by submission | Jul 7, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The passport control agent looks at me and sighs. “Another one,” he says succinctly. His use of “one” rather than the epithet “shellhead” probably has little to do with concern that I might be offended. The woman in front of me got a “Have a nice day” from the man. I get a jerked thumb over his left shoulder to indicate I can proceed.
I’ve gotten used to it. I received a similar reception at Bradbury Station. It wasn’t always like this. Ten years ago, right after I got shelled, the reaction I and the small number of people who had undergone the procedure got tended to be more curiosity than jealously and bigotry.
“Can you feel anything?” a skinny twentysomething on the RFS Valentina Tereshkova had asked me nine years earlier.
“Yes,” I’d told the young Russian. “There are sensors that feed into transducers that connect to my nerve endings. Everything feels a bit different from what skin feels. But, yes, I still have sensation.”
“So, you can feel everywhere? And, uh, everything…works?”
I’d smiled. “Everything works,” I’d said.
Shelling was novelty back then. The first patients who underwent the procedure had nanocomposite plates glued to their skin. In addition to being impractical and dysfunctional, they looked like early sci fi movie robots. Astronautical physicians soon realized that replacing the skin itself with a microtessellated armor was the only viable solution. It can flex and distend as well as human skin and it solved an important problem: cancer.
In the 2160s, significant numbers of people started migrating beyond Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars and the Lagrange V station. Outside of the protection of Earth’s geomagnetic field, solar and cosmic radiation caused cancer rates among space travelers to be seven to ten times that of their terrestrial peers. Trying to protect off-world settlements and ships with massive shielding or high-powered EM fields proved to be expensive and difficult. It was noted that travelers who spent more time in their spacesuits tended to have lower cancer rates. But suits are cumbersome. A more intimate solution was required.
“What have you done to yourself?!” my mother had said to me when I first saw her after my shelling. My uniformly gray skin with its subtle sheen made me some kind of a freak in her eyes.
“My job keeps me in space most of the time,” I’d explained. “If you can’t go outside the Van Allen Belt for any length of time you can’t advance your career.” After that afternoon, we didn’t talk again for nearly three years. And even to this day, things aren’t like they used to be between us.
“Welcome to Amazonis Planitia!” says a cheerful voice that snaps me out of my reverie. The voice comes from a smiling black man who extends his hand as he walks up to me. But the man’s coloration is not that of a person representing the darker hued races of the human species. I see my reflection in his ebony shell as he pumps my hand. His features and accent are Chinese.
“Dr. Cheng? Sorry if I was a bit distracted. I got a somewhat chilly reception upon arriving here.”
“From the 软壳,” he says. The term he uses sounds roughly like “ruan ke”. He notes my confusion. “The ‘soft shells’,” he reiterates. “An impolite term, perhaps, but one that is catching on.”
“Guess they don’t like us too much.”
“They don’t like what we represent: a higher level of commitment to be out here. Our resolve is more than skin deep.”
by submission | Jul 5, 2015 | Story |
Author : Brian Olszewski
The room reeked of burnt flesh. A fluorescent green halo blinked from the ceiling; the emergency lights animated the thick vapor swirling at the lab’s center, partially occluding the operating table.
Two special-ops soldiers entered, with guns drawn, fanning to either side of the door. Each zigzagged the light beaming from the barrel-top of their gauss rifles with precision, highlighting open cabinets, drooping drawers and dead machines. The lab’s floor was strewn with bloodied utensils, shaped and sharpened to cut through the toughest non-human exo-skin and bone in the galaxy.
“Still getting a faint bio-reading, but . . .”
“Weird. The Fe count is off the charts.”
They looked at each other from their ready stances. One motioned to move further into the hexagon-shaped room, the details of which flitted across the holographs of visor-interiors in glowing characters.
One soldier kicked a knife accidentally, clanging it into saws and blades across the maroon-stained tiles. “Dammit.”
“Something’s on the table.”
“Yep. Hope one of experi-pets didn’t stick around.”
They approached the warm mound flashing on their visor’s displays. A knot of fused flesh and steel crystallized in the foul mist they inhaled, a paralyzing horror.
The eyeless head-mass. A pewtered scream flush against the tabletop. The limb-hints protruding from the larger crinkled lump.
Then: ironstone tiles infected boots and the bones and skin within; the vapor-born stony contagion spread, clogging veins, hardening intestines, choking lungs, calcifying hearts, joining the soldier-statues to the ranks of the doctor’s stilled metallic life.
by submission | Jul 4, 2015 | Story |
Author : Kevin L
Zaizo sipped on his beer as the ship’s proximity sensor started beeping loudly. His drone, MAX, inquired “You really think this is a good idea? That Kavryan dreadnought in front of us has enough firepower to take out half a planet. Getting rid of a parasite ship like us would be like swatting a fly.”
“Relax, MAX. You know the upgraded cloak can fool any of their sensors.”
“Any of their known sensors.”
“Well, the way I see it, in about 5 minutes we’re either going to be atomized specks of dust floating in space or we’ll be about 2 million credits richer. The Zyrians will pay at least that much for these schematics if it’ll turn the tide of the war.”
Zaizo watched as the parasite ship’s proboscis found a particular panel on the massive hull of the dreadnought. He watched the screens flicker through data until the upload bar showed “Complete.”
“Well MAX, looks like you’re going to be able to buy yourself a new body and I’ll be able to get myself to a beach planet! MAX beeped a few tones of relief and joy. Zaizo slapped the drone on its back and took a swig from his beer.
Suddenly the lights and screens all went off in the cramped cabin. Zaizo dropped his can in the darkness. “What the hell, MAX?!”
–
“Looks like that virus worked perfectly, MEL. Check to see if we got all the schematic data.”
