by submission | Dec 20, 2008 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
30,000 feet above the ocean, my fighter jet went into a barrel roll. This was not optimal. I hung on the control stick for dear life, opened the flaps, and grunted as we decelerated hard.
In the air around me, flashing lights tailed and surrounded my plane. With a shriek of terror, my copilot hit the eject and blew out, leaving me with a malfunctioning plane and a big rushing hole in the canopy. Over the roar of the wind, I worked to stabilize the jet while the flashing lights moved in.
Nothing happened. I lowered to 20,000 feet. Some of the lights moved through the plane, through me. I felt nothing. A small chuckle escaped my lips as I contemplated my copilot. Shaky on the nerves; he’d key a transponder and the Coast Guard would pick him up.
Of more concern were the lights. Several of them were congregating in front of my plane. Others were still trailing me by several yards.
In front of me, the group of lights came together in a blast of white. My mirrored visor kept the lights dim, but I still squinted. There was now a big flashing light, keeping pace with me. I checked the radio. Still jammed. Ahead, I could see the coast. There was no landing strip nearby, but I could dry-land the fighter if necessary. I just needed a long enough stretch of relatively smooth ground. A low-traffic highway would be perfect.
The big flashing light suddenly came toward me and enveloped my plane. I could see nothing except the light, not flashing from the inside but bright and steady. My instruments said I was still about 15,000 feet above sea level.
A voice came from around. “You have been selected for our special offer, just 19.95 while supplies last! Just relax and take it easy, and you’ll receive three nights and two days in beautiful Las Vegas! As seen on TV!”
Shocked, I watched as my altimeter plunged towards the ground. I hit the eject, but there was no response. I braced for the impact–
And nothing happened. In awe and horror, I saw that my altimeter was registering 10,000 feet below sea level.
“Ah, shit,” I said. “All this time we’ve been looking to the sky–”
by submission | Dec 18, 2008 | Story
Author : Gavin Raine
It is with some consternation that I realize I am having difficulty in ordering my thoughts. Perhaps this is the onset of confusion one must expect, as the air supply becomes exhausted. I must make haste to write my account:
Only a few hours have passed since I was enjoying a bottle of port and a cigar with my good friend Dr Stanley. Stanley was pontificating on my work. “I know that I can’t match your grasp of mathematics, or the physical sciences,” he said, “but I still maintain that this whole notion of time travel is preposterous. If it were possible, then why haven’t we been visited by travellers from the future?”
“You well know that my theories will not allow travel backward in time,” said I. “The inevitability of paradox precludes any such journey. Time is an arrow that we all travel along at the rate defined by the clock, and my apparatus merely accelerates that progress.”
“So when can we see a demonstration?” said Stanley. “You completed your machine today, did you not?”
“Why not now?” said I, and I wobbled through into my laboratory, with the good doctor following closely.
I confess, the alcohol made me foolish and impetuous, but even in my most sober moments, I had not anticipated the fate that awaited me.
I placed myself in the saddle of the time machine and took the control rod in my hand. “Meet me here at exactly this time tomorrow night”, I exclaimed and, with a salute, I inched the rod forward.
There was a confusing blur of motion, after which I found myself looking at the stars. I was perplexed, but when I looked down to see the curve of the Earth, far below, my puzzlement turned to panic. It took some time before I calmed down enough to realize what had happened.
Throughout all of my theorizing and calculation, the one factor I had failed to take into account was the motion of the planets. While I travelled through the dimension of time, the Earth had continued onward in the other three physical dimensions. It had simply left me behind. Outside of my time dilation field, there was only the vacuum of space.
After a while, I advanced the control rod forward again, taking my machine a full year into the future. However, I could only watch in frustration as the Earth swung past, out of my reach. Perhaps I am drifting, or the solar system itself is moving, but it seems I have lost all hope of ever reaching home again.
My machine is moving through time at its maximum velocity now, and all I can do is hope that I intersect with some form of planetary surface, though I fear that the odds are against me. I am hundreds of years in the future already and it is becoming difficult to write in my notebook. All around me, the light sources are growing dimmer.
by submission | Dec 16, 2008 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala
It was raining, it was always raining. It fell thick and oily. I sought refuge in a Food-a-Mat. I dropped a couple of bucks into the slot beside the little plastic door. It had once been clear, but now was clouded with age. I pulled out what was purported to be an egg salad sandwich, sloppily wrapped in cellophane.
I took a bite, considered swallowing, thought better of it, and spat it out. I got a cup of coffee. Well, it was brown anyway, and decided I could swallow that. Neon signs flashed outside the window, failing to impart a festive air to the wet, filthy, garbage strewn streets.
“Honey, time to get up.” My wife shook me awake, “I already showered. I thought you might want a few extra minutes sleep. You tossed and turned all night.”
“I’ve been having those dreams again. They’re so depressing.”
“Maybe I can cheer you up.” She dropped the towel, her long golden hair spilled down her shoulders. She laid down beside me. I ran my hand up her stomach. “Enough of that,” she teased, “you have to get ready. Check in with the med techs at work, you probably just need to have your serotonin levels altered.”
“Yes Dear,” I said, in mock exasperation. I gave her a gentle slap on that cute little ass of hers, and made my way to the bathroom.
“What setting Sir?”
“My settings, number three. Thank you Alfred.” I said to the shower. Lean always chided me about my politeness when it came to dealing with the household machinery, especially naming them. I guess I’m too sentimental, but hey, they’re polite to me, what does it hurt if I reply in kind. Hell, maybe the Animystics who scrounge money at the docking port are right, maybe machines do have feelings. I’m no theologian.
