Gifted

Author : Michael F. da Silva

It started with a minor skirmish in a conflict between minor universes. A third-world war on a cosmic scale. Those universes were already unfathomably older than this one at any pace. An absolute zero trooper was wounded trying to avoid a hunter-killer squad in high orbit above a small backwater.

The trooper was hopelessly outnumbered and outmanoeuvred. Distracted trying to select a dimension where the physics would play to his favour, he was shot through his fifteenth segment. The warrior’s tertiary frontal lobe lost hold of a psycho reactive nano-tool before he could make his escape.

So it came to be that a star streaked across the night sky and fell to the Earth. Following the beacon of flames, a curious native found the artefact and, summoning the courage to pick it up, kept it to himself and tried to discern its meaning.

The tribal elders thought it unwise to keep such a thing. The other tribesmen feared it would bring nothing but ill fortune but the warrior, headstrong as only the young and boastful can be, refused to climb the mountain and offer it back to the gods. They must have many such things and would not miss one they threw away so carelessly.

After hours of useless arguing the elders cast him out so that he would not bring ruin on them all. His pride became hatred for the weak old men.

Many months passed after that and many years passed after those. His beard grew long and his understanding of the orb grew by steady inklings. He did not perish for lack of food or disease or the weight of decades. The orb favoured him and protected him. This he knew. He became a legend to frighten young children into their beds and a tale of warning not to stray too far past the tree line.

At night, the orb would float over him to keep him safe and warm. He would reach at it with his fingers but would only really touch it if he extended himself through his mind’s eye.

One night it changed. The pulsating blue aura that was at once there and somehow remained unseen grew like morning light over water.

‘Select primary function’ it demanded of his mind in his mother’s voice.

Suddenly frightened by a voice from beyond the funeral pyre, the aged traveller could think of nothing else than to protect himself. The orb began to pulsate and realign itself. It took the shape of a defensive implement of familiar use to him, despite the gleaming gold metallic surfaces and the visible energy field resonating from its centre. Now it was a shield fastened to a short leaf-bladed spear.

Years of rancorous isolation meant that after a short period of reflection, the aged outcast could not be expected to reach any other conclusion than that this was a sign from on high.

It must be a gift from the gods, he thought. He would become a conqueror-king.

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More or Less

Author : Jason Frank

She asked for more.

I asked something like, “More? More? It’s all yours already. Look around. Everything, every single thing is yours. The couch decided to settle into a shape that complements your rear, not mine; the curtains, you painted on them, they must be yours; that shelf, it has to be yours since it’s overflowing with knickknacks from your home world; the refrigerator isn’t full of anything I can eat without wincing; even my dog likes you better; the shirt off my back, looks better on you anyway (you did add a sleeve); the air we’re breathing has more sulfur in it than I require (or desire); the house, the sum total of all this, must then be yours. So I’m sorry if I don’t have anything else I can give you right at this very second, okay?

She said a bit more of the tea we were drinking would suffice.

I said… I didn’t say anything. I felt… how could I feel? Nothing I said was technically untrue but the way it came out was wrong, all wrong. I sent my gaze to the floor while I took her cup and kept it down there all the way into the kitchen. I turned the burner back on under the cooled kettle and leaned against the wall. I had to ask myself if I were seriously cracking up. Could it have been the strain of our interplanetary love, the gravity of all those celestial bodies between our home worlds? Could the various pressures have been greater than I thought? I looked out the window so the pot would boil somewhere on this side of eternity.

This wasn’t about her at all. It was about Kat(e)rina. What was it about that woman? The pretentious parenthesis in her name was an early indication that I should hate her, a notion repeatedly supported by her frequent social missteps. Was there anyone in the Center she hadn’t offended? Her social skills were on par with those of a four month old, eyeless Miltumbriate (an analogy that also went some way towards illuminating her fashion sense).

But… there was something about her, something so… human. I mean, sure, I was usually the only Earthtard in my social circle, but that was an inevitable consequence of being accomplished, right? Kat(e)rina represented basically everything that I, and pretty much everyone else, hated about humans.

