by submission | Jul 21, 2010 | Story
Author : Andrew Hawnt
I didn’t look back.
The explosion tore through the upper floors of the building first, raining white hot debris onto the street below. It was late enough for the streets to be empty, so no harm was done beyond a few damaged cars and scorched pavement. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. Nothing really important.
I ran outside without looking up. If I had tried to dodge anything that was falling from the chaos above, I would no doubt have put myself at risk of being hit by something else. Best just to run as fast as I could and hope for the best.
The police and fire brigade would already be on their way. A building so heavily guarded by secrets and covert technology would no doubt have a fail-safe trigger for getting the emergency services out to it. They would be here soon, but they wouldn’t find anything.
There would be nothing for them to find.
As I got to the corner of the street I finally turned and risked a look upwards at the madness that had consumed the top half of the building. I had to. I would never get another chance to see something like this, something so pure.
The structure was in flames now, and orange tendrils of fire worked their way throughout the whole place, plumes of thick smoke twisting from them into the night sky, obscuring the devastated upper floors. Debris continued to fall like molten tears from its ruined concrete face. Windows exploded. Columns of flame leapt from the new spaces in roaring protest.
Where there had once been a government-designed hangar hidden within that seemingly inconspicuous office block, now there was a massive blossom of flame and smoke and dust, opened up and forced out at terrible speeds by the power of what had been held captive inside.
I watched the ship emerge from the blinding furnace, the heat oppressive against my face even at that distance, but it didn’t matter. The craft ascended on a column of shocking blue light, which almost looked tangible in its glory. The building had begun to crumble under the repeated shockwaves pummelling it into nothing, sending massive chunks of masonry and steel girders into the street before me. Still I could not look away. Danger be damned.
The ship’s engines kicked in, and the sleek vehicle sped over me in an arc of glowing thrusters and strange metals. There was a glimpse of the crew as it passed, freed from their cages, just as their craft had been, by my own hands. They had no idea who I was. They never will, either. I wish there could have been some contact, but I wouldn’t have changed the way things had happened.
The ship was gone in seconds. Sirens grew in the distance as flames destroyed evidence.
I ran. Home was calling me, just as their home had called to them for so long.
by submission | Jul 18, 2010 | Story
Author : Liz Lafferty
“Abbot Cryogenics. Pod 47. Earthdate: 2870513. Final log entry. Dr. Amanda Davidson, Director, Abbot Cryogenics. All pods have successfully entered cryo-preservation.” I punched the final sequence starting the five minute countdown to my first wake cycle, hopefully to occur in 3870 minus 10. “All pod directors have confirmed successful shutdown. I have further confirmed that all directors entered stasis at zero mark twenty.”
Every cryo control panel operated independently with a domino failsafe. If one pod failed due to a malfunction, the other forty-six were ensured a successful reentry on the designated date, provided there were no further natural disasters to threaten the extinction of mankind.
Pod 47 at Svalbard also contained the world’s largest seed vault. I had the mild reassurance that if our pod failed, eventually someone would arrive to retrieve the seeds and repopulate the planet. The other pods had lesser collections, including the cryo-preserved insects and animals necessary to rebuild and restock.
Just as it seemed we had turned the corner for restored healthy marine and animal life, this had to happen.
The rim of fire in the Pacific had been unstable for the last two hundred years. Fortunately, somewhere along the way, someone had made the decision to expand the Earth Preservation Project. The history books are full of the contentious debates that went on at the time. Those folks are long gone now.
The ones that remained neither appreciative nor ungrateful of the foresight. It just was.
The four minute mark sounded. I walked to my cryo-storage unit. I wanted to run one last time before I entered stasis. I shook my head to refocus my energies. Childish thoughts like that had no place for the seriousness of the day.
We had successfully restored cryo-preserved bodies as old as four hundred years. We had never tried this long before, but it was necessary. Scientists estimated it would take that long for the atmosphere and the weather to stabilize after the massive round of volcanoes that had polluted the atmosphere, plunged the earth into near darkness and caused the temperatures to plummet.
In a short two weeks, the planet had become uninhabitable. Most people entering stasis were in shock, not even having the will to decide if they wanted to attempt the centuries long journey.
Those that lived near the pods were the ones who had a chance at life in the future. Everyone and everything else on Earth was dead.
I stretched out one last time and rolled my neck trying to relieve the tension. I was going to have one hell of a headache when I woke. Tubes went into my arms. The breathing hose lowered perfectly as the reinforced glass lowered and sealed. Cool preservation fluid ran through my veins. I allowed my eyes to close with the pretense of sleep.
