by submission | Sep 4, 2011 | Story |
Author : Dan Whitley
Ortega stormed into one of the houses on the outskirts of town, looking for and finding his colleague Pablo, who was mulling over the very thing Ortega had dreaded Pablo would hang on to. “Pablo, we are not taking that thing with us,” Ortega declared, staring into the oblong crate and pointing at the thing inside it.
“You are too superstitious,” Pablo replied calmly. “This is a great find, Ortega. Think of the sensation it will cause back in home!”
“More likely a calamity,” Ortega shot back. “It is the grotesque bi-product of the rituals of the savages. Who would want to see the burned corpse of a man ruined by their godless rites and sacrifices of local savages?” he demanded.
Pablo leaned forward over the crate, the light of the lanterns in the room casting dark shadows over his face. “Ortega… I’ve been examining this corpse for a long while. You know that. But I’m starting to believe…” he poked at the corpse’s chest, “I’m starting to believe this isn’t the corpse of a man.”
Ortega stared hard at Pablo. “Explain.”
“You’ve felt its skin, haven’t you?” Pablo pulled at the skin of the corpse. “It feels like sandstone and moves like stiff leather. Not even burn victims wind up like that. And look here,” he added, rolling the corpse on its side, causing Ortega to dry-heave. “It has a four arms, and hands with three fingers. But the most intriguing feature, my friend…” he said, laying a hand atop its head, “…is the skull.”
The pair leaned in close to the corpse’s head as Pablo began manipulating it. “See, it’s much longer than a human skull should be. And here, its jaw protrudes too much, and its teeth appear to be fused.”
Ortega folded his arms. “Since when are you a physician?”
“I’m not, but I am a man of common sense, and something tells me that this creature is not human.” Pablo left the corpse in the crate and pulled Ortega over to a table. “I took these from the same place we found the corpse. Look at this.” He held up a sphere, roughly the size of an orange, perfectly smooth. “Give me your sword.” Ortega obeyed warily; Pablo unsheathed the sword and held the sphere up to the naked blade. It attached like a drunkard to his bottle.
“It’s a lodestone,” Ortega observed tersely. “What of it?”
Pablo slid the sheath back onto the sword up to where the sphere sat. He grabbed sheath and hilt in a strong grip and said, “Pull it off.”
Ortega grabbed the sphere in one hand and gave it a light tug. It didn’t budge. He pulled again, harder, without success. Frustrated, he gripped the sphere in both hands and played tug-of-war with Pablo for several seconds before finally the sphere came free, sending both men reeling backwards.
“My word,” Ortega said. “That is not natural.”
“I found this near the corpse,” Pablo said, standing and brushing himself off. “There was some other metal around him, stuck in the ground, one of which looked vaguely like a ship’s wheel, but they wouldn’t move. I’m not sure what this all means, but my guess is this corpse is some other, undiscovered race of man. Perhaps someone will know, someday.”
Ortega thought about this, stared a long while at the crate and the corpse it held. Finally he shuddered, shook his head, and made for the door. “I’ll see that it’s loaded onto the San Jose with the treasure. We leave Cartagena to sail back to Spain tomorrow.”
by submission | Sep 3, 2011 | Story |
Author : Polar McCoy
The bystanders cheered and applauded as Officer Jimenez holstered his weapon. They patted him in the back and said things like, “Great work,” and “Now that’s one less of them we have to worry about.”
“Damn, Jimmy,” Jimenez’s partner, Goldberg, said. “That’s like the third one you got this week! You must be goin’ for a record or somethin’.”
“Come on, grab her feet,” Jimenez instructed.
“Why don’t we just leave her there?” asked Goldberg.
“Can’t. It’s almost rush hour. There’s gonna be a lot of foot traffic around here. She’ll be in the way.”
“Yeah, right,” Goldberg said, picking up the woman’s feet. “Where’re we puttin’ her?”
“Dumpster in the alley.”
“Hey, don’t forget her purse.”
Jimenez picked up the Gucci handbag and slung it over his shoulder as he picked up the woman by her wrists.
