by submission | Sep 24, 2010 | Story
Author : Joseph Hoye
A choice: the camp or the city. Carl would be dead within an hour if he approached the city without an offering for the Fathers – mercy and I.O.U.s have long since dried up on this world. An offering is not merely a representation of life. It is life. No-offering is death. Carl has no offering … yet. The camp beckons.
The sun is four hours away from its apex and already Carl feels moisture roll down his back, pooling just above his belt line. He reaches up to swipe the moisture from his forehead but his hand halts almost of its own volition before making contact. He lets his perspiration wash down his face and drip from chin and jaw line onto the catcher around his neck. It’s not enough for the offering but it’s a start.
He trudges north, hoping the camp hasn’t moved on.
Centuries ago, this land, this world was golden sand. It stretched further than the eye could see, further than imagination allowed. Now, the sand has become mere dust, clogging his shoe treads but doing nothing more. No wind disturbs it, nor rain turns it to mud. Just the sun, turning it into a mirror of sorts – a mirror for a vain god, unaware of lesser beings just trying to stay alive. Gold-dust, millimetres thick near the city, metres deep in the badlands and ever so slightly tacky to the touch; the glare could turn a man blind in less than ten minutes if he didn’t wear suntacts.
A scream broke Carl’s heat induced fug. Beyond the dunes, someone was in distress. Do for yourself before you do for others was the planet creed, so Carl waited, eyes scanning the horizon, feet glued to his patch of dust. Another sound rose from the dunes, a feeble cry instead of a shriek. Carl shuffled towards the sound. Opportunity called.
He skirted the dunes, preferring the security of the flats to the soft and probable death of banked dust. It took him twenty minutes to discover the cause of the commotion. A fellow traveller lay on the ground, one leg bent at an awkward angle at the knee. Carl wiped away the sweat from his eyes and licked the moisture from his fingers.
The stranger saw Carl and tried to raise himself … no … herself. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, Carl decided, and walked up to her.
She was young, maybe twenty Terran years and pretty, despite her pallid skin. Carl swore out loud before rushing to her. Her face relaxed, losing its look of fear.
She gestured down at her shattered leg, guiding Carl’s gaze to a slow bleed leaking on to the dust. Carl took out a dressing from his survival kit and pressed it none too gently on to the wound. She gasped but refused to flinch.
He grabbed a tourniquet from his belt kit and placed it around her thigh, tightening it to further slow the flow. She smiled. Then he took out the Needle and Filter. The screaming started again.
Half an hour later, Carl unhooked the Needle from her arm, scraped out the red dust from the Filter and stood up. He hefted the plastibag of clear liquid, judging it plenty to start up a small store and reap the rewards that a gold-dust planet could offer. The city fathers would welcome him with open arms just to get their hands on a fraction of this water. He began the trek to the city, the desiccated husk of a once beautiful woman already forgotten.
by submission | Sep 23, 2010 | Story
Author : Jacqueline Rochow
“Well? What’s it like?”
“Shut up, Dev, I’m trying to concentrate.” Nara squinted through the telescope, adjusting the focus slightly. “Well isn’t that something.”
“Let me see!” Dev strode over, only to be halted by Nara’s glare.
“I’ve just set this thing on two planets at a very good resolution over two hundred light-years away. If you so much as breathe near the focus I will kill you.”
“I’m not going to hurt your precious new telescope or knock it out of focus, Nara, just let me see.”
Nara shrugged and stepped out of the way. As expected, Dev’s confused questions began immediately. “They’re very different, but I don’t understand – ”
“That’s because you don’t pay attention, Dev. You might recall that when this project began, we seeded both planets with living cells?”
“Yes…”
“Right. Now, the one third from the sun, which was flooded with water and infused with iron to increase the density, is very busy, as you can see. I’ve managed to filter out the cloud cover because I am a genius. You see all that green? That’s life. The cells are green because they absorb certain wavelengths of light to make energy. There’s also life that can move around like us. Single-celled, multi-celled, with varying metabolisms – aerobic, anaerobic, some of them eat sulphur. Life that lives in ice and life that lives in thousand-degree hot water. They’ve changed the atmosphere dramatically. Now, using the preset focus and not touching a damn thing, if you look at the fourth planet from the sun in question, you will see an atmosphere that has also changed, but differently. Well, you won’t, because you are stupid and never bothered to learn how to read any of these instruments properly, but I assure you that this is the case. You would recall, I hope, that this was our control planet; similar to the third planet from the sun, with less iron and water. You might also notice that it is a lifeless hunk of rock.”
“But… there could still be single-celled life there, right?”
