by submission | Sep 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Shannon Peil
The Daughter looked sullenly around the council, at the hopeful eyes of politicians, bureaucrats, magistrates, and men of wealth, and their chosen suitors, knelt before her. She nodded to the back of the room, and they began to filter out slowly, risking glances over their shoulders at the four boys on their knees before Her in total reverence.
“And close the door.” Her eyes scrunched up in resentment as she heard the door latch.
Her name was Zee. The very Last.
When the men had left the boys with her, she returned to her seat, floating feet above the prostrate supplicants with their eyes on the floor. Beads of anticipating sweat had begun to form on their perfectly manicured brows. The boys were beautiful. She knew they had the most aesthetically pleasing features, healthiest immune systems, strongest bodies, and highest IQ’s that the last batch of humanity could offer.
“Stand.” She had never once said the word, ‘please.’ When the boys rose to their feet, she imagined having them for a lifetime of servitude. But, She knew, even if she produced a good amount of offspring – and God willing, that they were healthy, it was next to impossible that one would be a Female before Zee reached menopause.
“And why are you here?”
The boys looked nervously at one another and continued staring at the floor just below Her feet. She was enjoying this. Leaning forward, she raised the cutest boy’s chin with a long fingernail. He gulped deeply and shook when their eyes made contact. Males always swooned over the Last.
“Do not make me repeat myself.” Her words dripped with disdain but she held his eyes as he blinked rapidly and framed his answer. The silence was broken by his inevitable reply, the one she expected all along.
“Because, Daughter.. -” He scrambled for his thoughts and barely collected them in time, “because you are to be humanity’s new Mother. You are the Last and our only hope as a species. The four of us have been selected,” he glanced to each of the silent boys beside him, “to try to give you another Daughter.”
Zee sighed and traced her fingernail back off his strong chin and stood, whirling her robes as she kicked her chair across the room. Watching it float gracefully towards one of the long windows overlooking the city, she turned back to them. She commanded the boys to stand as the window impacted and shattered, glass sprinkling the city below.
“And why – why on Terra would I want that?” They looked quizzical, they always did. The males never understood why this wasn’t all She wanted. They kept quiet, but kept their dumbfounded looks. Finally, Zee continued.
“Why would I want to do this?” Her harsh exterior was visibly fading, replaced with sorrow, a dull resentment for the years leading up to this, knowing her fate from the moment she was old enough to speak. One of the boys cleared his throat, and she turned to look at him. His eyes met hers and he understood her pain.
“Miss Zee. Your duty is that of a Mother. Like Terra itself, it sacrifices its all for its children. To allow them to grow, to continue their cycle. If mankind were to die out…” He trailed off and once again allowed his gaze to hit the floor.
“If mankind were to die out,” she continued for him, “then Terra would be able to continue her cycle.” And with that, she stepped through the broken window, and slid silently downwards towards the city.
by submission | Sep 26, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Odhner
I’m weightless, then suddenly formless like the universe before God spoke to it.
I’m behind my desk, staring at a black screen. There are three bananas on the desk and no peels in the trash, so it’s probably a Wednesday morning. The desk is one at SureTech and I’m wearing a wedding ring, so it’s between May of 2004 and July of 2010. Everyone is standing up and looking around, surprised by the sudden power outage. I check the phone, but it’s dead so I just sit back and wait. I have all the time in the world.
“Tom?” It’s one of my coworkers. I haven’t spoken to him since he died of lung cancer two years ago. He looks healthy – so it’s probably not later than 2009. For a second I have trouble speaking for some reason, but then the words tumble out.
“Yeah Josh? What’s up?” I’m pleased with how casual I sound, but now I’m thinking that I should have sounded concerned. Healthy or not, Josh looks scared. Maybe he just found out about the cancer? Did he even tell me about it before it was obvious?
“Tom… does your cell phone work?” I pull it out knowing that it won’t, but I make a show of checking. Josh just nods.
“I need to step out. Maybe get a drink. I can’t get anything done with the power out anyway.”