“I betcha she’s a Prima,” Goldberg said. “Primas never want to show their status cards.”
“Well, if they would, then this wouldn’t happen as much,” Jimenez said.
“She looks like a Prima.”
“How can you look like a Prima? Alphas don’t look any different from Primas. That’s why we have status cards.”
“I can just tell.”
“You know who else said that?” Jimenez asked.
“Who?”
“You hear of Valentino from the two-seven?”
“No.”
“He got booted off the force a while back because he thought he could tell them apart.”
“So what happened?” Goldberg asked.
“He ended up shooting nine Alphas thinking they were Primas.”
“Jesus. Here, pick up your end. She’s slipping.”
Jimenez rested the woman’s bulleted head on his knee for a second as he gripped her wrists more firmly.
“The only reason he didn’t get arrested was cause those types of shootings were justifiable back then.”
“What changed?”
“Too many of those types of shootings. Just as many Alphas were getting killed as Primas. So they introduced status cards.”
“They should just tattoo ‘Prima’ to their foreheads,” Goldberg said.
“Not a bad idea. Here we go.”
They were at the dumpster. With one good heave they tossed the woman’s body in. Her head thudded against the side. Jimenez tossed the purse too, but missed. It fell to the ground, spilling its contents. He picked it all up.
“Katherine McKenna,” he read off the license. “Says she lives in the Presidio.”
“Should we notify the family?” Goldberg asked.
Jimenez flipped through Katherine’s wallet.
“Don’t have to,” he said. “Status card says she’s a Prima.”
by submission | Aug 31, 2011 | Story |
Author : Travis Gregg
The front door of the two-story colonial split easily beneath the man’s boot. The wood was going soft he decided, and the houses in the neighborhood were dilapidated versions of their former selves.
As the man entered the house he glanced at the sun and decided that this was going to be the last one for today. To not get greedy and play it safe was a lesson he’d learned the hard way.
Working his way through the house without finding much of anything, the man tried one last room and was surprised by what he found. It was a great find as far as he could tell although he’d probably have to abandon some of the things he’d already looted that day to make room. What he could get in trade for these would be much more valuable than anything he’d pilfered that day.
***
“So what have you brought for me today?” the portly trader asked two days later.
After digging a moment in his pack he came up with a loose bundle. “You know I don’t really have an eye for this sort of thing,” the man said almost apologetically.
He’d taken the time to individually wrap each figurine in a t-shirt or rag and then had wrapped the whole collection into a larger bundle. After separating out each one and placing them on the table, he had a small formation of figurines, twelve in all.
“These are nice, good quality,” the trader acknowledged after taking time to inspect them. “What do you want for them?”
The man looked around the largish warehouse, his eyes trailing over the mounds of junk, racks of old goods, even some electronics that they both knew would never function again.
“I could use some seeds I guess. I’m thinking of growing carrots.”
“Well the carrots are no problem, anything else?”
“Oil or gas if you have any. You know the real reason I’m here.”
“Yes I know. Supplies have been running low however. For these,” he gestured to the figurines, “I can spare three liters.”
“Five, and you give me a container to haul it.”
“Four, and you can owe me for the container.”
Having reached an agreement, the two men shook on it and the trader went to the racks looking for the seed packets and a container for the gas. The haggling had mostly been grandstanding; a ritual they both played out every couple weeks.
They both knew the man could only reasonably haul four liters on his bike, and the gas was in abundance anyway.
Within a twenty mile radius there were around a hundred thousand cars, most with reasonably intact gas tanks and the man didn’t even need the fuel. Getting around in a car was impractical and a bike suited his lifestyle much more anyway.
The bargaining was more a pretense for the little bit of human interaction he wanted. The trader appreciated his visits, the man knew, and he was sometimes able to get supplies he’d have to really search for otherwise. And on top of that it kept him from having to siphon fuel out of cars when he actually needed fuel.
After about twenty minutes the trader came out from around the back of his warehouse lugging a small metallic can.
“Here you go, and here are the seed packets,” he said, handing over a small bundle.
“Many thanks,” the man replied as he began peddling.