The scalding shower pounded on my back. Leaan said it hurt, but I found it soothing. Wakes you up in a hurry that’s for certain.
“Off please Alfred.”
“Scent, Sir?”
“Synmusk, thank you,” I read somewhere that this scent was actually procured from slaughtered animals centuries ago. Revolting.
I stepped out, and folded the bathroom back into the wall. Leaan was just pulling out the kitchen.
“Kof, “she asked holding up a mug.
“No Sweetheart, tea for me.” I always preferred tea. It had a natural flavour, and the plants were far more efficient at producing oxygen. The older folk said the synkof tasted just like the real thing, but how would they know? The oldest among them was maybe three hundred, and the plague hit more than four hundred years ago.
She placed a cup of tea and a plate of macrobiotic eggs and toast in front of me, and kissed me on the cheek. “I have to run. Doris is being transferred to the Ionian settlement, and we’re having a going away party before the work period begins. Bye love.” She hopped in the tube and was gone. She liked tubing to work, but I’m old fashioned. I like to drive in the sunshine.
I shoved the dishes in the `cycler, and headed to my car. I put my baby in drive and gently lifted into the morning sky. The sun felt good on my face.
“Sir, sir,” a hand shook me roughly. “If you’re not eating, you have to leave.”
I pulled the lead from behind my ear, and pocketed my Sony Dream Man. Reality congealed around me. I walked out into the oily rain.
It was raining. It was always raining.
by submission | Dec 13, 2008 | Story
Author : Jonah Lensher
The tunnel is long and dark; the smell of mould and must penetrate the darkness, the steady drip of water the only way to measure time as it unravels, unnoticed, past the weeks, years, and decades. Nothing breathing lives down here, there is no scampering of rats or creeping of insects; the tunnel is a silent tomb, sleeping in its eternal night.
The tunnel, and others like it, used to be part of an underground system, until they were abandoned overnight, many years ago, and they fell silent, gradually filling up with water, or succumbing to the gradual pressure from the land above. But this one remains, a silent, dead testament to those who carved it out of the bedrock.
Above them, in the once great city, Nature has started her own war of reclamation against the steel and glass jungle; bushes and vines grow unchecked on every surface, while small jungles have sprung up on corners and in parks. But still, nothing moves, there are no animals to prowl the deserted streets, no birds to fly in the empty sky. The city, like the tunnel, is a silent tomb.
Suddenly down below, light pierces the tunnel, a lancing beam of light that is soon swallowed whole by the darkness. Soon more join the first, and the sound of footsteps and crunching gravel echo down the walls. Gradually a group comes into view, backlit by the light from an electric lantern as they make their way down the empty, dead miles of the tunnel. Invisible to the human ear, brief, unnecessarily whispered conversations carry out over the airwaves, their participants hushed by the dead silence around them and the haunting, cathedral like ambience of the tunnel.
“-We shouldn’t be here-” This comes from a figure in the back, it’s hunched figure and nervous hands betraying anxiety, even through the thick plastic of the suit. The replay comes from the figure leading the way, “-We’ll do our duty-” the scowl that is hidden by the polarized visor obvious in the tone of voice. Suddenly a third voice chimes in,
“-We’re here-” it says simply, and one of the figures points to a ladder rising up into the gloom.
One by one the suited figures climb the ladder, gingerly placing each glove and boot, any cut or rip in the suit could prove fatal. They emerge in another tunnel, this one lit from above by light filtering in through drains and open manholes. They climb another ladder, and exit onto a wide-open boulevard, staring at the desolate scene around them.
“-Just think-” One of the voices says, “-We’re the first people to set foot here for what? 80 years?” the other voices mumble in agreement, too dumbstruck to say anything more, until a second voice speaks up,
“-What did they used to call this place? Noo Yawk?”
by submission | Dec 11, 2008 | Story
Author : Eric L. Sofer
Dear Cousin Pynn,
I want to thank you for the birthday present you sent from Proxima Centauri. You obviously remembered my love for plants and botanicals, and it was such a thrill getting a genuine extra-solar gift.
The HydroFern was lovely, and I carefully followed the instructions you included. And per the growth schedule, it bloomed and grew magnificently. The blues and purples sparkle in the sunlight (filtered, as you noted.)
Unfortunately, my imbecile of a husband did NOT read the instructions. I was on Mars for a weekend, and he decided to take care of it for me, despite his lack of any skill with plants at all. You would have thought that he might have known better, as he was perfectly aware it was from a different star system – or, as he referred to it, “that damned alien tumbleweed.”
He placed it into direct, unfiltered sunlight, and watered it – nearly a liter of liquid. He neglected to add the growth inhibitor, and he didn’t wear gloves. You can imagine that when it began to grow uncontrolled, the first thing he thought of was to grab it and throw it away.
I was able to get him medical assistance after I got home the next evening. Once the parameds got the plant unwrapped from around him, and started detoxifying his bloodstream, his skin began changing back from that lavender (which, really, did his features credit). They were able to remove the pods sprouting from his arms and legs also, and I’m told that study of these has yielded some fascinating data.
Of course, he is now institutionalized at the Center for Botanical Rehabilitation, but I don’t mind the peace and quiet around the apartment now. It’s so nice when I visit him… he just sits there, nodding and staring, quiet and nonabusive. They say he might recover his speech someday, too. And he’s finally achieved what I knew he could always become.
So thank you again, and best wishes from cousin Jek and her husband, the blooming idiot.
