by submission | Apr 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
“All right, just tell me what happened,”
Flight Commander Athelston was a long way from happy, but right now exhaustion outweighed anger. His two subordinates, one furious, one sheepish, started to speak at the same time. Eventually Turner, the angry one, won out.
“Sir, Cook’s endangered the whole mission with his stupidity. He’s contaminated the scene with lord knows what effect and put everything we were trying to do in jeopardy.”
“Look, it was nothing serious! You’re only freaking out because of-”
“Both of you, hush.”
They turned from each other to the commander. Anger was poking its head up again.
“Right, without laying blame, tell me what happened, not what you think of each other.”
After a pause, Cook spoke, sounding like the naughty kid found drawing penises on the blackboard.
“All right, full story. I was off duty last night, and I was bored, so I opened up the emergency spirit rations.”
“An offense under section-” Turner began, before catching the Flight Commander’s eye and shutting up. Cook continued.
“I got a bit of a buzz on, nothing else to do on this place, is there? And when I went on patrol this morning I was feeling the after effects a little bit.”
Athelston closed his eyes.
“Please tell me you didn’t throw up on the planet we’re meant to be observing.”
“No, no, nothing like that!” Cook began, his opening defense hasty with little to follow it up, “It was just… well, I was half a mile from base camp, and I was bursting for a piss.”
Athelston let out a sigh.
“So you used the emergency suit reservoir? No, of course you didn’t.”
“There was this little warm puddle by this rock outcropping and-”
“And you decided to make it bigger and warmer? Cook, you may have forgotten, but we are meant to be a non-contact mission. Our engines are full-capture, we take no samples. We don’t even take on water. Our purpose is to observe without impacting. What part of that tells you to take a leak against a rock?”
“Recommend his immediate court martial, sir!” Turner said, crisply.
Athelston paused, considering the months of his life such a court martial would take. Him answering questions in a courtroom instead of piloting missions, smart lawyers insinuating this was his fault, the endless headaches that would at best leave a smudge on his mission reputation.
“No,” he said slowly, “That won’t be necessary.”
“But the environmental-”
“Urine is sterile, Turner. Cook disgraced himself, but he didn’t put the mission in danger. Cook, you’re a bloody idiot, and you’re pulling engine room duty all the way home. Understood?”
Both men nodded, neither entirely happy.
“Good, now let’s finish up and get off this planet before Cook decides to take a crap on it.”
A few hours later, the launch capsule took off again. It was a remarkable thing, managing capture of almost all of its exhaust emissions. With a strong wind, any signs of its presence would be gone within the week.
In a small, warm puddle, half a mile from the landing site, interesting things were happening. Cook hadn’t thought to mention the girl he’d run into on their last planet leave, or the things she’d done with him in a bedroom above a kebab shop. He wouldn’t even know for a few days that he had caught a dose of something from her. Nevertheless, bacterial signs of that tryst lived on in this puddle. The only life on the planet, they started to multiply in this warm, nutritious mixture. When the rains came in a few days, they would be spread into the rivers and oceans of this planet.
And the morning and the evening were the first day.
by submission | Apr 26, 2009 | Story
Author : Skyler Heathwaite
Joshua had always been a God fearing man. He went to confession, said his prayers before bed, and gave to the collection plate. Then one day he saw an ad on TV for Revival.
The idea itself was simple: Science had found a way to download a mind into a fresh body at the moment of death. A transmitter at the base of the brain stem, a monthly fee, and never again would one have to fear death.
There was a tiny hole in Joshua’s heart, a defect in the womb. He signed up, and took a few days off while his neck healed. On his last day off he was shot in a robbery at his favorite liquor store.
He awoke in a healthy young body surrounded by doctors. They validated his identity and sent him home.
That had been a month ago. He poured the gasoline over the basement steps as he ascended to the ground floor. In a crumpled heap below lay his wife and two daughters, like so much wet cardboard.
He struck a match and leered at it. No death, no fear of God.
by submission | Apr 25, 2009 | Story
Author : Ryan Somma
Kheen stared out the window of his top-floor corner office, completely oblivious to the hustle and bustle of his city stretching off into the horizon below. Planes, spacecraft, gliders, unicorns, and more were cruising right past his window, citizens enjoying the nightlife of which he was architect, but he was still chained to work.
There was a flash and the tinkling sound of chimes from behind him, and Kheen turned around slowly. This was his personal assistant, Uui, teleporting into the office. Her face was always expressionless, matching her strictly business attitude. So the mere fact of her presence was like a lead weight on his heart.
“New directive from corporate,” Uui said and directed Kheen’s attention to the flat screen always floating at her shoulder. “They want the Xybercorp building inducted into the city by the end of the week.”
“Okay,” Kheen replied with measured patience. “And..?”
“They want residence in the Atomlight district.”
“Okay.”
“There are no plots left in the Atomlight district.”
“Yes.”
“So..?”
Kheen savored the uncertainty in Uui’s otherwise monotonous dialogue a moment longer before answering, “So we’ll boot a lesser client out. Xybercorp is a big name, and we can shuffle some buildings to accommodate them.”
“Everyone in Atomlight is a major client sir–”
“Which means whoever we kick out of there must have their building moved into a district of almost equal prestige, which will require moving a second-tier client out of that district, and a third-tier client out of the district we move the second-tier into, and etcetera and etcetera and etcetera,” Kheen turned his back on Uui. “It will mean overtime for everyone. Make it happen.”
“Yes sir,” Uui vanished in a tinkling of chimes.
