by submission | Jun 6, 2015 | Story |
Author : Elijah Goering
It began with the invention of the tool. Perhaps that was our big mistake. We built a civilization. We survived the discovery of the power of the atom, and lived to develop a faster than light drive. Immediately, we raced to colonize dozens of systems, and began terraforming at least one planet in each system. Then we faltered, stopped expanding just long enough to populate our colonies. And then we created the weapon.
I will not describe the weapon in detail and help whomever might find this to destroy themselves. I will simply say that it had the power to scourge a planet of all life. The inventors meant to use it only once, and achieve a final victory over their enemies. The demonstration was effective, and soon the technology was bought, stolen, or copied by every planet, except those whose enemies got it first. But if we’re anything we’re vengeful. Homeless fleets of warships got their revenge.
No planets survived, but life continued among the asteroids. So did the war. Two of the most powerful nations banded together and destroyed the homes of every other fleet. I escaped before my home was destroyed, but I have not since seen any sign of my people. I roamed far from home through unexplored star systems and waited until I thought it was safe to return. I was right. The war was over. Nowhere that I searched was there any sign of life, only ruins of a lost civilization. Until I got to the home system.
Males were too rare in our society to risk in war, all were left safely at home, until our homes were destroyed. In orbit of a gas giant in our home system was a monument which said “Here was the final battle of the Oikosians. Whether by accident or design, this small moon was destroyed in the fury to combat, with the last of our males. Now our species goes to extinction”.
Perhaps some males survived, and a colony was formed in secret, far from the war. But if so, I have since roamed through hundreds, perhaps thousands of systems and have seen no sign of it. Some systems had life, but nowhere was there intelligence. I found only one planet truly bustling with life, orbiting a yellow star halfway through its life. I have placed my ship in the Oort cloud orbiting its sun. It is my hope that intelligence will evolve on the planet nearby, and develop a technological civilization. Before my escape I collected as much information as I could, and on board I have a library containing works of science, mathematics, and the history of the Oikosians up to the final war.. Perhaps they will find me, and with my working FTL drive I will be the key to the stars for some future civilization. To that end I will now disable life support to save energy so that my ship can send a message when another ship comes near. By the time the aliens get here they should be ready for the FTL drive. So ends the dominion of life from the planet Oikos, and so (I hope) begins a new era of life in the galaxy.
-The Last Historian
by submission | Jun 5, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“Captain Ree’Eer’Ak reporting as ordered,” said the alien who, from a human perspective, might have been described as some nightmarish character from a Picasso painting made flesh, as it seemingly just appeared in the room that lacked any visible means of ingress or egress.
“Be comfortable, Captain,” said the other equally surreal creature. Part of what might have been one of the thing’s arms appeared to be missing. The alien looked in the direction of where the remainder of the arm should have been. “Ree’Eer’Ak, your report is…”
“Difficult to believe,” the Captain finished for its superior. “I’m aware of that, Admiral. But as the old philosophers said, when evidence and belief are in conflict, belief must change.”
“Quite a bit will change,” the Admiral replied, settling back. The missing hand that held the Captain’s report abruptly snapped into existence as the back of the Admiral’s head disappeared like a poorly executed split-screen effect in an old movie. “In fact, it’s no exaggeration to say that very few aspects of life will remain unaffected if your ship’s log entries are correct.”
“They are correct, Admiral.”
“Make no mistake, Ree’Eer’Ak. When this is made public, every biology textbook will have to be rewritten. And it’s an open question how the major religions will accommodate this discovery, if they can accommodate it at all.”
The Captain leaned forward. Its body seemed to break in two, its proximal half sliding forward on its distal half. “Every word of every log entry is true, Admiral. What I and my crew documented is an accurate description of life on Earth. And we have brought back biological samples for study.”
“And ‘Earth’ is the name by which the inhabitants of Dellor 3 call their world?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“And the…” The Admiral referenced the report. “The ‘humans’ as well as all life on that world are…”
“Three dimensional,” said the Captain.
The Admiral leaned back further. Its head now seemed to vanish entirely. “It’s long been theorized that simple microscopic life might exist in three dimensions. But complex, higher life forms? That was always thought impossible. And you claim these humans are intelligent?”
“They are, Admiral. Their science is somewhat confused because their sensory organs can’t detect a fourth spatial dimension. For example, they imagined some strange and undetectable material called ‘dark matter’ existed to try to reconcile their 3-D perception of what is a 4-D spatial universe.”
