Spring

by submission | Sep 22, 2007 | Story

Author : TJMoore

The path to the discovery of intelligent non-human life was, for me, a life’s journey. SETI had invested billions in high tech telescopes and antenna arrays, thousands of personnel hours and miles of red tape, without a single positive result. I had done it at the cost of just over five hundred thousand dollars, twenty five years of my own life, my own sweat and tears, my family, my friends, my reputation and my respect. The last two or possibly three items I have since recovered, depending on your definition of “friends”.

It all started with the artifact. I had found an artifact that I believed to be part of a larger artifact that was lost or discarded by prehistoric visitors from another world and time. It ended with my excavation of a site that I had purchased with the proceeds from the sale of my house, my land, my entire estate and personal wealth. The excavation resulted in the discovery of a mechanical devise of unknown origin, composition or purpose. Scientists have analyzed the metal like material and have determined that nothing like it exists in the world as we know it and the material has yet to be reproduced by any known process.

The discovery site was the southern edge of a quarry where decorative marble was occasionally mined for its unusual color, transparency and high concentration of fossils. The fossils were so numerous that the strength of the stone was unacceptable for most building materials so the quarry had been dormant for many years. I had little trouble purchasing it.

I had great trouble finding it. It took years of searching through paper invoices and inventories, work schedules, logs and shipping documents. The final link was actually an artist who had ordered some slab marble for a pedestal he was commissioned to build at a museum. He had personally scouted out the stone to be cut from the quarry, deliberately choosing the brittle stone for its interesting fossils. Unfortunately, the museum changed the color scheme of the atrium and the stone was sold to a tile company to be cut into floor tiles. The tiles sat in a warehouse for several years until it was sold at auction to a wholesaler who shipped it to another warehouse where it sat for another few years. When the wholesaler went out of business, it was sold, again at auction, to a distributor who sold it to a contractor whose business was building and remodeling for small businesses. The contractor had used the tile in the restrooms of a new office building.

So we arrive at the beginning of the journey where I, sitting on the bathroom throne, caught a glimpse of something unnatural beneath the polished surface of the floor tile beneath me. It was a tiny spring with a tiny fossil passing through the coils. A spring deposited in the ancient muck when the now fossilized shellfish was still alive. A spring made millions of years before man.

Time Assassin

by submission | Sep 16, 2007 | Story

Author : Daniel Rosenblum

“This wasn’t what I expected the past to be like.”

I looked around warily, absorbing the unfamiliar sights. I was alone in a rotund, palatial chamber, standing at the center beneath a sweeping ceiling supported by ornate columns. Yellow shafts of early-morning sunlight penetrated the room’s few windows, casting soft, dramatic shadows across the echoing structure.

I checked my watch. 4:28 AM. It was time to commit the grandest act of goodness possible.

Behind the mahogany doors ahead slept a powerful, perverted man. In two months, his distorted thoughts and nefarious deeds will irreparably damage the future of civilization. Three hundred years later, in my natural time, we still felt the shockwaves of destruction emanating from this man’s atrocities.

Now I held the power to end it all before it ever began.

I slipped through the doors like an avenging spirit, intent on my purpose. There he slept, so mortal and vulnerable – no more than a collection of bones and muscle. His faint breathing filled the room, amplified in my ears over the intense throbbing of my nervous heart. I removed my weapon from its holster, took steady aim, and…

“For morality,” I murmured angrily, and the deed was done.

I had done it. No one would ever hear of my deed, sing songs in my name, or celebrate a saved future. No, I didn’t require any fanfare – only the knowledge that I had done what’s right.

I returned to my time, looking forward to enjoying a world free from fear and oppression.

“This wasn’t what I expected the future to be like.”

Where there once was a wealth of technology, there was barbarism. Where there used to be a massive city just before the vast horizon, there was black, smoldering rubble. My laboratory was in ashes. My home was in splinters. I could see a small cottage faintly in the distance, starting life anew. At first I could not understand. I had fixed it! But the man’s ideas were greater than his flesh, transcending the material. Someone worse – far worse – had taken his place. The world was destroyed, but I knew what I had to do.

I returned to the past, 4:27 AM, and waited for my earlier self to arrive. I soon saw myself appear in the center of the room, just as I remembered. I stood still, staring at the back of my head.

“This wasn’t what I expected the past to be like.”

I took a step towards my earlier self and gripped my weapon.

I looked around warily, absorbing the unfamiliar sights.

I checked my watch. 4:28 AM. It was time to commit the grandest act of goodness possible. I held the power to end it all before it ever began.

No one will ever hear of my bravery – I only knew that I was doing what’s right. I removed my weapon from its holster, took steady aim, and…

“For morality,” I murmured angrily, and the deed was done.

