by submission | Oct 31, 2023 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Keet rested on the alien ship’s bridge, its green, leaf-like skin absorbing the nourishing rays of a distant Earth sun. It was a new recruit explorer among the plant-based race known as the Jotso Witan, traveling in massive, organic vessels orbiting a blue planet. Next to Keet was its superior, Rardonro, a seasoned diplomat, with tendrils from its foliage-like appendages rustling softly.
Keet voiced its confusion. “Rardonro, why waste time with these species? Why force them to stop their wars? It seems a futile endeavor.”
Rardonro turned its multi-faceted eyes to Keet. “This is your first voyage. It is our way, young one. We have warned them to cease all acts of violence. They had one planet rotation to comply, or face utter annihilation.”
“Do we ever complete such threats?” Keet asked, as its voice tinged with doubt.
Rardonro shifted its tendrils in a contemplative manner. “No, Keet. We do not. We expect our powers will force compliance. You see, violent races are rooted in fear of death, so they value their existence as sacred.”
As Keet mulled over Rardonro’s words, the ship’s viewports displayed their demonstration. Enormous ships, like colossal leaves of an otherworldly tree, created a massive tsunami in the South Atlantic. Within one minute, waves inundated an uninhabited island, leaving only swirling waters where the land had been.
Rardonro pointed to the screen, the images of the destruction reflecting in its compound eyes. “See, Keet? We make a point, and we do it without directly harming any innocent lives. That is the Jotso Witan way.”
Days later, they repeated the exercise on an uninhabited Aleutian Island, leaving no doubt that their threat was real and devastating. Still, humans did not comply.
Keet couldn’t help but ask, “What if they don’t stop their violence? What if they resist us?”
Rardonro’s tendrils rustled with amusement. “Oh, they will bend, eventually. You see, our experience proves that violent races build up so much enmity, so much distrust, that they will do anything to survive another day to find revenge. Once they concede to our demands, we gather away all their weapons. We leave them defenseless. Later we return, quietly, behind the scenes, offering them the same killing tools they had surrendered a century or more before. Our price is simple – non-interference with our operations. We can then peacefully take the minerals and water we need for our colonies while they continue their ridiculous cycle of self-destruction.”
Keet’s eyes blinked with understanding. “So, we manipulate their cycle of violence repeatedly to ensure they remain under our control?”
Rardonro nodded, its tendrils swaying in agreement. “Exactly. That way, we can strip their planet of its resources without any danger of attack. These species, like others, will always remain embroiled in conflicts, as we continue to profit from their desperation.”
Keet was astounded by the brilliance of the plan. As the peace agreement arrived, and the humans below began obeying the Jotso Witan’s ultimatum, Keet admired the subtlety of it all.
Rardonro turned to Keet, the soft rustling of its tendrils reassuring. “You see, Keet, the universe is a complex place. It’s not always about brute force. Sometimes, the most effective way to maintain control is through manipulation and subtlety. We’re not conquerors; we’re manipulators of the highest order.”
With their mission to initiate a new cycle on Earth complete, the Jotso Witan fleet departed for another world, ready to deliver their ominous directives and set in motion another cycle of control that had served them well on war zone planets for eons throughout the galaxy.
by submission | Oct 30, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“We eat life, not sunshine.”
Shielding his dark eyes from the desert brightness, Sitanni surveyed the acres and acres of solar panels filling the valley floor and waited for Jub to respond to his provocation. It didn’t come. Jub stood silent soaking in the sunshine, thin and welcome in mid-winter.
“Life gives us muscle. Muscle makes us conquerors.” Sitanni patted his ample gut sure that Jub would try to slit his throat soon. If not today, by the end of the week. The rapacious rules Sittani lived by required it.
“You cannot change these things, Jub. The energy your solar farms collect will only feed my appetites. My designs. I will devour you.”
Jub’s green eyes flashed but his voice was threadbare. “Are you so hungry?”
Sitanni smiled. Jub spoke like death. He liked that.
“You mistake hunger for destiny, my brother. You cannot cut out the middle man. You cannot deny my pound of flesh. Going off grid or creating your own doesn’t change the basic equation, the underlying DNA of our predatory hierarchy. My muscle says I will feed first.”
“Not if I eat sunshine.”
“Does this desert teach you nothing?” Sitanni asked, losing patience. “You will starve. I will starve you.”
“In such abundance?”
Jub’s mildness put Sitanni on alert. He would strike soon. “Come, Jub, submit to sense. You cannot survive without me. It is the way of things.”
“There is always another way. Always,” Jub proclaimed turning his emerald eyes to the sun. He stared directly into it, unblinking.
For the first time in many years, Sitanni was unnerved by the thought of imminent death. Jub would really kill him. Feast on his time-tested muscle. “Another way? You are sun-crazed.”
“Precisely.” The glow of Jub’s eyes bathed his whole face. His whole aura. “I have learned all from the desert. From its light. It is not only my solar panels that harness the sun.”
Jub’s aura continued to brighten. “I’ve modded my DNA. I am no longer like you or your kind. I do eat sunshine.” The air around him crackled with threat. “And I will outmuscle you.”
Sitanni backed away. “What have you done? What have you become?”
“Much more than a conqueror. I am now a conduit. To channel the might of our sun.” Jub flexed his hand and sizzling bolts scorched the earth. “Are you still so hungry, my brother?”
