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.
by submission | Aug 11, 2011 | Story |
Author : Cesium
Andelie stands atop the Fisher Building, gazing across miles of open air at the Monolith. It is formally the Colonial Administrative Headquarters, but it is always called the Monolith. Its imposing black form towers over the rest of the city. Fisher is the only building that comes close.
The Fisher Building is nominally the future corporate offices of Fisher Insurance, an immensely profitable and perfectly unremarkable corporation of which Andelie is also nominally an employee. It has risen story by story into the sky over the past decade. It is now only weeks from its official opening. Its unofficial opening will come significantly sooner.
Andelie adjusts her goggles, zooms in on the base of the tower. The motorcade is just pulling past lines of rippling flags into the entrance. They are later than she expected, but not behind schedule. The schedule is theirs. Andelie can afford to wait.
A scudding wisp of cloud obscures her sight for a moment. She looks away, touches a finger to her phone. The countdown starts.
Beneath her feet, illicit machinery moves into position. Industrial-grade fabbers complete the final stages of years of preparation. Surplus construction materials left deliberately unrecycled in the basements are covertly loaded onto high-speed lifts.
Careful deceptions and generous bribes have kept the Fisher Building’s true purpose hidden since its inception. The Monolith is well defended against terrorist attacks and armed siege alike. To decapitate the irredeemably corrupt government in an appropriately spectacular fashion requires a more innovative approach.
The clock ticks down to zero.
Down the face of the building, windows lift open and retract. Rail cannons extend, locking into position. The first salvo comprises kinetic and incendiary shells, fabricated from innocuous raw materials. Wind speeds and atmospheric conditions are known; angles and tolerances have been calculated precisely. Andelie watches the guns fire, perfectly synchronized.
The side of the Monolith bursts into plumes of dust and flame. Automatic turrets are already returning fire, but the Fisher Building’s active and passive defenses, which are overengineered for mere earthquakes and storms, adequately shield it. The architects of the Monolith, however, did not anticipate that it might face a skyscraper bristling with hostile guns.
Flying drones approach, but veer away before coming into range. The automated safeguards against colliding with tall structures are hardcoded even into military aircraft. They can be overridden, but it will take time.
The second salvo of explosive rounds shatters the weakened skeleton of the lower floors. The Monolith sways, bleeding acrid smoke, then collapses in on itself with an elegant rapidity. A cloud of dust enfolds its base and blossoms out through the city.
Just like that, it’s over. Time has run out.
The ultimatum to the armed forces, Andelie knows, has already been broadcast. She does not expect significant resistance. The weapon she stands upon should be intimidation enough. “Good work,” she says into her phone. A new age has begun, she thinks.
A stiff breeze ruffles her clothes and exposes the ruined stump of the Monolith. It was the Colonial Administrative Headquarters, but now it is only the grave of the old regime. The Fisher Building’s imposing silver form towers over the rest of the city. No other building comes close.
by submission | Aug 9, 2011 | Story |
Author : Dan Whitley
“What is this?” Marc demanded, shaking a little plastic baggie in front of his son’s face. “This better not be what I think it is.”
“What, it’s not like you didn’t do that sort of thing when you were my age,” Ralph shot back. “Besides, they’re not even mine, they’re Jake’s.”
Marc scoffed. “’They’re Jake’s,’” he mimicked. “That little shit’s been nothing but trouble since you met him.”
“Don’t talk about my friends that way!”
“You might as well forget about him anyway, son, you’re leaving for OMU in six weeks as it is.”
“Y’know maybe I don’t want to go to Mars, Dad,” Ralph said, his voice picking up into a yell. “Maybe I’d rather do nothing with my life, you ever think about that?”
“I didn’t serve 14 years in the Federation just so my son could be a junkie and a welfare leech!”
“Just watch me!” Ralph grabbed the baggie out of his dad’s hand and started to shake it himself. “Blah blah ’14 years,’ like I haven’t heard that one before.”
Marc wrenched the baggie away from Ralph, shouting, “Oh no you don’t!” and shoving Ralph away. “You’re going to shape up, mister. And you’re going to college. And that’s final!”
“Yeah, ok,” Ralph mocked, folding his arms defiantly. Marc finally boiled over and took a swing at Ralph, who ducked under it with ease. Ralph could move faster than Marc could ever hope to.
Marc started to storm out of the room. “Don’t think this is the end of this!”
Ralph was already dialing down, queuing up some music. “Whatever, old man.” The lights in his eyes dimmed and Ralph’s whole body went halfway limp.
“He’s really gonna get it later,” Marc said, as much to himself as to his wife Terry, who’d been standing just behind him in Ralph’s room during the whole argument. He dropped the baggie onto the dinner table in disgust and fell into a chair.
“Marc,” Terry said, standing across from her husband, trying to remain collected, “you really shouldn’t be so hard on the boy. One way or another, he’s gonna leave the house soon, and you’re gonna regret this rift you’ve created between the two of you.”
“I shouldn’t have to do this in the first place,” Marc said, still quite livid. “But no, you had to insist on adopting a synth, didn’t you? With all their damn electronic, self-repairing parts, because you couldn’t deal with a normal child and all their normal injuries. Now this happens This-”
Terry laid one right across Marc’s face and stormed out of the kitchen, her face contorted in hurt anger. Marc turned away, did not watch her go. His eye caught the baggie on the table and his rage flashed once more. He swore under his breath, snatched up the bag of little magnets and dashed them against the wall.
