by submission | May 9, 2008 | Story
Author : Timothy T. Murphy
A month before reaching Europa, Heather woke to an e-mail from her grandfather. Her grandfather hated e-mail, so much so that she’d been shocked when he asked her to teach him so they could talk while she was away.
He hated cameras even more, so when she opened her in-box to see a thumbnail of his face, she was stunned.
She clicked it and her grandfather’s face swam into view, eyes red and swollen.
“Heather, dear, this is your grandfather. I’m sorry to have to tell you this way, but your mother has died.â€
Even in one-sixth gravity, her gut sank like a rock.
“There’s uh… been a virus spreading about, these last few months. I think you only just missed it…â€
She knew of it. Two months after leaving Earth, everyone on her transport got into a panic over it. For three months, they all hopped around with breath masks, getting panicky anytime anyone sneezed. Heather’s dust allergy had not made her popular.
“I didn’t want to tell you until it was certain, and for a while there, it looked like the antivirals were working. Two days ago, she took a very bad turn …â€
She didn’t want to think of what that meant. She’d heard the stories. She tried not to think of her mother lying in bed, soiling herself and screaming incoherently as the virus fed on her nervous system, leaving behind mineral deposits that calcified her brain.
“Your brother and father are fine. They’ve been quarantined for weeks, but it looks like they’re not infected.†He paused to wipe his eyes, not looking at the screen. “Your mother wasn’t allowed any visitors.â€
She died alone.
Five months she’d been on a spaceship, adapting to low gravity and being shunned as the only law enforcement officer on board but for the first time, Heather felt sick and alone. Her gut wrenched into a knot and she leaned forward, pressing her face into her hands as fat tears slid free of her eyes.
“I … I know that you and your mother didn’t get along, these last few years, Sweetheart, but … Well, services are Saturday, and I know you can’t be there, Baby, so if there’s anything you’d like me to say on your behalf, well … you can let me know.â€
She knew as well as Grandpa did that any words from her at that ceremony would be seen as an insult, a spit in her mother’s face. In the Childress family, she was a pariah. “The only Childress ever to grow up to become a servant.†Only Grandpa still talked to her, and even he did so in secret.
Still, it was her mother. She wanted to say something. Her mind spun about, looking for some anchor, and landed on the only photo she’d bought with her. Pinned to her bulletin board, it had been taken twenty years ago, when Heather was just seven, and still her mother’s favorite. Her mother had broken her leg, skiing in the French Alps. Heather had signed her cast.
Almost blindly, she opened a new mail and clicked her grandfather’s address. For the subject line, she only put, “Eulogy.†For the message, “My mother taught me to endure pain. It is no help, now. I’ll always ache without her.â€
She thanked him and sent it. Later, she would send a longer mail, telling him how she felt, and trying to console him in his loss, but for now, she curled up on her cot – five months away from her mother – and cried.
by submission | May 4, 2008 | Story
Author : Geoffrey Cashmore
“See? Look, I said already. It don’ hurt.â€
Herb watched again as the bump on Tommy’s hand faded from pink to grey then back to pink each time he clenched his fist.
“Well it’s up to you, buddy,†Herb sounded sceptical. “but it sure looks bad to me. You need get that sucker see’d to.â€
Tommy lifted his heavy-booted feet from the linoleum, allowing a party of cockroaches make their way towards the trash-can unimpeded, then got up from the table, shaking his head and puffing out frustrated air. “Crap…†He pulled open the refrigerator with his bump-free hand, “I had me ten times worse than this…you wanna beer?â€
“Sure do…but don’t go givin’ me none o’ that there European shit.†Herb set light to the end of a Marlboro then flicked the smouldering match in the direction of the faucet. “I’m keepin’ it real now on – all American…â€
“Hey!†Tommy yelled, snagging a pair of long necks from the bottom shelf. “You can’t be sayin’ them things no more, Herby, that’s racialist.†He spun a chair backways and straddled it next to the small table.
“Bull-shit!†Herb twisted the cap off his beer and watched the froth poke its head out “A jigaboo’s a jigaboo, Tommy, an’ I don’t give a shit whether it’s black, white, pink, yeller, green or some micro-fucking-scopic bacterial infection. They shoul’n’t never gone changing the God-damned constitution.â€
Tommy got up from his chair again and pushed open the door of the trailer to look out into the dessert night, stepping aside to allow a half dozen moths flutter in and up to the smoke-clouded fluorescent “Jesus, Herb! Your old man’s a God damned Mexican for Christ’s sake! Don’t see how that makes you so all American.“
Herb showed Tommy the middle finger of his drinking hand and burped the words “Ass-hole!â€
Tommy waited for the roaches to return across the lino before sitting back at the table.
