by submission | Apr 27, 2012 | Story |
Author : Donald O’Barra
“You’re so full of shit, Barry,” said Kent.
“No, I’m serious. I was reading about gene activation. They’ve managed to wake up really old genes in lab mice. What if humans thousands of years ago all had superpowers? What if they could fly or something and we just forgot how?”
“So I take it that your X-Men box set arrived, then?” asked Kent.
“Well yes,” said Barry, “but that has nothing to do with it. Look at the pyramids. They’re huge. They didn’t have machinery back then like we do now. The only way they could have built those is if they were super strong.”
“I read that they used ramps and levers. And they had a huge manual labour force”
“How do we know?” asked Barry defensively.
“Well, we don’t. But that’s the most logical explanation.” said Kent.
“See? I read somewhere that the pyramids are even older than we think. They just didn’t have the technology to do something like that. And anyway, they would take centuries to build with ramps and levers.”
“So that’s what you’re basing this on? The pyramids?”
“Not just the pyramids! What about those Nazi lines in South America? They’re pictures that can only be seen from the air. What would be the point if we couldn’t fly?” asked a triumphant Barry.
“Nazca Lines,” corrected Kent,” and those could have been done with rope and a brain.”
“But why do it at all if nobody could see them?”
Kent thought for a while and replied, “To pay homage to their gods, I suppose.”
“That brings me to another point!” cried Barry. There were little balls of spit forming at the corners of his mouth. “What if all these legends of gods and things were just people remembering how things used to be? It’s still happening! What if Superman is just a story about a normal, prehistoric human?”
“You seriously believe that we used to be super strong and be able to fly? What sense would it make for us to get weaker?”
“Aha! I’m glad you asked. Civilisation, man. Civilisation killed us. Think about it. We were suddenly banding together so we didn’t need to be so individually strong. And and and look at the dinosaurs! They were WAY stronger than the animals that we have now.”
“And the flying? Surely that would have been useful, even in civilised culture.” Kent allowed himself a smirk. Surely Barry wouldn’t have an answer for this one. Airplanes were only invented a hundred years ago.
“Well they didn’t have the technology to build skyscrapers, right? So all their buildings were squat and small. Flying would actually be a hindrance there! Evolution, man. You can’t be reproducing if you’re floating off all the time.” There was a manic glint in Barry’s eye.
“What about hunting?” asked Kent, trying to beat Barry with his own twisted logic.
“Oh, that would be silly. The prey would see you coming if you attacked from the air. You need ground cover.” said Barry dismissively, lighting a cigarette.
“I can’t believe that my sister is marrying you.” said Kent.
“So anyway,” said Barry, shrugging off the comment, “back to activating dormant genes. If they can do it in mice, why can’t they do it in humans? Just think about it! We could all be superheroes again. I’m going to become a biologist. They’ll give me a Novel prize or something!”
“Nobel,” corrected Kent automatically. “Listen, Barry, your psychotic ramblings have been entertaining as always but I’m late for class. I’ll catch you later.” Kent walked away, his feet never touching the ground.
“Yeah, bye, man.” said Barry staring at his cigarette, a preoccupied look of deep thought on his face.
by submission | Apr 26, 2012 | Story |
Author : David Barber
The woman sitting the other side of the table is Jan Fierro, the Department chief. We’ve never talked much, I mean, I’m just a jack aren’t I? Though once I photoshopped a great nude pinup of her and posted it in the men’s changing room as a joke. I never found who took it down.
She switches on the tape. “For the record.”
“Charlie, Charles Fort. Officer with the GenderPol. And yes, I know Cris Johnson, she was my partner for three years.”
Fierro pushes the first file across the table.
“Yeh, I remember this one. His ex called him in. Porn collection. Really old vids. 2D on magnetic tape.”
“And you and Officer Johnson disagreed about it.”
“Look, we all know porn can incite gynocrime, but this was just a hobby. Jacks collect stuff. Friend of mine has a classic Toyota Camry that runs on gasoline.”
Fierro is about to put him right.
“I know what theory says, but he was no rapist.”
“In your opinion. And what did the law decide?”
“Oh, biochemical castration. Behaviour mods. Temporal lobe remodeling, the lot.”
“But you don’t approve.”
“Crime against women’s down isn’t it? It’s just… No. Nothing.”
