by submission | Apr 16, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
We’ve all heard about light pollution and how the glow from cities and towns obscures the night sky, making it difficult to view stars and planets. Maybe we’ve even learned how our luminescent nightlife affects nocturnal animals, migrating birds, and all manner of insects, confusing them and contributing to their alarming decline.
But from space, oh from space, what a show! What a shiny bauble Earth is! Celestial bling of the highest order! Often, I wonder if the stunning view of our glittering globe is the real reason I’ve stayed on Titania all these years. It’s certainly not the amenities.
The self-indulgent whim of the world’s first trillionaire, Titania is the only orbital hotel ever completed. First marketed as a stellar cruise ship for the high-end adventurer, it’s devolved over my tenure into a kind of sketchy skid row hostel for failed opportunists and escapists like me.
Not exactly the class of folks you’d want as our planet’s last best chance for survival.
Because that’s what we became when the lights went out on Earth. Our bright, gleaming world went dark. Like moths to the flame, they came. From Titania’s lido deck, it looked like an impossibly large swarm of insects engulfing the planet. Communication earthside went helter skelter. Then ceased.
Amazingly, Titania’s derelict denizens didn’t panic. We woke up, shook off our malaise, our ennui, our entirely French-forward weariness, and got down to the business of what was happening. Was it an alien invasion or bizarre planetary infestation? Was it organic or robotic?
Was it planned or opportunistic? Were we next?
We shuttered Titania, powered down to standby systems and waited. And, though there was literally nothing to see of the shrouded Earth, we watched as our sensors registered a mysterious spectrum of energy waves, ionizing the atmosphere. Though the lights were out planetside, the air was humming with electricity. Low-level radiation coursed the darkened skies below.
Was life on Earth being zapped out of existence? Was the planet being sterilized for new tenants? Were we just low-hanging fruit for some kind of interstellar harvest by sentient locust?
No one had an answer, though I had an idea: hormesis.
It’s the adaptive response of cells and organisms to low doses of what otherwise might be harmful to them, such as allergens, toxins, and even radiation. I’d had experience with that kind of therapy. It’s why I fled to Titania. Suffice it to say that even a snake oil salesman like me had to quickly part ways with a rogue foreign space agency because I didn’t like the kind irradiation dosing I was directed to give their astronauts to bolster their exposure immunity for a secretive Mars mission.
Still, the concept of hormesis was sound, and the more I saw of the atmospheric telemetry readings, the very systemic increase in ionization, the more convinced I became that our mysterious interlopers were not trying to terraform our planet, but terraform us.
After seven months, just as quickly as the interlopers had come, they (whatever they were) left. The shroud lifted and Earth once again gleamed majestically below us. We cheered on Titania. But Earth remained eerily quiet.
Once we re-established contact, my suspicions were confirmed. Life on earth had been changed. We were not what we once were. We were better. Healthier. Less hostile. More unified. We’d been imbued with a sense of common purpose. As well as an enhanced biological resistance to solar radiation.
From Titania’s vantage, I came to see that our interstellar interlopers hadn’t been attracted by Earth’s gaudy city lights. Instead, they’d been drawn to something more luminous, something more strangely dazzling in humanity.
They hadn’t come to invade or infest. They’d come to invite.
To coax us from our darker shadows, redirect our light, help us ride it to the stars, and fan the flames of self and selfless discovery ever brighter.
by submission | Apr 14, 2024 | Story |
Author: Guy Lingham
My job as a chaos machinist is simple: I inject failure. I’m unleashed upon a system to disrupt its dependencies and tease out its vulnerabilities. It’s all about building resiliency. Chaos exists everywhere, in everything, so better to break and fix things now, before they’re broken for you.
The practice used to involve killing a few clusters or upping the latency to test how well you’ve built your servers. These days, since the advent of global hyper-simulations, my job has become far more interesting. We’re no longer restricted to scaling tests and database failovers for creating chaos; now, the world is our sandbox.
The company paid me well to do my job, as they should have—I’m very good at it. Simulations emulate reality near-perfectly; this is by design, as there’s little point in testing anything that doesn’t. Though this makes a job like mine all the more challenging, it’s allowed me to develop a unique set of skills. If, for example, I was tasked with testing the security of a restricted zone—a contract I received all too often—I couldn’t just drop in, kitted to the teeth with fancy gadgets, and call it a day. That’s only testing the final layer, which, frankly, would be useless. What we need to test is the full journey.
Once plugged in, I would wake up in a random location with nothing but the clothes on my back and a pocketful of cash. The first step of any experiment—that’s what we call testing in the biz—is to gather resources. I’ve been doing this long enough that I know where to buy gear and weaponry that’s cheap and untraceable. Give me a week and I can get you anything. Tranq darts? Easy. EMPs? Done. Antimatter bombs? I happen to have a stockpile already, but I’m saving those for something special.
