by submission | Aug 2, 2013 | Story
Author : Bob Newbell
The electromagnetic catapult launched the research vessel off the surface of Titan and into a trajectory that would slingshot the craft around Saturn and then into the inner solar system. Of course, the xenoarchaeologists on board did not refer to their homeworld moon as “Titan” or the ringed planet it orbited as “Saturn”. They called them by names in their own language that would translate very roughly as “The House of All Life” and “The Ringed God,” respectively. Their destination was the first planet from the Sun, a world their ancient astrologers had dubbed “Cinder” because of its proximity to the star.
Degladdo, the leader of the expedition, reached out with a membranous hand and activated the ship's electromagnetic ram scoop and brought the fusion rockets online. The vessel accelerated at 1.352 meters per second squared, exactly equal to the gravitational pull of Titan. He and his learner, Womrevin, left the command deck and retired to the ship's lounge. Degladdo tapped a control panel and a holographic representation of a fossilized human skeleton appeared above the table. The image cycled every twenty-five seconds to other similar fossils.
“I wonder if they were subterranean creatures?” said Womrevin. “Living underground to escape Cinder's intense heat, perhaps?”
“I doubt it,” said Degladdo. “Radiometric dating suggests they thrived at a time when the Sun was still a yellow dwarf, not a red giant. The planet was once much cooler. And there's evidence that Cinder was once covered in water oceans.”
“Water? Not hydrocarbons?” asked Womrevin, his two lateral and two central eyes all dilating in astonishment. “Little wonder we've had to rewrite the biology texts.”
“We've had to rewrite everything,” replied Degladdo. “Biology, philosophy, religion. Nothing has been left unaffected by their discovery.”
“Could they have originated in another solar system?” wondered Womrevin.
“We've searched the skies for generations looking for signs of intelligence and found nothing,” said Degladdo. “In all likelihood, they originated on the first planet. Or what is today the first planet. There might have been one or more worlds between Cinder and the Sun in ancient times.”
The hologram changed to show the tidally-locked planet Cinder in real time in orbit around the Sun. “We'll have to limit ourselves to the dark side of Cinder. The surface of the planet that faces the sun is basically molten. Half that world's history lost,” Degladdo said with regret. “Even the few fossils of the Cinder People we've uncovered on the planet's dark side took generations to discover.”
“I wish we could set foot on the planet ourselves instead of relying on telepresence robots.” said Womrevin. “Too bad Cinder's gravity is so high. I wonder if we'll ever find some sort of record the Cinder People left behind?”
“It's doubtful,” lamented Degladdo. He looked at the hologram; it had cycled back to one of the fossil skeletons.
“Who were you?” he asked the image of light. “Were you a peaceful and enlightened species devoted to art and science or a belligerent and avaricious people? Or, like us, a bit of both? Did you produce a composer greater than Zarpemo or a playwright who exceeded the great Xenosan? Like us, did you laugh and cry and love? Did you observe The House of All Life before any life existed there? Did you sent robotic probes to our world or even visit it yourselves when the Solar System was young?”
The immaterial skeleton gave no answer. The hologram cycled on to another fossil as the spaceship sailed on toward the dead world that held close to the aging red sun.
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by submission | Aug 1, 2013 | Story |
Author : Vince H.
“Come with me.”
“We’ve already talked about this. I would never do that to myself.”
“Honey, we can live forever. Together.”
“Live? Is that what you call it?”
“Of course. Your brain remains completely intact, and you keep all of your memories… your entire consciousness.”
“There is more to life than a brain.”
“Says who? If I were thinking the same thoughts, saying the same things, but my body were metal, would I truly be any different?”
“Well…”
“If you love me for who I am, as you say that you do, why does the exterior really matter?”
“I wouldn’t want to live forever even if I could keep this body.”
“Why not? You’re not going to outlive me or anybody else. Everybody’s making the switch honey, you know that.”
“Everybody but me, yes.”
“Honey, I’m getting very frustrated with you and your lack of logic. Why wouldn’t you want to live forever? Why does the elimination of hunger, disease, war and every other problem you’ll ever have to face scare you so much?”
“Making the switch would eliminate hunger, thirst, disease, and war, sure. Do you know what else it would eliminate? A full belly. A cool glass of water. Good health. Peace. The switch doesn’t just eliminate every misfortune in life, it eliminates life itself.”
