by submission | Sep 10, 2022 | Story |
Author: Sam Nikiski
Hello friend! If you’re like me, the sudden transition from your simulated paradise to the titanium phone booth which are our sanitary facilities is both jarring and harsh.
You roll out of bed in a virtual Taj Mahal, Buckingham Palace, or Sistine Chapel contented in all of the finery of this environment. Your daily work is conducted atop a snow covered peak, or in a throne room, whatever your heart desires. The kingdom’s subjects or perhaps the animals of the forest bring you messages and reports. You eat the finest meals that the rendering can simulate.
Suddenly, the delicious cappuccino that the Walt Whitman or Gandhi simulation prepared for you is pushing on your bladder. It’s time to use the bathroom.
The door awaits you and you push the large red button on the wall.
The sterile shabbiness of the VR chamber is reveled, all the tiny pistons, retracting back into the flooring and walls as you step into the bathroom.
Grey titanium, cold and featureless. You sit, your feet almost touching the door in front of you.
There is the hum of the life support systems, and the loneliness of space. How many more years until I am back at another planet?
This is traumatic.
The average bowel movement is enough time to ponder the mediocre accommodations in which you exist. The body starts to rebel if the mind no longer believes in its decadent virtual renderings. Some cannot handle this strange dichotomy, and develop psychosis and disease.
This is no way to live
That’s why I use Dr. Zebco’s toilet-buddy. These helpful goggles, blur the environment to an ill-defined, yet navigable level. They are equipped with noise canceling ear covers, and an air-purification mask. There is even a handy magnet to hang the Toilet buddy on the inside of the door, so it is always ready for you.
Before you know it you’ll be back, receiving the ships diagnostic reports from Joan of Arc, and sipping Sangria with Pavarotti.
The sensory deprivation as a time of mediation and reflection on all that you are grateful for…rather than a revelation at the grand illusion of your perceived existence.
by submission | Sep 9, 2022 | Story |
Author: Joseph Hurtgen
Chaak had bright red hair and always wore a coat and tie, proud of his job at MIT teaching applied physics. He demonstrated the weapon–it almost looked like a toy–aiming at the snow on our front porch from fifteen feet away. “See how fast it melts? And I’ve only get this on 1% power!”
“Where did you get it, Uncle Chaak?” I asked.
“Made it. The government would never let private citizens have these things and for good reason. But this will be standard issue in combat drops in the next few years.”
“That thing scares me,” said Miriam. “Can you just put it away? What if Little Joey got hold of it and turned it on himself?”
Uncle Chaak laughed. “You’ve got knives around the house, haven’t you? He doesn’t run around stabbing himself!”
Miriam gave Chaak a withering look.
He pocketed the little weapon.
Later, we went out for soda and ice cream and a swim at the community pool. I liked to pretend I was a crustacean, scuttling across the pool floor. I got out to pee because it’s the right thing to do. Seconds after leaving the pool my skin was uncomfortably cold. I held my arms tight over my chest and shivered on my way to the men’s room.
A minute later, I found Little Joey standing beside the pool, mouth agape, microwave weapon in hand. The pool water was on a rolling boil. Chaak and Miriam’s bodies laid listlessly on the pool bottom, their skin the red of Chaak’s hair.
by submission | Sep 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rachel Sievers
The sky was painted with the deep reds and dark purples that can only come when a storm is pushing its way over the snow peaked mountains. I let the heavy cloth fall backward and into place blocking out the view. I tip my mug back and swallow the rest of the coffee I have reheated in the kettle on the wood stove.
Turning to the darkness of the house I look around. A storm would be good, we need the weather. An archaistically dry spring, summer, and fall has plagued the pacific northwest and drought has set in and taken hold like the sickness that had proceeded it.
The winter before the drought the world was plagued with something some called new, and some called ancient, and what some whispered as Gaia’s revenge.
The sickness brought a quiet to the world that I had never experienced. The cities ceased to drive cars, busses, and trains. The people ceased to buy. Groceries stories lay empty and their fresh produce left to rot. Department stores were ghost towns with only their clothing and sale tags there to watch in lonely forlornness. Even the television was not a solace, with the internet giving way to the dodo with no one to maintain its many faults.
