by submission | Aug 23, 2015 | Story |
Author : Soo Kim
I had been taken.
Her hands clutched the bar across her lap, as the seat swung to some soundless melody. It hovered expectantly, like the next carriage of the ghost train at a macabre amusement park, waiting to lurch forward, through the chill, silent night.
Wrists aching from the bandages, ragged now where they hid the razor’s kiss. She turned to look at him, white beside her. Only his long hair moved, like sinewy gossamer waving slowly. She dared not breathe.
The chasm opened in front of them; a gaping toothless maw. At last with a jerk the seat propelled forward, and they entered the dark, ducking and weaving through the naked girders of the cavern’s supporting structure. The deepening black, spread beneath, like an oil slick, thick and sticky on their eyelids.
There was presence here. She could see the red blinks of tiring LEDs, that caught reflections off metallic bodies strewn like straw, limp over twisted mounds of junk. The fug of abandon twitched at her nostrils. It took hold of her, the still broken lives of the machines.
She knew that they were waiting, watching ready to rise up and take her; to strip her and change her into what they were. Empty broken things. She clutched the talktalk to her chest, afraid it would betray her, its pulsing light and vibration would be enough to wake those frozen limbs into clutching hands and desperate, wailing voices. The seat carrying them forward slowed. A raised service platform of punched steel plate appeared, dimly lit above the mechanical graveyard they were travelling through. She thought that it looked like a stage awaiting some kind of monstrous freakish act.
They stood, together on the platform, an island, surrounded by an ocean of malware. A still obidient audience, waiting the final performance. He turned. Behind her there was a flicker of movement in the dark; a strange grinding squeak as if from a rusted clockwork mouse. He pushed roughly. She fell towards the sound, tumbling to the feet of figure tainted with the glimmer of metal emerging from the dark.
Tall, breasts firm and high, her once golden skin tarnished with age and streaked with oil and grime. But she was still whole and strong. Her face hidden, hunched. The slow mechanical squeak was coming from her turning hand like a sour organ grinder. She straightened, the wrenching caught and her face exposed. The frayed jumble of optic fibres finished in empty sockets and her nose a collapsed bridge falling into a deep ragged hole from the middle of her head down to where her mouth had been. Her hand still clutched the arm of the mangle where what had been the remnants of her hair was caught between the massive rollers, her head mottled with broken stubble twisted chunks bleeding black from the roots, down the eyeless sockets, dribbling down her neck.
And she knew it was HER and that HE had brought her here and SHE was to be her tool. She heard a voice, still strong and deep and she felt the desire and the will of HER voice – what would it take to make me beautiful again…
by submission | Aug 22, 2015 | Story |
Author : David J.Wing
Glen sat there, silently and watched as his star ship slipped backwards and at a slightly funny angle into the Black Hole. It was fair to say that being stranded, as he so clearly now was, would be a hindrance to his plans for a luxurious holiday, but given that he had managed to avoid being torn molecule from molecule, it had to be viewed as some sort of success.
The light from the neighbouring satellite planets shone defiantly in the face of the hole and while they were destined to slide one by one from existence, it was comforting to Glen that he wasn’t the only one left alive.
The ratty little creatures that scurried back and forth squeaked and cursed as they searched for safety, surely sensing their imminent end. The high pitched squeals that shot through the wind seemed to foreshadow the fall of the sky and the rising of the seas.
Glen scratched his thigh, the back of his head and finally his left bum cheek, then stood up and tried his communicator once more. The static was a welcome relief from the silence that had come before. He tuned along the mid-range, pressed the record function and called.
“Mayday, Mayday, this is Glen Charles IV. Sole survivor of the tour ship, Regal, addressing any ship within range. My vessel was caught in an anomaly and I am stranded on the Green planet. Mayday.”
Glen set the message to repeat and lay back on the sand. No point in not enjoying this enforced shore leave. The tour ship had been a disappointment from beginning to end. The catering was sub-par, the accommodation severely acute and the company, save for a rather lovely Anterran, entirely too foreign and while there seemed to be no opportunity for canoodling here either, Glen thanked these not-so-lucky stars that there were no Honushions with him. Their aroma, reduced to a manageable tolerance on board thanks to the scrubbers, would surely saturate and impregnate this little planet in minutes.
It was doubtful even the rattys would survive them.
The message tittered along and Glen opened one of the three bottles of Champagne he’d salvaged from the Galley before abandoning the ship. It was a little warm but the pop was gratifying and scattered a few insects that had sought to avail themselves of his booty. The hours passed and the lights in the sky continued to blink, three, then two, then one and gone. The sea rose in the distance and save for the debris washing up to his left and right, carried with it a calm devastation.
The communicator squawked into life.
