by submission | Aug 20, 2011 | Story |
Author : Garrett Harriman
Marigolds blossomed in the Evermore courtyard, tiny manes preening in the light.
Alongside them, Halley proofed her math. She knew it took eight minutes–ninety-two million miles–for sunlight to blanket the void of space and peck their tender flames. She knew the distance to Gliese 581d was forty light-years roundtrip. She knew her kid’s fears, her husband’s favorite teacher. And she still recalled how Russell Wood’d smelled on the hot April night he’d been drafted.
All of it factored the same: zero. Over two hundred and thirty-four trillion miles preparing what to say…and nothing, nothing, had surfaced.
To the contrary, she scrutinized her hands. They’d grown blanched and baggy. Shadowed with inclinations of liver spots. She lamented how short a jaunt even one AU had proven to be. How light played tricks at seventeen.
Halley stroked her sun hat lower, watching the ember blooms gorge more time.
Massive sound gained precedence. Soon a USF transport hovered over the lawn, graciously coming aground. Its door unfurled, freeing pilots, wingmen, gunners–triumphant young veterans of the Glieseian Uprising.
Halley’s breast tripped down a stairwell. Her promise rushed back, rushing here, to Evermore, mere hours after his fleet breached the HZ. She’d pledged to him and sacrificed for an instantaneous future, one with minor age discrepancies, friends and family long deceased. Those misty cryonic snakes redoubled her cold feet. A trepidating toe braved the Bite before the realization pelted her sensible:
It’s a crush. An infatuation. I am not in love.
Now, second-to-last out the pod, Russell O. Wood returned to the deep freeze, his miles of sunshine culminated. He’d served his planet well–time dilation, him. The United Space Force’d suppressed the Glieseian factions in six Earthen years. Discounting travel, he clocked in at twenty-five sharp. Shaven, impermeable, his decorated flack bottled bountiful joys.
Behind him the shuttle spat pneumatics and wafted gaily over the street. Russell smiled. Followed his brothers. When he passed the old lady on the bench he tipped his starchy hat.
Recognition didn’t shoulder him. It fled the other way.
Halley sulked after him, remembering: He’s not here for Halley Cross, girl. He’s here for Halley Wood.
Sure as Sunday, Russell joined the defrost cue. Just like he’d always sworn.
Halley watched nakedly. A dozen war heroes flashed receipts–puppy love–or recited cryo-chamber numbers by heart–true love.
It went.
Wood’s turn. Halley bunched up, praying she wasn’t the only service fiancée to ever burn the Bridge of Time or deny being some spaceman’s icebox leftover. Maybe he’d forgotten that she was all he’d left behind.
True love. Russell Wood rattled off her lost chamber number.
The name’s wrong, sir. Confusion. Dismissal. Well check again. Miss Wood isn’t enrolled with us. Bullshit–she’s waiting. God bless you, sir. Now listen here! I’m so sorry, Captain.
Silence.
Russell Wood withered to a bench. The last of the pilots embraced him. He promised different words, then jogged through the booth to reclaim his Bitten sweetheart.
Wood sat alone. Unaged beyond hope, he cried into his hat.
Halley didn’t interject for eleven point five million miles. She thought back sixty-three years. On her family. Marrying Albert Cross. New friends and a life lived outside of frost and waiting.
Reawakening today, dated seventeen, would it have been fair pretending to love Russell back?
Answers didn’t come. Just rays, memories.
Standing to leave, Halley stooped and plucked a gilded flower. She approached and pressed it to his lapel.
Russell jerked at her gesture, then softened. “Ma’am?”
“Wear it, soldier,” Halley soothed, straightening florets. “With a sun like this she’ll find you.”
by submission | Aug 19, 2011 | Story |
Author : Jason Frank
He was losing the crowd. Maybe they were already gone.
“Look, this is a new approach. We can’t keep attacking them directly; we always lose. We need to try unconventional approaches. We can win if we make them fight the battles they don’t want to fight.” The bright lights were a mistake; a man could melt.
