by submission | Nov 20, 2009 | Story
Author : Courtney Raines
As I watched myself falling down the hill, I remembered that fairy tale from physics class; the one about the cat in the box.
I had been walking home through the wilderness that separated my cul-de-sac from the grocery store, it was a walk I had taken hundreds of times over the past five years, when I tripped. The pack of groceries on my back had nearly slipped off my right shoulder, and I shuffled mid-step to adjust it. That’s when it happened; the quantum flash.
A ‘quantum flash’ is what the ubiquitous ‘they’ call it when you experience a moment of your life from another quantum reality before returning to your own. Mine happened in that instant between when I knew my foot was coming down wrong, and when it actually hit the ground.
I stood there for a millisecond frozen in time, watching as another me somewhere didn’t manage to regain her balance. I watched as the other me’s foot came down and twisted on a root. I heard the crack of bones. I felt the snap in my shin. I watched as the other me fell backwards towards the ravine, and wondered for the millionth time why the path was so close to it.
It was me, and it wasn’t. I felt it, and I watched it; both inside and outside. It was still me. The soft, moldy puff of dirt when I crashed backwards. The citrus thumps as my groceries began to tumble from my pack. The uncomfortable stab of cold plastic wrapped in polyester as I hit the milk jug before the inevitable flip.
The inevitable slow motion flip; my back arching, my pack sliding further down my arm, the milk, the bag of oatmeal, the kiwis and apples plopping to the ground, my feet creating the circle I could never draw. I felt my neck bending but not, quite, snapping. It radiated pain and there were spots before my eyes. As my body came around an almost elegant 360 degrees I saw, from both above and to the right, the pile of grapefruit and lemons that had first fallen from my pack.
Then my knees hit the ground, and I began to slide downwards. My pack was gone, what little cushioning it might have offered rendered nonexistent. Dirt and leaves began push their way up my shorts; I felt the leaves break and crinkle against my thighs. I slid in a slow motion second until first my feet, then my stomach, and finally my head bucked over a knobbled rock, smashing in a rhythmic serpentine motion. I barely had time to register the explosion that was my shattering kneecap, or the loss of breath following a rock in the gut, when the hard surface thrust my chin briefly upwards so it could better collide with my forehead.
Pain circled my head, blood trickled coppery in my mouth, and darkness called until the clock ticked into the next millisecond and my foot came down awkwardly on the dirt.
With a little hop, I regained my balance. I shifted my pack so that it was squarely on both shoulders, and muttered a prayer to the God of physics that I had been born to this quantum reality.
by submission | Nov 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Q.B.Fox
Peter Stovold had hoped to be the first person to solo circumnavigate the sun in his [Manchester Evening News sponsored] Solar Flare 2.
The timing had to be perfect; repeated Earth orbits before shooting off on a flawlessly planned course that used the planetary bodies and floating space hardware to help accelerate SF2 and, later, act as brake; finally completing one and bit revolutions, coming to rest on the moving target of the Earth.
But something went wrong on the homeward leg, as his elliptical path passed near locus of Venus’ orbit. The first signs were an unexpected change in heading; then, almost imperceptible at first, but soon decreasing rapidly, his velocity began to fall below the plan.
Stovold was baffled when he checked his computer. He was on the edge of Venus’ L5: the gravity hole that followed in the wake of the morning star. There should be no forces, at all, acting on the elongated bubble-shape of SF2.
The computer said something very large was tugging at them aft and slightly to port. But it was nothing he could detect and the computer model constantly changed its mind about the size and position of the body that must be causing it.
Solar Flare 2 had almost come to a halt when the cloud of particles, into which Stovold was being inevitably drawn, became sufficiently dense for him to notice them through the forward viewport. It was then that he realised that there was no massive object; no gravitation forces acting on SF2. Some other sort of force entirely was grabbing at his vessel from this quicksand of stranded, ancient particles; a trap set for unwary travellers since the formation of the solar system.
He had only half formed his next thought when the SF2 came to a sudden and complete stop, throwing him hard against bulkhead, with sufficient force to break a leg and a wrist, shatter his pelvis and crack six ribs.
–
“Our superstructure is made entirely of a special polymer, comrade.” Josif Samoilenko waved his arms effusively.
“We’re less than 1% metal, my friend,” his Ukrainian drawl like beet molasses.
“We are invisible to the cloud, like the ceramic Glock of spaceships,” he concluded, putting two fingers to his temple, pulling an imaginary trigger and slumping in his chair.