Amateur Historian

by submission | Sep 15, 2007 | Story

Author : Robert Niescier

“Why do you keep writing in there?”

He looked up and into her eyes, through steam shaded orange from the bonfire’s glow, and smiled. “It’s so people, future people, remember everything we went through. So we don’t get lost as just two generic survivors of the bad times. History tends to cast a blind eye towards those who don’t record their own endeavors.”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘people who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.’ I’ve heard the cliché.”

“Yes, and it’s advice humankind tends to ignore. But that’s not why I’m keeping a journal.”

The fire had begun to die down, so he groped through the darkness for another log. He placed the wood onto the weakening embers, close enough to the water-filled pot to keep its temperature up and boiling. His hand recoiled in pain as a flame jumped up like a startled snake and burned him.

Her eyes widened. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Here, let me get something to put on it…” She began to rummage through her backpack and came up with a cream. “This will help.”

“Thank you, but no. Save it for when we really need it. It’s only a little burn.”

“And when that little burn turns into a little infection, then turns into a little toxic shock, where will I be? You want to test out just how much of a survivor I really am? Use the damn medication.” But still he refused, and soon she put the cream away and sighed. “You didn’t finish answering my question,” she said.

“What else is there to say? I don’t want to be forgotten. It used to be that if you produced a grand work of art, a moving story, an invention or theory that would improve the quality of life, your name would be remembered, your memory encapsulated in books and landmarks dedicated to your name. But those opportunities are gone now; the only thing left for us is to survive. To be.

“This journal, this story, is the only thing I have left to give. I want future generations to know that, even though our time may have come so close to destroying that which we had spent centuries to build, everything that we held dear, that we were still just people. Neither villains nor heroes. Just people who made a grievous mistake and paid for it with everything they had.

“How can you be so sure that these future people will find your little journal, or if they will even exist? What if we were the only…” Her throat made an odd noise and she stopped. She poked at the embers with a stick for a few minutes, then shifted her body away from the fire and laid down, her gaze to the sky.

He grabbed two scraps of cloth and, after picking it off of the fire, placed the water pot onto the highway blacktop. He stood up and looked down the highway, but there was nothing to see but inky blackness all around. He shivered. It was getting colder every day; they would have to increase their pace if they hoped to reach the western coast before the winter months.

“Beautiful,” she whispered.

“What?”

“The sky, it’s beautiful. You know, I lived in the city all my life. I never really got to see the stars. Not like this. It’s like we’ve entered a whole new world.”

A coyote howled somewhere in the distance. He looked up, up at the black, star-sprinkled tapestry that seemed to go on for ever and ever. She was right; it was beautiful.

Chameleon

by submission | Sep 14, 2007 | Story

Author : Debbie Mac Rory

My knee is still bleeding from the last time I fell and my trousers keep sticking to them, bringing forth fresh darts of pain. But I’m too scared to use my torch here. I’ve already been stopped by two division patrols on my way here; I guess my research wasn’t thorough enough, and I still look overdressed for this part of the city.

She told me just to find somewhere quiet and private in the shared sector, where we could be alone. When I’d asked how she was going to know where we were supposed to meet, she smiled and told me not to worry. “I’ll find you”, she said.

46…47…48…49…50 paces further into the alley and there should be a door on my right. My fingers fumble on the greasy brickwork for the frame the obsolete city maps told me should be here. Finally my touch meets jaded timbers, and I move to brace my shoulder against the door. The door disintegrates in a shower of wood dust as I push against it, leaving me yelping as I hit the floor, skinning my partly healed knee again and earning a matching scar across my knuckles.

I sit there for a moment, cradling my bleeding hand and generally feeling so miserable that I never heard her come up behind me. She smiles at my disproportionate distress and takes my hands in her gloves fingers and pulls me to my feet. She gestures for me to follow her into the darkness further inside the warehouse.

When finally she stops, she takes the torch from my stiffened fingers, and props it against a wall, exploiting its feeble light to the full. I smile at her, and raise a hand to gently brush my thumb across her cheek – and my breath catches as I watch the trail of colour left there, as if I’d dipped my fingers in paint before touching her. Her skin seems to be flowing now, catching the colour from my hands, and carrying it in mesmerising swirls across her face. I tear my eyes away from the sight, and lifting my other hand to her shoulder, being to draw small shapes on her skin. I feel dizzy already, but when I see that she’s removed her gloves, and her hands are lying naked in her lap, I take her face in my hands and kiss her as all the world fades away.

***

When I finally open my eyes, my vision clears enough to let me catch a glimpse of skin as dark as my own, and a pair of unfamiliar hazel eyes. But the smile is the same, as is the gentle touch of her fingers. She could almost pass for human now.