Fiat Undo

by | Jan 29, 2008 | Story

Author : Luis Barjo

“It’s not a scam,” Robin explains as he plugs the cloning tank into the wall. “It just grows in there for a few hours and, when it’s ready, just hop right in. They proved it, man, they proved it with science and we’re gonna be rich.”

Picture a hallway with an infinite number of unmarked doors. Well, it took a few years to get there and a few more to find someone willing or capable of conversation. And, would you believe it, the very second we did, a couple of scientists became millionaires. Whoever is out there wants what we know, and knows plenty we don’t; all we had to do was ask.

I’m sitting here memorizing equations. I just have to run them in my head at the right time, with some provided variables, and I’m back on terra firma. At least that’s what the box claims. You can find these kits anywhere: a few hundred dollars, an empty basement and a friend a big brain and balls to match and you’re an official member of the TransGalactic Couriers.

“How’re you coming along with those numbers?” Robin is busy plugging what seems to be a large gas canister into the tank. That little box on the side, the one the outer controls are wired into, shocks the gases just the right way. Amino acids turn into DNA turn into a functional body. Sure, it’s practical immortality in a sense, but after the novelty wore off no one bothered. This isn’t the most exciting of galaxies.

“I’d be a little better if you’d shut the hell up for five minutes. Why am I the one going through all this trouble again?”

“Because I flunked Holonomic Calculus more times than I could count. In fact, I think you were the only one in that class that made any sense of that blackboard after two weeks.”

When he’s right, he’s right. I read over the documents I need to ferry; they compute out into a series of equations that become the variables to the one I’ve memorized. You’re not supposed to remember anything when you come back, when you wake up in that homunculus body the tank is welding together out of thin air. Thanks to the calculus, I’ll remember a few numbers. Feed them into some more equations and we’ve got a chunk of data TGC will pay a bundle for. Sounds easy enough, right?

“Okay. It’s all set. You remember what to do, right?”

I sit down on the stool. Behind me is a foot-thick slab of concrete. Beneath, some bunched-up plastic sheeting. If this goes well we’ll rent out somewhere with a drain next time. I inhale deeply and try to remember: they’ve done this a million times before. It’s perfectly safe and more than worth the money. It’s just like a photo booth.

Robin aims the revolver dead at my third eye chakra.

“Feelin’ lucky, punk?”

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Oedi's Opus

by | Jan 27, 2008 | Story

Author : Tim Hatton

The black is total.

Oedi’s life is devoid of light and endlessly deep.

Only stars prick the canvas. He stares at them, each in turn, for entire shifts. He finds it odd to realize that what he is looking at has moved from that spot eons before the light reaches his eyes.

Silence is the most common media.

Long stretches separate the use of his ears. Sound becomes painful.

His maintenance sentence was called “lenient” by the magistrate. He was dropped off on the station equipped with nothing but the clothes he was given and a thin instruction manual.

The only assurances he has of the functionality of his mind are the rare, random explosions that emanate from the Solar Span Gate. Exiting ships burst from it in a fanfare of sound. The pent up energy that held open the sub-space passage is unleashed as a fantastic show of swirling color. Reds shrouded in orange present a flame in the night, while yellow tickles the edge. Greens sprout healthy beside the warmth, soaking up the blues while they live. Surrounding it all indigo fades to violet, their soft transition back to space. No wavelength is neglected.

Every so often, one of these craft will dock with his prison and inject food and water. The rest fire up their electro-magnetic generators upon exit and gracefully glide away, propelled by their own polarized force field. The gift of their colorful arrival spent, they wander away from Oedi without acknowledgement.

His presence on this revolving maintenance deck is decidedly unnecessary. Computers regulate the day to day functioning of the Gate. Oedi is an overseer – a strange irony for a convict. In the rare event that the system is unable to repair its own malfunctions, Oedi does it. The rest of his life is spent idle. Nutrient paste is administered every eight hours. Water is available any time, but only four liters every twenty hours. The water is Oedi’s favorite. Sometimes he tries to cup it in his hands.

Oedi’s face is a gauze of pigment-deprived wax. His eyes are consumed by pupils, and in their black voids, his existence is mirrored. Life on the deck is permanent, but this situation has taken something from Oedi that he did not mind relinquishing. Oedi will die here, and that reality, coupled with the doldrums of his experience, has erased all fear of death. In his dreams, his mind melts with the blackness of space and his body fuels the light reactions that dance magnificently from the Gate.

For now, he resumes his examination of the stars – always staring at those things that are no longer there.

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Awful News

by | Jan 25, 2008 | Story

Author : Cody Lorenz

Mike was nervous, you could tell by the stains at the armpits of his shirt, and the way he kept shifting, causing that awful gown to rustle. He coughed, if only to make the little man with his chart speak up.

“It is hard to put this,” he started, in a regretful, timid tone, “but you’ve got EIT.”

Mike had never heard this particular acronym before. But it was all in the doc’s words – fatal, terminal, the end of his long, strange trip of 233 years. It was too bad his shocked, gaping mouth couldn’t move, letalone come up with a word or sound.

“I can tell you that it will not be painful, and-”

He was cut off by his patient: “Just…shut up. Tell me if…what does it do…why…why me, why did it happen?”

“It is a new disease, but swiftly becoming a common one,” the little man took his glasses off, wiping them with a black cloth, “Tell me, Mister Evadne, how many times have you used a Rebooth, or one of their home products?”

“Every day, why wouldn’t I?”

