by submission | Nov 9, 2013 | Story |
Author : Glen Luke Flanagan
“These monstrosities are a threat to national security, to morality as we know it, and to our very sense of self.”
Senator Ethan Calhoun punctuated the last statement by pounding his fist onto the podium. The fiery Texan was the face of the anti-cloning movement in America, and he delivered his message with the deftness of a politician and the fervor of a charismatic minister.
He stepped down from the podium, waved to the cheering crowd, and let his ever-present team of doctors lead him away. It was no secret that despite his vigor, Mr. Calhoun was not a healthy man.
“Sir, you shouldn’t work yourself up like that,” a young, red-haired, white-coated physician cautioned.
The senator coughed into a clenched fist.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Cameron, sir.” The doctor bustled about the senator, hooking him up to various machines and pausing to glance at the readings.
“Cameron.” The senator laid a hand on the doctor’s arm and held him momentarily still, looking into his eyes intently. “I had a son just about your age. Do you know what happened to him?”
The doctor was silent. Everyone in Calhoun’s entourage knew what had happened to the senator’s son.
“The Russians killed him, Cameron, and put a monster in his place. A monster that looked just like him, that lived in my house and broke bread with me each morning. I only found out about it when the damn thing broke down into a puddle of piss and water – unstable DNA, the scientists tell me.”
Calhoun released his hold on the doctor’s sleeve, but still held him with his eyes.
“So I’ll work myself up all I damn please,” he finished.
Later, the young man called Cameron showed his data to another doctor, with piercing gray eyes and silvering hair.
“It’s not good,” he said. “He’s wearing himself out, breaking down more quickly than we anticipated.”
The senior doctor thumbed through the pages, nodding in frustrated agreement.
“We’ll have to whip up a replacement ahead of schedule,” she said.
Thomas Calhoun turned restlessly in bed, trying to nap. The doctors insisted it was good for his health, but he was happiest when active. The silken sheets chafed, and the expansive hotel suite suffocated him. He was about to give up the fight and go in search of a bar when the door opened and a team of nervous lab techs trundled in another of the gadgets he so despised. The silver-haired doctor followed, giving directions.
The senator growled at the lab techs, then sat up and wrapped a sheet around himself.
“Clarice,” he grunted. “You could give a fellow warning. I’m not decent.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, Thomas.” Her tone was clipped. “We just need to run a few scans.”
She waved at the technicians, who hurried to attach electrodes to Calhoun’s forehead. He gave in with a resigned snort, and lay back down. At some point during the process, he drifted into a deep slumber.
Still later, in an improvised laboratory, Clarice MacKale watched over what appeared to be an oversized fish tank. Inside the tank, an imperfect replica of the Texas senator was being pumped full of nutrients and sculpted into an ever-more-human shape.
MacKale punched a number into her cell phone, and spoke furtively.
“We’ve had to make another replacement, but we’re still on track. The senator’s campaign will continue as planned.”
by submission | Nov 7, 2013 | Story |
Author : Thomas Keene
Every metal surface inside the cabin sang, and the readouts flickered. A steady, pure note that Charles called “the Banshee”. Evan clenched the crew telemetry readout so hard that waves of color flowed across the display. He was the only crew member with a heartbeat.
“‘Brown dwarf’ my ass.” Evan looked over the magnetic readings one more time, and scribbled them on a notepad. Three times stronger than an hour ago, before Yuri and Charles had gone on EVA to fix the external sensors.
The metallic ringing increased in pitch, and two more monitors in the cabin flashed error messages before shorting out. Evan shook himself. “I’m already dead. No propulsion, no computers, flying blind, gonna crash into a star at one-third cee in a week…”
Evan pulled himself along the rungs to the canteen. He drunk a liter of sugar-water as he stared out the port at the slow-moving bluish starfield. After a few minutes his breathing slowed, and he wiped the sweat from his face with a towel.
The ringing sound dropped half a note and Evan flinched. “Maybe… Maybe the magnetic anomaly is blocking their telemetry signals. They could be alive. I’ll just duck out for a quick look.”
Evan pulled himself to the back of the crew compartment. He stared wide-eyed at the airlock as he stroked the fabric of one of the pressure suits. “Wish I could use a hardsuit, but nobody’s here to close it. Hell… Dead, dead…” He suited up and started the cycle.
The ringing became quieter and quieter. Evan could feel a small buzzing in the joints of his suit, but if he breathed deeply he could barely hear it. He sat in the open airlock for fifteen minutes, staring at the slowly-shifting starfield that trailed behind the ship with his arms pressed against the walls of the chamber.
Then the ringing became a sharp whine inside his helmet. Evan curled up and gasped, then flailed and grabbed a rung at the edge of the airlock. He took a deep breath and pulled himself through the door.
