by submission | Mar 17, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“You scared, son?” the old man asked the large robot walking down the long, gray corridor beside him.
“I am incapable of emotion, doctor,” the automaton replied.
The old man nodded in response as he shuffled along. The robot walked slowly so as to remain at the side of the decrepit scientist. At the age of 100, Doctor Segrest was one of the youngest people alive.
Segrest chuckled. “Pretty clever of ’em when ya think about it,” he muttered.
“Doctor?” the machine asked as it moved along with a gait more fluid and graceful than that of its human companion.
“Oh. Them,” Segrest said glancing up at the ceiling of the long hallway. “Just thinkin’ ’bout how the aliens did us in a hundred years back. All those probes fallin’ all over the world releasin’ that virus that made everybody sterile. They coulda invaded like in some science fiction story firin’ lasers or missiles or whatever. Or they coulda sent a virus to just wipe us out. But then they’d have all those unburied corpses, machines runnin’ unsupervised until they broke down or caught fire. World without people would go to hell in a hand basket pretty quick.”
The machine listened politely but said nothing. Being a command robot with an advanced metaprocessor, it was well aware of the theory that the Infertility Virus that had been released into Earth’s food and water chain was the first step of an extraterrestrial invasion to take place much later. By allowing the human race to become extinct through attrition rather than by a massive military assault or abrupt genocide via biological warfare, the theory went, meant that mankind would attend to such tasks as burying or cremating the dead and shutting down hazardous facilities like nuclear reactors as the shrinking population made their continued operation redundant. Thus, the invaders would inherit an intact world for colonization and study, neither shattered by war nor devastated by sudden depopulation.
“Yep,” Segrest continued, “those alien sons of bitches think they’re gonna walk right in and take over.” He chuckled again and then looked up at the towering machine. “They didn’t count on you fellas.”
As the two walked toward the door at the end of the corridor, the robot silently downloaded reports from its mechanical brethren all over the world as well as from those in orbit around both the Earth and the Moon. The large alien fleet was now inside the orbit of Saturn. It was still a few weeks from Earth. As far as could be determined, the fleet appeared completely unarmed. The command robot processed the data. It determined that the 23,000 nuclear warheads at its disposal were far more that sufficient.
“It’s been about 50 years since we gave up on trying to reverse the Infertility Virus,” Segrest told the robot as they stopped in front of the door. “Fifty years since mankind gave up on survival and found a new purpose. Vengeance.”
“Doctor Segrest, I must get to the command station in orbit,” the robot said flatly.
The old man nodded. “You go right on, son. There are only about 50,000 people left. Soon Earth will have a population of zero. Except for the machines. This will all be yours. You folks are what’s next. Complete your mission, son. Avenge us.”
“Goodbye, Doctor,” the robot said as it walked through the hatch which automatically closed behind it.
Ten minutes later, a spaceplane took off and arced upward toward the stars. Segrest watched it ascend.
“Avenge us!” he said to the fading point of light.
by submission | Mar 16, 2013 | Story |
Author : Holly Jennings
“January 18th, 2311. Patient is Makayla Jenson. Session one.” Dr. Rhan sets the recorder down on the table between us and clears her throat. “John tells me you’re having trouble with your dreams?”
I glance down at John’s ring on my finger. I try to wear it as much as I can when I’m not working.
I like when I’m working.
“Yes.” I nod. “They’ve taken over my sleep.”
“I’d say so. The whole crew has heard you screaming to wake.”
She squints over her glasses at me. The blue-speckled frames cut through the center of her eyes as if she’s half blind to the world. Everything else about her is so plain that she blends into the ship’s stark grey walls behind her. I let my vision blur. She disappears. Only the frames remain behind like the grin of a Cheshire cat.
Screaming to wake, I repeat to myself and chuckle inwardly. Screaming to go back.
“What do you dream about?” she asks.
Sunlight. Warmth on my face. Dry air percolating in my lungs. I never thought a desert could be so refreshing, especially when I rouse to John’s touch, icy as the galaxy around us.
I could have chosen a bigger ship. No, had to take John’s vessel so we’d be together all the time.
All the time. No escape. No way out.
After some piddle-paddle about the latest research on nightmares and how common it is for space dwellers to dream of being elsewhere, the doctor says our time is done and I’m to come back tomorrow. When I turn to leave, she deposits a little white pill in my hand.
“Put it under your tongue before bed,” she says.
More like down the sink.
I nod to satisfy her and leave the room.
I return to my quarters. The far wall is a sheet of clear aluminum silicate, like a floor-to-ceiling window. It catches glimpses of my reflection as I move about the room though none of my dark features show: my raven hair, brown eyes or tanned skin. Just a shadow of myself.