“How do they appear?”
“They’re bipeds. They’re…it’s difficult to describe. They’re ‘flatter’ than we are.”
“And how do we appear to them?”
“Very unnerving. Parts of our ship and the crew are not visible to them. And the parts that are or are not visible change as we move. And their architecture is likewise limited to three dimensions meaning we can enter or exit what to them is a totally enclosed structure by simply walking around the walls. I’m glad we were able to make first contact without incident. To them, we must be terrifying.”
“And yet you conclude your log entry with the suggestion that we establish full diplomatic relations?”
“Yes, Admiral. As you noted, this will change who we are and how we perceive ourselves. And it will have the same effect on the human race. Isn’t that the ultimate goal of exploration? I believe we should extend the hand of friendship even if our new acquaintances can’t see it all at once.”
by submission | Jun 4, 2015 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
Dear Mr. Hawking,
I regret to inform you that I will not be attending your reception, scheduled for 12:00 UT, 28 June 2009.
Or perhaps I should say that I apologize for not having attended your reception, given that this letter will not be delivered until after the event has concluded. You of all people must understand the complexities of communicating in a manner such as this, but alas, we are limited by the temporality of our existences.
It would, perhaps, be prudent to inform you that a number of my colleagues discouraged me from sending this letter. In fact, they expressly forbade me from attempting any communication with you at all.
Their prejudice is not, as you might imagine, any concern over temporal paradoxes or alternate timelines or any such nonsense. Nor have they discouraged me from contacting you based on the concrete evidence that no one did, in fact, attend your reception. No, such historical truths can often be misrepresented, and I certainly trust that, if asked, you could have taken such a secret to your grave. A man of your intelligence could at least be trusted for that small a task.
No, the true reason my colleagues have urged not to contact you is simple: They do not like you.
And I’m afraid to say, Mr. Hawking, that I cannot much blame them.
Why, the very nature of your invitation is reason enough to scorn you. You may suppose that young and upstart time travelers may have a keen interest in making your acquaintance, regardless of the consequences. But you would be incorrect. Most young men in our business find your invitation so insulting, not only to our profession, but to the march of scientific advancement itself, that they would rather you die in ignorance than know the truth. What kind of arrogant man, they say, would claim to know more than men a thousand years more advanced than he?
But alas, Mr. Hawking, despite my hearty agreement with my colleagues on the latter point, I simply could not let the former pass. A man of your intelligence does deserve to know the truth before he dies, and thus I have crafted this letter to be delivered on your deathbed, mere seconds before you eyes close for the last time. Yes, you are going to die, and if my timing is correct (as it often must be) this will be the last thing you read.
And so I say again, Mr. Hawking, I am very sorry to have missed your party. Perhaps in the next life (if there is such a thing) you will look upon the natural world with a bit more humility.
Sincerely,
A Concerned Time Traveler
by submission | Jun 3, 2015 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
June 7, 2105: Today, we switched on the communications array and confirmed what Dr. Keller’s team had previously detected. The signals we are detecting follow recognizable mathematical patterns, resembling the transmission encoding commonly used on Earth. We have yet to verify whether or not these signals are coming from some other government on our planet, but the sheer bulk of transmissions seems to support Dr. Keller’s hasty conclusion: We’ve stumbled upon an alien communication frequency. It may only be a matter of time before we can make contact.
December 14, 2105: Ongoing efforts to decode the alien signals have gone nowhere. We’ve brought in encryption experts from across the world to analyze the transmissions, but we are no closer to unlocking their secrets. Some on the encryption team believe the level of mathematics at work to be beyond our understanding. Others believe potential linguistic differences will make it impossible to understand the messages, even after we have decrypted them. Only time will tell.
May 3, 2106: Congress has voted to continue funding our project, despite ongoing dissatisfaction with our results. We are exploring the possibility of designing new decryption software to break down individual messages.
August 22, 2106: The communications array has fallen silent. All messages have stopped.
September 10, 2106: No new messages have been detected by the array.
November 17, 2106: We have decided to transmit a message out into the void. We will send the message in all Earth languages and pair them with mathematical sequences to demonstrate our intelligence. Perhaps we will get an answer.
January 11, 2107: Array still silent.
March 1, 2107: Long-range telescopes have detected thousands of large, metallic objects nearing our solar system. They are too far out to estimate their shape.
March 7, 2107: The metallic objects draw nearer.