I’m at the bar across the street, and I don’t remember going there. The feeling of disorientation passes and I realize that Josh is talking to me. He has an empty glass in front of him and is holding one that’s mostly melting ice.
“I… it was the strangest thing. Right when the power went out… I don’t know, I guess it was a kind of hallucination or something, but I… it’s like all of these memories. It has me confused, I remember my… it was just that I must have nodded off or something. It was a dream, but so vivid and so detailed. It was the next three years of my life, right up to my funeral.” I’m fidgeting with a cocktail napkin, trying not to react, trying to remember to breathe. This isn’t happening.
Josh and I are both back at my desk. I’m still holding the cocktail napkin, though I don’t remember coming back from the bar. I shouldn’t be blacking out. The power is still out, which is strange because it should only last fifteen minutes at the most. In the grand scheme of things that’s less important than Josh having displaced memories. He wasn’t there, he didn’t come back. He wasn’t even alive, and you can’t remember your own funeral in any case. Josh is still talking; I’ve missed part of what he said.
“So… are you coming?” We must have just gotten back, but he wants to go somewhere? I nod and stand up, and we both walk out of the suite and down the stairs into the lobby. Josh throws what looks like a full pack of cigarettes into the trash can as we walk past it.
“Let’s just hit the bar across the street,” Josh says, and my stomach is a bottomless pit. We haven’t gone to the bar yet. My fist tightens around the napkin that shouldn’t be there and I pray that I’ve just lost my mind, that the consciousness transfer failed and I’m in a coma somewhere.
God forgive me, I’ve broken something.
by submission | Sep 25, 2009 | Story
Author : William Tracy
She loved the Coin-Operated Boy.
None of the men in her life would really love her. Yes, they were strong, and handsome, and promised wealth and luxury. They were also full of hate, and lies.
The Coin-Operated Boy was none of these things. He was quiet, and had an almost effeminate sort of beauty. He promised her nothing, gave her nothing, but never hated, never lied. Her coins would go clink-clink, and the cogs inside him would go tick-tick-tick, that was all.
The men came and went at their own whims. They wanted attention when she was busy, and were busy when she wanted attention. They forgot her birthday, and she forgot theirs. They forgot that her favorite flower was a red, red rose.
The Coin-Operated Boy was always there. She could leave him for months. Every time when she came back, he was still waiting for her with a smile on his face. She only had to put in her coins, clink-clink, and he would love her.
He never asked her any questions. He never scolded her. He was never jealous, and he never hated. The springs and levers inside him just went tick-tick-tick.
She would ask him if he loved her. Every time, the Coin-Operated Boy would go tick-tick-tick, and then he would answer yes.
His love was deeper than the shining ocean. His love was brighter than the burning sun. His love was more beautiful than the pale moon.
She would ask the Coin-Operated Boy how he could love her with his clockwork heart that went tick-tick-tick.
He loved her more ways than there were stars in the dark sky. He loved her more ways than there were flowers in the green hills and cool valleys.
Always, she would put in her coins, clink-clink, and always the gears in his heart would go tick-tick-tick.
Her lover came back.
He had black, black hair that shone when the light was right. He had bronze skin that glistened with sweat, and deep eyes that shone like the ocean. He had long sideburns that framed his face like a picture. He had a dusting of stubble on his sharp chin. He wore a slick vest that wrapped over rolling muscles. He had a voice that was like poetry.
He loved her, had never stopped loving her. He was sorry he had left her, so sorry. He wanted her to come with him, to come back with him to live with his family.
He brought her a red, red rose.
She took his hand, and looked into his eyes, and she saw her face reflected in them. They kissed, and the passion ran hot and wild in her veins.
The Coin-Operated Boy looked at them, and tilted his head to one side as though he had never seen this before. His mechanical soul of gears and springs and chains and levers went tick-tick-tick. Then, the Coin-Operated Boy asked a question.
