by submission | Aug 31, 2010 | Story
Author : Andrew Hawkins
The meeting was in a small stale office of the Pentagon, the two crisp suits shifted in their seats as I came in. I was tall clean shaved in a comfortable cream jacket, silk shirt, tie and custom leather shoes worth more than minimum wage makes in a year. They looked at me with uncertainty, no doubt I defied their expectations.
I opened with confidence, catching my interviewers on the back foot “Good afternoon, I am Mr Ross, you would be Agent Adrian Cole and Agent Maria Fernandez, shall we begin?”.
Adrian was hesitant but to her credit Maria took me in her stride, she must have been a few years older than her partner, clearly the more experienced of the two.
“Of course Mr Ross, now I just want to make certain you know what’s involved here. Your duties will include…” I cut her off with a wave of my hand, damn I love freaking out these Yale types.
“Agent Fernandez, I am perfectly aware of what is involved, the documents on the project were quite comprehensive. You are already aware of my previous employers, so let me cut to the chase. Finding highly trained government agents with high level access is easy. You can throw a brick in DC and hit a dozen. I have Graceful level clearance, two grades above your own. I am certified to know national secrets that would start wars if they got into the wrong hands and I have 20 years with a flawless record for my tact not to mention intensive torture resistance training with the US Marines and the British SBS, I am a rare commodity.”
I slid a crisp white sheet of paper across the table with a 6 digit number on it and relished the looks on their faces.
“Finding janitorial staff with the same clearance is significantly harder, hence my fee. Trust me Ma’am none of those suits will be willing to clean up alien substances off the laboratory floor or unclog the toilet that the Head of Project 12 was using yesterday and your average cleaning staff won’t be able to keep sufficiently quiet about the work involved or be able to spot a class 1 bio-hazard leak. I think you will find my services and record for discretion are well worth my fee.”
Agent Cole scowled in silence, but Fernandez simply nodded.
After a long pause staring at the number she met my gaze “Your fee will not be a problem, It will be a pleasure to work with you Mr Ross.”
by submission | Aug 29, 2010 | Story
Author : Fred Coppersmith
He calls her beautiful but he doesn’t mean it. He is in love with someone else.
He feels his hand stroke his wife’s back, hears himself whisper I love you, you know that, go back to sleep. He rolls over on his side towards the window. Through the half-opened blinds he can see the moon, full and round and orange, in the night sky.
He thinks of her, the woman in his dreams, waiting at the station, eyeing the watch he gave her as a birthday present. He imagines her there, waiting for the shuttle that will take her to Tranquility. She will be going on holiday to visit her mother. She has talked of almost nothing else for several weeks. The gray lunar mountains are just visible through the opaque shielding behind her, and the Earth, if she can see it at all, will hardly register: just another gray speck in the sky. No one lives there anymore where she comes from.
He feels himself fall asleep then, and when he wakes he does not tell his wife about the dreams. He does not tell her about the Earth, dead for centuries, or about the woman he is meeting at the station on the surface of the moon. He does not tell his wife how beautiful this other woman is, or how this world has become more and more like a dream. She would laugh, and then he would have to smile and say, you’re right, of course, I was only joking, what’s for breakfast? He would have to say, you know you’re the only one. He would have to say he loves her.
And he is growing tired of the lie.
by submission | Aug 28, 2010 | Story
Author : Jake Christie
While they made love, the world ended. Bombs dropped. The earth shook and split open. Tornadoes flung nations to pieces, and then tsunamis swept the land clean. By the time they were finished, everyone else was dead.
They lay there for a while without saying anything. She rested her head on his chest. He picked pieces of plaster out of her hair. The apocalypse had opened a small hole in the roof. Clouds of black smoke rolled by, occasionally revealing a patch of deep red sky.
She turned to look at him, her chin fast to his ribcage. “What do you want to do now?” she asked.
“Just lay here with you,” he said.
Somewhere in the distance something rumbled. Thunder, maybe, or more bombs. It was all the same now. She put her ear to his chest and listened to the smaller, more comforting rhythms of his heart. The earth shook once more and she dozed off as it rocked her to sleep.
She dreamed that the world hadn’t ended. She dreamed of plants growing in time-lapse, seasons changing. Children being born. The people of the world laughed and held hands and sang. She saw her family standing in a field, waving to her. The sun rose and set and everything was green and beautiful and alive.
She skipped through this world with the sun warm on her face, looking for him. But she could not find him. She stopped skipping and began to run. She ran through the green fields, over the cold rivers, faster and faster, always searching. Her feet left the ground and she flew through the clean blue sky, over the people, over the families, and she screamed his name but he did not answer. She could not find him. He wasn’t there.
She woke to the sensation of rain on her cheek. He pulled them aside wiped the water from her face with his thumb. It was gray from the smoke and the ash.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. She pressed her body closer to his, out of the rain. “I was just having a nightmare.”
by submission | Aug 26, 2010 | Story
Author : Peter Woodworth
I found them. Nobody else wanted to believe it, but I found them. It’s my truth.
Well, maybe not mine. But not theirs either!
