by submission | Jul 10, 2010 | Story
Author : Waldo van der Waal
Nobody warned me about the pain. Creeping from your brain and slowly extending to every bloody nerve-ending. Hot acid makes way for molten lava before the really hot stuff arrives. A million tiny needles prod at every part of your body. From the inside outwards and from the outside in, right into each atom that makes you what you are. Feeble movements of your fingertips are as much as you can muster. There’s nothing to do but scream until your throat bleeds. Nothing to do but wait. Nobody warned me about the pain.
They didn’t warn me because they probably didn’t know. Not at the time, anyway. Back then it was all smiles and champagne and fancy pens to sign the contract. Their office looked like the Ritz and their salesman – his name escapes me while I scream some more – their saleman was glib and self-assured and just a little cocky. And I fell for it. I took the diamond-encrusted Waterman and signed on the dotten line. And I gave them access to my First Bank of the Confederation account. It all sounded to good to be true. But their scientists must’ve known. Maybe they even knew themselves.
Things actually started going wrong some 872 years ago. That’s when I pinged the numbers in the Quadrant Lottomax – the only winner out of nearly 12 billion entires. What are the chances? It was a rollover, and I didn’t get rich from it. I got mind bogglingly, stupidly, richer-than-Zaphod-himself rich. Started snorting caviar because I could. Used chapmagne to brush my teeth. Bought anything I could see, including Pluto. And had a lot of money left over.
The only thing that was running out for me was time. I was 88 when the last lotto ball fell into place, matching my numbers. I aged considerably when I saw the result, sure, but realistically closing time was, uh, closing in on me. So I found a public terminal and did a bit of searching. Found the guys with the Ritz office and the fancy pens, who said they could make me live forever. They had tested it on rats and pigs and it worked.
So I climbed into the dewar they prepared – didn’t even wait to die. They said if I waited, I might be too far from their facility when the time came. So I went willingly while they pumped my body full of stuff. Cold stuff. I don’t remember dying, but my mind didn’t switch off completely. Blackness, but with peripheral dreams, if that makes sense. Lots of it.
I don’t know how much time passed, but it was a stack. Then, last week I became aware of the pain. My eyes started focussing and I saw a note pasted to the faceplate of my dewar. “Cryogenic reversal starting. Good luck.” Good luck? Then came the torture. Even through the thick sides of my casket, I can hear other screams. I hear more and more of them every day, but I haven’t heard one of them stop yet.
Needles filled with poison assault me constantly. They tested it, they had said. It worked, they had said. But surely they must have known. And not one of the bastards told me about the fucking pain.
by submission | Jul 8, 2010 | Story
Author : John Logan
At 34 years old, I was in bad shape. Sixty pounds over weight and wheezing like a dying man every time I trudged up a flight of stairs. The cigarettes didn’t help. My wife, Claire, constantly nagged at me to stop. She hated the smell. I also drank heavily. I’d abused my body. I was a wreck, a biological time bomb just waiting to explode. The day of reckoning finally arrived when I dropped off Claire at her office and moments later was clutching my chest while trying to breath through the intense pain.
Somehow I survived the ordeal. Angina they told me. After recovering, my physician insisted I visit one of the New Life clinics. I took his advice and ignored the financial grumblings of my wife. That’s when my life changed drastically.
I’d always been skeptical of their ads. “Take back your life, you deserve it!” said their slogan. They promised a total body transformation. And what did I have to do? Nothing. The tech at the clinic went through the details with me, I signed the papers and the next day lumbered into their lab room where a slab of metal awaited. Next to it, a man laid completely naked and deep in slumber.
“That him?” I asked.
“Yup, your trainer, Mike, he’s the best,” said the tech. “He’ll take over your body and get you into top shape. You’ll feel like a new man, mark my words.”
He was a fine specimen, rippling torso and bulging biceps.
I mimicked Mike’s posture and lay down on my own slab while feeling self-conscious of the rolls of fat that wobbled over my unseemly gait.
“See you in six months,” said the tech and smiled.
Syringes filled with colored liquid descended and the world turned dark.
#
I woke.
