by submission | Oct 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Shanna Yetman
Leila likes to lie within the algae when the air is thickest with smog—smoke, nitrogen oxide, and ozone particulates squeezing at her lungs, agitating her asthma. Today her chest is tight. The smog has sat on top of the city for days, building up as each car passes by, growing stronger with each puff of industry. The algae wash in and out.
Her throat is hoarse. Even so, she pulls down her N-95 mask. There’s no fresh whiff of air; it’s hot, and the world smells of coals and wildfires. Her nostrils widen and she puts her mask back on.
She gestures for her best friend Julian to catch up. “Come on, you punk!”
He scurries behind her in his old man bathrobe and pajamas. Even in this heat, his mom has swaddled him like a baby because he’s ill. Leila’s one of the lucky ones. Old bouts of pneumonia and fresh bouts of asthma scar her lungs. His lungs grow cancer.
“Hold up! You witch!” He pants. “Remember? I’m one of the unlucky ones.” He’s caught up with her and he wedges his finger right into her side. It’s a joke. These days, there’s no difference between the lucky and the unlucky.
They’ve both snuck out of their houses and headed for the lakefront. They’ve come to this beach though they’ve been told they shouldn’t. The lake is awash with chemicals like nitrogen and phosphorus. She wants Julian to lie in the algae with her; she’s sure it will make him feel better, if only for a moment.
These are the days when the algal blooms are brightest and cover the largest part of the water. The smog hides the sunset, but there’s a beautiful bluish purple along the horizon, and both Leila and Julian stop to admire the colors before they continue.
The lime green tide laps at the sand, and she holds up the caution tape so Julian can duck under. They ignore the signs warning them that this lake is not safe. Her mother has told her about the bacteria in the water that will kill her, especially when the water is green or tinged a reddish-brown.
None of this is true, at least not for her, and she hopes not for Julian.
She looks back at him. He’s bald from his chemo, so he does look like an old man. But he’s also twelve, and prone to fits of absolute goofiness, and this is what she loves the most about him.
Now, he’s butt naked and runs past her, grabbing her hand at lightning speed.
“Let’s go for a swim, you freak!”
They both rip off their masks and run until their feet don’t touch the lake’s bottom anymore. The algae envelopes them, spreading its lime green body around theirs; treating them like a spindle and wrapping its gooeyness between their toes and their arms, blanketing them.
Then it happens. The tiniest of the algae attach to the inside of her nose and snake their way down to her lungs and heart. It is here, they will stay, and implant. As these tiny plants secure themselves to the inside of her body, her head stops aching; her lungs stop wheezing.
She looks over at Julian. His skin is turning the lime green of the tide. The algae will work its own kind of respiration, replenishing their bloodstreams with oxygen while Julian and Leila breathe in all those chemicals it so craves.
The two friends float on their backs. They breathe, reinvigorating their organs with precious oxygen. At last, their lungs are fulfilling their purpose.
by submission | Oct 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Barber
The dry and sunny weather spoiled their holiday, confining them indoors until nightfall.
It was Lord Byron who proposed they pass the time by writing tales to entertain one another, and for two days the villa beside Lake Geneva was silent with their labours.
Doctor Polidori was the first to confess the reluctance of his pen.
“I have a notion,” he explained. “But it will not come right.”
Lord Byron was good enough to glance over the Doctor’s efforts.
“A conventional enough beginning, Dottori,” he adjudged. “You write about what you know.”
He flicked through more pages. “But vampires, blood feasts and the undead have been done to death. Perhaps you bit off more than you could chew.”
He paused for a moment, but no one acknowledged the wit.
Even worse, on reading the beginning of his own mundane tale of ruins, spectres and mystery, he frowned and tossed it into the fire.
#
It seemed Shelley’s story of a man turning into a beast had also foundered.
“I considered turning into creatures other than a wolf. Metamorphosing into a giant beetle perhaps. But the notion is hum-drum. I was bored with it.”
Instead, he mentioned a game he and his sisters played as children.
“Each of us would take turns continuing a tale. We called them round-robin stories.”
He held up a single page of manuscript.
“So I began with a mad scientist.”
“Really Shelley,” said Byron, unwilling to admit the worth of the notion. Still, an hour later he returned and read out the next chapter.
Shelley shrugged. “Gravedirt under the fingernails, body parts, reanimation and the like.”
“But this time the creature is a woman!” protested Byron.
“Well, there is no instinct like that of the heart.”