“You know the world is dying. You know these “good things” in life aren’t going to last much longer, don’t you?”
“All the more reason to enjoy and appreciate them now.”
“I’m sorry honey, but if you choose not to listen to reason, I’ll be forced to go without you.”
“Go ahead. But before you do, hold my hand, and feel the warmth of the blood pulsing through my veins. Look across this field and feel the wind caress your hair. Many years from now, as your consciousness maintains itself in that metal box, you’ll miss this.
“Goodbye honey. I’m going to live forever”
“Maybe your mind will, but you won’t. The man I love will die as soon as they make the switch.”
“Goodbye.”
by submission | Jul 30, 2013 | Story
Author : George R. Shirer
The cities float, a mile above earth and water, drifting across the surface of the world. Their positions remain constant to each other and so they form a kind of artificial archipelago. They are home to thousands of people, the best and brightest humanity has to offer.
The rest of us live in their shadow. At the last estimate, Earth’s population was almost twenty-three billion. We crossed the tipping point some time around mid-century, straining the environment to the breaking point and then shattering it.
The environment collapsed. Famine led to war, disease, deaths. By then it was too late, the world was too broken to be repaired.
So, the cities were built. Thirteen of them, mounted on enormous antigravity platforms. Self-contained artificial environments. After their construction, the builders went among the world’s choking masses and picked the residents. Their criteria were complex, their recruitment methods sometimes ruthless. They chose the smartest, the ones who had survived the worst the world could throw at them. These people were given the gift of the future. The rest of us were left to rot.
Is it any wonder that we hate the cities? That we scavenge the garbage-continents and shanty towns for weapons that can bring them down? The cities and their privileged residents have done what saints and peacemakers down through the ages have failed to do, they have united humanity under one cause.
Hate, it seems, is a more powerful motivator than peace.
We’ve built our weapons, out nuclear ballistae, in secret. It took years, cost lots of lives, but it has been done. Our marksmen man them, waiting for the signal, for the moment when the cities drift across the horizon. Waiting for the order to fire, to unleash hell and bring the privileged future crashing down to earth.
And afterwards? What will we do once we have crashed the cities? Once our hate is spent?
I don’t know. No one does.
Maybe we’ll just sit down and wait to die. Or maybe we’ll build new cities, cities of our own, grounded in the earth and not drifting among the clouds.
Their cities are drifting above the horizon now. Our people are ready, waiting for the order to fire, to kill their future and claim our own.
The signal comes. We fire. Nuclear arrows stream across the gray sky from a dozen concealed locations, one per city.
They strike true.
The cities blaze and burn but do not fall. We watch as they drift across the sky, thirteen colossal funeral pyres, trailing fire, silent as the grave. They drift overhead, blackened and battered, silent and, I suspect, long abandoned.
I remember that the builders picked the smartest and the toughest. People who would never make themselves targets.
Shaking my head, I marvel at their cleverness. Watching their empty cities drift away, I wonder where they went and what happened to them? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know and that’s probably a good thing.
I admit that begrudgingly, even now, even if it’s only to myself. Because wherever they went, wherever they are, it means that humanity still has a chance.
The bastards.
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by submission | Jul 29, 2013 | Story
Author : Bob Newbell
Captain “Jet” Connors of the Planetary Alliance and his sidekick, Cadet Lackey, burst into the secret base of operations of their archenemy, Dr. Sinistral. The evil madman barked German-accented orders at the robots who flanked him. “Destroy them, my mechanical minions! Destroy Jet Connors and Lackey!”
The lumbering automatons' advance toward the trim, muscular heroes in their form-fitting spacesuits was cut short when Jet and Lackey leveled their atomic disintegrator pistols at the machine men and fired. The robots collapsed to the floor, the vacuum tubes visible through the transparent bubbles in their heads went dim. Dr. Sinistral was too stunned by the quick defeat of his guards to put up much of a fight. Jet felled him with a single punch.
“Lackey, contact Commander Gernsback and let him know we've secured Sinistral's base. I'm going to look around.”
After informing the Commander of the Rocket Patrol of the situation, Lackey joined Jet in Sinistral's lab. Along one wall were several recharging alcoves designed for the mad scientist's robots. Lackey thought it curious that there were no robots in any of the alcoves. He was struck by the enormity of the odd chamber at the center of the room. “Jumpin' Jupiter, Captain, what is that?”
