by submission | Aug 25, 2009 | Story
Author : Phill English
“I just don’t want to hear it, Helen.”
Helen grips Henry’s arm as he moves about the household, packing his things into a small carry-bag. She tries to spin him to face her as she pleads, but he remains resolute in his mission.
“Please, Henry, just hear me out. It was never intended to go that far! There just wasn’t any friction between us, and he was so gentle, so noble…”
Henry rounds on her, “Then why aren’t you lounging in his arms instead of making a fool out of yourself here?”
Helen looks down at the floor as she answers, “He didn’t care. He was so…so inert.” She spits the word out. “For all his charms, a statue! Carved, static, unmoving. But you, you, my darling Henry. Please, give me one more chance?”
Henry waves her off, moving around to the mantelpiece. He picks up an image of them together, pausing in his fury to look upon their energy, the bond that was so obviously between them. He turns to face Helen, and sees her desperation laid bare in a tearful smile.
The frame hits the ground and they embrace, frantic and excited.
* * *
Several orders of magnitude above the scene, a scientist leans back from his Planckroscope and mutters to himself, “So this is why the call it quantum entanglement.”
by submission | Aug 23, 2009 | Story
Author : Yubin Kim
“I can see time, you know.” She said.
He looked up from a piece of paper full of scribbled equations, frowning at the interruption. “What?”
She plucked the pencil out of his loose grasp, quelling his half-formed protestations with a mysterious smile. Holding the thin object between her thumb and index finger, she closed her eyes. She could almost feel his frown deepening into a scowl, but she ignored his displeasure and instead, _looked_.
“I can see where this pencil was. In your hand, your pencil case, in the desk drawer, in the manufacture plant which it was made.” She narrated in a whisper, as she saw the pencil’s glistening shadow floating through time and various points in space.
“I don’t have time–”
She overrode his frustrated outburst, calmly continuing her narrative. “I can see where this pencil will be. Back in your hand and then–”
She opened her eyes with a startled gasp and glared at the pencil.
“What now?” He growled.
“It ends.” She explained in a slightly troubled tone, dropping the pencil back into his open hand. Rising from her chair, she lightly stepped away from the cluttered desk, and walked out of the room in wide, swinging steps.
He studied her sudden exit with bemusement, then shaking his head, he bent over his task. However, when he pressed the end of the pencil to the paper, the thin body broke in half with an audible snap. Blinking, the he stared at the remnants, and then raised his gaze towards the door where he saw her standing there with a smile. In her hand, she held up a new pencil. He suddenly found himself speechless.
by submission | Aug 22, 2009 | Story
Author : J. Keegan
In line at the all-you-can-eat, and I’m waiting my turn; fifty different alien species in the joint; it’s hard to get human food anymore; an earthling on earth and out of place.
I lift the lid to, ‘Turkey,’ but it is Alevi style, raw turkey, appendix red. Afraid of faux pas, I say, “Mmm, looks good, piquant.”
A Tarand to my left says, “Indeed,” he sarcastic.
The soup of the day is Campbell’s Alphabet soup, but not the Latin alphabet, and I get sick of eating a Sanskrit like language, the letter A in the shape of a character, a logogram, the character for lucky. Other entrees include, a bowl of ice chips, margarine, or rinds, not watermelon, just the rinds of watermelon.
The Tarand says, “W. C. Fields said, ‘Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” I laugh. Tarands, always classy.
I have to wait for a Beliada to spoon insoluble fiber onto his plate, no opposable thumbs.
In line behind us is a CalCalaKer, and although there is a little sign on the sneeze guard, ‘Please No Antennas,’ the hat stand alien with thirty antennas, you know will touch something.
More food, dozens of skull and crossbones, red cabbage being poisonous to Delteras; peanuts being poisonous to Elevens.
How things get translated, interpreted. The phrase all-you-can-eat, and Feltas taking the wording literally and trying to eat the silverware and plates, the seat cushions too. As well, all-you-can-eat, understood by carnivores, the Gelter’s Incident, two years ago, as all-the-patrons-you-can-eat.
A Heleton opens the 400 gallon ant farm and digs out a tunnel.
I’ve heard of beef tripe, the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach. And, Kopi Luwak coffee, undigested coffee beans picked out of monkey stool, the Asian palm civet. And, I’ve heard of the Italian cheese, Casu Marzu, a cheese infested with maggots on purpose until the cheese becomes buttery, eaten maggots and all, and when disturbed the larva jump six inches off the cheese. But the alien selections disgust me, the cannibalism mostly, an Inieateri eating an Inieateri – part of their religion.