“There never really was a….” Ian Bennet began.
“But the timing has to be perfect, comrade,” Samoilenko rejoined, leaping Lazarus-like from his seat. “We have to fire the grabber,” he gestured with a claw-like hand on an outstretched arm, “at just the right moment. Once we connect to the Solar Flare all the forces change, our course changes….” He waggled his eyebrows knowingly.
“I’m the astro-engineer,” Bennet said patiently, “I understand all this, but I’m not sure you….”
“The timing has to be perfect,” Samoilenko continued unconcerned, “and that is why….” He paused for effect, removing his pseudo-communist, red-starred beret with a flourish, “…that is why we let the computer do it. No?”
“Timing,” the Ukrainian mused. “All the planets have to be in exactly the right place.”
“Strictly speaking you only need….” Bennet attempted.
“It is why we have waited for 12 years, no?” Josif interrupted, “we could have come earlier, but the timing was not perfect; it would not have been, as you say in London, economically viable.”
And then the computer triggered the recovery systems; cables shot out into the particle cloud towards the Solar Flare 2. Inside the desiccated body of Peter Stovold waited patiently to make his journey home, waited for his hero’s welcome, waited for the timing to be perfect.
by submission | Nov 16, 2009 | Story
Author : Charles Spohrer
I totaled my motorcycle. Of course, I had no medical insurance.
I figured if I ever did have an accident, it would be final. I never expected just a couple of broken bones.
The ambulance dumped me off at County. The drivers wheeled me inside and left me on the gurney. A middle aged lady walked over and dropped a stack of papers on my chest. She pushed a pen into my injured hand. I winced as I reached over with my good hand to grab the pen. Without waiting, she began to leaf through the stack. “Sign here, and here” she said, as she flipped the pages quickly. I signed wherever she pointed. She gathered up the papers and left. Eventually the doctors set to work.
I was out of there before the start of the next shift.
By the time the road rash scabs fell off my face, the bills arrived. A year’s salary for a broken wrist and some scabs. Outrageous, I thought. So I let it slide.
Bills become past due bills.
Past due bills become final notice bills.
Final notice bills became phone calls from the collection agencies.
Daily.
For weeks.
Then the calls stopped.
A few days later, six in the morning, I woke to the sound of my front door crashing in. Several policemen in SWAT gear and guns drawn rushed into my room. They pulled me from my bed, threw me to the floor, and sat on me with my arm behind my back. A technician in a white lab coat over a bullet proof vest jabbed my bicep with a syringe and drew a small amount of blood.
After a few minutes, he said, “That’s him alright. He’s the one. DNA markers match at a 95% confidence level. You can bag him.”
One of the cops spoke. “We hereby serve Notice that you are in Default on your Obligations to County Hospital and invoke Reclamation pursuant to the Rights assigned by Contract as agreed by You at the time of Admission.” I could hear every capitalized word.
Those were the last words I ever heard.
It’s been a few days since I got my sight back. Quite remarkable if you think about it. I can see in four different directions now. It’s not that hard to process, especially since the decision logic isn’t that complicated.
The green light flashed on.
Summary judgment came quick. For not paying the hospital bills, I gave up all rights. Everything. I understand some politician’s son got my body, something about inoperable leukemia. He just happened to be next on the waiting list for a full body donor. It was all in the fine print.
Yellow light.
So what happened to me? Well, they found me some work. Look for me on the corner of State and Madison. Inside the traffic control box. The latest in intelligent traffic management. If you do come by, blink your headlights twice. I’ll hold the green a little longer for you.
Red light.
by submission | Nov 15, 2009 | Story
Author : Saurja Sen
The scanners showed signs of the same life-form across the galaxy, so it was safe to assume that the species, whatever it was, had discovered space travel. Thus communication with it was allowed and my advance team was sent in to begin all interaction protocols.
We hailed them on all frequencies, but there was no response. Since we had received life-signs, we went down to the surface of the planet to establish physical contact. Their cities were spectacular. Huge buildings, intricate designs, complex channels for what must have been transport, everything that one saw on other species’ planets existed. But there seemed to be no activity of any kind. A big city on any planet has a certain amount of hectic activity on it – on Earth, air-cars moving around, people teeming in the central areas; on Alpha Centauri IX, sky-trains flying everywhere; even under the surface of Cragganmore XII, the huge ball-bearing transporters. But on this planet, nothing. No movement whatsoever, yet signs of life, and seeming life-forms everywhere.
