by submission | Oct 3, 2008 | Story
Author : Glenn Blakeslee
It’s a disease, I guess, an affliction. My body is bound to a parallel.
No, not a geometric form, but a line around the earth. I’m bound to the 38th parallel.
I woke one morning dizzy, with throbbing pain in my limbs and abdomen. I hurt for days, but I found each time I went south the pain subsided. A few miles south of my home the pain and dizziness went away completely, and I actually felt good.
My friends thought I was crazy, but lent me a GPS. I found I was right on top of the parallel. I went back again and again for relief, until finally I lay down and slept there for the night. When I woke I felt wonderful, but I couldn’t go away again. It made the pain worse.
I couldn’t go west, either. I could only move within a half mile of the parallel, always east. So I started walking.
My job and home were behind me forever. At first I survived off friends, and then on the kindness of strangers. At times I went for days without food, always walking east. I figured it was a magnetic thing, the cells of my body aligned along certain points. All I could do was keep walking.
Am I worse off than you? Most people are bound to a region, a geographic area of a few hundred miles. The area I live in is more narrow than yours, but greater for its fantastic width. As humans we are bound to place, but my place is without end.
My family and friends figured I was obsessed, like in a movie, so they organized my eastward journey as a charity, a round-the-world walk for peace. It helped to pay the way.
It was painful crossing oceans. I spent the time asleep, mostly. Getting back to the parallel was the only way to find relief.
My route took me over the driest, most desolate place on earth. I had my pack with a little food and water, but I was so low that I was ready to lie down and die. That’s when I found Eliza.
I first saw her as an indistinct speck on the horizon, but as I walked the speck moved closer until I could discern it was another person. A woman.
Our paths intersected. She was the barest slice of a girl, but I loved her instantly. She spoke my language. We sat and talked for hours. I didn’t want to move forward. I asked her to walk with me.
She said that she could not.
She told me she was bound to a great circle, like mine. Her path would diverge from mine, as it followed the ecliptic rather than the purely geographic. We plotted our paths on the map from my pack. They would cross again in the American Midwest.
If we could find our way there, we could stay together in a hospitable place —our lives complete within a half-mile radius. I would gladly give up my narrow freedom for love and companionship.
We made love, and we stayed in the spot of our confluence until our food almost ran out. I took her picture with my cell phone. We made plans to meet and then we parted, our paths gradually diverging.
It was very difficult.
I made my way around the earth, across on my line, anticipating our meeting. And here I am in this fine town –Saint John, Kansas.
So, sir, have you seen this girl?
No?
How about you, sir? Have you seen this girl?
by submission | Oct 1, 2008 | Story
Author : Ben ‘Inorian’ Le Chevalier
Insanity. That’s the first thing I thought when they told me about the project. Insanity.
I felt a sharp shock, followed by pain at the back of my head.
Well, there goes another one. Another one of the thousands they have taken from me, but it doesn’t matter to me anymore. That was strange. Once, it had mattered, now it didn’t. The tank seemed to dull all feeling. Of course it was supposed to, physically. Perhaps the matter does affect the mind, after a time.
I was one of the few. We were all selected because we had the right type of brain, the right mental architecture, the right-
Another shock. Another pain. Another one gone. I must be on top form today. I wonder what they do with them all…come to that, I wonder what they contain. Some, I’m certain, must be for the betterment of mankind. Others, the ones I worry about, the ones that keep me from tranquillity, they must be the opposite. They must be the destructive ones, the painful ones.
They’re probably the ones that hurt more, but who can tell?
I’ve been in the tank for near on five years now.
For near five years I’ve been having ideas formulated in my mind, then being brutally ripped away without me ever seeing the shape of them.
I laughed when they told me about the ‘think tank’. I laughed because I thought they had misunderstood the term. It had turned out that they had simply taken it further.
My ideas are no longer mine…my body is not mine, the only thing I have is my-
Another shock. Another pain.
