by submission | Aug 29, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“The world is a Rube Goldberg machine, a bowling ball on a teeter totter, and all it will ever do is scratch someone’s ridiculous itch,” Amira d’Kay coolly observed to Riisa who nodded thoughtlessly, content to let her aunt ramble in the smothering warmth of the sunroom.
It was bitterly cold outside. It was almost always bitterly cold outside. Had been since Finrow’s Folly. Riisa hadn’t been born then, but she knew her aunt had been a part of the project. In an ambitious attempt to counter increasingly destructive climate change caused by global warming, Augustin Finrow, a Scandinavian climatologist had proposed a seemingly far-fetched plan. But, at that point of near hysteria in 2051 his audacious idea of climate rescue went viral. News pundits provided the sound bites, corporate moguls marketed the concept and desperate politicians coughed up the resources.
Then, it was up to scientists and engineers like Amira d’Kay to make it work. They did. In three short years, 17,000 twenty-square-meter mylarium discs were designed, manufactured and launched into high earth orbit to reflect “enemy sunlight.” The plan worked well. The discs cooled runaway warming within a decade. Finrow’s plan tipped the scale.
And then Finrow couldn’t tip it back.
Aunt Amira had told Riisa dozens of times that deploying the reflector discs had not been that difficult. There had been such common cause among the nations of the world. Such cooperation. And, then when the plan began working and people felt their futures were saved from runaway global warming, it all went wrong.
The discs were well designed with mylarium irises that could be opened or closed incrementally to regulate the amount of sunlight being blocked. Finrow himself monitored the flow of sunlight. Until the Shock Docs, disaster capitalists, hacked his codes and took control of them. The Shock Docs, a nebulous group bent on exploiting global catastrophe, touted a new Ice Age as a great business opportunity. For over three decades, they kept the reflector discs fully deployed and earth cooled an average of ten degrees.
Year after year of climate cataclysm and geo-political upheaval reshaped the world and its markets. Uranium became king: for atomic fuel to stave off the deathly cold and for nuclear weapons to stave off the deathly desperate.
Riisa understood all this terrible history because her aunt despised it—even the role she’d played. Aunt Amira would often lament, “Why couldn’t we leave well enough alone? Why’d we try to one up Mother Nature?”
Riisa only smiled and cooed “there, there” at her aunt’s outdated grief. She was content to roll with the earth she’d inherited.
In the blissful warmth of their sunroom, in a controlled environment fueled by micro-nukes, she just saw it as a beautiful row of dominoes that humankind was fond of setting up and then knocking down in a predictably unpredictable cascade. One after the other.
That was humanity’s gift. All of us together. Building the codes, the machines, the chains of causality. Line by line. Gear unto gear. Link upon link.
Why try to break it?
Why not embrace it?
“Come sit by me, Auntie. Let me rub your shoulders and scratch your back,” Riisa coaxed. “My hands are wonderfully warm.”
by Julian Miles | Aug 28, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Will burn across the worlds.
From shoreline to mountain top, from wrecked vehicle to ransacked fortress, they will light a night like none will ever see again, and will start a conflagration that will blaze so far onwards we will never know of all those freed by its passing.
“Set her down.”
They do so. Keegan, Habaden, Televa, and Tranger step back. Ponsor spreads our banner over her body.
Newsnets would crash upon showing images of we six gathered, which is why we’ve never come together since the end of hostilities. There is a cause we swore to follow, and it did not include becoming celebrities off the mass murder some had called a justified war.
“Lasira the Dancing Death, you showed us how to find peace.”
I step forward and regard each of them in turn.
“We are resolved?”
Habaden gestures to her body.
“They killed her because she sought to permanently end the Monarchies of Donn.”
Televa waves towards the night sky above.
“They watch us now, gathering their forces to blockade this planet so we cannot return.”
Tranger steps round to lay a hand on my shoulder.
“What of you, Griko, Grim Witness?”
“I will act upon the accord, but only if we are all agreed.”
Keegan shakes his head, a vestige of objection. Then he looks me in the eye.
“Ever have I gainsaid you, until I saw her body. There is a difference between the wounds I see and the manner of death reported. A difference that can only be bridged by a lie. For that, I withdraw my caution. I am agreed.”
A welcome surprise, and fitting cue.
I engage my orbitals and override the video feeds of every network I can reach. To end this properly, I must start with proclamation.