“So wait…” this guy didn’t raise his hand and hadn’t been recognized, “… how come we have to steal their socks and what… mix them up with other socks? I don’t get it.” Why does freedom from thought so often accompany freedom of speech?
“We talked about this. They don’t wear socks. The lower appendage components of their regulation suits, however, are finely calibrated and so are prone to disruption. Mismatched components weaken the suits and weaken their wearers.” One idiot was no cause for alarm in an open forum.
“I dunno, I really don’t like feet.” Wasn’t there a sporting event on somewhere?
“They don’t have feet. Do I have to remind everyone that we’re talking about aliens? They don’t even stand on their lower appendages on their homeworld. I don’t see how this is relevant to_”
“I heard their feet were their sex parts and I ain’t touching anything that touches anything if you know what I mean.” This guy won gold at last year’s Olympics of disapproval.
“Moving on… we can ignore this blatant weakness and still come out on top. I’m sure everyone here is familiar with the zrunchez, the main staple of our oppressors’ diet. We’ve found substances that, when poured into their tanks, gradually remove all the nutritive value of these creatures. This process would seriously weaken our alien overlords until the point where_”
“We can’t hurt those little ones; they’re innocents. My son found one and nursed it back to health. They’re kinda slimy but they’re so smart. We trained ours to play checkers. When it’s not eating the pieces it’s pretty good.” It’s always nice to see women equally represented in a popular movement.
“Right… so… there are plenty of other targets of opportunity we can take advantage of. Addressing all of these in tandem would be more effective but that isn’t important right now. Right now we need to focus on what we ca_”
“Are we only considering death and destruction scenarios? What about an equality thing, you know, with buses and marches and stuff?” Seriously, what is the half life of a hippie?
“Yeah, so… let’s just forget about it. Why bother? They cured herpes, right?. What more could we want? We should be grateful they took over. I’m sorry I wasted your time. On the plus side, the new episode of “Dancing with Our Masters” hasn’t started yet.
The crowd filed out gradually, disrespectfully. He got off the soap box when they were gone.
Quququial stood up and stretched.
“You see resistance like this liberating your people?” he asked. “I’ve never seen anything like that. How did you manage before the invasion?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anyway, you’re cool. Come with us. We’re freeing as much of the galaxy as we can. It’s hard work but the rewards include space model girlfriends and unlimited space-tinis. I can’t see what you’d be missing out on here…”
The Earth loomed large out his window until it didn’t. When it was gone, he cried a little. Then he had four elaborate space cocktails and made out with a super hot Yllumean. It wasn’t too long before he forgot all about the backwater planet of his birth.
by submission | Aug 17, 2011 | Story |
Author : Patrick Condon
His memory was slowly returning. That’s what she told him, at least. The physician was a liar, though. He remembered nothing before Thursday, the day they woke him up.
They called him Keene. It wasn’t his name. He would correct them, only to fail at recalling a suitable replacement. The nurses thought this was cute, and would let him continue the practice. Perhaps it would spark a memory eventually.
He was placed into the White Room, sometimes numerous times a day, where he would perform tasks for the Doctor. The time spent was often incredibly boring.
“Why did the room have to be white?” He would think, “Why couldn’t it be something more… fun, like purple?”
The Doctor congratulated him on his usage of colors, and noted his awareness of the concept of fun.
“Soda pop.” The Doctor said, handing Keene a bottle.
He grasped the neck, holding it upwards like a club. He eyed the bulbous top, dimpled sides, and threaded cap on the bottom. He had seen caps before, and knew their purpose. Pinching the bottom between his finger and thumb, slowly, the cap untwisted. Before anyone could make a remark against his technique, Keene had spilt the entire contents of the bottle onto his lap. A few of the nurses giggled. The Doctor jotted down the results, and took the bottle.
“Up.” He turned the bottle over.
Keene nodded.
“This:” The Doctor handed another object. “Pen.”
This one had a cap as well. Keene held it, right-side-up this time, and twisted. Nothing happened. He continued to twist, trying to remove the cap. This made him frustrated. The pen was stupid, he decided, and threw it back to the Doctor.
