by featured writer | Apr 13, 2007 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer
In small German-occupied towns during WWII, if a local woman had a German soldier boyfriend during the occupation, she was hung when the war was over. People who had been seen talking to Germans and helping them had their heads shaved in the town square or some other public humiliation.
I’d always thought that this was the real horror of war. The war itself was bad for the soldiers but the moral dead end of what the average person had to do to survive left that person with almost no safe way out.
If you stood up to the occupiers, you were shot. If you were nice to the occupiers, your own people would hurt or even kill you once the invaders had lost the war and were gone. If the occupiers won in the end, you would be a second class citizen in a country you no longer recognized.
No one wins in a war except for the people who make the weapons.
This time, we were the weapons. Our manufacturers made a lot of money off of this war but it was over now and we’d been outlawed and banned and condemned. Our side lost. We’d been hunted down and executed. A few of us had been kept alive to serve the public’s need to see revenge.
For a nominal fee, you could beat or rape us. If you brought tools, you were charged before you used them based on the severity of damage that the tools would cause. For a higher fee, you could kill one of us. There were package deals involving all of the above.
There were fewer and fewer of us every day. Prices were going up.
If one burns the flag of the country or political movement that killed one’s family, it’s ultimately unsatisfying. If one captures a soldier of the enemy forces and tortures him to death, one is left satisfied but with a haunting black mark on one’s soul.
If one can take out one’s grief and anger on a thing that looks convincingly human but has no rights, new levels of satisfying sadism can be reached. By making weapons that looked human, our manufacturers accidentally guaranteed our brutalization.
We are helping people cope with loss. It can’t even be called genocide.
When the first few men were let in and what was left of my hair was pulled violently back, I liked to think about what would have happened if our side had won. I fantasized about the millions of us walking the streets with lives. I thought about our lives as weapons being a distant memory. I thought about going on dates, working at a job, being decommissioned, and having nothing to do on a Tuesday night. I thought about our existence being tolerated and maybe even accepted.
My head snaps violently to the right from the impact of a farmboy’s fist and I pray that someone has enough money in this small town to pay for execution.
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by submission | Apr 12, 2007 | Story
Author : Sarah Klein
General Elias Knox sat staring at the paperwork at his desk, utterly confounded. “Would you care to explain what happened, lieutenant?”
The lieutenant swallowed nervously, trying not to tremble noticeably. “Sir, we dropped the conventional bombs yesterday at 2100 hours. There was noticeable destruction of building structures, but we saw no casualties – not even wounds. No bodies. They didn’t even seem to be frightened.”
“This is ridiculous,” Knox snarled. “Damn aliens won’t die. We don’t even know enough about them to try to starve them out.”
The lieutenant swallowed again and kicked dust off the floor. “What do you propose we do, sir?”
General Knox had never been defeated. He was Earth’s best weapon – an absolute mastermind of military manners. He’d been in every type of climate, participated in every type of warfare, and used every weapon. But now that he was up against nonhuman enemies, he wasn’t as successful. In Earth’s first battle amongst the stars, the humans were losing. Badly.
He sat lost in thought for a moment, and then started angrily. “Drop the atomic,” he growled, spinning around in his seat. The lieutenant’s eyes popped wide open.
“Are you sure, sir? You do know-“
“I said drop the atomic! That’s an order! 0500 tomorrow morning.”
“Yes sir.”
The lieutenant nervously paced the floor. It was 0505 the next morning, and the atomic bomb had just been dropped on the planet’s busiest city. He tried to calm himself down before checking the monitoring screens. The other day’s bombing had still shaken him – not the destruction it had unleashed, but the absence of it. He may have been young, but he was used to seeing bodies sprawled across pavement and pools of blood. The unaffected bodies of the aliens scared him more than any blood-caked, distorted human corpse ever had.
At 0510 Knox sat down in one of the seats facing several of the monitoring screens. The lieutenant saw him out of the corner of his eye and watched him carefully, but he did nothing. A couple minutes later, he steeled himself and walked to look over the silent general’s shoulder. What he saw pushed him far past the brink of panic.
“My God. We’re doomed.”
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by submission | Apr 11, 2007 | Story
Author : J. S. Kachelries
I couldn’t get to NASA’s Office of Human Capital Management fast enough. The e-flyer said they were looking for 1000 healthy individuals, between the ages of 21 and 32, that would be willing to participate in the first manned colonization mission to a planet in the Scorpii system. According to the flyer, they didn’t need trained astronauts for this mission; they were looking for a variety of skilled artisans to “provide the underlying foundation for a permanent autonomous human habitation.†Hell, I was a certified Class 6, Grade IX Senior Maintenance Technician. You can’t colonize a new planet without somebody who can keep things runnin’.
