by submission | Sep 3, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Odhner
Come closer to the monument, child. Do not be afraid. You have done well to make it all the way here – I know the journey from your village is hard. Your brother had to turn back the first time, and your mother arrived with an injured ankle and had to wait here for nearly a week before undertaking the final trial and becoming an adult – so do not be ashamed to lean up against the monument and rest a while.
No, it is not haunted, who told you such a thing? This is why we wait to tell you where our people came from – children are too superstitious. Come, feel the monument. Like no stone you have ever touched, is it? You can see it is shaped with a purpose, but it was not carved or chiseled. This is a special stone that our ancestors could shape as a single piece. Yes, child, that is a good comparison – but it is not quite like clay. Think of the candles your parents make, how the fire causes them to flow like water rather than hardening as the clay does. This stone gets soft like clay when you heat it, and then becomes hard again when it cools down. It is unlike anything else in the world – as strong as stone, but it does not shatter under any force.
More amazing, it channels lightning like water down a riverbed. Our ancestors knew this, and found ways to harness the lightning with stones like this. They used fire not only to shape it, but to pull it into threads and weave it like fabric. When they coaxed lightning through these tiny threads of the stone they were able to create all manner of wonderful things. They made light, wind, even life.
No, child, we cannot. They used this stone to create the monument and make it fly – do not look at your elders that way – fly away from the lands they had called home and to here. But the lightning died out, and the fine stone threads snapped, and they found none of this material here to replace it. They could not return home, could not make more of the amazing tools that controlled the lightning and wind. Our ancestors did not despair, and they did not curse the land for not providing what they needed – this land had everything that they could ever ask for apart from the special stone, and for that we are grateful. We do not mourn the loss of their wondrous tools; we wait, and we watch the stars, because we know that some day cousins from the land of our ancestors will find us and take us home.
by submission | Sep 2, 2009 | Story
Author : Daniel Bensen
Alex
This has been a humbling experience.
I can admit now that I was a little arrogant. I suppose I had reason to be. I was—I suppose I still am—the best mathematician on Earth. Funny.
I know I should have expected this. But then, most of us believed then that mathematics was a universal language. I can’t say I ever held much stock in the notion, but the politicians thought so, and that is why they sent me. If you are listening to this, then I know you have read the reports, so I won’t bore you by going over the details.
Suffice to say, the work was difficult. Almost impossible, actually. Math, pure math, may be the universal language, but our understanding of it is so warped by our biology that our systems of notation are completely incompatible. I couldn’t make heads or tails of anything the aliens were sending at first.
Again I won’t bore you with details. Basically, I eventually realized that there was a pattern in their communications. A broad pattern in all of their messages taken as a whole. Soon after we began to exchange information, I realized, they had been trying to teach me.
There were—this is difficult to express to a layman—there were equations that suggested several possible solutions. When I picked the correct one, I would be rewarded by another message. If not, the next message would be blank. Like a multiple-choice test. The pattern of my early work suggests that the correct answers I made were accidental. It was only by constant effort and thought that I could determine what the right answer might be. I wracked my brains. I stayed up for nights on end, running the numbers one way, then another. I nearly drove myself mad. Perhaps I did, since I finally started to get answers from dreams. I can’t say the dream answers were correct much more often than my normal ones, though.
Eventually I broke through a wall.
I can’t exactly describe it. I’m better now, more coherent, but the balance is that I can no longer remember clearly what it was that I said. But I know the answer felt or tasted or smelled right to me. It was a glorious feeling.
The next morning I had another message from the aliens and for the very first time, I understood almost all of it. Unfortunately, I cannot give you very clear reasoning behind my translation, but I know it is true. I know they told me that I had done a very good job, and that I was a very good boy.