The kettle was warming to the touch. Was I having a quarter life crisis ten years later than everyone else? It seemed at least possible if not particularly plausible. I hadn’t, after all, done many foolish things thus far in my life. Could all the bad decisions and incorrect impulses I pushed down over the years be building up pressure, forcing their way back to the surface? I was over thinking this like everything else. So what, some stupid girl got a job at the Center and now I was acting stupid. It was nothing. It would pass. Out the window, it looked like the neighbors were all going into seventh stage Vubialt molt together. That was going to be messy.

The kettle was just getting ready to scream when I took it off and refilled our cups. I had a long and complex apology ahead of me so I figured I needed to start pretty soon. She’d probably understand. She knew I was under a lot of pressure at the center and I’m pretty sure she was aware we were at a decisive point in our relationship. This blowup would be forgiven. Something I’d never expect from Kat(e)rina… that bitch.

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Conventional Warfare

Author : Ian Rennie

“I look ridiculous.”

“You look fine.”

“What is this garment made of, anyway?”

“A stretchy polymer filled with some kind of foam. It simulates the effect of muscles on your thorax.”

“Why would I want to have muscles on my thorax?”

“Because that’s where the mammals have them.”

Metr and Edlai walked, talking in voices too high for the collected mammals to hear. Around them walked alines, mechanoids and cybernetic creatures of every shade and stripe, none of them real.

Well, almost none.

“Why do we have to have this meeting here anyway?”

Metr hissed softly in exasperation and turned to face his friend,looking him directly in his slit-pupilled eyes.

“We’re having it here because this is neutral ground, as neutral as it gets. Between us and the Vaex, there’s about a hundred systems, only one of them has a breathable atmosphere, and that’s where we’re meeting. Neither of us has an advantage here.”

“I understand that, but why meet at this ludicrous carnival?”

Metr had wondered this himself, until he had seen video of the event. Hundreds of mammals in costumes, simulating a variety of weird races that they had dreamed up with no knowledge of the rest of the galaxy. With this range of shapes and faces, nothing humanoid would get a second glance.

“So,” said Edlai after the pause had started to stretch, “Do you think this will work?”

“The alternative to this working is the kind of war that rewrites the sky. Unless they’re insane and we’re insane, this will work.”

Metr said the words with a confidence that he didn’t feel. Nobody present, and very few still alive, could remember how the Vaek and the Na’taa had gained such antipathy towards each other. The source of the grudge was variously thought to be mineral rights in a variety of systems, trading deals gone bad, or just the overarching fact that insectoids and reptillians liked each other even less than they liked mammals. And now they were going to have to forge peace, or throw a third of the galactic disk into a slow and murderous war.

“Are you all right?”

Slowly, Metr became aware that he had stopped, and was staring into the distance.

“I’m fine,” he lied, “I just need a little air. You go on without me.”

Edlai moved away, leaving Metr looking out over the hall of mammals in their costumes. They were innovents, playing childish games of make believe. Their civilization had got little further than their own moon, and yet if things went badly, their planet could be snuffed out without them ever knowing why.

A drunken mammal bumped into him, nearly spilling a plastic cup of something.

“Whoa, sorry mate,” The mammal said, “Hey, nice costume. Star Wars?”

Metr shook his reptillian head.

“I hope not.”

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Product Recall

Author : Phillip English

“Listen, that kind of thing ain’t my problem!”

“Well whose problem is it then? I got a lotta pressure from the top brass on this one, and I’ve got to tell ‘em something!”

Ba’rhy and Gleeg stalked along the walkway over the steam cookers, yelling at each other over the high pressure hiss that emanated from the giant, steel riveted bell-jars. Ba’rhy pointed towards his office and then to his lower ears. Gleeg nodded and waited until they were safely inside the confines of the supervisor’s sound-proof walls before resuming his interrogation.

“I acknowledge that you’re not exactly in the line of fire here, but I’ve got to give something to the higher-ups. Isn’t there some kind of fault you can point to? Something mechanical, out of our control?”

