by submission | Aug 3, 2011 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson
“We’re sorry but there’s no other way Mr. Dunbar. It’s a very rare and inoperable cancer. We absolutely must replicate you if you’re to see your children grow and have children of their own one day.”
“Yes, yes, I know. You can stop saying it. I just hate the thought of this whole duplicating business. Frankly, it scares the daylights out of me.”
“Even more than dying of cancer?”
I pause and think for a moment and then answer earnestly. “…Almost.”
But in the end I have no choice. The nonstop tears from my wife and children are enough, plus I am fortunate enough to have the means to afford such a procedure, so I finally give my reluctant consent.
For more than a week I lie unconscious in the facility while swirling tanks filled with complex organic cocktails provide the necessary building materials for my replication. And as my old body lies unmoving in the input chamber my new disease-free one takes form in the incubator. But even as my nearly completed identical twin lies motionless under glass in the next room I am still myself. The very last thing will be the transference of my consciousness, my essence, my entire being.
Finally I awake in my new body. Aside from being very tired I feel no different. But then quickly a sensation creeps into my gut. My conscience suddenly weighs heavily on me as I think of my old self. I fully understand the consequences. I am in every sense still myself, yet I know that I am a replica, now free of the fatal disease that once grew inside of me. But what of my old diseased body? …You see, that’s the problem with replication, it replaces the sick, but it doesn’t “erase” them. Even though my essence has been transferred away my old body also retains the feeling of self. And thanks to recent legislative changes, it must now wait out its remaining days here at the facility, no longer me but… my imprisoned dying shadow.
I open my eyes and look up through the glass bubble at… myself. There I am but… different. Of course, how silly of me, after forty plus years I am quite familiar with the mirror image of myself. This fellow is backwards. His hair is parted on the wrong side. But I also notice that he is sad. Sad because he knows he has to live out his days here? I can’t say I blame him.
But then another thought creeps in. Wait a minute. His left-hand hair-part isn’t the only thing that’s different. This fellow looks fuller in the face than me, and his color is better than I have seen my own in quite awhile.
Before I can process what I am finally beginning to realize, I start to bang on the chamber’s bubble lid with both fists. The face of Hutchinson my cancer doctor appears solemnly, and quickly ushers my other self away.
Finally they have let me out… cruel heartless bastards. I can’t believe they haven’t kept me from the hospital’s observation level at a time when…
Wracked with painful sobs I look from my wheelchair, to the facility’s main entrance eight stories below, where my loving wife and children are happily and eagerly escorting my new healthy body toward the parking lot.
by submission | Jul 31, 2011 | Story
Author : Waldo van der Waal
I sat down heavily on the rickety chair at my console. A quick look towards my brother confirmed that he, too, was feeling the firm fingers of fatigue. Four straight days of coding will do that to you. Four straight days of inventing and shaping and testing… I opened a couple of beers and passed one to Stephan, who sipped from it with gusto. After he wiped his lips, he said: “I’ll flip you for it.”
Going back to our childhood, we always decided things by chance. Never age or skill or any kind of decree – just by a roll of the dice; a flip of the coin. And each of us had the scars to prove that the odds really are 50/50. “Do you think that’s what the Wright brothers did?” I asked him, drawing deep from my beer. His rejoinder was quick: “Does it matter? Can you remember who was piloting their flyer when they first flew? Everyone knows the Wright Brothers. Not many people know them individually.”
So I relented. He fished a coin from his pockets, and got ready for the flip. As the coin left his thumb, I called “heads” – I always called heads – and watched as he caught the coin and clapped it firmly on the back of his other hand. A quick look in my eyes, with a little wink, then he lifted his hand: Tails. Stephan had won.
From that moment on, we both knew how the rest of the evening would play out. He went to get ready, while I prepared the device. To anyone peeking into our shed, the myriad of wires and pipes and screens would’ve looked just as alien as the Wright Brothers’ flyer must’ve done more than 100 years ago. But they believed they were onto something good – and Stephan and I? We knew we were onto something good as well. Something that could shape the course of human life for eons to come – if only we could give it wings, like the Wrights did.
Stephan walked back into the shed just as I finished preparing. He had on a pair of faded blue jeans, a t-shirt and a leather bomber jacket. Old-fashioned but classic – perfect for our test. He glanced at me, smiled nervously, and proceeded to affix himself to the device – straps, cables, electrodes… He knew the drill.
