by submission | Jul 17, 2008 | Story
Author : Bob Burnett
A glint of reflected sunlight caught Will McRae’s attention. He ground-hitched his sorrel gelding and bellied up the slope to look into the next draw.
He scooted back down the slope, turned on his back and stared at the sky, his mouth suddenly dry. What he had seen could not be.
A silver barn floated some ten feet off the ground. Under the floating barn were three critters, looking something like antelope, except they were the wrong color and had only three legs. Definitely not antelope.
But there was no doubt about what was stretched out on the ground. Two of his cows.
He started to get mad, anger driving out fear. “Ain’t Jack Slade an’ his bunch,” he mumbled as he mounted, “but by God a rustler is a rustler.”
Will McRae flipped the thong off the hammer of his Colt and walked his horse over the rim.
“Alert, team members!” Relf transmitted. “A biped astride a quadruped approaches!”
Will McRae walked his sorrel to within a dozen feet of the strangers. He stopped his horse, slowly tipped his hat back with his left hand, keeping his right hand near his pistol.
“Howdy,” he said.
“Melodious reverberation from the biped,” Jelif transmitted. “Note that the quadruped stands mute.”
“I’m slow to rile,” Will drawled, “but you best be turnin’ my cows loose.” He pointed with his left hand to his two cows, which appeared not to be tied but moved only their eyes.
“Observe. The biped smglndf the subject quadrupeds. Perhaps it feeds on them and is hungry. Offer it flesh to eat. That will show our peaceful intentions.”
Jelif turned to the quadrupeds, extended his molof, and severed portion of flesh. He held the animal protein aloft, offering it to the visitor.
Will McRae’s eyes bulged with rage. “Butcher my cow right in front of me, will you? You dirty, low down . . . ” His right hand flashed to his pistol, drawing and firing in a single motion.
Something slammed into McRae’s chest and he fell from his horse, unconscious.
“Asmoth!” Jelif signaled, rubbing the mark where the .45 slug had struck his marlif. “Perhaps we did not correctly interpret the gestures.”
“Surely this is an intelligent being,” Relif transmitted. “This one suggests that the biped be transported for further study.”
“Agreed. Transport.”
A beam of green light surrounded the unconscious rancher, then he vanished.
#
Will McRae rode slowly around the herd, looking for signs of sickness or injury. He spotted a calf with a swelling on its left flank.
He guided his mount to cut the calf from the herd while he unlimbered his rope. The calf bolted, but Will’s loop settled over its head.
He secured the calf, walked back to his mount, and removed a straight razor and armored gloves from his saddle bags.
He examined the swelling on the calf, gripped it firmly with his left hand, and slashed the growth with the razor. When the golif emerged, fangs gnashing, he sliced it in two and dropped it, spurting purple fluids on the orange ground.
Will rubbed a salve into the wound and released the calf, which bounded back to its mother, screeching from the indignity of it all.
Watching the calf return to its mother, the young rancher smiled and coiled his rope as he walked back to his mount.
The land might look a little strange, Will McRae thought as he surveyed his surroundings, and the stock is some different. But ranching is ranching.
No matter where you are.
by submission | Jul 16, 2008 | Story
Author : Christopher Kueffner
The ocean swell was enough to induce the whisky to move back and forth in the glass, but just barely. This spectacle occupied the close attention of Arlen Tidmore, Systems Assurance Specialist II. The minutely swaying liquid in the glass was distilled on the other side of the world in the Orkney Islands, and some of it was already relaxing Tidmore’s brain. The door opened.
“Drinking your dirt-flavored paint thinner, I see,” boomed Tim Frampton, Navigation Specialist I.
“And it seems you just got out of asshole practice,” Tidmore replied. “It’s definitely working.”
Frampton chuckled and sat down at the table. He set a large beer bottle and a glass in front of himself. “The rain is starting to clear up. I thought I’d enjoy this change in weather, but it’s a drag.”
“Yep.”
“We’ll probably make our turn tomorrow. That typhoon shoved the boundary of The Garbage Patch over a bit.” He poured the clear, golden beer into the glass.
“Yep.”
“Three weeks ‘til the break.”
“Yep.” Tidmore leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his scotch. “I do believe I’m officially bored out of my damned mind.”
“It’s taken this long?”
“I don’t know how I’ve done these plastic reclamation tours for this long, but some switch has flipped. I need to find something else to do. The machines on this tub don’t break often enough to keep me focused.”