After the Act was signed and the last of the satellites went live, the corporations assured us the link would be continual. But I started twitching. I never twitched before. I’d have these little blackouts. I told people it had to be the satellites, but they said I was wrong.
So I parsed the stream. They let you see it if you want, but nobody really looks. And that’s how I found the gaps. They’re small, much smaller than the human mind can register, so small our technology can barely detect them.
That’s right. Our technology. Not theirs.
I started talking to the technicians who worked on the upload, and they all denied it, until I got angry and used the battery. One finally broke their vow of silence. He told me that they knew about the gap, but insisted it was for calibration.
This I knew to be a lie.
The human brain can handle the link, everyone’s seen the science that proves it. It’s like humming a tune you don’t even hear, they said. You don’t even know you’re doing it.
“So why are there still gaps?” I asked, but he couldn’t answer. I showed him the pictures I extracted from the blackness in the gap. When you look at it long enough, you can see the eyes, the places where the black gets darker than the rest. They’re slitted, the eyes. Like a cat’s.
He had tears running down his cheeks as he looked at the picture. That’s a sign of guilt. There are all kinds of signs of guilt, if you know what to look for. I’ve always been very attentive.
Those eyes kept me up at nights for weeks. I hate cats, always have, but I never knew why until I saw those pictures. Like they were an advance force, or something. Maybe I’m psychic. You see a lot more articles about psychic ability since the link went active. One says that we’re using parts of the brain that have never been touched before. Why shouldn’t psychic ability be hidden there? It has to be somewhere.
That’s when I realized what the gaps had to be. We’d spent all these years beaming messages out into space, and now our satellites are picking up their replies. We’ve got more satellites in orbit than any other time in history, and they’re more sensitive too. We’re finally hearing them.
But they’re being subtle. Tricky. Communicating through negative space, testing our link, seeing what they can insert without our noticing. So far, just their eyes. Understand? It’s like a joke. They’re watching us, so they put in their eyes. They want to see if we’re paying attention.
Nobody is. Nobody but me.
It took weeks and another technician, but I finally figured out how to make gaps of my own. So tonight I’m going to talk back. I’m going to insert my gaps into the link and show them we’ve noticed. And they will spread. The companies clean the link for carriers, but not for anything this size. I’m as clever as they are.
My gaps won’t just watch with black on black eyes, either. No. I’m putting images in my gaps, sounds, and they will be plugged right into the feed. Wars. Disasters. Primates howling. Metal grinding metal. They’ll see what we’ve survived. They’ll know we won’t go out without a fight. They. Will. Respect. Us.
Because I own the gaps.
Not them.
Me.
by submission | Aug 25, 2010 | Story
Author : Ellen Couch
Dr Siward’s Journal, 18th April
Another interview with Mr Renfield. I wonder whether he shall ever recover from the psychosis- his fantasy world seems so complete. One cannot help pitying the man. He is such a gentle soul, particularly compared with some of the others under my care. If I were to meet him outside the asylum, I imagine I should think him perfectly sane. But despite my best efforts to persuade him, he refuses the treatment. He is still a threat to the public.
I feel that we are at an impasse. Unless he becomes violent, I cannot force him to accept the therapy, and without it, he cannot be released to rejoin his family. He presents his ideas so rationally that I cannot help but be drawn into arguments, for all their insanity.
It began as usual- “You still want me to have that thing transplanted, don’t you, Doctor?” he announced.
“The genetic therapy would be for the best, Mr Renfield. Everyone else in your family has had it. Haven’t you seen how contented they are?”
“That’s because they’re slaves. You’re all slaves. You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“How can it be slavery when we choose to submit to the operation freely?”
“What about those of us who don’t accept it? Do we all end up in places like this?”
“It’s for your own good. You might endanger other people. You’re not sane. Some of you have tried to forcibly remove the implants- do that, and you end two lives! Don’t you respect the unborn child?”
“And when that…that thing reaches maturity? Do you know what happens then?”
“It’s not a thing, Mr Renfield. We’ve discussed this. It’s a child. It has a right to life.”
“Well, I have a right to choose. And I choose not to let those things use my body as a breeding tube. I don’t believe all that rubbish about us being under threat, anyway.”
“We’ve been through this, Mr Renfield. I’ve shown you the footage they send us. Our protectors are constantly battling threats from all kinds of terrorist beings. By allowing them to use our spinal fluid to grow their offspring, we help them continue to keep our great nation-planet safe. Don’t you care about national security, Mr Renfield?”
“I care about our freedom. I care about our future! Haven’t you ever asked yourself what happens once your implant reaches full maturity? Have you ever seen what happens? I have. Where are your friends, Doctor? What about the Doctor who came before you?
He got very agitated at this point. We had to restrain him again. But my Guest tells me all will be well. I must be vigilant, and not let the emotions of this body cloud Our judgement. Imagine! If it wasn’t for my Guest’s good sense, I would release him- I would even agree with him. Foolishness! Renfield must not be allowed to corrupt anyone else. We were lucky that his family discovered his experiments in time. He was close to perfecting an operation to remove the implant without harming the host. He planned to force his wife and children to be test subjects- and they were so close to being fully grown.