Praha, our biologist, took us to what seemed the dominant life-form. It looked organic, with greyish skin, about 7 feet tall. It had limbs with three extensions at three different heights that seemed capable of gripping objects. There appeared to be the equivalent of eyes at the 6 foot mark, and it had tank-tracks at ground level. The only visible sign of life that we saw was a thin column of gas being expelled midway down its side that Praha said was its respiration. Even this we may have missed had the gas not been a different colour to the air around it.
Our efforts to communicate with it continued failing. We tried sound, light, touch and smell. No reaction to any kind of noise or light, regardless of frequency. A complete indifference to our gentle prodding and to Craggan vapour bullets. Our experiments were repeated on all the nearby life-forms and they all resulted in a complete absence of responses. It was as if the species was deliberately ignoring our presence.
We placed a few of them under surveillance and worked shifts conducting other experiments. The physical watches on the life-forms were refreshed every six hours, and not a single observer reported any signs of any activity.
Just before we were due to return, Praha and I went back to the life-form we had initially encountered for a final contact instance. Praha noticed it first – the life-form was no longer in the same spot as on our first meeting. It had moved. Not by much, but enough that we noticed. The observers assigned to the life-form all swore that it had not moved on their watches.
Again, it was Praha who worked it out. It had moved, but so slowly that none of the observers had noticed, yet over the time we had spent on the planet, it was obvious. The same went for everything else – life-forms, transportation devices – they had all done something. Everything that had occurred had happened so slowly that we didn’t see it happen and thought nothing had happened at all.
That’s the moment when we realized that it wouldn’t be possible for us to communicate normally with them. Our relationships to a timescale were too different. As one species to another, we could, over a long time, but we wouldn’t be able to individually. Praha and I would be dead before they would ever be able to send either of us a message. We wouldn’t live to be acknowledged by the species we had discovered.
by submission | Nov 14, 2009 | Story
Author : Q. B. Fox
“Each freighter, since the very first one we built, is given a unique name,” the technician explained.
“Can I choose a name, if it’s not already taken?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not, sir,” the tech was barely apologetic. “A name will be assigned to you.”
“Oh, I’d like to have named her after my wife.” Alice’s warm smile and freckled nose appeared in my mind’s eye.
“Most people do, sir; a spouse or sometimes a child. But the journeys are long. And families, well, sir, they don’t always stay together. And you can see how that would become awkward. I’m sorry, sir, but there it is; I can show you the statistics, if you’d like.”
He started to turn his screen towards me, as he was required to by the Full Disclosure in Work Act, but I waved him away. Alice and I knew we’d make it work.
I was encouraged to think of the Catherine Rose as an animal, as a pet. Some men preferred to think of the freighters as their mistress; if those statistics were accurate then some of their wives did too. Some of the women thought of the freighters as children. But we were all expected to treat the ships as if they were alive; talk to them, care for them, spoil them.
It had always been a tradition to give names to vessels. And their crews have always treated them as living things, superstitiously believing it made the craft work harder to stay reliable, to keep them alive.
But the science is the other way about: giving them names makes us empathise with them. We sit in a vast emptiness of black, listening to the hum of the engines, alert for any sound of distress or discomfort. We fill our days with the repeated routine of caring for our babies.
And it keeps us sane, never quite alone in that horizonless, apparently unending, nothing.
They may have stopped me naming my freighter after my wife, but they couldn’t stop me naming my daughter after the Catherine Rose. So while I was away, my first born said her first word, took her first steps and had her first tantrums. But I was always connected to her, through the ship that shared her name, by an invisible bond that linked them.
I was only on a short run when the accident happened. Just an accident, they told me, nothing you could have done, if you were there. The sun shone brightly on the day of the memorial service.
It was year before they’d let me do another long haul trip, a year of short runs and psychological evaluation. I had adjusted remarkably well, they said. There was no sign of long term mental trauma, they concluded. I had grieved for a suitable time and I had moved on.
“Space,” Dr. Addison had warned me, “deep space, can play tricks on your mind. You’ve adjusted well, but if you have any worries, any worries at all, contact me, straight away.”
Of course, I had grieved for my wife, but I have to be strong. I still have to care for our child. She whimpers in the night, and I get up, adjust her injectors, balance her output, sooth her back to sleep.
She’s crying now, her display flashing an urgent red, tugging me towards our planned destination. It’s alright, sweetheart, I tell her, disabling the alarm. Let’s go this way. It’s quiet and peaceful; no one to bother us, kiddo. Just me and you and as much space as we need.