The Doctor sighed and whispered to one of the nurses. She hurried off and promptly returned with a box of new objects. She looked unsure.
“Let’s try it.” One of them said.
One more item was presented to Keene, thought this time no indication was given to what it was called.
Keene palmed the curiosity. It resembled two disks placed together side by side, connected by an axle. It wasn’t like the plates, or buttons, though, he noticed. A string wrapped between the two disks, as well.
It didn’t have any caps, but he tried twisting it anyways. The disks grew farther apart until they threatened to disconnect. He caught onto this and hastily screwed them back together. He looked up, awaiting some sort of cue to guide him.
The Doctor gave him his fake little smile.
The end of the string reminded him of a ring; he had played with those before. Putting his finger in any sort of hole never yielded favorable results, but he tried it anyways. Much to his surprise, and amusement, the loop fit snug around his finger.
The Doctor wrote. Nurses whispered.
Keene stood up, for what must have been the first time in hours. He stretched and wiggled his toes, still sticky from the soda accident. No one made any effort to restrain him. He figured he was doing something right.
In a bout of his usual clumsiness, Keene dropped the item. He winced and closed his eyes tight. He had been punished for this before.
It didn’t sound like an impact; instead, he heard a hum. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes to catch the object spin at the end of its string, peeter out, and hang dead.
More writing. A few nodded.
Keene waited for a second. He wasn’t in trouble? Knowing this, he decided he wanted to do it again. With an awkward, wide armed pedaling motion, he wound the string around the disks. He’d have to refine his technique; he wanted to see it spin. No closing his eyes this time!
He thrusted his hand downward, releasing the disks. A rewarding whiz and spin acknowledged his improvement.
Maybe he could make it jump? Keene tugged his hand. A strong crack met his knuckles.
Notes, whispers.
He’d have to practice. This was by far the most entertaining item yet, anyways.
A few minutes of trial and error, and Keene had the object jumping to his will. It dipped smoothly down and back, down and back. He hooted and hollered at his discovery. This was fun, and best of all, it was purple!
The door of the White Room opened, and the Doctor entered.
“He knows what it is.” He told the nurse. “Get the other unclassified artifacts.”
The Doctor went to reach for Keene’s new toy, hesitated, and instead rested his hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Keene, my boy, what is this?”
Keene giggled. “Fun!”
by submission | Aug 14, 2011 | Story |
Author : Isaac Archer
Be careful. Those were the last words Gully had spoken to him. And as he drifted beyond the point where the shallows ended and the real ocean began, Sam’s greatest regret was that the old man would know he hadn’t listened. Again.
Greed is the pathway to the Depths, Gully often admonished him. Looks like he was right. In the seven years since Gully found him, naked and nameless in the sand, the old man had rarely been wrong. But Sam was a metal diver now. He knew he could find his fortune on the ocean floor, and he knew he could go deeper, and search better, than any man on the island. So when Gully told him that the Eastern divers had abandoned their territory, scared off by a fishplague, Sam got on his raft.
Now he slumped against its mast, too far from home to make it back. He could barely see the wound through which the tiny creature had conveyed its paralytic response to his hubris. He guessed that most victims drowned in minutes. Not him. He made it back to the surface in time to watch eternity coming.
The tide carried him toward the horizon as fear gradually overwhelmed his frustration. In time he heard the maelstrom. He recognized its mythic roar instantly, even as he wondered if any other man had made it here alive.
***
Sam’s next thought was: I am dead. Pure chemical terror had taken his mind through the insane rush of the whirlpool and the inexorable, helpless drowning that followed. When at last the water invaded his lungs, he passed out, and on awakening he found that not breathing came as naturally as breathing had. Relief engulfed him then, but not for long. Judgement was waiting.
