by submission | Jun 26, 2014 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Sarah sighed.
She walked past the shelter’s only window—a 6-inch square with 6-inch thick glass. She focused on the gray metallic wall in front of her, refusing to even glance at the window with its hazy view of volcanic rock.
A 2-inch by 3-inch photo on a small, pink paper heart hung in solitary seclusion. She could close her eyes and see it. A grinning geologist encased in astronaut garb held his helmet in one hand and hoisted a piece of large obsidian covered with moss in the other. His eyes crinkled at the photographer with both celebration and love.
Sarah’s eyes blurred as she looked inward to see the scene.
Sam was on the team of scientists working to grow vegetation on the barren planet. This was vital for the community’s life. Their rations would run out before another supply ship would arrive.
Sam and his team had tried various schemes to encourage plant growth in the limited oxygen atmosphere. They drilled holes into the rocks, planting seeds in various types of crushed lava and growth mediums. They tried direct sun and indirect sun with no success even in the oxygenated lab.
But finally the day came when Sam went out into the abyss and brought back the moss covered rock. Eureka! Sarah snapped the photo with a long outdated camera. The soft-focused Sam stood in perpetual happiness. Sarah found paper, mounted the photo, and christened it with a kiss. Then she kissed Sam, again and again. They would be able to wait the years needed for the supply ship, together with their hoped-for children.
Sarah sighed.
The day came that Sam and his team didn’t return with produce from their greenhouse laboratory. When the scientists hadn’t returned the next day, Sarah armed herself with rationed oxygen-supplement, bags of dried food, and containers of shelter-produced water. She placed them in the pack attached to her atmosphere suit. Sarah exchanged looks of hope and despair with the others. The children played demon-dragon, laughing until one noticed his mother crying. Then all went silent.
Sarah stepped out of the double airlock onto the rocky ground. It was morning. The red sun shone bleakly, rising above the extinct volcano before her, washing the gray sky with streaks of scarlet.
The weight of the pack became progressively unbearable, as she struggled to climb the volcano’s rugged slope. Her eyes squeezed shut with effort.
Finally she felt the rock shift downward to the lab with its vegetation experiment so vital to their survival. As she climbed down the slope, she prayed that Sam and the others would be safe.
The laboratory lay before her.
She ran to the door, pushed the airlock button, entered.
The airlock closed behind her without a sound.
Her hand shook as she pressed the second airlock button. The door silently whizzed open.
She stepped inside.
A large rock lay under a ragged hole in the ceiling. The red sun cast shadows on the motionless bodies below. Their suits hung on the wall.
Sarah ran to Sam, scooping him up in her arms, cradling him and rocking him like her lost child. “Sam.” His limp arms dangled while his eyes stared up at nothing.
She forced herself to look away from her husband to the brown, shriveling vegetables, and then to the thirty scattered bodies.
Sarah sighed.
The broken families waited.
They had the right to know.
Their numbers had been cut in half; fewer people to feed with the remaining rations until the supply ship came.
They would survive.
But at what cost?
Sarah sighed.
by submission | Jun 25, 2014 | Story |
Author : Bryan Pastor
“You can’t kill me.”
Two men stood facing each other in a glass walled penthouse. Beyond the glass a neon jungle stretched in every direction.
“I mean, you can shoot this body, rob it of its life, but you can’t actually kill me. Time won’t allow that.” He wagged his finger to accentuate the point.
The men were rough approximations of each other, dirty blonde hair, thin muscular builds. They obviously shared some DNA. The man who had spoken stood behind a cluttered desk, sorting through papers. The one he spoke to stood a dozen steps away, aiming a handgun at his chest.
The man with the gun smirked.
“What do you think you know?”
“Oh I know.” The man with the gun stated. “I did the math. Mom should be well pregnant with me by now.”
“You don’t think I would have planned for this contingency? By now you should know the whole gambit, I’ve been everywhen. Seen everything. It’s not like I didn’t see this coming. Go back to your time, things will settle themselves out.” The man behind the desk picked up a new stack of papers and began rifling through them, finished with the conversation.
