by submission | Nov 18, 2011 | Story |
Author : Cesium
It is only from one of the higher towers, the myriad smaller buildings laid out below and higher ones gleaming in the distance, that the City’s infinitude truly becomes intuitively and not merely intellectually apparent.
But even in the mist of a cool morning, when only the closer bridges and skyscrapers loom nebulously out of the featureless white, the City’s sheer vastness is never far from one’s mind. The City has no limits in the horizontal; it is bounded below and above only by what current technology can delve from the ground and claim from the sky. It is immeasurably old and constantly evolving. It contains buildings, and indeed whole districts, of every conceivable purpose and architectural style, and no sooner is a new one invented than some aging, decrepit building is torn down to make room for its first exemplar.
The City is everywhere inhabited; its populace moves about on its daily business via a network of streets, walkways, and rail lines, irregularly distributed, intersecting interminably with more of the same. The system is of course impossible to diagram in full, though local maps are readily available. Many people find employment and contentment within a few miles of their birthplace; some travel great distances to settle in different regions of the City; the remainder are restless wherever they go. I count myself among the latter few.
Once in my youth, driven by the impetuous urge to prove wisdom mistaken and the City finite, I leapt onto the back of an emptied supply truck as it departed the local produce market. If any activity went on beyond the limits of the City, I reasoned, it would surely be agriculture. But the truck arrived finally at a vast complex of greenhouses and hydroponic farms, surrounded by the familiar yet unfamiliar skyline of some other part of the City, and, seeing no obvious openings for further exploration, I was forced to make my way home.
In the decades since, I have traveled uncounted distances across the face of the City. A few years ago I began to hear rumors of the Tower of Jorge, which called it variously a tourist destination, an ancient relic, or a pilgrimage site; its fame seemed to grow the closer my journey took me. This very morning I arrived in the square where it stands, a tall straight spire pointing upward at the heavens, and climbed the winding stair to its top.
An inscription there defines the Tower to be the center of the City. The claim is absurd; the infinite has no center, or equivalently, every point is the center. But soon the chaotic sweep of the City all around me began to make a sort of sense; I seemed to perceive the avenues emanating from the square below, the districts arranged radially, disguised though they were by centuries of construction and demolition. In that instant I could believe that the City had started here. And if it had a beginning then perhaps it is not endless after all.
This is all I have discovered, for I have not managed to recapture that momentary revelation. I leave this note here in the hope that it will reach someone younger and better equipped than I to explore the mysteries of the City. I plan now to follow as far as I can the direction of one of the hidden avenues; perhaps I shall find its end in a location as distinguished as this one from the rest of the City. More likely I will die still unfulfilled. The City will continue, eternal and indifferent.
by submission | Nov 13, 2011 | Story |
Author : Andrew Bale
“Five minutes, General.”
“Thank you, Gunner.”
Anywhere else in the fleet she would be an impossible escort. Her dull-black skinsuit was topped with a spiked leather jacket, her hair gelled into liberty spikes, her face painted like a skull. She still showed her rank and rate, but the only name was the one tattooed on her forehead. Her child perhaps, a lover, a sibling. All that mattered was that anyone she killed would be able to see why she was doing it.
He followed her down to the assault bay, to the raised platform at the edge of the deck. His command was waiting for him, ten thousand variations of the Gunner, uniformity thrown aside in favor of anything that would scare the enemy, or give voice and strength to the rage they all held inside. All had names tattooed on their forehead and elsewhere, even him — ten years of war, a hundred names, a hundred strikes to his soul etched in his skin. These were his brothers. Time to get them ready.
“You know why we’re here. PUD’s, all of us — Psychologically Unfit for Duty. Pulled from the line because we could not follow the rules of command, of war. Because none of us could see past our need to immediately kill as many of the fuckers as we possibly could. We didn’t want to leave — they made us. Today we’re back. Today is our day.”
“HOO!” The sound rang through the chamber.
“A few minutes ago, you all felt a bang, felt the ship veer onto a new heading. That bang was simulating a malfunction, and since we have not taken any fire it appears the bastards think we are out of control and falling into atmosphere to burn up. In another minute or so a big chunk will do just that, but this lander, this big stealthy armored rock, will drop right down in the middle of their field command. While the main strike force sets the beachhead in Switzerland, we will occupy and destroy as much of their command as possible. We will today kill as many of the fuckers as we possibly can.”
“HOO!”
“We’re coming in hard, no jets until absolutely necessary, so even with the dampers this is going to be a hard ride. We hit hard, the shocks raise the ship, and this deck is left on the ground. The gunners take out the hard targets from above…”
He paused to nod at his escort.
