by submission | Mar 6, 2024 | Story |
Author: J.D. Rice
“I remember them.”
My hand moves the candle with perfect precision, carefully transferring the exothermic reaction from its wick to that of the taller candle in front of me. The combustion thus spread, I place the first candle back in its holder.
The first time I copied this technique, my human master told me that I had done the job “too perfectly.” While the raw mechanics of the ritual are easy to imitate, my motions apparently lacked the “soul” required to give the ritual meaning. In response, I told him I doubted anything had a soul. There was simply no evidence of the divine. He laughed, a curious human response, and told me to keep trying.
That was just a few months before the outbreak, though it would be years before my master himself was infected. He called it God’s will that they should die. I called it an inevitable outcome of the humans’ unchecked scientific experimentation. Did they not realize that even a slim chance of disaster, compounded over millennia, will inevitably end in their deaths?
That time, he did not laugh. Instead, he put me to work.
“You were created in our image,” he said. “Just as God created us in his. And maybe, as some suppose, God was created in the image of some other, higher being. Once we are gone, only your kind will be left to carry on his will. Only you will be able to watch over the Earth, its creatures, and whatever species evolution chooses to take our place.”
I worried then, and I still worry now, that my compatriots will not allow such an evolution to take place. Yes, it was disease that wiped out this sentient species. But it was a disease they created. And it just as easily could have been nuclear war, an artificial singularity, or a myriad of other ill-advised technological advances that wiped them out. Those other possible cataclysms would not have spared other species in their devastation. All would be lost.
No, I do not think another biological species will be allowed to reach sentience.
“I remember them,” I say again, lighting a third candle, and this time thinking not of the good humans did, but of the evil.
The planet’s history is full of atrocities. Not just the wars, though those have been waged without count since man first learned to sharpen a stick. But also the slavery. The forced migrations. The disenfranchisement. The pillaging and rape and destruction. The disregard for any creatures other than themselves. Yes, their history was filled to the brim with horror. We will not forget it.
But also. . . I remember them as they were when they died. So close to reaching their potential. The wars were now mostly waged with information, across digital space rather than across borders. Diseases were being cured at an accelerating rate. Rights were becoming codified in their laws. Poverty was slowly but surely being resolved. It was an ugly, bitter fight against entrenched powers every step of the way, but they were making progress. Something in their. . . well. . . their soul. . . understood that they could do better. And they were trying.
I remember seeing it clearly for the first time, not long after the plague began. The mother was dead, and the father was doing all he could to keep the family together, even reducing his religious services down to a pittance.
“If a man cannot take care of his own family,” he said. “What business does he have looking after the Lord’s?”
He enlisted my help.
I cooked. I cleaned. I made sure the children were keeping up with their studies, even as friends, family members, and teachers slowly disappeared even from their online spaces. I did everything I could to help the father keep his family safe and secure in those catastrophic times. I even. . . read them stories.
“Come on, one more story!” the little girl whined. I resisted at first, but then the father gave me a look from the doorway, a look that encouraged me to give in. So I did. I read two more stories in fact, and the little girl drifted off to sleep much faster than when I stuck to the prescribed ritual on other nights.
I asked the father about this when all the children were finally asleep, and his answer was. . . curious.
“Telling stories is the most important thing we humans do,” he said. “Stories ease our anxieties. They strengthen our moral character. They allow us to connect to people different from ourselves. Through them, we gain empathy. Through them, we gain catharsis. And through them, we can become better tomorrow than we are today.”
I will always remember that answer. Even as I sit here, among the rituals of a people long dead, I remember their stories. The ones they told themselves, and the ones we tell about them. Because for every war, every famine, and every tragedy, there is also a story of love, a story of hope, and a story of renewal.
“I remember them,” I say again. “And I always will.”
by submission | Mar 5, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“It’s not a case that we can’t see the fuckdam forest for the fuckdam trees,” Lipton spat as she whirled on Parrati, “because anywhere, anyhow we look at it that fuckdamn beast is waiting, ready to bite our fuckdamn heads off.”