To his left was the fore of the ship, with the back of the ablative shield sitting as a large, dark pentagon with reddish stars slowing spreading from its edges. He carefully inspected it for holes, some sign of damage, but it was perfectly intact. Then he looked to his right and threw up in his helmet.
It was Yuri, his hardsuit’s steel-faced helmet ripped clean off. His face was pale and still. One side of his body was charred black, and white vapors leaked from it. His intact arm was held stiff, close to his face. Evan choked and coughed as he jerked his head around, and the vomit eventually moved to the side.
Evan turned back to the airlock. He pulled himself forward on the rung, but met resistance. He pushed on the rung to look behind him, and a bright white glow filled his vision.
Her upper body was chalk-white and slender. She had human clear-blue eyes, Evan stared into them with his mouth agape. Her tail was a thousand-meter long strand of twisting rarefied plasma curled around half the length of the ship.
She floated closer and took him by the shoulders, then kissed his visor. It bubbled apart under the heat and his suit depressurized in an instant. He screamed soundlessly as she caressed his face, his cheeks baking in the solar wind as he drowned beneath the starry waves of the void.
by submission | Nov 6, 2013 | Story |
Author : Scott Shipp
Ian was cornered. He had run straight into a dead end alley. Right on his heels were two cyborg cops, and he had the money credits hacked from the bank all over his data stores. There was no escape. Lucky for him, he was augmented with an eye implant that drew his computer screen directly onto his retina. His brain had both a processor and an organic hard drive jacked directly into the basal ganglia. He checked his computer readout. No. He wasn’t going anywhere. The only way out was to climb up the walls. And they were smooth as silk.
Cursing, he opened the shutdown script. The shutdown script would encrypt and backup the data to a cloud drive, including his entire mind, then it would wipe everything, even his brain, and this would cause him to die.
He ran it.
“Stop right there!”
“Freeze!”
Both cyborg cops bore down on him, ready to scan his mind and prove his guilt. Then, death.
#
He awoke. Friends had told him rumors of what it was like, but he wasn’t prepared for this. Although there was no more body to care for, his mind, now digitized, still felt the existence of an entire phantom body, itching and burning and twitching. He screamed in agony, though there was no sound.
He closed his phantom eyes and tried to focus.
“Must get the credits to Amy, must get the credits to Amy.”
Through the burning, he tried to interface with the system around him. None of it made sense. Everything was unusual. He requested memory, and he saw purple. He tried to ask what data stores were available, and he tasted pineapple and smelled burning rubber.
“I need to learn this new language.”
But he was already exhausted. He slept.
Weeks and months went by. He learned the meaning of purple, and pineapple, and each sensation only by experimenting with each request. He feared accidentally closing his program, or, worse, deleting himself. Once, after he had felt something like vibrations in teeth, a sea of digits swam up before him. He learned it was a man page, a help file in the system that described one of the commands available. It took awhile to learn how to read the man files, but once he did, it was a huge leap forward.
Months more flew by. He learned that he was inside a web server. It was part of a web hosting company. He started to gain more confidence, learning more about each interface. He learned new protocols. He pinged the network. He spoke the language of routers and switches.
And one day he reached the outside world.
#
Amy sighed, pouring her tea and holding back her tears. The grief was still too much to bear.
“Oh, Ian,” she said to his picture on the wall. “It wasn’t worth it.”
She felt the familiar ache behind her eyes and in her heart and clamped down on it. No use crying any more, was there? Nothing could bring him back.
Her phone beeped. She took it out and looked at the text message.
“Deposit notification: 80,000,000 credits.”
Her eyes grew wide. She checked her bank account. Indeed, it was there. Was it Ian? She smiled a little. He must have somehow scheduled the money to be deposited before he died.
Her phone beeped again. She looked at it. The mug went tumbling across the floor, the phone followed. Tea splattered out.
On the phone, it said simply: “I’m alive.”
“I’m coming.”
by submission | Nov 3, 2013 | Story |
Author : Dina Leacock
I sat at the table for two and waited for my date to arrive.
We’d been emailing since we first “met” on “Find-True-Love.com and now we were finally going to meet. Taking the mirror from my purse I nervously adjusted my face.
Would he like me? Would I like him? Does he really look as good as the pictures he posted? How was I going to tell him my little secret. I was worried it would be the deal breaker and I knew, just knew, Jeremy was my real deal. I was in love.
I watched people enter the café and studied each one. None were right, and then there he was! Tall, dark, handsome. He looked around and then our eyes locked. He smiled, a devil-may-care, wolfish grin and my heart melted.
He rushed over to my table. “Luna Marie,” he said, reaching out and grasping my hands.
