by submission | Feb 28, 2012 | Story |
Author : Asher Wismer
Jack realized he’d been shot. The pain lanced up his leg, shooting through his hip into his chest, and for a moment, he thought that another of the flying bullets had struck home. Instead, the pain receded, only a slight twinge as his armor took over and tightened around the wound, and he took two steps and launched himself into the sky.
The flying drones surrounded him. He ignored them — they were more for distraction than for damage, and they couldn’t do anything to his armor anyway. At the apex of his jump, he activated the graviton thrusters and powered over the building, turned at speeds that threatened whiplash, and landed with a bone-jarring thump on the roof.
The drones pulled off, not programmed to operate in the building’s defense sphere. For a moment, Jack was safe; he flicked the auto-medic on and felt relief as morphine flowed into his leg. Not enough to slow him, though; he took a quick look around and saw the stairwell door, which shattered under his foot.
Down the stairs and into the main lab. Around him, the lab’s automatic defenses activated and he shot them out, one by one, wincing as electricity slammed into his armor and flowed around the Faraday shell down to the floor.
Behind him, the main door cycled open. He spun and leaped behind the wreckage of a desk as the security team, themselves encased in armor, opened fire. They had weapons that would cut through his armor like butter. Instead of waiting for a break, he scuttled to the side and blew a gaping hole in the wall ahead. Before he fired his graviton thrusters, propelling him through the side of the building, he activated the contingency bomb and let it fall to the floor.
He was three floors down from the lab, falling fast, when the entire lab floor vanished in a pounding explosion.
The graviton generator saved him from pancaking on the pavement. Emergency vehicles circled into the parking lot, and for the moment, no one noticed him, standing up in the bulky armor that added two feet and one thousand pounds to his small frame. The comm in his helmet pinged.
“Did you get it?”
“Couldn’t get my hands on it,” he said. “I had to blow the whole floor.”
“That’s not what I paid you for.”
“That’s all I could do,” he said. “At least no one else will get it.”
“Fine,” the voice said. “Come back for debrief. I want to see the tape as well.”
Jack signed off without answering. Someone shouted and he started to run. Nothing on land except another armor unit could catch him when he went flat out.
It would take a few hours to fabricate the tapes, showing a much larger force in the lab, proving that he couldn’t get the virus out before he had to bail. His employer didn’t need to know that he never intended to steal it, but to destroy it. The virus was a horrible thing, and he knew personally what it would do if his employer got hold of it. He would never leave the armor, would die still inside it after, he hoped, a productive life, long or short.
Inside the armor, Jack felt the itch start up in his lower back, even though there was no skin there to itch. He ignored it; it would go away in time. His leg would heal as well, inside the metal skin that had replaced so much of his body.
Better this way, Jack thought. Much better.
by submission | Feb 25, 2012 | Story |
Author : Langdon Hickman
There wasn’t a conscious decision to eliminate sound. At least not one that anyone could remember. One day, the world woke up to silence.
No one was bothered by the sudden stark silence. It felt freeing, like a burden had been lifted. They wanted it, yearned for it. Each day was spent in radiant joy, their hearts beaming out love to each other. Crime rates dropped. Domestic violence almost ground to a standstill. Drug use practically evaporated overnight and those who once had judged the addicts of the world aided them in overcoming their withdrawal effects.
There had been a sound before the silence came. It was like an infection, a virulent sonic meme forcing its way through the veins and arteries of the sound-drenched planet like cocaine careening for the brain. One day, a song appeared on the internet. The file description was empty. It was entitled Song 1.mp3. It started spreading through forums and chat rooms at lightning speed, exploding into life almost the moment it became available. It was a curious song, just a throbbing dance beat, staccato synthesizers, cold washes of sound and steady pulse that almost demanded that you dance. It was an epidemic. It was uploaded to iPods, burned to CDs, recorded to tape, pulled to almost every medium imaginable. Missionaries and aid workers would show up to the poor areas of the world carrying it with them and would leave it in their wake on old boom boxes and Walkmen. The song knew no limits. The internet would not be its cage. It would live.
Musicians began incorporating it into their works. It was simple enough. The piece was skeletal, could fit comfortably almost any song with minor modification. Remixes were pressed, bedroom musicians pumped out material laced with Song 1 and its pulse. What was stranger was when older albums started to show the sound, as though it had always been in the DNA of the music waiting for humanity to know what to listen to. Every song on every album. A single pulse echoing forever.
