by submission | Nov 18, 2008 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
The Boast sat on the hill and watched the man-things playing with fire. They burned themselves, each other, and finally set the forest alight. The fire didn’t reach the Boast, so it just watched.
The Boast sat on the hill and watched the man-things hunt. They used rocks and sticks, the former for throwing, the latter burned to a point in their fire. The Boast was inedible, so it just watched.
The Boast sat on the hill and watched the man-things farm. They used domesticated horses to till the land, domesticated cattle for manure and meat, domesticated sheep for clothing. The Boast could not be domesticated, so it just watched.
The Boast watched the man-things discover electricity, and wire the forest with lights. The Boast didn’t sleep, so it just watched.
The Boast watched the man-things create shooting weapons and wage war for gold and oil. The Boast had neither, so it just watched.
The Boast watched the man-things create bombs, and destroy millions of themselves in seconds. The Boast moved to a different hill.
The Boast watched the man-things unleash terrible biological weapons, decimating life on the planet, sickening crops, cattle, fish, trees. The forest disappeared. The rivers dried up. The man-things came to the Boast and screamed, “Why didn’t you stop us? Why won’t you help? Why can’t you come down from your hill and dictate peace and prosperity?”
The Boast didn’t understand English, so it just watched.
Later, the Boast sat on the hill and watched the roach-things playing with fire.
by Duncan Shields | Nov 17, 2008 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
My skin is a grid of white tiles.
I’m on the moon, I’m naked, and I’m outside. I’ve been here for hours waiting for my target.
I turn my cue-ball eyes up to the sky. I don’t need to breathe but the batteries that power the whirring oxygenator that replaced my heart are running low. And I’m bored.
I look back down through the thick diamond-glass and resume scanning. The stars in the black sky behind my back don’t glitter. There’s no atmosphere where I am.
I’m perched way up at the apex of a recdome in a complete vacuum. I’m a snowflake on a windshield. I’ve become one with the temperature
They’ve done their best to recreate Central Park down in this recdome and for the most part they did a pretty good job.
Or so I’m told. I was a child when the aliens cleared us out and I had never been to New York.
At night here when the Earth is full, you can still look up and see the new shapes of the continents through the now-colorful clouds.
Can you imagine the terror and the chaos of The Lottery? A completely viable second earth had been set up, they said. An earth where we could frolic in controlled safety. Our race would not die out. We exhaled in relief. We’d seen what the aliens could do. Their technology far outstripped ours.
The catch was that this second earth they were talking about was The Moon. A series of tunnels and domes had been set up there.
The moon is not as big as Earth.
There was a lottery but the rules were dictated by the aliens. We had no say. In one way, that was good because it meant that not just the president and his staff would get to go but it was horrifying in other ways because the aliens didn’t have kids or wives. Those kinds of connections weren’t taken into account.
1/16th of the Earth’s population was teleported to the Moon. The rest were left on Earth and used to help with the experiment. No contact with Earth is possible. We don’t know what they’re doing down there.
I was part of a batch of humans that were changed to be able to exist outside. We are the police force here. They call us the wintermen. The meaning has become lost since there are no seasons here anymore but the name is apt. We’re white, we’re cold, and we kill things.
I stare down into the park and keep scanning.
by submission | Nov 16, 2008 | Story
Author : Ryan Somma
Wyndallo took an unexpected breath of cold, sterile air. He opened his eyes and saw his exhale condense against the glass door to the capsule, which was smoothly lifting away from him. He registered the air outside the capsule was colder than inside, but his brain was too removed from the otherly sensation to induce shivering.
Last thing he remembered, Wyndallo was enjoying braised antelope with a rich pesto side dish. He was just about to enjoy a sip of a 1986 Chateau Mouton Rothschild Pauillac, when the system had crashed. Now that he was here in the real world, the world of continuity, he could remember that the system always crashed when he tried to taste that particular vintage. The system would automatically report the bug, but it was obvious after all these years that no one remained out there to work on it.
Even if he had wanted to get up from the bed, his muscles had grown stiff and inflexible from decades of disuse. The capsule could overcome this, get him on his feet again, but the process would take months. Just the act of propping him up a few degrees would induce nausea so severe it might kill him. He was content to wait for the software to reboot and welcome him back into its warm embrace.
He could see his surroundings reflected in the capsule’s glass door. Rows of glowing capsules, their occupants obfuscated behind cloudy glass, stretched off into the distance in either direction. His own reflection was laid out in the center of them all, his naked body pale and emaciated. He felt no connection to it at all. It wasn’t his anymore.
His eyes wandered to the ceiling, where a skylight revealed a bit of night sky that was full of stars. It was so uninspiring compared to the night skies the VR software rendered, these were just bland white twinkling points of light.
