by submission | Mar 8, 2008 | Story
Author : V.L.Ilian
“Linda Kroen! 155013! Report for duty”
Linda didn’t exactly know why the crystalline voice of the ship AI was blaring her name but she wasn’t going to answer. It’s her day off.
“Linda Kroen! It is estimated you only have 135 minutes until you expire. Report for duty!”
The impulses signaling the importance of the message and the impulse signaling that her mouth is full of blood were simultaneously received by Linda’s brain.
Stumbling out of bed she fell on the cold metal floor. She had sprayed blood all over while gasping for air but the room still looked sterile.
“WHAT? Why?”
Her radiation meter tattoo was black. The little patch of skin almost looked burned with a laser.
“You’ve been exposed to lethal doses of radiation. You must make your way to the auxiliary bridge”
“WHY? Where’s the captain?”
“You are acting captain”
“I’m a level 2 tech!”
“Linda Kroen 155013: promoted to acting field captain by automated succession order on 27 Feb ‘47”
“That’s today. Wher…” As she stood up her lungs filled and she coughed another spray of blood on the wall.
“Ok… Situation report.”
“Aces..Ac…Ac” The voice of the AI reverbed as if caught in an infinite loop. “Information limited. Data corruption. Sensor data shows extreme radiation spike approximately 2 hours ago. Uncorrupted log information begins 27 minutes ago as follows:
– Cpt. Musa deceased, replacement not mentioned
– automated succession order comes into effect. Linda Kroen 155013 selected.
– Cpt. Kroen’s lifesigns fluctuating. Life expectancy: 14 minutes. Medical staff not available. Stimulants administered through ventilation. Massive internal bleeding probable. New life expectancy: 160 minutes
– assessment of ship status begins
Current situation:
– large sections of hull missing”
“You pumped me full of damn stims to wake me up? That’s why I’m bleeding from every pore.”
“Your condition was critical captain”
“This doesn’t make sense… the succession order goes by rank there are hundreds of people above me and… everybody’s dead.”
“Linda Kroen 155013 is the highest ranking living crewmember. You must proceed to the auxiliary bridge to enable the main cannon.”
The new captain had already stepped out of the room leaving bloody footprints on the cold floor. Her heart was pounding, her eyes were sore but she was unfazed. Bodies littered the corridors.
“Why am I still alive?”
“You requested sick leave. That automatically creates a septic field in your quarters. Combined with your documented higher resistance to radiation it was enough to lower your exposure to the event. Next corridor, enter the lift.”
As Linda neared the lift its vents hissed open and flooded her senses with an electric feeling. The lift whirred down.
“Who…?”
“Data corrupted”
The doors opened and a body fell. The sound of his head hitting the metal floor seemed interesting to Linda. Vents hissed again in the corridor making her feel better.
Skipping her way to the next lift she started thinking how cool it will be to tell her friends how fast she made captain. Rubbing the black tattoo on her arm and seeing everyone else’s was the same she spit out some blood.
The lift took her directly to auxiliary command. As soon as the doors opened she jumped into the swivel chair of the captain. Something snapped at landing but Linda was enjoying too much to notice.
“Take a note! Effective tomorrow everybody can customize his or her tattoo.”
“Acknowledged. Please authorize AI control of main canon.”
“Who are we firing at again?”
“Data corrupted”
Linda logged into the console and switched all control options to AI.
“…Good.”
The vents hissed loudly letting in welcomed euphoria. Captain Linda Kroen reclined, twirling, with a smirk on her face, as tears of blood ran from her eyes.
“Stims are great…”
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by submission | Mar 5, 2008 | Story
Author : Jacinta A. Meyers
A man lay limp in my arms. The body of a little boy was sprawled a few feet away from us, his young face motionless against the blood-stained earth.
“I will stay with you through this.” I said, stroking the man’s face very gently. “I won’t leave you.”
He coughed a little, grit his teeth.