I found a vacant “Employment Opportunity†kiosk and tapped in my Citizen ID number, then entered the job classification code from the e-flyer. “Greetings, mister Swartz,†said the sultry female voice of the Mark-III human-friendly interface. “Please enter the required information into Sections A1 through E22, and then proceed to the Ames Advanced Medical Laboratory for astrobiological DNA screening, psych evaluation, and a fertility testing.â€
“Roger that,†I replied, as I enthusiastically opened Section A (Personal Information). It was an easy enough start. First name, middle initial, last name, etc., etc. Then I got to question A31, “Enter your financial assets, liabilities, and list of your dependents.†I glanced down at the kiosk ID tag; JANE-3261956. “Excuse me, ah, Jane. Why is this information needed?â€
“Sir, you are applying for a one-way mission to a distant solar system. We need to make sure that you’re not attempting to avoid your financial obligations on Earth. There will also be questions concerning any outstanding warrants and subpoenas. You can’t flee the law either. In addition, you must answer questions about your family’s mental and physical history, drug/alcohol usage, sexual orientation, etc.â€
“Well, that all makes sense, I guess. “ Two hours later I completed Section A and opened Section B. “Say Jane, how am I supposed to know if I am allergic to ethyl-something-or-other? I don’t even know what that stuff is.â€
“Ethylene-trisodium-glycol-phosphate. It’s a biological stabilizer. We use it to replace all of the freezable liquids in your body. For example, your blood, cerebrospinal fluids, pleural effusion, semen…â€
“Whoa. What was that?â€
“Sir, you are traveling to a system that is 45.75 light years away. At maximum velocity, it will take the ship 587 years to arrive. You do know that this is a ‘Sleeper Starship’? Your body will be frozen in liquid helium in suspended animation for the duration of the trip. If you have any water in your body, it will expand when it freezes, and you’ll split open like a hotdog in a microwave.â€
“Oh, I thought you had warp drive, or something. Is this freezing thing safe?â€
“Relatively speaking. It’s safer than most other life extension protocols.â€
“’Relatively speaking,’ huh. What does that mean?â€
“Well, to be perfectly frank, you have about a 50% probability of viable revival. That’s why NASA is requesting 1000 volunteers. In order to maintain the overall genetic variability of the colony, a minimum of 250 mating pairs is required.â€
“Fifty percent? That sucks. Forget it.†I quickly pressed ‘Exit application, do not save.’
“Listen, Jane, can I go anywhere else without becoming a Popsicle?â€
“Yes, sir. I recommend the tropics.â€
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by featured writer | Apr 10, 2007 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer
The universal translator she wore around her neck always told me how she felt. When she sighed a series of clicks into my hair as my hands brushed the blue skin in between her 2nd and 3rd sets of arms, it was the translator that said, “Oh, I like that.â€
It spoke in a voice like a nearly tuned-in radio. I didn’t think of it as her voice. We could have complicated conversations and everything but the translator was just doing it’s best to give me the closest approximation of what she meant. It was like having a third person in the room. It was always once removed. It was a minor annoyance.
When I licked the sponge holes on the base of her anterior skull plate, it was the translator hanging on her chest that said, “Stop that tickles and you know it.â€
We had a year and a half of nice memories. Good conversations. Great sex. Fun times.
I was leaving.
The journey was only a few years but it was at near light and her race had a shorter life span that humans. This was the last time we’d see each other and we knew it. I smiled nervously like things were going to be fine while blinking back tears. She clicked and cooed while occasionally puffing out the strawberry scents I’d taught her how to make over the course of one hilarious weekend. It was as close as her kind could ever come to smiling. They covered up the acrid smell of grief that she almost successfully repressed.
This was the moment. We were in the lobby of the spaceport and we were staring at each other. I needed to go ahead past the security screens by myself. I held onto the olive-smooth fingers of her tophands and looked deep into her faceted eyes. She stared back up at me.
“Well.†I said. “I guess this is goodbye.â€
She shuddered. Her mandibles and orecase fluttered and clicked. Her translator kicked in. “Peter, I will alw-†it said.
With speed and strength I’d never seen her display she snatched the translator off of her chest, snapped the cord, spun on her talons and threw it against the tiled wall with all her strength. It shattered like a kid’s toy.
She turned back and stared up at me again. She grabbed my fingers in her tophands. She was staring intently up at me. Her wing stumps fluttered. It was the same as a human taking a deep breath.
Her mandibles clicked faster and faster. They made a sound like someone humming through a piece of paper wrapped around a comb. They made a sound like someone playing a saw with a violin bow. They made a sound like wood being pushed slowly through a jigsaw. It reminded me of a field of crickets on a summer’s day back on earth when I was a kid. Her mouth parts blurred with the humming.
“Hi hwill alwuzz love you.†the humming said. The words were there, clear as day. The humming stopped and she slumped forward, exhausted.
She turned and walked away. I had never heard of a member of her race-caste even attempting to mimic human speech.
She’d let me hear her true voice as a parting gift.
I will never forget it.
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by submission | Apr 9, 2007 | Story
Author : Kenny R. Brown
Our research ship; the Threshold, hovered about 800,000 kilometers from the event horizon. We could’ve taken better readings by moving closer, but then even the most powerful engines ever designed wouldn’t have been able to hold us back from the intense pull of gravity generated by our test subject.
Though our shielding was sufficient to protect us from the intense X-ray radiation, there was something unnerving about looking at the black hole with the naked eye. Some compared it to staring down the barrel of a weapon. I felt more like a projectile; about to be forced through the barrel at inconceivable speed.