One last look nearly caused my heart to fail. A man stared back at me on the other side of the glass.
He banged on the glass with both fists. “My unit didn’t shut down properly. What do I do?”
“Nothing,” I mouthed through the glass enclosure as the computer counted down, “Three, two, one.”
I saw the swirl of the cold fog and the terrified face of the only known man on Earth, not in cryo-preservation mode, stare in horror as I slipped into my one-thousand year sleep.
by submission | Jul 17, 2010 | Story
Author : Matthew Banks
Dr. McLaren stood in front of the tank with a printout in one hand and an ampoule of pale yellow liquid in the other. Octopus 2935 squirted through the tank in front of him, dodging nimbly around the tall coral outcrop in the middle. Excited waves of white and dull brown scintillated across its body. It knew the daily food packet must be hidden somewhere. It splayed out its tentacles as it rounded the coral spire, slowing down, gills pulsing rapidly. It hovered upside-down over a crevice, looking at the unfamiliar thing that had been secreted there: a little safe with an over-large keyhole in the door. 2935 hung suspended over the curiosity, then whipped its tentacles downward and grappled it, then groped it, then poked at it, slipping the end of a tentacle into the keyhole. Its skin was dark and pebbly, like the surface of an orange.
Hard shoes clicked down the corridor. Behind McLaren, the security lock beeped and the door opened and closed. Tanaka clicked up behind him, and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Tom should have done it himself,” McLaren said, meaning the project administrator.
“It wasn’t his idea, Ray.”
“But why do *I* have to do it?” Tanaka released his shoulder and stood next to him, watching 2935 make quick laps around the tank, searching.
“*Somebody* has to.”
“Fuck!” McLaren rubbed his face and turned away from Tanaka. He felt like he was about to cry and he didn’t want her to see it. When he’d regained his composure, he said, “He’s the one who couldn’t get us funding. Make him do it!”
“It’s not his fault.” It wasn’t. The new President had campaigned on two promises: to re-structure the tax system, and to immediately outlaw all genetic research. Ever since Riley Fever had left half of rural Maine blind and psychotic, the public opinion of geneticists had turned homicidal. Their own lab had a full-time security team, who lay in hiding all around the complex with assault rifles and tear gas.
“They don’t understand what they’re making me do. I can’t do this.” 2935 was now floating above a crevice opposite the one with the safe, probing with a tentacle, scintillating brown and white with excitement. In a moment, it had fished out the key, and was gliding back to the safe. After a few clumsy attempts, it fitted the key into the lock, turned it, and pulled the safe open. It tucked itself into the safe while it greedily munched the packet of crabmeat. McLaren heaved a deep sigh, wiped his eyes, and walked over to the tank’s water filter. He opened a little maintenance hatch and cracked the ampoule into it like an egg. 2935 had stopped eating and squeezed itself into the corner of the tank, watching him. He walked back and stood next to Tanaka, looking pale and shaking with restrained sobs.
“I wanna kill myself,” he said. Tanaka frowned, not sure how seriously to take him. They watched 2935 float over to the white square of plastic mounted in the far corner of the tank, watched it extract a waterproof pen from its holder, watched it scrawl three clumsy question marks on the square while brown and yellow patches rose and sank on its skin, then watched it shudder, spasm, and sink as the ampoule of anesthetic diffused through the tank.
“They think they’re killing a bunch of animals,” said McLaren. “They think they’re killing a bunch of fucking animals.” He turned and walked out of the room, weeping.
by submission | Jul 16, 2010 | Story
Author : Adam J Keeper
I swear there’s a curse on my spaceship.
As my vision returns I see the spiderweb of cracks in my visor, the now familiar sight of bodies spinning in zero g, the red pulse of the warning lights, the squeal of the proximity alarm.
I try to reach out, grab a rail, a console, but my body is too weak, I rotate helplessly suspended in mid air. I look at the oxygen gauge on my wrist… its running low. If I can just hold out long enough the distress beacon will be answered, I will live another day, more than I can say for the crew.
Ever since we refuelled on Riggs planet, my luck seems to have turned bad, this is the fifth crew I have lost, each time the circumstances more horrible, each time I am the only survivor.
I’m a man of science, an astronaut, rationally I know there is no such thing as bad luck, bad conditions maybe, poor decisions yes, but a curse, no, no it can’t be. As my air begins to run out I hear the heavy clang of the rescue shuttle, I will live another day, run another mission, lose another crew… its been the same ever since Riggs world…
I put a curse on your spaceship.
