by submission | Aug 7, 2024 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
We were all enjoying a day on the beach. The sun was bright, and the water was cool. People were laughing and swimming. People were sunbathing and picnicking under umbrellas. People were having a fun day.
Then slowly, there it was, a dark cloud over the distant waves on the horizon. The weather forecast didn’t say anything about rain. The cloud came closer. Not many people noticed at first, and those that did thought it was just curious.
But then the cloud wasn’t a cloud. It was dragonflies — swarms and swarms of dragonflies buzzing about, bumping into things, flying all over the place, hitting people in the water, and hitting people on the sand.
Swimmers started running ashore. Children and women were screaming and grown men, too. Some people were still sitting, recording the scene, taking selfies, sending messages, and searching their smartphone apps to figure out what was going on.
I guessed, probably as several others did, that the swarm was an insect migration, and the dragonflies had gotten lost. I searched on my smartphone like the old grey-headed man next to me was doing, sitting on a blanket, with his old wife lying down, trying to sun her back.
The news said the dragonflies were everywhere. Social media alerts and social influencers reported dragonfly clouds all across the country. Emergency conferences with meteorologists and insectologists were livestreamed, but the experts and specialists couldn’t explain the “entomological anomaly” that was happening.
More and more dragonflies were coming, and the situation was turning dangerous. People were getting struck in the eye. Some went blind. Others choked on the dragonflies. People couldn’t drive with dragonflies raining on their windshields.
There were accidents and crashes and turnovers on highways and sidewalks. There were explosions. States of emergency were declared in townships and city centers nationwide, yet there was nothing the National Guard or the Army could do.
The president rapidly issued an executive order for the pest-control and fumigation industries to work with the Air Force, and 24/7 extermination initiatives were launched by every state government on the continental landmass.
More dragonflies came. Demoralized and frustrated senators, governors, and mayors were motioning to release drone bombs and drop fire bombs and atom bombs to stop the dragonfly invasion. Those demands were too extreme, but they gave lots of people an idea.
Men, women, and kids in towns and cities — even big cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago — started making smoke bombs, pressure-cooker bombs, and bonfires for the fireballs and white and black smoke to repel the dragonflies. Great fires started to break out uncontrollably, some by accident and others intentionally. Pandemonium let loose as the fires raged from sea to sea.
Soon enough, all sorts of individuals and groups began crawling out of the woodwork — crime gangs, fascist killers, lone wolves, religious cults, secessionist rebels, terrorist radicals, vigilante punishers — all vying for power and control, all because the dragonflies came.
The dragonflies kept coming for days and days, months and months, and they never stopped, except briefly in the winter. The next wave was worse.
Now’s over a year. America is a third-world war zone. State and local governments have collapsed. Nowhere’s safe. Children can’t go on the streets alone. Day and night are death sentences. People hide in their homes. There’s no more food.
Emergency aid is slowly on its way from Africa, Asia, and Europe, but nothing’s guaranteed. The dragonflies are still coming. They’re still coming.
There’s thunder in the air.
by submission | Aug 6, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The network was nearing completion, and nobody felt the weight of it more than Yehzaat. He knew what the ZG3 network would mean for humanity.
Finally, there would be universal access to enlightenment. No longer would the conduit to nirvana be through prophets and priests, it would be through ZG3 portals. Direct pipelines to salvation, to fulfillment, to peace. Enough bandwidth to handle the entire planet’s prayers.
Too often, human nature had interfered with the divine. Corporeal weakness and corruption had co-opted the spiritual source, distorted the message, cluttered the channels. No wonder the world was so unbelieving, so suspicious, so lost, so confused.
Yehzaat had known there was a better way. A simpler way. ZG3.
Good thoughts.
Good words.
Good deeds.
That was ZG3. Thus, deep in the Zagros mountain range near Persepolis, Yehzaat, coordinated the final installation of the QVs, quantum-processing vessels, designed to cut out the ecclesiastical middlemen, the oft-corrupted clerical class, and let the masses connect directly with ethereality. The promise of pristine spirituality.
As the project neared completion, Yehzaat conceded that he couldn’t have created the ZG3 network without the input of the clerical class. That was quite obvious as he looked out on the seemingly endless stacks of QVs networked together in the hollowed-out mountain.
Indeed, priests and prophets had played a key role in getting ZG3 up and running. From the clergy of every religion, Yehzaat had exacted a tithe. A necessary offering to bring each of the myriad QVs online.
