by submission | Dec 11, 2009 | Story
Author : Sam Davis
Today was the day, Kari decided. Today she was going to tell Abe. She was going to have a drink and work up the nerve and send him a message and then he would come by and then she could just tell him. She could take her time and explain—Abe was a good listener after all. That was one of the things she loved about him.
Kari sighed.
She really did love him. It wasn’t him that was the problem. Well not really. But she had decided that today would be the day she would tell him. She moved to the console and carefully typed up a note. It went much quicker than the casual observer might expect. Of course the casual observer didn’t know that Kari wrote him a new note every day and had been doing so for the past three weeks.
Today she pressed send.
And then panic hit. “ohgodohgodohmygod! What am I going to say? He’ll be heartbroken. How could I do this? He is such the perfect guy. Why am I such an awful girl to him? Why can’t I just be happy with him? I need gin!”
Two blocks away, Abe’s HUD displayed “1 new message”. A quick mental command opened the message. From Kari. Abe’s heart fluttered a little seeing her name. “Surprise,” Abe thought. “Everything works like normal.” This really was a pleasant surprise because sometimes feelings change after the transfer or the body responds differently than one is used to. Kari wanted to talk. She asked to meet at her place. She said ASAP. Kari never says ASAP. Abe knew that the decision had been the right one. Maybe a name was in order.
Minutes later, Kari jumped as she heard the door bell ring. Downing the gin and tonic—minus the tonic—she ran to the kitchen to deposit the glass. Again the doorbell sounded and she almost dropped the glass. “Deep breaths. Hold it together.” The glass clicked against the counter. She strode back into the living room and, mustering up all her courage, she opened the door.
“Abe look, the thing is I….” was as far as she got before she actually took stock of what was going on.
“Kari, I know. I’ve known for a while.” Abe paused, hoping that she wouldn’t pass out. The voice would take some getting used to but Kari was worth it. After all, Abe had already come this far. “I put in for the transfer about a month ago. And I know I should have talked to you about it but…” Abe looked down at the new body. “Well I wanted it to be a surprise and well…yeah. So here I am. Just for you darling.”
Kari stated to smile. Oh gosh he really was wonderful. No that wouldn’t apply any more.
“Oh and I guess you can call me Abbey.”
by submission | Dec 10, 2009 | Story
Author : John C. Osborn
The shakes began to violently intensify. Janus couldn’t bear it much longer, the nauseating craving, the blankness of mind, the emotional emptiness. He tightly gripped a long slender metallic canister that cost him a days worth of panhandling cash. His index finger rubbed a trigger button, which it wanted badly to press. The brown-washed beach accommodated others like himself – dingy-looking, rancid-smelling drifters caressing bottles inserted into their noses, some rolling on sand, others swaying in the warm sticky breeze absorbed in a deep trance-like state. This would be his refuge during the Trip.
After finding a secluded spot below a broken wooden pier, Janus stuck two short stubby tubes on top of the canister into his nostrils, felt the cold rubber scratch his sinuses, releasing a thin stream of blood that trickled down to his chin. Eyes closed, breathing deeply in and out, he pushed the button.
A rush raced right into his brain, bombarding his sensory centers with a barrage of scents. A salty sea breeze. Sun block smeared on skin. Sand saturated with a fishy smell. They formed images, resurrected long-buried memories of days before the giant dust bowls, the catastrophic toxic spills, and great global economic collapse.
Janus smiled and opened his eyes. He looked awestruck watching the plump orange sun igniting the sky with red and purple colors as it fell below the skyline. The crystal blue ocean stretched infinitely into the horizon and stretched back toward shore, waves breaking against the white sand. He felt the warm water wash against his bare feet as the tide rolled in with a whoosh. A tear rolled down his cheek feeling the soothing sea breeze tickle his ear, listening to seagulls fly overhead, embracing the stillness – the serenity – of the moment.
Then the vision broke. The scene shattered like glass. The once pleasant smells morphed into stagnant sewage. The ocean became a brown sludge. The blue sky hid behind a curtain of thick dark yellow smog. The carcass of seagulls and other animals lay scattered across the trash-covered, discolored beach.
Janus felt that familiar sorrow return. He held the canister, which had the word Nostalgia® – the Breezy Beach flavor – written down the side. It felt empty, like he did. He discarded it into the sand and dropped to his knees, already itching for the next Trip, anything resembling the world he once lived in. He laid on the sand in a fetal position, sobbing, shaking, yearning for another hit.
