by submission | Mar 25, 2012 | Story
Author : Thomas Desrochers
Bertie was a kind looking old man of eighty who had more wrinkles from smiling than anything else, and who looked like he always had a joke on his mind. He wasn’t particularly tall, though he was clearly handsome once. His shirt was plaid and tucked into his pleated khaki pants.
Drene was taller than Bertie by a few inches, and although she had begun to look rather severe in her old age of seventy five she had a friendly smile ready for anybody and everybody. Her hair was perpetually in a white ball around her head, a hair style reserved only for the old, and she was always sporting a pretty, if not plain, heavy-cut, and old-fashioned, dress of some sort or another.
Bertie and Drene had no children or grand-children left planet-side, and to make up for the lack of company would spend every afternoon sitting on their apartment’s front steps watching the people go by. Sometimes Bertie would read the news on his computer, and Drene was usually knitting something colorful and vibrant – today it was a scarf.
“It’s rather nice that they learned how to control the weather,” Drene commented one day. “Though I do miss the rain sometimes.”
“Mm,” grunted Bertie. “Never feels quite the same any more. Always too temperate.”
“Oh hush,” Drene told him as she rummaged through her bag for a small gauge needle. “You’re always finding the bad things in the new tech. You should just be happy with change for once.”
Bertie set his paper-thin computer down on his lap and watched the people who walked by. “What about all the surgery and cosmetics? Can I complain about that?”
“Oh Bertie, why are you always going on about this?” Drene sighed.
“Because,” he exclaimed. Then, softer, “It’s sad.”
He watched the people go by. They were tan, perfectly so; They had well-proportioned noses and attractive cheek-bones; Their eyes were all blue or green, their hair blond or black to match; There was no fat on their bodies, just electrically stimulated and grown muscle; Nobody was taller than anybody else – the women were all five feet and ten inches tall, and the men were all six feet and four inches; Everybody had tattoos, though on closer examination they were really just different variations of the same popular thing; Everybody had perfect teeth and their clothes were all fashionable, albeit very similar.
“It’s sad,” Bertie said again. Everybody was the same at first glance, and sometimes even on closer inspection. “Kids these days.”
“They’ll grow out of it.” Drene paused her knitting to pat him on the leg reassuringly. “We did, after all.”
“Yeah, well,” Bertie grouched. “You’d think kids would learn more from the silliness of people before them.”
He turned back to his news. Long-range faster than light was finally ready for commercial use. Saturn’s Erys space station had finally reached twenty million people, and was continuing to grow. NovaCorp was finally beginning to harvest the core of Venus. The last veteran of the Gulf War had died. A senator had been caught having an affair.
Funny, he thought to himself, how some things never change while everything else is moving and changing and never stopping.
Bertie’s phone rang. He looked down at it and smiled, answering with a “Well, hello there.”
“Hi grandpappy,” a happy child’s voice giggled. “Daddy says we’re going to come visit!”
He smiled. Some things never change.
by submission | Mar 24, 2012 | Story |
Author : M. A. Goldin
Elise had been bellowing at the comms for two minutes. Where the hell was he?
Keeper McDermott scrambled into the room and fell into a chair before the console. He wore worn clothes and a week’s whiskers. “Sorry, I was just tinkering with the electrical shielding in my bedroom.”
She glanced at the readings on her screen. “Keeper McDermott.”
“Yes?”
“You were making it worse.”
“Really? You don’t say.”
“Since you kept me waiting, I’ve been through your systems.” She frowned. “Beacon’s fine, so I don’t have to get a repair team out there right away, but you’ve got an awful lot of screwy in there.”
“Wait, Boss –“
“Shut it. You’ve got unauthorized electronic devices wired all over the place.” She made a face. “Audio files called ‘creepy’ and ‘moaning’.”
“They draw zero power.”
“You’ve got abnormally high electric fields in most of the living quarters and the repair shop.”
He fidgeted. “They’re barely above background, really.”
“You’ve got a subroutine in the air processing system that’s intentionally causing random backups in your ventilation.”
“I like breezes.” Behind him, a door slammed violently shut.
“Uh huh. And now I see there’s… thinning in the exterior insulation? Re-directed heat ducts? Are you crazy?”
“It’s just a couple of cold spots, no big deal.”
“Cold spots! What the hell are you doing to my Beacon?”
“Nothing! Don’t you get it?”
She slumped back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “Clearly, no. Explain.”
“Please, don’t send a repair team.” He ran his face through his hands. “I’m fine. The station’s fine, I just –“ he sat there, staring at the console without really seeing.
“Keeper?”
“The weird feelings, the slamming doors, the moaning, the cold spots.” He looked up at her, his eyes pleading. “It’s better than the silence. Better a Beacon with ghosts than alone on a dead rock.”
