by submission | Apr 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
A thin cloud of red dust trailed behind Orton’s motorcycle. I’m running out of time, he thought to himself as he rode across Cydonia Mensae. The temperature was already down to -40 degrees Celsius and continued steadily dropping. The sun would be setting in less than an hour and it wouldn’t be safe to be outside after dark. Even after almost two decades of economic malaise, political disintegration, and finally open warfare, Orton had a hard time believing how seriously the situation on Mars had deteriorated.
It hadn’t always been that way. After the Nanotech Revolution of the twenty-eighties, space travel finally became cheap, fast, and safe, and while habitats in Earth orbit and on the surface of the Moon had their appeal, Mars was the true frontier. The cycle from flags and footprints missions to destination for wealthy adventurers to scientific outposts to genuine communities had progressed quickly, catalyzed by inexpensive and reliable space technology and the promise of a new beginning.
Orton slowed his motorcycle to a crawl and looked behind him. No sign of pursuit, he thought. A sensor sweep would have been much more accurate and comprehensive, of course. But a scan would have given his position away instantly. Even with the motorcycle’s stealth devices operating, it was a miracle he had eluded detection this long. He could just make out the dome in the distance. It would be so easy to simply upload the information he was carrying. It would be equally easy for any number of rival factions to intercept, decode, and quickly act on that information. He thumbed the accelerator and made for the dome.
A United Mars, he thought as he cruised across the rough terrain. That had been the dream. A global republic? A confederation of domed city-states? A true and literal democracy? It was strange how the past’s vision of the future seemed so unforgivably naive. As the sun descended deeper into the horizon, Orton noticed tiny flashes in the distance. In the thin Martian air, nearly microscopic machines were surveilling and, when opportunity presented itself, attacking. All the major factions had fleets of these innumerable, artificially intelligent drones. The flashes were drones being destroyed by a rival’s countermeasures. This microscopic, airborne war raged round the clock, as the tiny, flying robots fought, were destroyed, and were replaced minutes later by new models with revisions and upgrades based on their predecessors’ failure. It was this front in the vast, internecine conflict and not the engagements of men and their bulky vehicles and weapons, some argued, that would determine the outcome of the war.
Arriving at last, Orton piloted the motorcycle into the dome’s narrow airlock and breathed a sigh of relief. In ten minutes time, the data he carried would be scrutinized by military intelligence. Would it make any difference? Time would tell. The interior door of the airlock opened with a click. Orton stepped through. The atmosphere was only marginally different from that outside the dome. He took off his respirator and inhaled tenuous air into lungs engineered to extract oxygen directly from carbon dioxide. He withdrew the translucent, nictitating membrane from his eyes and hurried to deliver his report.
by submission | Apr 13, 2012 | Story |
Author : Drew Dunlap
My phone would vibrate approximately every fifteen to twenty minutes.
“Hey bro, there’s a celestial event going on,” said a friend. “Can you see it from your place?” asked another. “Heaven’s Veil is tonight!!!!!!!” buzzed a text. You get the picture.
Even my mother called. She asked me the normal round of questions, and scolded me for not calling her. Usual stuff. But then she started into the news report from last night that mentioned the stars aligning. I rolled my eyes, but didn’t let it carry through my voice. I feigned interest and, after promising to meet her for breakfast in two days, hung up the phone.
Dotty walked into the room, sat on the floor and stared up at me.
“Not you, too,” I pleaded.
“No, she doesn’t care about the alignment, but I think it’s kind of cool.” The voice came from the doorway behind Dotty. Karen swung Dotty’s leash casually as she leaned against the frame. “Besides, she could do for a walk, and so could you.”
I raised my hands in surrender.
“Fine, fine. Dotty wins. I have been beaten into submission. I will go out with all the amateur astronomers, ancient astrologers and asinine alien academes. But I refuse to gawk at a bunch of dots in the sky.”
I smiled mischievously, but Karen knew I was mostly serious. As a child I read a lot of Poe, which led me to a lot of Lovecraft. H.P. struck a chord with me, one that reverberated through my entire philosophical and religious existence.
The more we ventured among the stars, the more we inhabited other planets and moons, the farther our reach extended – the more obvious it became to me how terribly insignificant we are. Space stations and taxi shuttles did not make the human race any more profound. We were nothing but a virus to the natural universe.
