by submission | Oct 26, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Broz
I knew the stars would fall, and they did.
I watched from the observation deck as the midnight sky slowly brightened, burning with orange streaks, brighter than the hottest day, and I watched as the stars came crashing down.
Down through the dome that held our farm, down they came. Down again, bursting the water tower. Again and again the distant thumping of the stars, punching through years of dust and deep into the solid bedrock of the moon. Plumes like silent mushrooms grew.
I thought of you as the heavens rained down streaks of orange fire. Once we had burned hot like this, I thought, when you were here for a cycle, when we blazed bright like the sun, lighting up this moon all by ourselves.
Mine were the hands you needed to fix your ship. And so I put my hands to work, and you put your hands on my hands, your touch slowing me as I went, keeping me with you longer. And I fixed your ship, and she became flightworthy again.
Mine were the shoulders you needed for heavy lifting, to empty the holds and lighten your ship, so that it could break free from orbit again some day. You put your hands upon my arm as I carried it all, not sharing the burden, but leaning into me, and I bore your weight as well.
Mine were the ears you needed in the dark of the darkest nights, when the earth’s shadow hid us from the light of day, and cries and silence were all we had. And you put your hands over your ears, and you did not hear me, while I listened for us both.
And all along, you looked past me. You looked through me and past me, not gazing into my eyes but beyond them. I now know the difference, but I did not know it then.
You love me, you say. Your apology echoes faintly through the station, between the thumps of the falling stars. You thank me for everything, but you won’t be coming back to save me.
by submission | Oct 25, 2023 | Story |
Author: Toshihisa Nikaido
The woman jolted awake, surrounded by unfamiliar sterility. She didn’t know where or even who she was, until a cracked nametag dimly illuminated by a slit of light from across the room caught her attention—the letters “Ali” remained. She approached the faint glow, stepping on something sharp in the process. Her surroundings were too dark to determine what the item was or how badly her foot was injured, but she decided to pocket whatever she’d stepped on.
A heavy metal door slid open, revealing an endless corridor. One side boasted a spherical window showcasing an astonishing sight—Earth!
A noise rang from behind Ali. She spun, finding herself facing inhuman creatures looming from the depths of the dim halls. Fear consumed and paralyzed her.
“Remember your mission,” a voice echoed in her mind. “Our objective was to do a preliminary assessment of the planet and initiate the terraforming procedure.”
“You can’t do that,” Ali protested. “We’d all die.”
“Not us.” The alien’s appendage appeared to be gesturing toward Ali’s pocket.
Ali reached into her pocket and pulled out a small sharp object, the broken end of a nametag displaying the two letters “en.”
by submission | Oct 24, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
When I broke into the abandoned home, I hadn’t expected to stay long. I only wanted to get off the streets and out of the cold for a few days. I was pretty broken down. Being on the run for years will do that to you.
So, I’d hacked the home’s defenses and pried my way in. It was just my luck, though, that this had been a scrub’s house. The equipment was still there, though quite outdated: a classic ’37 Q-Res unit.
Only an old scrub like me would recognize it. Only an old scrub like me would want to boot it up, which is what I did. Damn mistake. Big damn mistake. I don’t know what that scrub who’d lived here was thinking, but it’s scrubber Rule #1 that you don’t store Residuals in your device.
When I booted the ’37 unit, it immediately linked to the home’s i-structure. I was to blame for that. In hacking the home’s protection program, I’d left the door open for the upload from the Q-Res. The result: a Residual immediately took up residence.
Epic cluster. I hate the term cosmic irony, but I’d just unleashed it. I’d spent the better part of twenty years scrubbing Residuals from homes, businesses, schools, hotels, you name it. Wherever remnants of past lives had settled and caused issues, I’d gone to scrub them out.
That used to be the job of shamans, witch doctors and exorcists, getting rid of an unwanted presence. It became the work of scrubbers in the early thirties after AI quantum consciousness was realized and led to an understanding of residual consciousness, the lasting space-time impact of intelligence, human or otherwise. Essentially, thought, perception, awareness left a trail—and sometimes a stain.
In the previous century, Carl Sagan postulated that we are the stuff of stars and in this century we learned we are the stuff of time as well. All past existences continue in the milieu of dark time, the byproduct of dark energy and dark mass (not matter).
Most past existences follow the enticing forces of entropy and hop on the Heat Death express. Some past existences resist and persist, keeping a certain potency and sometimes ferocity in their former surroundings. Residuals.
Over millennia, Residuals have been called many things. My years as a scrub only confused my thinking. I’ve dealt with terrifying presences and malevolent ones. Though most Residuals are merely fiercely loyal. Steadfast to a life I can only imagine they loved.
How lonely they must be. I realize that scrubbing them from a place did not remove their presence, it only sealed them away. Buried alive in death.
That’s why I was on the run. I’d given up scrubbing. Worse, I’d set about freeing Residuals. At the time, I didn’t know what I was hoping to accomplish. I guess maybe I thought I was leaving my mark by liberating these lost souls, before I became a Residual myself.
If I’d been releasing these unwanted presences for years, why then was I so worried about the Residual I’d just freed back into its oft-abandoned colonial home on the south shore of Long Island, New York?
Back to that cosmic irony. Entropy meets Amityville.
I think I was about to leave a mark.
by submission | Oct 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: Joanne Feenstra
A woman pounds on our front door. She is gaunt and tall, wet hair: short roots tipped with long dyed blond ends. We’ve seen that look before here in the Mercy Valley: city people. We’ve pretty much lived through the first couple waves of city folk. Now the gates are up: hardly anyone comes through.