“The Monarchies of Donn told us we were made from common soldiers to serve a common good. Then they used us to further their ends under that excuse. It took us too long to realise, but when we did, we swiftly built a peace in spite of their objections. We thought that peace would hold, but the loss of Lasira has made us realise the Monarchies will never yield.”
Sparkling globes appear high above as our automated defences deal with their clumsy attempts to silence us. I continue.
“Lasira was the only one of us who did not trust polite words and signed treaties. We five were dismissive of her work, until she was murdered to prevent her revealing what she found, and what she’d built in response.”
Habaden adds his voice.
“We might still have ignored her, had they not overstepped.”
Televa joins in.
“Our sister is gone.”
Keegan coughs, then finishes for all of us.
“The Six have been made Five. The only fitting response is for the Monarchies of Donn to mark her passing by burning to the ground.”
My monitoring is quiet for less than a minute. Then, across ninety-four worlds, explosions rock Monarchy installations and barracks. Lasira prepared well. Patrol craft fall under the fire of those they thought loyal lackeys. Space ships duel and explode into globes of fiery death. The casualties will be savage, but we have the military numbers, and the people of sixty systems behind us.
I nod, then add a coda.
“You would not leave us as passive observers. Now you will answer to us as your rulers. The Six Warriors have, by necessity, become the Five Crowns. We will forge a new peace in the seventeen thousand fires ignited by her murder.”
by submission | Aug 27, 2023 | Story |
Author: JH Mentzer
The boy was getting lonelier every day. He could almost not stand how many hours he would spend sitting in the woods, watching the babbling of the creeks, as the sun would rise and set, set and rise. Moss grew on his southern-facing side. He traveled home every once in a while. Today as he walked the driveway the rubber soles began melting off his grease-stained tennis shoes, one of them missing a shoelace and too loose and he sometimes lost it during his walks in the woods if the mud was too deep. Heat rippled off of the asphalt and cracked the weed-split concrete over the years. The boy entered his garage, pulling up the termite-eaten gate which rattled and creaked. The boy remembered the story his father had told him about a little boy down the street that had gotten his hand caught while playing with the garage door, and was decapitated. The boy thought now that his father was probably lying, but the remembering and the caution around the garage door struck him even now. The memory surprised him.
The boy took apart his late father’s riding lawn mower which hasn’t been used since his passing, and the vintage white convertible that his fathers-father had given his son and he had always meant to fix but was so busy raising the boy and being sick and dying that he never got around to it. The boy took it apart and rearranged and organized the fragments of these generations of memories. The boy took what he learned from the practical engineering class that he’d taken at his rural shithead highschool and created himself a friend. The boy created himself an android which he needed to teach how to live. He named this android Aurora after the breathtaking and temporary splash of colored lights that dance across the night sky, because that is how the boy believed one should live. Bright and beautiful and short-lived like a firework. Making your mark and then fading into the dark recesses of time and back into the dust of stars, knowing that while it will be forgotten, it was wonderful.
The boy taught this android everything that mattered. How to tell which direction is North from the way moss grows on a tree trunk. How to replace a fuse in a string of christmas tree lights and bring them back to life when everyone else would throw them away. How to open a banana the “right” way. The boy took his android to the old wheat milling plant which had been abandoned for years before the boy was born and they sat in a clearing nearby in the woods, which was overgrown with buffalo grass and gnarled bushes of blackberries hidden between old oaks that very well could have entertained the wheat miller’s children while he spent long days grinding wheat into flour and sometimes corn into cornmeal and sometimes acorns into acorn-four in the fall. The android caught baitfish that had a stripe from their eye to their tail-end from the stream that was used to power the rotating grinder of the mill. The android did this until a wreath of bright purple morning glories grew from its eye socket. A crayfish nibbled at the android’s left leg joint. After enough exploration, the boy led his android away. The boy and his android sat atop the milling building on its crumbling stone walls and watched the sun set again and the boy made sure that the android learned that the sun rose in the East and set in the West.
by submission | Aug 26, 2023 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
It’s amazing what you can learn in a bar. All kinds of secrets come out with the liberal application of alcohol. Let me tell you about one such occasion.
It was a Friday night and I was knocking back the beers on my lonesome. The regulars were in, along with a group from the Army base. The Full Metal Jacket crowd normally kept themselves to themselves. However, as I was savouring beer numero six, there was a hullabaloo at the back of the bar, where the Dirty Dozen were sitting. A difference of opinion was in the progress of escalating into something more physical.