“It’s certainly possible that our instruments could miss something, which is why you’re going to go on a little surveying trip to the surface and get me some samples.”
“But that’ll take forever!”
“We’ve been waiting for billions of years to get results for this experiment and you’re complaining about a little joyride? Suit up, you baby, I have four sets of replicates to focus this telescope for.”
by submission | Sep 22, 2010 | Story
Author : Jeroen Amin
She lay on the bed in the darkness of her room, clinging to her teddy bear. She spoke in excited whispers so that Mommy sleeping next door would not wake. She told of all the adventures that had comprised her day. “Daddy, I wish you could have seen it!”
Somewhere in the bear’s head, something whirred to life. “I wish I could have too, honey.”
She hugged the bear tighter to her chest. The bear that was nine years worn with the stitching coming loose at many a seam and mismatched strings holding it together where cotton had fallen out bulged at the right leg as she squeezed. Somewhere on the side, another small stitch came loose ever so slightly. Inside the head, the microphone transmitted the girl’s voice thousands of lightyears away to the lone traveller in the cargo ship.
“We had a show and tell today, Daddy! I drew a picture of you and told my class that you were a cargo carrier and that you were on an important mission! Everyone was so proud!”
“That’s great! One day, I’ll come to class with you. How does that sound?”
“Oh yes, Daddy! Please!” A hundred times she had heard that promise and not once had she ever lost a shred of anxiousness for its fulfillment. Daddy would come home one day, she knew. Daddy will come and we’ll have lots of fun and all my friends will be jealous because my Daddy has gone through space to other colonies and their Daddies only stay here and make ships for people like my Daddy.
Mommy told her all about Daddy. He was a brave man who tried to help everyone. Sometimes good people and sometimes bad people but Daddy always helped people. Now he was helping people far, far away so that they can travel as fast as people here at home could and visit their own families too. It would take a long time but it would make everyone happy, including Officer Denton who came by once a month to check on Daddy’s progress.
She liked Officer Denton. He was a very nice man and always made sure that her Daddy could talk to her through the teddy bear.
“Now don’t you think it’s time for bed, missy? You have a project due tomorrow and you don’t want to be tired for it, now do you?”
She giggled at her Daddy’s pretend seriousness. “Ms. Francine is really nice though and I don’t think she’ll care.”
He found her thought process painfully endearing. “Your mother will mind, though. We don’t want her to be angry, do we?” he teased.
“Okay, Daddy, I’ll go. Good night. I love you.” She hugged the bear as hard as she could and adjusted herself into a comfortable position. Before she drifted off, she heard the words she was waiting for.
“I love you too, honey.”
Thousands of lightyears away, he switched off the microphone and adjusted the chair to a reclining position. Nine years of his sentence had been served for a stupid mistake. Six more to go. He would unload the parts the colony in the Hestate cluster to finish their HFTL construction and finally head back home, almost twice the speed he came. Six more years and he would finally see his daughter. Six more years and she would finally hug him instead of the damn bear.
by submission | Sep 21, 2010 | Story
Author : Mark Wallace
The literary agent wore a sharp suit and a slick smile when Charles walked in.
“Hey Charles, my man. This is really an honour.”
“Thank you,” said Charles, a man of late middle age, bearded, with a sad, sober expression of face. He was dressed neatly and, though of relatively short stature, stood very erect.
“Oh my God, I’m such a fan, Charles. “Oliver”, “Christmas Carol”. Anyway, Charles – you don’t mind if I call you Charles – you can consider yourself one of us now.” The agent laughed, he had worked that one out earlier; always good to show acquaintance with the client’s work – put them at ease and stroke their ego a little. Charles, though, bristled slightly at the reference.
“So, finally, I get a chance to meet you. We’ve invested a lot in you. You’re a big project for us. As you know, mind reactivation doesn’t come cheap. But you’re worth it. We really like your work.”
Charles bowed stiffly in acknowledgement.
“Hey, sit down. How do you like your body? Just like the old one, huh? The boys in the lab studied the pictures and we think they got it just right. Just like you’ve never been away, huh?”
“It is a marvellous likeness,” said Charles “Inconceivable.”
“So, what have you got for me?”
Charles eyes grew animated, and he leaned closer to speak:
“I have finished it.”
“Yeah? Finished what?”
“’The Mystery of Edwin Drood’ the great novel left unfinished at my… my…”
“Corporeal termination.”
“Yes. For one hundred and sixty years men have debated my intentions for the conclusion of the novel. Was Drood killed by his uncle, the opium addict Jasper? Or his rival in love, Neville Landless? Did he in fact die, or was it a ruse? Now I have been able to clarify it all, as I meant to so long ago.” Charles was growing emotional now, his eyes brimming.