“Do you love me?”
by submission | Sep 24, 2009 | Story
Author : Rob Burton
He lifts the stained snow to his visor. Tiny mechanisms sample the stuff and, after sterilizing it (though that was hardly necessary at such low temperatures), sprays it as an aerosol into his nose and mouth. A tiny readout in his visor confirms his suspicions. ‘Waste dump’, he informs the others over the communicator. ‘They are lazy or foolish. Perhaps both.’
One of the others intentionally lets ‘Disgusting animal’ slip over the comms. He tries not care. Still, they live in the filth of cities, hoarded together like rats their very air a stinking fume. He’s had to share the tight, closed systems of a planetary transport with them and their sweat and filth for weeks. Sanitised urine was nothing.
He’d been brought as a guide to dark, icy Ganymede. Over-equipped as the folly of the rich men who employed him would have it, he knows he could survive indefinitely in this suit and on the life seeded onto this once sterile orb – though the others hardly recognise its existence. They all could, if they weren’t such fools, live by the life that, like him, loves the ice and the cold that is retreating so fast from their own world. Cold and ice these men treat as an enemy to be conquered.
They love their little wars. They use their murderous potential for nothing. They crave the opportunity to unleash it. They mutter discontentedly as they progress, doubtful of his ability to read the signs that to him, though subtle, are everywhere. They joke about kicking him into a crevasse.
In the dim starlight the entrance to the base is indistinct, covered with re-frozen ice that only he can tell apart from its immediate surroundings. The base itself clings to the underneath of the ice sheet, at the border with the water layer. Its location could not be found from space, so many miles beneath the ice, and the vehicle that had brought the relief crew was itself sunken far below the surface.
On Ganymede, in order to hide something you merely have to heat it up and let it melt into the ice for a while. An energy–expensive process, but warfare seems to ignore the energy rationing that has made so many lives a misery. People seem to believe that it is more important to cause human misery than prevent it, for a reason he could not understand. With a little waste of power, smaller things – like personal transports – might disappear forever into the ice to the eyes of those unused to it. He has to throw a snowball onto the area above the entrance to mark it for the soldiers.
They click their weapons into firing positions. Their leader uses an electronic eye that he trusts more than his own senses to look for its kin about the entrance. Finding none, he sends two of his command forward to set the melters. They should uncover the entrance in a matter of hours.
Their guide turns to go.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Away’, he simply states.
‘What? Don’t; you want to go home?’
‘My contract pays out to my family at the point that I deliver you to your target.’
‘But you are our guide…’
‘…and I have guided you. You are the paid killers, not I.’ He doesn’t add that he considers them ill-prepared and unlikely to survive.
‘Where will you go?’
‘Do you care?’
‘Let’s pretend for a moment that I do.’
‘This is a world. I intend to get to know it before you ruin it too.’
by submission | Sep 23, 2009 | Story
Author : Debbie Mac Rory
“I’m gonna take it”
“I don’t think you should…”
“What? It’s just lying here, it’s not like it belongs to anyone”
“You don’t know that”
“You mean one of these boulders is suddenly going to come to life and chastise me for taking its petrified little baby rock?”
“Well, no, not that-“
“You need to grow some. It’s just a pretty stone so I’m takin’ it”
“It’s not in our mission statement”
“Excuse me?”
“We’re not supposed to bring anything back. You don’t know what might be in it”
“Tell you what, if anything does hatch out of this little stone, I’ll step right up and say ‘my bad’. How’s that?”
“You’re not even taking this seriously”
“Because there’s nothing to worry about! Alright, ok, tell you what, when we get back to base and get out of these suits, I’ll buy you a drink”
“From where?”
“From the still, naturally? Where else you gonna get anything these days?”
“The still? The same one that you conned me out of two weeks of dessert so you could fuel the damn thing?”
“Yep, that’d be the one”
“The same one you haven’t given me a drop from?”
“Until now…”
“Hmph. You owe me a lot more than just one drink”
“Agreed. So I’ll just pop….this…in…. like so. There. Now, let’s get back to base.”
“I still thin-“
“Yes, I know, you think it’s all a bad idea. But what’s done is done now. Forget about it! Let’s just get those drinks”.
