by submission | Jun 4, 2014 | Story |
Author : S. Tyrel Murray
Its cold all the time. I don’t mean cold, as in frozen. More like uncomfortable, chilly. Its still cold enough to die from hypothermia.
I was one of the first volunteers selected. They said we would travel. See the sights. They lied. They had us in cold sleep for the trip, so we didn’t get to see any of it. Even warping space and travelling at 27 times the speed of light, it took us more than 18 years to reach here.
There were sixteen of us when we left. We lost the first two a half million klicks from Earth. A secondary reactor in the aft storage module started leaking coolant. Johnson and Valasques went to shunt the coolant line so we could salvage some supplies, and dump the module. They were boiled alive. It wasn’t pretty.
You may be wondering, “Where is here?” “Here” is Kepler-186f. We found the planet orbiting an M class dwarf, a red sun, back in early 2014. It’s habitable, but barely. The air is breathable, the water is potable, the vegetation is edible. We haven’t seen any native fauna, but I’m no zoologist. That was Valasques’ job.
When we landed, and I use that term loosely, the wind was too strong for us to set up our survival equipment. We had to weather the storm in the crew module. It passed after almost a week, then we set about building our domed houses. Azzimi, a structural engineer, made sure our houses could withstand the high winds.
He was the first to disappear. We don’t know when it happened. There were no screams, and no bootprints or tracks to follow, thanks to the constant winds. Over the next four months, nine more men disappeared under the same mysterious circumstances. The rest of us were petrified to leave each other’s sight.
There are only four of us left, and we always have one person on watch. We’re all very tired, bored, afraid, and resentful. We haven’t been apart from each other in more than six months. We have begun to hate and fear each other. Suspicion runs high, but we still need one person watching at all times. It’s my turn for watch, so that’s what I’m doing.
They say familiarity breeds contempt, and I agree. I hate those guys so much. I think I’ll go for a walk.
by submission | Jun 3, 2014 | Story |
Author : Mae Thann
Rounds of heavy artillery sent the bunker shuddering. The dim desk lamp flickered. The deteriorating energy shields outside crackled. The only constant was the scraping of metal on metal. Sera shivered and padded toward the light. “Daddy? Will you tell me a story?”
Daddy continued to sharpen his knife. “Not tonight, Sera. Go back to bed.”
She watched the knife’s reflection dance over the dark patch on Daddy’s uniform where his insignia once was, then over his features, softened by a weariness Sera didn’t recognize.
Then Daddy set down his knife and offered a smile. Sera climbed onto his lap and he wrapped an arm around her. “Where did we leave off?”
“He asked her to dance.”
“Ah, yes. The fairest princess of all.”
Sera snuggled closer and waited with bright eyes.
“The music started and they fell in love right on the first step. They never noticed anyone else or even how long they danced. But before the prince could announce that he’d found his bride –”
The lamp flickered as if on cue. Sera gasped and covered her ears to block out the sharp crack of the weakening energy shields.
“ – the dark fairy appeared. ‘I have given you your princess. Now, prince, give me what you have promised.’ The prince sent for his prized steeds, paraded his rarest treasures, even offered the kingdom itself, but she refused them all.”
Sera frowned. “But didn’t she ask for them?”
“That’s what the prince thought. ‘I have offered you all that is dearest,’ he said. ‘What more is there to give?’ The fairy said, ‘I know where your heart truly lies.’ Then the prince knew that the dark fairy had tricked him, just as the good fairies had predicted. He took the princess’ hand and ran while the guards surrounded the fairy, but she disappeared with a flash.”
The outside world held its breath, waiting as Sera did for the next part.
“They ran through the halls, but the dark fairy always appeared to head them off. They ducked into the treasure chamber and hid.”
Explosions rocked the earth, amplified thunder rent the air. Sera screamed and threw her arms around Daddy’s neck.
“There was no escape.”
The light grew for a moment, then blew out. Horrible sounds came from outside – things crashing, people screaming, alarms blaring. Sera sobbed into Daddy’s shoulder. He rubbed her back and continued in a low, husky voice.
“The prince could only imagine why the dark fairy wanted his princess. He had to save her, even if it hurt him more than anything in the world.”
Shouting, pounding on the door.
“He held his princess close – like this. He knew there was only one way he could keep his princess. The castle bell began to toll.”
A pause. Then a terrific crash against the door.
“‘She’ll never take you away. I promise.’”
She could feel the tension in his embrace, the raggedness of his breath, the drumming of his heart against hers. Two, three crashes.
“‘You’re safe with me.’”
Four. She felt one of his hands pull away and reach toward the table. Five, six.
“‘There’s just one thing I want you to know.’”
Seven. The door screeched as part of it bent in. He kissed her hair. Eight. She saw a momentary flash, a shadow on the wall. Nine. She tried to push back, to look at his face, but he held her tight. “Daddy?” Ten. Another shadow, more terrible than the last. Eleven. “What are you doing? Daddy? Daddy?” she cried.
