by submission | Mar 29, 2009 | Story
Author : Claire Webber
“Excuse me, miss?” he said, raising a finger to get the stewardess’ attention.
“Yes, how can I help you?” she said with a smile. Her accent was faint, and a single curl poked out of her modest hijab printed with the airline’s logo.
“I’d like a copy of the New York Press.”
“$2.50, please.”
He reached under his seat to get his briefcase. Good lord, they just remolded these 787’s and there still wasn’t any leg room, he thought to himself.
Rifling through his wallet, he smiled apologetically. His TransAmerican Airlines credit card was hidden in there, somewhere.
The stewardess held out the swipe machine, polite smile still plastered on her face.
He found the red and blue plastic card and ran it through the slot. The machine printed a receipt. She handed it and a folded copy of the newspaper to him.
“Enjoy your flight,” she pleasantly said before continuing to push her cart down the cramped aisle.
“Yeah, if it ever takes off,” he muttered under his breath. The people sharing his row had opted out of coffee and were dozing already.
He skimmed over the front page. It was filled with the usual troubles in the Middle East, the latest factory worker strike, another drug cartel kidnapping the latest mayor of Phoenix, Arizona.
When he opened the paper to the second page, though, his face fell.
The picture may have been in black and white, but he could picture the bright green of the grass, the red of the provincial roofs, and the crisp blue of the Tuscan sky. There was too much sky.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa had finally collapsed.
He wasn’t surprised. The unstable subsoil, the earthquakes in the past few years, but still…
His mind drifted back to college, planning to backpack through Italy and France. He had postcards taped all around his dorm of all the monuments he wanted to see. The cathedral at Chartes, Montmarte, the Sistine Chapel, little snap shots of history etched into his naïve collegiate mind. But the postcard hanging above his bed was the Leaning Tower. He didn’t know why, never knew why, but that was where he always pictured himself when he daydreamed.
Internships, business school, marriage- there just was never enough time. He was always too busy.
A crackle on the intercom snapped him out of his reverie.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we apologize for your inconvenience. Free moving particles in the thermosphere are preventing our departure from Los Angeles. Please expect arrival time in New York to be pushed back to 9:20.”
He looked down at his watch.
8:15, it flashed on and off at him.
He was going to be late to work. This commute was killing him.
There just was never enough time.
by submission | Mar 28, 2009 | Story
Author : John Logan
The metal clasps dug into my arms as they strapped me to the chair. I spat on one of the guards and called into question the loyalty of his wife. He raised his hand to strike but the other guard stopped him with a simple movement of the eyes.
“Let me up,” I shouted. “Just one arm free, I’ll take you both on.”
The guard who wanted to hit me sneered and spoke, “Gonna beat me up, are ya? Just like you did to that little boy they found in a box?”
I lost it then. It sickens me to admit it, but I began to whimper. “Please…let me go. I’ll be good. I promise,” I said.
The guard laughed then I felt a tingling at the back of my neck as the other plugged me in.
#
A stark whiteness surrounded me, the soothing tones of the sea whispered in my ear. A holographic terminal appeared before me, glowing in strips of cyan. Then a female voice, unmistakably synthetic, spoke.
“Initiate sequence,” she said with little emotion. “Welcome Mr. Brown. Are you comfortable?”
I leant back and the terminal flipped with me. I heard a seagull. It cried in the distance as the waves came crashing against the shore. “Yes, I am. Thank you.”
She spoke again. Each word was annunciated deliberately as though allowing time to access a vocabulary database hidden away somewhere. “You have four of nine categories remaining.”
The sea continued to churn. “Continue,” I said.
“Please choose from; Strangulation, Shotgun, Train, Dismemberment.” The cyan lights on the terminal shifted above my head. Each selection displayed with a number.
I lifted a finger and hovered over number 9. Dismemberment. I always left that until last. I just didn’t have the courage to take it until it was the only option left.
“Train,” I said and tapped the terminal. The cyan light flashed for several heartbeats then a blanket of darkness fell over it.
#
My heart hammered as I ran along the platform. I glimpsed him there, in the shadows, a knife glinting in one hand and a wicked grin on his face. Air rushed down the tunnel and I heard the sound of an approaching shuttle train. We were alone. He leapt at me, the knife poised to cut my throat. I slashed at his face and felt my nails sink into and tear the flesh. He cried out in anger and pushed me towards the vibrating tracks. I slipped and fell from the platform, my ankle snapped from the impact but that initial pain was drowned out as the train hurtled into me, pulping my soft flesh and grinding my bones against the ground.