Next, Dr Polidori added some routine background; a remote castle, a laboratory and a lightning storm to provide the vital spark.
To Mary Godwin of course, fell the chore of completing the task. Had she and Shelley not speculated about this very thing? Also, she had dreamt about the story most vividly.
“Do not think ill of my poor efforts,” she said when she finished reading aloud.
“And though it is not explicit,” she explained. “The female creature sinks into Dr Frankenstein’s arms, with the implication that they marry and live happily ever after.”
A log collapsed in the fireplace, lofting a flurry of sparks.
“But that is for another hand to carry forward,” she added, unsettled by their silence.
It was Dr Polidori who spoke first. “I am uneasy with what we have done here.”
It was nearly the full moon and he admitted to a tickle in his bones, like water seething to the boil. “Perhaps it is just that which unsettles me.”
“No,” Shelly said. “We have created something new.”
He took the manuscript from Mary’s cold, undead hand.
“I do not know if the world of the Gothic is ready for this.” His voice grew solemn. “A tender romance. Two hearts that beat as one. It will be kisses next.”
Undecided, he went to the hearth, the firelight glinting on the bolt in his neck.
Lord Byron shivered, glad it would soon be dark and he could go out and feed upon elfin-folk.
by submission | Oct 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
In the heart of New York City, in the shadow of towering brownstone apartment buildings, eight-year-old Ro was a peculiar sight. Her curly hair framed her youthful face, and her eyes sparkled with an otherworldly innocence. On the steps of her building, she sat cross-legged, blowing pink bubbles into the air. These weren’t just ordinary bubbles; they were filled with helium, and they held within them something truly magical.
Ro was one of hundreds of alien clones scattered across the world. Clones that stayed forever young, assigned to be adopted into homes in the most impoverished areas. They were an enigmatic group, representing every race, and their mission was clear: to blow pink bubbles that brought peace and love to their neighborhoods.
The rules were simple. Ro and her clone siblings would only stay with families that allowed them to continue sending out the love-filled bubbles. If a family turned them away or didn’t embrace the mission, they were reassigned to new families who understood the importance of their peculiar existence.
Ro’s days were spent on the steps, entranced in a ballet of pink orbs that danced in the city’s relentless hustle and bustle. She released the bubbles one after another, each one drifting into the world, carrying with it a message of hope. “Make the world a better place,” she whispered to them as they ascended into the sky.
Ro’s connection with the bubbles was extraordinary. She could hear their thoughts, or perhaps it was the collective thoughts of her clone siblings. They all resonated with the same simple, profound wish: to shower the world with love and tranquility.
In a world often plagued by division, poverty, and strife, the presence of these young alien clones was a whisper of cosmic kindness. Their mission was their secret, a quiet revolution born of understanding and unity.
The world responded in unexpected ways. As the bubbles floated over the streets of New York, people would pause, their hearts touched by the ethereal beauty and the feeling of peace that washed over them. Strangers shared smiles, neighbors offered warm greetings, and the world seemed just a little bit brighter.
The clones, forever young and forever committed to their mission, came to learn about the world through their interactions with countless families. They saw love in all its forms – parental, sibling, romantic – and understood the power it held in healing the human heart. They became conduits of empathy, helping families to reconcile their differences, soothing tempers, and mending strained relationships.
In the quiet of the night, Ro and her clone siblings would gather on the apartment steps, each lost in thought. Their unity was their strength, and their telepathic connection was their solace. They were the keepers of an age-old secret, custodians of love, and guardians of hope.
Over the years, they watched the world change. The neighborhoods they visited grew kinder, and the world became a more compassionate place. The love bubbles had a ripple effect, touching lives in ways they couldn’t fathom.
Ro, the little girl who blew pink bubbles, knew that her role was a small part of something grander than herself. As she released another bubble into the world, she smiled, for she could feel the collective heartbeat of her fellow clones, and together, they were making the world a better place, one bubble at a time.
by submission | Oct 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: Morrow Brady
The Data Centre hummed like a tuning fork orchestra. In a low-rent corner, a makeshift workshop sat wedged between a run-hot server and a rank of sweating helium spheres. Roughhouse acoustic walls, a vain attempt to stave off tinnitus.
For the third time this hour, I turned my aging frame toward the huge robot and reached up to scrape metal dust from my remaining eye. The adjacent optic implant streamed the robot’s maintenance data under Mitey 9.9.