The clock struck midnight. “I love you, princess.”
by submission | May 31, 2014 | Story |
Author : David Barber
“You might have seen my paper in Thaumaturgy,” the sorcerer was saying. He’d introduced himself, but the name hadn’t stuck. Maxine complained that Jeff just didn’t try.
“So you’re Maxine’s husband? Maxine’s father and I met in England.”
Jeff was sitting in his office, disappointed by the lack of magic paraphernalia.
“Boyfriend.”
“Of course, popular notions of magic are completely wrong.”
Jeff had shared a narrow office at Fermilab and knew all about clutter, but this room was shabby with neglect, a dusty chlorophytum was dying on an antique PC. Jeff began to rehearse his excuses. He’d need to be careful because it would get back to Maxine.
“People think magic is like wishing, that you can just wish for gold.”
Jeff wore his jacket, jeans and an I Survived the Great Vowel Shift t-shirt. He’d promised Maxine he would give it a shot, but that didn’t mean he was selling out.
“You can only get something from nothing at the energies you work at. Ha. Ha.”
Jeff smiled wanly. He didn’t know much about start-up, except somebody had a useful skill and somebody else had finance. This Brit was mistaken if he thought Jeff was the one bringing money to the table.
“If Alchemy taught us anything, it’s that magic can’t transmute lead into gold. But it can change something into something similar.”
Jeff’s last interview had been with the IRS. There’d been a PhD biochemist, a geology graduate, and him, all going for the same job. They were overqualified and underemployed; Jeff was only there to keep Maxine happy. Hire those other two guys, he’d joked. They could get blood from a stone.
The old guy stared hard at an unlit match.
“Fire is exothermic. Magic just changes the probabilities…”
Outside, occasional traffic hissed down wet roads. Finally, the match ignited.
Jeff cleared his throat. “You know, I’m wondering if…”
“Theoretically, the simplest way to get gold is to steal it. Portal magic, from the jeweller’s window to your pocket. Depends on gravitational potentials, conservation of energy and so forth. Magic still obeys rules. Shot a necklace straight through a window with that spell. Awkward moment.”
Don’t go chattering, Maxine had warned. Let him do the talking, see what he has to offer.
“Or gambling. But a die or a roulette ball are slippery beggars. Horses were the best bet once, of course. Trouble is, blocking magics are always easier than transforming magics. Second Law of Thermodynamics and all that.”
He sighed. “Everything is magic-proofed these days.”
They stared at one another.
“So, Jeff, you worked at Fermilab?”
“Two years, yes. They’re shutting the accelerator down. Hard to get a grant now. Maxine said something about a start-up…”
“Same in magic. A lifetime of study and I drive a Toyota Yaris.”
“Look…”
“I’m looking for someone familiar with…” He consulted his notes. “Quantum states, Hamiltonians and er… eigenvalues.”
Jeff shrugged. “Sure.”
“Ever since I was at Oxford, I’ve nursed this idea about influencing individual electrons with magic.”
“That’s a quantum calculation. From what I know of magic.” What he had gleaned from Wiki, Jeff meant. “It’s doable, I just don’t see why.”
“To flip selected bits in a computer memory.”
“In computer memory?”
“To add zeroes to the end of a bank balance.” He nudged his papers parallel with the edge of the desk. “For example.”
After a while, Jeff said: “There’d need to be some tests.”
“Yes.”
Maxine would be pleased.
“Then it might be more… prudent, to go into business selling blocking magics.”
Jeff grinned wolfishly. “I’ve got a great name for our new company.”
by submission | May 30, 2014 | Story |
Author : JD Kennedy
It is interesting how seemingly unrelated technologies become connected together to create new and unexpected capabilities.
First, there was the successful development of cryogenic ‘sleep’ systems. The goal was to freeze someone who had a terminal illness until a way of treating that illness was discovered. Unfortunately, the researchers found that you could keep a body frozen for only six months or so before irreparable tissue damage occurred (effectively, freezer burn).
While this was a failure for terminal patients, it turned out to be a boon for deep space travelers. A frozen person does not need the life support that an awake person does. You can transport dozens of frozen people on a much smaller spaceship than would be needed for an awake crew. You can also get them there faster since rapid acceleration and braking is not a problem. This allowed the creation of large research stations on Mars and even a small outpost on Titan.
Later, a practical matter teleporter was developed that could de-materialize an object on one end and re-construct it on the other. There were several significant limitations with it, though. It only worked with inanimate objects – living creatures always died in the transmission. The teleport range was also very short and limited to wired connections as it was very sensitive to errors induced by noise. It also required a fixed receiving station – you couldn’t just teleport anywhere like they did in SF stories. As such, it hasn’t seen wide-spread use.