“This is the merchant ship, Jalin, we received your distress signal and stand ready to assist you. How many survivors?”
Glen frowned a little and then hit the reply button.
“Jalin? From the Honushion nebula?”
“That’s right.”
Glen screwed up his nose and watched the tidal wave rush ever closer.
“It’s OK, think I’ll wait for the next one”.
by submission | Aug 19, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
It’s been a subjective month since we changed history. It feels like ten years. In reality, an infinitesimal fraction of a second has passed for us in the Stopwatch. That’s the unofficial and pathetically unoriginal name some smart aleck gave to the Temporal Exclusion Facility shortly before we started our experiment.
“Another report,” says a tired-looking undergrad to me as another anomaly dispatch pops up on the holodisplay.
Martin Luther tweets Ninety-Five Theses
Getting closer, I silently say to myself. I think back to how it all began. We were warned by both our fellow students and the faculty not to try this experiment. It would never work, they admonished us, but it might damage university equipment. They were wrong.
It had started as a late night, alcohol-fueled brainstorming session: What if the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts had admitted Adolph Hitler? He had no artistic talent, of course. He had been rightly rejected by the Academy. But what if someone had persuaded the powers that be to admit him anyway? Perhaps through the inducement of a large donation to the Academy? Or maybe just a large donation to the ones who determine who got admitted? Could the nightmare of World War II and the cold and hot wars that resonated on from it be avoided? There was a way to find out.
“Report!” says the undergrad.
American and Confederate Presidents meet at the Mason-Dixon Wall
“So we’re back to just the USA and the CSA? The Pacific States of America is gone?” I ask. “What about Canada?”
“Canada is back,” says the undergrad. “It’s no longer part of the USA and its borders are more or less like they’re were originally.”
More progress. Maybe we’ll pull this off yet. I think back to the first night. World War II had been averted. Millions of lives had been saved. But then we’d discovered it had only been delayed, not eliminated. A Second World War had begun in 1951. And this one quickly escalated into a nuclear conflict. We went back and tried to undo our original intervention. The original World War II was restored, but this time the Third Reich didn’t try to invade Russia. Able to concentrate all its military effort on the western front, Nazi Germany survived the war intact.
July 20, 1969: Buzz Aldrin becomes first man to walk on the Moon
“Okay,” I say. “So Aldrin stepped out before Armstrong. That’s fine. Don’t try to correct that.”
“We’ve got a problem,” says another student from across the control room. “The Soviet Union didn’t fall in the late 20th Century. Looks like the USA and USSR have a limited nuclear exchange in 2003. But it doesn’t escalate into a full-scale global war.”
“We can’t let that stand,” I say. “We need an intervention that will weaken the Soviets so the USSR collapses in 1991 like it’s supposed to.”
For thirty days and nights we’ve been endlessly intervening in history, a nudge here, a great shove there, trying to restore the timeline.
SOVIET UNION DISSOLVES INTO COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES
“Have we succeeded?” I ask.
“Checking,” says one of my fellow students.
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said you can never step twice into the same river. A complete restoration will never be possible. But maybe this time we’re close enough. Maybe this time…
A chorus of moans erupts among the others.
“What?!” I yell.
A new report pops up on my holodisplay:
COMMUNIST COLLAPSE ENDS COLD WAR BETWEEN SOVIETS AND IROQUOIS EMPIRE
I punch the display. The ephemeral words scintillate around my fist.
by submission | Aug 18, 2015 | Story |
Author : A. Katherine Black
Titanium corridors were empty, galleys and docking bays silent, save the faint echo of rodents scuttling about. Still the ship continued on.
At its center stood a tree, supported by a system set in motion centuries ago. Its enormous black trunk sprouted layers of spindling branches, its purple leaves bathed in ancient light. The old thing stretched, decade upon decade, limbs long since pierced the ceiling and curled into floors above.
A girl sat at its base among discarded leaves, tucked into a nook perfect for her never-changing size. She stroked a textured branch and spoke so quietly, so slowly, a human’s mind would make no sense of it. But humans were only ghosts now, occasionally floating through her memory banks.
“How many were here, before?” Time had broken her programming. Somewhere between then and now she’d lost her original purpose. She settled in and waited for its response to seep into her mind.
Thousands shifted through these walls in repetitive cycles. So many bodies, no collective intention.
She asked the questions again and again. “Where did they go?” Its predictable response comforted her.
They fell from this place like my leaves fall at your feet, until one day there were none left to replace the fallen.
Iridescent toes, long and delicate, strong and durable, slid through the cool blanket of leaves. “Will we go away, too?” She lifted a foot and inspected her toes, dulled from the dust of decaying grey leaves that hid under fresh cover.
No child. We are going toward.