A voice beckoned me to sit up. I hunched my shoulders, expecting old pains to return. None came. My abdomen felt taut and strong as I sat up effortlessly. The room was a touch cold and for the first time I looked down at the gooseflesh skin covering my biceps. They were thick, powerful and vascular, like they’d been when I was an athlete in my teens. My breathing was steady, my mood pleasantly euphoric.
“Bad news I’m afraid,” said the tech who appraised me with a furrowed brow.
I shifted from the slab, marveling at how fluid my body moved, how light I felt with each step. “Bad news?” I laughed. “But I feel fantastic!”
The grave expression the tech returned cut short my pleasant mood. “What happened?” I asked. A feeling of apprehension began to worm its way under my skin.
“It concerns your wife.”
“Is she ok?”
The tech paused. “I’m afraid she committed suicide last night.”
“What?” I shouted and swayed slightly as though slapped in the face. “How?”
“Mike, your trainer, evaluated your lifestyle and determined that your wife was the main factor in your poor health. Five months ago, he divorced her.”
“What the hell?” I shouted louder. I heard my knuckles crack. “You can’t do that.”
The tech looked apologetic. “It’s in the contract,” he said then sighed. “Look, for what it’s worth I’m sorry for your loss but just look at you now. Mike made you his masterpiece.”
He gestured to a mirror. I turned and stared in amazement. Mike really had turned me around. “I suppose it is time to move on,” I said and my thoughts drifted to a cute twenty-something I’d had my eye on at work but never had the confidence to approach, until now.
by submission | Jul 5, 2010 | Story
Author : K.S. Kim
It’s certainly nothing new. Shipping off the old to make way for the new. They used to call them homes for the elderly. They would have them everywhere, just to make it easier for the younger generation to pursue their everyday lives and goals, without having to care for the increasingly longer living old.
“It only makes sense to let us care for your elderly.”
The man on the soft screen was trying to convince my son to send me away. It made my blood boil. It wasn’t fair.
“…so offer nutri-solutions and muscle stimulants to encourage the revitalization and rejuvenation of dead or dying ce…”
I wasn’t even paying attention. My son’s eyes and ears, on the other hand, were glued to him, a sign of respect I wish he gave me sometimes.
“…ave the state-of-the-art virtual plane if your elderly prefers to experience life to it’s fullest but are physically unab…”
Oh yeah, sure, take all that anti-age tech that my generation heralded to try and make it seem any less cruel. My son sure seems to appreciate the idyllic image of an army of old minds in young bodies running freely on a farm somewhere. My parents used to tell me that my dog was running around free on a farm somewhere too. I found out that they had to put Koenig down. It was a lie to make my seven year old self feel better.
I wonder if my son realizes that they plan on putting me down.
“…ment plans are flexible and based on your insurances and current…”
Though, I guess I’ve lived long enough. I’ve spent the last four decades on the GenShip, “Malenfant”. My son must have grown tired of having his father haunt his every step.
“…ply for a Virtual Manifest in our systems if you ever want to visit. It’s very convenient and comes included with the Uploaded Legacy Packa…”
Great! Now their talking about making a damned copy of my mind?
“…chever decision you make, we suggest you move quickly. Your father’s brain is deteriorating quickly. He’s starting to show signs of the Ancestry Disease. That’s most likely thanks to the fact your father’s anti-aging involve a good deal of out-dated methods and from using expi…”
He’s bad-mouthing the tech that helped him make a business. If it wasn’t for our generation and our discoveries, you wouldn’t even be alive today. I swear, this generation has no respect for what came before. They only care about what comes after.
“…emory loss is usually the first major thing we notice. It’s okay though, we’ve seen this very often and we can restore much and continually maintain the rest of their mind. We just have to upload him before he get’s stuck in a repeating loop. Otherwise, even in a digital state, he may forever be stu…”
It’s certainly nothing new. Shipping off the old to make way for the new. They used to call them homes for the elderly. They would have them everywhere, just to make it easier for the younger generation to pursue their every… wait. This seems familiar…
But I wasn’t even paying attention anymore.
by submission | Jul 3, 2010 | Story
Author : W. Kevin Christian
Damn it, he thought. The delirium had stopped. Again he felt the pain and heat. Burning, sizzling, scorching heat, like tar on a summer sidewalk.
