by submission | Aug 28, 2014 | Story |
Author : John Plunkett
The girls were dressed in simple skirts and blouses of homespun wool from their father’s sheep. They spoke brightly to one another, rejoicing in a day of swimming and play at the small pond just over the hill from their father’s house.
A young, naked boy darted from tree to tree, his eyes focused on the group of girls walking down the path. He was filthy, covered in dirt, dead leaves, and a greasy smear of dried blood and hair around his mouth.
The youngest girl stopped suddenly, pointing into the trees and asking in a loud voice, “What’s that?”
The other girls looked, but seeing only the trees they shushed their sister and gently forced her to continue down the path.
The boy continued to follow them, but allowed more space between himself and his prey. It would hardly do to let them escape.
The girls arrived at the small pond, a place where the creek turned sharply and had carved out a deep hollow in the soft dirt between the trees. Having been to the little pond many times before, the oldest girls led the rush into the water, leaving woolen garments in small, neat piles on various rocks, tree stumps, and low branches near the water.
Laughing and playing in the water, the girls didn’t see the boy watching from the undergrowth until he burst out of the trees, running and jumping from shore into the cold water.
Shocked and uncertain at the boy’s sudden appearance, the girls didn’t start to move until after he landed in the water, and even then the oldest girls moved toward him at first, unafraid of such a young boy.
When they saw his skin change to a dark gray color, and his arms and legs shrink down into fins and a tail, then they reversed course, swimming hard for the shore they believed would bring safety.
Once he was in the water, the boy knew they were his for the taking. He flicked his powerful tail, opened his mouthful of long, sharp teeth and grabbed the closest girl by her leg, pulling her under the surface and toward his new lair at the bottom.
Very subdued, the girls walked home, already mourning their oldest sister, who had given her life so they might live. Many of them kept their eyes on the trees around them, watching for any threat.
A young, clean naked boy followed at a discreet distance, watching the girls, and waiting for an opportunity.
by submission | Aug 27, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
Tom Jacobs awoke.
It was 9 o’clock.
It was always 9 o’clock.
His mind swam through an ocean of grogginess. He did not know where he was. It was dark and, in a moment, he realized he was floating in some sort of liquid. He tried to turn his head, but something prevented him from doing so.
He wanted to scream, to call out for help, but his lips would not obey his mind’s command. He found that he could not move in the darkness, either. It was as if he’d been paralyzed.
What the hell has happened to me? He wondered.
A bitter cold surrounded him, but he could not even shudder from it. His body was completely and utterly immobilized.
He looked at the display again. Its red digital light was the only illumination in the darkness. 9:00 it read. He wondered if it was 9:00 A.M. or P.M. Or was he on military time?
He stared at the display a few moments, then his eyes slowly drifted off into the darkness. What little light the display gave off only masked his surroundings in a soft redness. The contours were smooth.
Where am I? He thought again.
He felt panic start to grip him as his memory began to drift through the fog bank. He had been here before. Many times, he realized. Awaking in the bitter cold darkness. Always at 9 o’clock. He wondered what the significance of 9 o’clock was. If, perhaps, this was his own personal hell developed by….
….He drew a blank. The fog had not lifted completely yet. He could feel the answer lurking at the back of his mind. But, the panic was increasing with each moment. The liquid that covered his body also covered his ears, and he could heard the steady beat, beat, beat of his heart. It echoed like a distance bass drum. But, it was so slow….shouldn’t a frightened man’s heart be pounding faster?
That only scared him more.
The fog lifted a little more and he remembered a woman. An older woman, but pretty in her own right. She had a kindness in her eyes. It was a worldly kindness that told him volumes that no conversation could. She was hurting for something, someone.
He saw her standing above him, in a white lab coat, looking down at him like he was on a bed or something.
She said something.
He tried to remember what it was, but the fog would not let him.
Then, she bent forward and kissed him.
He returned the kiss with passion. This was a woman he loved.
Yes, he loved her. That much, he knew with certainty.
Then, the words came to him.
He remembered what she said.
“I’ll see you when we get there,” she said.
“Promise?” he had said.
She smiled. “I promise,” she told him. Then: “I love you.”
He remembered the concern, the compassion, as she stood back and slowly, ever so slowly, the darkness enveloped him.
