by submission | Oct 14, 2009 | Story
Author : William Tracy
Philip had never been very interested in history.
If he had been, he might have known about the Fertile Crescent in the ancient Middle East. He might have known how, paradoxically, a barren desert became the birthplace of agriculture. In a parched land, those who control the water can control all things that grow. The ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians built elaborate irrigation networks that supported crops on a scale previously unimagined.
That water could just as easily be cut off. A field overrun with weeds could be starved by shunting a channel a different way. The weeds dead, the field could be reseeded, and crops grown anew.
Then again, Philip had never been very interested in agriculture.
If he had been, he might have known that he was carrying on this ancient tradition himself. This time the fluid being controlled was not water, but air itself. There are many pests that can survive a long time without water, but there are few that can survive the combined assault of hard vacuum and strong ionizing radiation.
Philip had never been very interested in engineering, either.
If he had been, he might have known the hows and whys of the agricultural space station that he happened to work in. He might have known that this was one of the first orbital stations to abandon hydroponics and return to soil-based agriculture. The soil was composed of lunar regolith, painstakingly spun in a tumbler to smooth its sharp edges, phylosilicates extracted from asteroid mining byproducts, and a combination of organics carefully synthesized from chemicals or lifted from Earth by heavy rockets at great expense.
Philip was interested in none of these things. In fact, Philip was not interested in very much at all. He was not interested in the instructions he was following, or in the holographic control panel flickering in front of him, or in the cylindrical greenhouses spread out before his tiny control cabin.
He was not interested in the safety override code that he had to punch in, or in the bulkhead lockdown sequence that he had to execute, or in the warning he had to call out over the loudspeakers, or in the compartment identification code he had to enter.
He should have been interested in what happened next.
The terminating lock on greenhouse 42—not greenhouse 24—opened and vented into space. As the air eagerly escaped from its chamber, it liberated two hundred and fifty cubic meters of topsoil from the grip of the artificial gravity. It billowed and boiled madly, then leaped free to the final frontier.
Also freed from their constraints were thirteen thousand zucchini plants. The vines danced frenetically, losing and and then finding each other again. Exhilarated, they slipped the surly bonds of greenhouse 42. Free at last, they relaxed, and slowly shriveled as the vacuum lapped the water from their vascular tissue.
Also relaxed was Philip’s lower jaw. His eyes were round, as though they too were swelling in the vacuum. His hand twitched, suspended above the very button that had unleashed this spectacle in the first place.
Philip began to be interested in keeping his job.
by submission | Oct 13, 2009 | Story
Author : David Richey
There it is again. That face. It’s there every morning when I look in the mirror. Staring back at me.
I suppose I should be grateful. Not everyone gets this privilege. You have to be judged morally sound and of benefit to the population to be awarded a new body when you die. It’s all part of the New Law.
In 2137, the World Government made a decision on how to go about solving the problem of our over-crowded prison system. They took the world’s top scientists and doctors and gave them free reign to do illegal experiments on prisoners. That’s when the New Law was created. Take the body of a person that has no benefit to human society, and use it to further the life of someone important.
That still hasn’t stopped crimes from being committed. Some people just don’t want to abide by the WG laws. Others just don’t care. But it’s the ones that are desperate that you have to watch out for. That’s what I should have watched out for.
I still have nightmares. It’s always the same. Constantly making me live that night over and over again. I’m walking home. The sun has just gone down. A man sitting on the street asks me for some change. I tell him “Sorry, buddy, I don’t have any tonight”. When he looks up I can see his face. I can see the look of desperation flash in his eyes. Then I see the flash of the muzzle as he pulls the trigger.
Then I wake up. Not screaming, but I want to. Laying there in cold sweat thinking about the night I died. I take comfort in the fact that he got caught. He was, of course, found guilty.
As I walk into the bathroom I catch a glimpse in the mirror of the face that haunts me. His face. My face.
by submission | Oct 11, 2009 | Story
Author : David Burkhart
“Jones! I want your squad to patrol to the far end of sector 6. Don’t engage the enemy unless attacked. We just want to know what’s out there. And take the Roland with you. I know Roland’s new and you haven’t been briefed on all of his capabilities but he will be just fine on the patrol.” barked the commander.
Hours later, deep in enemy territory, the squad rested overlooking a wide valley. Everything they could see was automatically transmitted back to the command center through their combat-vids. The squad was quietly talking and eating combat rations when suddenly Roland raised his hand and clicked the safety on his machine gun off. Immediately the whole squad quietly dove for cover and then froze.
“What is it?” asked Jones.
“Enemy in the brush below us, coming towards us” answered Roland.
“How many?” asked Jones.
“Many, perhaps forty” answered Roland.
“Crap!! Ok guys, move back up into the tree line just under that ridge and then we’ll work our way back from there. Maybe they won’t see us.” whispered Jones.
Stealthily, the squad moved towards the tree line with Roland covering the rear. They were almost to the tree line when the enemy opened up with their weapons. Roland turned and returned fire with his machine gun. Through a seemingly solid wall of bullets flying their way, the rest of the squad dashed to the trees. Through the raging battle, Roland picked off several of the enemy with his deadly accurate machine gun. Suddenly a rifle-propelled grenade hit Roland right square in the face and blew Roland’s head clean off. Roland was punched backward into a sitting position on the ground. Roland’s machine gun went silent. All guns went silent.
