by submission | Aug 5, 2011 | Story |
Author : Andrew Bale
Survey Ship Aldrin drifted softly through space, main jets silent while the steering and attitude thrusters pushed it gently through a seemingly empty patch of space. Weeks spent surveying an assigned sector rimward of Epsilon Eridani had come down to this. The extended antennas and magnetic plates that made the Aldrin look like a cosmic hedgehog steadfastly ignored the few specks of matter in the interstellar medium, instead measuring the local permittivity and permeability. They had followed the gradient away from the star, hunting for that elusive and otherwise invisible spot where the two tensors assumed three-dimensional minima.
Survey Pilot Jack Nguyen ran one more material proximity scan before turning the gain on his controls down to their minimum setting. So adjusted, he would be able to maneuver the ship as delicately as a neurosurgeon’s scalpel, but would be unable to quickly move the ship if some bit of unseen space debris tried to turn them into scrap. He kept on gently juking and turning the ship until his co-pilot and sensor operator finally gave him the thumbs up. He pulled the ship ten meters “up”, let the ship go deadstick, and hit the intercom.
“Howie – we’re here. Load Fred.”
Below, Survey Assistant 2nd Class Howard Green hoisted a heavily sedated pig through a miniature airlock into the survey pod, cursing again the guidance counselor who had failed to mention animal husbandry as being part of the job description. Placed, secured, connected to life support, and wired in every way imaginable, Fred the pig slept on as Howie closed and dogged the pod and airlock doors.
“All right Cap, he’s in.”
Jack glanced momentarily towards the sensor operator.
“Kat, she’s all yours. Find us a good one.”
“Yes sir!”
Survey Scientist Katya Chang turned away from her commander and occasional lover (space being essentially dull, and he possessing the highly attractive trait of not smelling like pig), and activated the controls that focused six terahertz lasers onto the previously identified point of space. After twenty minutes, her sensors begin to flicker with uncertainty.
“We’ve got something. Let’s see what.”
She cut the beams, opened the bay door, and pushed the pig-filled survey pod towards the focus on the robotic arm. As the pod neared the spot the arm released it, and it drifted onwards, connected only by the sensor tether, until it began to blur and fade away.
“We might… well that’s… ew. Retracting.”
The tether reeled back in, drawing the slowly reappearing pod back towards the arm and the ship. Kat turned to Jack.
“Cataloging universe … 5619,uninhabitable. Mu and epsilon at 0.85 and 0.13 relative, other constants still calculating. No masses nearby, but a lot of gas. The background radiation is strange – I think it’s electrogravitic here.”
“How’d Fred do?”
“Well, he woke up on schedule, right as he went through. He oinked and squealed for about two minutes, then apparently gained the power of speech and started spouting some gibberish about trolls. You ever hear of that happening before?”
“No, but I know Howie reads out loud down there. That might be worth something on its own. Weird. I’m guessing he died after that?”
“Yep, pretty messily. Got hot in there at the end.”
“Howie, do you have the pod? And how many pigs do we have left?”
“Yes sir, I’ve got it. Three more pigs if you want to keep looking.”
“Great. Try to clean up the pod, I’ll find us a new vector.”
“Yes sir.”
“Howie, are you eating something?”
“No sir.”
“Any good?”
“Yes sir.”
“All right, save me some bacon.”
“Yes sir.”
by submission | Aug 4, 2011 | Story |
Author : Michael Iverson
He was still seizing when the light hit his eyes. His head was pounding as he squeezed them shut, but it still tore into him, bright as the sun. His body was convulsing and his arms were trembling as he tried to hold onto himself. He wanted to lift his hands up and shield his eyes, but he was afraid he’d lose his grip and fall off into nothing. All he could see was white, impossible white, the light taking over his entire body, creeping into his soul. His headache faded, the shaking stopped, and he opened his eyes.
Walter was at a dinner party. He was naked. “Do you want some clothes?” An older gentleman with large eyebrows placed his hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to wear anything, but most people prefer it.” The man smiled.
“This is just like life,” Walter said. He looked around at all the people talking, laughing, and dressed for all occasions.
“It’s a little better, I think.” The old man breathed deeply. “Heaven. Like life, but slightly better. How about those clothes?”
Walter followed him to the closet, and accepted the faded jeans with a nod. He put them on and found them just a little big. “Thank you. What’s your name?”
The old man held out a hand, which Walter accepted. “Frank Cohen, it’s a pleasure. Yourself?”
“Walter,” he said.
“So how’d it happen, son?”
Walter looked back at the old man.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking. Some newcomers can be sensitive about it, but after you’ve been here a while it’s just like talking about the weather.”