I sound like a real pisser, but really I am not. I have a good job, a lovely wife, great friends and a sweet dog. I enjoy every morning that I wake up and I smile at night as I close my eyes for sleep. Being a cynic does not mean I have to be an asshole.
I smile and pat Dotty’s head before putting on her collar.
“Just don’t believe the zealots predicting the end of the world today, sweety.”
We made our way up the winding trail behind our house. This path was not only quiet, far away from the hover-tunnels and mass transit shuttles, but at the top of the rise we should be able to avoid most of the lights from below. I knew Karen wanted to see the planetary alignment. The things you do for love.
“It really is very pretty,” she finally said as we reached the top. Despite my previous bravado, I looked up. I had to admit she was right.
“It has a kind of greenish glow to the whole thing,” I observed. “I didn’t really expect …”
The words froze in my mouth as I noted a swirling pattern to the glow around the planets and the moon. The ground shook briefly as I noticed the patterns draw closer to the Earth. I tried to speak again, but all of the air had left my lungs. Dotty squealed and exploded at my feet, a red lump on a leash. I refused to look at Karen for I could not bear my last memory to be like that of Dotty.
My theory about mankind’s insignificance came to fruition. At least I felt no pain.
by submission | Apr 12, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Dr. José Zhang gently rotated an 800 credit bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. The price of champagne had skyrocketed in the last several weeks in anticipation of the completion of Project Hermes. Zhang’s colleague, Dr. Ian Bartlett, looked at the champagne with a skeptical eye. “You know there’s a good chance this isn’t going to work, José? I mean, there was no practical way to do any real field test. Nothing works right the first time, you know?”
Zhang smiled and said, “‘Your royal Highness, members of the Academy, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is with great honor I accept the Nobel Prize in Physics for the first successful space fold drive engine test in history. But with all due humility I must point out that without the constant naysaying and discouragement of my fellow scientist here, this project would have been completed a lot sooner.’ What do you think?”
Bartlett tried to suppress a smile and failed. He inspected the champagne. “Alright, if this works, we celebrate. If it fails, we drown our sorrows. We’re covered either way.”
Bartlett took a seat beside Zhang in the mission control room and watched the two countdowns on the screen. The first countdown indicated the time for activation of the space fold drive. The number was already T-plus seven minutes. The drive had already turned on seven minutes ago. The second countdown was at T-minus sixty seconds. The latter countdown denoted the time for telemetry to reach mission control from the ship which was eight light-minutes from Earth.
The Hermes ship’s space fold engine had two major components. One half of the engine, Hermes I, was in the ship in orbit around the Sun. The other half, Hermes II, was 26 trillion miles away in orbit around Alpha Centauri B. It had taken most of 100 years for the robotic vessel containing half the drive to traverse over four light-years using a conventional ion drive propulsion system. Once there, it sent back a laser pulse confirming it had arrived and was intact. Traveling at the speed of light, the signal took just over four years to reach Earth. A command signal was then sent back to the probe in response instructing it to activate its half of the engine at a certain date and time, specifically, today at precisely 1600 hours Coordinated Universal Time.
The plan was for both components of the space fold engine to activate at the exact same moment. If the theory was correct, as long as the vessels were at least 3.827 light-years apart, at the precise instant of simultaneous activation, a fold in the fabric of space would occur for exactly one Planck time unit, roughly 10 to the negative 43 seconds. In that infinitesimal span of time, the two vessels would swap places.
Zhang picked up the champagne bottle, removed the foil from the cork, and started untwisting the restraint wire. He wanted to pop the cork just after the space fold maneuver took place.
“Ten…nine…eight…,” the mission control crowd chanted in unison. Zhang looked at Bartlett, the latter’s brow furrowed with worry. “Pessimist,” Zhang said with a smile as he worked on the champagne bottle’s cork.
“Zero!”
Mission control was suddenly filled with screams not of joy but of horror. The space fold had worked. The Hermes II ship was now in Earth’s solar system, as was Alpha Centauri B! The new orange-yellow sun looked like an angry cyclopean eye. Zhang’s hands started to tremble uncontrollably. The cork popped.
by submission | Apr 8, 2012 | Story |
Author : Greg Lowry
Waving his antennae in amused confusion, the Commander responded, “That is a preposterous demand. I don’t know where you strange, primitive humans got that ship, but my task force has you outnumbered both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our scientists have determined it will take at least a century for you to develop wormhole travel on your own. You’re even farther from developing anything like our energy beams for offense. In fact, you’re still using ion propulsion and lasers.” He rubbed his mid-leg segments together in derisive chortles. “You are our lawful prey and we will do what we want with your kind.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong”, the strange biped on his communicator’s screen replied, the corners of his eating orifice turning downward and the fibrous growths above his visual sensing organs bunching in the center. “You may control this area outside our solar system right now—probably until we do develop that wormhole system you have, but you will not do what you want with us. You have caused enough slaughter among our people and we will no longer allow it. I repeat. Surrender your task force to me, now.?