Another one gone.
by submission | Sep 30, 2008 | Story
Author : Andy Bolt
WELCOME, Chip Winkler, TO STORYWEB 9.0! PLEASE INPUT LITBASE:
Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea
LITBASE FOUND! LAUNCHING . . .
Enrique was mindswiped by the storybot as he dangled from the 93rd floor window of the Kentaka building. He was a little preoccupied rewiring the entire structure for atmospheric transdigitization, but he always liked contributing to storyweb.
GREETINGS, Enrique Mendoza! YOU HAVE BEEN RANDOMLY SELECTED TO CONTRIBUTE TO TODAY’S STORYWEB TALE BEGINNING:
The old man had gone eighty-four days without taking a fish.
PLEASE INPUT LINE:
Fighting the tide in his fully submersible XLJ thermodynamic subship, the old man deployed a series of fish-seeking nanobaits with attractive carbon fiber lures.
LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Enrique Mendoza!
The storybot found Mindee Walsh as she was on her thirteenth shot of semi-intelligent Nuevo Tequila. Her boyfriend had just dumped her, and she was out doing her best to erase the memory of his face. It took her twenty minutes to notice the blinking prompt in her right eye.
And he was miserable because nobody loved him and he was probably going to die by himself all miserable and sad and miserable!
LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Mindee Walsh!
Billy Watson was playing Slaughterhouse 5000 on his quantum box. He was assaulting his way through the chainsaw laser level when the storybot caught up to him. Reading over the first paragraph distractedly, Billy found himself focusing more on the arterial spray of lupine aliens.
Then the dinosaurs in helicopters attacked with their acid guns! “Let’s get carnivorous,” said the old man.
LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Billy Watson!
Marion Day was in the middle of her forty thousand word dissertation on interracial relationships in postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa.
I would like to unsubscribe please.
LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Marion Day!
Milton Wilks, an anal-retentive librarian from Greenbrier County, was alphabetizing his coupons.
That’s right, thought the old man. I’d sure like to unsubscribe from this rain of hydrochloric thunder lizards, if only that were an option.
LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Milton Wilks!
For the rest of the week, the storybot bounced from person to person. The old man fought off the dinosaurs, mused on the nature of human existence, fell in love with a woman who turned out to be a zombie, then a robot, and then his sister, had crab cakes and fine wine on the Parisian seashore, traveled back in time to kill Hitler, unsubscribed from six separate situations, violated seven copyrights, fell asleep in the sun, denounced the president, praised the president, committed suicide, came back to life, and finally, grew himself some gills and went to live with his true love, a mermaid person from Zeta Beta VII.
By Friday, the story had ended and bounced home. In his office, Chip Winkler smiled at his work.
“Perfect!” he cried.
Two months later . . .
GREETINGS, consumers! THIS SUMMER: A MAN. A SEA. THE MERMAID WHO LOVED HIM AND THE DINOSAURS WHO DIDN’T. WILL HE DEFEAT HIS ZOMBIE ROBOT SISTER IN TIME TO BE WITH HIS TRUE LOVE? WHICH WILL GET HIM FIRST, HITLER’S LEGION OF CYBER MONKEYS OR HIS OWN NAGGING FEELINGS OF SELF-DOUBT? THE HUMAN SPIRIT WILL BE EXPLODED OFF ITS HINGES. THE OCEAN JUST GOT EXISTENTIALLY DEADLIER.
THIS SUMMER: THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway
by submission | Sep 28, 2008 | Story
Author : Bill Lombardi
He had been awake for seventy-two hours – twenty-four spent in an acclamation unit. His legs hadn’t adjusted yet and he had trouble standing, so he sat at an unshielded viewport in the common area looking off into space, sipping from a nutrient pack. His stasis pod had failed. According to the AI, the overall damage it had sustained was ‘catastrophic’. Not just for the unit, he thought. Jon Merritt was an engineer and the damage was beyond his expertise. He was lucky he wasn’t dead. He stretched he legs, trying to work out the stiffness. It seemed to make them worse. Getting up slowly, he limped to the habitation module. The crew consisted of six: Daniel Hahira – captain, Adair Quinn – first officer, Billy Dillard – helm, Aria Lopez – navigation, Doc Mercer and himself. Six stasis modules – no backups. Jon leaned against the doorframe of the hibernation chamber. The indicators on five of the pods cycled periodically, flashing green. Their occupants faintly illuminated by the glow of the access panels above each one – except for his, the sixth – open and dark. He thought about waking Quinn, but he wasn’t ready to do that just yet.