Next, I’d need to reach my destination unseen. I rarely have to think about this part anymore, it’s practically second nature. Nasty in-and-out facial surgery is scarily easy to come by these days. A quick trip to some backstreet clinic and a visit to the forgers next door would yield me an identity that would last long enough. Finally, it’s simply a matter of sneaking in, placing the charges (if applicable), and getting out. Then, I unplug, wait a month for them to implement fixes, and try again.
The company sent me on countless experiments, even choosing me as the machinist to test their own premises, entrusting me to breach their defences and topple their towers. Like I said, I’m good at my job. I could have done such great things for the company, if only they weren’t so shortsighted. See, they weren’t ambitious enough. As good as the simulations are, a test is never truly worthwhile until it’s executed in prod—the live environment.
They didn’t trust me. They called me mad, mad for wanting to build their resilience, mad for wanting to do my job. Do they not realise that chaos is in everything? In everyone? They’re lucky I’m so forgiving. Even if they won’t take their security seriously, I will.
Soon, they’ll be sorry they got rid of me. Soon, they’ll realise just how good at my job I really am.
by submission | Apr 13, 2024 | Story |
Author: James Flanagan
From Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II this storm has raged unabated. Wars and plagues have scoured the Earth while eras of enlightenment and eras of disgrace have risen and slipped away, and always the mother of all storms has boiled and churned — the Big Red Eye of Jupiter.
Annie Edson Taylor plunged over Niagara Falls, and Felix Baumgartner fell from space. Today is the day that you’ll remember my name: Kienan O’Malley, the first man to storm ride on Jupiter.
From Earth, the spot is an anomaly, a blotch on its perfect face. On final approach before geosynchronous orbit, we gaze into the maw of hell, a rusty rotation, an orbit in orange and red. Today it breathes in the darkest ruby, like the dirt from the land of my birth. I love a sunburnt country, but I adore the rouge of Jove.
For twenty years this has been my dream: Planning, fund-raising, designing, training, simulating every contingency. Then six years in transit. I would be remiss not to mention my sponsors Bluecow Racing who have been with me from the start. Twenty years of training for a single circuit around the eye of the storm, a six day ride. I stand on the precipice of history. There is no sitting on the fence for me.
Mission control, all checks done. The door is open. Let my guardian angels follow me down. Go!
I’m free falling……….Can’t breathe………Rotating…………….Rotation stabilised…..pointing head down now……. Picking up speed…..Seven hundred miles an hour…..12,000 miles above tropopause……………………..8,000……….4,000………passing tropopause….. Officially inside the eye……. Wings getting hot…..Banking….. So heavy…….Can’t breathe……Pressure holding…………..Neutral buoyancy reached……..Nominal. I’m in the jet stream now, winds speed 435 miles per hour.
It’s been eight hours now, navigating towards the inner eye, wind speeds down to eighty miles per hour, and I’m floating along like flotsam on the tide. Relative to the wind speed it is quite calm. I see white clouds surrounding me, occasional specs of ammonium are hitting my visor, but apart from that it is white gas. I see nothing else.
Three days now floating on this tide, like swimming through gaseous milk. Every ten hours the planet rotates and I see the whiteness brighten as we face into the sun, then it darkens quickly as night falls. Yesterday, I think I saw an apple-sized chunk of ammonium crystal, the largest thing I have seen so far. I’m counting discernable crystals. I have nothing else to do.
Five days now, a sensory deprivation chamber churning my mind. The instruments tell me I’m approaching the exit point for rendezvous, but I have no landmarks to confirm. On this blank canvas my eyes have wandered. I’ve imagined colours I might have seen from space, the reflections of expectations. I see shapes, faces, bulbous noses, monstrous eyes, mouths widening to swallow me.
“My God! What’s that….”
by submission | Apr 12, 2024 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
If you’re a trillionaire, you can get powerful people to turn up when you call an informal meeting. It’s one of the perks.
As the Industrialist’s guests finished their excellent meal, the Diplomat put down his glass and said, “This is all very pleasant, but why are we here?”
“I’ve decided to help,” she replied. “Rising sea levels have put whole populations on the move in Europe; in Africa and Asia coastal communities have been devastated, and people are migrating, even though wealthier countries can’t or won’t take them in.”
Heads of assorted colours and genders nodded around the table. Whether with lies, bribery, asserting influence or applying outright violence, they were all dealing with it, one way or another.
“I and some partners want to help take some pressure off. We have commissioned plans for what we call MegaRafts – self-sufficient floating communities of ten to twenty thousand. Their energy will come from wind and solar power; yeast and algae farms will provide food, supplemented of course by whatever the residents can catch at sea. Satellite communications will mean remote working can generate income for whatever they find they need in the way of luxury goods, repairs and suchlike.”