“That’s some people’s idea of a dream job,” Frampton said between gulps.
“How can you drink that piss?” Tidmore grimaced at Frampton’s beer bottle. “You can only bring so much crap out here on the plane, and you bring light beer? We’re surrounded by water that’s free.”
“It’s too salty and full of plastic, Your Highness. You should talk, with all your books and god-awful scotch.”
“Slowly filling the hold with carbon nodules isn’t enough to keep me entertained.”
“Let’s not forget the chlorine. That spices things up, doesn’t it? And what about the nitrogen?
“Nitrogen’s boring. And it’s too bad we use the hydrogen for fuel; we could fill a balloon with it and float out of here.”
“Quit whining,” Frampton droned. “When you applied for a job that consists of sailing back and forth in the middle of the Pacific, scooping up plastic, were you expecting big-city night life? The Horse Latitudes Symphony Goddamn Orchestra or something?”
“I knew what I was signing up for. I wanted the chance to get sick of something besides my relatives and neighbors. I got that. And I wanted to do something good. I’m cleaning up the ocean, and that’s cool, but this ship… I’m over it.”
“You’re cleaning the ocean and saving the world only because somebody invented a way to scoop up the plastic, separate it into its elements, and make money at it.”
“It wouldn’t be profitable without the government subsidies,” Tidmore pointed out.
“Same difference. Nothing big gets done unless it’s profitable or fashionable, preferably both.” He poured the rest of the beer from the bottle. “Funny that we don’t have anything on this ship that handles glass.”
“Hmm. Lemme have that.” Tidmore took the bottle and walked out the door. Several minutes later, he returned and picked up his glass from the table and headed back out the door. The bottle was corked.
“What are you doing?” Frampton got up and followed him. Up on deck, the sun had come out. Tidmore threw the bottle over the railing and took another sip of scotch. “What was in that bottle?”
“I wrote my resignation this morning. This way, it should take a couple of years for it to take effect.”
“You don’t like change, do you?”
by submission | Jul 13, 2008 | Story
Author : William Tracy
A stranger walked through the door of the diner. The man sported sunglasses and a comb over. He was sweaty from driving through the desert in his suit. His collar was disheveled; his tie was loose. He must have been lost—people like him were not common in this corner of New Mexico.
Another man stepped up behind the counter, wiping his hands on a ragged towel. “Hi, I’m Larry. What can I get you?” Sweat and grease struggled to dominate his odor, and stubble adorned his round chin.
The stranger asked for the special; Larry shouted the order back into the kitchen, then went back to scrubbing the counter. Larry quizzed the stranger about his business, got no response, and proceeded to alternate between extolling the virtues of small town life and singing along with the radio.
The food was ready. Larry laid the plate and a tall glass of cola in front the stranger. The stranger proceeded to eat.
“We get all sorts of people out here,” Larry announced. “You wouldn’t believe what sorts we get.”
The stranger ate for several minutes, while Larry cleaned and rambled. The stranger had worked his way through most of the meal when Larry leaned forward, elbows on the counter, and added conspiratorially, “They say over in Roswell that space aliens crashed in the desert a while back.”
The stranger studied his food with renewed interest.
Larry continued. “Some say that the aliens have been visiting us for many years now. They think the aliens disguise themselves as people, to study us, and that anyone you meet could be an alien.”
The stranger failed to acknowledge the information.
Larry looked over the other customers in the diner. They all had heard Larry’s stories before.
Larry leaned closer still—his halitosis was palpable—and whispered, “There’s an alien right here, right now. You wanna know how I can tell?” he looked around the room again, and added, “I’ve been inside one of the flying saucers.”
The stranger stood up abruptly, and cleared his throat loudly. “I would like to pay my bill, please.”
“Certainly, sir.” Larry rang up the sale.
As the stranger walked out the door, Larry yelled, “Come again soon!” The stranger did not speak, or look back. Larry whistled as he worked his way to the end of the counter with his ragged towel.
“I’m going on break!” he shouted back into the kitchen, and ducked into the men’s room.
Larry locked the door, and smiled into the mirror. His flesh rippled, and his body flowed into its natural form. The creature that called itself Larry drained its distended fluid sacs into the toilet, then flushed.
Reverse psychology works very well on these humans.
by submission | Jul 12, 2008 | Story
Author : Jacinta A. Meyers
He had a reputation from the time he brought in his first kill from the lush planet. Walked through the warden’s office lugging the thing in a sack over his shoulder. Everyone involuntarily gasped when they felt the floor shudder, heard the thunder of his steps and looked up.
