by submission | Feb 17, 2011 | Story
Author : Jason Frank
I’m in my office, the big one on the top floor, minding my own business and he just walks in without knocking. Hey, we might have just had a revolution but there’s still a right and a wrong way to do things. For example, storming into my office with a sour look on your face and then yelling at me with a tone of voice I don’t appreciate is not the best way to stay on my good side.
“Fred,” he says, “we have to rethink the Copacetitron. We have to turn it back on, now.”
“What?” I shout at him. He’s not supposed to call me Fred, not anymore, nobody is. I didn’t risk my life leading the Eight Departments against the Kindlys of the Serious Commission so I could be called Fred. Comandante, now that’s a title fit for a man of my accomplishments. That’s what I’m supposed to be called, whether or not I told anybody that yet.
“Fred…” (again with the Fred!), “Fred, I know that shutting down that evil, mind bending machine was the whole point of our uprising, but listen, we have to turn it back on, right now. I don’t know, maybe we can turn it down gradually over the next couple of weeks. I just know that turning it off suddenly was the wrong move.” That whole not calling me Comandante thing is totally a crime. Ignorance of the law is no defense, regardless of whether or not I told anybody about it. The law flows out of me like my exhaled breath, the steaming exhalations of the Comandante.
He’s got that look in his eye, I know it pretty good, like he’s going to keep talking. I let him go, he can dig his own grave as deep as he wants it for all I care. “Look, just look outside,” he says and I do.
I knew he was off but looking outside just proves it. The city looks better than it ever did. The lovely fires are bringing out dramatic shadows and angles I never could have imagined. Down the way, I can even see a guy crucified up on the hands of the big clock. Now that must have been damn hard to do and I almost tear up thinking about all the ambitious go-getters we got down there.
“Fred!” he says again, louder this time. I’m going to have to say something to him, that much is clear. He starts walking towards me with some kind of look in his eye I can’t identify. Better safe than sorry, I always say. That’s why I put together this fine club, a stick anyone of Comandante level would be glad to call his own. It’s got a bunch of nails through it at odd angles. Its lack of symmetry really stirs the soul. Anyway, I start hitting him with it (I really should give my club a proper name like, I dunno, Darlene or something). All kind of roses bloom on his face. I think maybe I hit him for too long, mostly because my left arm cramps up something fierce.
I look down at him, my little brother, the brains behind our rebellion. What happened to him? We shut down the evil Copacetitron that was, we all knew, messing with our heads in a manner most indelicate. For some reason, he just couldn’t deal with the reality of our liberation. Oh well, you couldn’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. We were free now and we had to start acting like it.
by submission | Feb 13, 2011 | Story
Author : Michael Bagen
Hobbes lowered the Polaroid, blinded Carla giving him the finger.
“I just woke up and I’m hung over. Please die and leave me that picture to dispose of.
He ignored her, turned, and dealt the image like a playing card onto the scanner.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Carla, not his lady or even his friend, slid on tight jeans and buckled her belt. Hobbes ignored her, tantalizing though it was. She leaned over him, loose tank top billowing over her cleavage as she looked down.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He was scanning in her photo, point of fact. Blue dots appeared on the image. He was doing something else too. The computer made a buzzing noise, sifting through massive amounts of data. The fan vainly fought to dispel the heat.
“What’s it working on,” she asked.
“Sifting data and repelling viruses, mainly.” He looked up at her. He kissed her on the cheek, an act that had made her recoil in horror.
“I didn’t fuck you last night and I’m sure as fuck not going to now that I’m sober.”
“I know,” he said, turning his attention to the screen, “Have you ever heard of Rule 34?”
Rule 34—If it exists, there is porn of it.
“No.”
“Good.” He took a deep breath, lighting a bracing cigarette. “Little known fact. Did you know that there are a limited number of facial casts recognizably unique to the human eye.”
“So?”
