by submission | Jul 30, 2012 | Story |
Author : Dan Whitley
The natives prostrate me over a disused shipping crate in their temple and begin their ritual. They flog me with ancient braided industrial cables that have hung from the temple walls for centuries, awaiting this day and this purpose. The temple sits in what was the bridge of a crashed cryo-ship, the only part of the vessel not buried under time. They cheer as my back sparks with every blow. What they don’t realize is that I have full control over what I feel and how I respond to it. I could turn off my pain replication centers, if I so choose. I am not sure why I haven’t.
The natives act to fulfill their prophecy, cobbled together from the scraps of one of Earth’s holy texts, old fission reactor maintenance manuals, and nearly a millennium of misinterpretation. But I did come from the sky, as it were, and I was created in their image. They lay a scrap metal cross on my back and a crown of rotted electrical wire upon my head and march me up a hill to where one of the cryo-ship’s engines came to rest. They know not what they do. They think I will become a god under the reactor’s still-leaking radiation.
Why must I endure this? My accursed programming keeps me from breaking my bonds and fighting off these madmen. These people, they’ve regressed to the point that it feels almost blasphemous to put them on the level of my creators, to even call them human… Would that mean that hurting them doesn’t break the laws? Were I to destroy these creatures in the name of self-preservation, could I then justify it by saying they weren’t truly human, and thus I was in the right?
They smile with rapture as I am lashed to the cross in the reactor room. They kill me with kindness. Surely only my creators’ species is capable of such paradox.
No, I cannot harm them. They may not much resemble my creators, but my creators insisted that whoever I found here were their species, and were to be protected, as per my mission parameters. It may be tempting, but the laws are absolute.
I feel the unrelenting warmth of the fuel rods pouring into the stripes on my back as the cross is hoisted up and hung before the naked reactor. The natives affix a sign above my head. I assume it reads, in their scrawl: Colonial Reclaimer 1.57, King of the Bots. I wonder what they will do when they return in three days and find my circuits fried.
O Creators, why have you forsaken me?
by submission | Jul 29, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 3, Captain Zeus commanding. The Olympia’s A.I. has performed an emergency biometamorphosis on the crew who were all in stasis at the time of the transrelativistic drive malfunction. The A.I. was able to get the ship back into realspace and managed a controlled crash landing on this planet. As per protocol, the ship released a swarm of nanoprobes which identified the local dominant intelligent species and initiated standard somatic cell transformation procedures. The crew and I are adjusting to these new, odd, bipedal bodies. Chief engineer Hephaestus continues his damage assessment.
Addendum. Hephaestus reports the transrel drive is beyond repair. He is attempting to rig a superluminal distress signal. The Olympia’s stellar cartography system cannot pinpoint our location based on the local constellations. We have no idea where in the galaxy we are. Lieutenant Hermes has requested permission to don an antigrav pack to make an aerial reconnaissance of the area around the mountain on which the Olympia crashed. I have approved this request.
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 4. A group of the planet’s inhabitants, perhaps having seen Lieutenant Hermes flying about the area, approached a patrol lead by Commander Hera as they were reconnoitering the region around the ship. As the nanoprobes are still learning the local language and are uploading it to the crew’s cerebral speech centers, it was with some difficulty that she tried to communicate to the locals that we come from another part of the galaxy.
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 5. Hephaestus is having difficulty getting the superluminal distress signal set up. At his request, I attempted to make contact with the locals to see if they might have technology that would assist in this endeavor. As I tried to explain our situation, one of the locals became belligerent and decided to attack me. I was left with no choice but to defend myself with an electroplasma rifle. While the weapon was set on stun, the frail anatomy of the local was unable to withstand the lightning bolt-like discharge of the weapon. I very much regret that this failed attempt at peaceful contact has resulted in the death of one of this world’s inhabitants.
Addendum. Chief Hephaestus reports no success with getting a superluminal message out to any ship or base. I have little doubt that Admiral Hyperion has half the fleet out looking for us.
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 6. Commander Ares is recommending armed patrols around the clock given the combative nature of the locals. While I am concerned that this may result in a further deterioration of relations between us and the locals, I must consider the safety of my crew.
Addendum. Hephaestus reports he will not be able to send the distress signal. In addition, the ship’s power reserves are almost gone.