March 10, 2107: The objects detected by our telescopes will not enter the Sol system, instead passing us by en route to some location farther out into the Milky Way.
March 12, 2107: The objects are passing as close as they will come. Images from our high aperture telescopes verify our suspicions: Alien spacecraft are about to pass Earth. Who are these travelers? And why will they not communicate?
March 14, 2107: The last of the alien ships passed our system today, drawing close to the orbit of Pluto. As it passed, we received a single message through the communications array, transmitted in all Earth languages.
“They are coming. Run.”
by submission | Jun 2, 2015 | Story |
Author : Janet Shell Anderson
The sunlight’s dim, strange, blood colored. “I was framed.”
He doesn’t say “That’s what they all say.” He doesn’t know enough. He doesn’t know what I am, what he is, what it is to be horribly in love. He will.
I’m in prison on KEPPLER 442b, a Goldilocks world, and lucky to be here.
“You killed five people,” he says; his voice cracks slightly. He’s fifteen, knows nothing, has never been off this world. He’s interviewing me because he’s an aristo here and they have to do civil service from the time they’re kids, start at the bottom.
A murder conviction on homeWorld gets you death, immediately, unless you’re pregnant, then death immediately after the birth, unless you can raise the wind, get enough cash to go to KEPPLER 442b instead. I got pregnant, got the cash, took the sickening long trip to this dim world with its red dwarf sun. Kids run the prisons. They’ve got lists everywhere on every wall. Everything that’s not forbidden is required.
I’m a Temptress Level Three. I don’t work well with lists.
“How are you getting along?” he asks.
I’m homesick. Who would think?
“It’s beautiful here. I love it. The people are so kind,” I lie.
They’re idiots. Who puts their children in such danger? The place is all desperate felons, red light, deserts, waterfalls, falsepalms, fancy plumed redfish in the pools, legged snakes that sing till dawn, starry, starry nights. No walls. No fences. Where would you go? Out beyond this oasis there is nothing but red rock, red sand, death.
It’s called MUCHADO.
“Your family are beetle producers?” I ask him.
What’s his name? All the big money here in this oasis is in beetles. These people raise them, eat them, wear them, just about marry them. Name them. That bugs me. Not sure what the beetles think of the relationship. Maybe it’s mystical.
“Yes. I’m glad you like it here,” he says.
I hate it. I spent a fortune and hate it. I miss DC, the Tidal Basin, the Potomac, the White Mansion, the Lincoln Temple, the reflection pool, the Capital of Allworlds, Rock Creek, tulip trees, Meadowbrook Stables, light baths, Beech Drive, winter. I miss Loki, my seventy-five-pound, semi-domestic Norwegian Forest Cat who could talk. Mostly he said things like “Wurp” and “Wow,” but he tried. I miss my ex.
What is this boy’s name? Patrick? Philip? My ex was Cecil Howard; we married at thirteen. His family had it annulled.
“Philip,” I say, and he smiles. “How do you raise beetles?” I sit close, smile. I’m twenty going on one thousand. His pupils are wide. He likes me.
By midnight he will be horribly in love.
“Beatrice,” he says. “It’s a wonderful name.” Sure.
After the annulment, Loki and I went to a few houses of the rich, late at night, when no one was home, borrowed a few things, jewelry, whatnots, paintings, this and that, sold some of it. Nobody missed it much. Being a Temptress Level Three gets tiresome, so much changing clothes. We got caught by some frat boys from Sigma Sigma Sigma Sigma Aldebaran. They threw Loki into a high-beam light bath, and he screamed “no, no, no,” as he died. I’ve never forgotten. Five of them died after that. One ran away.
My cousin represented me. Selda McGregor. She wanted to plead down. To what? Hanging instead of being shot? I said to give me five minutes with the judge. Five minutes. She said she’d be disbarred.
Now the kid’s gone walkabout. I’m here in my “room” with my illegal pearl earrings that change perceptions, illegal face powder that’s really a drug, illegal lip rouge, a drug I actually like, my deadly and illegal scent from beetle wings, my prison uniform that I can make transparent, and my strappy shoes that cost a mint. My eyes can be any color I want, my hair the same, my body, any shape I want. The kid’s going to fall horribly in love and remember me forever; I’m going to escape and go home.
Selda will be about a thousand years old when I get back, my child almost that old. Who knows if my ex is alive? Cats have nine lives. I’ll bring Loki back.
And then cat and I will find the one that got away. How old will he be, I wonder?
