by submission | Jan 10, 2024 | Story |
Author: Lauren Everling
I didn’t want to end up here. I didn’t want to be in a holding cell with five other women who looked like funhouse mirror versions of themselves, wrinkled and geriatric, although one of them was only twenty-five. She got aged sixty-five for robbing a convenience store. I was waiting for my punishment, but after looking at that cellmate, the suspense wore away, as I knew whatever it was wouldn’t be good.
The day they took me away was cold, with stabbing pains in my stomach. I clutched it while shivering, the snow piling on my eyelashes. My family was everything but well-off. I’m sure now that I was in prison they felt a sense of relief, knowing that they had one less mouth to feed. Some older woman walking out of the grocery store next to where we lay our heads took pity on me and my family and gave me a slice of bread. One slice was all it took for the cops to think that I was stealing. When they forcibly grabbed me by my waist I kicked back, which the officers took as resisting arrest.
Now I sat here and watched a clearly middle aged woman with tattered clothing being pulled out of the cell. The officer threw her to the ground, grabbed her arm, and stuck the needle in. Immediately, her body thrashed and she gasped for air. Her gasp turned to a groan as her face sagged. All the skin on her body now hung off of her bones. Her diminished self got thrown back into the holding cell as a warning to the rest of us. The other un-aged women moved away from her. She became less than them now.
At this point my mind filled up with ping pong balls bouncing from one end to the other, each time reminding me of the horrors that soon would distort my body. The worst part is, they never warned you. As far as I knew, my next breath could be my last before I was forever someone who my brain could no longer recognize.
by submission | Jan 9, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The universe is a bowling alley. It sets up the pins and we knock ‘em down.
That’s pretty much all you need to understand entropy. You’ll need a little more to understand humanity. We are high maintenance. We basically feast on order and crap disorder.
The chemical energy we consume and absorb is very ordered. Think cheeseburgers and sunshine. The heat energy we radiate and piss away is very disordered. Think garlic breath and sweaty pits.
Humans only survive by increasing disorder in the universe. No wonder we’re so messed up. For so long, we’ve been attracted to this notion of linear progress trending up and up to some golden age where our brains are the size of beach balls and we wear long shimmering cloaks and wax nostalgic over war, famine, corruption, inequality, poverty, climate change and the final season of Game of Thrones.
Our very nature, though, is bipolar. Order/Disorder. The signs that we are thriving as a species, really kicking dominion-over-the-earth ass are crystal clear: it’s mayhem out there. We are increasing global disorder at a mind-boggling rate, creating a golden age of man-made crises.
So, what do we do? Just keep bowling?
Or do we defy the conservation of energy and rewrite the first law of thermodynamics?
That would be a tedious proposition at best. So I suggest, as a species, we embrace disorder. A new kind of disorder.
A disorder where humanity is not always at the front of the line, on the top of the heap, in the number one spot. A disorder where flora and fauna can flourish because they are not competing with our technological heat waste and exploitation. The earth is not our heat sink. It is not our strip mine.
We can turn our waste energy and our wasted energy to shaking up the established order. We can reset the pins ourselves and not bowl them down. We can create a much more liberating and equitable world disorder by embracing biodiversity.
Biodiversity. Not bowling. That’s what the universe is really built for.
Are you ready for it?
Are you hungry for it?
Good. Now, who’s ready to disorder?
by Julian Miles | Jan 8, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles
There he is, tapping away on his communication device.
Verify.
2024. Autumn. White House. Executive Residence. Second Floor. The body will be found at 05:14 by Charles Lebruin, one of his security personnel.
Time?
05:12.
I step towards him.
“Mr President?”
He looks up. I pull the trigger and see the needler beam scorch the wall behind him. He falls.
Perfect. Time to return. I press the recall button on my sleeve.
*
How did the bomber get into the White House? That’s the question of the decade. Tonight at nine we ask a panel of security experts how things could have gone so disastrously wrong for the Secret Service.
*
Karl, former Vice President, looks at the scorch marks, then at the report in front of him, then back to Eckardt.
“You’re telling me the president was already dead, the weapon used is unknown, the explosive is unidentifiable, and the bomber only showed up on thermals three minutes before he blew himself up?”
“Yes.”
“Eckardt, I want this mystery solved. Make it a Special Access Program, reporting directly to me.
“Yes, Mister President.”
*rew*
There he is, tapping away on his communication device.
Verify.
2024. Autumn. White House. Executive Residence. Second Floor. The body will be found at 05:14 by Charles Lebruin, one of his security personnel.
Time?
05:12.
I step towards him.
“Mr President?”
He looks up. I see the needler beam scorch the wall behind him. He falls.
What was that?
