by submission | Dec 17, 2011 | Story |
Author : Ian Rennie
Dear Tony, Amanda, Vladimir, and Manami,
If I set this right, then this message has appeared just as you lost radio contact with Earth, alongside the real figures for how little fuel there actually is on your ship.
The first thing I want to do is apologize. You don’t deserve this. Nobody would deserve this. You deserve much more than an explanation, but an explanation is all I can give you.
Ultimately, this has come down to money. For decades NASA, ESA, and JAEA have been asked to do even more with even less, and as a result we’ve been forced to be a little more creative than we would have liked with our budget.
One of the largest costs of any Mars mission is the cost of bringing the ship back. All the way there, you have to lug the fuel to bring you all the way home again, meaning that the mass of the craft turns out to be more fuel than anything else. However we span it, a return trip to Mars costs exponentially more than a one way. We looked at sending the fuel first for you to collect when you got there, we looked at sending means of manufacturing the fuel for your return journey. Nothing worked. We could afford a one way but not a round trip.
We could have been open about it, recruited specifically for people who wouldn’t have objected to spending the rest of their life on the red planet. It would have been a bigger trip, but it would also have been a bargain rate for multiple years of data collection. This wasn’t possible politically. No elected representative would sign off on people going to Mars to die there.
So, we’re left with this, and I’m sorry. Your instruments have been lying to you the whole time, telling carefully constructed untruths, making sure you and everyone else believed you would be coming back.
You will be remembered, and honoured, and loved. The news will call this a noble sacrifice and they will be closer to the truth than they know. We’ll come back to Mars sooner, and in greater numbers, to honour the four brave souls who died on the takeoff of their return trip.
The countdown on the explosives should be nearing zero now.
Godspeed.
by submission | Dec 14, 2011 | Story |
Author : Drew Dunlap
The sun curls itself over the mountain, sneaking golden fingers gently over the hill and down into the valley to touch my arm. Like a lover waking another, the warm caress encourages me to rise while nudging me into the comfort of consciousness. Oh, the temptress does greet me so aptly. I open my eyes too quickly, only to have them close against the brightness of their own accord. Again I try, more gently, and enter slowly into the virgin day.
Still alone.
Awake now, I bask in the warmth of the sun. It is cleansing time, and I make my way to the lake with my belongings. The trip is short but allows me to breathe in the smells of morning. The fragrant tall grass and wild flowers nourish my soul.
As I sit down at the water’s edge, words and symbols flash through my mind. A deep intake of breath, and I am prepared.
The words of the gods pour from my mouth. Brilliant lights consume me. I feel life-force leave my fingertips as a green vortex forms in front of me. From it steps a humanoid creature of pure bone. I return its permanent smile as it stands slightly askew, awaiting my command. The earthlings call them skeletons. I shall call him Fydow.
“Guard my pack, Fydow.”
My companion steps forward, hunkering slightly over my pack. “Guarding with my life,” replies Fydow, its jaw bouncing like a puppet’s.
I strip at the water’s edge and bathe quickly, then sit for a moment on a warm rock. I love the sun. After many long, blissful moments, I dress.
A fisherwoman eyes me as I return up the path and eyes me suspiciously. When I smile politely, her face turns ashen. She increases her pace.
The sights and sounds of the day distract me and I wander, eventually finding myself in a field, far from my intended destination. “Out of my way, troll!” says a burly earthling farmer.
Troll is an earthling term for a mythical creature that lived under bridges, ate goats, and scared children. I have read many of their books. The insult is not lost on me.
He attempts to push me aside, but fails. His rudeness fills my heart with disappointment. “Me sorry,” I reply in his native tongue. So self-centered are these earthlings. He makes a sound with his throat and continues past me down the path.
I whistle to Fydow, who saunters over to me. His awkward gait reminds me that he is simply an automaton: a creation with no true soul. I know this for a fact, yet I continually repress the thought. We walk for hours.
My life is soft baked bread and frothy ale. It is warm sunrises and the desired touch of love. It is a lasting look into the soul of a lover’s dream. It is the rippling water’s edge, a deep breath, shared happiness, and a warm rock.
But to these earthlings I am merely a troll.
The city is still hours away as the day draws to a close. I drop my pack. The sun slips behind the far hill, a quiet goodbye to lonely me.
“Fydow, how do you feel?”
“I am at full health.”
I unfurl my bedroll.
“But how do you feel?”
“I am at full health.”
Slumping beside my companion, I play with a piece of grass growing through a split in a rock.
“Tell me how you feel.”
“I am at full health.”
I put my head in my large green hands to muffle the sounds of my loneliness.
by submission | Dec 13, 2011 | Story |
Author : Garrett Harriman
Flagons of goat milk strewn before him, Mr. Rudolph propped boots on his musty bag. Sun-wrung but cheery, he’d drunk nonstop the whole interrogation, whistling once winter classics between questions and guzzles. Their purpose, their lyrics, had all but evaporated. Only their catchiness remained.