Elise chewed her lip. Let him wait a little. “Had to send a crew out to Beacon 113 last month. New lightkeeper.”
McDermott looked confused. “Yeah?”
“The old Keeper wasn’t dead, so it never tripped the bio sensors here. Only reason we knew something was off was he had the oxygen cranked way, way up. Son of a bitch had drilled a hole in his skull. Big one. With that plus the oxy, he was blissed out of his mind when they got there. Walked out an airlock when nobody was looking.”
“Holy Christ.”
“So now I’ve got an emergency boat headed out there with a new Keeper. You got any idea what that costs? Company’s probably going to take it out of his life insurance.” She glared at McDermott. “Am I going to have to do that twice in one month, Keeper?”
“No, ma’am.”
She stared at him through the screen, trying to see the man through bad lighting and a billion miles of interference. The Beacon would run fine, if need be; would he?
“I suppose ghosts are better than tripping balls till your Beacon explodes.”
McDermott blushed and tugged at a piece of hair behind his ear. “Yeah.”
“You get any other ghosts out there, ones you didn’t make, you tell me. Let me send your replacement on a slow boat.”
He smiled, nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“San Martin out.”
by submission | Mar 23, 2012 | Story |
Author : Chris Daly
There were two, quite different, options open to him now.
The optical sensor domes sprouting from his aft projections registered six thermal spikes; a quick cross reference from his synthetic aperture radar strips confirmed the incoming ships. Pulling a polite one gee acceleration towards him, they were slipping into a rough hemisphere about three kilometres apart. It was a subtle combat stance, if you counted subtle as not actively broadcasting your intent to surround and confine the target. Of course, that broadcast came over within minutes, gently tickling his microwave sensors: the ship captains urging him to deactivate.
He looked slowly out over the empty starscape ahead, his gravity field reshaping to align him towards a polar orbit of the vast B-class star stretching below his bulk. The blue radiance below was blinding his ventral sensors, especially in the incredibly bright UV region. He knew that his pursuers would have difficulty seeing detail, only a faint smudge due to his stellar occultation at half a light second distance. His transversal velocity was steady at nearly two kilometres per second, forcing the hunters to aim ahead to the intercept point; at their current range missiles would not have enough fuel and acceleration to hit him. He began small, random adjustments to his acceleration, negating any projectile targeting completely. Time was now the limiting commodity.
He retreated to the faster optical substructure within his core, buying him additional thinking time, and began weighing up his options.
The first was the most obvious, easiest to perform and physically safest choice: Surrender. He had no online weapon systems, so fighting was contraindicated. Of course after surrender the pursuers would not destroy his body; it was far too valuable as a technological entity. However, his personality would probably be etched away or modified, which was the worst outcome. Fear of death, it seemed, was not limited to biologicals.
The second was riskier and much more difficult: Running. His body was much stronger, faster and more agile than any two of the other ships combined, but there was one major physical limit. The vacuum he swam through was permeated by the mass shadow of the brilliant star below him, allowing him to anchor, push off and resist against the gravity field. The further away he ran, the less capable he would be – deep space was not an option.
Anger and frustration reached their apex and he sprang out of the isolated optical core, screaming into every available spectrum. Signalling lasers flickered into the darkness; microwaves tore out and superheated every polar molecule in a kilometre radius; his magnetic shielding expanded, producing bright aurorae as it focussed stellar charged particles. Finally he kicked out against the gravitational ether and felt massless as a great ripple raced out, like a tidal wave in space-time.
Two minutes later, his rage subsided. His sensors reopened and sampled the thermally hot sphere he now sat in. As it slowly radiated and cooled back to background levels, he observed hundreds of small objects slavishly following a dead trajectory where his pursuers once flew, on course to add their mass to the great star below him.
He lay in the vacuum, retreated to his quiet substrate, and slowly contemplated the third path.
by submission | Mar 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : Kyle Hubbard
Humans are remarkably ugly.
The kylhu child had never seen a real one before, so it stared with morbid fascination at the man on the stage. The human marched back and forth on two legs, bellowing and waving his bizarre limbs in grand, sweeping gestures. He was speaking a local kylhu dialect, but not very well; he did not meet the right vocal pitches, he paused frequently to suck in air, and his body language was all wrong.
“Come see aliens from all over galaxy!” he was shouting. The surrounding kylhu seemed confused and a little afraid as the human made his speech. The kylhu race rarely saw anything from off-world, as most space travelers felt that Kylh’on had little to offer them. It was a dry, desolate planet with harsh weather that spanned most of the solar rotation. The carnival had arrived on an optimal cycle, but it was unclear what they hoped to trade for the entertainment they provided.
