by submission | Apr 15, 2009 | Story
Author : Tim Hatton
Judith switched her headlights on and checked the rearview. Deep brown hair slid around her shoulder as she turned to the right, looking down the street while the floating panel above the intersection flipped green.
She touched a few small switches in her console. Her chair reclined back while the car moved on in electric silence, making its own judgments about where to turn, and how fast to travel. A screen lit up and a man’s face appeared.
“How may I assist you Miss Amateau?”
“I just need the weather – oh, and some business news.”
“Very good… It is currently 10 degrees Celsius outside your vehicle, and 9 degrees Celsius at your destination. Overcast skies – “
She interrupted: “That’s fine N-Fo. So, how’s business?”
“In business news, the newest player on the market, BOOKCORP, has seen its most impressive rise in two weeks. They closed out the weekend up 35.9876 AC –“
She interrupted him again. “Ah, forget it. Just give me some television.”
The face melted back into the screen, replaced by a running advertisement. “…and this book just changed my life completely, I can say without doubt that I am a new man. I recommended it to all my friends and they –“
She heaved a sigh, flipping another switch and the cockpit returned to silence. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. The Book was inescapable these days. Arcturus was alive with this new phenomenon. It was possibly the biggest pop-culture item of the generation, and Judith was a bit exasperated. She had read it and aside from being a complete bore to read, it was also full of subtle contradictions.
What was worse, she couldn’t go anywhere these days without some jumped up Book advocate following her down the street trying to get her to “open her eyes to the light of Jesus.”
Yesterday a little boy had come to her door and asked her politely if she would read his favorite book. She had leaned down with a captivating smile and asked which book it was. When he produced a plain black copy of the Book, her smile froze into an icy grimace, and she shot an ironic glare at his mother who was waiting in the street.
Judith remembered clearly how the book had surfaced. Some astronaut had brought it back with him on a routine terraforming excursion to Earth. On returning to Arcturus, he had brought it to a publishing agency attempting to have them publish his “new novel.” When they discovered the origin, the government had confiscated it and auctioned it with many of the other artifacts that returned from Earth with the terraformers. The market for Earth artifacts was voracious and exclusive. Lane Channer, chairman for one of the planets largest publishing (now the largest publishing) agencies, Book Corp, had bought it, read it, and decided it could make money. Long story short, he published it, everyone read it, and it changed enough lives to attract the largest fiction based cult following in Arcturus’ history.
Judith settled more snuggly into her seat, and as it sensed her restlessness, it slowly conformed to her body and smoothly wrapped itself lightly around her into a soft, artificial embrace.
She didn’t notice the new building that was going up near her street as the vehicle rounded a corner, windows dimming as the red sun rose very slowly over the horizon. Tomorrow she would scoff at the obnoxious wooden cross that was being set into the ground in front a humble building with a sign reading “Book Study beginning soon! Invite your Friends!”
by submission | Apr 12, 2009 | Story
Author : Paul Starkey
The ad said; “I’m rich, you can be too! Call to find out how!”
Frankly it was the sort of ad you see in the papers every week, and you always laugh at the idiots who reply. At least I used to, but the recession was pinching, and my redundancy pay was running out. I was desperate.
The interview was laughable. Just a bland guy called Tony asking me inane questions in a hotel room, followed by him waving what looked like a calculator in my face.
‘Congratulations,’ he said afterwards. ‘You’re hired.’
‘Yeah but hired for what?’ I asked, suspicious that I was about to be asked to strip.
‘Why to time travel of course.’
Desperate or not, this was the point when I stood up, flipped him the finger, and headed for the exit.
Before I could reach for the doorknob however, it vanished…along with the door. Suddenly I was facing a counter, an old cash register welded to it by rust; empty shelves lined the back wall, cobwebs everywhere.
Turning I discovered I was in an abandoned shop. The windows had been badly boarded up- and sunlight streamed in through myriad gaps.
I wasn’t alone. ‘Welcome to 1978,’ said Tony.
I was in shock, stumbling to the nearest gap in the boards, weaving my way like a drunkard (Chronosickness Tony calls it). Peering out I saw a busy high street. Only the people were dressed in out of date fashions, and the cars looked ancient yet brand new at the same time. Sweet Jesus this was the past…
A moment later and I was back in the hotel room, back in the now. ‘So,’ said Tony. ‘Want to be rich?’
I nodded like an idiot and he explained how it worked…
Firstly Tony is from the far future. He won’t tell me exactly when but whenever it is, it’s dull, and he seems a lot more at home in 2009 (apparently THE year to be seen in). To live here however, he needs money. Now I know what you’re thinking; time machine/lottery numbers/horseracing etc …doesn’t work. Time is a bitch, a cantankerous bitch at that. She won’t let you profit from future knowledge. Winning lottery numbers fail if you bring them back, horses fall…
After trial and error though, Tony discovered that time has nothing against hard labour, and nothing against putting your earnings in a high interest account then drawing the proceeds out in the future. However it only works with money earned in the past (trust a woman to be that fickle).
So Tony hops back, gets a job as a labourer for a week or two, banks his wages and skips forward to live off the interest.
He got rich, but he also got greedy, and he quickly figured out that he could only earn a finite amount alone. If he had help however…
So now I have a new job. I’ve been a street sweeper in 1970, a navvy laying railway lines in 1925, heck I even helped build the Titanic. I never have to work more than a week, then I return to the instant after I left to discover I’m a wealthy man.
Of course Tony takes half, but so what… I’ve worked just a month in the last year, and earned well over a hundred thousand.
