by submission | Oct 28, 2011 | Story |
Author : Tim Rouse
It’s been eight years. I suppose it had to happen sometime.
They’ve been here longer than that, of course. Just shy of a century, they say. But eight years ago they revealed themselves, thousands of people enslaved, with aliens in their bodies, and suddenly they wanted the rest of us to welcome in an alien guest.
And people lined up for the opportunity. Maybe it was something in the water, but I drank that water and I never wanted an alien put inside me. I suppose when they saw some of the people the aliens already had (the president, hell, they had the president) they didn’t think it was worth fighting no more.
‘Course, lots of us did fight. Didn’t matter, for the most part- one of them inside the camp was all it took to open the gates, so to speak. And once they were in, it didn’t matter how hard you fought or how fast you ran, you ended up in the back of a van headed for Processing.
That’s where everyone ended up. Processing. Didn’t matter if you’d fought to the last man or if you’d welcomed them with open arms, there were only two ways out of that place. Death for the fat, the terminally ill, or whatever- we still don’t know, to tell the truth. My guess? They were just thinning us out. Maybe they didn’t need eight billion bodies, or maybe they just wanted to make sure Earth survived once they took over.
Maybe it was the lucky ones they killed. The rest got taken. One of their grubs down your gullet, and two days later they’re sat in your stomach, latched onto your spine, and it’s them running your brain now. They claim it’s like motherhood, but I always figured they were more like zombies.
A few of us got away. Not many- one in ten thousand, maybe? Probably less. Might be more overseas, where there were less people- Russia, perhaps, or Madagascar. Round here, most live in the hills, on old farms or in caves.
And then there’s us. Domestic terrorists, they call us. Freedom fighters, we call ourselves. Bombings, vandalism, straight-up execution sometimes. We’ll do anything to rid this planet of these monsters.
But sometimes… sometimes you stop, just when the crowbar should be smashing into the skull of a pretty teenager, just as the cold dead eyes of the alien inside betray, just for a moment, a flicker of fear, of humanity long since smothered.
It’s been eight years. I suppose it had to happen sometime. You stop, once too often, and the police
are onto you, and it’s no mercy, the aliens don’t know the meaning of the word.
So there we are. Two of us are already dead. The rest are battered, beaten, on the ground. The police aren’t paying much attention any more, busy with the growing crowd. But there’s no way we could get away now, unless…
I look over at Owen. Sure enough, he’s already got his slim wrists out of the cuffs.
“Go on!” hisses Cassie, a girl I thought I loved, once. Whatever happens to me tonight, I’m fairly sure I’ll never feel love again.
Owen looks unhappy. “I can’t leave you all… to them…”
I cut him off. “Just go, Owen. The fight must go on!”
Resigned, he nods, rises, and darts across the street.
As he walks up the road, mingling with the passers-by, I can’t help but think.
They look so like us.
by submission | Oct 27, 2011 | Story |
Author : Damien Krsteski
“One more and you’re done,” the bartender informs me. I nod, then take a large sip from the bottle.
Due to the nature of their work, bartenders tend to know certain things about people. Fortunately, the multiversal collapse that would lead me to her is a concept he’d never grasp. See, I have a secret to tell. I’ve lived and seen plenty, as much as all the people who have ever walked on this Earth put together. Probably even more so. I noticed it first in my early childhood. What a strange thing for a kid, to be able to leap back and forth. Sideways too. Well, if you think about it, every leap is a leap sideways. To be quite candid, it’s sort of difficult to explain even now. My family considered me sick, asocial. Never tried to disprove them, really. I ran away at the tender age of thirteen and never went back.
So here I am, me and the bearded bartender, half-bent from the alcohol, waiting. Just as I am about to pay my tab and leave, she enters.
Of course, I recognize her. I’ve seen her an infinite-fold times before. Elegant as always, immaculately dressed. That’s her, right there in the doorway. She enters with a bald, toothy guy. He’s talking his head off but she seems bored as hell, and I pick up the cue to intervene. I get up, try not to stagger, and walk over to her.
“Mind if I buy you a drink?” I ask, totally unsure of myself, knees shaking.
“Sure,” She’s beaming. Beautiful black hair waving, breaking right above her shoulders.
She ditches the asshole and sits by my side at the bar. Bartender Mike serves us both beers. We drink in silence, smiling at each other.
Thing is, I know what happens next. She doesn’t.
“I have a confession to make,” I say.
She widens her eyes, anticipating. There must have been a billion guys who’ve told her the same thing before. You’re the most perfect creature I’ve ever seen, she thinks I’ll say. I’ve never seen such beautiful eyes before. She’s almost sure of what I’m about to say. I ponder all possiblities and decide to tell her the truth this time.