I stand alone in the quiet of the house. The stillness I have tried to grasp so many times through meditation and yoga now available at every moment of every day. I sigh and go to the bedroom. I have placed them in a bed together. I think it helps, knowing they are not alone. The beautiful faces asleep like the princesses of old fairy tales.
I am lucky, I have medical training. I can keep them alive with fluids and feeding tubes. I shudder to think of the dead that are in all the other homes around the world. When the world fell asleep eighteen months ago many died just from neglect. Too many slumbering and not enough staying awake to care for them. As more and more became infected with the Sleeping Beauty Virus the race to find a cure was cut short and the dead piled up.
I run my hand over their sleeping forms. Check their IV bags and prepare the nutrient rich food that I pump into their bodies. I move their sleeping forms at least five times a day to prevent bed sores yet my husband has already developed two. I am not a surgeon so if the sores become too much I know he will die. My two children lay next to their father. They have peaceful smiles and I can’t help but smile at them. I sigh breaking the silence and move to keep the restful alive.
by submission | Sep 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
There’s no mistaking it now. The Professor’s advanced optics make it clear. A small blue orb, hanging in the void. I can see the Earth again. I can’t quite see England’s green and pleasant land yet, but soon, soon.
Is it really seventy-five years since we left our world, setting out from that remote moor in Caithness into the darkness of space? My thinking is sluggish, a consequence of the professor’s modifications, but the memories spark brightly in my mind.
Professor Sutherland really was a genius. We met as boys at Harrow, cementing our friendship on the cricket pitch. Afterwards, I took up my commission in the Army, but the Professor returned to his Highland Estate, there to take care of his sick father. We kept in touch, however, updating each other on our exploits as the years passed.
Whilst I was battling the Boer and the rebellious Chinese, the Professor, bound to his family estate, developed his mental faculties to a remarkable degree. In that mind, scientific mysteries fell like dominoes under the force of his brilliance. Through use of technological innovation he was reportedly even able to keep his father’s terminal illness at bay.
It was during one of his rare sojourns to London that we met in my club and he recruited me to what would be the defining adventure of my life. Taking leave from the Army, I returned with him to his ancestral home in Caithness and he demonstrated to me the culmination of his researches – an anti-gravity vessel capable of travel into the void.
I was keen to present this remarkable discovery to the Army Council. With such vessels our civilising Empire would dominate the world for the next century! The Professor however, wished for the adventure of discovery and his proposal was simple but breath-taking.
“Picture it” he said, “Halley’s Comet hangs bright in our skies this very month. Imagine a radio broadcast of ‘God Save the King’ from the surface of this celestial wanderer, to be heard all over the globe! And this at a time when our new monarch, George V, has just ascended to the throne.”
How could I resist!
We launched and reached the Comet after a mere matter of days. What a sight it was! A tumbling mountain of rock and ice, heated by the rays of the sun, trailing a huge, luminous tail.
However, the surface of this bizarre world was unexpectedly active, with plumes of gas jetting energetically out from crevices in the rock. We landed, but our ship was catastrophically damaged in the process. The Professor and I were both mortally wounded. Yet his genius was undimmed.
“I am beyond saving,” he told me, “But I can help you survive, in the way that I helped my father survive. I can link the essential parts of your biology to my machines. Your metabolism will slow, as will your thinking. Your new body will be immobile but long lasting and your mind will be able to access the ship’s optics and radio. These will be your senses”.
I have no memory of these surgeries, but when I awoke afterwards, the Professor was dead. It took some time to accept my new condition and my mind flirted with madness. Now however, as Halley’s Comet completes its great circuit, I find a degree of clarity returning. My fears subside and pride at our accomplishments swells within me. We who, in 1910, first planted the Union Jack in the Vaults of Heaven!
It is the year of our Lord 1986.
Long live the Empire!
God save the King!
by submission | Sep 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Phil Temples
Kenny just finished making his sixth and final call for anyone to talk to on his ham radio. He wasn’t surprised at the lack of a response. There was no “skip” on the band at this time of the night. It was deader than a doornail. Kenny finished his coffee and reached for the controls. But just as he was about to turn off his set and go to bed, an amazing thing happened. He heard his own voice coming back over the headphones.
“Calling any station, calling any station. This is KR1ZYC in Lewiston, Maine. Over.”