“As of the year 2025 with its omnipresent cameras, be they in cars, banks, toilets or phones, we have been able to record an estimated 10 percent of the human population engaging in sexual acts that are now publicly available for download. One in every 10 people on earth. So mathematically, after we reached the point where 10% of the population is equal to or less than the number of facial casts, we get what?
“I don’t know,” she growled, sensing that she would not like it, whatever it was.
Hobbes’s computer struck gold and sang. Hardcore pornography erupted vile, raw and creative on screen, the face of Carla ecstatic at the efforts of some well-hung professional.
“Son of a bitch, you stole my face and–”
“Guess again,” he sang, “Rule 34. If it exists, there is porn of it.”
Carla braced herself against the sides of his chair, hissing spit and tobacco juice in his eyes.
“Explain!”
“If there are more pornographic actors actual or incidental in the world than there are facial casts, then it becomes a mathematical certainty that…”
She stumbled backward.
“Yep. If you exist, there is porn of you. For every face, there is at least ten other identical faces in the world. And at least one of them, like this girl here my dear Carla, got fucked six ways to Sunday on…what do they call those things, anyway?”
“It’s a sedan chair you unbelievable fuck!”
Hobbes, pimpled, fat, having spent $100 on vodka just to get a woman into his basement abode, smiled serenely as she rose, dead but for the hate and jabbed a lacquered black nail in his direction.
“I–”
“Every 5th man on Earth has seen that video. He has seen an image of himself fucking an image of a woman he is statistically ensured to be in eyeshot of.” Hobbes gently laid a kiss upon angry Carla’s knuckles. “Peace be with you.”
by submission | Feb 12, 2011 | Story
Author : Matthew Velez
I miss the rain. It’s been years – I’ve long since lost track of how many – since I saw it last. Since anyone saw it last. It’s been so long that no one really remembers it anymore, except for what you’d find in dictionaries. I remember rain as being so much more than those bland descriptions. I remember falling asleep to it, listening to the soft, even sound of running water, distinct from yet blending into all else. I remember sitting by windows, letting my mind wander while tiny droplets formed patterns on the glass, ambient light casting tiny shadows. I think I’m the only one who remembers, but all I have are faint flickers of memory.
I live in a city of mist. An endless fog blankets the entire city, providing moisture without the need for rain. A fog that is unobtrusive, casting what it hides not in opaqueness but in shades of gray. No one remembers the onset of the mist; it simply was and now is. All that we remember was that before the mist, there was rain, and now there is none. With the mist came a loss of knowledge; we lost contact with the world, with our own history, where we came from. No one, save for maybe the City government, knows where the City is, what country it is a part of, how old it is, or even what its real name is. All we call it now is ”The City.” We know of nothing else.
One day, I tried to leave. It wasn’t because I was dissatisfied with City life; it’s a laid-back place. It was due to wanderlust, an urge to see what was beyond. I wasn’t really doing anything else, anyway. So, I packed my things and walked on the main road for hours. The City was big, but it wasn’t infinite. Eventually, all that was left was the road itself, with no other ground I could see. The only sounds were my lonely footsteps upon the asphalt. Gray-white mist surrounded me, blanketing my clothes with a faint dampness I couldn’t feel. The road kept going. I looked back to find that the City was out of sight, hidden by the now-opaque mist. I knelt down by the side of the road and reached for the ground beside it. It was a hard, unnatural substance, the same color as the mist. It felt almost like the steel used in buildings, but somehow more organic. It was wet with condensed mist seeping down into cracks I could barely feel.
I continued. Nothing happened for ages, until I heard a sound. A steady, even sound splashing in the distance. A sound that I identified immediately, even though I hadn’t heard it for countless years. My pace quickened as I heard the rainfall from my childhood. Eventually, I saw it: a shimmering form breaking the opacity of the mist. The white fog gave way into more color, a sickeningly gray-brown earth extending beyond the horizon. It was entirely featureless. The rain fell unceasingly, causing faint wisps of smoke to emerge with each impact. I slowed my pace, until I felt a thick pane of glass in front of me, barring my progress. It bore no seams or faults. There was no way in or out. Its only peculiarity was a plaque etched in the glass. It said, in large, plain text,
“The City is all that is left. There is nothing else. Turn back now.”