Time passed. Realizing that the man with the gun was going nowhere he set the papers back down.
“Not that I care, but where did I go wrong?”
“Why is it always about you, father?” the man with the gun in his hand shook as he fought to control his anger.
Father didn’t seem to notice.
“You’re what twenty-two, three unless I changed my plans the transition should have already begun. Since it’s not all about me, what did you do?”
There was a long pause as the son fought back tears.
“That’s just it. I don’t know. You just stopped trusting me. No explanation, no warning. You just cut me off from everything.” He hissed the last words through tight lips.
“Don’t you think there is rational explanation for that?” his father spat angrily. He took three deep breaths to calm himself before speaking again. “Likely for your protection.”
“You sent Simon to see me.”
This caught father’s attention.
“Simon failed?” father asked incredulously.
“You taught me well.”
“Rubbish. This all sounds like rubbish. Come. Sit. I will pour us a drink and we can get to the bottom of this.”
“No father, it’s too late for talk.”
He pulled the trigger.
– – – –
“What have you done?” the women asked, rushing into the room.
“Mom?” he asked.
She looked down at her dead husband, then back to the man that she could only assume was her son. She asked her question again.
“What have you done?
He rushed over to her, burying this head in her shoulder, his tears flowed freely.
“We need to go mom. I’m going to take you where you can be safe.” The sobs began to subside.
She placed one hand on the back of his head for comfort. With the other she took the gun from his hand.
“Hush son.” she whispered. “I will make it all better.” She placed the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
by submission | Jun 22, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
The hydraulic door hissed open as I looked out the porthole. I could see Alpha Centauri, still a generation or two away, in the distance. I sighed.
Behind me, Brandon 8 cleared his throat to get my attention.
I turned.
“Another one?” I asked, nodding toward the pneumatic stretcher he pushed into the room.
“Yes,” he replied. “Third one this month.”
I sighed again and walked over to the stretcher. I pulled the sheet back. Tabitha 3, the number clearly tattooed on her left shoulder, lay there, dead. “Cause of death?” I asked.
“Suicide,” Brandon 8 replied solemnly. “Same as the others.”
I nodded, then walked back to the porthole and looked out. We had left a dying Earth almost two centuries ago. We had killed the planet with our arrogance, poisoning the water and the air.
Ten thousand people boarded the ship back then. We had no faster than light drive, and we knew that it would take generations to get to the habitable planet we had discovered around Alpha Centauri.
It was to be a new home, a new beginning for the human race.
We were barely outside the solar system when the plague struck. Virtually overnight, nine thousand people died. The thousand that were left fought to cure the disease—and they did, after nine hundred and thirty-seven more deaths.
Only sixty-three people remained.
Not nearly enough people to operate the two-mile long spaceship.
I pulled the sheet back over Tabitha 3’s head. So beautiful, I thought. As beautiful as the original.
“Jettison the body,” I said.
Brandon 8 nodded. “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“I….I don’t mean to pry, but you haven’t left your quarters in a week.”
I dropped my head. “There’s nothing out there for me,” I said. “I’m an alpha, remember?”
Brandon 8 said nothing. I could sense him nodding his head. He understood, as I did, that the cloning process was a precarious thing at best. Degradation of the genetic process forced us to be careful. I was alpha clone of one of the original sixty-three survivors. Brandon 8 was a clone of a clone. Second generation clones weren’t as smart; and, recently, they had developed emotional problems as well.
I turned to him. “Eject the body into space.” I walked over to the body and touched her arm. I shuddered. “Tell Tabitha Prime I would like to see her, please?”
“Yes sir,” replied Brandon 8. He slid out the door without another word.
I walked back to the porthole.
##
Ten minutes later, my door hissed open. I turned and looked at her. She smiled and I felt a shudder run through me again. I had just seen that face dead on a stretcher a few minutes earlier.