“Roland’s dead!! Retreat through the trees. Run!!” yelled Jones to the rest of his squad.
“Stop!! Hold your position!! Wait for the Roland!!” ordered the commander over the combat-auds as he monitored the battle through the combat-vids.
“Sir, Roland’s dead!! They blew his friggin’ head off!! We got to get out of here!!” begged Jones.
“Negative!! Hold your position!! Wait for the Roland!! That’s an order!!” ordered the commander.
The squad watched desperately as the enemy slowly advanced across the field. A headless Roland sat there unmoving as the enemy approached him. Suddenly Roland stood up and started firing with machine guns in each hand. The startled enemy had no chance to escape Roland’s withering gun fire. In a few minutes the enemy was completely eliminated.
“Ok. Get back to base now. As you saw, Roland doesn’t need a head. The head is just for our benefit so we don’t feel uncomfortable around him. The only thing Roland can’t do now is talk so watch for his hand signals.” said the commander.
“You saved our butts out there. We would never have made it without you.” thanked Jones after Roland was fitted with a new head back at camp. “But how can you tell us from the enemy out there? How do you know who to kill?”
“Roland only kills the enemy.” replied Roland after a second’s thought.
“Yes, but how do you know who the enemy is?” persisted Jones.
“The enemy is those I have killed” replied Roland with a deep rumbling laugh as he walked away.
Oh great, thought Jones, a killer android with a sense of humor.
(Inspired by the song “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” by the late, great, fantastic Warren Zevon)
by submission | Oct 10, 2009 | Story
Author : Chris Faulkner
The generals stood in their finest uniforms looking at the war raging on the planet below. Despite being so far above the planet, an occasional bright flash could be seen. A large display showed troop movements and readouts along with live streaming battle footage. The next few hours would decide everything.
They dined on every delicacy and finery that was available as they watched in anticipation. It was a game of inches one side would give the other would gain over and over again; each side losing troops in the process. The footage showing the silent screams of the fallen the tide of battle as it ebbed and flowed.
After dinner each man lit a cigar and sipped brandy while they waited. The casualty numbers hadn’t stopped increasing for at least two weeks; they were nearly identical. The streaming footage showed artillery strikes decimating units, bombing runs taking out production facilities, missile strikes, small arms fire, hand to hand combat. It was night on the planet down below, not that in mattered the sky was so thick with smoke and haze from the fighting that the sun was permanently blocked.
Hours passed and still no clear winner. Perhaps the war would linger on another day, perhaps two, but certainly no more than that. They waited and waited and the hours dragged on. Locked in a stalemate, each side as resolute as the other, it seemed this whole ordeal would never end. And then finally as the wee hours of the morning crept into day their answer had come.
“Well it seems you’ve lost, old boy,” one general said as he extended his hand to the other. “It would seem my droids are quicker on the draw.”
“A mere three to zero hardly seems a cause to celebrate, Bartholomew,” the other man replied, smiling and taking the first mans hand.
“Until the next war I suppose. Perhaps then we can send the droids to that planetoid on the outer reaches. I’m curious to see the low gravity affects the outcome.”
At this a steward entered with a bottle of champagne.
“I’ll be waiting. Shall I see you at the negotiations later?”
“Of course,” he responded, toasting with Bartholomew.
by submission | Oct 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Dale Anson
It had taken eleven reactors on Earth for the first success, each one larger than the previous, each one providing the power to get the next one going, but fusion power had been achieved. All the safe and endless power that anyone could want. There were forty seven installations in the US alone. The change in the economy was staggering, with the price of power near zero and the virtually unlimited supply, nearly every industry had been affected, and for the good. I remember when the first one came on line, my dad said this would change everything, and he was right.
It made sense to power the moon base with fusion power. Once it was going, there would be no need to refuel for years. On Earth, after the first fusion plant was going, it was a simple matter to direct enough power to subsequent plants to let them power up to the point where they could self-sustain their own magnetic bottle to contain the reaction. On the moon, the plan was to step up with three reactors, each firing in rapid succession. The first would provide just enough power to the second to get it to provide just enough power to the third to be able to sustain the magnetic field to contain the reaction.
The reactor center was located about two hundred kilometers from our main base. Some called it Reactor City, but really, a few domes and a couple of hundred people don’t make much more than a village. I was piloting in a load of supplies and some new recruits when they initiated the firing sequence of the three reactors. I piped the audio through to the new guys so they could hear it as it happened. Start up of the first reactor to final magnetic containment in the third reactor should only take about five minutes.
We listened as the first reactor started up. We heard that its magnetic field had drained nearly all the electrical reserve we had on hand in our tiny community, but that the first fusion reaction had started and was powering up the second reactor. The new guys cheered when it was announced that the second reactor was on line and powering up the third. Then the details get fuzzy. Apparently, the fusion reaction had just started up on the third reactor, when the second suffered a critical malfunction. No power to Reactor Number Three meant the magnetic containment field disappeared, and with the fusion reaction no longer contained, all three reactors went up in an amazing nuclear display.
I wondered along with the recruits just where we were going to set down.
