by submission | Dec 3, 2009 | Story
Author : Kevin Hosey
It was after him.
Captain Kurt Avenel hadn’t seen the alien creature himself, but the last radio transmission from his first officer gave him a brief, panicked description: two meters tall with a reptilian body, razor-sharp teeth, and jagged claws. Their deep space freighter, the Leonine, had recently passed through a dense cloud of meteorite fragments. Avenel speculated the alien was concealed on one of them and somehow made its way inside.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
The creature began methodically stalking the seven-person crew. After all efforts to trap or kill it failed, Avenel ordered everyone else to abandon ship.
Then he became its intended prey.
Sweat prickling his face, he peered cautiously down the corridor leading to the last remaining escape pod. Flashlight leading the way, he stepped into it. It was shrouded in dense darkness. For one terrifying moment, he felt as if he had slipped outside the confines of the ship and was adrift in space.
And then he heard it. A voice.
“Ruuuuuuuun…”
A voice…inside his head.
BAM!
Something metallic smashed against the deck. Avenel jumped so violently, he lost his grip on the flashlight. The cylinder rolled on the deck, then bumped against a square piece of slatted metal. It was the cover to the ventilation shaft above him.
That meant the alien was in the corridor with him!
Avenel cried out when the darkness seemed to solidify and slam him against the bulkhead. Lit in the halogen beam of his flashlight, he found himself peering into the open jaws of the alien monstrosity. It was a cavern of serrated teeth dripping with green saliva.
Eyes open so wide his lids threatened to rip loose, and heart pounding as if begging desperately to escape, Avenel watched as the creature’s mouth curled into a demonic smile. The alien’s face edged even closer until Avenel’s entire world consisted of nothing but its foul breath and piercing red eyes.
And then—it spoke.
“You’re…IT!”
Suddenly, impressions of the creature’s thoughts flittered through Avenel’s mind. A child. It was a child. And it wanted to play.
Run?
The word Avenel heard moments before. It was some sort of psychic emanation coming from the creature. It wasn’t stalking him. It was playing with him, just as it had been with his crew.
Suddenly, Avenel dropped and hit the deck as the alien released him. Confused, he watched as the creature scurried away…giggling.
“Come find me,” it called out in a thick, guttural voice. Then it was swallowed by the darkness.
Avenel blinked. What was it talking about?
Then he knew. Hide and seek. The thing was playing hide and seek.
And now, apparently, Avenel was “it”.
The captain of the Leonine had seen many strange things during his years in space. But that was definitely the strangest. A huge, terrifying, yet harmless alien child, perhaps lost and lonely, had come on board simply searching for someone to play.
With that realization, Avenel’s fear and anxiety slipped away. No longer afraid for his safety, he sat wondering what his next move should be. The company he worked for had a standing order that any initial contact with sentient alien life should be pursued in the hopes it may lead to future profitable business ventures.
Okay, so what now? How would he pursue relations with a childlike being?
After a few moments of deliberation, he shrugged and stood up. Retrieving his fallen flashlight, Avenel stared in the direction the alien had vanished.
Then he cleared his throat, counted to a hundred and called out, “Ready or not, here I come.”
by submission | Nov 29, 2009 | Story
Author : Jeff McGaha
A red-haired man walks directly up to the customer service counter. He carries in his right hand a metal cage with a tiny brown hamster inside. Reaching the counter, he drops the cage thoughtlessly, jostling the small creature inside.
“Scuse me,” He says to a man in a royal blue short-sleeved collared shirt.
“Yes sir, how may I help you?”
“I’m havin’ some problems with Neo here. I thank he’s broke.”
“Ohh, that is unfortunate. What is exactly is the problem?”
“He got out de other day and attacked me cat.”
“Ohh, that is too bad. Is your cat okay?”
“Naw, he’s dead.”
“Ohh, my.”
“Yeah, hampsters ain’t suppose to attack cats. Suppose to be de other way round.”
“Ohh, yes. Most definitely. I am sorry to hear about your cat.”
“It’s okay. Been meanin’ to get a fake one anyways. I ain’t got de time to keep takin’ care of a real one anymore.”
“I completely understand, sir. I have two artificial dogs myself. I do not know why anyone would want a real animal anymore.”
“Dogs, eh? Not much fer dogs. I’m more of a cat person.”
The man in the royal blue shirt nods and reaches into the cage and grabs the hamster. The hamster growls at him.
“That is not right. Hamsters definitely do not growl. I definitely know what the problem is then.”
“So, you’ll be able to fix ‘em?”
“I believe so.”