She’s sitting, with legs crossed. And one kneecap gleams bone white. It’s enough. Something feral slips the leash and gorges on the swelling and the tightness in the silk; in the flesh. Oh, he’s rescued them all, accepted their chaste kiss, nightly moves their limbs according to his pleasure.
He reads the other file upside down.
“I thought you’d bring that one up. Cris really hated all that stuff. Never knew what you were plugging into. He was wearing a silverlace and…”
“For the record.”
“…a neural interface for total immersion software. Didn’t even know we’d crashed his door. The sim wasn’t a media face. Some woman the jack knew maybe. All it takes is a picture and some software…”
Wearily, I explain the software maps faces onto bodies, so you can have sex with any woman you like using a silverlace.
“Yes, I know a lot about it, it’s my job. And I resent the implication.”
Fierro hands me a statement to read.
“I have never used morphing software involving… Cris Johnson? She said that?”
“Sit down Officer Fort. Unless you’re resigning.”
On the street it’s what they call being jack-knifed.
This was the time I said something about victimless crime and Cris really stomped me. Desensitization theory. Learning to think about women as objects. But I never thought about Cris like that. She was my partner.
Fierro knew something, the bitch.
“As it happens, I don’t think it does affect me.”
I’m clenching my teeth so hard they hurt.
Jack. Their mouthes are red as wounds. Gaping with talk. How I despise them, their clacking heels and ripe ovaries. They do not know me yet. My will be stronger than that blithe flesh. They shall suffer and become wise…
“Yeh, I’ve heard the new scanners can hack right into your dreams. I also know it’s not compulsory.”
Fierro smiles. You have to guess she only uses it for special occasions.
“For the record.”
“That’s my signature, yes.”
PAUSE
Please relax.
“Easy for you to say. Just thinking about women will be a crime soon.”
All gynocrime begins in men’s heads.
“How long before this is compulsory?”
Ask yourself what you have to hide.
“What, from the Thought Police?”
From women.
PAUSE
This is a test.
The headset is part of the scanner. The drug encourages free association. Fantasizing. Here is a picture of a female colleague.
Begin.
by submission | Apr 25, 2012 | Story |
Author : Autumn Humphrey
A dog barks rhythmically in the distance, its voice distorted by the noise of the world, sounding a desperate call of, “Come here! Come here!”
It has been this way since the revolution, odd sounds ringing out, confirming things are not the same, a disturbed variation of the city that was before Archmartadon. Shadows move behind the broken windows of storefronts. Each footfall lands with the sound of broken glass.
Raven, crouched in the corner of a burned-out market, sucks at the inside of a black banana peel and listens to the sound of the canine’s call. A mental volley plays in her mind: who is hungrier and weaker, she or the dog. Deciding the odds are in her favor, she rises from her hiding place and remembers the taste of meat.
On bloodied feet wrapped in dirty cardboard and string, she ventures outside, grateful for the cover of fog rolling through the streets. She steps over debris, human and alien parts strewn and stinking, pieces of metal and garbage, following the sound of the bark.
Skirting the battered edge of a fire station, Raven is startled by the sound of a brick hitting concrete. She turns sharply, peering through the fog, her nutrient-hungry eyes seeing movement everywhere. Shaking from fear and hunger, she moves around the corner of the building and directly into one of them.
The metallic smell of its skin makes Raven gag, muting her scream before it reaches maturity. Flight, her only option, is aborted by the cold hard hand of the alien, which has grabbed her by the arm. She feels the fingers from its other hand closing around her neck as a shape emerges from the fog. The familiar sound of the bark confirms Raven’s last thought. She has miscalculated her odds. The dog that had drawn her out of the sanctuary of the market was not the weaker of the two.
by submission | Apr 24, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The captain repeatedly tapped his mesothoracic exoskeleton contemplatively and looked out the main viewport at the blue and white planet below. Two-thirds of the surface was underwater and its atmosphere was over 20 percent oxygen. How could life, let alone civilization, have developed on such an inhospitable world? He imagined what it would be like to set tarsal pad on such a planet without a spacesuit. A few moments of unfathomable agony followed in quick succession by unconsciousness and death. And yet down there was exactly where he was going. In less than half a cycle he would be standing right in front of…them.
The group with whom he would be meeting called themselves the United Nations Security Council. The ship’s interpretation computer had some difficulty in rendering a translation. This world did not have a single, unified hive-government but a collection of “nation-states”. The computer could approximate the words, but not the underlying meaning. But more alarming than either the murderous environment of the planet or the inhabitant’s odd patchwork of political authority was the appearance of the dominant species.