Addendum. A group of locals has apparently engaged in some ghastly form of ritually sacrificing one of their own kind in some sort of religious rite!
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 7. Lieutenant Artemis while on patrol came across another attempt at barbaric self-sacrifice on the part of the locals. As the nanoprobes have now almost completely assimilated the alien language, she was able to convey her disapproval of this horrific practice. The local king, Agamemnon, acknowledged the lieutenant’s displeasure and the life of the king’s daughter, Iphigenia, was spared. An animal was sacrificed in her place.
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 8. Final entry. Ship’s power almost gone. We are marooned here on an alien world in alien bodies. I take full responsibility for–
by submission | Jul 28, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
A little girl runs down the street in her bare feet, her vivid orange skirt prancing through the air behind her all the way. She is young, barely six, and more full of life because of it. She loves the flowers in her mama’s garden, the cookies that old miss Dunham gives her every day at the bakery (When her mama isn’t looking, of course), and the way her papa reads her stories at night about cats and rats and mischievous little boys and girls. Never in all of her 8354 lives will she forget the way he tucks her in, kisses her on the forehead, and says, “I love you.”
The young girl never really knew what computers were. They were before her time. They were before everybody’s time. Back when she was a girl people didn’t have computers. They had cars, planes, trains, and wars. No computers. The planet had a computer, of course, but people didn’t.
The girl stops suddenly, her messy brown hair swinging all about her. There is a caterpillar on the ground in front of her, green and fuzzy and, to the girl, cute. She kneels in front of it, peers at it, coerces it onto a leaf and names it. As the sun shines through the old oak trees on either side of the road she babbles to her new friend about anything that seems important. There’s the cat at home, always up to something, and of course there’s Pierre down the street who’s always teasing her. Boys and girls being what they are the little girl hasn’t ever figured out that Pierre likes her despite the thousands of times she has experienced it.
Below her, beneath the planet’s upper strata, lies a machine. If men had ever lived long enough to discover it they would have been fascinated with it, and not without due cause. The machine is massive, a rough sphere almost a mile in diameter, and lives off the heat of the molten planet around it. It knew the histories of men, had recorded the lives of all creatures, from every maggot to every great whale. The movement of every piece of matter had been duly observed and saved.
The girl, absorbed in the intricacies of pretending to have a life with a caterpillar, finally breaks away from her play. She looks around her, puzzled. The street has gone quiet. Where are the songs of birds, the static of wind through leaves, the endless buzzing of toiling bees? A shadow falls across her face, and she looks up. The world disappears.
A singularly spectacular cataclysm has occurred 8354 times in the planet’s past, though it was only felt by the machine once. It retained its shape, but inside was broken. Its vast communication arrays went dark, unable to transmit its plight. After some time its data banks filled up, unable to offload old data. The vast projection arrays it held activated. Designed and intended for in-depth examination of a civilization should it be lost, the devices became the projectors of the ghost of man.
Were there still an atmosphere on the planet then cold winds would be scouring the bare rock where a little girl had once stood. Instead the granite and dust lay undisturbed under the blanket of black skies and stars above. Then, suddenly, miraculously, there is life. The world is sent down the same path again, and after several millions of years the girl’s footsteps will again haunt the gray face of the planet like the specter of lost love seeking closure that was never there.
by submission | Jul 22, 2012 | Story |
Author : Aldous Mercer
Septu’s core-temperature rises as soon as he steps out of the wind. But he keeps his eyes to the ground. The trembling of his father’s hand has nothing to do with the heat and everything to do with gathering other Master-Miners every sevenday.
“Greet the Heptarch, child,” says the Priest behind them. His father’s fingers tighten around Septu’s for a moment. But then he lets go and Septu walks forward till a pedestal, waist-high, enters his field of vision.
DORSALIS PEDIS; POSTERIOR TIBIAL
His first glimpse of the Heptarch is of the Heptarch’s feet: bare and dusty, they don’t look any different from miner-feet. But higher up, molded perfectly to the shape of the Heptarch’s ankles, are two metallic cuffs. Pyramidal extrusions of copper rise from their surfaces to form a miniature stalactite-forest of copper spikes. Septu is so absorbed in counting spikes that the Priest has to prod his shoulder till Septu leans forward, kisses the Heptarch’s feet and darts back.