Plagues berating Tor’s head, they underscored the man’s impossible alibi. If nothing else, he was assiduous. He swore himself a Worldtop missionary. Detailed cobbling, pointy-eared creatures, whirlwind, nightlong deliveries. Snow.
Noah Tor stopped him again. “Snow, Mr. Rudolph?”
Rudy’s dimples were products of emaciation. “Like fallout, my Noah, only freezing. Pure. You can even sculpt it into men.”
Tor’s matte imagination couldn’t contain such splendor. “Why approach Subhaven by foot?”
The man mime-whipped eight creatures in succession–“On Comet! On Cupid!”–waving from a high-flying sleigh. “Couldn’t slip down the chimney. There’s only a coal chute.”
“It’s blocked. For emergencies.”
Rudy toasted genially. “Thank the saints I signaled, eh?”
Tor’d seen the distress flares, red and green, as Rudy collapsed in the swelter. It was a dangerous foible accepting Shadeless subsurface. Most Ark lords slit vendor throats as a precaution; Tor gave them hospitality. Empathy. Milk.
So long as Old Wind stained the Geiger-hot air, Tor refused to kill unscrupulously. Even if Rudy proved a conscript, some Secular saboteur, life on the Sprawl scorched the mind beyond blame. History and lore were toxins, Blurring men out of all prescience.
And who’s to say flying deer never existed? Truth, like sand, was immemorial.
Tor beckoned for the bag. “Your wares, Mr. Rudolph.”
Rudy slid his haul. “Wares? Ho-ho-no–they’re gifts!”
“You say that…” The Noah unloaded toys onto the tabletop. A wooden caboose. A wind-up alligator. A scuffed Gameboy cartridged with Mega Man V. Each an inscrutable, portable ruin. Items not of nostalgia but suspicion.
“All handmade!” lauded Rudy. “Subhaven’s children have earned their rewards.”
Tor rummaged through dolls. “By whose standards?”
“Why mine, of course.” Rudolph chuckled. “And the Naughty-Nice List.”
Tor tightened: List? He flapped the sack until a hide scroll fluttered out. He read it top to bottom. He gloomed.
Tor clenched a doll’s floppy head. “And how does a Shadeless conjure the names–the deeds–of children secured underground?”
Rudoulph’s latest tune–“We Three Kings”–withered. He stroked his braided beard and winked. “Ah, that I can’t explain, Noah. The lives of Ark children stream through my head in gales. Always have, good and bad.”
A missile of sinew and meat, Tor wedged Rudy against the flagstone. Torchlight radished their faces.
“That much I can’t believe. Are these beacons, Rudy? Bombs?” Tor decapitated the doll–a flurry of fluff. “Who’s the Secular traitor what sold you my children? Give me creeds, you Blurred wretch! Remember!”
It was futile. Guileless eyes irradiated back. “I’m a public servant, Noah. An entrepreneur. My elves made these presents. At the workshop.”
Silent, remorseful, Tor shrank from the deluded merchant. He rallied his guards; they advanced with ill tidings.
Rudy cornered himself. “Don’t be naughty, sir–the delivery’s tonight! Your children, the others–they need me!”
Gentle, Tor retrieved Rudy’s flagon. “You’re no child murderer, Rudy. No lunatic or marauder. You’re a charitable man. Like me.” He pecked his far-gone brow. “Roam,” he whispered. “Don’t come back.”
Incredulous, his whiskers white with foam, Rudolph was ushered by the guards.
Weighing the coming conflict, Tor paced the hall. He restocked the threadbare bag. It smelled bodily of coal.
Yes. Coal. Hunting Seculars would constrict Subhaven’s resources. They’d need every scrap of fuel to survive.
The Noah cinched and shouldered Rudy’s relics. He quickened to the furnaces, whistling “Silver Bells.”
by submission | Dec 10, 2011 | Story |
Author : Timothy Marshal-Nichols
Black; void.
Agnieszka did not believe she had seen anywhere this empty. It was unexpected.
Thus far it had not been a particularly good life: the degenerative illness; stuck in the minuscule grey bunkers of the menials accommodation block; reliant on handouts from other menials. For the past forty years Agnieszka had wasted away to a slender stick; her dirty blue overalls hung limply from her frame; her thin face made her black eyes look enormous. And then the offer came: three key strokes to reset her life, another start, a reboot, all it would take was three little key presses. She’d jumped at the chance, she shouldn’t have.
Weeks later, after the tedious desperate wait, she’d been ushered into the gleaming expanse of the research institute; here to be the first to go back in time; the chosen one to be experimented on. There wasn’t much for her to do; no training was needed. She had been stripped, showered, dressed in white paper overalls newly ripped from their cellophane, and been given a superficial medical examination. From there she was marched through the laboratory; driven out to a half buried concrete bunker where she descended in a lift to a platform. From there she walked alone through a narrow passageway to the chamber where she was to initiate the experiment.
