to our new home. I go to the crew’s section and start making preparations. My X/O is the first to wake. As he shook the cobwebs from his mind, he looked at me in wonder.
“Captain?—Jesus. Is that you? What the hell happened?”
“Time—Just time.”
by submission | Nov 7, 2015 | Story |
Author : Connor Harbison
No name. Names were to distinguish one from another. Now there was only one. Only him. The vastness of space seemed to swallow him up. From his asteroid perch he could spot a few other bodies. No planets. Not anymore, at least.
He cast a mournful eye towards the center. Nothing showed in the visible spectrum, but he could see the palpitations in gravity. The hole was there, just where he’d left it eons ago.
He remembered when the abilities first manifested. There was no explanation; one day he was ordinary, the next extraordinary. First there were accusations of steroids. Then he did things that no steroid, or any drug known to man, could do. Flying. Redistribution of mass and energy. The scientists called him the closest thing to God. The religious people didn’t like that.
He drifted cooly towards the heart of the system, letting the natural gravity well do its work. Or rather, artificial. It was man made, after all. Even if it was made by the last man.
Wars had broken out, but all he had wanted was to be left alone. His country had convinced him to fight on their side. The horrors he committed still flashed in his memory. Flesh melted from bone, bodies incinerated in an instant. Before that he had no idea what he could do.
With a twitch of his fingers he atomized an incoming asteroid. Had it impacted before the Earth disappeared it would have caused an extinction event to rival the dinosaurs. Maybe that would have been cleaner, he contemplated.
His first act of rebellion had been minuscule. His military handlers gave him a target; a small town thought to be harboring enemy operatives. He refused. They got angry, and he vaporized them.
The black hole neared with increasing speed. He calmly compared it to floating along in the rivers and creeks of his youth. Instead of water it was gravity now.
From that altercation it escalated. Ground troops were called in and quickly dispatched. Armor tried to stop him, but they were no match. Airstrikes demolished the house, but he was unscathed. Finally, the high command authorized a nuclear strike, which only served to kill everyone he had ever cared about. That was the final straw.
He came to a stop. He could see the gravity ripple before him, pouring over the event horizon. He had the power to stop himself here, but once the horizon was crossed there was no going back.
As the radioactive dust had cleared from the nuclear strike he rose into the sky. He kept rising, through the atmosphere and into space. He pointed himself towards the sun and minutes later he was in the heart of the star. From there it was a simple thing to overwhelm the core and collapse the star into a black hole. He had watched from afar as the inner solar system was sucked in. Earth’s demise barely registered on his emotionless face.
That was ages ago. He could not number the time that had passed. He had thought and rethought his actions. It took millennia, but he found remorse. Condemning a whole planet to death, for the actions of a few. He was no better than the men who had condemned the town.
He looked again at the event horizon. One step and it would soon be over. The black singularity would pull him in and crush his atoms into oblivion. He had survived countless hardships, much more than the human body was meant to endure. He contemplated a moment, then took the step.
by submission | Nov 6, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
Bismarck, North Dakota
Jimmy Severud prostrated his nine-year-old frame on the blooming stiff flax, undulating in cobalt waves from winds caressing North Dakota’s startling-blue spring sky. Nearby, summer whispered among meadowlark calls and cricket melodies. He imagined billowing alto cumulus clouds as pirate ships adrift from Montana, meandering above grain fields, but puffy ships violently pulled sails to become thin wisps, without warning, as rapid ribbons scooting past. Fields silenced. Jimmy twisted back in awe, gazing to a menacing three-hundred-foot misty giant hovering over the rolling prairies, consuming clouds into a semi-transparent behemoth.
Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
“Observations are now worldwide. Thousands are being confirmed by satellite. These monsters appear without warning, craft or sound, devastating clouds. I want answers, gentlemen, and now. The President’s waiting.” The Joint Chiefs’ Chairman took no solace deep in the Rockies. Confronting threats this massive called for nuclear intervention.
“General,” Dr. Elmore Baker, climatologist, responded, “We’ve tried salting clouds with silver iodide and chem trails. No effect. They prefer cumulus, but yesterday one devoured a nimbostratus over Kansas, with tornado funnels forming. High winds and lightning had no impact. If they continue we’ll have worldwide droughts in a month.”
“What about you, Carlson? Any luck deciphering that scalar wave code? Are they communicating?” The Chairman leaned towards Dr. Carlson, Berkeley’s renowned linguist.
“General, we’ve tried every decryption code…every alphabet. There is a correlation with an ancient Iroquois dialect given to them by their tribe’s Sky Mother.”
“Yes…go on…go on,” the General interrupted, flapping his right hand at Carlson to get to the point.
“Not absolutely sure,” Carlson paused, “but we interpreted one phrase as Myrgdala thirsty.
“Thirsty? That’s it? I don’t care what they call themselves. It’s obvious they want water. Peterson, what’s DARPA got ready? Can we nuke these bastards?”
Analyst Gerard Peterson delayed, waiting for tensions to drop. “Options are limited.” He halted again to gather everyone’s attention. “Radiation won’t affect them. They don’t have enough solid substance. We have no idea what heat might do, but based on lightning stories, probably little. In fact, targeting them is not feasible. They come in and out of the atmosphere we believe through some inter-dimensional portal. They’re gone in minutes. We’d waste our arsenal. The Agency, however, does have practical options, but there may be collateral damage.”
“Peterson, the last one of your collateral risks cost us an aircraft carrier off North Korea. You better be sure this time.” Red filled the General’s neckline.
“We are already set to test the use of swarm nanobots. They can combine with tenuous matter like these gas giants. Clouds of intelligent, swarming particles will spread over them, uses the giant’s contents to reproduce, and then encase them in metallic mesh allowing us to drag them into space. We believe these beasts will perish before reaching the upper ionosphere.”
“Ready to launch, you say?”
“General, just say the word. We’re already in the Pacific, far from any land mass.”
“Do it. Do it now!”
The team monitored results on their war room screens. Rockets released swarms on a targeted giant northeast of Hawaii. In seconds, a black cloud circled and engaged the invader. Its arms and legs reflected with new mesh as the bots spread…but suddenly the metal disappeared. The casing of technology became flesh as the giants solidified. Carlson rushed to answer an emergency call from Berkeley.
“General,” Carlson shouted out. “Hundreds of them are mutating simultaneously worldwide into the new form and communicating with the scalar waves. My team has deciphered a new message. Oh, God!”
“What is it man? Speak up!”
“Our world. Hungry.”
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.”