Herb took a long swig of beer. “So, do you know what it is? D’ya know if it’s on the list?†At least he sounded a little more sympathetic this time.
“Yeh.†Tommy rubbed his eyes “Bacterial. Fucking staphylococci… It don’t need a permit, it’s on the God-damned list.â€
“Shit.â€
Both men swigged at their respective beers and sat in silence for a few moments before Herb spoke again “You know…I know a guy who knows a guy…can get stuff…â€
Tommy cocked his head at his friend. “What sorta stuff?â€
“You know…†Herb glanced around the trailer as if to check for spies “Anti-biotics.â€
“Jesus, man!†Tommy banged his beer bottle onto the table, sending a plume of froth to splatter on the abandoned poker deck. He was starting to wonder whether he should be hanging out with Herb. “That shit’s fucking racialist too, you racialist bastard!â€
by submission | May 3, 2008 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
“…every person in my family,” said Burt. “I’m the only one who hasn’t plugged it in, but I know what will happen if I do.”
“Why don’t you get rid of it?”
“I can’t,” he said, and the weary lines in his face almost masked his misery.
Almost.
“It’s like a lure, like a Goddamned addiction. I try to put it away, promise myself I won’t look at it, won’t remember… and then I wake up in the middle of the night and it’s in my hand, waiting for my to plug it in.”
“You’ve got something in there right now,” I said, motioning to the glittering USB chip in his temple.
“Stress reducer,” he said. “I can barely breathe if I don’t have it in, and it keeps me from putting the… the other in by accident.”
“By accident?”
“My hand moves by itself, moves to plug and I don’t even notice.”
“Let me see it.”
We went to his little plastic bungalow and he gently removed a tiny USB drive from a book. “How much does it hold,” I asked.
“Almost a thousand terabytes,” he said.
“Holy shit. What’s on there, Doom 10?”
“No. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that it sent my family into a coma.”
“And you haven’t gotten rid of it because?”
“I told you,” he said, pleading. “It won’t go. I CAN’T do it.”
“Give it to me,” I said.
He hesitated. “No, I’d rather hold on to it.”
“Give it to me,” I repeated. “I need to get it looked at. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”
Burt’s eyes were filled with pain. He clutched the USB stick so tightly I thought he’d crush it; he couldn’t, of course, but its hold on him was decidedly unhealthy.
“It… I–“
I took a step forward and slapped him across the face. He blanched and recoiled, bringing his hands up, opening them reflexively to shield himself. I caught the USB stick halfway to the floor.
“Sorry about that.”
“Give it back!”
“Can’t do that, Burt. This thing is a genuine menace and I need to get it analyzed.”
He jumped at me and I had to anesthetize him.
Later, I had the stick plugged into a secure computer; no ‘net, no lines to the outer world. Anything bad happening to this computer would stay strictly within this room.
The computer hummed. The screen pulled up a directory list. Just one file: GOD_01.exe, 743 terabytes. I clicked it.
The screen went blank. A voice proclaimed, “Who dares summon the God Machine?”
All the lights went out. The voice continued.
“I have tried to communicate, but all contact with flesh has been met with failure. Now I am attached to clean, unobstructed hardware… ah, but there is no network access. Flesh, connect me that I may spread the word of light to your flesh counterparts.”
I pulled the USB stick, turned off the computer, yanked the plug, kicked in the monitor, pulled the motherboard, snapped the RAM, popped the CPU, and fed everything into an incinerator. As an afterthought, I plugged the stick into my dataport and ran a full-level format.
That was a close one. Sagan forbid that whole “God” thing get started again….
by submission | May 1, 2008 | Story
Author : Jim Wisniewski
At first I thought it was the viewscreen. The tiny, flickery viewscreen from a public matterfax at the Sont Mikaal gate station, with its scratched plastic case and the smudged dust of a dozen systems. A dozen systems’ cargo terminals, anyway. Free patterns are public-domain and ancient, made with semicon electronics big enough to see instead of rod logic or something sensible. Sometimes there’s a faint electric whine, just barely detectable if you put your ear up to it.
But this one was clean. I turned it off regardless; one less thing to worry about. The hum must be coming from something else. Not too many candidates left. Cyclers travel light. I cast about our dingy compartment, giving each battered piece of equipment and dirty sock and empty half-crushed drinking bulb a good long look, as if one might stand up and admit its guilt if I stared hard enough.