Only redness filled that darkness.
It was the display.
It read 9:00.
He turned to the display. It silently clicked over to 9:01 and then he remembered nothing.
##
Somewhere in the vast colonization ship, a computer registered the malfunction the in cryotank. It had registered the malfunction many times before, of course, but the drones were too busy repairing the damage from the asteroid strike to the main hull to be bothered with such a minor anomaly. In time, when the repairs to the hull were finished, they would address the cryotank. There was no threat to life….just a momentary thawing and refreezing. A simple matter to repair, and the cold, calculating computer had no understanding whatsoever of consciousness, so it did not understand the horror.
by submission | Aug 26, 2014 | Story |
Author : Cameron Filas
It’s about a five year process, the whole prison-rehab formula. Since the introduction of Memwipe, crime rates have plummeted. The idea is to take a dangerous criminal, wipe their memory, then give them a basic education and return them to society.
Still, I’m not so sure it always works as planned. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been a firm supporter of Memwipe. That is, until my brother got convicted.
It was a bullshit arrest. If your girlfriend leaves her apartment door unlocked, and you show up with flowers and invite yourself inside, I don’t think that’s really a crime. At least there wasn’t intent. The way he smashed open the other guy’s face when he found them in the bedroom was pretty bad, I’ll admit. He did have a sort of violent streak in him growing up.
It’s no surprise they nabbed him within the hour and hauled off to a rehab facility. With crime rates so low, anything like this makes headline news. I couldn’t believe it when I first saw his face on my TV.
He got out a few weeks ago. He’s simpler now, like a minimally functioning human. When you go through Memwipe, everything you own, your house, your stuff, your dog, it’s all taken away. Supposedly, exposure to things from before rehab can have adverse effects on the treatment. They also encourage family members to avoid Memwiped individuals, for the sake of society. But he’s my brother.
When he was released, I found him wandering through a mall by chance. He wasn’t drooling or zombified or anything like that, he was just…blank. I almost didn’t recognize him without his beard and colorful sleeve tattoo down his left arm. They use laser surgery to remove all tattoos, pictures from the past.
“Jake?!” I said. “Oh my god, Jake!” I gave him as big a hug as I could manage around his broad shoulders.
He didn’t embrace me back and, when I let go, only had a confused look on his face.
“It’s me, Sarah…your sister.” It hurt, him not recognizing me. But it wasn’t his fault. “Come on, you’re staying with me.”
We had been close all our lives and I couldn’t bear him being out in the world alone. It wasn’t breaking the law, per se, but it was definitely not advised.
Back at my place, Jake seemed to be having a hard time taking everything in. It would’ve been impossible for me to tell him we’re siblings without explaining why he has no memory of this. He just kept shaking his head, saying he didn’t remember.
Pictures of family vacations and Jake and I holding up beers on my 21st birthday hung on the wall down my hallway. He studied them intently, like a scientist who’d just discovered a new species. I kept tearing up, flooded with mixed emotions. In a way I felt bad for telling him what he’d done, and about the life he’d had before Memwipe. But he’s my brother. He deserved to know.
I couldn’t really tell if any of it was coming back to him, or if he was just soaking up what I told him. Either way, he started asking questions.
“My girlfriend, what did she look like?”
I dug through a box of old photos and handed him a picture of them together.
“I think I’ll go find her.”
I couldn’t understand his motivation. “But Jake, she cheated on you.”
“I know.”
I haven’t seen him for a week.
I hope that Memwipe really works, changes people. I hope, for both our sakes.
by submission | Aug 24, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
“You really should try this,” Liz said. Her voice was distant and gentle, like someone talking to me from the end of a tunnel.
I turned and looked at her. She lay on the vacuum formed couch, her naked body sucked in perfectly, every curve, every contour fitted to pulsating plasma.
“No thank you,” I said.
She sighed and drew in a deep breath. “It’s awesome,” she said.
I turned away and looked at the ship’s control console. Lights glittered and circuits clicked. Everywhere, there was sound and motion. The whole ship, over two miles long and a quarter mile wide, was controlled from that console.
And, then, there was “The Void.”