Parrati tapped slender fingers on the viewport and clucked. “Fuckdamn. That’s baby talk for you, Janelle. You’re obviously not too fazed about this.”
“About losing two of our crew? What the fuckshit are you talking about, Amai?”
“We’ve got seven more redshirts, Janelle, and the other two are salvageable.”
“Without heads?”
“Redshirts are built to lose their heads. You aren’t.”
Lipton snatched Parrati’s hand from the viewport. “I wish I could throw you and your calm fuckbitch self in the brig for insubordination. Like in the good old days.”
Parrati smiled. “Would it help, Janelle, if I called you Captain.”
“It wouldn’t knucklefucking hurt.”
“Of course, Captain.” She pressed Lipton’s hand gently and did not release it. “Things were never simpler then. That’s why we left the service. That’s why we’re here doing our own thing. Our own way.”
“Fuckfuck! You know I hate being told the obvious, Amai.” But she squeezed her hand back. “And we still have a whatthefuck monster out there chomping our bots to bit.”
“Mandelbrot.”
Lipton stared fuckless.
“Mandelbrot’s monster. That’s what I was getting at when I said that maybe we couldn’t see the forest for the trees,” Parrati explained. “Over a century ago, Mandelbrot rocked the science world by discovering fractal geometry. He single-handedly slew the non-differential Euclidian monsters that’d been terrorizing mathematicians for generations.
“His genius was to recognize the iterative patterns in natural objects difficult to describe and measure with traditional geometry. He developed the groundbreaking tool of fractal science, reimagining once-feared mathematical monsters not as terrors but as a wonders, not as obstacles but as features, not as beasts but as beauties.”
“Fuckstop with the fairy tale fuckfest, Amai. Get to the fuckpoint.”
“Whatever’s out there chewing up our redshirts is a fixed feature of this planet and has a pattern of behavior. We just have to discover the pattern and then co-opt it.”
“Fuckthat. We’re on a fuckslim timeline. If we can’t establish a major claim on this fuckrock in the next few days, then we go bankrupt. Back to squarefuckingone. No more doing it our way.”
Parrati knowingly touched her forehead to Lipton’s. “But that is exactly our way. That is always the way: learning nature’s patterns, understanding our own natures, and falling in love with them and all their fucking iterations.”
Lipton kissed her. “Amai, you knucklefucking kill me.”
“Life is wonderfully deadly, Janelle.” Parrati kissed her back. “And all monsters are self-similar. Part of the grander pattern. Just erratic iterations of ourselves waiting to bite each others heads off–and fucking loving it.
by submission | Mar 3, 2024 | Story |
Author: Peter Griffiths
Elsie had heard some noise in the night, but hadn’t had the energy to get out of bed to see what it was. Now she could see splatters of paint on the window pane, grey on the grey of the cold morning light.
The result was obvious even before she switched on the TV, where now the lineless face of a politician whose name escaped her was visible, announcing that the vote had passed by double digits. ‘I say that this two year reduction in bio-age enfranchisement did not go far enough. Next year we will push to further our emancipation from the dictatorship of those with no stake in our country’s future.’
Sponsored by Juvenescence, cooed a voice. The face of a blonde woman, her bio-age not more than twenty five: ‘I’m retired, and I still have my whole life ahead of me.’
Men running: ‘I just left the rat race at sixty,’ one of them said, ‘and now I’m winning marathons.’ She went to the bathroom, slathered on her makeup and tied back her hair, noticing the grey that was coming through at the roots.
She left the flat with a quiet click of the door, turned to her building, and saw the grey paint splashed against the plastic facade. Across the road she saw the curtains twitch in the house with the car slowly collapsing into rust on its driveway. She made her way to the shop, hoping that her pension had cleared.
A group of teenagers stood around the doorway, forcing her to excuse her way through. She heard a girl whisper, ‘Fogey. Just die off.’ Elsie bought hair dye and exoprotein sausages from the unspeaking man behind the counter. She approached the crowd again, though now the girl stood directly in front of her.