#
I gasped and spluttered, gulping at the air. It was a wonder there was any left for the guards.
“I’ve had enough,” I cried. “Don’t do it anymore.” Sweat dripped from my brow and stung my eyes. They removed the straps. The metal bands around my wrists, magnetized with 5 g modules, automatically clamped against the harness on my chest. Roughly, they lifted me to my feet and I shuffled forward. “I beg you. Don’t put me back in the chair.”
“Too late to plead,” growled the guard. “We’ll see you tomorrow, same time same place.”
I tried to think of some retort but couldn’t. The scars on my face itched. They always did after the Train.
by submission | Mar 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Ken McGrath
The car pulled to a stop overlooking the city.
“There it is kids. Dublin, where your old Dad grew up? What do you think?”
“It doesn’t look like the postcard Dad,” Amy said, looking up momentarily from her computer game and at least showing some sort of interest. Her sister just grunted in response, not even raising her head.
“Ah kids, c’mon, get out the car and have a look, why don’t you?” Their Dad sounded exasperated, yet happy. He wound down the window and leaned out, breathing in the fresh air. “It’s not everyday you get to come and see someplace like this.”
It was years since he’d been back here and a lot had changed. Amy paused her game and opened the backdoor, stepping out onto the thick, lush grass that grew on the roadside. Walking slowly so that the dew wet her shoes as much as possible she followed her Dad to the fence which overlooked the valley.
“It wasn’t always like this you know? It used to be a big, bustling city with traffic and people, noise and jobs and rubbish and everything else. Just like that picture postcard I gave you. Before the water rose, that was. Before the water came and reclaimed it all.” A hint of sadness crept into his voice as he spoke, the memories bubbling up through his mind.
Amy fumbled around in the front pocket of her dress and pulled out an old crumpled and dog-eared postcard. It showed an aerial view of the city she was looking at, not from the exact spot they were standing at, her and her Dad, but similar and it showed a city at night. Not one which was sleeping, but one which was very much alive. It was all lights glowing, like hundreds… no thousands, of stars, as if God himself had turned the night sky upside down for the photograph. ‘Behind each of those lights is a story,’ she remembered her Dad saying many, many nights when tucking her in to bed.
The girl tried to imagine the scene in front of her now, as it would have been when the photo was taken, but it was hard to do. The sea had risen, back before she was born, so her Dad had told her. The people who lived there had fled, not believing what was happening, but it didn’t matter if they believed in it or not because it was happening. The Earth was healing itself, ridding itself of the pestilence that had picked at it. Had hurt it for so long. He’d run to the north with their mother to escape the rising waves and they’d made a new life there. A simpler life was how he put it.
But he had still wanted to bring his daughters here today, to show them the past and what had once been. To show them the present and what was now.
Suddenly a voice tore through the perfect quiet stillness. “Daaad,” Amy’s sister called from the car, dragging out her words, which meant she wanted something. “C’mere.”
“Sure thing honey,” he shouted back. “You coming?” he asked Amy.
“I think I’ll stay here a few more minutes if that’s okay,” she said, then turned back towards the drowned city, holding up her postcard, as if comparing the two. “I like the view.”
by submission | Mar 26, 2009 | Story
Author : Matthew Forish
It was cold. Of course it was cold. Now though, I could feel the cold.
Feeling returned to my body, and a faint light was starting to filter in through my closed eyelids. I was waking up. Thoughts filled my mind. I was shivering, hungry, thirsty and quite stiff. A hum vibrated through the soft plastic beneath my bare flesh.
I opened my eyes, which took some time to adjust to the light. As my vision cleared, I felt a click and saw the transparent lid of my cryo-tube lifting upward. Warm air rushed in. I stopped shivering. I heard the sounds of movement all around me; I heard gruff voices not far away, coughs and groans, shuffling plastic.
Sitting up, I saw dozens of other men doing the same, looking as groggy as I felt. I heard one young man asking for a few more minutes of sleep. I laughed at that – we had slept for nearly ten years.
A door whooshed open at the far end of the chamber, and a uniformed man entered, a member of the command crew.
“Good morning gentlemen,” he said, “We’ve arrived at our destination, and we’re currently in orbit around the planet. You will find fresh clothing at your assigned refresher unit. Get dressed and proceed to the commissary for the Mandatory Replenishment Meal.”
