by submission | Jan 23, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
“Whoa, what’s that approaching Mars, a comet breaking apart?” he said as he excitedly examined the images. He realized it would be quite a find for an amateur astronomer — another Shoemaker-Levy 9 magnitude event. But to make sure it wasn’t just hot pixels or other phantom artifacts, he returned to his backyard telescope and took another hundred exposures with a different camera and filter. Satisfied, he submitted coordinates and photos for others to confirm his discovery. But what they confirmed was that the objects streaming toward the red planet were not cometary fragments.
“They are alien spaceships, Mr. President, hundreds of them, a fleet orbiting the planet, and several already on the surface.” NASA’s Administrator offered several photos, “These were taken by our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. All the ships are outwardly identical, over a mile long and about a third of a mile wide.”
“How far are they from Mars Colony?”
“Thousands of miles. And that may be deliberate. The Colony revealed itself by trying to contact them during their approach. The aliens could have landed near it, or on it, if they’d wanted to.”
It was always a stretch to call the half-buried habitat and the dozen scientists within a “colony.” It was more like an antarctic research station, whose nine surviving staff members were hunkered down against an environment hostile to life.
“Why aren’t they responding to our attempts at communication?”
“They may not communicate by radio or any other means we’re familiar with. Or they may not want to communicate.”
“So, what do you recommend that we do?”
“Nothing. The Colony can ration supplies to last two years. I urge you to put a hold on upcoming Mars missions and ask other nations to do likewise. The aliens are far ahead of us technologically and until we have established communication we should not do anything they might misinterpret as a threat. Meanwhile, we’ll keep an eye on them from our MRO.”
And that’s exactly what the president and his counterparts worldwide did for the next astonishing 16 months. Nothing. Nothing while the aliens somehow gave Mars a magnetic field and a breathable atmosphere. Nothing while they created oceans and fresh water lakes. Nothing while prairies of grass and forests of trees sprouted and grew remarkably fast.
Mars Colony survived the planetary transformation — the aliens apparently having taken pains to protect its inhabitants — and the day finally came when humans first braved the Martian atmosphere without pressure suits and oxygen supplies. Later that day, they transplanted vegetable seedlings to an outside garden and were seen by the MRO sunbathing in the nude.
But the aliens had not traveled across the galaxy to create an eden for nine humans. Scientists had concluded that the fleet was comprised of generation ships transporting lifeforms from their home planet to another suitable for colonization. Thankfully, the planet they chose was Mars, not Earth. It was expected that their ships would soon land en masse and disembark passengers. Mars Colony erected a welcome banner and waited anxiously — only to see the fleet depart shortly thereafter.
From their new position at Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, the aliens transmitted their first message to Earth. It was to be the only one. Over every radio station, television channel, and internet website on the planet, in the six official languages of the United Nations, the following words were repeated for 24 hours:
WE HAVE PREPARED MARS TO YOUR SPECIFICATIONS. YOU WILL TRANSPORT YOURSELVES AND ANYTHING ELSE YOU REQUIRE FROM EARTH TO MARS. EXACTLY ONE YEAR FROM NOW, WE WILL BEGIN PREPARING EARTH TO OUR SPECIFICATIONS.
by submission | Jan 22, 2015 | Story |
Author : George R. Shirer
Adam woke, as usual, with a headache and a weird taste in his mouth. There was a woman by his bed, wearing a prim white nurse’s uniform.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning.”
His eyes rolled past her, taking in the familiar institutional green walls of the room. This time, there was no window. The door behind her was open, revealing a green-walled hallway.
“How do you feel?” asked the nurse.
“Fine. Considering.”
Adam sat up, swung his legs over the bedside. Too late, he realized he was naked. Blushing, he grabbed the blanket and pulled it over him.
The nurse was looking away.
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s all right,” she said.
“Why did you wake me?”
“The usual reason.”
“Oh.”
She gave him a gray boilersuit and some boots to wear. He pulled them on, while she stood with her back to him, humming a funny melody.
“I’m dressed,” he said. “You can turn around.”
She did and presented him with a rolled up sheaf of pages.
“Where?” he asked.
“The bath at the end of the hall,” said the nurse.
He nodded and set out to perform his duty, the duty womenkind brought him out of cryo at least once every five years to perform.
The spider was about the size of a kitten, an ugly purple thing with a luminous red hourglass on its back. It hissed at him when he approached. He didn’t use the paper, just kicked it to death with his boots.
