by submission | Aug 14, 2010 | Story
Author : Daan Kogelmans
Harry has wrapped a tentacle around his inner lobe, which means he is thinking deeply. Two of his cigarettes have gone out, he squints in the orange smoke. Then he coughs.
“You smoke too much,” I say.
“I know, I know,” he extinguishes the cigarettes in the hole and scratches his lips. “It’s just that… I can’t stop thinking about these poor things. He points at the glass dome.
I bend over and peek inside. The aliens crawl around in the mud. “You have two of them?”
“Yeah, a couple… They mate sometimes, but without success.”
“They are active though,” I say.
“I gave them some sokaputty to see how they would react.”
“Oh,” I say. One should never expect too much of sokaputty. “Two eyes,” I say looking at them, “let’s see… that’s only three dimensions, isn’t it? Which makes them…”
“Practically blind,” Harry says nodding and lighting a few more cigarettes, “that’s what I worry about so much. Because with two eyes… Man, I would die with loneliness.”
“No contact?”
“Not a flitch, not even a flicker.”
“Than how can they live?”
Harry shrugs, smoking. “It makes me so sad, you know. To be so lonely, all your life crawling around in darkness.”
“Maybe their species doesn’t need any contact?”
He spits on the raster. “No man, they crave for contact all their life. I’ve seen them mating man, they try to touch, they try to lick, they look each other in their two eyes, but they just can’t do it, man, they are lonely as hell. A rock has more contact than these wretches.”
I shake my head and look at them crawling in the mud. “Poor things.”
“Yeah man,” he puts his cigarettes in the hole, “I should quit smoking.”
by submission | Aug 13, 2010 | Story
Author : Jake Lane
You’ve never been the most outgoing person, Sam. It’s not your fault, I’m sure, but that doesn’t stop it from being the truth. As wonderful as you are now (I love you, Sam, you know that), you could be so much more wonderful.
From the moment we met I could see that you were a slave to your own insecurities. When you spilled your coffee all over my briefcase you self-consciously apologized to me for hours. You apologized for hours and then we dated for months because, well, a flawed diamond is still a diamond. I married you.
Even now, I’m just barely able to see beyond the sheen of your sun-speckled surface into your concealed depths. But what depths! Oh, I have no doubt that you are as magnificent as you are repressed. Peel away your cocoon of complexes and you would become the perfect person, the person that I met, briefly, after you returned from your mission.
As you strode out of the starport terminal I could see a confidence in your swagger that betrayed the extent of your transformation (or should I say “emergence”?). As you strode out of the starport terminal I knew that everything would be different. I was standing face-to-face with the hidden person I always knew you were just dying to let out. When your friends come by to fry fish and crack beers and stargaze, they talk about being transformed out there in the void. The dusty amber dye-drop hurricanes of Jupiter are said to be unparalleled by our terrestrial standards. At first, I thought that was it: That you’d seen the silent, stormy beauty of the outer planets and it had changed you, Sam. You opened up, you calmed down. Sure, you’d occasionally drop plates or stumble on the stairs, but you maneuvered around these minor slips with wit and casual grace. The Sam I’d always loved, the Sam I married, no longer felt the need to hide behind awkward apologies. You had this inebriated joviality and this nonchalance and this debonair aura that just turned me on. You had fire and you had edge and you had sly humor and motivation and nosebleeds…
Those damn nosebleeds.
The doctor said they were superficial, not necessarily a sign of any permanent damage. But those nosebleeds gave us away, or gave you away. Gave it away, the goddamn stealthy little helper curled around your brain stem. When the doctor pulled the needle-thin, noodle-thin parasite from your skull, I knew I’d lost you. The moment you blushed and kneaded the back of your neck and awkwardly told me it must have, ‘Uh, climbed in there while I was down on the surface, I guess, I don’t know, weird huh?’, I knew I’d lost you.
I wonder if you miss that uninhibited, charismatic self? In fact, I’m almost sure you do. You’d have to. Because for all the nosebleeds and the twitching and the fumbling, that worm was the best thing to happen to you, Sam. Well, this fight isn’t over. As weak and insecure as you may be, you’ve always looked out for me, and nothing in this world or others is going to keep me from looking out for you. There’s a parcel in the mail, hermetically sealed, atmosphere regulated, temperature monitored, express-shipped from the frigid planes of Io. I’ll see you soon, Sam. I love you.
by submission | Aug 12, 2010 | Story
Author : Alec Ow
“When are you going to get a new body?”
I ping my guildmates, “I’ve got girlfriend aggro, this might take a while,” and sheathe my sword. They only manage a cursory glance and a quick “later mate” before they and the dragons’ den dissolves away into a white room with Cerise standing in the middle.
“It’s been a month since the accident,” she continues, “you need counseling. There’s more to life than working a menial number-crunching job and wasting your day away in VR you know.”
“I don’t need counseling-”
“You THINK you don’t need counseling,” she interrupts me, “first deaths are a big deal, John, you don’t have to hide behind that tough exterior.”
“Times are tough right now Cerise, being an infomorph for a while can save us some money on living expenses. I can’t afford to buy a body right now and you know I don’t want to rent. What if I get a smoker’s body? Having to deal with the nicotine withdrawal-,” I stop myself. I know I can’t win this argument so I try to change the subject, “Where are you right now?”
“At work, on break. I just got off chat with my mom. They want to take us to the Bahamas this summer. Even if you rent a synth it’ll be better than bringing you along in a harddrive. I miss the feel of your touch.”
“But we-”
“VR’s not the same. Please, I know you don’t want to be hurt again, but think of all the things you’ll be missing out on.”