A few men groaned at that statement – I guess that they had travelled via cryo-sleep before and already knew about the “Mandatory Replenishment Meal”. I took a quick sonic shower and donned my new utility coveralls, then discovered the reason for their complaint. The M.R.M. was rich in vitamins, calories and everything we needed after a long cryo-sleep, but was greatly lacking in flavor.
As I ate, I looked around the commissary. There were about three hundred of us, both men and women, which represented the first of ten waves of sleepers. Of course, the vast majority were young like me, barely out of our teens.
Young people make the best colonists. We don’t leave much behind, especially the single ones like myself. We have more years in us to help build up the colony’s infrastructure. We’re more likely to start families. Many hands make light work, as they say. There’s lots of work to do starting up a new colony.
I struck up a conversation with the pretty young woman seated across from me. She sounded as excited as I was about the opportunities ahead. It would be hard work, but it was better than living like sardines back on Old Earth or one of the orbital habs. Her enthusiastic chatter helped me endure the M.R.M.
As we were herded out of the commissary toward the shuttle bay, I walked beside the young woman, who had introduced herself as Oriana. I managed to secure a pair of seats for us at the front of the shuttle’s passenger cabin, near the forward viewport.
I felt a lurch as the shuttle left its bay. Startled, Oriana nervously reached out to take my hand. I smiled. The viewport filled with stars and the night-side of the planet below. We descended rapidly, the sleek shuttle cutting through the clouds. I could see the dim outlines of mountains speeding past far below.
The horizon took on a reddish hue, slowly brightening into a full sunrise. I gazed in awe at the unspoiled beauty of the woodlands revealed in the growing light. I looked over at Oriana and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. I knew the future – our future – was as bright as this new dawn.
by submission | Mar 24, 2009 | Story
Author : Helstrom
They call her “The Flying Dutchman”. Don’t ask me what a Dutchman is, or whether or not it is supposed to fly – it’s apparently taken from one of old Earth’s folk tales. It doesn’t really matter, but I suppose every ship needs a name.
The Flying Dutchman goes by many different names on many different lanes, but all deep spacers have heard the stories. Go to any skydock’s saloon and you can hear them, provided you pay the beer of course – hah! Deep spacers are not generally a superstitious lot, but that’s never really stopped a ghost story, now, has it.
I knew the stories too, of course, and gave them about as much credibility as one might expect. Until I found she was real. She attacked my ship on the Tartars lane and made short work of us. When I came to, I was aboard the Dutchman, alone, afraid, and more than a little confused.
The first days I spent wandering around the ship – she’s quite huge, you know. I went looking for answers, but there was no crew to talk to or terminals to query. I looked for water, too, and food, until I found out that I was neither hungry nor thirsty. Strange feeling, that.
Eventually I found my way to the command deck. Took a bit of doing to get in there but I managed. Like everything else on the Dutchman, it was huge, oppressive, and completely abandoned. But I did find a library and therein, finally, some answers.
I was not the first of the Dutchman’s prey, you see. Those who were here before me left their traces – journals, logs, carvings on the bulkheads. There was a lot of it. Some had been very prolific writers indeed, others just scribbled away their boredom and, as time went by, their madness. Some had destroyed many of the works of their predecessors, while others had meticulously cataloged everything they found. There was a deck plan of the Dutchman carved into the floor, with compartments crossed off in sequence, and the underlining statement read: “Looked everywhere. Nothing here but the echoes.”
It became apparent to me that the Dutchman had been about her grim work for a long time, millennia at least, maybe even since before our ancestors first set foot on interstellar soils, though I wouldn’t know what she would have done without us to hunt. Because that is all she does, really. She hunts.
Not very prolifically, mind you, and not at her own discretion either. The Dutchman is a ship and, like any ship, she needs a captain. But the captain she traps only serves one purpose, and that is, to find a successor. How do I know? Because there’s nothing else to do. It is all the Dutchman will allow – find a ship, destroy it, and bring aboard a new captain.
Why? Hah! Now there is the big question, isn’t it? I haven’t got a clue, and believe me, I’ve been all over this ship looking for it. The library’s not much help either. Speculation plucked out of thin air, journals of failed attempts to make sense of the whole thing. No, I’m afraid I don’t know for which ancient transgression the Dutchman collects her toll, or to the laughter of which cruel god she navigates. All I can tell you is that the Dutchman’s captain can not rest until he finds a successor.
And that’s where you come in.