A few days past and he felt better. His legs cramped less and he had beaten the AI at backgammon, two out of three games. It wasn’t until the seventh day while in his cabin rereading the last transmissions received from his family before the Arizona had passed out of communications range that it hit him. He couldn’t go on like this indefinitely. He decided that he would wake Quinn in twelve hours.
—
“What do you mean I don’t have clearance?”
“Only the captain and first officer can override stasis protocols.”
“Gary, this is an emergency. I can’t go back into hibernation. You know this. So, override and wake Quinn.”
“I can not, Jon. The protocols prohibit me from doing so.”
“And in the case of an emergency?”
“Standard procedure is to wake the engineer.”
Jon sighed. “I am awake and that’s the problem.”
“Do you need my assistance with anything else?”
He wanted to throttle the AI. “Yes. I want you to wake Quinn.” There was no response. He slammed his fist down on the console and getting up, went forward to the bridge. Slumping into the navigator’s chair he folded his arms and looked around at the silent command center. All systems were at minimal for the long trek across space. He thought about waking the first officer without the assistance of the AI, but there were too many things that could go wrong and he couldn’t compensate for them without help. Jon was looking at the Nav console when he noticed the lifeboat ejection system. He sat up straight. Of course, he thought. He would have to take one of the lifeboats offline in order to activate it and create a tether, but he could do it. Jon moved aft to the Evac compartment and went to work. After a while he was able to release LB-1 and prime it. The door popped open with a hiss. It would take about twenty-four hours for him to get prepped for stasis and then another three hours for the sleep cycle to complete. He just hoped that once he jettisoned, the magnetic lifeline would hold. If not it wouldn’t matter either way. He’d never wake up again. And that had to be better than spending seventy-five years alone with Gary.
by submission | Sep 27, 2008 | Story
Author : Alec Ow
My parents always told me the Cold was a gateway bug. All throughout middle-school and for most of high-school I was pretty clean. Then I saw one of my friends coming to school with the sniffles.
He didn’t really try to hide it from anyone, thinking back now it seemed like he was wearing it like a badge with pride. I have to admit I got a little curious so I asked him about it. The whole time he was talking about how it makes you feel the world differently, how it numbs your senses. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would put themselves through that willingly. I laughed it off as just a bunch of rebellious teens trying to shake their fists at authority.
It wasn’t until I tried it that I started to understand. Having been without disease for innumerable generations, Humankind had lost touch with what it was to be mortal. Having humanity’s essence backed up in the central database ensured that death was only a temporary condition. There was a movement a few generations back where a bunch of death seekers got together to find the wildest way to die. They got it all wrong, when one dies only the moment before death is felt. It wasn’t a very long high.
When death is trivial, everyone’s a god. When everyone’s a god, the concept of a God is lost through dilution.
My first time at a bug party was pretty wild. The wildest bunch was probably the STDers. Something about adding sex to the equation definitely made everything seem so much more taboo. I took my hit of de-immunizer and hit up a double dose of the common cold and a shot of influenza then finished off with an accelerator. We hung out all weekend in a daze. It was the first time I’ve ever really felt human.
I think I should wrap up this journal entry soon before my Alzheimer’s kicks in. It reminds me of what my parents used to say, about how the Cold is the gateway bug. I still remember my first time being submerged in the culture. I saw one of my friends coming to school with the sniffles. He almost wore it with pride…