Ba’rhy pinched his foreflanges together in exasperation “If I say it was a mechanical fault, then our engies will get it in the neck for not performing proper maintenance. If I say it was a quality control problem, then a schmuck on the assembly line will be out of a job, and likely his life. What do you want me to do, condemn some poor bastard to his death?”

“I know, I know. It’s just that this kind of galactic fuck up doesn’t happen every day, and they want someone or something to blame.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ba’rhy’s faceplate change hue to a smile. “But man, I’d have killed to see their faces when that bloater exploded in their faces. I mean, damn! All those chunks of fat and giblets strewn over Her Royal Highness? Hah! Priceless.”

Gleeg allowed his faceplate to colour slightly. “Yeah, right, I know. Look please, can’t you think of anything?”

“Maybe…hey, maybe we could say it’s just this batch of humans? Do a product recall? It’s a grand enough gesture and the blame is placed on the product, not the people behind it?”

Gleeg pondered this for a few moments, but then reluctantly leaned back and nodded. “Hmm, product recalls are expensive, but a lot of that cost can be reclaimed by feeding the ‘damaged’ product back into the feed stations. Alright, sure, I’ll see if it flies. But you’d better be prepared to point a foreflange if it doesn’t!”

“Yeah okay, okay,” Ba’rhy lead Gleeg out of his office and surveyed the landscape of the factory. The smell of the thousand or so bodies writhing around in feeder vats below made him shudder and return to his office. He sighed and brought out his private stash of clink: filling out the paperwork for the recall was going to be an all-night job, but someone had to do it.

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In the Beginning

Author : Tom Kepler

A large, rectangular container slid silently through the air, a dull, umber metal box, utilitarian and featureless except for the alternating pattern of raised and lowered slabs of metal that were the connecting construction of the rectangle—all the world like a wooden shipping crate.

Above the rippling, endless pattern of trees the freight crate, large enough to hold a hundred units, slipped with perfect equilibrium until it reached a meadow green in the dawning light. Lowering until inches from the meadow grasses, one section, six units wide on the long side of the container facing the meadow, whispered open, sliding back alongside itself, revealing a gridded cage front.

The container then began to rise on the end away from the opening, and a stumbling rustle of sound from inside the container indicated movement. The units moved to the caged door as the acuteness of the angle of the container increased. Twenty units stood in dull stupor, squinting into the morning light.

“Each stand within a consecutive square on the grid on the floor, one standing on the red square at the corner. No one must stand in a square that is completely surrounded by empty squares. Obey, or the sequence will repeat.”

The units complied, shuffling to rectangles, the directions simple enough even in their fatigue. A new voice spoke.

“Outside is a mown section of grass where the grid upon which you stand is duplicated. One square is also painted red, and the two grids are aligned so that the red squares of the grid upon which you stand and red square in the grid outside are in the same place. You will move to the grid outside and enter and remain in the square corresponding to the square within which you now stand.”

“Identify now the units next to you,” the first voice continued. “Proceed to your designated square, lie upon the good earth, cover your heads with your arms, and whatever happens, do not leave your designated square.”

The door noiselessly slid open, and the second voice said, “Get!”

Naked forms leaped from the container and, as if no voices had spoken, ran through and past the grid etched on the mown meadow grasses, ran into the tall, uncut grasses, ran on legs sweated dirty from long confinement into the silent, shadowed darkness of the forest.

They ran, feet beating stubborn rhythms until they were gone—gone, all but one who staggered last from the container, fell to its knees as it stepped from the drop to the mown meadow with its pattern. Staggering to its feet, the unit staggered to its designated space and collapsed, face down upon the grass.

It did not notice the fragrance of the cut grass or the birdsong at dawn or the blue of the sky or the warmth of the morning sun. It did not hear the sudden silence after the trampling of feet. It did not hear the subsequent screams and cries and moans from the forest—or the silence that followed.

Brighter light approached the unit that had collapsed on its perfect square.

“What is this unit?”

A pause. “Adam.”

“This behavior has occurred only once before.”

“Deactivate the guards, and let us depart. We leave it to its fate.”

Light caressed the face of the man unconscious upon the earth.

“Who knows, perhaps the woman still lives and shall meet this man.”

“Perhaps. And may God bless.”

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