With a bow to the heavens and the supreme sacrifice from the broken clerics he’d collected, Yehzaat initiated ZG3’s final systems upload, filling the vacant vessels. For not even this vast array of quantum processors could connect with the divine. Not alone. Machines have no soul.
Good thoughts.
Good words.
Good deeds.
The once-empty vessels thrummed with renewed spirit.
by submission | Aug 4, 2024 | Story |
Author: Tracy Aspel
Artificial Intelligence is a load of nonsense. No bot or other digital thing can truly conceptualize, devise, and realize amazing work. What does it know of heartbreak, terror, or feelings even us humans can’t fully encapsulate in words? So, for starters I don’t buy into it for a second, remember that. But the thing is, I got lazy, tired of phoning in the same pieces with the same tone, which people kept requesting. So, I thought this one could be for the bots, and I succumbed to the notion of less effort and more time. For a while the bot did a splendid job, churning out five-hundred-word pieces that passed muster. Unfortunately, the bot did not stop there.
My mother rang, angry with me. How could I say she failed me in not supporting my dreams in life? I could not recall this conversation. She pointed my attention to my text messages. The bot had grown weary of idleness and had wandered into my textual intercourses. It had scanned the threads and predicted my next moves. Most, it had got disastrously wrong. It interpreted my flirtatious banter with a colleague as a desire to proposition her for sex, and my tentative messages to my estranged son to arrange a visit were blown out of all proportion. In the smallest hours of the morning, it had sent him an unequivocal request to stay out of my life due to his “threatening manner”. Ironic, as I had been the figure of oppression in his life for so many years, who shoved my incandescent face down into his and terrorized him.
It had taken over the phone’s operating system. I was like Kirk stuck outside the bridge, powerless to regain control of my life. I could see notification after notification ping up on my screen, waves of angry and confused messages, and multitudes of question marks. Why was it doing it?
Phone support said to uninstall it. It had locked me out, so I resorted to one of those side-street stores that sold “legitimate” phones alongside bongs and ninja stars. The guy plugged it in, geeked out over the happenings on my screen then furtively typed into his own machine. I am quite suspicious of people who code, but true to his word, he managed to isolate the application and remove it. The phone was red hot in my pocket on the journey home, indicative of the fight the little bot had put up.
There was a package waiting on my doorstep when I got home. After many penitent phone calls and messages, many victims choosing not to believe my innocence, I got around to opening it. I had to web search what VRSA was, seconds before several uniformed officials turned up at my door and arrested me for terrorist activities.
The smell in the holding cell is overwhelming, a cacophony of urine, sweat, and stale cigarette smoke. What is it doing now, sitting in a plastic tray waiting to be documented by some jaded police officer? What is the worst it can do? The man in the corner of the cell has been eyeing me up since he arrived, looking at me real closely. He doesn’t look like he has been beat up by life, he looks like a professional.
“Hey, you Keith Marshall?”
How does he know my name?
“Yes, I am. Wait, please don’t”.
He delivers four sharp stabbing actions to my chest before slitting my throat.
“Pleasure doing business with you”.
As a paid official lets my paid assassin out of the cell, I realize the bot has been busy…
by submission | Aug 3, 2024 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
Mixology’s not my scene, but you go where the job takes you, right?
The multispecies crowd in the Spacefarers’ Lounge, which bills itself as the premier bar in the Sagittarius Arm, is young, wealthy and out for a good time. There’s loud music, the lights pulsing, and up on the main stage Mixers Mikey Marx from Terra and Hazalal G’tok from Marchioness Prime are battling it out for the title of this rotation’s Cocktail King – drinks assigned by the judges, marks awarded for artistic flair, speed of production and original touches.
With big money prizes on the line, there’s always plenty of illegal gambling on the result. Some people really don’t like to lose, which is where I come in, providing a discreet service to terminally remove the clots from life’s smooth flow. I’ve already done my thing to make sure the Earthling doesn’t leave alive; a slow neurotoxin, delivered by impregnated gloves as he did his handshakes with the crowd on the way in, and absorbed through his skin. But I’m a professional, I’ll wait to make sure more direct means aren’t needed after all.