The Commander paused a moment in thought, his amusement sliding into annoyance. Surely this unnatural biped couldn’t be serious. It didn’t matter where his people had bought or stolen their ship—there was no way it could attack his task force and survive. The puny kilometer-wide sphere couldn’t house a wormhole drive, power generators, and serious weaponry. He allowed his antennae to straighten in severity. “There is no way your tiny ship can house a wormhole drive and enough weaponry to matter. I fail to see why I should do anything but destroy you.”
“Commander, I already told you that we haven’t developed a wormhole drive, yet. Your species had better examine its assumptions about us. You have only one of our minutes left before we attack. What is your decision?” The human asked.
“What do you mean, you have no wormhole drive? Then how did you get out here, beyond your solar system?” His amusement was returning. These humans might say anything. It was going to be entertaining until their destruction, after all. “The heliopause and bow shock around your solar system are impossible to survive and the thrust to push through the gravity waves is inconceivable. You would have to be able to be able to create nearly indestructible armor and generate nearly infinite power.” He rubbed his mid-leg segments together, chortling, again.
“Well,” said the human on the screen as the counter at its top ticked to zero, “you should have researched our species a bit more. While we haven’t figured out your wormhole drive, we’re pretty close on both of those.”
The Commander’s amusement metamorphosed into shock as his instruments detected immense energy readings and then overloaded as a blast of coherent electromagnetic energy bridged the distance between the human sphere and one of his own ships, burning through its armor and vaporizing it in milliseconds. Automated weaponry fired on the human ship immediately, but the powerful energy beams didn’t affect it at all. A sense of confusion and fear lashed the Commander’s brain—he hoped his species would be ready when the humans developed the wormhole drive—and then, to him, it no longer mattered.
by submission | Apr 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Keigan Ewing
It was too good to be true. As Sonny hovered above the city, all but weightless, he couldn?t believe such technology existed. The feeling was indescribable. He marvelled at the device, humbly glowing in his palm as it worked its magic. Magic. That?s essentially what it was, he could only fathom as to how it operated. He had theories of course, but no evidence to support any of them. It was possible that it somehow interacted with the local gravity field, reshaping it in a way that caused it to forget he was even there. Regardless of how it operated, he was enjoying the experience. He reflected on how it came in to his possession.
The man who gave it to him had not said a word about the device itself. Only that it was necessary to leave it here for the time being. Sonny had no idea what the man was talking about, but something about his tone was familiar and soothing, almost fatherly. This was clearly very important to him, and Sonny found himself unable to deny him. So he took the device and promised to hold on to it. He had no idea why he was holding it, or for how long he was supposed to hold it, but it seemed like the right thing to do. After a brief thanks, Sonny could have sworn the man flat-out disappeared. Gone in the time it took him to blink.
As Sonny had started to walk home he noticed a slight warmth coming from the device now stowed in his jacket pocket. Taking it out to investigate, he noted a faint blue-green glow about it. He turned the small metallic object over in his hands. It was very subtle, and he wasn?t sure if he hadn?t noticed it before, or if it was a new development. Cupping the device in his hands, he suddenly felt the ground fall away beneath him. Panicked, at first, he considered throwing the small object as far from himself as possible. He quickly realized though, that he could control the velocity of his ascent. After gaining control over his flight he settled in at a nice viewing altitude above the city.
Sonny snapped backed to reality. Only now did he notice that he wasn?t the only person airborne tonight. There were a few others dotted around the nightscape. He could feel them more than see them, and he knew this was not the only area where this was happening. Sonny began to feel uneasy, only now questioning why this was happening. The giddy feeling of flying had worn off, and was slowly being replaced with one of dread. Without warning, the entire city went dark. In the distance he could see the lights of nearby towns going dark as well, one by one. The only light left came from the few people hovering above the infinite blackness. Sonny looked up, it seemed even the stars had gone dark. Still looking up, he saw the lights come on, and now understood where all the stars had gone.