This was my least favorite part. I had only seen an unmaking twice before this. It’s different from death. In an unmaking, the body disintegrates before your very eyes. The DNA in every cell actually unwinds, each reverting to a more primitive state until they cannot hold a recognizable form, cannot continue to function as a complex whole organism. It’s a relatively quick process compared to the amount of time it takes a human being to develop over the course of a lifetime. The rate of change is comparable to the development of a fetus, only in reverse. I watched the wrinkles fading from his face.Very soon this man would be nothing more than a puddle of inert, inorganic matter.
His eyes roved slowly over to the boy still lying in the grass. “Why?” He managed.
“Because I had to.”
He sputtered a bit. “I only came back to tell myself I had a future to be hopeful for. I can remember being so… so despondent then…”
“I had to kill you. That is our job. The past must be protected at all costs.” I said it as I had been trained to. “Through it, we are protecting our future.” He would understand, if he still could.
He was shrinking in my arms. Growing lighter, growing limper. A small trail of saliva ran down his chin. He shuddered. But something in his eyes hardened. “You…are wrong. There is… no way you can be sure.” He was fighting it. “You… may have damaged the future worse… than I might have. Worse… than you could ever know.”
But I was smiling. I held his diminishing body close. “There will still be a future for us to be hopeful for.” I said. “Shhh, it will be over soon.”
“You… you broke the rules… you and your kind…”
“Perhaps we did.” I whispered gently to what was left of his ear. “But you broke them first.”
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by submission | Mar 2, 2008 | Story
Author : Christopher Kueffner
“I thought you didn’t smoke,†she asked.
“I did, and I quit,†he replied through a bluish cloud, “but it seems an appropriate time to pick up the habit again.â€
“Really,†she drew the word out as if stretching it like taffy. “That could very well be the most ridiculous statement I’ve ever heard from you, and that’s saying something.†She got out of the bed and walked over to the kitchenette. She filled a glass with water and drank it, unworried by her nakedness.
The man, also naked, took another drag from his cigarette. “A cigarette after sex is nice.†He contemplated the little pillar of ash at its end. “I’ve found something.â€
“Oh?†She absently picked a feather from the bed off of her right breast.
“Yup.â€
“What?â€
“An asteroid.â€
“Oh, come on,†she sniffed. “Ever since that asteroid missed us a couple of years ago, everybody’s talking about asteroids.†She sat down on the edge of the bed and handed him the glass. He sipped, looked fondly at her body and handed the glass back to her.
“Well, I found one, nevertheless.†He stubbed out the cigarette in a saucer on the nightstand. He leaned over and kissed her side where the waistband of pants would normally be. He kissed his way up her ribcage.
“What was it called, Aprophis or something?†she asked.
“Apophis was the one that just barely missed us in 2029,†he stopped kissing her body and lay back. “This one is not Apophis; it’s a different one.â€
“What, is it going to hit us or something?â€
“Well, yes.†He drew another cigarette out of the pack.
“You’re kidding, right?â€
“I’m sorry, but I’m not.†He lit the cigarette and dragged deeply on it.
She put the water glass on the nightstand and rested her hand on his chest. “What will it do? They said that last one, Aprophis, I mean Apophis, would have wiped out a big city.â€
“Yes, but life on Earth would have continued. This one gives every appearance of being bigger, denser and faster.â€
“I thought they were looking out for these things,†she furrowed her brow, “I thought they had all these asteroids charted out.â€
“There’s an awful lot of space out there, and an awful lot of stuff flying around. The prevailing theory around the office is that this is a charted asteroid, but it got close enough to another one for its orbit to change.â€
“Around the office!†she blurted incredulously, “You mean other people know about this?â€
“Yes. We’ve all checked and rechecked the data. The Director has been informed, too.â€
“So the government knows, too,†she got up and grabbed the robe from its hook on the bathroom door. She wrapped it around her body and held it close as if it were woven of asteroid-proof cotton. She looked at him again. “You’re not bullshitting me, are you?†Her tone had acquired a bewildered, accusatory edge.