“100% uploaded on our server, Captain. Good thing our new cloak can fool any sensors.” Myra undocked the Ripley’s proboscis from the larger parasite ship in front of her and set a course towards the Zyrian zone. It was a dog-eat-dog universe, but she would finally have enough money for her and her drones to retire. She started flipping through the brochure for a condo on a beach planet as her parasite ship sped away.
by submission | Jul 3, 2015 | Story |
Author : Jake Teeny
When the first signs of alien life came, no one, of course, believed them. It took nearly every scientist from nearly every science to confirm that it was true:
Another form of life, on a planet other than our own was speaking to us.
Certainly there were doubters, as there are regardless of unanimity. But for the majority who believed that it was true, myriads of emotions shifted through them.
Rejoice. We are not alone!
Our God would not allow…
What does this mean for my children’s children?
The top analysts in cryptography from all across the world assembled to decipher the message, and with quiet breath, the world waited.
Every pundit with a camera had his or her most rational prediction. Water cooler chitchat. Late night whispers.
And then, one day, it happened.
At first, we only knew that there was some kind of disagreement between the code-breakers. A division. Seventy-two hours of heated debate.
But on a solemn day in late September, the lead analyst on the team held a press conference:
A warning. The message we had intercepted was a warning.
The extraterrestrial language had proved much more complex than ever possibly conceived. But as they augmented their understanding, an onyx message emerged:
They came for us. They’ll come for you.
The words that set fire to the globe as terror—seized—the world.
But after the shock, quick came denial. Surely they’d just read it wrong. Science’s made mistakes before. But as more of the alien tongue was unraveled, the certainty only cemented:
They came for us. They’ll come for you.
Within months, there wasn’t a news station talking about the amassing of weaponry. And as the ballooning power of nations was made aware, a subtle tension of wild destruction ensued.
One snap of a twig, and the world could crumble.
But humanity’s most superordinate category is human, and together, peace passed between brothers and sisters. The world.
It was one.
In unity, we waited. And waited. The communion between people did not falter, but the fear, admittedly, became less acute. And we waited. And waited. And waited. It seemed pointless to have all the weaponry divided, when we only had one foe. And we waited. In a single, world-shared bunker, all of humans’ capabilities for violence were harbored. And we waited. And waited.
And waited.
There came a time, when people tell stories of how there had once been a thing such as passports and wars. For left with only that single message from the aliens, we inevitably began to think, Well, now what?
To this day, there is speculation as to whether the intercepted message was the most elaborate scheme in human history. Fabricate a binding enemy, unite the disparate clans. And to this day, the scientists heartily deny it.
All the data’s there. Go and have a look right for yourself.
But even if you question, even if you doubt, the world’s a better place no matter how it turned out.
by submission | Jul 2, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
He awoke to a darkness reverberating with car crash sounds from the street below, a helicopter’s whomp-whomp-whomp overhead, and screams of injured and frightened people radiating from the flats around him to the neighborhood beyond. Was Liverpool under attack? Attempting to get out of bed, he lurched dizzily and fell on his face. A deafening boom followed by a fireball that lit up the room sent him scrambling under the bed, where he cowered. His cell phone rang and he reached up and grabbed it off the bedside table.
“Paul, it’s Layla and I’m under the covers and I’m so woozy I can’t even lift my head and it sounds like a war going on outside. What’s happening?”
“Dunno. But if it’s happening to you in Old Swan and me in Allerton, then it’s something big, maybe all of Merseyside, maybe…”
“Maybe it’s a temporary phenomenon,” said the Prime Minister, hopefully, head on his desk, speaking into a secure line at 10 Downing Street.”
“And maybe it’s the end of the world as we know it,” said the President, flat on his back in bed as Air Force One flew high over the Pacific.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions. Fortunately, I’ve got a can of Vimto and a bag of Wotsits here to feast on, so all is well.”
“I have no idea what that is, but you’d better enjoy it. It may be your last meal.”
Suddenly serious, “When did you last talk to your pilot?”
“A few minutes ago. He and the co-pilot are slumped in their seats. Can’t hold their heads up long enough to fly this thing. It’s automatic pilot to the mainland. It could land itself if there were an airport without planes and debris blocking the runway. Haven’t found one.”
Lennie made his way through Wichita neighborhoods of tangled wreckage and burning structures, ignoring distractions as he’d been taught. A dog was biting the face of a man sprawled on the sidewalk, but that woman who talks to herself chased it away and started taking the man’s clothes off and tossing them into her shopping cart.
“Not supposed to do that,” Lennie said under his breath. “Not supposed to do that.”
Most of the morning crew was standing by the front door of the thrift shop. Dorothy had put her clothes on backwards again. George would have to send her to the bathroom with one of the other girls to fix that. Lennie’s watch, digital because he couldn’t read analog, said 9:03. George always unlocked the door at precisely 9:00. Something was wrong. He pushed aside the others and saw George lying face down just inside the door.
“Wake up, George. Please can we come in?” he said. “Wake up, George. Please can we come in?”
A conference call participant summarized, “So, you’re telling us the Sun’s orbit around the galaxy is taking it and the rest of the solar system through an interstellar cloud of cosmic dust and gas, and that’s why I have fallen and I can’t get up?”
“Yeah, that’s my theory. But I’m going to have a tough time proving it crawling around the floor of my lab.”
“We are so screwed. We’re gonna die right where we are, clutching cell phones…”
“Shut up all of you with that negative crap! We’re scientists. We’ve got enough collective intelligence to think our way out of this.”
“No, it’s just the opposite. Intelligence is the problem. I can see my neighbor’s retarded boy running around the yard like he always…”
“Don’t call him ‘retarded.'”
“Right. We should call him ‘King of the World.'”