“Jeremy!” I replied and blushed.
We sat and both ordered cappuccinos and lemon cake, then laughed because our tastes were so perfectly matched. Then his smile faded. He looked at me with such a serious expression. “I am so excited to finally meet you, Luna Marie. I’ve been dying to see you since that first e-date. It’s hard to believe that we could be in love like this for three months and yet have never met face to face.”
I remembered Mama’s warning about computer dating, about the need to be with our own kind was more important than love, and I frowned realizing how mistaken she was.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked in alarm. “Did I say something wrong?”
I shook my head and smiled. “Oh no, nothing’s wrong. Jeremy, you and I, we are soul mates. I can feel it. Our lives are going to be perfect!”
Now he frowned, “Luna Marie, I haven’t been totally honest with you. From the moment I met you, I fell in love and I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t.”
His frown deepened and his grey eyes turned a stormy charcoal. “No don’t be so sure, I lied to you, lied by omission, I have a secret, one I fear will tear us apart.”
My smile froze and I suddenly felt scared. What could possibly be so bad, I wondered and remembered that I too harbored a secret, one possibly more horrific than his. “I’m sure it will be all right, Darling.” I assure him through trembling lips. “Tell me.”
He lowered his gaze, but I saw the pain in his eyes just as he broke our stare. “Luna Marie, please, I beg of you, forgive me but… but I’m a werewolf!”
I laughed and clapped my hands together in delight.
He looked up at me, puzzlement mixing with the pain in his gaze.
“Oh Jeremy, this is perfect. I knew we were destined to be together forever, because, you see, I lied by omission as well. I’m actually an alien to this world and, conveniently, my home planet doesn’t have a moon, full or otherwise!”
by submission | Nov 2, 2013 | Story |
Author : Richard Halcomb
Life Itself…
The electrostatic bubble crackled to life around the travellers; two scientists, a politician and a pair of media photographers. Dr. Tim Bilcks, Team Leader of Project Tempus, held the controls of the Temporal Transport Platform, as the sphere of energy surrounded them. “My friends, we are making possibly the most astounding journey in human history; to the birth of Life on Earth itself!”
“Most previous time experiments failed to grasp that ANY Time Engine needs to be able to accurately navigate in the traditional three dimensions, as well as in the temporal fourth dimension. Destinations are constantly in a state of movement through time, and failure to consider this aspect cost us many great, pioneering minds.” Dr. Bilcks paused, to make sure that his genius was understood. “This device, the T.T.P., incorporates a navigational computer which ensures that you land on the coordinates of your destination, at the temporal coordinates of your choice. We also have a terrain scanner, to avoid appearing inside a rock, or a tree!”
“All very good, Doctor. How long will this take?” Science Magister Tompkins had an important meeting planned, with a blonde reporter of questionable morals. He had worn his best kilt suit for this journey, and hoped to be rid of it by 2pm.
“Technically, we won’t be gone at all. We arrive back a nanosecond after we leave. It’s all a part of the genius of the…”
“Excellent!” Magister Tomkins interrupted, “The beginning of life itself! I can’t wait to breathe the Ancient air!” Or, he thought to himself, to smell the cologne of that reporter, whose name he had momentarily forgotten. Steve? Sven? Something with an S…
“Ah, well… the air of the time that we are visiting would be highly toxic to our evolved lungs! My assistant will give you one of these filters to inhale.”
Bilcks’ long suffering assistant Penny Worthington handed out small, black marbles. “Once this lodges in your throat, it will filter out the toxins, and balance the remaining gases, to give you the air that you need.” she explained. Dutifully, the marbles were inhaled, feeling unnatural as they descended towards the trachea. Dr. Bilcks deftly flicked the transit switch; the T.T.P. crackled a crescendo, and flicked out of existence.
For the travellers, all they saw was a blur. Then their new reality solidified around them, the crackling subsiding. They had arrived. Primal Earth was strangely beautiful. Water covered most of the view around the rocky outcrop where the T.T.P had landed. Sol, Earth’s sun, was a deeper orange in this time, and the rocks reflected it as a red hue. The Magister admitted to himself that it had been worth the trip. He inhaled deeply, as the photographers stepped out to document the moment.
“Damn,” Magister Tomkins beamed, “I was saving this for later, but this seems much more auspicious!” He took the cigar and lighter from his sporran, inhaled deeply, and lit up.
The mainly methane proto-atmosphere flared around the Magister. None of them had time to feel a thing. The T.T.P. was torn apart by the force of the explosion, and the five temporal travellers were ripped into millions of their composite pieces.
Quiet resumed, Earth’s natural soundtrack. In the surrounding puddles, the small carbon-based molecules scattered around started to change. They had a very long journey ahead of them.