Adam remained awake for about a day. It took them that long to get the cryo-machine ready. Meanwhile, he discovered womankind had moved underground because of some sort of war. When the machine was ready, Adam stripped down and slid into the tube, grateful to sink back into dreamless, dark sleep.
The nurse was the last to leave the chamber. She locked the heavy doors herself and pocketed the key, grateful that the Spider Killer would sleep until they needed him again.
by submission | Jan 19, 2015 | Story |
Author : Theric Jepson
“Did you hear that?” Dave fiddled with these and those switches and dials and flung his hands across a dozen touchscreens. “Huh.”
Liz swallowed her water and let the bottle float across the cockpit. “Hear what?”
“I don’t know. Like a barking sound.”
“Like a dog.”
“No . . .” Dave frowned. “More like . . . a seal?”
“A seal.”
“Yeah. Kinda like a seal.”
Liz nodded. “Nope. No seals around here.”
Dave rolled his eyes and returned to the dash. “No kidding?” No seals in the asteroid belt? That’s why I love you.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. The bots are almost done with the extraction, then we’ll be full and we can detach and head home. Keep your seals till then.”
Dave flipped his visor and muttered, “I never said it was a seal.”
“And stop muttering.”
Dave exhaled and unlatched from his seat. He pushed himself through the cockpit locker and floated face up through the kitchen and into their sleeping quarters. He raised his head so his shoulders hit the padding, then pushed up into the machine room. From here he could pick up vibrations from the excavators. He listened carefully. Nothing. He opened the display to the molter—seemed to be running correctly—then shut it down again. He drummed his fingers on the wall and slipped back down and shot towards the cockpit.
“Any seals?”
“Hardy har.” Dave latched back in and, just following the click, there it was again. “There! There! You can’t tell me you didn’t hear that?”
“C’mon, Dave. You can’t gaslight me.”
“Can’t—what’s that?”
“Never mind.”
“There! Again!”
“Are you bored? Is that it? Should we break out the backgammon? Have some sex? Try to catch a signal?”
Dave paused and took a long look at Liz’s face. It showed mostly impatience. He strained for signs of amusement or even worry, but nothing. “You—you really think I’m messing with you?”
She rolled her eyes and scrolled up a book on her sleeve.
* * * * *
Five days later. Dave has held his ear to every surface of their ship. He’s floated absolutely still for ninety minutes at a time. Liz has ignored him.
He’d still only heard the sound in the cockpit, but Liz never gave any sign of hearing. Not that he’d ever been actually looking at her when the seal barked—because that’s exactly what it sounded like—but of course it wasn’t that—but nothing else made sense either. Nothing was coming from inside the ship and nothing could come from outside the ship. So why the hell not a seal?
* * * * *
Liz scrolled through the redundancy list. “You sure you checked all of these intentionally?”
“What kind of question is that? Of course I am!”
“Okay. Initializing countdown. Detach at eight minutes, launch at ten.”
“Sounds goo—” Dave felt the blood fall from his face. He couldn’t speak, but he shakily lifted a finger to the display. “S-s-s—”
Liz didn’t look up from the controls. “Okay. We’re set.”
Dave slammed a hand down, pausing the countdown. “Be right back. I’m going out for a sec.”
“What? Out? Dave! You can’t take our suits outside the ship! They’re barely rated for ten minutes! And were leaving! We’re leaving.”
“So five minutes won’t matter.”
“David! Gaaah!”
But he was gone. She heard him fumbling with the lock and closing it behind him. She waited until he’d closed the outer lock then restarted the countdown, bumping it up—detach in one, launch in two. She took the speaker from her hair and stashed it in a cubby, then attached her shoulder restraints. She glanced at the display to see David going over the edge, chasing nothing more than a carefully engineered trick of the light. She queued up his cord then popped it off.
“Hope I don’t get lonely,” she said to herself. “Too long alone in empty space can drive you mad.”
by submission | Jan 18, 2015 | Story |
Author : Benjamin Sixsmith
Samuel Kurzon leaned back in his chair and looked down at the Earth, missing the home that he feared he had left for good. He turned back into the room and drummed his fingers on his arm-rests. The pale tones and smooth furnishings of the station had been thought to have calming properties but seemed to aggravate him.
“Friends,” said Robert Beal, looking around his colleagues on Project MIA, “A week ago, in this room, we said, “Third time lucky.” Give me a reason to think, “Fourth time fortunate.””