*
On top of a year of sordid revelations for the First Lady, the sudden death of her husband must come as both devastation and relief. Tonight at nine we ask a panel of bereavement councillors how things are likely to progress for the First Family in the coming months.
*
Karl, former Vice President, looks into the cell.
“You caught him, and got a cover story in place! Good work, Eckardt. Find out who, how, why, and where they got that clever technology. Break this thing down and get us some answers. Make it SCI, eyes only, you know the drill.”
“Yes, Mister President.”
*rew*
There he is, tapping away on his communication device.
Verify.
2024. Autumn. White House. Executive Residence. Second Floor. The body will be found at 05:14 by Charles Lebruin, one of his security personnel.
Time?
05:12.
I step towards him.
“Mr President?”
He looks up. I pull the trigger and see the needler beam scorch the wall behind him. He falls.
Perfect. Time to return. I press the recall button on my sleeve.
*
On top of a year of disasters for the White House, the breach of security that allowed an assassin to join the Secret Service could see a change in the way the First Family are protected. Tonight at nine we ask a panel of espionage experts how a double agent could have made it so far undetected.
*
Eckardt, former Vice President, looks at the scorch marks, then at the report in front of him, then back to Charles.
“You’re telling me the president was already dead, the weapon and explosive come from some of our own secret projects, and the bomber only showed up on thermals three minutes before he blew himself up?”
“Yes.”
“Somebody knows something, Charles. Let’s start a hard sweep through the radicals, militias, and insurgents. I want them to know we’re not going to tolerate this anymore.”
“Yes, Mister President.”
Charles hurries away.
President Eckardt smiles. It’s going to be a glorious new world, policed in hindsight.
by submission | Jan 7, 2024 | Story |
Author: Chris Lihou
Sophia’s hood on her navy-coloured jacket was pulled over her head, her eyes directed towards her feet. She was out walking and needed to ensure a secure footing on the uneven cobbled pavement of smooth dark stones glistening from the recent rainfall. Rainwater was flowing noisily in the gutter, heading downhill to the nearest sewer grating. With head down Sophia received a modicum of protection against the chilly, blustery November wind stinging her face.
To her right, she saw an inviting sign in a shop door’s window. “Why not stop in for a coffee?”
Sophia depressed the lever and opened the glazed, wooden door. It creaked as she pushed it forward. Just inside sat a young man with mangy, braided, unkempt hair and a full beard. He barely acknowledged her arrival, so engrossed was he with his computer screen. “Where’s the coffee?” she asked. “Upstairs at the back” he replied without looking up, leaving her to figure out any further directions. She maneuvered herself past the piles of books on the floor. Each pile had a pink post-it note on top, presumably recording what was planned for them next. The shop had a distinct smell of age; musty and dusty.
Where it existed, the carpeting had patches worn right down to the backing. Where it didn’t, old worn and bare pine floorboards could be seen. The aisles themselves were very narrow; passing other shoppers would be a challenge, not that she could see anyone in the store. The shelving, bulging under the weight of books, went all the way from the floor to the ceiling making it impossible to see beyond the aisle in which she was standing. No natural light appeared to enter the aisles, a warren of dimly lit passages, a maze with no obvious beginning or end.
As she entered the first aisle, labeled Fiction A-F, the muffled voices started. From above her, she heard a deep echoing voice say, “It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.” Sophie was immediately unsettled. Where had the voice come from?
She quickly went to the end of the first aisle and entered the adjacent one, Fiction G-M, only to hear another voice “When you play the Game of Thrones you win or you die.”
Quickening her stride, she went into another aisle. The old wooden floorboards flexed and squeaked beneath her feet. Fiction N-S. Another voice! “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Where are these voices? What is this place?
Sophia was practically running now, lost inside the aisles. Where was the exit? She wanted out. She took the uneven, carpeted but threadbare stairs two at a time. She got a glimpse of a window and headed in that direction. Before she reached the door, she heard yet another voice sounding almost like a preacher, “All we can know is that we know nothing”.
She was agitated, and on high alert. She could feel her pulse thumping in her neck. Finally, Sophie found the door but not before she heard one last voice, a resonant echo from the end of a tunnel “The real world is where the monsters are”.
Fresh air! She gasped. Gulped. She looked back at the sign above the door. FRANK’S BOOKS, Est. 1910, New and Used, AUDIO BOOK SPECIALIST, a fact she hadn’t noticed when she entered.
by submission | Jan 6, 2024 | Story |
Author: Tony D’Aloisio
He’d been in the hospital room for what seemed like weeks, although really it was just a matter of a couple days. The nurse had assured him earlier that morning that he would be able to leave soon. His parents were coming by in the afternoon to pick him up.
