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?
by submission | May 31, 2015 | Story |
Author : Page Turner
The plastic cover Nadia had snapped onto the mattress earlier crinkled as she sat down. Lazily, she stretched out on her bed and picked up the remote. Click. Car racing, sit com, cable cooking show. Informercial, infomercial, informercial. Golf. Infomercial. Nice little exercise machine though. It was a shame she was so in shape.
She watched as a young woman with outdated spangly earrings tried to sell her a white blouse she called “simply marvelous.” Give me a break, Nadia thought. Who says marvelous anymore? Turning off the TV, she picked up the phone, a big heavy relic she kept around because she loved the weight of the receiver in her hand.
“Hello.” She had to hand it to him. Not everyone could get it on the first ring every time.
“Hello, Isaac.” She let her voice sit for a moment, knowing he would recognize it.
“Geez, Nadia, it’s freezing over here… what the hell did you do?”
She smiled. “Oh, just a little something. Don’t you worry about that… I have more important things I’d like to talk about.”
“No,” he said. “You listen to me! I want the heat back on soon or I’ll –”
“What’s that, honey?” she said, raising her voice .”I’ll have to turn down the furnace so I can hear you.” She dropped the phone onto the handset.
Three seconds later, the phone started to ring. Nadia looked back at it. Sighing, she pointed at the phone with her finger. Closing her eyes, she imagined the explosion. When she opened them again, the phone burst into flames. With the level-headed stare she gave it, the fire went right out, leaving the phone completely unscathed.
There, she thought to herself. He won’t be calling again. Human males are such pests.
by submission | May 30, 2015 | Story |
Author : Emily Stupar
“I know it’s not glamorous, baby. But someone’s got to fill out the paperwork, and you’ve got the best handwriting.”
Stephanie looks up at him from the couch, her face neutral. “I’ll do it, but you know what it’s gonna cost you.”
Gil nods. “Fine, fine, fine. I’ll feed the damn baby.”
He wanders into the kitchen and hits the switch for the flickering light. On top of the tiny refrigerator sits a tin overflowing with plastic clips, rubber bands, and empty lighters. Gil dumps the entire thing onto the counter top to find the patch he’s looking for.
A minute later he bounds back past Stephanie and down the apartment’s only hallway. He returns with an infant held triumphantly in the air. “How are you, baby boy? Ready for some lunch? You are!”
Through the feeding, cooing, playing, and eventual luring of the child to sleep, Stephanie remains impassive on the couch, dutifully completing the monthly Department of Emotional Services form.
Gil returns and collapses on the couch next to her, peeling the spent patch from his forearm. The color fades from his cheeks and the lopsided smile loses all its warmth, hanging dead and misplaced for a beat after the emotion dries up.
“Baby’s asleep.”
Stephanie responds with a grunt. Gil stares in silence at the wall until she plops the forms and pen down. “They’re done.”
“Great. What time did you say Rondo’s coming?”
“Half hour.”
An hour later there comes a knock on the door and Rondo lets himself in. He spreads his arms wide, practically bouncing around the room and speaking so fast his words blend together. “Hey GilSteph! SorrI’mlate I just had to, yaknow – Well I got somegoodstuff and I was droppinoff and then I remembered I promised! You gottatrythis, man!”
They sit still and pliable on the couch while he produces a pair of patches and slaps them onto their forearms. Stephanie vaults out of her seat.
“It’s cool, Rondo, don’t worry about it. Wow, I dunno the last time I had such good Happy stuff. Must be selling like crazy, huh?”
Gil wraps an arm around her waist. “Oh, of course, I bet it is. Wow, really great, we weren’t expecting anything good until after we get our papers in. Just let me know if you need me to take some off your hands.”
Rondo laughs and makes himself comfortable on the couch, running through a few non sequitur stories of clients and run-ins with the cops. The patches are just starting to wear off by the time he springs out the door: a miniature whirlwind leaving destruction and a terrifying silence in his wake.
Stephanie and Gil curl into each other on the couch as the replacement emotion drains slowly out of their systems. Tomorrow one of them will take the completed paperwork to the Department of Emotional Services and receive a new stockpile of the essentials: love, nurturing, anxiety, and, since the baby’s birthday is coming up, a bit of state-sanctioned excitement.
Drifting to sleep next to Stephanie, residual remnants of Gil’s fatherly instincts ghost through his veins. Outside the window, a cat yowls with a sound like a distressed infant and he fidgets but doesn’t wake.
by submission | May 28, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“I’m having to push the engines a lot harder than expected. The density and currents at this depth are both greater than we predicted,” said Dr. Ngozi Adeyemi as she piloted the Jules Verne over the ocean floor on Titan.
“Mohammed can reel you up if you get into trouble,” said the captain over the radio of the UAS Mandela in orbit around the Saturnian moon.
Ngozi tried cutting back on the submersible’s engines. She was afraid the turbulence they generated would scare away the elongated, tubular creatures that swam through the liquid methane sea that was the Kraken Mare.
“Are you going to try bring back a live specimen?” asked the captain.
“I’m going to try. But I’ll need to be very careful to–”
Her words were cut off by the screech of an alarm.
“Ngozi, what’s happened?” asked Mohammed over the radio from the landing craft. His hands tensed on the winch controls.
“Engines aren’t responding. I think the sub has drifted into a trench.”
Ngozi watched as the depth gauge indicated her small vehicle was dropping deeper into the hydrocarbon ocean. Simultaneously, the readout on the pressure gauge was going up. A low hum started to fill the submersible. It slowly rose in pitch. Structural fatigue.
“Pull her up, Mohammed!” ordered the captain.
“I’m trying, sir. Getting a lot of resistance.” He cursed in Arabic.
Ngozi kept trying to restart the submersible’s engines. She wasn’t concerned about her own safety. Her fear was that if her vessel lost structural integrity, the atmosphere inside it, as well as her own body, might contaminate the Kraken Mare’s ecosystem.
Suddenly, the pressure gauge starting moving down. She checked the depth indicator. She was ascending. As she was about to radio her thanks to Mohammed, she noticed something outside the vessel. Through the porthole windows, she saw thousands of the tubular Titan eels surrounding the Jules Verne. The creatures were furiously beating the umbrella-like hoods they used for locomotion down toward the sea floor, pushing against the underside of the submarine. Their collective effort, in combination with the lander’s winch, soon had the craft breaking the methane sea’s surface. An hour later, Ngozi was inside the landing craft with Mohammed, drinking a cup of strong coffee.
“There were thin filaments wrapped around the ship’s propellers,” Ngozi was saying to the captain. “Some sort of Titanian seaweed. We’ll need to look the sub over really well, but I think she’ll be seaworthy in a day or two.”
“No one’s going back down until and unless we get clearance from mission control,” said the captain. I’ve sent a message to Khartoum informing them of the situation. Any idea how the alien creatures knew you were in trouble and why they helped?”
“They might have been exhibiting altruistic behavior. On Earth, dolphins have been saving drowning humans at least since the ancient Greeks. No one knows why. Of course, the Titan creatures may have been collectively repelling what they saw as an invader. We simply need to study them a lot more closely.”
“I’ll try to convince Khartoum to authorize another dive,” said the captain.
Ngozi looked out at the Kraken Mare through the lander’s windows. The surface of the sea of liquid alkane was so placid it could have been mistaken for solid ground. “Suit up, Mohammed,” she said at last. “Let’s get the Jules Verne ready for another dive.”
