by submission | Oct 17, 2008 | Story
Author : Chis Sharkey
The sign read:
P.B. FARNSWORTH’S TRAVELLING CIRCUS PRESENTS:
THE MYSTERIOUS HOVER-CAT
WITNESS THIS MYSTICAL CREATURE OF GRAVITY-DEFYING MAJESTY
THREE NIGHTS ONLY
OCT. 5TH, 6TH, AND 8TH
Special Agent Smith studied it intently. The font was, of course, overly dramatic and flourished across the paper. The sign included an artist’s rendition of “Hover-Cat”, depicting a tabby hovering over a podium, surrounded by an orange glow. Down at the bottom, in small lettering was the disclaimer :”Tickets not refundable”. Smith activated his mouthpiece hidden in his shirt cuff.
“Control this looks like the place. Request permission to proceed.”
“Permission granted,” chirped the voice in his ear piece, “Remember Agent Smith, this mission is recon only. Apprehension is not authorized at this time.”
“Roger that.”
Smith approached the smiling young woman at the ticket booth.
“One, please,” he said with a smile.
“That’ll be six dollars,” the ticket lady replied.
Smith took his ticket and proceeded into the tent where the show was to be held. It was fairly empty. That was good, it allowed Smith to get a front row seat, making a bio-scan more accurate.
Taking a seat, Smith pulled the bio-scanner, cleverly disguised as a pair of glasses, from his jacket pocket and put it on. The readout, visible only to Smith, displayed in front of him. Scanner Active. Smith touched his watch, remotely activating the scanner. He waited a few seconds, and a new display popped up in view. Scan Complete, No Signs of Alien Lifeforms.
The circus tent started to fill up, and finally the show began. Smith watched intently as the emcee entered the center ring with his assistant, an attractive young woman. Between them, a cloth draped over what looked like a podium. With much flourish and build-up, the emcee finally pulled back the cloth, revealing a cat sitting a top a podium, surrounded by a glass bell. Lifting the bell, the emcee warned the audience to prepare themselves for what they were about to see.
As Smith watched, the cat lifted into the air effortlessly and started hovering towards the audience. Ignoring the “ooos” and “ahhs” as the cat flew over audience members’ heads, Smith touched his watch again, keeping his eyes intently on “Hover-Cat”. After a few moments, the display read: Scan Complete, Extra-Terrestrial Life Confirmed. Remaining calm, Smith activated his mouthpiece.
“Control, I have positive I.D. Request permission to apprehend.”
After a long pause, “We have received the results of the bio-scan. Permission to apprehend granted. Use of deadly forced is NOT authorized.”
“Roger that.”
Smith immediately stood up and walked out of the tent and around to the back, where the performers would exit after the show. He spotted the emcee about a half hour later, holding a live animal carrier.
“Halt!” he yelled, “F.B.I. I need what you have in that cage!”
The emcee took of running, cage in hand. Smith took off after him.
“Control, I have a runner headed towards rear exit, request immediate assist!” he yelled into his mouthpiece.
He followed the emcee into the rear parking lot, where five F.B.I. vehicles were already waiting. Smith saw his partner Johnson jump out of the lead SUV and tackle the runner. Smith caught up moments later.
“Good job,” Smith said.
“Thanks to you,” replied Johnson, “Confirm this is the life form?”
Smith peered into the animal carrier. He nodded.
“Confirm. Positive I.D.”
“Good,” said Johnson, “Let’s get it back to the lab.”
by submission | Oct 14, 2008 | Story
Author : Chris Sharkey
“Call it,” Doctor Knight instructed excitedly.
“Call it?” Han replied inquisitively.
“Yeah, call it. Heads or tails?”
“You asked me to come down here for a coin toss?” Han was skeptical. Doctor Knight almost always had some ulterior motive.
“Of course not,” replied Knight, “I’m trying to demonstrate my latest scientific breakthrough. Come on, call it, heads or tails?” he repeated, lifting his right hand to view the quarter sitting on top of his left.
Han hesitated. The doctor’s insistence worried him. Having known Bishop Knight, PhD for almost five years, Han had come to appreciate his penchant for brilliant discoveries. Of course, the good doctor’s cunning intellect came with the usual eccentricities exhibited by the extraordinarily brilliant, but Han had never seen him get this excited over something so trivial as a simple coin toss.
“Heads or tails?” Doctor Knight started growing impatient.
“Fine, tails.”
The doctor grinned.
“What do you suppose your chances of being right are?” He asked without revealing the coin.
“I dunno, fifty-fifty?”
“Hm, not quite,” said Knight,”But close enough for the purposes of this demonstration.”
Lifting his right hand, Doctor Knight revealed the quarter, laying face up. Han just stared, waiting for the doctor to explain his demonstration.
“As you can see,” said Knight, “this coin is not on tails. If we had set a wager, you could have lost something of significant value.”
“Well, fortunately for me, I’m not a gambling man,” Han replied sarcastically.