“That, Lackey, is a time machine. I found the blueprints for it on that desk. And look at that chalkboard over in the corner of the room.”
Lackey walked over and examined the chalkboard. On it were parallel horizontal lines, the top line marked “Prime Timeline” and the bottom one “Altered Timeline”.
“Captain, what does it all mean?”
“Lackey, Sinistral's plan was to destroy the Planetary Alliance by changing the past.”
“Roarin' Rockets, Captain, how?”
“By sending his robot henchmen back in time to destroy certain inventors and technologies so there'd be no solar system-wide Planetary Alliance. Look at that chalkboard again. Atomic rockets, flying cars, ray guns, space colonization. He was going to erase them all from history. He was even planning to have his robots self-destruct after they'd completed their missions in the past so no one could use their advanced technology to get history back on track.”
Lackey rested his hand on his semi-automatic pistol in its holster. “Good thing we stopped him,” he said. “Just imagine a world with no Moon base and no space stations.”
“Yep,” replied Connors. “If we'd gotten here just a minute or so later, Project Apollo would have been deleted from the history books.”
Connors and Lackey exchanged glances. “How did we get talking about the old space program?” asked Officer Lackey.
Connors looked around the room. Trash and drug paraphernalia were everywhere. The chatter from a mindless daytime talk show played loudly on the TV. The house smelled of pot and urine. Connors shook his head. “I don't know,” he said.
A siren screamed in the distance. Two police cars joined their own cruiser parked out in front of the house.
“Well,” said Connors, “let's get the paperwork knocked out on this.”
Lackey sighed. He looked at the three disheveled suspects sitting handcuffed on the floor. He looked at the squalid, filthy room. Another day, another meth bust, he thought. “Let's grab some lunch when we're done here,” said Lackey.
“Not fast food,” said Connors who looked down at his large belly. “Doc's been after me about my weight. Blood pressure and cholesterol are up, too. Sometimes I wish we just had food pills like in those old sci fi stories.”
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by submission | Jul 28, 2013 | Story
Author : Jim O'Loughlin
It’s like flying a kite, Sheila thought. In a way she was right. Just a thin strand of carbon nanotube stretched out of the launch pad, rising into the sky, and continuing out of sight. She accepted that the cord reached through and beyond the atmosphere, where it eventually attached to the space station in low orbit. But that had always seemed an abstract fact, like the knowledge that the earth revolved around the sun or that dinosaurs once ruled the earth.
Yet, now she was going to board the shuttle for a 100,000-kilometer trip up this flimsy looking strand, and there was nothing abstract about that. But it was important that she kept her cool, because her husband was starting to lose it. Palik stood next to her, his face flushed and his hands trembling, and they hadn’t even boarded the space elevator yet.
“Hold it together, bloke,” Sheila said.
“I’m not afraid of heights and I’m not afraid of small places,” Palik said. “But I’m not sure I can do the two together. What would that be, acroclaustrophobia?”
“I think I’m suffering from fear of bullshit. Does that have a name? Here, take this. It’s a special new anti-anxiety pill. Just don’t tell anyone I gave it to you.”
“Where’d you get this?”
“I know people.”
Palik swallowed the pill and looked relieved. It was only a sugar pill, but Sheila wouldn’t tell him that. She appreciated the power of suggestion more than most. It was one of the ways she had risen from rural Aussie schoolgirl to doctor in a semi-illegal clinic to Governor of this island. And it’s how she had been able to talk her way onto the space elevator for one of the first trips open to civilians.
She knew that despite his complaints, this trip meant everything to Palik. Of course, Sheila was excited to go into space, too. Who wouldn’t be? But for Palik, getting up the cord meant something more. She tried to fully appreciate what it had been like for him, growing up on the island where the economy, the culture and the schools all revolved around the cord, even though so few people ever got to go up to the space station. His whole life he had been staring at this sky-bound string, knowing it went somewhere he couldn’t go. It had left a core of bitterness in a man who was otherwise caring and decent.
Palik craned his head up the length of the cord.
“It’s a long way to go,” he said.
“About five days, they told me.”
“No, you and me. It’s a long way to go. I never thought we’d end up here.” Palik placed his arms around Sheila’s waist. “I’m ready to fly, and I can’t imagine what happens next.”
Sheila smiled. He was right. He couldn’t imagine what he was in for. She hadn’t told him the half of it yet.
“Enjoy the view. It’ll be a while before we see this again.”
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