Walter glanced around. It was a beautiful house, with a light sage carpet and eggshell walls. There were probably fifty people here. He turned back to Frank. “It’s complicated. It took years.”
Frank frowned and nodded his head. “Cancer, my boy? It got my wife, Cherry, too. A few years after me. You’ll meet Cherry, she’s around here somewhere.”
Walter nodded, and Frank went on. “I had a heart attack in the garage, about a week after Erin’s graduation. Erin’s my granddaughter, of course. Must have been ten years ago, now. Maybe longer. A lot of us lose track.”
Walter glanced at the clock and smiled. “I can understand that. How long have I been here?”
Frank raised his eyebrows. “Five minutes, probably. Not much longer.” He laughed, “You’ve got a long time ahead of you. Would you like to meet Cherry?”
“I’d love to meet Cherry, Frank, but I think it’s going to have to wait until later.”
“Of course, my boy. Just wait right there, I’ll grab you a beer.”
Walter looked at the clock. “No, Frank. I’m sorry. It’s just about five minutes. I’ll be back here later. I’ll look for you.”
The ground erupted into light and collapsed beneath him. He hugged his knees to his chest and shut his eyes. The pounding in his head returned, he felt it throbbing against his eyes. He thought about Frank, and then he was sitting down.
He was in the laboratory. His assistant was holding his wrist, counting his pulse. He took a deep breath and smiled at her. She cleared her throat. “Walter? You were out for five minutes. Did it work? How was it?”
He let his head fall back against the machine. “It worked. Just how we imagined it.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe a little better.”
by submission | Aug 3, 2011 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson
“We’re sorry but there’s no other way Mr. Dunbar. It’s a very rare and inoperable cancer. We absolutely must replicate you if you’re to see your children grow and have children of their own one day.”
“Yes, yes, I know. You can stop saying it. I just hate the thought of this whole duplicating business. Frankly, it scares the daylights out of me.”
“Even more than dying of cancer?”
I pause and think for a moment and then answer earnestly. “…Almost.”
But in the end I have no choice. The nonstop tears from my wife and children are enough, plus I am fortunate enough to have the means to afford such a procedure, so I finally give my reluctant consent.
For more than a week I lie unconscious in the facility while swirling tanks filled with complex organic cocktails provide the necessary building materials for my replication. And as my old body lies unmoving in the input chamber my new disease-free one takes form in the incubator. But even as my nearly completed identical twin lies motionless under glass in the next room I am still myself. The very last thing will be the transference of my consciousness, my essence, my entire being.
Finally I awake in my new body. Aside from being very tired I feel no different. But then quickly a sensation creeps into my gut. My conscience suddenly weighs heavily on me as I think of my old self. I fully understand the consequences. I am in every sense still myself, yet I know that I am a replica, now free of the fatal disease that once grew inside of me. But what of my old diseased body? …You see, that’s the problem with replication, it replaces the sick, but it doesn’t “erase” them. Even though my essence has been transferred away my old body also retains the feeling of self. And thanks to recent legislative changes, it must now wait out its remaining days here at the facility, no longer me but… my imprisoned dying shadow.
I open my eyes and look up through the glass bubble at… myself. There I am but… different. Of course, how silly of me, after forty plus years I am quite familiar with the mirror image of myself. This fellow is backwards. His hair is parted on the wrong side. But I also notice that he is sad. Sad because he knows he has to live out his days here? I can’t say I blame him.
But then another thought creeps in. Wait a minute. His left-hand hair-part isn’t the only thing that’s different. This fellow looks fuller in the face than me, and his color is better than I have seen my own in quite awhile.
Before I can process what I am finally beginning to realize, I start to bang on the chamber’s bubble lid with both fists. The face of Hutchinson my cancer doctor appears solemnly, and quickly ushers my other self away.
Finally they have let me out… cruel heartless bastards. I can’t believe they haven’t kept me from the hospital’s observation level at a time when…
Wracked with painful sobs I look from my wheelchair, to the facility’s main entrance eight stories below, where my loving wife and children are happily and eagerly escorting my new healthy body toward the parking lot.
by submission | Jul 31, 2011 | Story
Author : Waldo van der Waal
I sat down heavily on the rickety chair at my console. A quick look towards my brother confirmed that he, too, was feeling the firm fingers of fatigue. Four straight days of coding will do that to you. Four straight days of inventing and shaping and testing… I opened a couple of beers and passed one to Stephan, who sipped from it with gusto. After he wiped his lips, he said: “I’ll flip you for it.”
Going back to our childhood, we always decided things by chance. Never age or skill or any kind of decree – just by a roll of the dice; a flip of the coin. And each of us had the scars to prove that the odds really are 50/50. “Do you think that’s what the Wright brothers did?” I asked him, drawing deep from my beer. His rejoinder was quick: “Does it matter? Can you remember who was piloting their flyer when they first flew? Everyone knows the Wright Brothers. Not many people know them individually.”