Kheen set his world settings to nighttime. The daylight outside his window fell under a canopy of darkness and flowing light streams. Then he turned off the windows completely, substituting the best view in the city with a moonlit nature scene instead.
He thought about lunch breaks, water coolers, and sleep, all the living necessities of which this place was devoid. He thought about his body, in an isolation chamber in some corporate warehouse, aging away.
He thought about his retirement. With the exchange rate the way it was, he might afford it by the time his physical body was in its 80s. Then he could buy his way out of this place, live in a homeless shelter somewhere cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and dirty all the time. This made him smile.
It was going to be wonderful.
by submission | Apr 24, 2009 | Story
Author : Joshua Willey
Every morning a giant Seller’s Jay lands on the railing and sings until given some caloric morsel. The fog shifts constantly, burying the trees. I choke my dirt bike, kick it, and we’re off, down empty trails, to an empty highway along the empty ocean.
A fungus, which traveled to these parts from Japan on Rhododendrons has attacked and killed most of the Tan Oaks between San Francisco and San Simeon, and while it is sad to see the giants fall, it makes work plentiful, so when we go on the weekends to Los Angeles our pockets are bulging, and we buy drugs and giant incomprehensible books and parts for the car Shell is building; the one and only, Galaxie 500. She spends the brightest hours of everyday beneath that metal machine, and comes to the dinner table with streaks of grease across her face singing “see the pyramids across the Nile.” I climb trees and tie ropes around high limbs and strap myself against the trunk and cut cut cut.
At night I light up all the kerosene lanterns and play with the words, or fight with them as the case may be. More and more it becomes difficult to tell the difference. Six people here in Pacific Valley have all read one copy of Tree of Smoke and now it rests in tatters atop Finnegan’s Wake, 1000 Plateaus, and The Master and Margarita. Hardest thing is, as we have no electricity we have little opportunity to take in recorded music, verily one of this American life’s greatest pleasures. Shell has a deep cycle marine battery which she charges on her weekly trips to Castro to see some human “who might be the one” (though this golden prospect doesn’t keep her from crawling into half the beds in Big Sur at her leisured whim), and we hook a short wave radio up to it and can get the BBC and, occasionally, music from Japan.
I remember all the nights of her professional life. How, in the mirror, she combed her hair with the radio on playing Sun Ra and the city lights all spread out around her. “There are cigarettes in the fridge” she said, as if this was some consolation. I could only stare at her, open-mouthed, shirtless and broke. “You don’t need this,” I’d say. “What does need have to do with anything, in this country” she’d respond, and walk out the door.
Those nights I always took a bath and sometimes I got high and cleaned her little place with a fine-toothed comb.
When she came back it was dawn and she would run her fingers through my hair and say, “his penis is twice the size of yours and he runs a very successful hedge fund downtown, and his eyes” she swoons, “his eyes don’t lie, like yours.” Then we would laugh, and smoke her cold cigarettes and I would tell her about some novel, and when the fog lifted off the bay and the first rays of light crossed the concrete and steel, we would sleep, my chest against her back and my hand on her hip.
At noon I got on my bicycle and went to work and she lay in bed, drinking Foldger’s, reading Proust, waiting for me to come back.
by submission | Apr 22, 2009 | Story
Author : Carter Lee
Everyone can see me. I can’t see them, of course, but I can tell by the way that they shy away from me on the street and in stores. Their grey, featureless forms flinch, and drift away from me. No matter how crowded the area might be, I always have room to breathe.
I live in a world where the space between the ground and sky is composed of bare outlines. I subscribe to almost nothing, and so the world of men gives me only the smallest amount needed to make my way through it.
I wear my shield, of course, but I don’t sell the skin for display, unlike everyone else. I don’t sell my display, and I don’t buy anyone else’s.
I used to, of course. When I walked down the streets, the garish colors of the displays crawling and throbbing from the shield-skins of every building filled my eyes. What are now nebulous shapes would show the fantastic corporate creatures of the companies that had bought their personal displays.
One day, in a restaurant, I walked into a room full of people, each one looking like the mascot of the Deltoid Gymnasium Company. Almost 200 people, all with the same face, smile, and body. My eye had caught the words on my own retinal scrawl. Current Display: Deltoid Jim, paid for by DGC.
I was dumbstruck. I wondered for the first time who these people might be, under the picture of the blond god each was displaying. And I knew I’d never find out, that I could never find out. People showed their un-displayed forms only to those they knew very well. Some never showed their true self to anyone.
I’d disabled all of my subscriptions that evening, and declined to renew my contract with my display broker when it came up the next week. The only display anyone gets from me is me. If they want my deep background, I won’t transmit it. They have to ask me.
I lost a good number of friends over this. Many people seem to find my lack of any kind of barrier to the world as something indecent. It makes them uncomfortable to be around someone who isn’t masked in any way.
I was delighted to find that the libraries and museums in my city either don’t have fees, or only charge a small amount for upkeep, and rarely display commercials. I use old-style wall displays for information and entertainment.
I told myself that I would not pay for any more viewing subscriptions, and for the most part, I’ve stayed true to that. The one subscription I’m saving for, though, will let me look at buildings directly. I became interested in architecture a while back, after I found that the first buildings covered with shields had had them installed to protect their beauty, not to cover them with come-ons for foot powder and the like. There are pictures of the lovely structures in my city, but I’d like to see them in real life. I’d like to walk the streets and study the beauty humanity has wrought in stone and steel.
The ghosts steer themselves away from me, the stranger they can see clearly. How wonderful.