“No,†he shook his head and sat up.
“Well, what are they doing about it?â€
“I’m not sure anything can be done. There wouldn’t be much point, other than to cause mass hysteria.â€
“You mean they can’t shove it out of the way or dig some shelters underground?†She paced and gestured sharply with her hands.
“Not in six hours, no.†He put out the cigarette. “Would you take that robe off and come here?â€
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by submission | Mar 1, 2008 | Story
Author : Lucas Atkinson
In my dream I am wandering through Babylon. Prostitutes linger on every street, thieves wait at every corner. Barefoot children look at me as I pass; shopkeepers watch me too, from shadowed doorways, behind flags and tables piled with weapons and fruit. In the distance buildings rise – the courts, full of judges with grins and thick expensive robes; their eyes narrow as they smile, the markets with a subtle finger cheating every scale , the temples with their rows and rows of idols shaped like writhing snakes or women with many breasts or birds with teeth and human hands. The Babylon of my dream is also the New York of my childhood – the pickpockets dressed in rags mingle with gangs implanted with flashing fluorescent tattoos. As I pass them, their smiles are them same.
Every night, I wander through those streets again. On the ship, the narrow corridors seem lonely, and I am afraid the next turn will lead me there, to that place, and the scrubbed metal will give way to the mud, the brick, the littered streets. Sometimes I think I can smell the city – perhaps, behind the sweat of the crew and the scent of engine oil, might that be the faintest hint of the city’s open sewer? Of sun-baked stone? Of sour incense?
I can see it in the eyes of the crew as well. They are dreaming of the city too. They too are afraid that they will turn a corner and find themselves in the market, or one of the many shadowed alleys. When we eat meals together, the crew does not converse. The city is our other cargo, an unwanted twin to the one in our hull.
When we first met them they only farmed. They could not transport food more than a few miles; none of their villages numbered more than a few hundred. When we gave them what we knew – techniques, know-how, theory – their villages moved, changed, conglomerated. The largest was not far from where the ship landed. “We call the city Babylon,” they tell me in fluting voices. They pause. They are smart; they can read human faces already. “Is this a name you know?”
In the dream, behind the markets and the temples, there is a great structure. It was a tower once; now it is collapsed. Its form against the blue sky is ragged, like a wound.
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by submission | Feb 29, 2008 | Story
Author : Scott E Meyer
“Some of what you are about to read you will think is science fiction, ” said the front of the dust jacket, “But I assure you, dear reader, that it is not. It is based on sound scientific principles with which we are all familiar.” Edgar skipped on. The book looked dry, windy and boring, but Edgar liked dry, windy and boring. He amused himself, picking out the long words to see if he could pronounce them, words like “supersymmetry,” “quantum fluctuations,” and “unified field theory.” For a minute, he allowed himself to be absorbed by what this Dr. Ledbetter had to say. He imagined the world as Ledbetter imagined, a world of free energy, travel to the stars, transmutation of matter and all the dreams he had ever had coming true.
Edgar looked up, curious as to which section of the bookstore he had stumbled into. To the left were Bigfoot Sightings, UFO’s, and the Loch Ness Monster. To the right were alien abductions and government conspiricies. Not an auspicious place to find the missing secrets of the universe. He flipped to the back of the dust jacket, the author’s biography. It seems this Dr. Ledbetter had been laughed off stages and out of seminars for years before finally vanishing only a few years ago. He had only published one book, the very book Edgar held in his hands.
Edgar frowned. As much as he wanted to believe, wanted to be caught in the mystery and play with the secrets Ledbetter claimed to reveal, he couldn’t bring himself to take the man seriously when the entire scientific community had already laughed him into obscurity. He placed the book back on the shelf, determined to find something of value in this bookstore.
The secrets of the universe would have to wait for another generation.
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