The night sky the system rendered was full of geometric shapes and patterns, clear proof of a galaxy brimming with intelligent life. Wyndallo’s civilization had wasted centuries searching the skies for even a hint of life beyond their world to no avail.
The system mercifully whirred to life again and the capsule door descended to enclose him. Before the psi-field wrapped his consciousness in its warm illusion, Wyndallo had a moment to wonder if no civilization had ever left its mark on the stars because they were all fated to the same prison of introspection.
by submission | Nov 15, 2008 | Story
Author : Glenn Blakeslee
Janie and I sat on the rocks in the afternoon sun, overlooking the shallow valley and, beyond it, Gordon’s face on the mountainside. We waited until the sightseer buses left the parking lot, and walked down the path to the viewing area.
It was impressive. Gordon’s face was a quarter-mile across, set amid slabs of granite, tilted back at a forty-five degree angle. Foreshortening made his brows appear heavy, his nose overbearing. His eyes were closed but it was still obviously Gordon.
Janie stopped almost to the interaction kiosk, her hands clenched on her chest, but I continued. I stood for a while, and called Gordon’s name.
The eyes slowly opened, gimbaled up to the sky and then down at the viewing area. They blinked, slowly. The lips on the mountain moved, and the sound of his voice came from all over, rumbled through the rocks at my feet. Gordon said “James?”
“Yeah,” I said, “It’s me,” and the lips on the mountain smiled.
“And Janie, too,” Gordon said. Janie stood on the path, still, her hands clenched.
“You look… amazing,” I said, and it was true. “Your skin looks so real.”
“It is real. It’s my actual skin, cloned into a macro-analog, tougher, more durable.”
“Cool,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
“My eyes are amazing,” Gordon rumbled from the rocks. “They’re like real eyes, liquid-filled, with a billion charge-couple devices close-packed where the optic disk would be. I can see forever.”
“We’ve just heard about this, and came to see you,” I said. I moved from behind the kiosk, to make sure he saw me. “We wanted to know that you were happy.”
“I am happy. It’s wonderful,” the rocks rumbled. “Janie?” She raised her face to his. “I still love you,” Gordon said.
I could see tears streaming down her face. I started to walk to her, but she ran up the path. I followed.
“Janie?” Gordon said.
#
I came back a year later, alone. There were no sightseers, no buses or cars. Gordon’s eyes were open, staring up into the midday sun. His skin looked cracked and leathery, eroded around the sides of his nose. Crows sat on the expanse of his face, cawing, picking at loose pieces of skin.
Gordon was slow to answer. He recognized my voice but wouldn’t move his eyes from the sky. “I can see forever but there’s nothing to see,” he said, his voice lower than before. “We’re all alone here, I’m all alone,” he said, and then wouldn’t speak any more.
#
I made my third and last visit to Gordon three days after Janie’s death. It was dusk, the light gone from the valley, the stars rising at my back. I could see his profile, and glints of starlight reflecting off his eyes. He didn’t respond to me, but spoke continually in a rumbling growl. “I am your master,” he said, “Kneel to me. I am the lord of this land, you are my creation. Kneel to me.”
I stood there for an hour, and then started up the path.
“Hands!” Gordon screamed. “Give me my hands!”
The next morning I found four laborers in town. We used garden tools to chop and hoe the square mile of Gordon’s face to pieces. I severed the cable to his cold-fusion power supply. I split the aqueous humor of his eyes with a pike, widened the gap until the liquid ran down his cheeks. We dug to the embedded center of his analog-brain, and I crushed it.
It took hours. The crows came by the thousands.
by Stephen R. Smith | Nov 14, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Street-lamps outside lit her bare flesh an iridescent blue, but he knew in the absence of light, she was chiseled obsidian, black as the sun was bright.
“It’s been a while,” her voice low and gentle, “I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”
Logan unrolled a soft-case on the night table beside the bed, absently fingering the half dozen syringes nestled within. It was going to be a long night.
“I could never stay away,” he read her face from where he sat on the edge of her bed, “I told you I’d come back, didn’t I?”
Taking her face in his hands, he felt her hair stalks bristle beneath his palms, the beating of her hearts carried up his arms as her pulse quickened.
Her hands found flesh beneath his shirt, and holding him so tight his ribs ached beneath the pressure, she pulled him over her to leave him gasping on his back beside her. She wasted no time flaying his clothing from his body, razor sharp claws extending and retracting, slicing fabric, grazing flesh but never drawing blood. When she mounted him, it was with the fury of an animal. Her breath came in frenzied gasps. His hands guiding her hips at first before sliding across her muscled body, to her breasts, then to her face. Where he touched her, her flesh turned the colour of sun touched pink as her body mimicked his own.