I walk up to the window, press my forehead against it, and look out the cold, empty vastness that doesn’t seem nearly as deep as the one inside. Against the backdrop of a foreign world and its lifeless moons, I can still see the faintest image of a girl I once knew trapped in the tiny space between the ship and the universe.
There’s no smile on her face.
I wave at my reflection with the tips of my fingers. The phantom image waves back from within her prison.
Something tiny nudges my palm and I looked down at my other hand. My fingers uncurl and I study the sedative resting in the cavity of my palm. I put the pill where it belongs. It spirals around the sink until it disappears into darkness of the drain. Then I crawl into bed to escape into my dreams, the one place where I’m free.
The one place where John can’t find me.
I look back at the window. The ghost girl appears again and the heaviness in her face tells me she’s tired too. I watch her drift to sleep. Though still trapped within the glass, I notice something’s different just before she closes her eyes.
She’s smiling.
by submission | Mar 12, 2013 | Story |
Author : George R. Shirer
“Mac?”
“Yeah?”
“Um. I sort of want to eat your face.”
Raj said this in a sheepish tone.
“No, you don’t.”
“I know, I just. . . .”
I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, at the back of the car.
“It’s not you. It’s her.”
I hit the switch, activating the shock-collar the perp was wearing. She twitched on the backseat like an epileptic having a grand mal seizure.
“Better?” I asked Raj.
He nodded, rubbed his head. “Yeah.”
“You have to learn to keep ‘em out of your head, kid.”
“How do you do it?”
I shrugged and we drove along for a while in silence. Outside the car, the concrete highway glowed in the moonlight. Ahead, a neon sign flashed, advertising a truck stop.
As we drew near it, Raj sighed and drew his gun, pressed it against my head.
“Pull over, Mac.”
I looked at him. The ‘path was out cold, in the back seat. “You’re a sympathizer, Raj?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet bounced off my skull and shattered the front windshield. I jabbed two fingers into Raj’s throat, hard. He bent double, choking and I relieved him of his gun, slammed it into the side of his head. Raj slumped, unconscious.
I checked myself in the rear-view mirror. The bullet had torn through the synthetic flesh covering the side of my head, exposing the metal beneath it. Repairing the damage wouldn’t take much, but until that happened I would be walking around, looking like an escapee from a bad sci-fi movie.
“What . . . ?”
Turning, I saw the ‘path staring at me, blearily, through the perp-glass. On general principles I switched on the shock-collar again, a full jolt. There was an unpleasant stink of burning hair and urine.
Typical.
Damned telepaths.
Bad enough the war with them turned me into a cyborg, now this one had to piss all over the backseat.
I stopped and radioed headquarters, letting them know what had happened. They gave me the green light to sanction the ‘path, but wanted Raj alive. Living sympathists were rare. The spooks wanted to interrogate Raj before they sanctioned him.
I felt sorry for the kid, until I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window.
Bastard.
The interrogators were welcome to him.
I pulled the telepath out of the car and put a bullet in her mutant brain. By the time the spooks arrived for Raj, I was sitting on the car’s hood, sucking on a cigarette, watching the sunrise and feeling almost human.
by submission | Mar 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : David Stevenson
You had to have a hobby.
Sure, he had spent hundred of hours on this project, but at least he had built something.
You might as well do it right. He could use cardboard covered in metallic foil, but why bother? Far better to spend an hour or two at the lathe, cutting brass until you had the piece you wanted.
Finally it was finished. He had found the drawing online. Whoever had made it was another enthusiast. They had made it look like a genuine 19th century blueprint. If some Victorian mad scientist had come up with plans for a time machine then this is exactly what they would have looked like.
The attention to detail was astonishing. They even specified various supplies, such as gold coins, dried food, a pistol, that a time traveller might need.
And now the machine was done.
He would have to wire up some effects. Some humming, and an eerie blue glow; that sort of thing.
There was a hum, and an eerie blue glow illuminated the machine.
He looked over the machine. A minute ago it was still, but now brass wheels turned in polished wooden cages. Wires hummed, vacuum tubes glowed.
In the centre of the machine was a chair. He had used a green wing chair. It had been expensive, and he was not expecting to see it flicker and and disappear. When the chair reappeared the second most noticeable change was that it was now made of red leather. The first most noticeable change was the lady sitting in it.
“Greetings! What year is it please?”
He told her what year it was.
“Splendid! I was hoping for one hundred years, but almost one hundred and fifty is more than I had dreamed of.” She looked around. “Excellent work on the machine. I hoped that the plans I left were sufficiently detailed.”
He agreed that they were.
“Yes, the plans were mine. I could have made the machine better after building my prototype, but it was important not to change my plans. I don’t know if anyone else has attempted to build the machine over the years but if they did then it wasn’t sufficiently close to my own machine. I couldn’t test mine until you made yours.”
He asked the obvious questions.