His question cut like a knife, with which Sitanni sorely wished Jub had cut his throat ages ago.
by submission | Oct 29, 2023 | Story |
Author: William Torphy
I’ve always heard voices, whispers actually, from another dimension. I exist between worlds, suspended between the quotidian concerns of one and the timeless aspirations of another. People call me distracted, ditsy, and sometimes even disturbed. They have no idea of the chorus that sings to me every day, multitudinous tales of hardship and celebration, disappointment and love.
They are usually women, consoling voices of mutual understanding whispering their secrets. But men sometimes speak sympathetic words too, loving the way humans should love without guile or greed.
I speak with the dead, not because they don’t talk back, but because they listen. There’s a fundamental difference between these two qualities. I always have an earful to tell them, usually about the others who are dead.
I remember my father only dimly He was a pilot chosen to be an astronaut who left my mother and me behind to explore the stars. He could have refused to go if he loved us more than emptiness. He would argue about that, I suppose. Not about loving us, but about the emptiness.
“There are billions of stars and planets up there,” he told me when I was seven, days before he went into space. “Worlds filled with mystery. Everything that is, except for this tiny ant globe is up there.” I guess he loved that world more than us, because he never returned.
My head is filled with the voices of mystery, never mind space. I’ve attempted to call in my father from the farthest reaches, but he has not yet come through. I have so much to tell him of our little world, the one he so willingly deserted. I will tell him about those with whom I speak, voices from some space other than his outer. I will inform him of my mother and the others who have passed into the infinity. Whether dead or alive, with his silver ship forever circling in space, I will hear from him someday. He will call to me from some dark corner of the universe, telling me tales of all he’s seen, as I remind him of all he’s missed down here.
by submission | Oct 28, 2023 | Story |
Author: Graham Mossman
I loved Afterfone when I was alive, but now I curse the jackass who invented it. They started by calling their dead friends and family, but then they realised that by building in a universal translator, they could call all kinds of interesting people from history. It was a huge hit, and that jackass became a billionaire.
I read in a newspaper poll (when I was alive and reading) that the most popular day to use an Afterfone was Halloween, and the most called person was Hitler. I’ve no idea whether the callers were haters or admirers, but either way, Adolf does not get any peace in the afterlife. It’s not torture like you’d see in paintings of hell, but it is relentlessly unpleasant. It’s like when you’re on a long flight trying to get some sleep, and the guy next to you keeps waking you up to tell you his life story. You just want to be left alone to rest in peace, but there’s always someone nudging you awake, wanting to chat.
I’m told Hitler is still Number One these days, but with three million calls in the year since I died, I’m now in the top ten, sandwiched between Mother Teresa and the Marquis de Sade.
Why so popular?
Because I was that billionaire jackass who invented the Afterfone.
by submission | Oct 27, 2023 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
You know how sometimes you enter a room after a while, and you just know that someone’s been in there? It’s not your imagination. It could be an aroma so slight that you don’t consciously notice it. Maybe something’s not quite in the same place it was before. Perhaps the dust has been disturbed so subliminally that you wouldn’t normally realise. But something triggers you, and you don’t know what. Eventually, people a lot smarter than me came up with tech that could detect the smells and identify where dust had moved, and give us all some peace of mind. That’s what the OmniSniff (“The Nose that Knows!”) does. So I took the company’s courses, splashed out on the kit, and set up as a freelancer, consulting to PI’s and police departments. Never thought I’d be pinned as an accessory to murder, though.
The first OmniSniff was a great success, but you still didn’t know who’d been in your hypothetical room – only what lotion or perfume they’d put on, or where’d they stood. People demanded more. So the geeks went back to the drawing board, and OmniSniff 2.0 is not only smaller and faster, but it sucks up DNA strands from the ambient air, too. It’s been a revolution in forensics – I mean, if the husband’s twists are the only fresh ones around, odds are that it was him that did the wife in, whatever his alibi, am I right? The company got a lot of publicity from that, and I got more competitors.
Since then the criminal underworld’s come up with countermeasures, of course: from expensive helix-killing sprays (which are now detectable) to cheaper material collections designed to just overwhelm and slow down the detectives. I did more courses, but they’re a lot more expensive now, and you have to keep requalifying to keep up. My net income’s gone down, not up.
So when a guy in the bar who said he was a sensie scriptwriter researching a new show offered me a big credit transfer for a couple of hours just talking about my job over some coffee, I jumped at the chance. Who wouldn’t?
And yeah, okay, it was me that told him that really, the only way for a criminal to beat the OmniSniff is not to leave any DNA at all. But so what? I mean, unless you’re wearing a space suit (kind of conspicuous), that’s next to impossible, right? And that’s all I said, I swear!
How was I to know that he’d go back home, wait a week, and then hack his household butler unit, programming it to smash his wife’s brains out? I mean okay, it kind of makes sense, robots don’t leave DNA, but seriously? Of course he was caught. It took the cops maybe 10 minutes to check the thing and find out there was no mechanical fault or memory glitch. He’ll do thirty to life, and serves him right. Idiot.
But now they’re trying to say it’s partly my fault? That I gave him the idea? That’s just unfair. I tell you, I need a new career – it’s not just the OmniSniff that sucks.
