by submission | Aug 4, 2012 | Story |
Author : Chris Capps
She’s a shrewd old lady. She knows things. When she gave the Parch brothers the treasure map, she said the journey would be dangerous. She even asked them if they had twelve shooters and – more importantly – knew how to use them. When they assured her they had killed before, she nodded and handed it over.
The treasure itself was a relic of our planet’s past, back when the interstellar mining syndicate owned the rights to the massive thorium deposits wedged deep in the canyons. It had been this simple isotope that had justified years of terraforming and careful city building. And when it dried up, so did the supply runs. When that went, so did most of the decent people and a great many roughnecks like the Parch brothers had landed in what was left hoping to gain some windfall from the planet’s past.
And then there were the urban areas. Even folk fixing to end it all didn’t go to the cities.
Unfortunately for the Parch brothers, the treasure map led them directly to an abandoned greenhouse complex in a little town called Good Night Sunshine, named in its heyday because of the massive ore drilling complex one town over that stretched up nearly a half mile into the sky. The sun rarely peeked over into the town proper. Needless to say, the greenhouses had been retrofitted with indoor lights.
They set up camp in the artificial wilderness of one of the buildings.
They had already run into their share of bandits, so when the doors to the greenhouse opened and the Parch brothers saw a trio of rough looking thugs springing to get in at them, pistols in hand, it was a simple enough flash of lights before the victor was declared. The Parch brothers had added three more to their kill count.
The older of the two, Buck, walked over to the bodies to see if they had anything on them – no doubt stolen off of the decent folk. Buck hollered at his brother holding a closed fist around ninety-eight dollars in gold bullion. Not a bad claim, but pocket change compared to the wealth that awaited them if they found the treasure. While Buck was searching the bodies, the younger brother Ed said he wasn’t interested – said he had only “the big one” on his mind.
When Ed awoke, he found himself alone with the sound of rain pelting the glass windows all around him in the perpetual artificial sunlight of the greenhouse. When he went outside he found Buck’s footprints imprinted in the mud filling up with water leading back the way they came.
When he found Buck, he was outside the old lady’s house, gun in hand and murder in his eyes. He said he had found a familiar looking map on the bandits leading dangerously close to the trail they were on. He had a few questions for the old lady.
Ed, being the younger, smelled the rank of lies on his brother’s breath, and the two carried on from there yelling and spitting until someone -we don’t know who- raised a gun and they shot each other stone dead. I’d say that’s the closest anyone ever came to figuring the whole thing out.
The Parch brothers had ended each other, but I’ve got to hand it to them. Buck suspected something was amiss when he found that map. I can’t say I feel too bad, though. It takes a cold-hearted man to shoot his own brother.
She says she didn’t hear the gunshots. With the thunder carrying on that night the way it did I’m not surprised. She never even knew they’d come back for her until she found them both lying outside her front door. Maybe one of these days we’ll figure out what to do about the cities, but you know it’s a lot easier to walk around at night these days with all the rough and tumble folk out of the picture.
You see in this town we don’t hand out death warrants. We hand out treasure maps.
by submission | Aug 3, 2012 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
When man first delved into the depths of the sea, they discovered a teaming ecosystem like nothing they’d ever imagined. When he first ventured out into space, he found bright stellar formations in the midst of barren blackness. And when men finally learned how to venture into the very heart of a star, they discovered something they’d never thought possible. They discovered something new. A single particle, like nothing ever witnessed or theorized, glowing in an unknown color, humming with an unknown tune.
The Particle was all at once the most important discovery in the history of mankind, both aesthetically and scientifically captivating. People clamored to see it, traveling from across the globe for a chance to catch of glimpse of this new thing that scientists couldn’t explain. Many theorized that these particles could exist in the heart of the every star, that if we could only reach another solar system, then we could have two something new’s.
As belief in that theory spread, the people of Earth became unified in a way they hadn’t been in all of history. Economies boomed, international tensions eased, nearly every country on Earth with something valuable to offer took part in the interstellar project. Within fifty years we had reached Alpha Centauri, ready to delve within the depths of her central star to find another piece of heaven to bring home to Earth.