The signal was weak and “watery-sounding,” as though it was being reflected off the aurora borealis. Making contacts off the aurora or even an ionized meteor trail was not uncommon. Nor were “echos.” Radio amateurs had reported hearing their own signals skipping around the earth—even multiple times. What was unusual, however, was the extremely long delay. He was sure it was his first transmission from almost seven minutes earlier. Most long-delayed echoes were typically one or two seconds long—the time it takes for the signal to bounce repeatedly between the ionosphere and the Earth’s surface before arriving back at its point of origin.
This is crazy, he thought.
Kenny heard his voice again. He was pretty certain that it was his second attempt to elicit contact.
Seven minutes? It’s only three-to-four seconds to the moon and back. It would take seven minutes for a radio signal to travel to Mars!
Kenny turned on his signal analyzer and recorded the next incoming signal, comparing it to earlier recordings of his transmitter’s waveform characteristics. They were practically identical. It would be extremely difficult to spoof a waveform on the fly unless you worked for a three-letter agency. It was clearly his signal!
He timed his last transmission. This time, the echo took only six minutes and forty seconds to arrive.
“Earth to Mars, Earth to Mars. Come in, Mars,” Kenny said, jokingly. He waited the requisite period of time for his voice to appear. That’s when he got another surprise. His signal arrived in only six minutes, thirty-two seconds—almost six seconds earlier.
“Come in, come in, whoever you are. Red rover, red rover, send the aliens right over!”
Kenny waited. Six minutes and twenty-four seconds later, instead of hearing his own voice, he heard:
“Thank you for the invitation. We will see you soon, Earthling.”
The next morning, there was a knock on his door.
by Julian Miles | Sep 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The café is dimmer than usual – more bulbs have blown, and they’re expensive. There are more candles, but it’s not the same.
“What the eff have you got there?”
Davey looks up at me.
“Steak and chunky chips.”
I look at the plate in front of him. I know it’s HEMAP, HEVAC, and HESL – Human-Edible Meat Analogue: Protein, Human-Edible Vegetable Analogue: Carbohydrate, and Human-Edible Savoury Liquid – but it’s coloured up just right. Certainly looks the part.
He beckons me closer.
“Take a sniff.”
I do so. Ye gods, that smells good! It’s usually the giveaway of tarted up substitute food. It might look the part, but still smells like warm compost. I straighten up, then wave to get Hokuto’s attention.
“I’ll have one of what Davey has!”
Hokuto waves. Someone peers round him.
“You sit down, Barton. Takes my daughter time to make. You paying tonight?”
Subtle, Hokuto.
“Full tab, plus this, and a coffee.” I wink at him. He’s got a stash of freeze-dried arabica. It’s strictly for regulars, forty notes a cup, and worth every penny.
Davey raises his eyebrows.
“You’re paying your tab? Who did you kill?”
None of your business, my hardworking friend. The less you know, the better.
“Finally hit a winning streak at Johnson’s, and managed to walk away without spaffing it.”
He nods.
“Well done. I know the gambling has troubled you over the years.”
Not really, but excuses people can empathise with always work better, especially when they involve topics people expect reticence about.
“I have good days and bad days, Davey. Speaking of which, how’s your boy?”
“Looks like he’s headed for Colony Ten. That bloke he fought with has died.”
“No effing way, mate. Such a bad break.”
He nods.
“Lana is beside herself. Nothing we can do. I won’t deny the penal stipend will help, but losing our lad is hard.”
Bruno’s doing it for you. He’s got a screw loose, but working for me, he’ll spend the next ten years making Mars a safer colony – instead of getting himself executed. As for the bloke who died, he’s not a loss to this community. Thinking of that, I need to come up with a way for Bruno’s bonus to get to his folks.
Simplicity is best: I lean closer.
“Look, Bruno asked me to keep it quiet, but he’s been stashing funds with me in case his temper got the better of him, to make up for losing his tithe. As he’s going away for a while, I’d be happier if his folks had hold of it all up front. Is that okay?”
Davey hastily wipes away the tears that start from his eyes.
“Oh my lad. Such a good heart. Yes, of course it is. Bless you, mate.”
Steady on. I suspect any powers up on a cloud somewhere aren’t too impressed with me and mine. We’re the bad guys who keep things good. Vigilantes, my arse. These days, we’re essential.
