by submission | May 31, 2008 | Story
Author : Viktor Kuprin
Jump drive, hyper drive, quantum drive, there were many names for the exotic-vacuum engine that propelled our ships to the stars. In the CIS Space Force, we called it the Super-Space Drive, the S-Drive.
Thirty of us lined up outside the training ship’s control-simulator bay, everyone wearing light suits, helmets clipped to our belts. Only a few in our squad had experienced a jump. The rest of us were simultaneously excited and terrified. A jump can affect people in different ways, not all of them pleasant. Anyone who couldn’t take it would be immediately washed out of the astrogator program and reassigned to a non-flying career track.
Someone tugged at my suit’s collar ring. It was Sturms, the cocky, muscle-bound creep who always harassed me when I pulled dorm-guard duty.
“Hey, Kreminov, loan me 500 rubles,” he demanded.
“Nichevo. Forget it, Sturms. You got paid last week just like me.”
He snarled and grabbed my collar ring, pulling me face-to-face to him. “You lousy lickspittle! I’ll be looking for you later!”
Squad leader Medvedkov shoved Sturms away from me. “Belay that or you’ll answer to me!”
He knew better than to cross Medvedkov, but Sturms had to get the last word: “I can’t wait to see you two during jump. You’ll be pissing in your light suits. You’ll scrape paint off junk ships while I’m flying starcruisers!”
Chimes sounded, and the training bay hatch opened. We marched to our stations, each console fitted with a dark-turquoise astrogator-control simulator that we would use to mimic the jump’s setup and execution. I read the destination preset: Epsilon Eridani; Distance: 10.5 light years. I plugged my suit into the flight seat, sealed my helmet, and started my pre-jump checklist. The vacuum alarm blared as the bay’s atmosphere started venting away. No military ship maneuvers when pressurized. Neither did our training ship.
In nine minutes I had my plot. I entered the solution and keyed my console. A green-light reply returned from the instructor. Yes! I was one of the first to finish.
I could feel the ship’s rumbling vibrations as we accelerated. The initial energy that triggers a jump comes from the conventional engines running up at full power, and the greater the acceleration, the less veer during transition.
Then I felt the giddy exhilaration I’d heard about. I inhaled deeply and the walls of the training bay contracted and expanded with my breath!
I began to see the electro-photonic glow around my body, around the other cadets. Next to me, Medvedkov held out his hand. I saw Kirlian sparks leap between our fingertips when I touched him. We laughed hysterically.
On the bay’s huge televisor, the stars began turning blue. Then came the long, terrifying shot-out-of-a-cannon rush of final transition. The screen showed a black void dotted with slowly tumbling colored orbs.
I felt something slam into the deck behind me. It was Sturms, curled up like a hedgehog, his eyes wide, crazy with terror.
Medvedkov keyed his helmet-mike: “Welcome to S-Space.”
by submission | May 28, 2008 | Story
Author : B. Zedan
The woman on watch stood barefoot, a coil of rope slung ’round her waist. The belt at her hips carried a sheathed hunting knife, the handle carved by her mother. Below the knife, as if in magnification, swung a scarred and keen machete. In perfect balance opposite was a rotary tool, the different bits and attachments in a leather and plastic pouch beside.
Sighing, but quietly, the woman traced the outline of her mobile in its thigh holster, but didn’t remove it. The rules of watch were firm, no distractions, even if you were going crazy with curiosity about the latest translation.
She curled her toes on the crumbling concrete lip of the watchtower and pondered. Bamboo and pines dappled the sun on her hair, shaded the portable monitor screen so the live feeds played out their acts in crisp reality. The archae-translators were probably done running their finds past the council. No reason to get the village excited about what was in the crates if it turned out to be fully useless, like the cameras that didn’t use film. The ancient alchemy of developers and negatives they could make from translated literature. The cameras from just before the Fall sent the images on their own through the air to village consoles. But those earlier relics needed some sort of—thing to be both film and developer, one more incomprehensible lost piece of the ivy and blackberry enshrined broken places the villages had built their foundations on.
Maybe this crate would hold something wonderful, like the atomic batteries that powered their machines and tools. Finds like that didn’t happen often, but—
Movement in the ferns below broke her reverie. The woman brought up her spyglass in an oiled movement, searching for the source. A flicker of tails and ears caught her eye, then two deer stepped into view. Their edges blurred in the hand-ground lenses as they moved velvet jaws, grazing.
She relaxed. It wasn’t the season for bears, but the creatures seemed to like the villages and they were a growing threat.
Soft footsteps rang up the tower’s stairs. Without a word the woman handed the spyglass to her relief and started down, almost skipping with excitement. A voice echoed after her,
“You won’t believe what they found!”
by submission | May 27, 2008 | Story
Author : Peter Carenza
It was a special day; not merely because Bobby opened his eyes to an absolutely picture-perfect sunny surprise straight out of a travel brochure, but because he had been waiting for today for a long, long time. Rubbing the sleepy crust from his eyes, he swung his feet out of bed and ran nose first into a wall of sensory pleasure – the scent of still-sizzling bacon and eggs, browning toast, and Lord knows what else his parents might have conjured before dawn’s eruption.
Taking that as his cue, he jumped up, grabbed a clean shirt, and bounced out the bedroom door, practically fllinging himself down the stairs.