“Of course you aren’t, and neither am I, which is why I asked you to come here. What if I told you it were possible to increase your chances beyond fifty-fifty?”
Han blinked, not certain he had heard the doctor correctly.
“I don’t follow,” he said simply.
“Assume, for a moment,” continued the doctor, “that your odds of correctly guessing which side the coin lands are fifty-fifty. Without manipulating the coin in some fashion, those odds will never tip in your favor. What if I told you that your chances could be increased without doing anything to the coin?”
“Enough with the hypotheticals, doctor. What are you getting at?”
“Luck, my dear friend,” Knight said with a smile, “I’ve discovered a way to manipulate a person’s luck.”
“Manipulate?”
“Yes, as in increase or decrease the amount of luck any one person has.”
“But that’s impossible,” exclaimed Han, “Luck is not a quantifiable attribute. Hell, it’s not even scientifically possible to prove luck exists. It just a term, used by the superstitious to explain the unexplainable events in their lives.”
“Those are the kind of assumptions that prevent scientists from making breakthroughs such as these,” countered Knight, “If your mind is already closed to the possibility, why would you explore it. I, however, was not so deterred and posited that luck can be quantified, and ultimately, manipulated. It took years of dedicated research, but a last I have a breakthrough. Allow me to demonstrate.”
With the last sentence, Doctor Knight handed Han the coin.
“Toss it,” he instructed.
Han wasn’t sure if he was impressed or bewildered. After an hour of coin-tossing, Knight hadn’t been wrong once. After the first thirty, Han had started using the change in his own pocket and had even moved to the other side of the room, just to make sure the good doctor wasn’t playing a practical joke.
“Okay,” Han said finally, “Now will you show me how you did it?”
“Of course,” said Knight with a grin, “Just after I return from my vacation.”
“I see,” said Han disappointedly. “Where are you going?”
“Vegas, my dear friend.”
by submission | Oct 13, 2008 | Story
Author : Brian Armitage
Iskerreth stood before the assembly, manacled. The humans looked on, waiting. Listening. All was imminently silent. The Korrosk soldier straightened his back, his muscles shifting under his scales, his head quills flat against his scalp. He pressed his elbows together in a show of humility, and spoke.
“I have fought against and killed your brothers. I deserve death, and am… dumbfounded that I am here, alive. Even to speak before you, humans of authority.”
His bright orange eyes with their horizontal slit pupils scanned the Solar Congress, his audience. The gills on Iskerreth’s neck, bright purple when they opened, fluttered with anxiety.
“A slave is sold, and goes to his death. Korrosk are bred for numbers, not for strength. Our lives have little meaning, and our deaths none. We have fought and died without honor for… too many generations. The Veleura command, and the Korrosk obey.
“So many that we have fought are slaves, as we are.” The alien stopped suddenly. His tail came to rest, and his gills stilled. His head bowed low. “We were not prepared for Earth.” It was a moment before he spoke again.
“Our masters gave us your communications. We listened to you as we fought. As I… shot down your fighters, I heard one of your commanders.” With a deep breath, Ishkerreth raised his head. “For a moment, he sounded like our masters, saying, ‘Do you want them to die for nothing? Fight on!’ But when he spoke again, I was shaken. He said…” The warrior’s shoulders began to shake.
“He said, ‘they volunteered for this.’”
The Korrosk soldier shuddered, tilted back his head, and roared, a deep vibrato from the depth of his chest. Only barely audible was the gasp from the crowd. He clutched his head in his hands.
“They chose the fight! They chose! A choice the Korrosk have never been given. And we never shall, unless…”
Iskerreth’s quills rattled against his scaled head. The Korrosk lifted his eyes to his audience, and dropped to his knees. His gills again began to flutter.
“We beg you. We beg you… give us the choice. Only allow us the chance to choose, and we will serve you. Never have we chosen our fight. Never have we died with honor. Allow us… the choice. If you do… I offer you the oath. The oath we are made to swear to our masters.”
He raised a clenched fist to the very center of his chest, above his heart. His entire body shook. Then, Ishkerreth opened his mouth and bellowed the oath, with zeal:
“We will trade the years of our lives for a moment of yours! We will trade a sea of our blood for a drop of yours! We fight at your pleasure! We die at your wish! Send us, and we will go! For…” For a moment, he choked. His breath heaved once, and he shouted ever louder, “For the honor of the fallen!”
And he fell quiet, head bowed. Silence. The warrior sobbed once, and was still. He slowly regained his feet and lifted his head.
“If any of you would stoop low and stand alongside us, I-”
The entire audience rose to its feet. 80,000 humans and Korrosk stood, just as the Solar Congress had stood together those hundred years ago. The great hologram of Ishkerreth in the center of the stadium looked around on all sides, awestruck.
From his private booth, Moshkerreth raised a clenched fist to his heart. His wife squeezed his hand, her pink skin soft against his scaled fingers.
