by submission | Oct 25, 2007 | Story
Author : Viktor Kuprin
Father was up late cleaning his long rifle and my old musket. Mother fried biscuits and packed pickle dog for us to take on our trip to Fort Needmore.
No, we don’t eat dogs. That’s just what we called pickled baloney. We always took it when we went into the woods.
I’d only been to the fort a couple of times. Father said we had to go. There was big trouble coming, and the Americans couldn’t help us. They didn’t have enough ships or soldiers.
Some said the Americans didn’t care about our world because we didn’t have much money and they didn’t want our furs and mussels for trade. Instead, the CIS Space Army, the Russians, would be coming.
The next morning Mother put out my best buckskins and boots. But then she bawled something awful when we hit the trail. She cried so hard, Father had to help her back inside the cabin. That scared me.
It was the end of the hot season, so we had an easy hike through the woods. The air was sweet and the ground was dry. We stopped once to watch a big fat rockchuck grubbing around a bunch of wineberry bushes. Father told me to leave it be.
When we got to Fort Needmore, the Russians were there. They wore strange hats and clothes, all dark blue or camouflaged. Even some of their ladyfolk wore uniforms. On their suits there was a weird patch that looked like black noodles with a ball on top. Father said it was the CIS flag. Some of them wore red rocket-and-sickle medallions.
The big meeting was held in front of the distillery. We gathered around, and a Russian with white hair and blue eyes stood on a whiskey barrel to talk to us. He said everyone had to come to the fort, and to bring all our black powder and ammunition. The “Yelgrammites†were coming and we had to fight them.
Father acted like he didn’t believe the Russian. “You mean helgrammites? Like we seine up out of the river rocks?â€
The Russian nodded. “Da, but bigger. In spaceships they come, thousands and thousands. They have intelligence, but they don’t communicate with us. They show no mercy. We must make ready to fight soon. Or they kill you and take your world.â€
After the meeting, the Russians handed out packages to everyone in the crowd. Father told me to get one. A pretty Russian lady dressed in white handed it to me.
When we got back to the cabin that night, Father let Mother open the package. Inside it was sacks of buckwheat, canned food, medicines, and square blocks wrapped up in silver foil. Mother handed one of the blocks to me. I couldn’t read the Cyrillic letters on the pretty paper, so I just ripped it open.
I thought it looked like smashed skat. It really did, all brown and…well. Father and Mother laughed and laughed. They told me to taste it. And it was heavenly good. Mother thought it was chocolate, but Father said chocolate costs over a hundred dollars a kilo. The Russians would not be giving that away. I know now that it was a carob bar.
I broke the carob into small pieces so it would last longer. Father and Mother both took some. And as we enjoyed that sweet treat, sitting together as a family by the light of the oil lamps, we didn’t know what was coming.
Outside, from high in the night sky, we heard sounds like thunder, the sonic booms. Father ran for his rifle.
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by submission | Oct 21, 2007 | Story
Author : Simon Petrie
Afar contemplates lifting something small, a souvenir, but is distracted by the conversation at the next table:
“…forgot our anniversary, so I’m sending flowers back.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“You kidding? It’s just one day. Not going to affect anything, except avoid an argument.”
“Still don’t see why they allow it. Bloody dangerous, you ask me.”
“Na, we’re protected by paradox. Anyone wanted to change the past, badly, far enough back, things shift so that person didn’t exist, or time travel hadn’t been invented. Then that action wouldn’t have occurred; past doesn’t change. Machine just seizes, briefly, if someone tries that. But anyhow … you reckon roses or daffs?”
“Why ask me? She’s your wife.”
Afar stands up and leaves. Hopes he still looks inconspicuous, though it really doesn’t matter anymore. It’s not possible to grab a souvenir: salt cellar, spoon, whatever. Not simply disallowed, not possible. There’ll be memories, at most, even if he survives. It’s a pity. He’s learnt much of this culture over the past months. His intended actions are necessary, he knows; yet he feels remorse, frustration at the cost in time, sheer uncertainty. Stage fright. Nerves.
Down the street, he passes a kiosk. They’re everywhere, time travel has blossomed. Natural-disaster fatalities are rare now; missed appointments a thing of the past. (There is talk, even, of grandiose new pathways in spaceflight: install a kiosk on a spaceship; send crew, equipment, and braking fuel ahead to just before arrival.) The kiosks are busy, heavily policed.
Afar, also, has time travel business today, but what he intends won’t work on any other time machine in the world. He’s brought his own device, folded in his heavy briefcase.