The captain waved a carpal pad at a control and a holographic image appeared in front of him. At the sight of it, he suppressed a shudder. They called themselves “humans”. This particular human, the United Nations representative with whom he had communicated only a few cycles earlier, was a female of the species. It was like something out of a horror story. A soft, pale integument covered its face. When it spoke, its jaws moved up and down rather than from side to side. Its skeleton was on the inside, not the outside. But the most disturbing thing about this ghastly, inside-out creature was its eyes. The thing gazed at him not with gracefully recessed, multifaceted eyes, but with glistening, bulging orbs of white with brown irises.
That, thought the captain as he looked at the monstrous alien before him, is why we’re out here. We could have done this across interstellar distances with radio waves or lasers. We could have sent robotic probes in our place. But that wouldn’t have been true exploration. We came here to see what The Other is like. To literally see it. To set all four tarsal pads on another world, walk up to an intelligent alien, and look it…in the eye.
“Disgusting,” said the navigator in a low voice. He was looking at the human in the hologram. “Nightmarish,” whispered the communications officer.
Suddenly, the captain snapped his elytra closed over his vestigial wings. The bridge became silent. He turned to his crew. “We’re going down there,” he said sternly. “We’re going to make first contact with those people. And they are people. Don’t forget that. This isn’t some science fiction story where ‘aliens’ look and act like us. This is reality.”
Elytra snapped closed all over the bridge in response. The captain had made his point.
“Don your encounter suits,” the captain ordered. “Navigator, begin de-orbit sequence.”
by submission | Apr 22, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
Ellie’s leg was broken. They couldn’t run any more.
Andre gently eased her up against a grimy brick wall, trying to ignore the grimace of pain cracking across her porcelain face. “It’s going to be alright, love,” he whispered. “It’s going to be alright.”
He could hear the hooting, the hollaring, the screaming of the bugs behind them. There was sporadic gunfire, but not for long. Andre glanced up at the sky – it was a deep green, almost black. There was no sun today.
“Andre,” Ellie whimpered. “You need to keep going. Don’t stay here just because I can’t keep going.” She was crying, the tears gliding down to dangle desperately on the tip of her nose.
Andre grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I’m not going to just leave you here,” he told her. Where could he run to, anyways? The last ships off were leaving any minute.
There was a distant roar of massive rockets engaging. A stale, warm wind began blowing down the alleyway. They were leaving now. There really was nowhere to go.
Andre slid down the wall next to Ellie and idly rubbed his thumb along her fingers as she squeezed his hand. He let out a long, deep breath. This was it, he realized. There would be no more running, no more laughing and playing, no more love under the cover of night, no more Ellie, no more Andre… There would be no more anything.
And it was going to hurt more than anything else. Bugs liked to torture.
Ellie leaned over and rested her head on Andre’s shoulder and closed her eyes. She was getting cold. Shock was a side-effect of a double compound fracture, it seemed. The air was beginning to reek of blood.
“Ellie,” he said. “Ellie. Do you remember the time we were at your sister’s house making whipped cream?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. A smile crept across her lips.
He laughed softly. It was hollow and empty, but she couldn’t tell. It was for her benefit. “We had that big huge bowl of it, it must have been eight liters of the stuff. And then you accidentally bumped it, and down it went!”
“Right onto the cat,” she murmured.
“Right onto the cat,” he agreed. “And that cat sped off through the house covered in whipped cream, hissing and mewing while your sister ran on after it yelling, ‘no, get back here, get back here!’”
Ellie giggled softly. “She was cleaning whipped cream off of things for an hour.”
Andre quietly pulled an old revolver from his pocket. “Right. And the sun was shining through the windows and your mother was going off again about how they don’t do things like they used to.” He checked the cylinder. One round left. “And I said to you, ‘So, how would you feel about marrying a bum like me?’”
She poked him gently in the side. “You just think you’re funny.”
The bugs were getting louder. They were getting closer.
“I was so nervous that you would say no.” He could hear their skittering. Their time was up. Andre ran a hand through Ellie’s hair. “I love you so much. So, so much.”
“I love you too. You make me so happy,” she replied.
The gunshot was like a peal of thunder, her mind and personality sprayed across the wall like so much red paint.
The bugs found him quickly after that. They made him scream until he couldn’t remember her name.