We were on the final leg of our mission, examining the black hole known as subject K14-683. For the last three days, it has been business as usual for us; taking readings and performing tests.
“Sir!” Lieutenant Caruthers shouted; “Positive contact in optical.”
“What’ve we got?” I asked.
“It looks like a vessel of some kind, holding station about 12 kilometers from the event horizon; spherical, 6 meters in diameter.”
“Analysis?”
The Lieutenant scowled as he examined the various displays arrayed at his station.
“Unknown, it seems to have no source of propulsion. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I ordered a routine scan of the object, probing the object in a wide range of spectra and frequencies.
Ensign Michaels began shouting, bypassing the usual chain of command. “The unknown is moving. It’s on a collision course!”
Lieutenant Caruthers hit the collision alarm. “Time to intercept; 25 seconds.”
The expected impact never came; the unknown vessel stopped 10 meters off of our bow. Then our engines went dead.
“Main engine shutdown! We’re being pulled in.” The Lieutenant paused a moment, then continued; “40 seconds to event horizon.”
There was nothing left to do, every member of the crew knew there was no hope; the bridge was silent as we each prepared to meet death. The unknown kept its position off our bow, exactly matching our acceleration. We reached the event horizon, but instead of being destroyed; we suddenly found ourselves in normal space once again.
The silence was finally broken by Lieutenant Caruthers; “Ensign Michaels; report.”
“The unknown is still off the bow; engines operating at station keeping.”
“What’s our position?†I asked.
Lieutenant Caruthers consulted his stellar maps. Finally; he responded; “Position… uncharted.”
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by Stephen R. Smith | Apr 8, 2007 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Jack smiled across the card table, and the newly bankrupt old man glared back with open hatred. Jack busied himself stuffing his winnings into his cavernous coat as the coin was collected by the dealer, counted, and after the house tax paid, credited to one of Jack’s many account cards. He’d compensate the dealer later for the extraordinary luck he’d had tonight.
The rest of the nights losers had already wandered off, a teacher, a housewife – beholden now to Jack for a fortnight, and the young ranger who’d lost his recoilless pistol to a low pair. Jack hefted the weapon for moment before it too was stuffed into a pocket. A chronometer, food ration tokens, several knives and a nice pair of long glasses all disappeared into the coat. As he picked up the old mans last offering of the game, a velvet bag full of beans, Jack paused.
“Beans?” he thought out loud “What the hell am I going to do with beans?”  Jack hadn’t wanted the old mans beans, but he had wanted the win. There was something special about cleaning someone out of everything they had, no matter how worthless the items themselves.
“Magic beans.” the old man spat at him, “You’d best be careful with those, you don’t respect ’em and they’ll bite you in the ass”
“Sorry about your luck, and thanks for these.. magic beans.” He spoke over his shoulder, turning towards the door “If you can muster up something else to bet with, I’d be happy to take it off you some other time”. He could feel the mans eyes burning into his back as he strode out the swinging doors into the night, twirling the bag of beans deliberately by its drawstring as he left.
He walked quickly, down the alley past Madame Harlots House of Whorers, over the canal bridge and down the path along the waters edge, still twirling the bag.  It was here that the straining drawstring broke, sending the bag and it’s beans skittering across the path into the shallow of the water.
Jack could have cared less about the beans, and had almost walked past them when the ground began to shake. The shallow water erupted with explosive force, and a thick vine began to claw its way skyward at an impossible rate, sending Jack staggering backward as he stumbled and fell. The vine thickened as it grew, strong roots visibly churning their way outward beneath the ground, some erupting in the canal proper, some unsetting the underbrush lining the edge of the forest that traced the shoreline.  Jack lay on his back, watching the vine rocket into the dense fog of the night sky, and for a moment, childhood stories filled his head.  The old peddler and his beans, a ladder to a dimensional rift in the clouds and a castle filled with riches beyond imagination. Jack’s eyes lit up at the thought, and he scrambled excitedly to his feet, rushed to the base of the towering vine and began climbing, feet and hands finding purchase on the shoots protruding from the vines’ spiny flesh.
He pulled himself skyward tirelessly, in and out of the fog, great boots tearing broad gashes in the plant flesh beneath them as he went. After some time, the fog cleared, and he could feel that the vine itself had stopped rising. Jack had stopped where the plant had taken a sharp perpendicular turn, snaking out sideways into the darkness.
‘This is it’ Jack ventured into the night ‘this must be it…’
Something stirred just on the edge of his sight, an area of blackness, growing, blotting out the stars peppering the darkness beyond.  Could this be the portal?  Jack strained to see as the patch of void moved towards him. The dark shape took form as the distance closed, revealing itself as the end of the vine itself, truncated in a misshapen clutch of petals. It paused, just a few meters away, and the petals peeled back, revealing row upon row of barbed and ribbed spines, bristling inward and foaming angrily.  Jack recoiled in horror, his feet slipping on the torn wet welts his boots had left behind in the haste of his climb. The words of the old man rang again with finality in his ears ‘Best be careful, treat em badly…’
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