“Listen Lisa,” For a brief moment she wonders how I know her name, then decides to go with the flow. “Believe it or not, I’ve practiced this for ages. We have met before, I’ve done this many times before.” She’s almost ready to get up and go back to Mr. Baldy. “Both of us live in a different instance of our universe, everyone does, but the funny thing is, ours overlap at this exact moment. At this instant, where we meet. I have yet to understand why, but what I know for sure is we belong together. Take my hand, and let go. Trust me, and our probability equations will collapse together into one.”
As I speak I become aware of how fast the words rush out of my mouth. She eyes me suspiciously, like I’m the homeless weirdo from the street corner.
“I think you’ve had too much to drink,” she says, gets up, pats me sympathetically on the shoulder and goes over to wrap her arms around the asshole on the next table.
“But you don’t understand,” I holler out as reality starts dissolving, “we’ve spent a lifetime together already.”
Everything becomes dark.
“And it was perfect,” I whisper into empty space.
Out of nowhere, pieces of the nothingness emerge and rearrange themselves into a bar scene. Bartender Mike tells me something, but the words reach me garbled, devoid of meaning. I’m sitting at the bar, finishing my last beer. Just as I am about to pay my tab and leave, she enters.
I take a deep breath and brace myself for what is to come, my heart trembling with the hope that this might be the time our realities finally converge. I muster courage and walk over to talk her into it.
by submission | Oct 26, 2011 | Story |
Author : g.a.harry
Such heat. Wave upon wave. Through air thick as tapioca. Brutal oppressive. Under the awning, the shade makes it worse. Adding weight, piling on heavy. A bead of sweat starts to form on his forehead. Welling up till gravity pulls it down the side of his head to dangle itching on his chin.
The waitress brings him a glass of frozen tea. Leaves boiled, sifted, separated, the run-off poured into a glass and put into the freezer over night. He watches it melt. The water in the air condensing, making a little puddle, darkening the wood of the table. The wait is unbearable. When enough has melted he slurps at it greedily. The ecstasy of cool. He bites into the ice, impatient.
The next table over, a man, lank skinny, sits, tapping a finger on the table, mumbling some kind of devil voodoo through the solid air. The words come soft, unintelligible. Edges dulled by the soupy breeze. His leg jiggles. The fear of god in his eyes. They flick wildly around. Paranoia written all over his face, a terror of everything.
The waitress comes over, carrying his drink on a small, round, cork-bottomed tray. As she sets the drink on the table, his eyes widen with fear. His hands are at his head. Scratching, pulling,
“Get ’em off me!”
He stands up, jerks vertical, the table tipping. The menu flickers, goes out. The glass of tea smashes, the ashtray dumps ash and butts all over the stone. The people around him stand up, backing away, afraid. It might be catching, borne from his stinking mouth on the moist air, to infest their blood, bring the madness down on them.
Falling to the ground, writhing screaming. Kicking. His skin, torn by glass beneath him, wet from the expanding puddle of melting tea, begins to bleed. Slowly at first, until he is a flailing red mass of lank hair sticky sweet tea.
When the van arrives, medics spill out wearing latex gloves, medical facemasks, he is picked up bodily. Dragged screaming onto a stretcher. They shoot him full of something. Finally he subsides, the animal violence dulled to an occasional twitch. He is put in the velo and taken away.
The matron, thin emaciated, emerges from the cafe pushing a mop and bucket. She struggles to get the small castors over the uneven stone. Her tiny arms, withered thin, look like they might snap under the strain. She grunts, breathing heavily.
As she slowly sweeps the mop across the flags, diluting the bloody tea, spreading it out more evenly, she sings to herself. A song from her childhood, maybe, that her mother used to sing. The melody a memory of happiness, a youth now long gone. Words from an old language spoken to the tune of three little notes.
She notices him watching her, gives him a friendly smile. He can see the shape of her skull through the sagging skin of her face. Watery grey eyes, a hint of jaundice yellow around the iris. She replaces the mop in the bucket, coming over,
“I am sorry. He is a lonely man. He got lost some time ago never managed to make his way back.”
She leans over, taps the menu in the table,
“Order anything you like.”
He looks down at the table. Everything heavy. Meat potatoes rice. He orders the gazpacho.