So I relented. He fished a coin from his pockets, and got ready for the flip. As the coin left his thumb, I called “heads” – I always called heads – and watched as he caught the coin and clapped it firmly on the back of his other hand. A quick look in my eyes, with a little wink, then he lifted his hand: Tails. Stephan had won.
From that moment on, we both knew how the rest of the evening would play out. He went to get ready, while I prepared the device. To anyone peeking into our shed, the myriad of wires and pipes and screens would’ve looked just as alien as the Wright Brothers’ flyer must’ve done more than 100 years ago. But they believed they were onto something good – and Stephan and I? We knew we were onto something good as well. Something that could shape the course of human life for eons to come – if only we could give it wings, like the Wrights did.
Stephan walked back into the shed just as I finished preparing. He had on a pair of faded blue jeans, a t-shirt and a leather bomber jacket. Old-fashioned but classic – perfect for our test. He glanced at me, smiled nervously, and proceeded to affix himself to the device – straps, cables, electrodes… He knew the drill.
Then, when he was ready, I looked fondly at my brother, and cleared my throat to say something. But he held up his hand, stopping me before I could say anything. He looked around our shed, maybe checking that everything was ready, or maybe taking it all in once more – the dusty equipment, the haphazard technology… Then he nodded at me.
I walked over to my console, and with just the briefest of looks towards Stephan, I executed the command. There was no sound. No light, no fanfare… But even so, Stephan had disappeared in a millionth of a second. The electrodes and wires swung lazily backwards and forwards, in the spot occupied until moments ago by my brother.
by submission | Jul 30, 2011 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
“When do you have to leave?”
“Couple weeks.”
“Is it set in stone?”
“You know I can’t stay in one place for longer than a month. Guild rules.”
She lay quiet, pressed against him.
“Maybe you could put in for a leave?”
He pushed up one his arm, looking down at her warm body, framed in blue lines from the ceiling vents.
“I can’t stay,” he said. “I have a job to do. I service this whole sector.”
“But I thought — maybe you wanted to stay?”
“With you, you mean.”
“We’re very good together. I feel–”
“For me? Or because you’re lonely?”
“I want you to stay.”
He settled back in the cushions. The blue star overhead glowed dimly, in its passive phase for a year before the flare season started.
“How long is your service here?” he asked.
“Fifteen years, and then I retire.”
“Do you know how long I’ve been traveling?”
“I don’t know.”
“Twenty years in personal-time. I stopped paying attention to real-time after the first month. Every time I get into the FTL pod the universe goes on without me. I can’t worry about it.”
“I’ve only taken the trip once,” she said. “To get here.”
“We don’t stay anywhere because we have to keep moving. I have a thousand more assignments to service before I can retire. That’s one per month, and I’m twenty years down. I have sixty to go.”
“Real-time?”
“It makes no difference. I don’t age in the FTL pod. I think I started my tenure over a hundred real-time years ago, but it doesn’t matter too much. All the out-system stations need us, and we can’t stay or the system breaks down.”
She was crying, silently. “But you could stay. We could send a tightbeam to your Control Network and they could take you off the rolls. We can live here together.”
“I don’t travel to settle down,” he said. “I travel to make sure none of you go mad from the isolation. We have no other purpose.”
“You have free will. You can choose to stay.”
“And the next station has to wait an extra month for personal and sexual contact,” he said. “It’s not possible.”
“So go now, then,” she said, a sudden surge of anger drying the tears. “No sense keeping them waiting. I’ll just wait here for the next gigolo to stop by. You have no other purpose, after all.”
“Whatever you want,” he said. “I’m here to service you and you alone. If you want me to go–”
“No! Don’t leave me!” She came up and clutched him, desperate, feeling for his face and pulling him down in a passionate kiss. They coupled hard and fast and she slept in peace. When she woke up, he was making breakfast.
“Are you ok?” he said.
“I’m sorry. It gets harder every year. I’ll be fine.”
“I can stay my whole shift here, if you want, so you only have three months to wait for the next one.”
“That would be nice.”
He brought her coffee and they drank together, looking up at the vents where the blue sun shone. Instruments on the asteroid’s surface constantly recorded and transmitted information about the star’s cycles, valuable information for the Collective.
“It’s not so bad,” she said at last. “I’ll get over you. But I’ll be dead long before you retire.”
“I’ll remember you.”
“Promise?”
He looked out at the stars. A hundred lightyears to the next station, and a hundred more after that, and further and more and on and on.
“Forever,” he said, and smiled.
