by submission | Sep 11, 2011 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
When they described this planet to me, rogue, free from its orbit, adrift in space, I pictured a world of devoid of light, a world enveloped in darkness. But to my surprise, as I walk through the ruined city, protected from the vacuum of space by an environmental suit, my way is lit by the glistening of a million stars. With no atmosphere, the starlight passes unrefracted to the surface. It’s like looking up into a populated metropolis, like seeing an echo of what the city had once been.
I pull my eyes away. We have no time for stargazing. The planet will soon drift too far for our ships to follow, and we have a mission to complete. I order my team to canvass the large buildings to our left and right, while I walk, somewhat nostalgically, through the park in the center. I can direct the entire operation here, alone with my thoughts. I wonder. Who were the people who once stood here? What were their names? Did they know that their planet would one day be torn from its sun, sent drifting in space like a wandering vagabond?
The ruins of a great obelisk lie before me. The man it was meant to honor is now forgotten. All that effort to honor a single person, wasted. I shake my head. I’m getting sentimental.
Turning my back on the ruins, I see a member of my team approaching. I can’t even tell who it is until he speaks. The helmets make it impossible.
“Sir,” he says. “We found the document, or what’s left of it. It was nothing but dust. It appears some rubble from the ceiling shattered the glass seal meant to preserve it.”
I sigh into the breathing unit in my helmet. So that’s it. Another piece of history lost. One stray rock, a twist of physics, and our mission is a failure. It took us months to find this site, years to plan the expedition. And it’ll be decades, maybe even centuries before our propulsion technology advances enough for us to return. I try my best not to look disappointed as I order everyone to salvage what they can and get back to the lander.
As I watch the planet drift away from our ship, I say a silent prayer for the people who died on that planet when disaster struck. I thank God for my ancestors, the people who were off world, the people who were spared the catastrophe. And I say goodbye to Earth, the rogue planet, doomed to drift forever in the vastness of space.
by submission | Sep 10, 2011 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson
They ate. They ate everything they could. It was as simple as that. If a solar system contained even one planet with significant life forms in abundance, they came. They landed and they ate, every tiny scrap of organic material in their terrible paths.
Giant gray machines ravaged the landscape. Trees and fauna stood no chance as they were mulched at will… and the beings that ran, crawled, swam and slithered faired no better as machines eventually caught up to all of them. Each and every living organism was pureed into food for the Gluttons. This was the name mankind had given them, once the fact of their approach had been revealed via the galactic network of communicating species.
To actually transverse between star systems physically as opposed to communicating by light-language was nearly unheard of, except for parasitic beings such as the Gluttons, who existed only for conquest and further gluttony. A species so devoted to their ways that they sacrificed generations of their already long-lived individuals to transverse the gaps of nothingness over centuries, with no other purpose than to find more food.
Mankind learned of their approach with nary a decade to spare. Earth would be on her own now as any chance of communicating with another intelligent species for assistance as to how to deal with the invaders was long past. Earth’s leaders gathered. Together they analyzed the information package that had been sent in light-language from one helpful alien race some fifty-five light years distant.
This was our only hope, a life preserver tossed to us just in time to, “head ‘em off at the pass” so to speak.
In the end it was a tiny probe, a mere three meters across that sailed out on the solar wind to meet the approaching horde. In truth the Gluttons never gave it any mind, a useless weather satellite to be tossed aside with indifference, they let it cruise by without concern.
As it spread its tiny cargo amongst the fleet of marauders its self-destruct clock began to count down… and by the time the little probe exploded into oblivion the nano-bots had already breached several hulls, and were now burrowing into whale sized gray beings with rough rocky skin. Each tiny android had a series of compounds aboard, so small some elements contained but a scant few molecules. Once inside their hosts, they began to experiment… until the chink in the armor had been discovered. A message was sent back to Earth as the invaders slowed and fell into orbit around their blue prize.
When the first wave landed they met what they expected, the resident intelligent race surrounding their landing party with what looked to be primitive war devices. Unconcerned they launched their armored mulching machines into action.
The first trees began to die as the grey goliaths raped the land. The Gluttons followed close behind, gorging themselves on the organic exhaust of their leviathan food processors. Forest animals and lake fish began to add to the invaders’ menu when suddenly…
The humans unleashed, directly into the intakes of the machines, a boiling spray of the most glorious shimmering sunshine. And as the spewing feeding snouts began to exhaust the deadly element into the hungry mouths of the approaching aliens, they started to die by the thousands.
Who could have guessed that the Gluttons’ one and only yet deadly allergen would be one of the solar system’s rarest elements? Luckily for mankind we had now had the ability to turn lead into gold for more than a century.
by submission | Sep 9, 2011 | Story |
Author : Douglas Kissack
Every day I am losing more of my sight. Every night, the edge of the moon blurs a little more. I can no longer see the stars. In its way, this slow drift into obscurity comforts me. It reminds me of my mortality.
The city streams by several thousand feet below as the zeppelin glides through still night. Rock and metal flow together, a light-specked river, as above a cold wind snaps through the zeppelin’s mainsail. I lean over the railing, straining to make out individual buildings, and try my best to ignore the scraping of talons against the elevator wing. There is a thunk as Aryan lands on the deck.
The HARPY joins me at the rail, c-fiber wings retracting silently into his back. For a few minutes we stand and say nothing. I can hear his eye shutters irising as he tries to infer my line of sight.
“I don’t understand,” he says at last, rotating his head toward me. “Every night you come out here. What do you expect to see?”
“Nothing,” I reply, trying to keep everything out of my voice. My hand rises, almost unconsciously, to feel the silver cross that rests beneath my shirt. Aryan knows about it. I know it irritates him, but he sees no harm in me keeping it.
“Your body is failing. We offer you treatment.”
“I’m not interested.”
“You would let yourself die?”
“Death is natural,” I say, smiling.
In the ensuing silence I can feel him contemplating forcing the surgery upon me. But he knows that I would escape it afterwards. At least that much humanity tends to remain after the procedure. “I see,” he says. “Why do you wear that cross?”
“Who are you?” I ask, ignoring the question he has asked me a hundred times and more. “I mean, who were you before?”
For a moment, I think he is going to respond. Perhaps this time I have caught him off guard. Perhaps, somewhere within that network of wires and nano-tech, he has a vague recollection of his past. “I don’t remember,” Aryan finally says. “It is not important.”
“It’s the most important thing there is,” I respond. “It’s why you will never understand.”
Something changes about him. Aryan shifts his weight from talon to talon, then, without warning, throws himself over the railing. I watch moonlight spark from his body as he plummets towards the earth. He fades from sight before I can see him protract his wings. Maybe this time he won’t bother.
Below, the city streams by. Through this final journey, I have kept track of the latitudes and longitudes. Somewhere ahead of us is the Dead Sea. Below the ruins of Jerusalem lie, sinking slowly beneath waves of metal.
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.”