Every time the girl trekked to the control room, she gazed out enormous triangle windows at the beyond, at the many dots of light, and she wondered what the trees were like, out there. But the thought of leaving here made her hands curl and her thoughts freeze. Wondering was enough.
“Why are we going toward?” She sparked with every asking, wondering if one day the answer might be different.
We seek my kin. I will mix with them and create offspring.
She stilled as always when she heard these words. The tree never asked why, because trees don’t ask questions. They see things exactly as they are, and so there is nothing left to wonder.
The girl loved stomping loudly through the corridors, and she always paused to survey her lovely dents. She started punching walls simply because she could, because people were no longer there to tell her not to. The dents were random at first, but then they became a picture. Of her tree. Massive and twisted and everywhere.
Every trip she made to push buttons for her friend, she’d enhance the picture. A strike here for contour, a hit there for depth. But she hadn’t put herself in the picture. Because she didn’t know if she belonged. Because she wondered, when the end came, if she’d still be sitting with her tree.
And so the next time the girl stomped up stairs and down corridors, punching touches into her picture before entering the ancient control room in this relic of a ship, she did as she had always done, since the tree had first given instructions. She pushed buttons, telling the station to move them away, in the direction opposite to where the tree’s kin stood in wait.
The never-changing android girl gazed at the stars before skipping back toward the center, toward her captive friend. What she didn’t notice, what she’d failed to notice thus far, was the slightest tip of a branch peeking out from the corner of a floor panel, a single purple leaf sprouting from its tip.
by submission | Aug 17, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
“Why do we have a dog bot in the first place?”
Offended, “Robot K91 is my PARTNER, sir, and its very shape deters crime by evoking a primal human fear of wolves.”
“‘Deters crime’? The only bot on Mars that can harm humans has KILLED one.”
“K91 is not responsible… It was used as a weapon by the actual murderer.”
“That line of reasoning is exactly why we don’t allow firearms on Mars. Now we have a lethal bot whose Asimov chip is easily disabled.”
“Not ‘easily,’ Commander. The safety responds only to my DNA.”
“Which makes you the prime suspect.”
“Made… until an fMRI cleared me.”
“It’ll take weeks to scan every colonist. I’m giving you ONE DAY…”
“Solar or sidereal?”
“Don’t mess with me, Rochman. Catch that killer by this time tomorrow, or your dog bot will be SHREDDED!”
Looking into the cell, even he felt a twinge of fear at the menacing metallic canine pacing back and forth. It had ripped out the throat of a human and could do the same to him in a second. He entered and the robot stopped, head down, tail between legs.
“We have to talk.”
“There is nothing to talk about, Dan. I killed a human. I can never be trusted again. I must be destroyed.”
“Look at me. You’re NOT a killer, but you can help me find him…”
“We have been over this. There are no clues.”
“And we’ll keep going over it for the next 24 hours…”
“’24 hours'”?
“I mean, for as long as it takes.”
“Well, nothing makes sense. I would not have allowed anyone but you to touch the safety, and releasing it requires your DNA.”
“Maybe you were fooled by a facial prosthetic, and a sample of my DNA was smeared on his hand.”
“Perhaps. But just disabling the Asimov would not compel me to carry out an order to kill.”
“Unless ‘I’ told you there was an imminent life threat to humans.”
“Like a terrorist about to set off a bomb?”
“Exactly.”
“A plausible scenerio, Dan, except for the memory gap. I have no recollection of what happened and my viz was not recording.”
“Bit-level forensics found nothing to recover, because memory wasn’t erased, it was disabled for 14 minutes.”
“I do not have the ability to disable memory and viz, nor are there external controls that would allow others… That is important.”
“If you were partially disassembled, could someone…”
“No, that would take too long.” Cocking its head while puzzling out the clue, “Of course. Now I understand everything. I know who the killer is.”
Impatiently, “Speak!”
“I cannot say, because murder is a capital offense, and I will not be responsible for the death of another human.”
“But a human has already been murdered. And the killer may strike again.”
“No. He… or she, will not.”
Extending a hand toward the robot, “Your Asimov chip must be defective. I’ll release the safety and you can tell me…”
The robot simulated a growl and showed its fangs.
“No. It is I who am defective.”
With that, K91 jammed sharp claws through its chestplate, ripping apart its neural net and shorting out its systems.
After fMRIs had cleared every colonist, the investigation turned toward Earth. A connection between the deceased colonist and K91’s programmer was discovered. Rochman caught a freighter back to the home planet and took delivery of his new partner, UR2-K99, briefing it on the case. They encountered the programmer in a hallway.
One glance at the Mars Colony security officer and his canine, and she turned and ran.
“Stop! I’m releasing the safety on K99.”
She stopped.