“…while we go after the soft targets below. We have no meaningful intel on their actual deployment. There is no plan, other than mayhem, destruction, and death. Give it to them.”
“HOO!”
“They are not like us. They are clinical. Detached. To them, this is a business, our oppression their right. They can handle the Fleet, the Army. They can’t handle us.”
“HOO!”
“Our own people called us flawed, called us broken. When we planned this mission, they called us ‘The Legion of the Dead’. They knew us better than they thought. We are dead. And we are legion.”
“HOO!”
“We will kill a hundred of them for each name we bear, and we will break their spirits so that the Living can break their backs!”
“HOO!”
“No mercy. No surrender. Only RAGE! From each of us, they have taken something. From them, we take EVERYTHING!”
“HOO! HOO! HOO!”
The General stepped down, walked to the number ‘1’ blazoned at the edge of the deck. Ten thousand knelt down as one, grasped the handholds, and waited.
It was going to be a good day.
by submission | Nov 12, 2011 | Story |
Author : M. A. Goldin
“Anything?”
“Bacteria, some multi-celled organisms, but nothing complex. Nothing sentient.”
Captain Dalmar nodded, and the technician’s projected image blinked out. She stood alone on the bank of a river. It rushed, boisterous, from the mountains behind her and off into a rolling plain, the water twinkling with the light of two small moons. The night was fresh and cool, but nothing hunted, or crawled, or flew. No tree broke the horizon, no grass rustled in the breeze. No soul had ever been touched by this vista.
Another planet nearly identical to Earth — gravity, atmosphere, temperature, soil composition — another dead rock with nobody home. For Dalmar, this was number 165. For humanity, this was dead world number 10,380.
The comm on her wrist beeped. “Go.”
The face of her XO hovered in the air over her arm, lines of concern bunched up between his eyes. “Everything okay, Dalmar?”
She sighed. “I read a lot of space fiction as a kid. The really old stuff, if I could find it. Spacefarers were always meeting other species and fighting, or trading, or getting into crazy politics. Joining a bigger, I don’t know, family.”
Temujin smiled. “My favorites were the ones where we’d find ancient artifacts from an earlier civilization. They’d leave behind markers carved with their story, or transportation devices, and the humans would rush along trying to learn what happened to them.”
“Yeah, I liked those, too. It was a lot better than this…”
“This nothing?”
“Yeah.”
Dalmar looked away, listening for a sound on the wind. All she heard was emptiness.
“Ever wonder if we’re that ancient species, Temujin? Sometimes I’m afraid there’s no one to find. Maybe we’re the first ones out here. Maybe humanity is destined to grow old and bitter while we wait for the Universe to catch up to us. Maybe we’re wasting our time.”
She glanced at the Lieutenant Commander’s face. She saw something like horror pass across his features. Then he cleared his throat and composed himself. “Yes, well. I wouldn’t say that too loud, Captain. I called to inform you the final geothermal pillar is in place. The imaging sensors will be powering up shortly.”
“The map? The archive?”
“Already in place. If anything moves nearby, we should get images. If it’s sentient, the archive will explain how to find us.”
“Great. I’m heading back to the shuttle now. Be ready to jump to the next candidate when I reach the ship.”
by submission | Nov 10, 2011 | Story |
Author : Michael Georgilis
My hand scrambled over tiles studded with shattered glass until it found my gun, clenched, lifted, swung over the bartop, and pointed between the deepest blue eyes I’d ever hunted in the entire system. The gun cocked on reflex. Her eyes twinkled.
“Per-sis-tent.”
Her hand grasped a bottle of grog rather than her pistol, which rested between her thighs. Custom-modified Consortium Militia standard issue. Extended clip. Polonium pepper rounds, as the moaning sap over a table could tell you. A dozen other mods. The amount of violation fines collected from the gun alone could buy you a very nice apartment in the Venus Nimbus District.
Celine Maddox. Hijacking. Piracy. Smuggling. Destruction of property. Littering. Reckless endangerment. Murder. ‘Possession of an illegal firearm’ now, too. Took two strong hands to carry that file. Weren’t a prettier set of legs that walked out from the Belt and into the legends of spacers in station bars everywhere. Any clod from here to Europa has himself a tale. Trouble is, it’s always her pissing on the law. And it’s pissing the wrong people off.
She glanced those ocean blues up the barrel.
“Nice piece. Replacement for your last one?”
“Quiet.”
Those whites split her lips. A black lock loosed from behind her ear. “Sorry, hon.”
Someone called for a doctor. A bottle emptied onto the floor. Glass everywhere. Another job, it’d be too much collateral. But Celine.