“And who’ll pay for all this?” asked the Merchant Banker.
“We’ll make the blueprints available to all, for nothing. My friends and I will finance the first couple of dozen, and donate them where we think they’ll help most. A practical proof of concept. After that… governments? charities? public fundraisers? other philanthropists? Anyone really.”
“Ridiculous. You can’t make ships that size,” stated the Politician.
“Of course you can. The capacity isn’t much more than a modern cruise vessel,” said the Shipping Magnate, looking thoughtful.
“Pirates,” said the Admiral laconically.
“The MegaRafts will be equipped to defend themselves, obviously. But not so much that they pose a threat to littoral settlements. They’ll be neither prey nor predator.” The Industrialist smiled.
“Colonialism dressed up,” muttered the Warlord.
“Not at all. These will be independent entities, free to travel the high seas wherever they will. And not so profitable or strategically important that they’ll make it worthwhile occupying them.”
The discussion went on for a long time after that.
—
“Will it work?” asked her reclusive Husband, as they got ready for bed later that evening.
“Oh yes. They all see a way of getting rid of their problems on the cheap, putting them out of mind and literally out of sight – it’ll play well to the conservative voters, or buttress their own positions.”
“Are you sure?” He removed his shirt, displaying his a slightly misshapen torso in the dimmed light. Her gaze lingered on him.
“Yes. I’ve spent a lifetime getting us to this point, I’m not going to let the project fail now. Part of humanity is going back to the oceans. The landmasses are becoming unviable, they’d have to do it eventually. We’re just accelerating the process a little.”
“The bioengineering teams are ready?”
“Yes, they’ll embed with the refugees; de-evolution will need a helping hand. Our beneficiaries will get every physical advantage we can give them.”
“No regrets?”
“None. You’re proof that the idea works. We’ll take people with nothing to lose, and give them two-thirds of the planet’s surface.”
“And then what? Parallel species? Competition? A fight to the extinction of one or the other?”
“Who knows? That’s a problem for those who are left behind. We’ll just trust that the Old Gods will take care of their new people.”
Her Husband smiled, and clicked his gills.
by submission | Apr 11, 2024 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Her lips were soft as marshmallows fresh out of the bag—tender yet unyielding to Aaron’s hard press against them. They’d been torn apart from their love for years, but now, suddenly renewed, he could not hold back tears as they kissed. His strong hands held her thick dark hair as he pulled her face tight to his. Then electric shocks woke him as they had every day during his forced deep space mission. It was his shift to join the crew in the ship’s control center to seek out new worlds to conquer. He had no choice. There was no time for his feelings, only a new automated injection of Chlorfaxian20 in his arm through his iridescent-blue bodysuit.
“Pilot, get to your station. You’re late!” Captain Zamose barked at Aaron, disregarding the crewman’s superior stature.
“The lifts were overcrowded. Couldn’t get here sooner.” Aaron tried to call off the verbal abuse with an honest assessment. Zamose was not having it.
“The one thing we require above all on the Caroeto is discipline. That’s three marks for you. Is there a problem?”
Aaron stood away from his post, which was forbidden, striding back to his superior, into Zamose’s personal space, glaring intently.
“I’m tired of this, and you, and this stupid voyage. I’ve seen the status reports. There’s no return trip back home. No reuniting. It’s all a lie…a damnable lie, and you support it in your little purple suit like some pumped-up turnip. I’m done with this. I refuse any more juice. Find someone else.”
“Memories of your loved ones, I suppose.” Zamose looked to the side in disappointment. “It’s the sign, but you’re earlier than usual this time.” Zamose pressed a small blue button on his jumpsuit sleeves, arousing two robust robots wearing covered black face shields to rush into the center.
“What do you mean, ‘this time’?” Aaron snapped back.
“The juice is having less effect as the centuries go by. Whether it’s the age of the drugs or our worn-out DNA, we don’t know. I’m not supposed to know. I’ve been replaced a dozen times whenever I start remembering my father in his wheelchair. When that’s not blocked any longer, I’ll probably be joining you in the recycling tanks so my replacement can take charge.”
“What…what are you talking about?” Aaron tried resisting the metal grips of the security forces, but there was no use. One injected him with a red fluid, causing Aaron to buckle before the robot lifted him into its arms like a newborn.
“Poor Aaron. She must have been special. At least you didn’t remember your child these last two times. Clones don’t have that right or need those thoughts. It’s getting harder for me as I sometimes see my father and smell his rancorous odor from cancer during hospice. I should have been there for him. The guilt is growing in me, distracting my duties.”
Aaron slumped, unconscious, as the server bots took him deep into the ship’s cloning recycling operations.
“It’s a shame, Father, for that one to fail like that, in anger. Now I’ll have his duties until the next Aaron fills the duty roster tomorrow. Help me in your strength so that I may not refuse my duties this shift.”