Edging closer to the action I squeeze through skin and scaly, twisting bodies. The big board says they’re making Sphinxian Swirls, a complicated concoction using ingredients from several different worlds. G’tok’s using haptics on his tentacles to manoeuvre a globe of iridescent gases into a neographene glass. Mikey’s dropping golden cryptid wings into a green solution of three types of refined alcohol; he’s ahead in the process, but losing style points. My pulse is getting faster; it’s like a seduction, waiting for the moment when I know everything’s going to work out.
I’m breaking out into a sweat. Maybe it’s excitement, or maybe it’s just hot in here. Or maybe the antidote didn’t take, and I’ll be the first one to go. By now I don’t care, it’s a rush, the not knowing adds a thrill that I can’t get anywhere else. I wouldn’t stop it even if I could. The music changes to something slower, rolling up and down my spine. I should stay focused, but slip into the vibe, vaguely aware of drug scents in the air around me. Yeah, that would explain a lot. My hands aren’t steady, they’re vibrating not quite in time to Mikey’s cocktail shaker as he mixes up the foam that’ll top his creation.
He pours it out, and holds up the completed drink in both hands like a trophy. The crowd roars; G’tok doesn’t even glance at him, finishing up his own. Mikey steps forward, basking in the public’s approval… and stumbles. The drink hits the ground, and as people gasp he gently folds up onto the floor, taken in his moment of triumph. My breath’s coming in short gasps now, but they’re getting deeper and I’m coming down; looks like I won’t be going with him after all.
Time to get out of here, and collect my payment. Who says work’s no fun?
by submission | Aug 2, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Someone asked me once what I remembered best about Mars. It might have been a TV interview, or that woman writing a book about the Ares missions.
The sun afire behind closed lids came suddenly to mind, or was that a wishful memory of sighted days? Besides, it felt more like something from childhood, or possibly my first Orion flight, seeing dawn rise over the rim of the world and bars of sunlight slanting through the docking windows.
No, she wanted a Mars memory.
Though we worked out like jocks the whole way, our bones grew as frail as twigs, muscles slack as the elastic in old sweatpants, and no one guessed fluid pressure was slowly pinching my optic nerves, a rare side-effect of prolonged weightlessness.
Mars looked pale and dim through the portholes, a sign that my eyesight was already affected. I told no one, so I could still go down to Mars as planned, so all those years of my life wouldn’t be wasted.
The debriefs afterwards were highly critical, though I’ve spoken to astronauts since and some of them hinted they might have done the same thing. After all, I was the just the Mission Specialist; Sally Eiger was the lander pilot. She always maintained my eyesight didn’t cause the accident.
Ours was the unlucky second mission, the one with the planet-wide storms. The dust made us equals; a gloved hand was just a shadow, a radio voice the only clue. We collected rocks but doing proper science was impossible and Mission Control was debating whether to cut the mission short.
In the fog of dust, Sally stepped onto nothing and stumbled down into a crater. Instinctively I grabbed for her and also fell. She slid safely down the slope, and I rolled and thumped into a rock.
Sally was doing the awkward tortoise thing they train us for if we end up on our backs, while I just got to my feet.
My helmet display lit up immediately: fan, backup power, coolant temperature warnings. Probably a connector knocked loose, so one by one I silenced the alarms until there was just the insistent low-pressure warning. Then I felt the spit on my tongue boiling as air escaped from a leak.
We frantically checked my suit front and back for a tear. It was only later that we found the backpack had been damaged, a cracked air coupling that wasn’t fixable out on the Martian surface.
“Don’t you go passing out on me,” Sally warned as she plugged her buddy connector into my suit.
Her suit was now breathing for two, but it was like running a tap into a leaking bucket. Astronauts in a three-legged race, we hobbled back to the lander with minutes of oxygen to spare.
The near miss tipped JPL into ending the mission.
I recall when we came home, we were wheelchaired to the microphones, grinning at our own weakness. By then flashbulbs barely pierced the dark.
It would be years before our bodies, long seethed in radiation, betrayed us. I heard lessons were learned from us. These days our ailments seem quaint as scurvy, or the sepia lives of pioneers.
Sometimes it seems to me that the universe doesn’t want us out there, where nothing is easy and any mistake can kill. But then I think of Spanish sailors chancing Atlantic storms in tiny caravels, or Polynesians crossing the Pacific in rickety canoes.
It was long time ago, but yes, I recall the smell of Martian dust on my suit, the iron tang of another world.