Janus controlled his breathing and sat up. He scanned the beach glimpsing others like himself seize with euphoria in the sand like fish flopping out of water, metal canister pumping scents that recalled memories straight to their brains.
It wasn’t always like this, he thought. There was a time when you could swim in the ocean here, a time when you could hike in the woods, even a time where you could drink the water without it being in a bottle. But it all changed.
Janus sniffed and rubbed his nose. The rebound from his Trip subsided, leaving a lingering lust for another hit that he could feel on his lips. He stumbled to his feet, looked down at the empty Nostalgia® bottle in the sand. Perhaps, he thought, I’ll try the Redwood Rush next.
by submission | Dec 6, 2009 | Story
Author : Glenn Blakeslee
It had taken us weeks to get there. My brother Phillip and I, carrying heavy packs, had joined with a group of pilgrims early in our journey. We’d wound our way through the ruins, followed the old freeways to the mountains which rimmed the coastal plain like sentinels.
We wore burnooses and headgear like the pilgrims. I’d befriended a girl, Elisa, traveling with her parents, and spent my time with her. “The Tree talked to our ancestors,” she’d said once, but I didn’t argue with her, couldn’t blame her for being backwards. Most people, besides my clan, were lost in myths of the old days.
“Maybe it’ll talk to us again,” I replied.
We were attacked by robbers in the foothills. They rolled rocks down on us and closed the narrow canyon to our advance, but we were able to overcome them. I killed my first man with the rusty shotgun my father had given me, and kept wits enough to collect the emptied shells before covering the body with stones.
Finally we’d arrived. The Talking Tree stood high on a ridge overlooking a rugged sere valley, a tall evergreen that looked out of place among the Manzanita and low sage that filled the canyon.
Pilgrims filled the space around the Tree. Beyond, a cleared area beside the crumbled asphalt of a highway held merchant shacks where people traded water, food, and bits of broken technology as charms. Phillip and I moved to the front of the crowd, where the pilgrims stood reverently circling the Tree. Some were praying but most just watched, waiting for the Tree to Talk.
The Tree was a steel column surrounded by a wire fence, festooned with tokens and charms. At the middle and top of the column curved pieces of steel jutted at cardinal points. Green plastic needles cascaded from the column, completing the Tree illusion. A large silver box stood between the Tree and the fence.
Phillip glanced down the canyon, at the hills that fell to the sea. “Excellent fresnel location,” he whispered, and walked toward the Tree. The crowd stirred, and as he climbed the fence pilgrims gasped and screamed. I stood back, at the periphery, afraid.
Phillip motioned to me from inside the fence. I carefully dropped my pack and pulled out the converter-relay and the compact solar panel, handed them to him. The crowd moved but didn’t approach the fence. Someone shouted “Blasphemers!”
Phillip opened a door on the silver box, knelt and stepped inside. I turned to the pilgrims, who were all watching us, the crowd surging toward the Tree. I pulled the shotgun from under my robes, pumped it once, and pointed the barrel at the sky. “Get back!” I screamed.
A bearded man in the crowd screamed back, “You must not touch the Tree!” and he took steps toward me. I lowered the shotgun.
Elisa appeared out of nowhere. “Matthew?” she said, looking at me.
“The Tree doesn’t talk to us,” I said. I tried being calm, but I was shaking. “We use the Tree to talk,” I said, holding the shotgun level, but not at her.
Phillip scrambled back over the fence, smiling. “The interface worked perfectly,” he said and pulled a handheld from his pocket. The crowd watched, silent. Phillip pushed a button on the device. “Radio check,” he said.
The handheld was silent, and then a tinny sound issued from it. My father’s voice said, from miles away, “We read you.”
The bearded man threw up his arms. “It talks!” he screamed. Elisa smiled at me.
Bit by bit we are rebooting the world.
by submission | Dec 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Q. B. Fox
Bill had never been the sort of person who looked for the limelight. He was the sort of team player that kept his head down and worked hard; no doubt that’s why he had been selected for this mission.
But it bothered him that he would be the first person in the world to do something as remarkable as this and no one would ever know. He would not be a name in text books or the answer to game show questions. But worse, no one, beyond a very small circle, would ever know that he’d done it at all.