And mighty he was, hovering in by himself overnight to take up four workshop grids. As an autonomous tier one, Mitey roamed the world fixing robots. I was honoured to be the robot fixer’s fixer. Together, we kept chaos from our frail dusty world.
Alongside, my team of robot fixers assembled, like an awry collection of bismuth samples. Each robot motionless with throbbing blue LEDs, their diagnostics completed and clean. Silla, the cable checker, slithered in her battered steel crate, testing fibre-optics for fun. She had just wriggled out of Mitey’s gleaming rat nest after a three-hour dive. Her green striations signalling everything was dandy. I heaved my dirty work-suit onto a torn mustard-coloured vinyl stool, staving off my own deep dive.
A weird gut feeling lingered.
“Damn it” I said exasperatedly, slapping oily thighs to release silver mist and stepping off towards Mitey’s towering wall of tech, to begin removing parts. Javelin long modules skewering Mitey’s bulk were promptly withdrawn, unwieldy Tetris-like parts removed with powered manipulators and numerous circuitry cubes that sprayed non-electrolytes were unplugged. After two hours of disassembly, I spat oil and stood among piles of parts before a truck sized block of techno Swiss cheese. The muffled sound of helium relief valves whistled midday and hailed my lack of progress.
The far side beckoned, so I squeezed between Mitey’s assemblers and a perforated cork wall missing numerous tools. A shocking number of assembler arms passed menacing close to my face. That subtle fear again. While micro-scanning Mitey’s far side, I lifted my head and glimpsed strangeness within a nest of copper tubes. I zoomed in to see a squarish grey haze.
Hinge, my articulated robot arm, jogged me forward as he docked with my work-suit. Slowly, like magic, I ascended toward the haze. After extracting more modules, I looked closely at the squarish haze, revealing it was ribbed with fine gold lines. My optics processed the anomaly and red-lighted a reworked inhibitor rig. Curiosity defeated fear and I reached out.
“I would not touch that” said Mitey’s calm deep voice.
I flinched.
“I thought you were powered down?” I queried.
I reached again.
“It is not broken” the voice admonished.
“It’s not right” I countered.
“It is there for him” Mitey said with inflection.
Through Mitey’s forest of parts, I watched a grey mist seep into my workshop. It streamed inside Mitey and mad pulses shook him like slapped jelly. Parts shattered, spraying the workshop like a fountain and from a glowing light, reformation began under a melting heat. Sharp shapes twisted, then rematerialised until the light dimmed and the air cooled. Calmness returned.
“Not a fix, a broadcast upgrade. You were here for backup” soothed Mitey, as it raised its mammoth bulk and pivoted a cave of manipulators towards me.
“I fix humans now, and you will need an upgrade to keep up”
Hinge shuddered with resistance, then shunted me forward into a niche of scary things.
I hit a mental panic button and waited for everything to go helium cold, again.
by submission | Oct 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Shamash, the Mesopotamian sun god, probably didn’t see this coming. Considering he was also known as the god of justice and equity, he really should’ve had an inkling of this kind of cosmic irony.
Though we shouldn’t blame a dusty old deity when it’s really our own damn fault. And by our own damn fault, I mean, humanity. As in human arrogance, our rather celebrated celestial self-centeredness. Especially mine.
Yet, I can’t resist pointing a finger back a few thousand years to a Babylonian king who likely started the whole thing rolling, and falling into my, admittedly, helpless hands. And I’m staring at Hammurabi right now standing rather rigidly before me. He’s sporting a nutshell of a cap and rocking a trapezoidal beard that could easily make him an honorary member of ZZ Top.
Of course, he’s not alone. His celestial buddy, Shamash is majestically seated before him. Replete with sun flames busting out his shoulders. You’d think I’d be shaking in awe before a monumental king and a blazing sun god, but I was more concerned with a noisy troupe of school kids crowding my space.
You get that a lot in museums. Timeless art and artifacts surrounded by tiresome little farts and fanatics. The kids seemed frantic to complete their best-of-the-Louvre checklist so they could get credit from their teacher who was likely enjoying a quiet coffee in a nearby cafe. I should have cut them some slack for blocking my unobstructed view of that very ancient basalt stele. I should have been patient, knowing what I knew, but in the moment, I had to get close, really close to it.
The Code.
The over four thousand lines of cuneiform text beneath the carving of Shamash handing Hammurabi the laws of the land. The sun god benevolently bestowing almost three hundred rules of jurisprudence to the king. The seven foot black slab should have inspired a sense of pride, confidence, and reassurance in the continuity of civilization. Instead, it filled me with dread.