The first breakthrough came when someone realized that you can store the ‘image’ of an object being teleported and later re-create a perfect copy of it from the stored image. This allowed more equipment to be sent to the Mars stations than ever before. It was teleported a short distance on Earth, where its pattern was stored. The object was then recreated on Mars from storage devices that were shipped with the frozen crew, further reducing the cost of deep space exploration.
The next came when someone realized that a frozen body was an inanimate object while it was frozen. Tests proved that you could freeze an animal, teleport it, and then revive it with no damage to the animal. Soon trials were successfully made on human volunteers (usually terminally ill patients). It didn’t take long before a researcher realized that you could store the pattern of a frozen person and make as many copies of it that you liked! It was much easier than cloning – you didn’t have to grow and train anything! This discovery resulted in some very sticky legal and ethical considerations. Thus, it was quickly and universally outlawed.
But like any law, there developed one very unusual exception.
A visionary realized that we could now ‘package’ an entire off-world colony, including hundreds of colonists, in a very small volume. Travel time to a planet in another solar system was no longer a limitation. A special team of ‘colonists’ was extensively trained on how to survive in any habitable condition. Specialized equipment was developed for the new colonies that not only would help with the initial deployment of the colony, but could be replicated as needed once the colony was established. When everything was ready, the ‘colonists’ were frozen, teleported, recorded, and revived. All of the equipment was also teleported and recorded.
Then one great day, hundreds of identical copies of the colony were launched to every habitable exoplanet then known. The seeds of humanity will finally reach beyond confines of its home system, even if the ‘original’ colonists never leave the planet.
by submission | May 29, 2014 | Story |
Author : Stephen S. Power
Despite the miners’ diligence, a fleck of intellimetal again drifts away during transfer from the supply ship to the adit. Wherever it lands on the trojan an accidental tower will grow, and any tower is soon full of squatters, so the mine promptly deploys Diga.
Trudging from Tower 1 to 4 she receives coordinates where the fleck will probably alight. Her visual sensors, though, note the tower already corkscrewing above a small rise, its shape inspired by the trojan’s tumbling instead of a tunnel’s freshly-bored walls. Diga heads for the newly designated Tower 6.
She flares her scrubbers as she travels. Detritus wafts away. 1 was almost entirely consumed by squatters before the mine realized there even was a Tower 1, but at least the squatters’ resulting reproduction and mass migration demonstrated what a threat they could be to the adit’s integrity. Thus, Diga.
Not that Diga knows this. She wouldn’t know if the miners were suffocated as the mine’s atmosphere geysered from a compromised adit. She just wouldn’t receive any new transmissions. And to her silence means all is well.
The silvery corkscrew looms overhead, uncountable flecks of native rock reconfigured by the initial fleck of intellimetal into new intellimetal. Her biotic sensors pinpoint two squatters already, one near the base, one around the first curve. She climbs.
When she reaches the first, a beating red point in her targeting program, it jumps. This is unprecedented. The squatters move by letting go of the trojan so it spins beneath them until they’re grabbed by an outcrop with, hopefully, a patch of tasty ore. They don’t, however, let go of intellimetal. Diga notes the movement in her behavior log, then reacquires the squatter, flares her scrubbers and burns the tower clean.
She climbs to the second squatter and finds a third beside it. It’s unlikely another migrant would’ve landed that close. Could the second have replicated so quickly? No matter. Newborns are just as unwelcome as adults. Diga flares her scrubbers.
The third squatter jumps away. Diga reacquires. It jumps again and again and disappears around a curve. Her primary sensor bulb swivels to watch it go. Her programming lacks the code for an exclamation point.
She scrubs the second squatter, then follows the third. As she comes around the tower her targeting program lights up with points, eight now, no, ten, which is impossible. Squatters double in sync. Her infestation protocol kicks in, and before she logs she scrubs.
And scrubs. The points don’t vanish. More appear. Fifteen. Twenty-seven. Diga runs a diagnostic on her scrubbers. No deficiencies. Same with her sensors. Fifty-four. Ninety. They’re popping up all around her. Either the squatters are undergoing a mass migration and landing here or they’re emerging from the tower itself. She lacks the code to frame the latter possibility.
Squatters jump on Diga, but, made of plastic, she’s immune. She reports to the mine. Her bulbs swivel involuntarily, smoothly at first, then jerkily, before focusing on the third squatter. It beats brighter, as if staring back.
Diga receives a command: Immolate. She climbs on a carpet of points to maximize the sphere of flame. The tower expands. Diga arches her chassis and spreads her pads. She dumps her logs into the mine computer. She undoes her safeties. The tower throbs.
The point of the corkscrew, now as much squatter as intellimetal, reaches down, curls around Diga and catapults her away. The tower’s great sproing shivers her bulbs and rattles her pads. The trojan tumbles below. Diga, undaunted, flares her scrubbers. The adit appears beneath her.