Suddenly, Debbie’s baritone cut across the melee-to-be, stopping everyone in their tracks. Even the Saving Private Ryans knew better than to mess with Debbie. She was the owner and sometimes bartender. A woman she may be, but I’ve seen her lay out two rowdy bikers with one hand, while strangling a third with the other.
All of the Few Good Men, bar one, decided that the DJ at Saucers, the towns premier (and only) nightclub, was playing their song, so they shuffled out the door in various states of inebriation. That left the one disgruntled soldier who’d been at the centre of the ruckus. He plonked himself down on the barstool next to mine.
Being the neighbourly sort, I engaged him in conversation.
“What the hell was that all about?” I asked.
“Ah,” he replied, obviously somewhat intoxicated, “I just tried to talk about some stuff and they were all ‘You can’t discuss that, it’s secret!’ What’s the point of knowing secrets if you can’t tell anyone?”
So we became buddies of the barstool, the beer got to flowing and secrets as well as booze were spilled.
“You ever wonder what goes on at the base?” he asks.
I’ve heard all the rumours about crashed UFOs and captive aliens with the spooky big black eyes, so that’s what I tell him.
“It’s all true!” he laughs.
Now, I have actually given this topic a bit of thought and some things never quite sat right with me.
“So you’re telling me,” I say, “That these UFOs, that are the product of a technologically advanced civilisation, cross umpteen light years of hazardous space, then crumple like a cheap sedan the moment they get here. Not only that, but we capture the pilots and the folks back on planet Vulcan, or whatever, aren’t even bothered about rescuing them!”
“Because they’re not crashing by accident,” he grins, “They’re crashing on purpose.”
“Huh?” I reply.
“These aren’t state-of-the-art spaceships. The ones that’ve crashed (and there’s been a few), they’re little more than drones, sent one way with no expectation of a return journey. We’ve had their ships for decades but there’s very little there to reverse engineer.”
“But why?” I ask.
“The beings they send are their rejects. Their criminals. Their psychopaths. The ones they don’t want on their world. They send them one way, to a planet in the middle of nowhere, with no prospect of return. All these ‘visitors’ are sadists, or insane, or both. Why else would you probe someone’s ass?”
I wanted to ask him more, but Debbie called time so I went to the can then headed outside, but he was already gone.
So that’s what I’ve heard about saucers and aliens. Maybe its true, maybe he was pulling my leg. Imagine though, if the galaxy is sending its crazy rejects to us, it would make Earth the universe’s lunatic asylum. Somehow that feels like it explains a lot.
by submission | Aug 25, 2023 | Story |
Author: Matthew Scott
The article that started it all appeared in Progress in General and Special Relativity. Andrey Ivanov’s Development of the artificial cosmic string as a method of time travel was as welcome to Theodore as a sudden geomagnetic reversal was to a migrating tern. Ivanov, his nemesis, had beaten him to a discovery yet again.
There was only one thing to do. Diving into his pantry, he prepared a celebratory banquet fit for a king. Piles of crackers and sandwiches smeared in soft cheese and sashimi rose into the rafters and out of sight, and on a table next to his easy chair stood a roast turkey the size of a boulder, stuffed with rosemary and doused in a rich port gravy infused with sage and lemon. A second table groaned under the weight of an assortment of canapés, and at the centre of it all towered a cylindrical black forest gateaux with a radius of several feet. Cherries were arranged on its apex like a stone circle, while waves of fresh cream washed over its edges and down to the floor. Satisfied, Theodore settled in his easy chair and waited.
At 9 o’clock that evening, exactly on cue, the doorbell rang. Dismayed, Theodore went to the door, finding not Ivanov but a small waif from the local village. He did not have time to open his mouth before one waif became several, which became a hundred and then several thousands, pouring through his front door like water from a jug. The waifs gorged on the crackers, canapés, and cake, and as they gorged yet more piled into his home from the back door, carrying napkins and empty boxes, which they began to fill with slabs of black forest gateaux and turkey drumsticks the size of grandfather clocks.