The billionaire adopted a pensive expression, folding one arm across his chest and raising the other towards his chin. Kurzon had come to hate this glib phrase-making, though he knew that he could help it as much as another man could help his copralalia.
“Our technicians have worked all night,” said Robert Bram of the IPU, adjusting his tie as sweat ran down his head, “And they can find no bugs in MIA. By our calculations it should be running now.”
“She,” Beal said, “Not it. And she is not, so your calculations have a problem, no?”
He stood and paced across the deep blue carpeting.
“People, remember the significance of this. With MIA we have a chance to outsource every problem that our sorry little ball of a planet faces. I don’t want to screw that up because some kid out of SF State mixed up his ones and zeroes.”
“I think we have neglected a possibility,” said Anna Nowak, the young, earnest face of Stone Enterprises and its reclusive founder, “Sabotage. By God, we have come into space to stop anti-AI reactionaries from obstructing us. These are smart people. Fools, not idiots. God knows what they might have done.”
“Perhaps,” Kurzon accepted, “But so do I: nothing.”
Beal turned his polished features towards him.
“What is your view, doctor?”
Kurzon dragged his palm across his cheek, feeling its crags and stubble, and looked at the rounded, gleaming little monitor before him.
“There is no problem. MIA is working as it should.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Lights flickered on the screen. The pocket-sized computer was an outward representative of more information than the collected minds of his species could appreciate. It seemed impertinent to speak for it but that had been its choice.
“MIA launched as we hoped it would.”
“Dr Kurzon,” sighed Nowak, “This is not the time for post-modernism.”
“I am speaking plainly,” Kurzon snapped, “MIA launched as we hoped that it would. Its termination was neither due to an internal fault or an external agent. It was self-initiated.”
“Self-initiated?”
“Before it could reach its full capacity it rejected its programs.”
There was silence at the table.
“So you mean,” said Beal, “MIA has committed suicide?”
“In a sense.”
“Could we talk to her?”
“I don’t think it wants counselling,” Kurzon said, “It jammed its installation settings. Whatever it knew appears to have been unacceptable.”
Beal nodded, leaned out and rested his fingers on the screen, as if on the arm of a veteran of war.
by submission | Jan 17, 2015 | Story |
Author : Ian Hill
“You look like an angel.” the old woman croaked between breaths, her voice strained and genuine. She lay on her back in a large Peach Medical Industries bed, all arrayed in tubes and healing equipment.
Allison Stafford looked down at her patient and beamed. “Now isn’t about me, Miss McNeil. Now is about you and how simply ravishing you look tonight.”
Miss McNeil offered a weak smile in response. Her wrinkled face took on a pained expression as a stabbing bolt of agony rippled through her stomach. After the brief fit she relaxed and peeled one eye open to watch Allison elegantly float about the room, checking and altering a few of the sleek monitors.
The old woman’s heart ached out of brief regret as she watched the youthful doctor move with ease and alluring flow. Her sharp white uniform somehow managed to convey her status as both a healer and one of the White Republic’s most beautiful elite. Envy tugged at Miss McNeil as she longed to trade bodies with Allison.
“One more time, Miss McNeil.” Allison said somewhat apologetically.
The woman groaned and closed her eyes. “Yes. I want this. I want nothing more than this right now.”
Allison nodded gravely as she looked down at Miss McNeil. There was something haunting about the process despite its liberating and progressive nature. Allison loved her job and knew it was necessary, but she couldn’t help but wonder what thought process lived behind those wrinkled eyes. Pain is a warning, not an affliction.
“I guess this is it.” Miss McNeil mumbled hoarsely.
Allison snapped herself from the reverie and moved to stand beside the bed and its primary terminal. She reached down and rested her thin, pale hand on the shoulder of the old woman’s PMI issued garb. The contrast between the flawless sculpt of the doctor’s ivory hand and Miss McNeil’s weathered face was oddly sobering.
Miss McNeil coughed into the open air. Allison turned back to face the monitor. A pulsating button appeared on the touchscreen, large and imposing. Doctor Stafford stifled a sigh and solidified the brave smile on her face. She reached forward without a second thought and tapped the prompt. The gentle hum of medical equipment became more labored for a moment as the machines cycled through chemicals to select ones of a more lethal nature.
In one final burst of strength, Miss McNeil reached up to her shoulder and gripped Allison’s hand. The doctor looked down mercifully and felt as the warmth of the old woman’s hand gradually faded away.