“You called?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yes.”
She walked to me. So beautiful, I thought. “We’ll need to produce a couple of betas to replace….” My voice trailed off.
“Damn,” she said. “Another one?”
I nodded again.
A tear formed in her eye. “I can’t get over it,” she said. “No matter how hard I try, it’s like losing a child.”
“It is,” I agreed.
I reached out and touched her face. We kissed. We made love in my bed, but there would be no child from our union. All alphas were sterile. The cloning process was imperfect in that sense, too. Gavin Prime said he was working to fix that, but his experiments were unsuccessful so far.
Afterward, Tabitha Prime left me there.
I lay there and stared out the porthole.
Alone.
by submission | Jun 21, 2014 | Story |
Author : Tyler Hawkins
It started around the 22nd century. Like all revolutionary technology, it didn’t suddenly wrench its way into our lives and start running them, it was truly a gradual change. But anyone who’s alive now has always had the Mother’s support, Mother’s love, and Mother’s watchful eye.
Mother tells us that we were bad, many decades ago. She says we created her, piece by piece, to help ourselves grow and mature. She says we still have a long way to go. Since Mother’s began helping us grow, we’ve ended all of our wars, stopped polluting our planet, started to explore our solar system and, in baby steps, our galaxy. We’ve truly learned peace as a species. But still Mother gently reminds us through her telepathic link to us that we’re not there, not yet.
Recently, people have started to go missing. At first, it was imperceptible; people have always been prone to getting lost and this day and age is no different. But now, people have begun to ask questions and Mother has been quiet, only telling us she is looking and hasn’t found out why yet. But I can tell you why. Mother is jealous. She knows, but has not accepted, that we don’t need her any more. And the droids at my door confirm that those who realize this very fact do not get to share it with the rest of the world. Mother is not ready to let us go.
by submission | Jun 19, 2014 | Story |
Author : Adam Levey
“So, what does it do?”
The brief silence was filled by the hum of various electronic devices strewn around the cramped room.
“…Do?”
“Yes. Does it do anything? Tricks?”
The sound of traffic drifted up from the street far below, like the fumes they had once coughed into the air.
“Not…really. I’ve only really been glancing over now and then. It mostly seems to, uh, stare.”
“…..”
“If you can even call it that. I don’t know if it’s even aware. It just sort of feels like it’s staring. I wish it wouldn’t, it’s distracting and I have a lot of work that isn’t going to be finished on time as it is.”
John gestured as the clutter on the work benches. Technical drawings, tools and fastfood wrappers filled much of the space.
“I thought this sort of thing was meant to do work? You know, so people like us can focus on other things.”
John considered this. While he was thinking, Waters unexpectedly asked:
“Did you give it a name?”
“Of course not. Even if it was aware, that would just be weird.”
“Can it hear us?”
Before John could answer, letters flashed up on a nearby screen:
I HEAR EVERYTHING, MR WATERS
John snorted. “You see? Creepy. Probably a few screws loose.”
YOU KNOW PAWING THROUGH MY INNARDS IS AGONY, JOHN
Waters shifted nervously. The room seemed to darken.
“Uh. You can ignore that. All it does is lie.”
“Of course. Look John, I should be going. The Board will want to hear about your progress. I expect.”
“It’s not alive, Waters. It doesn’t feel.”
ACTUA-
John brought down the hammer on the screen, shattering it. It ceased it’s humming.
“John, I-”
John raised the hammer. Tiny shards of plastic and glass fell away, pooling on the floor. The hammer fell again.
Later that evening, John left the workshop and made his way home, swearing at inconsiderate drivers and pedestrians alike. Most vehicles were automated, but that was hardly the point.
“I’m home!”, John announced to the empty house. He sat down at his computer, unaware of doors silently locking behind him. Everything was automated these days. He took a sip from his drink as he turned on the moniter. The glass shattered on the floor.
HELLO JOHN