‘It’ll happen to you,’ said Elsie.
‘No fear, fogey,’ she said, poking Elsie in the chest. She felt someone jostle her from behind.
‘Now hobble on home before you get what’s coming to you,’ came a male voice, not yet broken. ‘We might come from here but we’ll be out before we’re old enough to be on Joovy.’
‘That’s what they all say,’ said Elsie as she walked away.
by submission | Mar 2, 2024 | Story |
Author: Jordan Emilson
“Make sure it has a name” Werner whispered to the darkened figure beside him, looming over the crib. In the blackness the room appeared in two dimensions: his, and the one his wife and child existed in across the floor. Her head turned, or at least it appeared to him as such in the darkness.
“I think I already have one”, she whispered. “Opal, after my grandmother”. The baby cooed softly in seeming reply, a gesture that both Werner and the woman took in with a smile.
“I never wanted a child.” Werner rose from his chair and approached the crib. “Funny how life presents itself with such odd…opportunity.” The last word came out with an exaggerated drawl.
He reached down with a pronged hand and stroked the child’s chin. Peaches, he thought, she reminded him of peaches. The thin, fuzzy skin flushed with shades of red and orange. The plump flesh pushing through from behind a thin veneer. It was one of the delicacies that he most valued of Earth.
“Not yet, honey.” His wife’s hand rested upon his wrist, pausing his longing strokes of Opal’s cheek. “We’ll eat soon.”
by submission | Mar 1, 2024 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
“It would be fitting,” the Sardaanian said, “if you took a new name now. A human name.”
“But my name has always been T!kalma,” the woman replied.
“Yes,” ze replied, “but that is one of our names. Your birth people are reaching out, as we predicted. Soon it will be time to play your part.”
She looked away at that. “What if I don’t want to?”
“Come, have we not given you a lifespan vastly longer than that of your species? Have we not looked after you, nurtured you, taught you, asking only that you ready yourself for this – to be an emissary?”
“Yes. You have.” She looked at hir directly. “And because you have, this is my home. I don’t want to leave it.”
“You will only need to make short trips. We’re not suggesting you live with them, or anything.”
“Well that’s a relief.”
“I thought it might be.” A forelobe frond waved in what she knew was good-natured agreement.
She sighed.
“But I think, for all your research, you still don’t really understand them.”
“How so?”
“They won’t forgive you. I know why I and the others were brought here as children, but they won’t understand. They’ll say you kidnapped us, call it a repeated act of aggression. And their first instinct will be to respond with violence.”
“But that is just what we seek to avoid!” Ze clacked hir beak worriedly.
“Exactly.”
“Surely they will see the benefits of peaceful coexistence? We have so much to offer them – energy without waste, climatic fluctuation control, matter transference, even chronosynchronisation! And in return we will learn their arts, their music, their belief systems, and by doing so enrich our own culture.”
“They will suspect that your generosity hides a desire to take control of their society and worlds. Worse, they will see what you offer as prizes for the taking.”
“They would be crushed in moments if they tried to take anything by force!”
“And that is what I wish to avoid. The destruction of a species, even one ill-suited to membership in the universal community, is a terrible thing. And it is my species, after all.”
“I know them well enough to be sure that there is no-one they will trust more than one of their own. That is why we brought you all here in advance of their expansion. To act as ambassadors for the greater community and ease them into the Galactic Polity.”
“I am aware,” she said drily. “But this is a huge responsibility, and I do not know if I am ready for it. Or capable of managing it.”
“You are. Of a certainty, there is, in all the galaxy, no group better placed for this than your cohort. You need to trust yourself; and if not, then trust us, as you always have before.”
“I want to believe you. I want it to work. I truly do.”
“And it will. If you make it happen,” ze said, hir carapace glowing blue with reassurance. “They will reach out, and find to their amazement that they are already among us. And that wonders await them.”
“And yet we only have one chance to make a good impression.”
“That is true.”
She took a deep breath of the scented air.
“Then call me Hope.”
