by submission | Jun 27, 2007 | Story
Author : Viktor Kuprin
“This is the last call for evacuation. Everyone must leave. Go to the park for water, food, and medical care. If you cannot move, call out or make a noise, and we will help you.â€
Spaceman Kuzmin tried not to look at the bloated red sun as he walked the deserted urban streets. No one had come even though he played the message three times at every city block just as he had been ordered. Only fools or the deranged would wait so long, he thought. The unstable sun the locals called Sosnovka would soon end this miserable world.
The motion detector pinged, and Kuzmin halted. Something in the shadows of an alley, but he couldn’t see anyone there. He keyed his helmet’s external speaker.
“Come out. I am CIS Space Force. I have water.â€
Then he saw it. Scruffy and dusty, a big orange tom cat wobbled out of the alleyway and collapsed onto the hot pavement. It panted and gasped for breath as it looked up at Kuzmin, its tongue distended from its mouth.
Kuzmin gently picked up the cat and felt its sides heaving.
“Poor old koshka, did you get left behind? Here, a little of this.â€
He drew a handful of water from his drink tube and slowly, carefully, dripped the cool liquid onto the cat’s lips and tongue. It began to lap and swallow.
Kuzmin unzipped his light suit. The air felt like an oven’s heat striking his chest. Slowly, he slipped the cat inside his cooled coverall, and there it rested without complaint or struggle. He could barely feel the old tom feebly rumbling, trying to purr.
And so, he continued on to complete his route, but no other strays, human or animal, were met.
As Kuzmin walked back to the evacuation center, he saw others who had been successful. The last inhabitants of Sosnovka Prime were a sorry lot. Two of his crewmates forcibly led a wild-eyed man who cursed them for their efforts. Others helped a grossly overweight woman whose clammy white skin indicated severe heat stroke. Dirty street children huddled, looking anxiously at the shuttles.
Kuzmin was refilling his drink tube when a hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around on his heels.
“You durak! Idiot! I told you that looting was forbidden!â€
It was Second Lieutenant Burkhanov, the section commander. With a jerk, he pulled open the front of Kuzmin’s suit. A furry orange face with flattened ears and frightened eyes stared back at the officer.
“What the?! Kuzmin, get rid of this … infectsia! It can carry disease! Understand me?!â€
Kuzmin shook his head. “No, sir. Sorry. I won’t leave it here to burn.â€
Burkhanov eyes opened wide with rage. But then he paused. It wasn’t often that a Spaceman Recruit refused an order. And never Kuzmin, one of the better spacehands.
“Bah! Make ready for liftoff!†He stomped off towards the shuttle.
As the days passed, the orange tom took to starship life quite well. Kuzmin was in the mess hall, slipping a few sproti fish to the new mascot when a crewman yelled, “It’s started!†Everyone dropped their food and ran to the portholes.
The flashpoint had been reached: Immolation. Waves of fire swept over the planet below.
A man next to Kuzmin gasped and made the sign of the cross. It was Burkhanov, his sad face illuminated by the hellish flame storms.
Kuzmin watched nervously as the old koshka wandered between the officer’s ankles. He was amazed when Burkhanov picked it up, placed it against his shoulder and began to pet Sosnovka’s littlest refugee.
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by submission | Jun 26, 2007 | Story
Author : James Smith
Murphy took a bench and pulled a paperback from his coat pocket. He dialed down his shades to read better, and sipped his coffee. After a few pages, he became aware of a presence on the bench next to him.
“Oh, wow. Paper. You drive gas, too, huh?”
He looked up. White girl, half his age, red hair cut into some sort of n-dimensional shape that confused him and made him feel old.
Murphy smiled. “Digital paper. The real stuff’ll get you thrown in jail.”
“Mm. What are you, a cop?”
Her eyes widened a bit when he told her he was a detective. She leaned closer, their knees touched. She asked if he carried a gun, if his job was dangerous. She saw the scar on his cheek. He wouldn’t tell her the story of how he got it; she was sure it was something fantastic. He had the kind of body you’d imagine a dangerous man to have; she told him her hotel room wasn’t far.
In the hotel. She sat up in the bed, rolling a joint. Murphy lay on his back with his eyes shut.
“You wanna smoke this with me?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve got to meet my ex-wife later.”
“You really a P.I.?”
“You really a redhead?”
“I think there’s a few real ones left. A generation to go, at least, before they’re all bred out.”
He asked her how she got into the business. Most Modern Girls were depressives looking for some way to hurt their parents, but feel like they were hurting themselves. This girl, who called herself Pepper, claimed to really have DID, and had gotten the chip implant to referee her various personalities. She had three, she said: Pepper, August and Katherine.
It was a cliche’, she admitted, to get the chip and become a Modern Girl. But the freedom people talked about, to simply turn that person on, to do whatever you wanted in that body, and then- at will- to shunt it aside like it never happened… Well, not many people had that option. It was hard to pass up.
His phone rang. It was the one ringtone he couldn’t ignore, so he crossed the room and pulled it out of his pants. Pepper licked the spliff and watched Murphy as he talked in clipped, cryptic phrases. She watched his shoulders. He didn’t get tense or upset; she figured it wasn’t his ex.
He finished and turned to look at her.
“I’ve got to go.” He took a wad of bills out of the same pocket, already clipped together, and put it on the dresser.
“Mm hmm. Same thing next week?”
“Why don’t we try a little older. Maybe Asian. Japanese?”
“Thai would be more convincing, with my bone structure. And the melanin tweak will run you extra.”
“Sure.”
“You gonna let me read that book one of these days?”
“No,” he said. “Every good romance needs a bit of mystery.”
He dressed and left.