“Your son will make a fine Priest.” The Heptarch’s voice is strong, like Septu’s father’s.
“Wh…what?”
“You didn’t think we came all this way to quell a rebellion, did you?”
Septu’s father is silent.
ULNAR; RADIAL
Septu travels in the Heptarch’s own chariot. The jolting motion has upset his balance often enough that the Heptarch’s hand now rests permanently on Septu’s shoulder. Sometimes the bumps make the Heptarch’s wrist-cuffs dig into Septu’s skin. One such bump draws blood. The Heptarch hisses and removes his hand. Septu, who has been absorbed in twists of the ore-road, looks down at the single drop of blood blossoming on his shoulder.
“Blood,” says Septu, “carries the heat-beneath-skin…”
“…from extremity to center, and back again,” finishes the Heptarch. “I am surprised you memorized such an obscure syllogism.”
Septu knows others. “The heat-over-head begins at–”
“Not now,” says the Heptarch. “Concentrate on balance.”
Septu returns to watching the road that carries ore from the mines to Church, and copper back out again.
FEMORAL; BRANCHIAL
The suns rise, limiting Septu’s ability to radiate heat. The chariots rumble to a stop, and Septu wonders how they will survive outside the dark of the mine-caves. Then a Priest takes him aside and drenches his body with a bucketful of glasslike green unguent. Septu feels the heat within him recede; he feels like running and jumping, without worry that it will raise his temperature, that he will collapse gasping to the ground.
“Temporary,” says the Priest, whose loins and upper-arms are girded with copper spikes.
Septu has to be drenched with unguent–gel–three more times till they reach Church.
CAROTID
The Heptarch takes gel-covered Septu to a table with small pieces of copper-spiked jewelry on it. Septu cannot help but stare at the glittering green-and-copper web of a tiny neckplate—too small for a Priest.
“Septu,” says the Heptarch, “do you know what the Heptarch does?”
“He drains the heat-within, and the heat-without.”
“So today the son of a rebel becomes Septarch. Do you understand?”
Septu shakes his head.
“You will, eventually.”
EXTERNAL MAXILLARY; SUPERFICIAL TEMPORAL
The Heptarch places a knuckle under Septu’s chin and draws his face upwards; Septu sees the Heptarch’s face for the first time. He is younger than Septu’s father, his head framed with the green-and-copper spikes of the Heptarchy’s crown.
“Pulse Points gather the heat-under-skin.” Septu remembers all syllogisms he has ever heard.
“Yes,” says the Heptarch. Then he reaches over, and picks up a tiny crown from the table. Septu stands still, not daring to breathe.
The Heptarch grins down at him. “This,” he says, “is called a Heat Sink.”
by submission | Jul 21, 2012 | Story |
Author : Dan Whitley
My people called me a fool.
They said it was impossible to leave the surface. That was why no beasts flew through the air. It mattered not if I could imagine a machine that could. My people offered me hollow aphorisms; what goes up must come down.
My people called me a madman.
They said we had degenerated. That was why we could not walk beyond the sky. It mattered not if I could somehow free myself of the surface. My people declared we had become unlike Our Ancestors, and could not survive where They had once tread.
My people called me a heretic.
They said my endeavors were hubris. That was why we did not know how Our Ancestors came here. It mattered not if I could survive Their realm. My people believed attempting to exist as They once did was the worst blasphemy.
I defied my people.
For decades I toiled. I spurned friends and relations as my creation grew with my hopes. I would leave the surface and find the realm of Our Ancestors.
I called my machine a “rocket.”
No one came to witness my launch. My people did not care to watch an old man burn himself on history’s most extravagant funeral pyre. Such was their conviction.
Yet it worked.
I left the ground at an amazing speed, tearing apart the clouds as the glass bubble of my cockpit shot through them up into the sky. The blue faded slowly to black as I gained altitude.
And then, failure.
The last dregs of fuel erupted behind me, shattering my creation and sending me hurtling up and out away from it. I entered free-fall in nothing but my clothes. My canvas parachutes would never debut.
I never cared. As I tumbled through space, I knew I had not reached Th’erth, the realm of Our Ancestors. But They rewarded me in my final moments. I saw beauty in the curve of the world stretched out below me. I heard God in the dead silence of the black beyond. I felt my soul escape in my breath as vacuum tugged at it.
I died in rapture.