“And that is the problem,” replacing his glasses, the doctor sat on a rather unpleasant looking stool, “You just can’t reorganize your body’s basic materials! Replacing cells willy-nilly! You’re ripping yourself apart for vanity’s sake!”

The little man’s outburst was quiet, still nervous-sounding, but it had force. Mike was taken aback. But rather than focus on a perceived insult, he chose the smarter option.

“I…I don’t…is it curable? Vaccine? Pills or…or something?” The panic was all too clear in his voice, now high, reedy, and discomforting.

The doctor pushed with a foot, gliding to his computer.

“I’m afraid not,” and, after a pause, “I am deeply sorry.”

That’s when every word the little man said lost all meaning to his patient.

The fog had lifted after nearly an hour. Mike had changed in that dream-like state, and had sat in the clinic’s waiting room amongst the young and old. He didn’t realize that his wife was in the car outside – seventh wife in his life, and he’d outlived two of them.

He just didn’t want to get old, didn’t want to fall apart.

The irony was lost on him.

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Inconspicuous Conspicuous Consumption

by | Jan 22, 2008 | Story

Author : Lucas Atkinson

“Tell me what it is you do, Mrs. Adam, In your own words.”

“Well,” she said, and leaned forward onto my desk. “I deal in luxury goods. One specific luxury good.” She smiled. “Obscurity.”

“That seems a strange way to say it. Usually one would…”

“Of course. But then my clients are not usual men. Lesser men seek fame, to increase their fortunes or what have you, but only a select few can know true obscurity. Those whose fortunes and position are secure…” She pulled at the sleeves of her suit. “The media’s a circus, you know. It can tear you apart. Fifteen minutes of fame can be fun, but the aftermath can kill. You’ll be associated with whatever gimmick you were a part of for the rest of your life. I’m sure you’ve also seen those celebrities with scandal after scandal, hounded by the tabloids.

“My clients don’t have to worry about that. Neither their face nor their personal life will ever appear on television, in newspapers, or in the internet. These days, being completely unknown is the ultimate status symbol. That’s how the technocorps and other companies hire their upper echelons. They only hire those they’ve never heard of, despite their numerous qualifications.”

“Do you have any clients I might have heard of? I mean, their positions?”

“You’ve never heard their names, but the man who invented the fluid processor, or author of the Countdown novels. You know the richest man on earth? Ryan Turner? He’s not the richest. By my count, there are over fifty people richer then the supposed tenth richest. The forty not on the list are all my clients.”

“It seems a wonder I’ve never heard of you,” I joked.

“Yes,” she said, and smiled. “I’m my own best advertisement.”

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Mythlabs

by | Jan 20, 2008 | Story

Author : Andy Bolt

Senator Bigfoot sat at the top of the Eiffel Tower daintily sipping espresso from one of Café au Francais’ literally bottomless vortex glasses. His massive, gorilla-derived nostrils inhaled the artificially addictive coffee smell, and he smiled to himself as Jenny stepped out of the spacebender and glided toward his table. He liked Jenny. The multicolored nanolights in her flowing blond hair sparkled with hypnotic blinkery. She hummed low and smooth, her pitch-perfect artificial larynx set to a calypso love song. The lowjack pheromones pumping out of Jenny’s pores didn’t affect bigfeet, but Senator Bigfoot thought Jenny was pretty anyway. Not just because she had been engineered to be pretty either, but because she really was. (Although Senator Bigfoot had an I.Q. of 220, his silverback genes granted him a simplicity of thought that made him more contented than most.)

“Hello, Jenny!” he called to her.

He caught her eye, and a wild swirl of rainbow pigments cascaded through her irises.

“Big!” Jenny’s mech-wings fluttered with delight, and she half-flew the remaining twenty meters to the table. “I’ve missed you!” she sang, kissing his leathered cheek. “Congratulations, Mr. Senator!”

“I’ve missed you, too. Sit, sit.”

Jenny smiled and swished and sat, still humming. “Green tea,” she trilled to the overexcited waiter. “So does this make you the first senator from Mythlabs?” Senator Bigfoot smiled as her loose silky coat almost swallowed her up.

“No,” he responded. “You’re forgetting Senator Gremlin.”

“Oh! Yeah, yeah. He got asked to leave, though, right?”

“Sort of. He was asked to holocommute. He kept making everything malfunction. But how have you been?”

“Alright. Being a siren is fun, most of the time. I get to sing a lot. That part’s nice. But all the boys try to sleep with you, and women hate you. It seems a bit artificial because of all that. Everything happens without me really doing anything.”

The waiter, a jumpy young man in a jumpy smart suit, whizzed up to Jenny with a glass of green tea and a walnut sized diamond.

“Here’s your tea,” he said. “May I have the honor of being your eternal love slave?”

“Not right now,” Jenny laughed, patting his shoulder. “But thank you for the tea.”

Senator Bigfoot shifted uncomfortably. He glanced out the longview window at a flock of three-legged Samjoko swooping and diving over Ulsan. Their bioluminescent flesh-mesh made them glow like bright little suns.

“Jenny-“ he started.

“Yes, Big?”

“Will you marry me?”

Jenny stared at him for a long minute, steam drifting around her cheeks and turning them pink.

“Yes,” she said. “I think I will.”

Senator Bigfoot smiled. In the longview, a Cherokee rain dancer shimmied, the kinetically fueled barometric sliders in his hands and feet producing a light summer mist in southern Oklahoma. Jenny giggled.

“It’s a silly world, Senator Bigfoot.”

“Yeah,” he replied.

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