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by submission | Jun 24, 2007 | Story
Author : Francesco Navarro
The air scrubbers were failing. Generators were running at less than fifteen percent. Only one large bio dome and four of the sixty life support shelters remained of the mission complex.
Father Nandres died a week ago and there was no one left who could operate a harvester or any of the larger terraforming machines.
This field was the only one remaining and it was slowly dying.
Still, there were twenty six other souls whose bodies needed the nourishment the field could provide. Most of the survivors were acolytes with only a class three technical training, just like him.
There were no clouds anymore. Only a baleful yellow sun glared down at him from a fiery orange sky. The seminary had not prepared him for the magnitude of the impossible.
The recirculated air in the containment suit was stale and dry. Thick gloves made pulling up the low tubers clumsy. The words of a four thousand year old prayer formed on his parched lips as he worked.
â€Teach me to be generous,
Teach me to serve you as I should,
To give and not to count the cost,
To fight and not to heed the wounds,
To toil and not to seek for rest,
To labor and ask not for reward,
Save that of knowing that I do your most holy will…”
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by submission | Jun 23, 2007 | Story
Author : Joe Carter/Kyle French
37 hands. Zed shook his head. The 84 candidates running for President were asked if they believed in Sixism, and only 37 raised their hands.
He couldn’t believe this debate was still going on. For years they had assumed that the Manhattan Inflation Trial in 4838 had put the lid on the silly notion that the universe contained billions of galaxies. Billions! Zed looked out the window at the smooth black plane of the night sky. One-two-three-four-five-six. Six galaxies. There they were. It was so basic, so obvious. Any kid with a neutron telescope could make the observation for themselves!
The moderator turned to Governor Tembke of South Africa. “Madam, are you a Big Banger?†There were dampened giggles at the pejorative. Everyone knew what a ‘banger†was.
Rev. Tembke sniffed. “I’m running for the office of president, not planning on writing a 5th-grade textbook on astrophysics.”
“Aargh!†Zed threw his shoe at the screen, but it flew through the image of the Senator from Zimbabwe instead. He stood up and began to pace. He tried to breathe deeply, as if that would lower his blood pressure.
He used to be patient with relativists. He really did. But at a debate at ultra-conservative Harvard University, he’d made the mistake of asking one to explain how this galactic disappearing act occurred. The answer the nut had given him had been so ridiculous, he’d written it down:
“As the universe expanded, the force pushed the galaxies outward faster and faster. As they surpassed the speed of light, their light shifted to infinitely long wavelengths and dimmed. A similar “cloak of invisibility†befell the afterglow of the Big Bang, a faint bath of cosmic microwaves, whose wavelengths shifted so that they are now buried by the radio noise in our own galaxy. There was also an element called deuterium, but it is in deep space now. To be seen it needs to be backlit from distant quasars, and quasars, of course, have also disappeared.â€
Totally unqualified. Unprovable! Billions of galaxies–similar in size and shape to the six observable galaxies – simply sped up and – poof! – became invisible. “Yeah, that happened,” Zed chuckled to himself, turning back to the debate.
Zed was particularly frustrated that the relativists were able to prop up their beliefs with… ancient texts! The silly belief was dying out until an archaeological dig in New Atlantis produced evidence of near universal belief in relativism by ancient world civilizations. Einstein, Hubble, Hawking… proto-scientists believed in an inflationary universe, so why shouldn’t we?
“Science is based on observation,†he grumbled, “not faith in theories about a Big Bang, cosmic radiation, and an expanding universe in which galaxies go missing.†Why couldn’t they just embrace the facts? Why did they insist on clinging to mythical beliefs? Were they just stupid?
Zed collapsed back into his recliner. Fortunately, time was on the side of science. Eventually, the old beliefs would finally fade away. After all, everyone knew the modern system would collapse if the rules could ever change.
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by submission | Jun 20, 2007 | Story
Author : Mark Lindquist
“I’d like to order an arm, please. Left, if you have them. I’ve always liked left arms.”
“Certainly, sir. Have a seat while — oh, my apologies, that was quite rude of me.”
“Think nothing of it. It’s by choice, not by circumstance; sitting has always been highly overrated.”
“So I’ve heard, so I’ve heard. I wouldn’t wish to do without it myself, you understand, but I can see how … ah, here we are. Did you need it coloured to match?”
“I don’t suppose you have green…”
“No, sir, only the natural colours. There’s a dyist some of our patrons use that we can highly recommend, if you’re interested.”
“No matter, I have my own. Did my ears.”
“Remarkable work. Modified?”
“Not much. Standard frequencies and AM/FM radio. Decent quality, but I pick up a bit of static when I get too near a microwave.”
“Common problem, or so I’ve heard. Now, if you’ll take a look at the monitor, you can see what we have in stock.”
“The, ah, black one…”
“An excellent specimen. Professional ball player, or so I’m told. A pitcher.”
“The cost seems low in that case.”
“Well, he was right handed. But it’s still a very high quality arm. Do you play?”
“I must say — never quite got the game. I mean, I understand it … but why?”
“Quite, sir. I was never very good at it myself. Would you like to see another, then?”
“Ah… one moment. Hm. 3X23.”
“I am compelled to tell you, sir, that that is in fact a female arm. We certainly don’t oppose such things, but we’ve had some complaints from customers who weren’t aware when ordering.”
“What’s the motor control like?”
“Rated at 73%, sir. Very good for a left hand.”
“Not a primary hand, then?”
“We get very few of those, I’m afraid. Not for lefts.”
“Understandable. I’ll take it. Put it on my account.”
“Certainly, sir. Will you need that installed here or delivered?”
“Neither, thank you. I’ll eat it here.”
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