The door slammed shut, bolts hissed. All that remain of the world outside was memory, and an occasional faint metallic clang.
Inside the bright grey chamber the shiny metal walls were smooth and polished. There was almost nothing here; just a bright blinding light above; the faint outline of the door she had just entered; and a small hip height console jutting out from the far wall, on this those three precious keys. She waited, should she? She didn’t want to do this any more. She waited; they, those above ground, would be expecting some response; she waited. She strode to the console and looked at it. Slowly she pressed the Ctrl key with her left hand little finger, and quickly took it away. She waited; could she back out? There were no communications with the world above. Again she pressed the Ctrl key with her little finger and then, tentatively, held down the Alt key with her forefinger. Closing her eyes she lightly tapped the Delete key with her right hand thumb.
And where was she now? Void; black.
She was supposed to have been transformed into a younger version of herself; one long before her illness had taken hold; but this was not it, this was certainly not it.
The burning sensation was ripping her apart. Time was both standing still, compressed into an unimaginable fraction of a second, and stretching exponentially. Her previous frail body was crushed into an infinitesimal dot, so much smaller then an atom, and was expanding into a whole new universe; she could feel everything as the rate of acceleration diminished.
As the singularity had crushed her; she’d become one with space-time; she was a god, the god Agnieszka.
by submission | Dec 4, 2011 | Story |
Author : Donovan Pruitt
“It itches,” the soldier complained, scratching at the data socket on the back of his neck.
Seated across the table, the doctor offered a sympathetic smile. “That’s normal for a new download, Sergeant Jax. Just don’t think about it. Think about something else.”
“Like what? I wasn’t recruited for my thinking.” Jax continued to fidget.
“Why don’t you tell me the last thing you remember?”
Jax pondered briefly. “Inter-continental orbit hop between Houston and Moscow. Cargo transfer for the space program. I don’t remember the ship name.”
“The download is intermittent,” the doctor explained. “If we dropped everything in at once, your mind would, well, explode.” His eyes darted aside as he solemnly reflected on this concept with apparent regret. “The name will come to you.”
Jax’s face turned uneasy as more memories downloaded. “Did I crash?”
“You did.” The reply was hesitant. They didn’t tend to react favorably to the news.
“Well, shit,” Jax replied unexpectedly, chuckling after a few moments. “So how am I alive?”
It was a fair question. “Technically, you’re not, yet,” the doctor admitted, though he looked pleased. “We downloaded your brain and are attempting to parse it correctly so you can be re-appropriated.”
“Re-appropriated, huh?” Jax repeated the clinical term. “That would explain this tan,” he joked, raising his foreign arm into the light. His personality was returning. “So technically, I’m not alive?”
“Not exactly.”
“But I’m not dead?”
“Well, no.”
“So I guess, scientifically speaking, I’m undead.” Jax erupted with laughter.
Pursing his lips with subtle amusement, the doctor offered a nod. “I suppose so.”
Turning pale, Jax straightened his posture. “Sir, I have a question.”
“Go ahead,” the doctor replied, still distracted by the comedic nature of their exchange.
“Did the Zs take the Moon Base, or do we still have control?”
The doctor blinked, focusing on him with narrowed eyes. “The Zs?”
“The zombies, sir,” Jax clarified matter-of-factly.
Turning from the table, the doctor rubbed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes to release the tension. “Undead,” he said aloud, identifying the trigger word. Sighing, he reached into the folds of his lab coat as he turned back, producing a pistol that he easily leveled at the man’s head and fired. Gore splashed against the wall and the body collapsed forward on the table, lifeless. Tilting his head to the ceiling, the doctor stoically spoke his report, “Subject twenty-seven terminated due to faulty data transfer. Download incomplete.”
The main door opened into the room, giving way to an officer dressed in a formal uniform with numerous trinkets shining proudly on his chest. Casting a disapproving look at the fallen soldier, he redirected his disdain to the doctor. “What happened this time?”
“General,” the doctor offered a lackluster greeting. Replacing the pistol, he braced both hands atop the table with a heavy, weary push to his feet. “The system still isn’t able to separate actual events that the subject experienced from dream sequences that he perceived as real. He apparently remembered a dream fighting zombies on the Moon. The word undead must have caused the server context recognition to give him a packet of information that he thought was real.”
“Well, fix it,” the general demanded, turning around to exit. “We’ve got plenty of vegetables left for you to practice on, but let me know if you run out of bullets.”
Frowning after the general, the doctor took a moment to recuperate before looking up to the ceiling again. “Sally, send in someone to make arrangements for the body, please. Then contact the coma ward. We’re going to need another blank disc.”