“Good morning, Bobby!” exclaimed Mom, always the first to spot things.
Dad looked up from his newspaper and grinned. Winking knowingly, he motioned to the hot food simmering on the stove, he said, “Help yourself, son. It’s your day! We’re gonna spend some quality time together!”
And of all days, this one was shaping up to be the most perfect.
It was planned for months, a chance for Bobby and his parents to bond, to spend some quality time together. For once, Bobby was asked what he would like to do, where he would like to go… it was as selfless a gift as he could have ever received, and though it happened only once every six months or so, it made him feel valuable, loved.
After a most scrumptious breakfast, one during which Bobby thoroughly stuffed himself, he scampered upstairs to get ready to go. He was pleasantly surprised, though it was typical of his Mom on special days like this, to find a brand new set of clothes beside his bed. Ecstatic, he slipped into his new clothes, stormed down the stairs just as his parents were ready to walk out the door — and so the day began.
This frame in Bobby’s scrapbook, this 24-hour spectacular, was better than any previous special days in his life. It was as if all the most pleasurable activities in a lifetime were crammed into a compressed capsule of time and space, and Bobby existed at its very center. Amusement parks… miniature golf… sumptuous meals…. Yet, like the persistent lap of the ocean waves against the glistening beach sand, all things in time and space ebbed and flowed. And like the deceptively sturdy-looking sand castle Bobby built that day at low tide, all things must soon pass. As the sun settled lower against the infinite horizon, the waves grew closer and closer to the shore and etched larger and larger pieces from the structure, until it finally collapsed.
Bobby heard his parents calling for him. He looked out at the ocean wistfully, silently sobbing under the gulls’ screeches, then turned and solemnly joined his mom on the way back to the car, his head resting against her hip, her hands stroking his sandy hair.
He was weeping uncontrollably by the time he was inside the car, his face red and swollen. He knew what was coming… the consolation, the pleading, before the syringe was pulled from the purse bearing the CDS logo… Cryogenic Disposition Services.
“Why? Why can’t you just find some other jobs or something?”
“Son, we’ve been through this before. We’re working to give you the life you never had, so that someday you and your kids won’t have to go through this.”
Tears blurring his vision, he helplessly watched as they pulled out the needle and injected him.
As he slowly faded into blackness, he wondered what special kind of life awaited him in return for this.
Quality time, indeed.
by submission | May 25, 2008 | Story
Author : Grant Wamack
Coins, they’re thrown into the small pile that sits in front of a heap of dirty rags. The rags shift and the metal underneath shines in the dull afternoon light. It rises to its feet, specks of dirt fall to the ground, gears groan and its body creaks.
It slowly walks to the small shop down the road, with each step its body jerks awkwardly. When the android clerk turns, he recognizes the droid even though it’s covered in filthy rags. It’s a TX-1000. Outdated, pulled from the market ten years ago. They were “switched off,” melted down into scrap metal. Some escaped, most didn’t. The ones that did however were hunted down. This one must have slipped through the cracks. The clerk could hear the joints creak, as the rags approach the counter. They were drought dry, in dire need of oil.
Two wires taste each others lips.
Once….
Twice….
The third time ignites a spark. Each word a small explosion. “Oil, please.”
The clerk looks underneath the counter, grabs the bottle and sets it on top. “30 units sir.”
30 units are thrown on the counter. The clerk takes the units and slips them into the currency slot. “Would you like this in a bag?”
No more explosions, the words crackle, “Yes, thank you.” The rags walk out the shop, clutching the bag in its hand.
It wasn’t hard to imagine where the outdated droid would go. Pixels form on the screen of the clerk’s imago-screen. In the image, a pile of rags slump down against a brick wall. Red rocks surround the rags. They could have been rusted parts or bits of brick or both. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the bottle. The rags guzzle the black oil; till it trickles out the corner of its mouth.
A girl passes by and mistakes the oil for a tear. She bends down and wipes the oil away with her shirt. Her eyes are wide with liquid innocence. “All better.” Then she skips away. And for the first and last time, the rags taste humanity.
by submission | May 24, 2008 | Story
Author : William Tracy
Call me Sarah. That was my name, in one of my lives.
I have the memories of many lives in me, you know. Male and female, old and young, short and tall, light and dark, human and not human. Presidents and ditch diggers, starship captains and desk jockeys.
I know I don’t look the part. A glittering biocomputer smaller than your fist, studded with tiny vernier thrusters, suspended on a web of particle collectors stretching ten meters across, drifting through the void around a fading star.
Buissard ramjets used to ply this space, you know. Vast electromagnetic fields funneled the interstellar hydrogen into the gaping maw of the furnaces driving the fusion engines.
That was eons ago. The ramjets are gone now. So is the hydrogen. Now I’m alone.
The universe is dying. As the universe expanded, the stars drifted apart until the heavens were emptied of their glittering grains of light. Heat death is setting in as the stars run out of fuel, and everything settles to the same temperature. I now cling to a failing sun, scraping what energy I can from its death throes.
It is a depressing way for everything to end.
But I remember why I am here. I am here to remember. I remember what no one else is left to remember. I remember hopes and dreams, joys and sorrows. I remember failures and triumphs, love and hate.
Humanity will not have lived in vain as long as someone is left to remember. I will live as long as I can, so I can remember. This is my task.
I will remember you.