She smiles, returning to the mop bucket and struggles it back inside. The patrons return to their tables and are reabsorbed by the air. They appear gelatinous, thick custard statues, moving slowly. Sipping their cold, sweet tea.
by submission | Oct 23, 2011 | Story |
Author : Cech
They try not to let them know that they aren’t human. They say it’s for their own good; they wouldn’t be able to handle the reality. I don’t know, though. I mean, if they knew from the beginning, they weren’t told anything else, why wouldn’t they be able to accept it. Hell, they outnumber humans at this point, we’re the minority now. The artificials are an important part of the community now; they do the jobs that we aren’t able to anymore. In a way they are more human than humans.
Ever since we left Earth millennia ago, we have been changing. They deleted the files on the great athletes of Earth from the archives, afraid that they might upset the community. Illegal copies exist; they are passed around by trusted friends because the penalty for viewing banned files is severe. How the athletes of Earth moved was so fluid, and how they communicated was so personal, I am enamored by the feats that they accomplished with such ease.
Maybe that’s why they banned the files; they give us hope and desires. The banned files make us want more from our lives. Maybe that’s why they won’t tell the artificials who they are, artificial humans created long ago to do all the jobs that humans were no longer able to do. Maybe they feared that the artificials would want more for themselves rather than toiling away for us helpless humans. We should tell them, I should tell mine. The artificials have nothing to fear from humans, we can’t even take care of ourselves, how could we do anything to harm them?
Earth is a myth now; I am unable to tell fact from fiction. Whether there was life on land and in water, if there was a sky and there were stars, and if humans really built structures that dominated the landscape. It all sounds surreal to me, and if it’s all true I’m glad we left because it would all be wasted on us humans now.
I should tell my artificial what it really is, an image of humans of myth. That it was created to serve what is the reality of humans, a species that can no longer survive on its own. A creature that should have died out ages ago, but found a way to keep going, defying the plans of nature. Maybe the artificials could redeem humans, live on when we shouldn’t.
I should tell mine.
by submission | Oct 22, 2011 | Story |
Author : Damien Krsteski
Nurse Anne’s botoxed face creases into a contrived expression of worry but her tone remains bizarrely casual, “I’m sorry Mrs. Adrian, but as you can see for yourself, we’re unable to start therapy on the fetus.”
Caroline gets visibly agitated. “No,” she screeches in a panic-laden voice. “You must’ve made a mistake. I’ve looked these things up online and the margin of error turned out to be much higher than most people are aware of.” She stares right through the woman, incredulous.
“I assure you, Mrs. Adrian,” the nurse sounds bland, “no mistake has been made. I’m terribly sorry.” Her face stretches unnaturally into a sympathetic smile betraying her age.
“The common procedure after such results is…” She trails off.
Caroline nods, dumbstruck. She knows what the common procedure is.
“I’ll leave you alone now,” the nurse adds and strides out without further fuss.
Tears stream down Caroline’s cheeks. Her hands tremble, making her mindful of the results print-out that she still holds. She flings it across the room angrily just as the door slides open again, parting before Joseph.
His face appears burdened with sadness, eyes distant and unfamiliar. The two of them hug and hold each other for a few moments in silence. Little Geoffrey’s genetic results strike out of the blue, tearing a massive fault line between them. And they planned it all: the countryside baby-proofed house they saved up money for, neighborhood where the baby will grow, even the elementary school where he’ll tread into intellectual water for the first time. But now, because of the wretched Seventy-seven syndrome Geoffrey will be unable to receive the crucial cognitive enhancement therapy at the fourth month of pregnancy. A whole future wrecked, the fault line breaks them further apart.
“The nurse said we should do as most people,” Caroline manages to say through the sobs.
“But we’re not most people, we could still…”
“I’m not raising an idiot, Jo!” she interrupts through gritted teeth, apparently more angry than grieved. Her thoughts stray to their family trees, calculating despite herself a way to place blame.
Muted by pain they remain for the better part of the afternoon in the room, each in a separate corner, avoiding eye contact at all cost.
Three days later, on a day of weather as rotten as the fetus in her womb, she walks in the hospital alone. Doctors usher her unceremoniously in a wide windowless chamber, ease her onto a yellow X-marked spot. She dons a white paper gown which covers her entire body except for a cut right before her belly.
Flash.
The first wave of radioactivity bursts throughout. She thinks of the poor boy. He is almost a person.
Flash. Another loud click and burst. Why did they name him? They shouldn’t have done that.
After the third flash comes and the doctor’s digitized voice says she’s free to move, a single morbid spasm of remorse rips through her brain. Her blood freezes, but she quickly shuffles the thought aside hoping it’s gone forever.
Next time, she thinks, caressing her belly. Next time I’ll make a good Geoffrey, a better Geoffrey. And I’ll be damned if I let someone spoil me again.
Caroline smiles inwardly and saunters off to the adjacent room for the flush-out.