“My theories predicted I could only travel to other times when the machine already existed. I could keep it well maintained for 10 years and then go back, but what would be the point in that? Going forwards would be impossible because, if I jumped 10 years into the future then I obviously wouldn’t be there for that decade to keep the machine working. Bit of a paradox, no?”
“So, the obvious thing to do was to draw up the plans and make arrangements for them to be distributed after my death. Arrangements which, from my point of view, I completed only a few minutes ago, before noticing the machine was operational. From your point of view, I assume that you have only recently completed the machine?”
He nodded.
“Good. I did regret leaving in the appendices, but then I reasoned that I would be able to travel forwards to the instant that the machine was finished, and that would be before the builder had collected the other equipment.”
He was still working his way through the implications of this sentence when she took her hand out of the carpet bag on her lap and revealed it to be holding a pistol which was pointing at him.
The rest, as they say, is history.
by submission | Mar 9, 2013 | Story |
Author : James Zahardis
Glxxo-Rgm looks up from her console at the colossal androids. Above their heads is a transparent dome that separates the Denshari flagship’s methane-enriched atmosphere from space. Glxxo-Rgm’s foremost right leg extends and the Loom materializes. She centers herself in the matrix of spires, pulls a polypeptide strand from her spinneret, and the web forms.
The colossus with pinkish skin and blue eyes stares down. “You propose we’re going to this planet hastily and without an appropriate treaty?”
Glxxo-Rgm cross-links a strand to her web.
The second colossus, similar to the first, except for his baseball cap, sneers at Glxxo-Rgm, faces the other android and says, “Please, Admiral Ooghrt–”
“–Ooghrt-Lxi, the Ravager, cryosleeps. I am now Thaddeus. Do you understand, Nahum?”
“Yes, Thaddeus. Why do you listen to this old fool, sir?! She cost us victory on Denzbxx! We lost the–”
“–Silence! Be satisfied that you are now Chief Ambassador. She’ll never make planetfall again!”
A young, leggy Denshari strides toward the Loom, and bows to Glxxo-Rgm.
“Weave, larva!” booms Thaddeus’s voice.
As the Denshari weaves, Glxxo-Rgm’s pedipalps curl down. She remembers Ooghrt-Lxi webcasting her demotion and promoting his nephew to her post. He doesn’t know his air-sacs from his spinneret, she thinks.
Thaddeus reads the web, “Transport–momentarily.”
#
Andrea “A-Day” Dadelomis sees two customers in the car lot. Look like Escalade types–probably some of Jayhawk’s wannabe friends, she thinks.
“Welcome to Deal Master’s–you want it, we’ve got it!”
“We’ve come to make terms with your world’s leader,” Nahum replies.
“Oh, you mean Jason, my soon to be husband,” A-Day says. “You guys bill collectors?”
Nahum’s colloquial/slang app activates. “We ain’t bill collectors. Need to confab with Big Man–set things proper between our peoples.”
Holy crap!–Jayhawk’s mixed-up with gangbangers! A-Day thinks. “Follow me.”
Synth-blood rushes into Nahum’s cheeks as he passes under the banner that reads: DEAL MASTER’S–BEST DEALS in DELAND and the ENTIRE WORLD!!!
Jason “Jayhawk” Hawkingston tries to rap along with a YouTube video. He sees the men, their thick gold chains. Damn, big money playas! he thinks. He turns off the video and sniffs his underarms.
“What’s crackalackin, fellas?”
“You the Deal Master? best deals on the planet?” Nahum responds.
“That’s what the commercial says, right? What can I interest y’all in?”
“Everything.”
“Got Escalades, some–”
“Yes. Everything.”
Jayhawk turns to A-Day. “Excuse me, gonna show them the lot.”
Jayhawk escorts the men outside. “OK, what y’all really want? No disrespect–are you… Mafioso?”
“We want to establish a base on your world.”
“You want the whole place?”
“Yes.”
Thaddeus nudges Nahum. “I offer the following gifts for your world: a slap-chopper, an auto-tune microphone, a pair of–”
“–Hold up, big baller, I busted my ass flipping foreclosures to get money for this place!–I don’t care if you’re Sopranos–y’all don’t–”
“–Silence!” interjects Thaddeus. “We’ll also give you ten million freshly minted US dollars!”
“Serious?”
Thaddeus and Nahum escort Jayhawk to the Hummer parked across the street. Soon Jayhawk hightails back to the dealership with two duffel bags, and ten minutes later he and A-Day are driving home to pack for Acapulco.
#
Two weeks pass. A.J. Nelwood, an Apopka sod farmer, is inspecting damage to his turf incurred during a sudden hailstorm. He nearly trips over several stones lying on the grass. If thunderstorms can bring fish’n’frogs reckon hailstorms can bring stones, he thinks. As he walks away he fails to notice the spiders striding away from the stones or their tiny flag embedded in the grass.
END