The trader waved, happy for the visit. There were so few people left.
by submission | Aug 30, 2011 | Story |
Author: Dan Fuhr
Years spent as a shuttle engineer and now I’m facing the unemployment line for another week. Of course, after this week, someone will be calling me up.
A bachelors and masters in Electrical Engineering, MBA, Professional Engineering license, the whole nine yards in education, and I can’t even get a callback from a company. Of course, I’ll get a callback next week from someone, maybe the European Space Agency.
All the parts used I bought off the shelf from hardware stores in America. Then I drove them in a trailer to Mexico, where my family owns vacation property in a secluded area with plenty of land. A few weeks down there “on vacation” and I was ready to go. Sure, the natives called me “científico loco”, the mad scientist, and the officials came knocking a few times, but a few greased palms and dinner parties put me in the clear. Overall, it was cheaper than I paid for my last car than it was to build the rocket, bribe officials and launch it. American ingenuity produces amazing work, or is that a will and a way? Either way I’ll impress the Russian Federal Space Agency.
Every night I checked, the rocket was on course. I’m an engineer, I don’t care about landing in the history books; I just want a job that uses my abilities. When I first started the project, I thought about landing on the moon, but really, whom would that impress? Everyone can see the moon and point to it. Hitting that would be like hitting the broad side of a barn. Therefore, I chose a smaller target.
2010 TK7, the first Earth Trojan asteroid to be discovered, 300m in dimension, hard to see, hard to find, easy to miss. And I landed an old Dell on the thing. The clock is ticking; soon it’s going to start sending a simple radio transmission, a short form of my resume.
I picked up my last unemployment check and started talking with the nice lady who handed it over. She was very giddy.
“Have you heard the big news? Some unemployed NASA engineer just landed a living dog on the moon, AND he’s bringing him back alive!”
I smiled as I resigned to seeing her again next week.
by submission | Aug 29, 2011 | Story |
Author : Carter Lee
Martin Crimmons was brought into the hospital at 5:40 pm on a Thursday. 63 years old, Martin had suffered a minor heart attack, and was admitted overnight because his personal physician had a boat payment to make, and personal hospital visits were money-makers. Being wired up to half a dozen monitors made no difference when, at 3 am, Martin suffered another, altogether more serious attack, except that it allowed the attending doctor to pinpoint almost to the second when death officially occurred.
Martin knew none of this, of course, because he was dead, and this world held nothing more for him. It wouldn’t be correct to say his consciousness continued, but neither did it end. Martin had been an atheist, and, to the extent he could be, was surprised that he hadn’t vanished into nothingness. The pulling, tearing sensation was unexpected, too.
The last thought Martin had was that it felt like someone was tugging off the spiritual equivalent of a band aid. Then Martin was gone, and only I remained.
I ached terribly, emptiness and loss coursing through my being. I barely felt the wave of hope and joy my Assistant tried to cover me with. I appreciated the effort, but it would be some time before such things could really affect me.
My vision cleared, little by little, and the lighted mount in front of me gradually came into focus. In front of the mount, a mass of flowing substance, at once crystalline and organic, floated, silent. As I watched, my agent leaned forward and interfaced with the mass. I knew what he was experiencing, because it had come from me. My Agent was feeling Martin, all that he had been, all I had been while him.
Leaning back, my agent began to make noises of happiness and greed, approving of my latest effort and what it would earn us. I barely noticed.
Looking at Martin, the hole I felt inside seemed to yawn wide, threatening to swallow everything else. My Assistant came into physical contact to bolster the healing wave being broadcast to me.
I tore my awareness away from Martin. For the next few cycles, I knew, I wouldn’t be able to even consider Martin. The sense of loss and sadness would fade, slowly, but healing would not occur if my mind wasn’t focused elsewhere. I would never interface with him, as my Agent had. I’d made that mistake, once. Never again.
Part of me was gone, and would never return. Martin would be, to the rest of existence, one more in a series of works of art I had created. To me, though, Martin would always be something I had lost. A little life gone. Forever.
It hurt so much…