Yet more came down his two flights of stairs, leapt into the air, and tucked their legs into his chandeliers, sweeping up sandwiches in their arms as they swung violently above his living room floor. Others fought brutally over the most luscious cuts of turkey, while some gulped gravy out of his finest crystal goblets like a poisoned man drinks an antidote. Soon the turkey was no more, and the remnants of his black forest gateaux dripped mercilessly onto Theodore’s easy chair. As soon as they had arrived, the waifs had gone, having done to Theodore’s banquet what locusts do to farmland.
Perplexed, Theodore dutifully waited until midnight before retiring to bed. At least he had been proved right. The next morning he wrote the letter that would close his experiment, and turned his thoughts to the curt rejoinder he would later send to Progress in General and Special Relativity, asking for the retraction of Ivanov’s paper. He waded through mounds of dirty cutlery to his front door, and proceeded to the post box in the middle of town. He slipped the letter into the box and began the short walk home.
The courier robot was waiting for him when he returned. It handed Theodore an envelope. Inside, dated some three weeks prior, was a handwritten letter. Dear Theodore, my much-maligned friend! It read. Please accept my apologies that I could not attend your banquet in person. However, I extended your invitation to the waifs and strays in this galaxy and the next. I hope they were sufficiently courteous and appreciative of your food! Regards, Ivanov.
Theodore folded the paper once, then a second time, and then crumpled it into a ball before throwing it to the ground, hard. His nemesis had received the letter inviting him to the banquet yesterday after all.
by submission | Aug 24, 2023 | Story |
Author: Becky Neher
Something enormous strode through the double doors of the dilapidated, rust-begrimed warehouse. Not quite whale, not quite elephant, not quite ogre, but nevertheless a creature hefty, fleshy, and odorous. Sporting purple and magenta beads glittering around a blubbery neck, swishing side to side with the dainty lumber of their wearer. Followed by an impressive halting of momentum just inside an entryway that only previously looked the opposite of cramped.
The elephant-like snout let fly a wet, windy, motor-igniting-right-at-your-ear snuffle, throttling everyone to attention.
This sun-eclipsing quadruped was my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, Mrs. Beleever, and she owned this warehouse.
Actually, she owned several warehouses, ours receiving products, materials, machines, scraps, sketches, blueprints, and junk other warehouses failed to utilize, but which looked to inexpert head honchos including Mrs. Beleever like still-promising stuff.
My own high-productivity output hailed from the Make-the-Future-Real room.
Specifically, I was a Gadget Sorter.
Which was pretty much what it sounded like.
After grouping doodads and doodad-parts into what according to my best albeit wild guesses were their ultimate purposes, matching them up with potentially (but possibly not at all) relevant diagrams and so forth, I packaged and delivered them to agents of PerfectSource or Always-a-Product, with whom Mrs. Beleever and her cohort had decades-long contracts, to be extended indefinitely into the foreseeable (and unforeseeable) future, made possible by something called Being Well-Connected.
Having cleared the room of all sound, the behemoth deposited her own. Earplants in us non-jumbo species modulated the subsonic rumble to an audible frequency.
“Wee underlings”–my whole body shook–“an announcement.” No shit. “Remember your lunch breaks must not exceed ten minutes. Your shifts start and end precisely on the hour. Sloppiness earns a pay dock. Time to tighten ship. Oh, and happy birthday to my dear wonderful husband and COO, Gorrup, wind beneath my feet. Dismissed.”
Mrs. Beleever then backed out of the overstuffed, floor-cracked, multiple codes-violating edifice, industrial lights rattling in their sockets, people braced against pillars.
Someone next to me grumbled that there were people with knowledge and experience with putting things together, folks who actually knew what they were doing, creating stuff that actually worked, and who could function in a productive and competent fashion, if only resources weren’t monopolized by these hulking extra-Earth interlopers, beings lacking all seriousness, all substance, really under-the-rug sweepers, and that if it weren’t for them human society would be a wonderful and amazing place for everyone.
I took down the last of my diet SuperSudz with a loud straw-sucking slurp that somewhat unfortunately bothered no one due to the lingering ringing in everyone’s ears.
I then went back to my thingamajig organizing.
To be honest, I don’t know what all this has to do with the rest of the story, which is about hovercraft and teleporting and neural uploads (the real kinds though, not the fake ones you normally read about).
The real story starts later that evening, back at my apartment. Where for days I’ve seen ants crawling on the floorboards. Not a line, not an army. Just one or two here or there. Solo explorers.
Back at Tolerable Lodgings ant headquarters, no reports on what these mini trailblazers find.