Like I said, humbling.
by submission | Sep 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Michael Varian Daly
Junior Lieutenant Menat Borsa, Space Force Marines, had the Third Watch on Barracks Platform 2/26 [2nd Regt/26th Batt] because, bluntly put, she was a ‘noob’, barely four months out of the Academy. And she was fine with that Tradition from ‘beyond the mists of time’. The Sisterhood was ever conscious of not throwing out the practical baby with the Patriarchal bathwater.
Besides, the view was gorgeous, a five by ten transparent plasteen window in High Earth Orbit. Menat spent a significant portion of the watch simply staring out that window. The rest of the time she read books, Mimsdottor’s “History of The Horse Clans, Vol 1” at the moment. Electronic media were forbidden on Watch.
Oh, and she checked the systems, a swirl of intermeshing holograms. Systems that never failed. Ever. And every time she thought that, she heard her Tech Instructor, Captain Haduri, saying emphatically, “Something. Always. Fails.” Which was why her warm body was here on Third Watch.
A proximal danger alarm activated.
“Shit,” she muttered, letting “Horse Clans” float away.
An impact alarm flared/squealed.
“Shit!” she barked. That was too quick for space junk. Data flows informed her that a micrometeorite had pierced the platform, damaging Drop Troopers in their Sleep Pods. One set of life signs flat lined and others were ‘unhappy’.
A hologram coalesced, Senior Chief Warrant Officer Mwera. “El Tee, I’m on my way to Hold Seven.”
“Roger that, Chief.” Technically, she was a ‘superior officer’, but Mwera, born a True Male, had, at the age of fifty three, become a Space Force Mandriod. That was over three decades ago, so Menat fully deferred to him.
“Chief, be advised that Corporal El Em One Two Seven is up and about.” Mwera blanched. “But he has exited Hold Seven,”
“Roger that, El Tee,” he said flatly.
Sensors showed the Corporal heading for the mess bay.
“Can’t be hungry,” she thought. He’d been hooked up to bleeder/feeder tubes in his Sleep Pod.
“Maybe he wants one of those nasty Drop Trooper candy bars,” the ones that tasted like vulcanized cowshit laced with cinnamon and fruit compote.
“Junior Lieutenant Menat Borsa exiting the Command Center,” she said.
Menat found him floating in front of the mess bay’s window, naked, eight feet tall, seven hundred pounds, pink as a baby pig, a dozen gray caps covering his battle armor plug-in points.
She turned off her neural implanted combat programs. At six two, three hundred pounds, and heavily augmented, she might be able to take him. As an Initiated Sister, she was a weapon herself.
But he was a fellow Marine.
“Corporal?” she said softly.
He turned to look at her somberly. She wondered if he ever looked anything but somber.
“One of my Troopers died.” He looked out the window again. “I wanted to see the sky.”
She had no trouble whatsoever radiating Empathy at him.
“I’ll have Chief Mwera program sky dreams for you.”
He looked at her with what seemed a smile.
She held out her hand. He took it gently in his massive fingers and allowed her to lead him back to Hold Seven.
by submission | Aug 30, 2009 | Story
Author : Phill English
Bob leaned back in his chair and sighed. The first day had been a long time coming. Every time they thought they had the whole project licked, a new feature came to light that had to be incorporated into the preliminary model. And there were a whole lot of features. How long had he even been at this? It seemed like decades ago that he had begun the project as a hobby in between building planetoids for superstars. It wasn’t long before it consumed more hours than the weekend could provide. He started asking around at work for people interested in joining his little experiment and found a few kindred spirits willing to get involved for a laugh. It was just a bit of fun; a problem to get a kick out of wrapping your brain around. After a year or so of hacking together what they could, the now dozen-strong group realised they needed some outside expertise and advertised for volunteer positions on the Galaxyweb. A modest following sprung up, which then exploded when the project was mentioned on one of the more popular news feeds (Jump Squared; a self-proclaimed “directory of awesome”). Soon the job of overseeing thousands of eager minds overtook Bob’s weekday efforts and he resigned to more effectively manage the project. Its popularity only seemed to grow over time, forcing Bob to start screening volunteers. This lead to the whole deal becoming a yardstick for the hacker culture. Every tinkerer, repurposer, and eccentric engineer wanted in on the prestige that came with being selected to help with Bob’s grand experiment. It was tough, but eventually he had a steady core of brilliant minds helping him to achieve the nigh-impossible detail required by the original plans.