Gotta go anyway, Tony has a new job for me in 1815. Only pays a schilling, but with that much interest I’ll wealthy enough to take a year off. I’m meeting him at Waterloo. I’m assuming he means the railway station…
by submission | Apr 11, 2009 | Story
Author : Christina Kern
I don’t like to think of it as “running”. No, let’s call it “traveling with the intent of avoiding a specific party”.
What you call it doesn’t matter, I guess. What does matter is that the Abunari have tracked me through six states up and down the Atlantic coast, and I need to keep moving.
I’ll assume you think that the Abunari is something like the mafia, some family organization geared toward money and corruption and a skewed view of honor. You’d be terribly wrong. The Abunari is ten times what the mafia could ever be with no clear understandable motivation. At least what the mafia does can be understood; the Abunari do what they do simply for the hell of it.
I guess with that much power it’s understandable.
I attacked one of them. They have this hobby of taking over largely public vehicles and crashing them into things. They like to watch your thoughts panic and bounce frantically around your aura as you see death approaching you, as you begin to comprehend that your life is terminating.
They live for that moment of clarity you experience right before impact. It feeds them.
I happened to be on that bus one of them overtook in Virginia. And I happened to notice that he didn’t even realize I was there. I looked him straight in the face. He looked right through me.
The Abunari do not “see” like you and I “see”. They perceive the world through something they like to call Visual Telepathic Energy. In essence, they don’t see you, they see your thoughts. Think something along the lines of thermal energy goggles.
I can’t explain it, but for some reason, they can’t see me. I have some sort of VTE shield, and they can’t penetrate it. That’s why the one on the bus couldn’t see me pull out the handgun I carry for protection and shoot him directly between the eyes. Now, of course, this didn’t kill him, but it stunned him long enough for us to toss him onto the road at 60 miles per hour. That didn’t kill him either.
I assume that’s why they want me so badly. It gives them something to chase, something to experiment on when they eventually catch me.
How are they tracking me? I can’t say that I’m entirely sure about that myself. My theory is that they can see me through other people’s VTE. Sure, they never had a clear basis for what I would look like to them, but I’m sure the one on the bus caught glimpses of me, even though he had no idea where I was or what I was doing. Using that, they simply follow me through the people that see me, those who happen to see a ratty, skinny, dirty young woman scaling scaffolds and running through shadows, those who happen to see me hop a bus to wherever.
That’s just a theory, though. I cannot claim to fully understand the Abunari. As I said: all that matters is that they’re tracking me, and I’ve got to keep moving.
All I care about is staying ahead. All I care about is finding others like me, other Shielded, so that maybe we can start a resistance. The Abunari want to tear this world apart; I don’t feel inclined to let them. There are more out there, somewhere, and I’m going to find them.
So I’ll keep moving. Be on the lookout for a woman in the shadows, beyond the perception of everyday life. That’s where I’ll be, preparing to fight.
Will you?
by submission | Apr 10, 2009 | Story
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Agnes glanced up at the tiny yellow dot that hardly pierced the vacuum of black sky. She crouched over in her threadbare spacesuit touching Carl as their gloved hands picked through the rubbish pile. Her stomach fed upon itself, while her eyes searched for bits of discarded food.
“The supply ships will be here soon.” Carl tried to straighten up, failed, and collapsed on the ground.
“You’ve been saying that for years, you old bear.” She sat down beside Carl, enveloping his gloved hand in hers.
“They promised,” he whispered before his heart pumped one last time.
Startled, Agnes realized his passing. She carefully removed his helmet and touched Carl’s cheek.
She thought back to their joyful arrival buoyed with youthful hope, later childless loving and mourning her empty womb, failed hydroponic gardening, crumb rationing.
A sigh escaped. “I’m coming, my old bear.”
She unfastened her helmet, falling beside him.
by submission | Apr 9, 2009 | Story
Author : Daedalus
I look around, one last time, at the empty apartment and the packed bags.
One last time? Nicholas Jameson will see those old, beat-up duffels often, but I can’t think of him as being me. As being real. It isn’t my new face I see in the mirror, courtesy of Tabula Rasa’s plastic surgery, it is his. It isn’t my brand-new driver’s license in my pocket, it’s Jameson’s.
Still, I tell myself it was worth it as I begin to feel sleepy. “‘Tis better to have loved and lost…” Bullshit. What did Tennyson know about loss? Better a new life, a new person, than this wretched loser. I try to silence my doubts, but if life is so terrible without Her, how can I live without even her memory?
I won’t. Nicholas Jameson will. I’ll fall asleep, and the nanobots will go to work on my amygdala. Nicholas Jameson will wake up, happily ignorant of the breakup, the obsession, the thousand unsuccessful drinking binges…
As my eyes begin to droops, I look around desperately for a pen, for some way to tell this new person who he once was…
—
Nick Jameson woke up in the middle of leaving for a new apartment. Making a mental note to get more rest, he checked to make sure nothing was forgotten. The raise had come as a bit of a surprise, but Nick had always been a hard worker. He could hardly wait to make the spacious new apartment his home.
“Well, time for one last check,” he muttered, wandering into the small bedroom. He looked under the beds, on the bedside table, in the drawer–
Nick froze. His mouth was dry, and there was a ringing in his ears. What the hell? It was just a photograph, no doubt left by the previous occupants. Strange that he’d never noticed it. It was of a happy couple, holding hands and basking in love. It was a cheerful picture, so why did he feel so sad? It wasn’t jealousy… Meh. A mystery for another time.
Turning to leave, Nick Jameson suddenly grabbed the photo and shoved it into his pocket. No point in leaving it behind, after all.