I put a hex on your engines.
When your black hole drive kicks in I wouldn’t want to be you.
I have no sympathy for you Mr. Spaceman, since you came to Riggs planet you have brought nothing but pain. Before you came I was happy, free, I hadn’t been planning on falling in love.
When you left you took everything from me, you stole my soul, so in return I demand yours.
I remember when you first came, a great metal bird from the sky, your body covered in pipes, a great glass dome where your head should be. When everyone else ran it was I who talked to you, befriended you, became your lover.
When you left you took everything, you mined our fields, stole our ore, our life’s blood, our soul food. When my people tried to stop you, you had them arrested, de-programmed, murdered, without conscience.
I tried to stop you, to stop you taking from us, from leaving me, you just laughed, our planet was just a fuel depot to you, me just a pitstop.
After you spurned me I crept aboard your ship, I used the sacred ore you took from us against you, made your fuel sources impure. I didn’t stop there, I re-programmed your navigation systems, I downloaded pieces of my mind into your shipboard computer; my thoughts are now its thoughts, its will is no longer its own.
So good luck to you Mr. Spaceman, your ship loaded with my dark magic, the odds stacked against you.
Don’t break the heart of a robot from Riggs world Mr. Spaceman; we are programmed to never forgive.
by submission | Jul 15, 2010 | Story
Author : Mike Marsh
“Tell me again about the dime. How is this relevant?”
Charlie was tired. This was the end of a long day; his head hurt. He swatted at a buzzing fly.
“The dime is just part of it, doc. Don’t you get it? Who’s on the dime is just the start.”
The man across from him nodded. “Okay. But who is on the dime?”
Charlie sighed. He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a dime, and tossed it across the table. The doctor looked at the dime over the rim of his glasses for a moment, then reached over to inspect it.
“Look at the dime.” Charlie demanded. “Who’s on it?”
“Greek god. Mercury? Gotta be valuable. They haven’t minted these in a long time.”
“The date?” Charlie demanded. “What’s the date?”
The doctor flipped the coin around. His face blanched.
“Gotta be a joke. A trick. You bought it as a gag.”
Charlie sighed again.
“Yeah. That’s what they all said. All day long. Except I didn’t. I had a bunch of other coins, even some bills. But they all disappeared hours ago. I hid this. Just in case.”
He snatched it back from the doctor.
“Okay, so what if it is real? You’re saying what? That you aren’t from our world?”
“I don’t know. I guess. Look, I’m just a cab driver, okay. I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout this kind of stuff. I get up this morning, my wife’s hair is black, not red. I have my coffee and eggs, but my wife thinks I’m crazy when I ask for cheese and honey on my toast. Says I mean butter. I always have cheese and honey. Thirty years, and suddenly she doesn’t know what I eat?”
The doctor shifts in his seat.
“When did you suspect something was – umm different?”
“I was headed to work. I only live a block from where I park my cab. But the streets were all laid out wrong. And the names were wrong. There was this Roosevelt Street. Who the hell ever heard of a Roosevelt?”
“Wait. You don’t know who Roosevelt was?”
Charlie shook his head, rubbed his temples with his index finger and thumb, and sighed deeply.
“That’s what I been trying to tell everyone! Where I came from there ain’t no Roosevelt. It’s different! The same, yeah, in some ways, but different!”
The doctor slid his chair back. He stood and fastened the button of his suit jacket.
“Look, Mr. Simms. Relax here a few minutes. Let me go converse with Detective Anderson. Let’s not dwell too much on this dime, for now. Okay?”
“It ain’t just the dime!”
“I know. I know. Why don’t you let me hold onto it. As evidence. Alright?”
Charlie flipped the coin back over to the doctor.
“Fine. Whatever. I’m too tired to fight anymore.”
“Just give me a few minutes, okay?” The doctor slipped the dime into his pocket and knocked on the Interrogation Room door. When it opened he stepped through.
“So what do you think, doc?” Detective Anderson asked. The doctor slid his glasses along the bridge of his nose.
“The poor man is obviously delusional. He needs treatment.”
He fondled the dime in his pocket, flipping it between his fingers.
“He has to be delusional.”
“How do you mean?”
“A world, like ours, but different? Yet the same? I mean, really, how would you even explain that? No, he’s obviously over stressed. Needs therapy, quiet surroundings”
“I guess. You’re the expert.”
Charlie Simms stroked the hair on his chin and waited.