The light receded into nothing as he descended. He could move a little now – not enough to stop falling, but enough to face the Depths. As the sky vanished, his surroundings began to glow. Wherever he was, it had stone walls, smooth and curved and somehow lighted. Finally, he came to a spherical chamber with two rectangular gaps in the walls. The larger of the two held jagged rocks and a bloated, decomposing arm, and it spilled orange-red light into the chamber. The other was shimmering, black, and opaque.
Too quickly, there was a blinding flash, and Sam was thrust through the black gate. He collapsed onto – a floor? – and vomited water. His vision returned by the time he summoned the courage to look up.
“Welcome back, Commander.” The speaker was roughly Sam’s size and form, but thinner, with strange, translucent plates for eyes. Stranger still, its body was made of metal, the richest, brightest metal Sam had ever seen, more than he had imagined the world held. Greed and power personified. This must be a demon.
Sam stared at it, slackjawed, and it noticed.
“Memory loss? Curious, as your skinsuit appears undamaged. Hold, I have your chemical backup somewhere…” The demon opened a large locker and began searching through its contents.
“That was a hell of a storm you went into – I mean, got caught in. Of course, we activated the virus because we thought your communicator was down. We are lucky it found you so soon, you could have been out there decades instead of years. It has to evolve if you do not know to dive.”
The demon seized a long, shining tube with a thin spike at one end – a bringer of pain if Sam had ever seen one. It turned toward him.
“Now, hold still.”
by submission | Aug 13, 2011 | Story |
Author : Andrew Bale
He stared at the body on the ground. He felt like he should be crying, laughing, raging at the universe, something other than just sitting there, but all he could do was sit there and stare. The belt pouch was new – he had never seen it before. Reaching over the corpse, he opened it, pulled out a cigar, a lighter, a flask of whiskey, a grenade. He already had a bad liver, bad lungs, had sworn off drinking and smoking years ago, but it hardly mattered now. He was a dead man, just waiting to die.
It had been a simple plan. His stolen time-belt gave him a big advantage in the stolen antiquities market, and the Mongol battlefield below would yield artifacts worth millions to the right collectors. He didn’t know how they saw him, or why they came after him, but he had had no choice but to fight – the belt had not cooled yet, jumping again would have killed him. Besides, he wasn’t really afraid. A millennium’s worth of technological advantage had overcome his substantial natural cowardice.
He had cut down a few with his beamer before he saw a figure appear behind them, just as in a dozen past skirmishes. Two guns made short work of twenty charging horsemen, and he had just started to swagger over to loot the bodies when he saw it at the edge of the impromptu battlefield. One body that was not that of a Mongol, but of a time traveler. His body.
The Time Patrol forbid it, but when you were out on your own, illegal already, why not? You get attacked, you have no backup, so you become your own. Survive the battle, then jump back in time later, prepared, and help yourself win! It had worked before, and it wasn’t any greater of a risk – no matter how his personal timeline looped, he could still only die once. Besides, the big risk was the initial contact, any later incarnation that had come in to help would know exactly what was happening. He was a little unsure about the continuity of causality, but he was no theorist and it worked!
But now he knew his future, not his past. An ancient blade, an unseen attacker, perhaps a straggler. The horse-amplified cut had come up under his arm, bypassing the armor entirely and cleaving through his armpit into his chest. He had staggered, crawled, writhed before he had bled out. It would have been, would BE agonizing.
He touched the wrapping on his shin, stared at the partly-healed matching wound on the body before him. A gouge sustained finding his overlook was now the measure of the rest of his life. A few days, a week or two at most? Long enough to scab over, not long enough to become skin again. At least he had, or would have, the decency to wear shorts, leave that marker exposed.
He pulled out a pad of paper, began making lists. A 20th century Cuban cigar, a 22nd century Bourbon, a cheap lighter, an incendiary grenade, a belt pouch, his gray hiking shorts. A fight at the Coliseum, Sinatra at the Desert Inn, Lunapalooza 23, the grassy knoll, that place with the strawberries.
The belt pinged, cool enough to jump. He stubbed out the cigar, dropped the empty flask, set the grenade on the body, and pulled the pin. No time to waste on a funeral, he only had a little time left to be living. Time to jump.