The acid rain continued to fall on the remains of the world.
by submission | Feb 7, 2011 | Story
Author : Ryan Swiers
From the sand she raised herself. The desert wind had coursed over her exposed flesh and the gritty pain of its wake made the effort slow. Sleek tendrils of sand rolled from her back. She realized a layer of the sand had once been her skin. She could feel some of it filter through her skeleton, passing around bones and organs and pocked limbs, surprised that it hadn’t claimed all of her as a fossil.
She stopped to rest on her hands and knees. Nine feet ahead she saw her discarded helmet. The color had left it. She swayed—an old, obstinate fruit on a wind-worn branch—to shake away the remnants of the desert floor. Careful, let it ease out. Don’t want the important things to go too. It was a slow, exhausting ordeal this resurrection.
To pass the time while her strength recovered she fiddled with the error in her date system. She picked at it like a child would a scab. Errors like these gaps in time and memory were becoming more frequent. Hadn’t she just done this?
Star alignment gave her the local time. That was easy, but when had she fallen? An estimate put her between twenty three or twenty three hundred days. And the time before that? Maybe a millennium. Who could say?
A human expression came to her: time can heal all wounds. True, in her case, it could; not many humans would bother rising from the dead much less wear their worthless skin again. Yet, this wasn’t what the expression meant.
“Forget it.” She said. Memories fade and rinse the soul clean.
Awake now, she felt scrubbed, thoughtless, and relieved. Forget the errors.
It was time to get up. Make new ones.
Although, maybe another five minutes. It was Monday after all.
by submission | Feb 6, 2011 | Story
Author : Zachary Murray
My mind came awake before my body. I was thankful that the sense of detachment was short lived, and it was good to feel the warmth of the fluid that filled the tank around me. I hated being in the tank. The whole breathing liquid aspect of it always left a bad taste in my mouth, and the regular sting of electrical pulses was the closest thing I could imagine to being cooked in a microwave oven. They said the shocks were to prevent muscle atrophy, but to me they were just a pain in the ass. I tried to laugh at the joke I stumbled upon, but having your lungs filled with fluid makes it difficult.
It’s not hard to get restless when you’re stuck in a near perfect state of sensory deprivation. I tried to open my eyes, but all I got for my trouble was a searing glimpse of the life-lights that lined the tank. It was still amazing to me that they had figured out how to keep a person alive off of light alone, for short periods at least, but they could have at least included a dimmer.
At that point I figured I may as well get comfortable, not that I could change anything of course, as there wasn’t much I could do until the techs pulled me out. In pre-jump training they told us to refrain from violent movements when we first woke up. They wouldn’t want us to break their fancy equipment after all. I could still see their smiles as they told us normal tank extractions averaged only five minutes, and not to be alarmed if it felt longer.
That thought was of little comfort to me since I didn’t have a clock to look at. Not that I could have opened my eyes long enough to see it even if they had bothered to include one in the tank with me. I could still remember how pissed I’d been after my first dunk. No one does well their first time and I was no exception. I came out swearing, my fists ready, and I didn’t calm down until they told me I’d only been awake for three minutes. Those three minutes had felt like a lifetime though, and just thinking about it made my chest feel tighter.
To pass the time I contemplated some violent movements I hoped to show the techs when they pulled me out. My dark reveries came to an abrupt end when my tank shook hard enough to send me bouncing from side to side. Several choice curses came to mind as I floundered around, but once again the fluid in my lungs kept me from expressing myself.
When things were once again still, and nothing else happened, I sat trying to decide if I should be getting nervous or not. I’d just come to the decision that everything was probably fine when the grow lights kicked off and I was surrounded by darkness. I realized the electric pulses had also shut off along with the lights. Oddly enough I missed the sensation. The tank felt much smaller as I hung there waiting, and I couldn’t help but remember that the lights never went off during training.