A lull in the conversation. I let out an audible sigh, “My promotion should be coming soon. I’ll go schedule an appointment for counseling and we can shop for hybrids when you get home. I just hope your parents don’t sneer too much for not going full-organic.”
“They won’t judge,” a smile slowly creeps across her face.
“Oh right, your dad in his ‘all-natural olympiad body, the blue-print cost a fortune you know and fabricated from the finest biomass money can buy’,” I attempt my best impression of her dad.
She lets out a giggle and plants a kiss on my lips, “I’ll see you when I get home, babe.”
Cerise and the white room dissolves away and I’m met by my guildmates standing over a dead dragon, arguing over who gets the spear.
“Anyone know any good hybrid models?” I ask and grimace as I’m met by their sneers.
by submission | Aug 9, 2010 | Story
Author : CJ Bergin
Tom rolled over in his sleep and felt his arm fall onto cool skin.
“Careful honey” a whisper in his ear said. “Unless of course, you’re trying to start something.” A smile crawled up Tom’s face as he moaned playfully.
“No” the word resounded through the room clear as crystal, and was followed by a much more muffled “at least not right now”. Warm breath passed by Tom’s ear, as the response came.
“Of course, honey”. Sarah gave her husband a quick kiss, then closed her eyes, and fell still. Satisfied, Tom’s smile melted away, his eyelids sank, and he let reality fall away, at least for a little while.
When he opened his eyes again, Sarah was out of bed. The smell of bacon and eggs wafted through the bedroom door teasing Tom’s taste buds. His smile quickly returned.
What a wonderful wife, he thought to himself, I can’t believe I’m so lucky
Tom crawled out of bed, put on his slippers, walked out of his bedroom, through the hallway, and into the kitchen, which was neatly hidden away in the corner of the house. Sarah’s back faced Tom as she tended to the bacon on the stove. She was already dressed for the morning in a flowing white sundress. On the kitchen counter a small TV displayed the news.
“How is it you know exactly how to make me happier than anyone else?” Tom came behind Sarah and slid his arms around her waist.
“Easy” She chuckled “You told me how, bacon and sex.” She turned to face him, “Except, this morning, somebody wasn’t in the mood” Tom’s smile didn’t falter an inch
“You’re forgetting its bacon, sex, and sleep. Sleep is just as important.”
“Well you didn’t seem to think so last night” He smiled at his bride, and with no other diplomatic option available, he kissed her, and she kissed him back. Tom completely lost himself in the moment. He blocked out all other thoughts, even the entrancing smell of bacon on the griddle. None of it could compare to this. After what seemed like a wonderful eternity Tom slowly returned to reality, to the sound of the TV blaring.
“Protesters have stormed D.C. demanding the repeal of the population control bill, or what has become known as the “control clause”. Protesters insist that the right to reproduce should be shared by all, not simply by government appointed breeders…”
Tom’s smile didn’t falter an inch. In fact, it grew. It grew until he couldn’t contain it anymore, and he began laughing. He laughed until tears started streaming down his face.
“Can you believe those people? Who the hell would want to have children? Do you realize it takes $100,000 to raise the things till their 18? Yea right” Sarah looked at her husband, turned around, and continued tending to the bacon. “Aw, honey whats wrong?”
“Nothing” the reply came
“Aw c’mon, Sarah you don’t want to have one of those things…do you?”
“You know that I can’t”
“But do you want to?” Tom’s question was answered with silence. “Oh Jesus, not again” he muttered. He grabbed Sarah violently by the waist, and began reaching up her dress. Sarah panicked, she began screaming and flailing her arms.
”Stop!” Tom shouted, and so Sarah did. He reached Sarah’s abdominal control panel and hit reset. Sarah’s eyes closed for a second, and then opened again.
“Hello, I am Sarah, serial number 942621137 what is your name?”
“Tom”
“Oh, Tom I’m so happy to be your wife! How can I make you happy?” Tom’s smile returned.
“Lets go upstairs”
by submission | Aug 8, 2010 | Story
Author : Dale Anson
Seventh Contact
The ship was nothing but a bit of gossamer, wrapped in a smallish chunk of spacetime and plasma, elongated to impossible dimensions. Krista’s thougths, stretched by relativistic time, traveled from synapse to synapse in mere seconds. Ahead, the red star grew from a suggestion to a dot to a period to a disk to an orb to a sphere to an overwhelmingly large object that dominated all thought to absolute brightness bending her course slightly to the right to merely large to not so large to diminishing to what was that, anyway?
Krista looked outward, considering the trigonometry of the center versus the reddish star disappearing rapidly behind her versus the nebula at 9 o’clock versus the smallish galaxy below versus the leftish edge of the spiraling arm directly ahead. It would be at least a quarter turn, she decided.
She napped.
She blinked. She heard it now, low level, but distinct. She heard the sound of organization, of civilization, of thought above the slime level. Hours later, fully aware, she triangulated. She had entered the second arm, her journey across the void had been successful. Krista backtracked the signals: correlation, confirmation, origin. She ran pattern matching routines, deep archival retrieval processes, and bounced everything against her last known intelligence registries. She ran her data through the subspace routines, then through the species identifier, then through the spacetime geometry stacks, then through the hyperspace stacks.
It fit.
The bluish star pass to port, then she aimed toward a yellowish star down and to starboard.
Krista passed a small planet, then an orange gas giant with a ring, then a small white planet, then she contracted, swelled, and slowed to visibility. As she rounded the yellow star, she saw the blue marble from ancient days. She angled toward the equilibrium point trailing the orbit of the blueness, and set up her defenses to repel the incoming nuclear warheads.
Contact was never easy, even when it came from home.