But there was nothing there. Nothing but hydrogen and helium, the most unextraordinary particles imaginable. So the world moved on to another star system, then another, and another. From star to star we traveled, searching for another taste of newness, and still we found nothing. Gradually the united Earth began to crumble. Our cooperation waned. Old feuds were reignited. And suddenly, without anyone realizing it, without anyone anticipating it, we each began to covet the Particle for ourselves.
The first bomb dropped without warning, a preemptive strike, followed immediately by the demand to give up the Particle. The following exchange of missiles devastated most of the northern hemisphere. Southern countries who had long been minor players in international politics suddenly became world leaders, their presidents and parliaments and dictators all promising the people one thing. Control of the Particle.
The wars went on for years. They are still going on today. As the current caretaker of the Particle, I’ve come to realize that this world deserves neither its beauty nor its wonder. I’ve decided that it’s time for the Particle to leave Earth. As my transport leaves the solar system, I pity the world I’ve left behind. They weren’t worthy. They never were. Their lust and greed and arrogance cost them their right to paradise. Maybe, when they reunite to pursue me and my treasure, they’ll at the very least spare themselves Armageddon.
As for me, I will hide quietly away in another star system, alone with my prize. This is really the only way it could have worked out. I am, after all, the only one who ever deserved the Particle’s majesty in the first place. Its beauty exists only for me. For me, and me alone.
by submission | Jul 31, 2012 | Story |
Author : Dan Whitley
A ghastly wrenching sound drummed the ship from outside. Another loose bit of hull or outboard instrument had torn away. It flapped off into the distance, carried on the frigid blizzard of an alien world.
“Would you stop fidgeting?” Petra shot a baleful look over her shoulder at Quinn, the downed ship’s other occupant. She felt too cold to worry about getting the distress beacon working. He ignored her and continued rummaging about. She looked back toward the burning instrument panel and warmed her hands again. Quinn located the ship’s emergency locker and secreted its pistol into the back of his belt. He tossed the first aid kit onto the small loading deck.
“Seriously Quinn, cut that shit out. You’re gonna use all the air.” Petra stared rimed daggers at him. Her voice had the wrong sort of dread in it, the kind of tone when someone knows they’re going to have to live through something awful.
Quinn did not look up as he sorted through the first aid kit. Petra spun back around in a huff and tried the distress beacon again. Quinn made sure she wasn’t watching and shot himself up with a morphine syringe. He repaired the first aid kit and stretched his limbs a bit, getting his blood pumping.
“Fuck!” Petra shouted, dashing the distress beacon against their ship’s wide viewport. “I can’t get this working!” That tipped her over the edge. She coiled up in the co-pilot’s seat and spoke into her knees. “Oh god… we’re really gonna die. Quinn, we’re gonna die! Do something!”
Quinn was back at the locker. Satisfied that it was empty, he wandered over toward the loading hatch’s control panel and started typing at it.
“Quinn… Quinn, look at me…” The dread in Petra’s voice had returned. Quinn spun around and looked Petra square in the face, knowing full well what would come next.
“Listen,” Petra went on. “I don’t think we’re getting out of this… so I have to tell you. Back home, Chris…” Tears crept into Petra’s voice. Tears of dread, but not remorse. He could tell; he knew her too well. “He’s not yours, Quinn. I’m sorry.”
The slightest of smirks crept over Quinn’s face. He drew the pistol from his back and let it hang at his side.
“So that’s how it goes, huh?” Petra all but screamed. “We crash on a routine scout flight, and I come clean about Chris, about what I did, and you’re gonna up and shoot me, right here, just because you can? Well fine!” Petra threw her hands up defiantly. “You wanna kill me just because of that, do it.” Her words rang with more hollow fear than anger or hatred.
Quinn raised the pistol and put a round right through the distress beacon. He put another into the radio for good measure. Petra stared at Quinn with empty confusion. He never broke eye contact as he punched the console to open the hatch and set it to lock when it shut again. Lethal, icy winds blustered into the ship as the hatch crawled open.
Quinn spun around and flung the pistol off into the snow at an angle. He turned back and punched the console to shut the door and looked Petra square in the eye.
“I knew.”
Quinn ducked under the hatch as it shut and started off into the snow. As he walked, the ice in the wind tore his suit, and then his skin, and then his flesh, right off his bones.
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–