Then, when he was ready, I looked fondly at my brother, and cleared my throat to say something. But he held up his hand, stopping me before I could say anything. He looked around our shed, maybe checking that everything was ready, or maybe taking it all in once more – the dusty equipment, the haphazard technology… Then he nodded at me.
I walked over to my console, and with just the briefest of looks towards Stephan, I executed the command. There was no sound. No light, no fanfare… But even so, Stephan had disappeared in a millionth of a second. The electrodes and wires swung lazily backwards and forwards, in the spot occupied until moments ago by my brother.
by submission | Jul 30, 2011 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
“When do you have to leave?”
“Couple weeks.”
“Is it set in stone?”
“You know I can’t stay in one place for longer than a month. Guild rules.”
She lay quiet, pressed against him.
“Maybe you could put in for a leave?”
He pushed up one his arm, looking down at her warm body, framed in blue lines from the ceiling vents.
“I can’t stay,” he said. “I have a job to do. I service this whole sector.”
“But I thought — maybe you wanted to stay?”
“With you, you mean.”
“We’re very good together. I feel–”
“For me? Or because you’re lonely?”
“I want you to stay.”
He settled back in the cushions. The blue star overhead glowed dimly, in its passive phase for a year before the flare season started.
“How long is your service here?” he asked.
“Fifteen years, and then I retire.”
“Do you know how long I’ve been traveling?”
“I don’t know.”
“Twenty years in personal-time. I stopped paying attention to real-time after the first month. Every time I get into the FTL pod the universe goes on without me. I can’t worry about it.”
“I’ve only taken the trip once,” she said. “To get here.”
“We don’t stay anywhere because we have to keep moving. I have a thousand more assignments to service before I can retire. That’s one per month, and I’m twenty years down. I have sixty to go.”
“Real-time?”
“It makes no difference. I don’t age in the FTL pod. I think I started my tenure over a hundred real-time years ago, but it doesn’t matter too much. All the out-system stations need us, and we can’t stay or the system breaks down.”
She was crying, silently. “But you could stay. We could send a tightbeam to your Control Network and they could take you off the rolls. We can live here together.”
“I don’t travel to settle down,” he said. “I travel to make sure none of you go mad from the isolation. We have no other purpose.”
“You have free will. You can choose to stay.”
“And the next station has to wait an extra month for personal and sexual contact,” he said. “It’s not possible.”
“So go now, then,” she said, a sudden surge of anger drying the tears. “No sense keeping them waiting. I’ll just wait here for the next gigolo to stop by. You have no other purpose, after all.”
“Whatever you want,” he said. “I’m here to service you and you alone. If you want me to go–”
“No! Don’t leave me!” She came up and clutched him, desperate, feeling for his face and pulling him down in a passionate kiss. They coupled hard and fast and she slept in peace. When she woke up, he was making breakfast.
“Are you ok?” he said.
“I’m sorry. It gets harder every year. I’ll be fine.”
“I can stay my whole shift here, if you want, so you only have three months to wait for the next one.”
“That would be nice.”
He brought her coffee and they drank together, looking up at the vents where the blue sun shone. Instruments on the asteroid’s surface constantly recorded and transmitted information about the star’s cycles, valuable information for the Collective.
“It’s not so bad,” she said at last. “I’ll get over you. But I’ll be dead long before you retire.”
“I’ll remember you.”
“Promise?”
He looked out at the stars. A hundred lightyears to the next station, and a hundred more after that, and further and more and on and on.
“Forever,” he said, and smiled.
by submission | Jul 29, 2011 | Story
Author : Julian Miles
John was quite something to see when he got his threatening on. The bioluminescents lacing his body in intricate whorls and knotwork turned varying shades of red or white as his eyes darkened to black. The natives were terrified of him. Which was the whole idea. Natively inhabited water worlds were an unplumbed resource due to the difficulty of establishing relations with them.
John had left the military when his pod was slaughtered. I became his podmate by virtue of being the only aquatic physiognomy specialist turned freerun trader. We ran our ship half wet, half dry. It meant we could trade in stupid gravity zones and get places sane or dry people couldn’t. Plus John’s part dolphin, part shark splicestry gave us kudos in the oddest places. All of which got us a lead to our latest splashdown.
Karessia was named after Trutch Karessin, the first man to discover the locals here regarded humans as a delicacy, not as peers. Which is why I was in a zerosee suit and John was handling the diplomacy. This was entirely based on the local religious tendency to shun places where the influence of their god of death was felt. We were just making the influence a little more visible above the patrium node we had located.