He reaches the park. A cold day, overcast, easy enough to find a deserted spot. He opens the case, assembles his machine. Nobody here is going to recognise it as a time machine. It resembles an easel.
The case contains also six dull metal globes, the size of croquet balls, but heavier, and cold. Antimatter, painstakingly contained. Payload. He aligns them along the machine’s waist-high tray, locks them in position, loads coordinates.
It’s taken him months to prepare: the orbital mechanics require incredible precision. Pin-point accuracy, within a few kilometres’ depth, across a six-million-year gulf. He’s aiming for twelve kilometres down: six antimatter grapefruit, evenly spaced along the fault underlying the rift valley from which he’s chosen his alias. Afar. Ethiopia. Home of the proto-hominids. It should go almost magnitude 10. But the volcanic follow-through will be the real killer.
He looks around. In the distance, there’s a couple sitting on a bench; a woman dog-walking; a man and his daughter exploring the playground. Further afield, cars, sporadic aircraft, the bustling city. People going about their daily lives, wondering whether to go with roses or daffodils. As if it mattered.
He regrets the necessity to obliterate, to kill: he has deep respect for life. But life will continue, after his interruption; merely without one particular species and its invasive civilization. Probably be better for it.
He laughs a little. The man from the café would say Afar’s plan wouldn’t work. Nobody on Earth could use a time machine to retrospectively erase humanity, because that’s a paradox. And he’s right; but he’s also wrong. Nobody from earth.
Afar? He’s from Alpha Centauri, here to eliminate a potential threat to his homeworld.
He throws the switch and waits for the world to reorder itself.
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by submission | Oct 20, 2007 | Story
Author : Beth Mathison
She knew it was a bad idea when the man dropped dead in front of her.
She had seen death before, when she had lived on the streets. But that had been long ago, almost a different life. The suddenness of this man’s death had caught her off guard.
“Cari, we go now,†Chin told her, tugging on her leather jacket. “We leave this place.â€
Chin’s cool reaction told her that he had most likely seen death before, too.
She carried the data within her right wrist, a tiny bump of skin the only indication that she was a courier. It wasn’t the worst job in the world, she knew. Lugging data in the surgically designed port on the underside of her right arm. It paid the bills. She could work when she wanted.
This job was unexpected, with her friend Chin suggesting they make a run together with a courier named Duncan. Chin introduced them as they ported at the origin site, their three arms stretched across the company’s mainframe. The tech was using some kind of new transfer cable and software, and it burned her skin as the data flowed into her. Cari thought that Duncan was handsome in a rugged, country way, his blue eyes intense. As they waited for the data to fill their respective ports, Duncan’s gaze settled on the logo stitched across her shirt for just a moment too long. He looked back up, and she had held his gaze.
Now he was dead, his eyes fixed towards the dirty metro terminal’s ceiling. A thin trickle of blood streamed out of his nose.
Chin was pulling her along now, Duncan’s body lost in the crowd. The station was packed, as usual, and Cari found herself shoved into a car, Chin barely making it as the doors swished closed. They hung onto a thick metal pole, swaying as the bullet train strained forward.
The three of them had been headed north to the city’s edge to deliver the data. Chin had changed directions, pulling them into a car heading downtown.
Chin was pale under his dark skin, and she reached out and gently lifted his left hand. Turning it over, she saw that his port site was red. She wondered if Duncan’s had looked the same before he fell.
She knew where they were going, down to see Izzy, the black market’s master data miner. She and Chin had about sixty minutes before the chip in the data alerted the authorities that they were rogue. Izzy would know how to reverse the software and remove the data.
“Cari,†Chin whispered, leaning into her. “You must hurry if I fall.†His eyes were closed.
The car slipped under the river, and the world outside turned a frantic shade of blue and black. She closed her own eyes and thought of herself as a piece of data, flowing along some long, complicated logic stream.
Her wrist burned now, her head filling with a bright light and buzzing sound that made her nauseous.
She wondered about the data in her wrist, what new technology had gone viral and decided to terminate its hosts. She had just wanted an easy job, to carry data from overly cautious clients eagerly protecting their data. She felt Chin’s arm relax in her hand, falling away from her.
Opening her eyes, she watched as the train exploded out from under the river into the bright sunlight. The city gleaming above them like some precious jewel as they headed for the station.
The radiance filled her then, the data working throughout her fragile body. And she let herself go, allowing the light to take her.
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by submission | Oct 19, 2007 | Story
Author : Debbie Mac Rory
The thing shrieked like a badly tuned violin.