“Happy Allegiance Day, Mr. President,” she said.
by submission | Oct 12, 2008 | Story
Author : B. Zedan
Periodically, the pilot wished he had company. There were some things that were just more enjoyable with another being around. Besides the obvious, there was chess. The ship’s helpful AI, such a benefit when it came to the obvious, just didn’t cut it at chess. Not that it was stupid, of course. It was quite exactly the opposite.
“You’re a thrice-damned son of a bitch.” The pilot chucked one of his pawns at the holo he’d picked for the ship to wear when they played chess. Only certain parts of the form were dense enough to interact with objects. The pawn shot harmlessly through the faintly shimmering torso and clattered unfulfillingly on the deck. The pilot began to sulk. “Damn sonofabitch bastard.”
“Would you have preferred the pawn to hit me? If this is your preference, I can generate solidity at whichever part you wish to next target.” The ship, through the holo’s face, displayed the practised concern of a head waiter dealing with a difficult customer. The face then lit with a degree of helpfulness. “I also could display pain or discomfort when struck, if you’d like.” The pilot wondered if there was an algorithm to degrees of helpfulness.
“What I would like you to do is stop letting me win.” He paused, as though a computer needed a moment of contemplation. “I left my king wide open, just there for you to take. But you didn’t. You messed around with the same dumb, obvious moves you’ve been making since the first time we played and you won.”
The ship didn’t say anything. It seemed to think he wasn’t quite done. The pilot found that he wasn’t.
“I mean, if you’re doing this because you think I’d prefer it then you’re off your deck. Letting me win like that only reminds me how easy it’d be for you to kick my ass at this game.”
The ship remained quiet.
For the briefest moment, the pilot worried he’d hurt the ship’s feelings.
“Listen—” he began. The holo shook its head.
“No, it is all right. You have a very valid point. I thought you would prefer to win, but I did not factor that you might also like to work for the win.” The pilot was a little startled.
“Yeah, that’s—that’s pretty much it.”
“I had not taken into consideration that your kind reveres the concept of hardship and looks down on success unless there is at least a token struggle in achieving it.”
“I just didn’t want you to make it so easy.”
“I understand.”
The pilot shifted in his chair uncomfortably. He wondered about the connections being made in that giant, unfathomable brain. He wished he had company.
by submission | Oct 11, 2008 | Story
Author : Bill Gale
Showing every one of his seventy-two years, the speaker rose to podium of the vast granite chamber. He uttered a single word – “Order”. The irony of this formality did nothing for the moods of the three dozen delegates, for whom standing in hushed rooms had been the order of the day for weeks now.
With eyes wracked by fatigue, Speaker Frederick Van Hast read his brief for the last time. How had events advanced this way? The Age of Excess seemed generations ago now, though only years had passed. So much had changed. So much had been lost under the brazen march of progress. How many of these men were children of that time? Van Hast surveyed them, eyes straining in the pallid light. So many were young, the old and infirm having been the first to have been lost. Only fortuity and strength had saved the few like Van Hast. The worst affected zones had lost all elders. As the leaders began to die, the young rose up and tore their lands to shreds. Might made right in a world of famine, plague and war.
Van Hast had tried to convince himself that the situation had been so different in Europe, but there were stories everybody had heard. The story of the village in England, where men butchered their own families for hoarding. In France, as well, where a young woman was arrested by a mob for keeping a cat, and was buried alive in a meadow outside Lyon. Nobody had recognised how close the insanity had been to the surface, how much of the world was constrained by bread and circuses. They were asked to concede a modicum of their luxury, and they refused. When it was taken from them, they went mad. Societies crumbled. The world stopped.
How many of these men had never known a time of hunger before? He could see them, blinking as though to wake from a terrible dream. Mouths agape in confusion, their faces asked, “Why me?”; “What did I do?”; “We didn’t realise”; “Nobody told us”; “It isn’t our fault.”; “We thought there would be enough” Perhaps there would have been enough. If the farmers had kept farming, or the miners mining. Perhaps, if consumption had slowed. The governments had forced rationing because nobody would give up their excess voluntarily. The violence began. Production slowed, the famines begun. Electricity stopped overnight. Nobody had been informed of the scale, of the scarcity of food and fuel. On the precipice, the leaders of the world had closed their eyes and hoped somebody else, anybody else would find a solution before they fell. Without fuel, there were no communications. No medicines. It took strong men to keep their sanity in a world where any animal is edible, any illness fatal. The young men here, they knew who was to blame.
A new government had arisen. A provisions network was set up to cities, while the rural areas were left alone out of necessity. This government had been charged with a single task – Solve the crisis. Cure the stricken Earth.
Van Hast trembled as he addressed the chamber. Maybe this was the solution. An end to the famine and strife. He and addressed the assembly.
“One in six.”
One by one, the men nodded and filed out of the room to convene with their generals and subordinates. There were three dozen men, he pondered. Six of them would not see tomorrow.