Before he was a hunter, he had been a builder. You could tell by the enormous honed muscles, his foul speech, his burly way of leaning. He dropped the sack to the floor and leaned over the counter, making it creak with his weight. “Got one,” he said.
“Right,” I said, pulling out a form. “What kind of an entry?”
“Sentient-intelligent.”
Ah. “Weighing some brains today?” My fingers twittered over the keyboard, entering the order. To my right a little door in the wall hissed open, allowing a tray to ease forth with a prepared canister full of preserving fluids. “Why don’t you bring it around.”
He hefted the sack up over the counter. Well, that was one way to do it. I undid the tie. And gasped.
It was the biggest cranium I had ever seen.
My tools were ready. I brought down the hose to suck up the noxious fumes of death while I worked. My hands were deft; sever the head from the body, incision here, incision here, and the skin pulled away clean. Insert the chisel here, between the two primary skull plates. Quick bump and open. Use the tubes to suck up excess fluids, pry away veins and capillaries…
At last, my gloved hands slipped the prize from its nest. I carried the gooey mass to the scales and set it down.
“Bastard. You don’t got the stem!”
“It’s the rules, mister. Stems don’t count toward the final measurement.” I focused hard on the numbers as they slowly stopped moving up.
1,672.12 grams. “A new record,” I breathed. Picking the brain back up, I carefully moved it to the canister and set it down into its new home. I shook my head. “That’ll make some trophy.”
The hunter was still leaning against the counter, picking at his pointy teeth with one large claw. He straightened a little when he saw me take my place again behind the keyboard. “Well?”
“I have confirmed the record. Congratulations,” I said. “Now we just have to finish the forms. Can I see your system license?”
He belched before passing a chip across the counter to me.
“Great.” I cringed and flicked it into the computer drive. “Sentient-intelligent. Specimen, brain. Species, homo sapien. Oh…” I looked up. “Where on Earth did you say you bagged this one, again?”
by submission | Jul 10, 2008 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
Here’s me, walking through the deserted streets of Chicago. I can see a few ravens pecking at some unidentifiable detritus in the gutter; somewhere, a car alarm is weeping to the night sky, and I can still smell the restaurant exhaust on the breeze.
Here’s me again, now searching an abandoned shop for something more nourishing than chocolate. Don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate, but the body craves salts and proteins… more’s the pity. Chips are good in a pinch.
I wonder what will happen to the water supply? Theoretically, the underground reservoirs will be shielded enough to avoid contamination, but most of Chicago’s city water comes from open-air cisterns. I should only drink bottled water, until it runs out. Then I’ll have to find a library and do some research; there must be a deep self-contained reservoir not too far from here.
Hey, I can scream in the library and no one will care.
I’m all alone, but there are plenty of other people around. Not moving, of course, but who needs to these days? Last time I saw independent movement that wasn’t animal was on TV, and that stopped after a couple of days anyway. End of times, worst of times… most serene of times? The ELF would be delighted, but I guess when there aren’t any human members to know or care the point is a little bit moot.
Yeah, the water thing bored me too. No point; plenty of bottled water. No electricity, but I can scrounge a generator from somewhere if I need it. Now I just need something to do for the rest of my life.
I could travel; plenty of fuel for that, but it seems somewhat futile to go anywhere. Gasoline will gel eventually, so I should use it while it’s still good. I could devote myself to recording our history in some invulnerable form, like carving it on a mountain face for future civilizations, but I doubt I could get farther than my own little life before I die of exhaustion.
Come to think of it, every possible form of media that tells our story will degrade beyond comprehension before anyone gets to read it. Whenever this kind of thing happens in fiction, there’s always a motivation, a need to tell the story of humanity and the mark we left on the planet. It’s just… I don’t think there actually is a mark. “When all is said and done,” they say, but now all really is said and done and that’s it. There’s nothing left. There’s no second coming, no messiah, and no future for anything that could conceivably call itself intelligent.
Just me. Nothing else. No magically surviving camp of refugees, no single person of the opposite sex conveniently named “Eve,” no gods descending from the skies.
And certainly nothing that could remotely be called a future.
Right. Here’s me, walking through the empty, desolate streets. The car alarm is silent; battery must have run out. The ravens are gone; better pickings elsewhere. The evening wind has blown away all recognizable human scents, and I think that the smell of all those other people will start to fill the air very soon.
Here’s me, walking along, my finger on the trigger.