Vegetarians too, Janusi, with a face in front and one in the back so it walks forward when it walks backward. Common backyard weeds, elephant ear, dandelion, creeping charlie, sold for hundreds of Euros per kilo. One alien species, the Keael, digesting sorghum, for the Letins, regurgitating and spitting in the other’s mouth like a mother bird.
Political correctness, and aliens complained of, ‘Bovine-mammary-gland-cow-utter-nipples,’ so ice cream had to be removed from the menu.
The staff, the workers paid less than minimum wage, they in stupid uniforms with chef hats, the floors greasy, used napkins everywhere, and probably nothing’s changed in a century.
I’ve my tray, rice balls and raisins. Nowhere to sit.
What did I expect for only $176.88 a plate?
The Tarand, being kind, “There’s room here at my table. Please, sit here by me.”
I’m a little afraid because of the Tarands’ high intelligence, their high class. “Thank you,” I say. I try a joke. “They’re no longer serving milk,” I say. “Like W. C. Fields used to say about being told no more alcohol, ‘My illness is due to my doctor’s insistence that I drink milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies.’”
“Yes,” he laughs. “Like W. C. Fields used to say, ‘Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.”
by submission | Aug 21, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
I was out for a walk last night when I heard a cry for help. There was a girl in the river. I don’t know how she got there, she didn’t say at the time, and I haven’t asked her yet. All she said then was “help!”, in a voice that got sharper and higher as time went on.
I moved quickly, but deliberately. Doctor Mahnke used to tell me “less haste, more speed”, better to get things done right first time than have to try again after you get it wrong. I got out my equipment, which I carry with me at all times. “Be Prepared” is another thing that Dr Mankhe used to say, but he didn’t know about the equipment. Not then, anyway.
In a moment, the computer had interfaced with the girl’s cortical drive, and by a forced handshake the download process started. It took about thirty seconds. While it was going on, I watched her, paying quite close attention to the expressions on her face and the sounds she made as she tried to stay afloat. It was two minutes and fourteen seconds from the start of the transfer to the last time she went under. I timed it and made a note.
The transfer process took place without error. When I got home, I moved her file to the menagerie.
I saved her.
Now I’ll always have a copy.
by submission | Aug 20, 2009 | Story
Author : Liz Lafferty
Jonathan Wolf had grown old in space. His craft chugged across the Milky Way on its return journey to Earth. As the first solo explorer and the first man who’d left the galaxy, he was anxious to return home.
Potential candidates had been selected based on hereditary aging DNA. His family members had routinely lived into their hundreds and prior to his departure, one of his uncles had reached the age of one hundred and thirty. He would be long dead by now.
The other trait happened to be one of his strong suits. He enjoyed being alone. The mission involved mind-numbing, insanity-inducing loneliness, unless one had prepared both his mind and his body against such predispositions. He’d rejected the idea of a mate. Why inflict further torture when one outlived the other, as would eventually happen. In the depths of space, he didn’t believe he could endure the absence of a cherished partner. He’d work alone. He’d study. He’d read. He’d explore.
The craft library was stocked with media, all digitalized from Moses to Plato to Hawking. The bay area of the craft was largely empty. A few rocks from distant planets. He was especially fond of a glow-in-the-dark purple specimen he kept in his night room.
His mission had been a failure, or at least a failure by mission standards.
He had found no one. His only discovery: the universe was a vast, empty place. Space was aptly named.
Twelve years ago, he’d lost contact with Earth. There’d been no incoming messages, though he believed his messages still got out. Since most information about space was theoretical, he’d had to theorize about the disconnect. Messages could have gotten lost, scrambled, gravitazationlized.
Or maybe they simply vanished into the ether.
As he sailed into the solar system, the familiar planets came into view. Saturn and Jupiter, beloved twins, their trajectory nearly aligned. Efforts to hail Earth failed. If he hadn’t gotten used to twelve years of silence, he might have been alarmed. Instead, an excitement unlike anything he’d felt since the day of his launch hummed through his veins, making him feel light-years younger.
The gentle hum of his craft soothed him as he neared Earth’s planetal rotation.
John scanned the limited horizon of his viewing screen. Earth should be coming into view. But wasn’t. He ran the program for the star date to determine Earth’s location. A small cluster caught his eye. The white cheese pocked moon came into view. Without its planet. The computer scanned, confirming his suspicion. The moon wandered, ripped from its gravitational anchor by some unknown event.
John blinked, allowing the weight of his emotion to darken his hope. There was no one. The Earth was gone.
He couldn’t be the only one. Others must have been sent out. They would eventually come home, too. He would wait. John Wolf set his craft to orbit the sun in Earth’s orbit – every 365 days. If he lived the rest of his natural life, he might get to see another human again.
His only mission now was to make sure the next person who stumbled upon him was not left alone in the universe.