Not for the first time, he sighed wearily.
*
“Telescopes, William,” Professor Paulson had confided in him, “It’s all because of telescopes. Before that no one could see the details, so we hadn’t bothered with them; there was enough to do. But Cambridge University’s new Gorsky Orbital Telescope… They say it’ll be able to read the serial number on the reflector array.” The professor had laughed at his own exaggeration. “And you know what academics are like…,” Paulson had added with a wink.
At least Bill had met the president.
“I’m sorry to ask you to do this,” he’d said to Bill solemnly. “As you know this is our second attempt to complete this mission. Travelling in space is harder than people imagine.”
“If it wasn’t, sir,” Bill had replied, “then there wouldn’t be a mission to carry out in the first place.”
The president had smiled, but it had been sad smile; no doubt he was thinking of the missing astronaut’s family.
*
Bill turned his head to check the navigational readouts and in the cramped cabin he banged his head on a rover’s replacement wheel; the original was damaged during landing, apparently.
*
The professor had shown him the pictures from the obiter.
“They’re convincing,” Bill had conceded.
“It’s all really there, William. We put all the machinery up there. The problem has always been the people.”
“That’s what Agent Gregg said, sir.”
It was what Agent Gregg had said.
“The problem was always the people. We lost lots of craft; fifteen before we even managed to slam one onto the surface, another two after that. When three people were killed, someone (and I am not authorised to tell you who) proposed a different direction.”
“But how did you keep it quiet?” Bill had asked.
“Well, we weren’t entirely successful with that, now, were we?” Agent Gregg had said with a grin. “But mostly there was much less to keep quiet than you’d think; mostly what folks think happened, happened. ‘Cept there wasn’t any more people involved.”
“And the Russians? How could they not have known?” Bill had wondered aloud.
“Now there is a tale all of its own,” Gregg had laughed. “Shall we just say that ‘bout the time the Soviets found out, we found out they hadn’t been entirely honest either.”
*
Bill shook his head, forced himself to concentrate as his pod started its landing procedure.
His main mission was to take stuff away from the sites; like the garbage left over from deploying the reflectors. But some things he was there to leave behind. It’s all in the detail, he told himself, parroting his training.
He adjusted his boots, larger than they needed to be, so they left the right size prints. Then idly he rolled a dimpled spheroid around the palm of his hand.
“What a lot of fuss,” he thought to himself, “to put a golf ball on the moon.”
by submission | Dec 4, 2009 | Story
Author : Iva Koevska
-Mommy, what does snow feel like?
I’m in the kitchen taking care of the dishes after dinner. I turn around and there she is. My little daughter’s staring at some snowflake hologram. It’s as big as her head, a gorgeous illusion of perfect symmetry. One you will hardly ever find. Since it doesn’t rain or snow anymore.
-Honey…
I’m delivering this climate speech for the hundredth time, trying to explain to someone who knows only sun, bright blue sky and a daily temperature of 22?C what does wind or raindrops or snowflakes or dew feel like. I hate those climate history classes and I know that kids need to know. It’s just that… I haven’t felt the slightest change of weather for some 20 years now. And the last time I saw and felt snow was right before the Great Installment. Right before they put this great big computer controlled factory dome up there in the sky to take care of the weather, the global warming and all the pollution. It’s like having an air conditioner switched on all the time in some weird incubator.
So now I’m trying to make up my mind and remember what snow was like. I must have been 10 years old back then. As old as my little darling.
-You know ice, don’t you? It’s wet and cold. Well, snow feels kind of like ice.
I’m lying. Like I lied when I told her that morning dew felt just wet. There was more to that. We hated and we loved the change in weather back in the old days. Back then we were not the prisoners of an artificial sky designed to “bring you comfort and safe environment for your children”. We were not supposed to experience rain and snow and dew through holograms. We lived through every gift or punishment nature had for us.
Oh, I know what snow felt like. What it was like to dance in the perfect whiteness of winter, making angels in the snow. What it was like to have a snowflake melt on your tongue, to take a handful of these perfectly shaped jewel flakes and imprison them in an ice sphere marked with the warmth of your hands. What it was like to fall in love with the chill of the clear winter sky…
It felt like freedom and childhood and love.
But how do you tell that to someone who’ll never know more than sun?