Flattening herself against him she pressed her mouth against his, forcing her tongue between his lips. She bit gently, serrated teeth tearing into flesh. He felt the fire of her saliva rushing into his bloodstream. His heart begin to pound, the muscle labouring as though to burst the confines of his chest. As his body stiffened, her excitement intensified, and she sat upright, heaving against him with renewed vigor.
The sensation was exquisite; his pupils fixed and dilated, his field of view remained filled with her taught, muscular flesh seemingly lit from within. Unable to blink he watched as her own lower lids closed, her eyes now translucent yellow, staring through him for what seemed like an eternity before she squeezed the upper lids shut, crying out in pleasure. Her moans washed over him in waves, the powerful paralyzers in her saliva mixed now with endorphins as her other fluids flooded his system. She had intoxicated him completely as he came, the feeling strange with his body now completely immobile and consciousness rapidly giving way to euphoric nothingness. His heart counted off his final moments in beats, unbearable in their intensity while alarming in their diminishing frequency.
In the moment he was sure he would slip away forever, the happiest of departures, he felt a lance of pain through his chest. With a sudden intake of air, his lungs filled and his heart resumed a laboured but steady beating. One by one he felt his muscles unclench, his body gradually relaxing into the sweat soaked sheets beneath him. He had barely the energy to moan as she withdrew the needle from his chest, laying the empty syringe with the others on the night table.
“That…” he could barely move enough air to make a sound.
“Shh,” she placed a finger on his lips, “you need to rest.” She curled up beside him, placing her head on his chest. “I’m glad you came back.”
Logan closed his eyes, feeling the lingering effects of her coaxing him toward sleep.
“Loving you may kill me,” he finally breathed, “but leaving you surely would.”
by submission | Nov 13, 2008 | Story
Author : Tony Pacitti
“You ever hear of a fellow named, Jules Verne?” the man asked me.
“Sure I heard of him. Frenchman. Done borrowed an idea or two from him from time to time.”
“It’s funny you should say that,” he said.
The man smiled such that it didn’t do much in the way of makin’ me feel at ease. It was the kind of smile that said he knew a secret I wouldn’t guess in a million years.
Now the only thing to rival the number of notes these fingers of mine have plucked are the number of miles these feet have carried me. I done walked my fair share across this great nation, I’ll tell you what. From Kennebunk to Salinas and from there right on back to Macon. Hell, I didn’t even stop once the entire way and I done it to prove that there ain’t nothin’ a man can’t accomplish when he’s got the gumption.
I have however made plenty of stop in plenty of towns on plenty other voyages across these forty-eight states. As a result I’ve got myself something of a reputation as a raconteur. A wanderin’, song singin’ story teller like they used to have in the old world. I tell it all, tales of heroism and horror, rags and riches. The people of this country have a thirst for the sweet drink of Someplace Else, especially during these dark times, and I’m happy to be the bar man fillin’ their empty glasses. In some places my services aren’t as appreciated as they once were, thanks to my only mortal enemy, The Radio, but there’s still a personal connection to a crowd that no gizmo can ever make, especially not when old Fin’s around.
It’s because I’m a storyteller that this here man in black approached me. He said that as known as I am I can disappear without any suspicion.
“It won’t matter how long it’s been since anyone seen you last,” he told me, “They’ll all just assume you’re someplace else.”
He took me to a large steel mill where I was told a group of men were waiting to make my acquaintance. The first of the other recruited men I met was an ancient lookin’ Englishman named Barkley. His hands were like twisted, knotty branches and his face barely visible through a bramble of yellowing gray hair. All that showed through it was a fat, pockmarked nose and two sunken, stitched shut eyelids. His eyes themselves where kept in a jar he carried and I’ll be struck dead by God Almighty if they didn’t follow me as I moved passed him. The man in black told me that Barkley here had studied under a man named Crowley and had spent years in places powerful in black magics such as the Far East and the voodoo swamps of Louisiana.
After leaving Barley to his mumblin’ in tongues, the man in black was met by a clean-cut gentleman wearing glasses and a strange suit that looked more like a machine than a garment. They spoke at length about timetables, trajectories, heavy explosives and, unless I misheard, alchemy. Almost as if he’d forgotten I was there, the man in black introduced me to the iron and hose clad Captain Stewart.
The busy Captain stomped off, fast as his heavy suit would allow and it was at this point that I finally demanded to know what was going on.
“Why Mr. Sassafrass,” he said with that wicked smile again, “We’re releasing you gentlemen of your terrestrial tether.”
Jules Verne—these old boys were breakin’ for the stars!