Well.
That’s different.
Our last meeting started on a luxury cruise yacht heading for the Mars Consortium Center. It ended with the yacht in flames, she and I racing to escape pods before it crashed into the planet surface, and seeing her wink just before we blasted off on completely different trajectories. I’ve caught rapists, cultists, murderers…you see ’em all in this racket. But it don’t matter how many bounties you haul in; there’s only one way you catch the Ore Belt Buccaneer. The hard way.
She smirked. “Don’t keep me waiting.”
I took her firearm and told her to stand. We exited through the south airlock. Alcohol, smoke, and gunpowder hung in the air. She walked in front down the catwalk to the hangers, arms raised.
“Is he paying you well?”
“You might say that.”
“How much?”
“Seventeen million.”
The bounce in her step deflated.
“Really?” She glanced back, frowning.
Forget about an apartment in Nimbus—try owning a whole district. You didn’t do what Celine did without attracting that kind of attention. And you certainly didn’t get that kind of attention without your father heading one of the top corporations in the Consortium.
It started at forty thousand for the missing daughter of Akio Maddox, CEO of Maddox Engineering. You turn on almost any engine in the system, you have them to thank. The bounty was the highest in history. Had old vets coming out for another chance at glory. But nothing came up. Everyone figured she was dead. That is, until she sacked a ME Commercial Tanker and sent the video to every police outpost this side of the Belt.
The number’s been climbing ever since.
“Daddy must want to talk with his little girl,” I sneered.
“Huh.”
When the side of her boot smashed into my face, I had just started in on the trigger. I ain’t a liar—I went down hard. In a haze I saw her pick up our guns. She smiled.
“Only seventeen million? Guess he doesn’t want me that bad.”
Before I blacked out, she snatched my keys and hopped into my ship. As the hatch closed, she looked back.
And winked.
by submission | Nov 6, 2011 | Story |
Author : John Arthur Beaman
Why should we expect God to keep track of everyone in the world? The galaxies, you know, take a trained eye and eons of proper management to turn a profit. It’s quite an operation. I don’t blame God for losing me.
It’s funny when you think about it. The universe runs in circles. Maybe it’s just easier that way. I’ve yet to build a one; I wouldn’t begin to criticize. So, the moon goes around the earth. The earth goes around the sun. The sun, too, has its little circles. The solar system moves around the galaxy, and so on. Our lives? They’re like microscopic versions of the universe. We go round and round, until we don’t.
To crawl inside the mind of an infinite being seems easy enough. There’s plenty of space. But it’s like a game of hide and seek in there; the only problem is no one’s seeking. We hide in back of the curtains or under the bed. We poke our heads out occasionally, wondering when we’ll be tagged. Years go by; no one finds us. Have we hidden ourselves that well? It was only curtains!
It’s hard to say how important the Milky Way is on the universal scale. It harbors life, we know that. In certain scientific circles, they call the realm in which we survive “the habitable zone.” I like the word zone. It has a z in it, and that’s good. More importantly, it starts with z. Plus, it has two vowels and two consonants. That’s perfect symmetry if I ever saw it. Zone. We live in a zone.
Neighborhoods have been zoned for housing. Parking lots have been zoned for parking. We have commercial, residential, agriculture, time, weather, ocean and even empty zones. We have zones within zones. I suppose we do this to keep our cities running smoothly. It’s not hard to see why God would have a habitable zone. It just keeps the integrity of the thing.
So, our spot in the galaxy has been zoned for life. I’m sure when scouring over the blueprints God took great pains deciding the most lucrative locations. We have our place, and the other three life bearing planets in the galaxy have their zones as well. How I came to the conclusion that there are four life supporting planets in the Milky Way is a simple matter of deduction: it’s less than five and more than three. Five and three are, of course, absurdities.
How does our habitable zone stack up? There are billions and billions of galaxies, give or take. Each of them has four life supporting planets. When all is told, God’s got his hands full. It’s quite an operation.
Then there’s a man named John. He’s just one living soul among the trillions and trillions and dare I say trillions more. He’s managed to crawl inside the mind of an infinite being and get lost. He lives in one galaxy among billions in a very small site zoned for life. In a solar system too large for his little mind to grasp, he exists. Magnifying further, we see that he lives on a tiny speck of light that’s almost completely overshadowed by its own sun, if overshadowed is even the correct word. Through the clouds of a dense atmosphere we go. Passing over billions of lives, we find his country. Over multi-millions more, we find his state. Millions go by again just locating his city, but hundreds of thousands remain before we find him. I can see why God gave up. Who’s got the time?