The man in the royal blue shirt holds the hamster in his left hand and pinches the hamster’s head with his right thumb and index finger. The hamster becomes rigid and the top of his skull pops open, exposing a tiny socket. The man in the royal blue shirt pulls a small hand held device out from under the counter. There is a short cable wrapped tightly around the device. He unwinds it and plugs the end of the cable into the jack embedded in the hamster’s skull. He taps on the hand held device for a few seconds.
“Yes. It appears that the hamster has inadvertently been given canine programming rather than rodent programming. That’s an easy fix.”
He taps a few more times on the hand held device. The hamster goes limp.
“Okay, everything is fine. I have just flashed him with rodent programming. He will be up and acting normal in about 10 minutes.”
“Thank gawd. My kids woulda been real upset if anything happened to Neo.”
“Yes, sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Yeah, ya got any calico’s in stock?”
by submission | Nov 28, 2009 | Story
Author : Erin Searles
“Cats,”said Big Fat Dave. “It was cats that started it in this reality.”
In his channel’s feed I saw Archibald, Big Fat Dave’s big fat cat, stretch as if in agreement.
He continued: “You know how cats will watch something or someone crossing a room when you can see there’s no one there. That ‘s them watching people on alternate reality channels. That’s how we figured out how to do it. Scientists did studies on cats’ brains.”
“I doubt it.” Pink Dave scoffed. Pink Dave hadn’t chosen his own nickname. The day we all first met Pink Dave had been wearing a pink shirt and tie. He didn’t like it, but nicknames stick.
Recently things hadn’t been going so well for Pink Dave. We hadn’t seen him in a shirt and tie for a while. He’d stopped shaving for so long that he was a better candidate for Bearded Dave than I was. Maybe he could be called Bearded Dave when I was gone.
“It was those scientists at CERN, right?” He looked to me and Not Dave for agreement. “You Daves have CERN in your worlds, don’t you? Back in the noughties they build a machine they thought might end the world, but instead they discovered how to view the alternate realities.”
I wasn’t keen to gang up on Big Fat Dave, who worshipped his cat slightly more than was healthy. I answered as diplomatically as I could.
“Yeah, we have a CERN here and they did build the LHC, but I don’t remember anything coming of it. I think the tech came from the American military on my channel.”
Not Dave shrugged. “It’s probably different for all the channels, that’s the point of alternate realities, right?”
Not Dave’s name was actually Andrew, we didn’t know why. Like the rest of us he was the 32 year old son of Jack and Nicola Upton, but in his reality they had called him Andrew, not Dave. It was strange for him to realise after a lifetime of being an Andrew that he was, according to probability, a Dave. He elected to be known as Not Dave, despite not needing the differentiating nickname.
Pink Dave was about to start arguing again. I headed him off:
“Guys. Do we want to spend my last night retreading the same old arguments?”
“Hell no,” said Not Dave. “ Let’s raise a glass to Bearded Dave.”
They all lifted a can, in strange unison in their respective corners of my screen. Not Dave and Pink Dave had beers; Big Fat Dave was drinking Coke.
“Bearded Dave,” they chorused.
I picked up my own drink to toast them back.
“Dave, Dave, Andrew it’s been a pleasure knowing you all. I wish we could carry on being friends… I’ll always remember you.”
We all lapsed into silence. It was close to midnight, the time when my channel would block all other realities from viewing us, and, as the inter-reality laws decreed, be blocked in return – who wants someone watching you when you can’t watch them back. Despite international outrage my reality’s committee governing reality channels hadn’t backed down. People had been given a month to say goodbye to friends on other channels while the final appeal went through. It had failed and at midnight the switch would be thrown.
“It sucks, man.” said Big Fat Dave.
More silence. One minute to midnight.
“Bye Daves.”
“Bye Dave.”
“Bye mate.”
“See you Dave.”
Black screens. Channel 1353 had blocked. I sat back in my chair – an isolated Dave in an isolated world.
by submission | Nov 26, 2009 | Story
Author : Ilan Herman
Koy, the sky-blue alien, explained to Jeff that life on earth was really an experiment conducted by him and his associates, an anthropological study of how life evolves from the molecular to the bird, or fish, or tiger, or man. “We planted the seeds of life on earth. We did the same with other planets with various environments and used different seeds. On H12, we have an intelligent race of birds. They have language and governance much better than yours, perhaps because they use their wings instead of cars, though they have those too. We have not done well with creating life on Earth.”
Jeff listened to Koy’s explanation and then said, “No worries. We’re like germs in a Petri dish. We’re genetically engineered. I can dig that. How many other humans beside me know about your experiment?”