I’d come to the Louvre from halfway around the world to see The Code. To really see it. To really believe it. Because like Shamash, another sun god had sent a message from halfway across the galaxy. To me. To all of us. The message wasn’t carved in black basalt, but it was clear enough.
It would take volumes to explain the particulars, but let’s stick with the unfortunate fact that not long ago I was the lead on the ill-fated CERN wormhole experiment that snuffed out a star about fifty thousand light years away. A horrific mistake. A terrible accident.
Didn’t matter. In the age of relativism, it appears that there are still absolutes in the universe. At least to the ancient sentients who disseminated The Code throughout the stars millennia ago. And they’d let me and my team at CERN know it through a series of cryptic interstellar transmissions: Law 196 was in effect.
I pushed my way through the milling school kids, innocents who didn’t deserve the punishment I did, and leaned as close to the immovable basalt stele as the Louvre permits. I scanned the cuneiform for the line I’d memorized. The line, the law, I’d crossed, arrogantly, blindly.
Law 196: If a man should blind the eye of another man, they shall blind his eye.
Seemed pretty clear what was coming. I was left with Shamash, Hammurabi and a planet’s worth of guilt, while the school kids raced away. Hopefully, to enjoy a final few hours of light and warmth before the sun went down.
by Julian Miles | Oct 16, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There are naked angels riding our missiles down, using their wide wings to override delicate guidance systems by brute force. Distant explosions show that, yet again, we’re going to kill more friends than foes. Actually, those explosions-
“Charly Four, where are you, over?”
“Heya, Topside. Just watching the latest episode of Dances With Missiles. It’s sure to be ratings smash, over.”
“Charly Four, you’re not amusing. New orders: shoot the aliens off our missiles, over.”
Of course we shoot down our own ordnance. Good plan.
“How’s that going for the rest of the flight, Topside? Over.”
“You’re it for Charly Flight, Four. Sorry about that, over.”
“So our sainted Commodores want us to die shooting down missiles because they won’t listen, despite every bastard bombardment getting redirected to blow up our own? Over.”
“Can’t comment on that, Charly Four. It’s a good day. Every hit has taken out a bogey, and some pilots managed to bail out, over.”
Which reminds me.
“How do we know a bogey got downed, Topside? Is there a cloud of singed feathers twirling in the wind? Over.”
“You’re still not amusing, Charly Four. Weaklings like you are why this offensive has stalled. Get on with your duties and stop chatting. Over and out.”
Different voice. Could I have just been graced by one of our beloved Commodores?
There’s a knock on my canopy. Oh, poot. I slowly turn my head to look that way, keeping my hands steady on the sticks. No sudden moves.
What looks like a turquoise-haired teenager sporting auburn freckles, no nipples, and eagle-ish wings with a span wider than I can take in points at something inside my plane. I look down, trying to work out…
I look up and shout: “Ejector seat?”
The apparition crouching on my wing nods enthusiastically, pantomiming me punching out.
“Eject or go down with the plane?”
Another nod.
Nice of them to offer a choice. Okay. Live to snark another day.
“Topside, Topside, got a pair of them going at my wings. I’m bailing out. Co-ordinates are-”
The figure taps the canopy and points behind, nodding urgently, eyes wide. Surely not? Only one way to find out.
“-seven four cross three two, tactical grid nine.”
Which is about two klicks behind me, over that open ground I saw.
I kill my comms, wriggle out of my harness, and pop the canopy.
“What now?”
My hitcher leaps away, shouting: “Fly, mannish, fly.”
More of a controlled fall – I punch the eject panel.
A while later I come back to thinking, and find myself hanging under the parachute. Looking about, I see my seat being carried off by my hitcher while two more alien angels do slow circuits about me.
Shortly before I hit the trees, my hitcher comes hurtling back. The three of them manoeuvre me to drop neatly through a gap in the canopy.
I look back the way I came just in time to see a skylance obliterate the area I said I’d be landing in. So that’s what those explosions were! Well I’ll be…
Betrayed.
Being distracted means I clown up the landing, dislocating both ankles and a knee. I grab the painkiller from my medpack and give myself a shot in each leg. As I slump back in relief, a group of people, some in familiar uniform, storm into the clearing.
Uniforms might be familiar, but the lack of insignia isn’t. Gee, let me guess. More betrayed?
I raise a hand.
“We fighting angels or commodores?”
“Commodores.”
So be it. Cheeky bastards tried to kill me.
“I’m in.”