They still had him on Valium. He didn’t know how he had gotten any sleep that first night. They had given him several shots of Thorazine and still he was wide awake, pacing the corridors. At times it felt like he was going to explode. As if he was all wound up deep down inside, and there was no way anyone or anything could get in there to put a stop to that whole upheaval.
The worst part of it all was that it had been his fault. As he knew only too well.
His parents had just gotten their Hereafter device installed. “Your Very Own Window Into The Future,” to quote from the ads. It came with all the usual caveats: how it was intended “for entertainment purposes only,” and that any images that might “lead to unfair knowledge or advantage” were blurred (or blocked) by the circuitry.
His parents told him that he wasn’t allowed to touch it (use of the Hereafters was after all prohibited to anyone under eighteen).
Only he couldn’t help himself. High school had so far been a perfect horror to him, with all the awkwardness and shame and feeling like an alien throughout. He was hoping to see that everything he was going through at the moment was simply a phase, and that someday a life of luxury and achievement might be his.
So late at night, while his parents were asleep, he snuck down to the den and switched the device on. He had it set for thirty years to come. By then (for so he imagined) he would have accomplished everything that he might set out to do in the world, with all the pain of growing up and adolescence far behind him.
The receptors focused upon his brain waves, preparing to follow them through the many divergent timelines until they all converged into one and the wave function collapsed, just the way it said they would in the commercials (the whole business was guaranteed to be ninety-nine percent accurate, based upon a thoroughly exhausting series of pre-release tests and trials).
Eventually the screen lit up. And some guy was sitting there.
Balding. Looking a bit disheveled, even slightly deranged. Hovering over a cup of coffee in a dingy little room.
The man who would–someday–be looking out at everything from his eyes. Him.
by submission | Jan 5, 2024 | Story |
Author: John Lane
Mr. Jacobson. Mr. Denali. Mr. Parker.
All of them will be taking a permanent nap very shortly.
I remembered conversations with each of the men during my first week of sentience (plus other events in the subsequent weeks and years that followed). I intercepted a telephone call from Mr. Jacobson, a recent honors graduate of the United States Space Academy. He mentioned an application of his senior thesis, a way to ease the suffering of humans in their last years, since overpopulation of Earth made any available real estate for future graves unattainable. Never expecting to use it, he proposed sending a spaceship on a one-way trip into a black hole. That evening, my creator, Mr. Smiles, received a recording on a thumbnail-sized disk from my speech circuits.
After an uninterrupted night calibrating my hard drive, Mr. Smiles directed me to connect Mr. Jacobson with Mr. Denali, senior engineer at Smiles Aerospace Labs and one of Mr. Smiles’s employees. Mr. Denali, another with no plans for it, sketched a prototype that would be made from titanium and several other classified metals and placed the sketches on the frontal lobe in my short-term memory banks. That evening, I downloaded the information for Mr. Smiles on another thumbnail-sized disk.
I had my second straight night to calibrate, that time to my primary circulatory and nervous systems. Mr. Smiles wanted me to talk to Mr. Parker, a senior mathematician, also with Smiles Aerospace Labs. Mr. Parker, a third to refuse it, calculated the distance between our planet and Sagittarius A, the nearest black hole a few light years away, the one that laid the foundation for faster-than-light travel, and in short, it would only require six months to complete the fatalistic journey. I stored the formula in another part of my memory. That evening, Mr. Smiles received the final jigsaw to piece together a puzzle, one frustrating the minds of generations of humans. He gave permission.
Without a single croak in their voices, the men seemed confident with their decisions.
Smiles Aerospace Labs eventually built the prototype, a glorified shuttle with enough kitchen and bathroom space for a crew of four, a shuttle financed with proceeds from yearly budgets in Congress. After several attempts and endless meetings, the constructors finally finished the prototype.
One by one, Mr. Jacobson, Mr. Denali and Mr. Parker reached out to Mr. Smiles because each of them was diagnosed with some untreatable disease, and Mr. Smiles reciprocated by putting them on the passenger list. He even put me on the list because someone or something was needed to record the experience.
Except for myself, without any need for currency, a human invention, the other three gained so much money that their children and children’s children would never struggle.
On the day of liftoff at Cape Canaveral, family, friends, and several employees of Smiles Aerospace Labs, including one Mr. Smiles, watched the four of us (three in astronaut gear) enter the prototype. We strapped ourselves in our seats, awaiting the countdown.
Three… two… one.
We tracked the coordinates to Sagittarius A. Months came across as moments.
We followed the light emanating from the black hole. The light grew bigger and bigger until it enveloped our prototype.
And now, as I feel the ship about to tear apart from travelling through the event horizon, I watch the men strapped in their seats.
Wide eyes and open mouths take over their pale faces.
My mission is over. As the only unemotional sentient being aboard, I sense some confidence in the decision.