People said that if you translated the synthesizer lines using a complex computer program, you’d see alien messages. Some said no, it’s Morse code and it says the name of god. The song became an obsession and decoding it became everything. But then the silence came.
Sometimes there would be gatherings, spontaneous and inexplicable, people joining together in masses of thousands in empty spaces without a word, without a sound. They would stand together and they would hear the pulse and then they would disperse. No one knew why. No one cared anymore. There was peace. Peace and the pulse.
by submission | Feb 24, 2012 | Story |
Author : Krista Bunskoek
Racing down the barren street, she grinned like an escaped fugitive.
She’d done it. She’d done it again!
Taking away her network privileges! Ha!
It only fueled her flame. With more time to plot, to create, to be on her way to feel the thrill of freedom. Freedom once more!
And, well, what she really missed were her friends.
They hadn’t disconnected her ‘vital’ Education network. Parents!
Ha. She’d figured it out, of course. The tiny loophole in the code. The connection to the house network. She’d worked on it every day, chipping away like a rock hammer to stone. She found the way. Undetected – the network still showing her as grounded.
Her parent’s schedules. Easy-peasy. The small security changes made after her last breach – child’s play.
Then there was the house alarm. The multiple levels of security. This took some time, and a few errors which she laid squarely on her brother. But she figured it out. There was always a way.
With the house network hacked, she owned it.
Turning off the front door alarm, she was out!
Freedom!
It was dark. It was silent. It was the thrill of the forbidden.
No one went out at night. It was unsafe.
She was out, and it felt good.
Now she had to be quick. She had to make her way down the street to Alexi’s house. She was late. She hoped he got her message.
It was chilly. It was strange. The slight breeze left icy kisses on her cheeks. So this is what night feels like, she thought.
A street lamp flickered. She darted from its range.
Glancing upwards, she raced in awe.
Stars! Not one or two, but hundreds, no – thousands! Her heart skipped a beat. She thought briefly of her parents. Wondering for a second if she might find their space station flying in orbit.
It was live. It was real.
Mesmerized, she felt like a small part of this enormous universe.
This was freedom. This was like nothing she’d experienced before. This was like nothing left to loose.
A sharp breeze whipped at her, snapping her back to the hunt. She had given Alexi a specific time, and she could not be late. Too risky.
Her stealth instincts kicked in again, she focused on the pursuit.
Alexi’s house.
A rock. Solid and heavy.
Hurling the rock in the air, it banged in perfect precision on Alexi’s bedroom window.
No response.
Wait. A shadow.
Was it Alexi? Was that a signal?
Too late.
The front door opened. Alarms.
No.
She stood frozen.
Too late.
The compliance police. Trapped.
She was put in the back seat of the extended unimobile, and zoomed silently to her house.
Her parents stood in the doorway. Glaring in disapproval.
Elana was sent straight to her room.
Deflated.
Defeated.
Dismally crushed once more.
She would always know, though, the thrill of freedom. A freedom so frightfully on the edge. A freedom so real, so rare.
This could never be taken away, and she knew it.
by submission | Feb 22, 2012 | Story |
Author : O. Alexander
I open my eyes. They burn after another restless night, filled with nightmares. Three weeks in the jungle, playing deadly cat and mouse games with a neo-leftist demolition squad, can have that effect.
I get up and walk unsteadily into the bathroom. Looking into the mirror, dark fear swells within me.
The Incident.
It is never far from my mind.
My man lost. A village massacred in retribution. Innocents slaughtered. I stood by, silent.
I pound both my palms against the hard porcelain sink, the pain clearing my head for a moment.
The One World de-brief begins at 9am. No time for regrets now.
Moving back into the bedroom, the TV is showing another cratered launch pad. This time they hit a base to the West. A primitive bomb again, crippling another launch facility.
I dress quickly and walk outside. The protestors just beyond the fence notice me and a swell of hatred is hurled in my direction.
“No to human murderers,” a strained female voice rises above the others.
My squad is part of an experiment. We are the first biologicals One World has allowed into front-line combat on its behalf in thirty years. With the rise of autonomous fighting machines, and the breakthroughs in Moral-Software that soon followed, war became a wholly non-human affair for the developed world three decades ago. Then, last year One World’s autonomous forces proved incapable of pacifying this jungle insurgency. The genetically enhanced locals proved too tenacious and clever for the agile machines.