“Emilia!” She pounds again. If I don’t move, she might not see me. I sit very still in the warm dark, in the heat of the wood stove, my hands stopped from pulling apart a green wool blanket. The blanket will be a sweater, something beautiful and practical.
The woman is illuminated by the faint moonlight that’s come out after the rain storm. She’s wearing wet wool pants and a huge black slicker that comes down to her knees. How does she know my name? I wish we had dogs. I’d just let them out. We don’t have dogs anymore, hardly anyone does, it’s too expensive and some of them, well you know, some of them got eaten. She probably saw the name on the faded wooden sign we had installed in the halcyon days before this.
It’s after 7 pm, when the electricity shuts off, so it’s dark in our house. The wood stove heat is warm. In the Mercy Valley, I’m the Knitter. I reknit anything to make sweaters and then trade for vegetables, fruit, fabric. Martin darns his own socks with the leftover bits, and I patch up our jeans. We do this in the quasi-dark and it’s comfortable and secure.
There’s a gun in the back of the closet. We mostly use the gun for hunting: deer and last winter, a bear cub. We tried wild turkeys but haven’t got one yet, too flighty.
She cups her hands around her wet face and presses it against the glass. I don’t move. We’ve decided that no matter who was at our door, we’d pretend we weren’t home. Then they’d go away or if they didn’t, Martin would take out the shotgun and then they’d leave. It makes it hard to sleep sometimes at night, not knowing if a stranger is lurking around. That’s why I wish we had dogs.
She kicks the door. “Emilia. Let me in. I came through the Ashfall Pass.”
The Ashfall Pass? I heard of people coming to the Mercy Valley from there, you come out in the park. There’s no gate on the trail.
My feet are warm against the heat of the wood stove but we can’t let her in. We only have rations for the two of us, beans and rice, doled out a week at a time, from the market. Used to be a store but now it’s a Ration Station. I’ve lost a lot of weight of course, we all have, and the skinny ones, well, they suffered the most during the early food shortages.
Martin takes out the shotgun, opens the door a crack and points the barrel at the woman. “Get out,” he says. “Leave this place.”
I slowly put down the unravelling and tug a blue quilt a bit tighter around my shoulders.
“Emilia!” she shouts, crying. I watch her bend over, bracing her bare hands against the door frame, her hair sloping down over her face. I hear her more clearly through the partially open door. “It’s me. Jocelyn.”
Martin turns to me. “You want me to let your sister in?”
by submission | Oct 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Shanna Yetman
Leila likes to lie within the algae when the air is thickest with smog—smoke, nitrogen oxide, and ozone particulates squeezing at her lungs, agitating her asthma. Today her chest is tight. The smog has sat on top of the city for days, building up as each car passes by, growing stronger with each puff of industry. The algae wash in and out.
Her throat is hoarse. Even so, she pulls down her N-95 mask. There’s no fresh whiff of air; it’s hot, and the world smells of coals and wildfires. Her nostrils widen and she puts her mask back on.
She gestures for her best friend Julian to catch up. “Come on, you punk!”
He scurries behind her in his old man bathrobe and pajamas. Even in this heat, his mom has swaddled him like a baby because he’s ill. Leila’s one of the lucky ones. Old bouts of pneumonia and fresh bouts of asthma scar her lungs. His lungs grow cancer.
“Hold up! You witch!” He pants. “Remember? I’m one of the unlucky ones.” He’s caught up with her and he wedges his finger right into her side. It’s a joke. These days, there’s no difference between the lucky and the unlucky.
They’ve both snuck out of their houses and headed for the lakefront. They’ve come to this beach though they’ve been told they shouldn’t. The lake is awash with chemicals like nitrogen and phosphorus. She wants Julian to lie in the algae with her; she’s sure it will make him feel better, if only for a moment.
These are the days when the algal blooms are brightest and cover the largest part of the water. The smog hides the sunset, but there’s a beautiful bluish purple along the horizon, and both Leila and Julian stop to admire the colors before they continue.
The lime green tide laps at the sand, and she holds up the caution tape so Julian can duck under. They ignore the signs warning them that this lake is not safe. Her mother has told her about the bacteria in the water that will kill her, especially when the water is green or tinged a reddish-brown.
None of this is true, at least not for her, and she hopes not for Julian.
She looks back at him. He’s bald from his chemo, so he does look like an old man. But he’s also twelve, and prone to fits of absolute goofiness, and this is what she loves the most about him.
Now, he’s butt naked and runs past her, grabbing her hand at lightning speed.
“Let’s go for a swim, you freak!”
They both rip off their masks and run until their feet don’t touch the lake’s bottom anymore. The algae envelopes them, spreading its lime green body around theirs; treating them like a spindle and wrapping its gooeyness between their toes and their arms, blanketing them.
Then it happens. The tiniest of the algae attach to the inside of her nose and snake their way down to her lungs and heart. It is here, they will stay, and implant. As these tiny plants secure themselves to the inside of her body, her head stops aching; her lungs stop wheezing.
She looks over at Julian. His skin is turning the lime green of the tide. The algae will work its own kind of respiration, replenishing their bloodstreams with oxygen while Julian and Leila breathe in all those chemicals it so craves.
The two friends float on their backs. They breathe, reinvigorating their organs with precious oxygen. At last, their lungs are fulfilling their purpose.