The Void, I thought. It did not refer to the vast emptiness of space we were traveling through. The Void was a ship-wide interactive playground. It was the logical child of our Earth-bound Internet, but, now, we were able to plug ourselves into the system and drift through the Ethernet with our thoughts and feelings. The Earth was long gone—a victim of a massive solar flare that turned its surface into a cinder—but some things traveled into space with us.
I looked at Liz, naked and so beautiful, hooked into The Void, every nerve ending tingling. As I watched, she wiggled and moaned with pleasure.
“Join us,” she said, her eyes closed.
“No,” I replied.
Liz fell silent. I looked away from her because I knew what was coming next. It always came next. I found it disgusting, the way she satiated her needs on the void couch….and I remembered a time when we made love like real humans.
I walked out through the hydraulic door, not wanting to hear her sigh and gasp as she played on the couch with the others.
The corridors of the ship were empty. Everyone was fitted to a couch, enjoying what could only be thought of as group sex. The commanders and block commanders had forbidden true contact of the flesh unless approved beforehand. We were, after all, onboard a spaceship. We had finite space and resources. Population control was a must.
I walked through the quiet halls, past many, many living quarters. I knew they were all in the Void. It had become so popular.
I stopped at the arboretum entrance and looked inside. It was at the center of the ship, basically. I had heard that, on Earth, they had a city called “New York” that had a wooded park in the middle of it. That park was called “Central Park” and we had adapted that name for our arboretum.
I punched in my entrance code and a metallic voice said my name. “Harlan Kance,” it said, “entry approved.” I knew, somewhere in the vast computer, my entry had been logged and scrutinized.
The door slid open.
A gust of fresh air assaulted me. I stepped inside and started down the path, not noticing that someone had entered behind me. I heard a soft footstep, however, and turned.
It was a woman.
She put her finger to her lips. “Please,” she said. “Don’t raise your voice.” She pointed at the sensors nearby.
I nodded. I understood.
We walked into Central Park until we were certain the sensors could not hear us. “Who are you?” I asked.
“Kateline,” she said. “My name is Kateline.”
“Why aren’t you in the Void?”
“Why aren’t you?” she replied.
We stared at each other a moment and, for the first time in a long time, I smiled.
She smiled, too.
I took her hand and, together, we walked into the woods. The others could have the Void. We had something more real. We had found each other, two outcasts among many outcasts, at last.
by submission | Aug 23, 2014 | Story |
Author : Colm Scully
When Henry hit the curb he knew it was over. The sun had got in his eyes. He had bent his left wish bone badly and knew he could not walk straight. He called the recovery service and they lifted him into the van. He tried to keep upbeat, chatting with the driver as they headed for the depot.
He sat there in an armchair surrounded by old robots, all de-energised. He saw the look in his owner’s eyes as she talked to the engineer. He over-heard “no parts available” and “not much point”.
“We’ll be back tomorrow Henry. We’ll see you then”
He avoided her gaze, within twenty four hours the information would start draining from his memory banks.
He began to think back over his long life, his being switched on, the journey from the factory. He was a prototype, first in a long line of models, built to last. Before they cheapened the materials. That was back when robots were King, could do no wrong. He worked hard for all his owners, helping them with human life’s practicalities: childcare, car maintenance, adult education. He sniffled slightly. He now wished he’d been more careful, worn those sun glasses Margaret had given him.
She’d been good to him since the anti-revolution; the Advent of Sameness. Took good care of him while others were thrown on the scrap heap. He moved in his chair to ease the pain, reaching down and rubbing the human like skin across his leg. His ankle was skewed ninety degrees outwards. He looked around him, he was just an old machine. Gone out of production since the technology cap. No one cared for his kind any more. People lived as people now, happy with what they had, and Margaret had no money to repair him. Even if she could scrimp it together, he knew there was no way back.
He thought of all the changes that he had known in his life: Omni–science, Suicide Rights, The trips to Mars, Zero Warfare, The Cybernetic Bulge, and then the changes stopping change. It was strange he thought, as some one dimmed the lights,how the smallest event can alter everything. Like when parents were arrested for stealing sweets from their children’s party bags. It made all the humans stop and think, where were they going? Like hitting a curb at four miles an hour, that you always knew was there, your eyes blinded by the sun.