“Only four others, a woman in China, and one in Russia, a man in Peru, and another in Scotland. The rest of humanity is not ready.” Then Koy’s voice choked with cosmic tears. “We tried so hard to make a good world for you. Our best minds labored tirelessly to help humanity succeed. We failed and we are sorry. Man turned out to be toxic to the planet.”
Jeff scratched his balding scalp. The alien sounded like a frustrated five year old whose tree house had collapsed. “Why are you so upset? We’re all still an extension of God, with you as a facilitator. It’s all good.”
“I am happy to hear you say that,” Koy said, “for what you say is true. We are all one.”
“Besides,” said Jeff. “You could be someone else’s experiment.”
The alien’s sky-blue skin dimmed slightly. “I am not sure what you mean.”
Jeff held out his palms. “Duh. Like us humans are your experiment, though only five of us know that, maybe your race is also a Petri dish set up by another race.”
“But I have revealed myself to you,” Koy said, a cheer in his voice. “If what you say is true, why have I not met the race that created me?”
Jeff rolled his eyes. “Because you’re not one of the five of your race to know. Like your secret is safe with me, so is the secret safe in the hearts of a few of your people, or race, or blue blobs.”
Koy’s shimmering ripples turned pinkish-green. He shrunk to about half the size of when he’d first appeared. He hovered only two inches off the carpet.
“That is a silly theory,” he finally said.
Jeff raised his arms in surrender. “If you say so. You’re probably right. After all, you made me, so you know better.”
Koy said nothing. Then he vanished.
“Nothing new under the sun,” Jeff said and hoisted himself off the couch and walked to the fridge for a glass of milk. Pouring the milk into the glass, he chuckled and said, “And that’s not a bad thing.”
by submission | Nov 25, 2009 | Story
Author : Amanda Baker
Years ago, Christina stayed over at Emily’s house, and found herself belting out this awful pop song in the shower. Some boy band kind of thing. She didn’t remember the song; boy bands hadn’t been popular since the nineties, and she’d be hard pressed to name the band and tune, or hard pressed to admit she still had a fondness for nineties pop, even back then. To be fair, she didn’t even realize she was singing at first, and she silenced herself in embarrassed horror as soon as she did, stopping the silly “love you baby” lyrics from leaving her mouth as she rinsed the bubbly foam out of her hair. Her singing voice was pretty awful.
Of course her girlfriend heard her. Emily being Emily, she didn’t give Christina a hard time about it, but still, Christina knew Emily knew, and she felt ashamed. She had been caught doing something incredibly stupid.
Christina doesn’t think she remembered it until last Saturday—after all, she’s got better taste in music now, and she hasn’t talked to Emily since the breakup. Christina’s a loud sort of person, and she’s got a million better memories with Emily if she wants to feel nostalgic, and a dozen sillier memories that she can look back on if she wants to laugh at herself. She’s been quieter since Saturday, though. Everyone’s been quieter. When Christina turns on the news, crime is down. Of course crime is down. Even the criminals are stunned.
Everyone’s busy watching the sky, too. The talking heads on TV told them it wasn’t like that, the messages came from light years away, and there’s nothing to worry about. They couldn’t be here yet.
Peace negotiations have started. Peace negotiations, and it’s only been less than a week. It’s funny, almost. Back when the war started, Christina went out to city hall every weekend with her protest sign. She wrote letters, signed petitions, blogged rant after rant just to get people to care… pretty much everything she could do, and it took this to get peace negotiations to start? The first day, she thought this was a hoax. Probably everyone did. It’s something out of science fiction, which she used to actually like, before it was all over the news that extraterrestrials had made contact. It was better back when it wasn’t real.
It’s terrifying now. It’s like a hidden camera on the wall, like being the teenager who thought she could get away with everything, and then suddenly you’re faced with evidence that your mother knows every detail of what went on at Hannah’s birthday party. No, that she might know. No, that “Mom” exists. Christina frames it in another concept, thinks about it differently, but really… Do they know about Hiroshima? Do they know about the holocaust, or slavery, or the way humans have fought each other tooth and nail over absolutely everything ever since they’ve had the bad luck to evolve from the chimpanzees?
And they still want to talk to us. Christina hopes that maybe they don’t know us as well as they could, that we’ve got another chance to make an impression if we just behave ourselves from now on. Christina herself has gone to work on time, stopped grimacing so much, called her father back before he called her again to ask why she hadn’t called. And it’s not just her—it’s everyone. Everyone’s trying to shape up, to be better for whoever’s watching.
As Christina sees it, it’s as if humanity itself has been caught in the galactic shower, singing bad love songs off-key.