And now it was time. He felt like the unwitting participant in the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine. He wondered what it would do, this replica, this cynical doppelganger. Hopefully provide a bit of harmless entertainment for the news feeds to report on from time to time. It would probably get the zealots up in arms. Whether they’d do something drastic was still to be determined, but he figured they’d probably be curious enough to let it be. He didn’t really care, for him it had been all about the build; now that it was done, he had no interest past letting it go. Bob spoke calmly into his microphone. “Is Adam in place? Good to hear. Illumination technicians on standby? Great. Alright guys, get ready to set the timer on my mark. Three-thousand years, that’s correct.”
Everything was in place. Alright, thought Bob. Time to see if it really went down the way He said it did. The panel in front of him flashed green. The station went quiet. Millions held their breath.
And Bob said, “Let there be light.”
by submission | Aug 29, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Odhner
Jacob looked down at his hands, at the skin that had grown wrinkled and translucent over time, veins rising as the liver spots bloomed around them. His wedding ring rattled around loosely on his twiglike finger, secured only by the gnarled joint of his knuckle. He had done so much with these hands. They glowed red intermittently as the light on the control panel flashed beneath them, begging him to reach forward and press the button that would abort the experiment. Already the others that could have done it had fled to what they prayed was a safe distance. He had told them to, sent them away without telling them that the experiment was actually going as planned.
There were voices, speaking to him from the console. Telling him to abort, telling him that whatever was happening was beyond the understanding of physics and had to be stopped before it tore the world apart. Jacob ignored them and turned the speaker off. He gazed once more at the ring of gold on his withered finger, scratched and worn. Remembered the feel of his wife’s cheek against his, the dry warmth of her skin. He thought, too, about the way the ring reminded him of the brass linking rings he had used in his performances. Making some extra money on the weekends, his hands not yet shaking and curled from arthritis, hiding and revealing cards and coins as his spectators stared in awe and confusion. His wife was among them, always, watching his eyes rather than looking for the trick.
Once more the safeguards tried to kick in, and Jacob calmly disabled them. He had told his teachers, his students, his coworkers. Physics is about magic tricks – and the deeper you go the more magic is revealed. The motion of the tiniest building blocks of reality seemed mysterious only to those unfamiliar with the tricks of the craft; his hands could disassemble the most complex puzzle-boxes as easily as they wrote equations on a blackboard, as easily as they made a dove seem to vanish into the air, as easily as they traced the secret lines down his wife’s form that only he knew – and so he had known the trick to the universe would unfold before him eventually. There was always an equation up God’s sleeve, a palmed quark, a hidden force. But he had searched for the trap doors and secret compartments, never stopping even when his wife took her final bow and did a vanishing act right in his arms, leaving only her cold body behind – a particularly cruel trick.
The room went dark for a moment, but his hands knew every inch of the control panel and he coaxed the device back to life. The emergency lights now showed the walls seeming to buckle and warp, but this was an illusion; misdirection. Communication with the world outside the lab would be impossible, and Jacob wondered briefly if the lab was even visible from the outside anymore, or if the scientists were panicking at it’s apparent departure. Watch, closely, ladies and gentleman – now you see it…
Jacob the Magnificent’s hands made a flourish as he reached for the button. “Abracadabra,” he whispered, and pressed. The world was still. He reached down and plucked the wedding ring off of his finger seemingly through the bone, and it unfolded into a chain of interlinked rings longer than the universe itself. With another flourish, he produced a new galaxy from his other hand – and behind him, his wife clapped.