It was the middle of the third week. Changes had begun innocently enough around day three. A little fatigue, a headache, a bit of a cough. Nothing much. Nothing he couldn’t handle anyway. But now . . . now he felt as if he had eaten the Devil’s heart for breakfast.
$150,000! God I’m a cheap bastard, he thought.
He had done many stupid things for a quick buck, but this was far and away his masterpiece. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, it did with odds like he had anyway. His chance of winning was 78 percent for God’s sake! He didn’t have to do anything either. He just had to avoid doing one thing. Dying. Billions of people did it every day.
He had felt like a dangers-be-damned pioneer making a mad dash for free land. He remembered the quiet, smoldering excitement as the needle had pricked his arm. He had been terrified, ecstatic, anxious, remorseful and everything in between. $150,000! And all he had to do was live? In three to four weeks he would be back to his old self, he had thought, puttering around the house like normal people do. Not the house for long, though. He would buy something new. A down payment on something big and regal, something he could raise a family in one day. But not for one day—for many years. Many long, happy, Hallmark years full of golden turkeys, training wheels, and scraped knees. And all for a month’s work? He would have been stupid not to take the deal.
Plus, he would be famous.
Now the ceiling camera buzzed and blinked as it zoomed in. On 166 million television screens across America human beings watched sweat pour down his forehead. His blue eyes had turned the darkest shade of gray.
166 million American television screens cut to a commercial for fabric softener. The ad had cost its maker dearly. Airtime for such a highly rated show was extremely valuable, after all.
The lights shimmered and melted before his eyes. “150,000 dollars!” he muttered to himself with a gurgle or chuckle.
When 166 million television screens cut back the misery had left his eyes. The delirium had returned.
The corner of every television screen displayed his heart rate. It was starting to look irregular. It would jump up a bit and then come back down. Meanwhile, the sweat continued to pour.
He mumbled various nonsense as a thin, yellowish liquid slithered down his chin. “I like it in blue, but I can still see how you’d like the green,” he said. “What’s wrong with leather? I can pull it off . . . Typhoid? That’s still around? . . . I think I’ll get the lobster! I can afford it now . . . Let’s go skydiving! You only live once, right?”
His eyes rolled into the back of his head. Suddenly his heart rate tore up to 200 beats per minute and he convulsed violently as blood bubbled from his lips.
“150,000 dollars!” he screamed. “But that’s a 300,000 dollar value!”
by submission | Jul 2, 2010 | Story
Author : Phill English
We welcome. They are quickening their destruction of planets at an exponential pace.
We acknowledge. But what can be done? We encouraged their growth, gifted them technology that could build worlds. They were only exerting their free will by opposing our wishes.
We accept. Nevertheless, the destruction must cease. The planets are the three-dimensional extrusions of our energy source. If they are destroyed, thus are we.
We agree. But what can be done to halt their wave of ruin? We are not able to manifest in the physical realm and those who receive our inspiration are burned as heretics.
We are aware. However, we believe there is an expedient solution to their expansion.
We inquire. What knowledge is known that grants insight into this problem?
We reveal. They worship their weapons as religious fanatics. An entire society centred around the power of utter annihilation that our weapons have granted them. They have forgotten the ways of hand-to-hand combat. Another species could invade them with few casualties.
We are thoughtful. The introduction of one species to control another. We concur with your proposed action. Which control species is appropriate for our needs?
We are grateful. There is a species that excels in such matters. They require less than a century’s guidance to place them at the level of the Varlaxx.
We are impressed. There are no other parameters that might halt their subsumption of the troublesome race?
We are proud. None that are known and therefore none that are knowable.
We are satisfied. Encourage these ‘Terrans’ to take up arms against the Varlaxx.
We begin. Observe our preservation.
* * *
We welcome. The Terrans have not solved the problem in the way that was expected.
We acknowledge. Their expansion was unforeseen. Their uncontrolled breeding has spread a blight over a greater number of planets than even the Varlaxx could extinguish.
We are distraught. Their abuse has diminished us. They arrive on paradise and within a few short millennia have reduced its wonder to a landscape of dust.
We grieve. They know not what they do.
We die. There is nothing left.