Our baseline human squads have a good record in the test so far, giving the insurgents a series of bloody engagements with no civilian casualties. An Autonomous Witnessing Unit, the size of a small bear walking on four legs, is sent out with each squad. It records and reports the squad’s interactions with civilians and combatants back to One World.
The Incident happened in a zone too dangerous for communication transmissions. The images from the village remained inside the AWU when Owens attached the armor piercing explosive to its underbelly. The report we later filed told the story of our squad coming onto an atrocity clearly committed by our enemies. My job today is to walk the Council through that report, to keep the Baseliner’s record clean and my men off the gallows.
———-
Thirty minutes later I sit at the center of a drafty room, surrounded on three sides by elevated podiums. I watch as the colorful One World uniforms file in. When the last seat is filled, I sit up straight and prepare for my testimony. The room grows silent. A minute passes. Then five. No familiar words of welcome from the Director. Just silence.
Panic slices through my stomach. I stand, taking two steps backwards. Four strong arms meet me. I try to whirl, to run. The strong arms jerk me off my feet, carrying me to the far wall. One of the hands fumbles in a pocket, then holds something cold and metallic to my head. I am instantly paralyzed. They place me in a stiff chair. A metallic cap is fitted to my head. A screen descends from the ceiling.
To my horror, my skull under the metal cap seems to split in half. It happens smoothly. Mechanically. Without pain. Connections are made under the cap. A jungle scene appears on the screen, showing a view from just outside the village. The huts are still intact. Miller is just ahead on the trail. I remember this view. It is mine.
As the image leaps to life, I fear it is the end of mine.
by submission | Feb 20, 2012 | Story |
Author : Jabez Crisp
Vagner: Your name please?
Niken: Niken, William, Flight Lieutenant, 10039880
Vagner: [pause] Date of birth?
Niken: 29th February 1912
Vagner: And you went missing how long ago?
Niken: To me, well… it has been two years. To you, sixty? Eighty? I’m given to understand we made peace in the end, such as we always do.
Doctor Vagner: So where have you been?
Niken: Amongst the stars, if such a thing seems plausible. Taken… You read what I said to the last doctor. Abducted, he said, by a race called the Herzan.
Doctor Vagner: So why you?
Niken: You’ll probably already know that I was shot down over Kent. A Herzan Hunter-Gatherer ship picked me up while collecting dead meat. I remember the twisted metal, the smell of the Merlin as it smoked me to death. Next thing I knew I was watching the war from an unknown vantage point, being tended to… God only knows why me, maybe I was originally meant to be food. I remember waking in a steel container surrounded by carrion… [Sighs, audible lighting of a cigarette] And of course no one noticed. Well, who would notice a missing dead man or another light in the sky? As it turned out they came down to where the lights were because they thought it was the most civilized. Technically it was. What a depressing farce. [pause] I guess you’d call me the ships cat.
Doctor Vagner: Go on.
Niken: The Herzan are… travelers. A long lost race in search of their home, traveling with the burden of the fact that the faster they travel the less likely they are to get back. I never quite understood the folklore, though they tried to explain. They were running, I could never quite make out if it was a civil war, or war with another race. But whatever fighting they did they were very adept at. I remember once we were ambushed, out by Alpha Proxima. From nowhere these two vast vessels appeared from the blackness. I remember Herzan ships being batted like flies. Fearing for my life, not knowing what death the uncaring vacuum had in mind for me. I was there when they retaliated. Space came alight with fire and the silent thump of destruction. It was [pause] quite terrifying.
Of course, they could travel quickly away from their tormentors, but as they approach light speed time slows down. With that in mind, they have the choice between destruction on their path or the knowledge that when future generations reach their homeworld it will be but an unlit lump of char. Just imagine [pause] growing up and living in a community that only knew the thump of war on the hull and the danger and necessity of repair. The Herzan would travel in vast ships, knowing only florescent light, and surgical steel. After a year with them I got very sick, they sent a smaller craft to drop me back. I was amazed they did that, and humbled as well. But that has left a tremendous problem, it’s been coming for many centuries for us but only a few years for them.
Doctor Vagner: And that is?
Niken: The wake of the journey the Herzan leave behind them can only bring their tormentors here.