“It’s been making those sounds for days nowâ€, the woman said. The white-robed man nodded absentmindedly; he was unable to tear his eyes away from the creature on the examining table.
A lumpy looking creature with gray-brown skin which was strangely cold and gravelly to the touch lay there, three of its six legs pushed weakly against the stainless steel surface of the examining table.
“I… em… well, you see… eh…â€
The woman nodded her understanding and bent down to speak to the young boy at her side, whose attention had been given solely to the animal before him.
“Peter, why don’t you step outside for a moment? Mommy and the animal doctor need to talk about grown-up thingsâ€.
The small boy nodded his head slowly, and reached out to stroke the small creature. His mother gave him a moment or two, then ushered him out into the waiting room. Taking a deep breath, Will prepared to explain what he could.
“You see, Mrs. Langdon, it’s just.. I can’t really do anything. I’m not a vet, I’m a xenobiologist-â€
“Oh I knowâ€, Mrs. Langdon interrupted. “But we’d already tried our zone doctor, and she was the one who suggested we come to youâ€.
Will nodded, letting his gaze stray back to the animal for a moment. He could swear that some of the spots of its back were turned towards him, listening as he condemned it to leave once more without aid.
“Mrs. Langdon, there is nothing I can do. To be honest, I was surprised when we heard the announcement telling us that the base was going to be accepting colonists and even family units, so early in its launch. We’re just not equipped yet to deal with it all. That†he swung an arm to point at the table, “is not even something I’ve encountered before, and my whole purpose of being here is to catalogue the native faunaâ€.
Mrs. Langdon nodded. “I just don’t know what I’m going to tell Peter, he’s gotten so attached to the wee thing. I.. I don’t suppose I could say that you’ve kept it in for tests? Maybe that’d give his father a chance to catch another oneâ€.
“Certainly, Mrs. Langdon, that’s no problem at allâ€
Will shook Mrs. Langdon’s hand, and showed her to the door, closing it again on the beginning of her explanations on “special tests†that Spot – he shuddered, he simply wasn’t able to think of that thing as a pet, especially not one that shared a name with a dog he’d long since left behind – was going to need.
Returning to the table, he stood looking down at the animal. With a speed and agility that belied both its shape and apparent illness, the animal lunged for Will’s hand. Will leaped back, clutching the hand that had only barely retained all its fingers to his chest.
“Vicious little bugger…â€
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by submission | Oct 17, 2007 | Story
Author : Steven Holland
You awake; the familiar smell of synthetic, processed food greets you. The pneumatic tube has delivered three packages of food. They contain artificial eggs, sausage, and pancakes today, just like every day. You, Stackhouse, and Sergeant Zimmerman begin your breakfast. It’s the three of you today, just like everyday.
As you eat, it never occurs to you that you can’t remember a time when you didn’t live in this room, eating the same food with the same two men. You never question why you are being kept in this large, featureless room. The room houses bunk beds, exercise equipment, several couches, two ping pong tables, and one locked door. The dozen bunk beds, coupled with the large size of the room, suggest that 24 men could be housed here comfortably. You have often wondered why only three men need such a large room. You never once suspect that you might be being held prisoner in here. Instead, you know with confidence that you live in this room; you have always lived in this room.
The door opens at 0930 hours, just like usual. In walk four men clothed completely in white hazmat suits. They take Sergeant Zimmerman and half walk, half drag him out of the room. One of the four men mumbles something about taking him for some tests and not to be worried. They can rest easy; you’re not worried. They always take him for tests at exactly this time every day. The door closes after them with a familiar metallic hiss. This sound always triggers you to look down at your left arm. You do so as is your custom. You wonder, as always, why the half dozen needle marks peppering your upper shoulder never heal. They look exactly the same as they always have. You don’t think to ask what was injected into you. You could care less; a warm, fuzzy, and detached feeling swirls around and in your brain. This is the way you feel; this is the way you have always felt.
The rest of the day passes without incidence, exactly as it always does. You and Stackhouse entertain yourselves by lifting weights, playing ping pong, and trying to guess the exact moment when the quiet hiss of air from the pneumatic tube will announce the next meal. Lunch and dinner arrive promptly on time, each meal composed of the exact same food as the day before. The two of you don’t talk much, for there is not much to talk about. Nothing ever changes in the room. At 2200 hours, the lights shut off. You are already in bed and fall asleep immediately.
You awake; the familiar smell of synthetic, processed food greets you. The pneumatic tube has delivered two packages of food. They contain artificial hash browns, french toast, and glazed ham today, just like every day. You and Stackhouse begin your breakfast. It’s the two of you today, just like everyday.
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