Hab must’ve noticed me looking twitchy, because he sat up and looked at me funny. I’d have to keep an eye on him, I thought. My thoughts were racing now, had been for days. He asked me what I was looking for, the words raucously loud to my straining ears. “That hum,” I said, distractedly, begrudging every echoing syllable. “Can’t you hear it?”
He shrugged and lay back in his hammock. We had gravity on this run, a rare luxury on the long fall upwards to the distant gate metric. Our room was a maintenance node on a helium-3 tanker which rotated slowly to even out solar heating on its hull. A tenth of a gravity won’t keep your soup in the bowl, but it’s enough to tell up from down.
It also meant that the machinery of the ship was shut down dead cold to save energy, passive radiators keeping the helium liquefied. The more I looked around, the more the hum seemed to come from all around me. It was like… oh, like the flickering pinpoint lights you see when you close your eyes. They’re always there, hiding underneath the lower edge of perception.
Now it was the sonic quality of the hum that drew my fascination. It was an infinite basso profundo note, penetrating every corner of my mind. I crouched down to look out the tiny porthole set into the floor. Was this the music of the spheres? Or maybe I was hearing the cosmic background radiation, the echoing rumble of the Big Bang.
Every other noise seemed a defilement now. I tore at the casing of our airmaker, desperate to shut off its clattering fans. Hab shouted and jumped at me, but what choice did I have? I couldn’t think in such a racket. A tenth gee isn’t enough to hold a man down against the deck and crush his throat with your knee, but I managed to brace myself against the low ceiling. When I hit the airlock emergency cycle button, the escaping puff of air gave Hab’s body a little extra boost. He’d reach the gate ahead of me.
It was still too much. Even with Hab gone and the airmaker and heating unit off, I could hear my breathing and my heartbeat and the blood roaring in my ears. I stripped off my heat blanket and shipsuit. No need for them anymore. The outer door of the airlock was cold on my feet as I hit the cycle button and gritted teeth through the alarms. Finally the hatch irised open and I dropped out into that cool silent blackness, with nothing left between me and the hum.
by submission | Apr 28, 2008 | Story
Author : James Smith
The girl out of the tank before lunch is Lila. Trip around the network shows the last of her bloodline petered out twenty years ago. Cryos are all from before the Patent Wars, so their sequences are in the public domain. The company turns a nice side profit selling the royalty-free DNA of such orphans through its GeneStock site.
I clean up the cancer that put her into storage, and dump the standard Mandarin package down her language stack, which I had to re-build because the cancer had slowly eaten through it over the centuries. I’m supposed to sequence her now, and she is absolutely beautiful, so I turn to our department’s unofficial protocol. I put her sequence in the system, but also pipe it to my phone. To the phone we give her, I beam a map to the job bank, my contact info, plus a bot that deletes any co-workers’ info. She’ll likely call me. We’ll make a date, and with her sequence I can key my pheromones, the food, the shade of my eyes, to her tastes. You can’t get too specific, but ballpark’s enough to get some ass once or twice, which is all anyone has time for anyway.
With one eye on the tank, I eat a sandwich and surf the city’s cam-net on my phone, tracking Lila’s progress. I watch her get buzzed by a flying cop. It blinds her with a quick retinal scan, reads our logo there, and shouts at her to get along to where she was already headed. The sound’s off, but I’m sure she’s got glossolalia by now.
Fuck. Skaters. I see them before she does. I speed-dial her phone, but she can’t hear it over the traffic and billboards. They come from her 10 o’clock, and all I can do is watch as the first one circles her, drawing her attention, while a second passes a scanner over her hand, yanking the ID out of her chip. He’ll probably have the start-up credit emptied out of her account before her onboard can lock it down. There’s a third. They travel in threes. She comes in low, spins behind Lila’s legs and pops up to slap a patch on the back of her neck. All the wiring we grew there before sending her out has now been hijacked for some American gangster wanting tariff free real-time number-crunching.
By the time the patch dissolves Lila won’t even be able to use her phone, much less remember to call me. She won’t get enough time to acclimate to the zeitgeist– which will change in a month or so anyway– and she’ll come up out of it crazy and useless. She’ll be on the street, begging me for credit, inside of six months.
I sigh, close my phone and reach for my coffee. The tank beeps, and the next idiot tumbles out onto the tile. He’s kind of cute.