The child began to wander the fair, marveling at the sights. Various alien life forms were on display inside metal cages, glass tanks, and fenced pens. As much as the child wanted to take its time looking at them, the carnival would be leaving soon, so it had to be quick if it was going to see them all.
Scurrying from display to display, the child stumbled blindly into the leg of a large creature. It looked up and up until it recognized the alien as the human it saw earlier.
“Greetings, young one,” the man said in the same barely-coherent kylhu dialect he used before. “You like fair?”
Nervous, the child said nothing.
“You like candy?” the human continued, though the final word was unfamiliar. He reached down and presented a pink, fluffy substance. “Cotton candy,” said the human in a language the child did not understand. “Human food. Try.”
Curious, the child took a small piece of the fluff and tasted it. The flavor was very strong, which the child disliked at first, yet it found itself ingesting a little more. Before long it was eagerly consuming the stuff, unable to stop itself. The child felt ill, yet it kept eating and eating until the pink fluff lost its color, and the world faded to black.
–
“You awake yet?”
It took the child a few moments to recognize the noises as words, but it could not decipher what they meant. Its vision returned slowly, and it let out a sickly gurgle, feeling queasy and disoriented.
“‘Bout time,” said the voice. The kylhu child peered around its surroundings and found itself trapped inside a metal cage. Everything nearby was grey and shiny, unlike the familiar orange sands of Kylh’on.
A figure approached the cage, causing the child to back into a corner. It recognized the figure at once: the human from the carnival.
“Have a nice nap, kiddo?” said the man, but the child did not understand him. The human crouched down and tapped lightly on a metal bar. “Sorry about this,” he said. “Your kind don’t have much in the way of currency. None we can use in the colonies, anyhow. But you… You’re something special. The colonies are just itching for a new display, and I think you’re it. You’re gonna put us on the map again, little guy.”
The young kylhu shrunk even further into the corner, its little body quivering. It wanted to go back home. It didn’t like this place.
The human exhaled and rose to his full height. “Buck up there, champ,” he said. “You’re in show business, now.”
by submission | Mar 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
I found her on my way home from a party. She was sitting in the middle of the park’s square in the four shadows of the four streetlights, and she was hugging her knees to her chest as if her life depended on it while her head was tucked in behind it. Her hair was short, dirty like her face and the nightgown that seemed to be all she was wearing.
She was pretty.
I sat down three feet in front of her, legs crossed. It was a little chilly out, and a storm was moving in, kicking up leaves and dust before it.
“You’re going to get cold,” I said. “Would you like my coat?”
She made a noise like a whimper and hugged her knees tighter. She whispered something, but it was lost in the wind.
I leaned forward. “What was that?”
“I have to stay in the center.”
I looked around. The city rose up all around us, towering over the trees. On each corner of the park was one of the four towers – two hundred stories each of pristine carbon, steel, and silicon and home to four million people a piece. She was sitting exactly in the middle of all four, at the center of sixteen million lives.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to be alone any more. I’m surrounding myself with people.”
I felt something catch in my throat. It’s so easy to be left behind and forgotten these days. I was like her once, sometimes I still am. There are some things that drugs can’t cure. I hadn’t imagined the tattoo on her wrist that marked her as broken, that read ‘Schz5-105014.’
At some point people stopped trying to even pretend to care about the schizophrenics, the manic-depressives and psychotic depressives, the hallucinators and day-time dreamers and the happily mad men and women of the world. Bag them, tag them, drug them, and if they cause trouble, neutralize them. That was the way society dealt with them any more. Cures are for the healthy, after all. Homelessness and poverty was easy to fix, but other problems? Too much work.
I hugged my knees to my chest, rested my chin on them, mirroring her. “It’s bad right now, isn’t it.”
She nodded her head, an almost imperceptible movement in the half-dark.
I wanted to tell her she wasn’t alone any more, I wanted to tell her that I would help her through this and help her through life and, if she wanted, through death. I wanted to hold her and run my fingers through her hair and whisper to her that everything would be alright.
I ran my hand over the rough scar on my wrist where I had burned my mark off and melted the electronic tag. MD5-103331. Manic-Depressive, fifth order. Most severe. Dangerous.
I couldn’t tell her that she wasn’t alone, I couldn’t help her or hold her or whisper in her ear. She was dangerous, like me, like all of us. She would draw attention, have me found out. I would be evicted back to one of the homes, I would lose my job and my friends. I just couldn’t do it. I stood up and left her sitting there in the middle of nothing, fat drops of rain beginning to fall like so many empty tears.
I saw in the news reports that they found her body after the storm, wet and cold and limp and empty.
They burned it with the rest of the ones that always turn up after bad weather.