John came hammering past me, tail moving swiftly but with relaxed power as his pectoral fins handled the manoeuvring. I could tell he was grinning, but that was only because he’d told me that was what the little biosparks by his mouth meant.
“Flee for your lives! The Reaper of the Colossus is here!”
Oh, how he loved this bit. His broad spectrum sonic roar hit the Karessians and they scattered, frantically trying to genuflect and swim away simultaneously. I was about to instruct the ship for a plant drop when John’s red and white turned blue and green, his primaries of confusion.
“Dave, we may have a problem.”
I scooted my rig over to him and took a look over his dorsal fin. Hanging in the blue, right on the colour change between high water and deep water was the oldest Karessian I had ever seen. Wrinkled over his entire body, but still muscled like an athlete. His left hands clutched a truly formidable polearm, its head reflecting highlights from John’s luminescence. His right hands were behind the shield that covered his entire right side.
“Amp your spectrum analysers, Dave. That shield and the pointy end of the big stick came from the same thing, and I don’t think it was a rock from around here.”
I was about to hit the analysers when something occurred to me. I hit the lights instead. This far down, the simplest things became obscure. The bright white light made the Karessian duck his head behind his shield, but it made the letters on that piece of metal leap into view. Two rows of text, in English. Wonder and a prick of fear intruded on my routine.
‘VEY SHI’
‘LOSSUS’
“John, I think we’ve lost a mining opportunity and made a fortune.”
“Dave, I think you’re wasting valuable lost survey vessel listing query time.”
by submission | Jul 28, 2011 | Story
Author : Michael Georgilis
Always follow this rule: never go to a hospital. No exceptions. Heal as best you can if someone is hurt. Abandon someone who can’t or won’t move. Tell them this risk when they join you. Friends help you survive. People who endanger your survival are no longer friends. Offer friends a bullet if you leave them. If they accept, remove the head afterwards. Cremate. Move on.
Scratches are minor. Bites are death. Friends should tell friends if they are bitten. Friends who hide their bites are no longer friends. Pity them. Do not keep them. Tell them this risk when they join you. Give them a bullet, or let them do it themselves. Some will try to fight back. Be ready. Remove the head. Cremate. Move on. Grieve on the road.
Know your enemy. Do they shamble? Do they run? Run away from shamblers. Drive away from runners. No matter what, move. Be paranoid. Travel during the day. Eight out of ten deaths occur at night. Don’t become a statistic. Cut your hair short. No ponytails. Easy grab spots. Wear close fitting clothes. Take extras for tourniquets. Wear coats for weather only. Wear running shoes. Take only what you can run comfortably with. Sleep in safe houses. Have two escape plans. Set up watch shifts. Cry, but be alert. Watch the dark like it would swallow you if you didn’t.
Defend yourself. Guns are obvious and dangerous. Aim for the head. Never shoot twice if once will suffice. Always reload. Clean your weapon. You are always one jam away from death. Avoid combat. Always look for ways to circumvent. Converse ammo. Have back up. Use shotguns for crowd control and bottle necks. Fire and run backwards. Never fight without a full magazine if possible. Count your shots. Three shots left, the battle is over. Run. Use these bullets with care. Two for escape. One for you. Choke on the muzzle. Point up. Think of home before pulling. Move on.
Scrounge with intent. Go as a group or not at all. They are never alone. You shouldn’t be either. Listen before entering. Moaning, shuffling, you leave. Desperation is the only exception. Enter with firepower. Create bottlenecks. Have two fall back points. Have an escape plan. If it’s clear, move quickly. Ignore the smell and the bodies. Take only what you can run comfortably with. Move on.
Know your locations. Malls are bad. Offices are bad. Hospitals are worst. Off shore is best. Prisons are good for long-term stays on land. Useful for headquarters to a large group of friends. If the coast is not an option, search for a prison and lots of friends.
When you find a haven, sweep the place. Fight for it. Don’t let it go. Set up homes. Regulate food intake. Attempt to grow sustenance. Make decisions as a group. Laugh. If food growth allows, friends can become closer. Skeletons can regain their flesh, their smiles, and reclaim the mantle the virus annihilated long ago.
Never count on permanency. Food, medicine, equipment runs low. Always be prepared. Exercise. Practice. Leave as a final option. Things are different in havens.
But the rules stay the same.