“’The Mystery of Edwin Drood’ I’ve never heard of it. Show me the manuscript.”
Charles handed him the manuscript.
“Whoa! This is a monster. How many words in this thing?”
“Some 120,000, I believe.”
The agent breathed in sharply.
“Ok, here’s what I’m getting, Charles: you’ve been out of the loop a long time. You’re not with what’s required these days. Now, first things first…” with this, he threw the manuscript in the bin.
“Let’s get real here, Charlie. What century are you living in? If you can’t say it in six hundreds words, then I can’t hear you. It’s called flash fiction. That’s what people want today. You got any flash fiction for me?”
Charles was very pale: “I am not familiar with the term.”
“Ok, Charles, here’s what I want you to do for me. See that manuscript there?” He pointed to the bin.
“Yes.”
“I want you to go home and write that story in six hundred words. That’s flash fiction. It’s simple. Just leave out the padding and the digressions and the boring bits. You do that for me and we’re on our way. We didn’t reactivate your mind for nothing, Charlie. You’ve got to give a little too, ok?”
Charles gave a small nod.
“All right. Now we’re on the same page. You want that contract renewed, right? And we want to renew it, but we need results, and fast. Ok, that’s all. Bring that in tomorrow and we’ll see where we are.”
“Very well,” said Charles, rising to his feet.
“Oh, and Charles.”
“Yes.”
“Lose the attitude, will you. You’d swear you were the one had given us the gift of renewed life, for Christ’s sake.”
by submission | Sep 19, 2010 | Story
Author : C Sousa
“Son, have you seen the stars?”
“This one time when I went camping,” I replied. It had been lame, just a handful of lit pinpoints in the sky at this touristy little campground my parents had found.
“That’s not really seeing the stars,” he told me. “I can get you the best view any human can ever experience. Just let me explain…”
I should have never joined, I thought bitterly, hanging for dear life to the insertion craft. I knew how fast we were traveling; I tried to keep my mind off the speed I couldn’t feel, and the lasers I couldn’t see, all of it trying to peel me out of my pressure armor and leave me to the cold mercy of hard vacuum. Old bastard had lied to me, made promises of glory and women and the best view a man could imagine.
Too bad war doesn’t afford views of anything but bodies and cold steel. The other ship was coming up fast. A perfect target, some lumbering capital ship, it’d be full of relatively soft targets and the landing would be easy. Especially retreating as it was, drawing away flat on the galactic plane. The insertion craft swept in under it, plane inverted and began a dive at the underside.
Much as I couldn’t feel it through my inertial dampener, there was no juking or evasion as we approached. Weird, I thought. Ship like that would usually have about a hundred small point-defense guns in any given direction, firing in sequence to try and predict our approach. Not that it much mattered; it just meant a longer uncontrolled flight if we were hit. I grabbed hold of my release catch as the target loomed closer, getting within mag range now. Closer, closer, pull!
The insertion craft dropped away as I flew free, straight on to my target. This ship was gigantic, bigger than any other I’d boarded. Usually I could see the guns by now, but the hull was still just flat steel, overlapping plates and bolts, no guns or antennas or any of the other usual protrusions. And no hatches. I triggered my mag guides and pushed off of the target and my retreating insertion, flinging myself wildly to the side. “It’s a trap!” I screamed it into the headset, hoping the others would abort as well.
I couldn’t tell if anyone heard me, couldn’t see worth a damn as I spun away from the ship. I saw it shatter under some kind of blast, seeing it like a flip book, each rotation a page. Pieces of ship scattered and flew, and what little atmosphere was on the hulk burned as it vented, an orange blossom much smaller than the vids ever showed.
I triggered my mags again, trying to stop the spinning. Everything was falling away, too far to do more than slow the rotations. I finally came to a stop, facing away from the battle, too little power left in my suit to even turn back around. I drifted awhile, my beacon blinking faintly, waiting for pickup. I tried to call for extraction, but my comm must have been fried by the blast. No contact, likely no vitals readout, and running out of oxygen.
The heater cut out as I drifted, my little remaining power shunting to the beacon that wasn’t working and the oxygen that was being used up. I started to shiver, floating coreward from the battle. Coreward? I thought. I stopped and focused a moment, stopping my endless thoughts and just looking. I could see stars! Billions of them! I started to grin through chattering teeth, and laughed hoarsely. Maybe the old bastard had been right about one thing, I thought as my mind started to wander, drifting into space just like I was. This was the best view of the stars a man could have….
