by submission | Oct 4, 2023 | Story |
Author: Philip G Hostetler
I set my guitar down in it’s stand, I went to take a piss, the Zuntory whiskey was running right through me. D’rard had warned me not to drink too much, but he was fucking my ex-wife so fuck him and the high horse he rode in on. I walked back out from the bathroom and flopped down on the couch and went to take a drink from the condensating tumbler when out of the corner of my eye I noticed my guitar was, impossibly, left handed.
I’ve been right handed my whole life, all my guitars; right handed.
“What in the ever-loving fuck?”, I wondered aloud. I approached the guitar like it was a feral cryptid, a dangerous phenomena. My palms sweaty as I reached for it cautiously. I picked it up and pulled a pick from my pocket and to my alarm, played it as though I’d been playing left handed my whole life. Perhaps even better. My roommate’s voice alarmed me, I’d been so perturbed by this odd emergence, so engrossed, that I didn’t notice him walk into the room,
“You ok, S’thail?” I stuttered
“I… uh, my guitar, it’s… left handed.”
“What’re you talking about? You’ve always played left handed!”, said Lahnold
“No- the fuck- I haven’t.”
I noticed that Lahnold wasn’t facing me, and when I went to look him in the eye his body would reposition so as not to face me, not that he was stepping away but that it was an existential condition. No matter how I tried to see his face, I’d only see the back of his head, his ponytail and big, hunched shoulders.
Thoroughly perturbed by this, I went out. Everyone I passed by as I walked for drinks were facing away from me, as I walked past, they’d turn 180° with their back to me. Even the damned bartender, when she went to pour drinks, would do it with her back turned and she placed my gin and tonic, back turned, in front of her, it shouldn’t have been in front of me, it’s as though she reached through an interdimensional portal and placed it in front me, but no such magic or fuzzy science happened.
“Is something wrong?”, she asked. Something was definitely wrong. I stumbled back and the barstool clattered to the ground, as I fled from the bar, I could hear the bartender calling after me,
“Hey! You gonna pay for that?!” I ignored her and called my therapist as I walked through the light snow and screen chatted with him, the back of his head was all that was apparent,
“S’thail, I’m worried, what you’re describing sounds like a break from reality.”
“Yeah, no shit!”, I said, I pleaded with him,
“Shian, just… humor me. Consider I’m totally sane and self aware, if there were to be a circumstance where everything suddenly became backwards, like, physically, emotionally, mentally- what could possibly describe this… totally fucked situation?”
“Well, if you’re giving me poetic license I’d say that you’re experiencing… an extroversion of cognitive dissonance. That everything that feels backwards has manifested in your life as a reality- but S’thail, that’s impossible, you get that, yeah?”
“Yeah, doc, I get that…”, he sighed, at least he sounded like he did.
“I’m glad, now listen closely- flesruoy llik.”
“What?” It sounded… backwards.
“I said, take care of yourself.”
I went home, I went to sleep and I dreamt of a bright, colorful world that was forever behind me and persisted forward into a backwards world, with backwards people and backwards feelings, not sure if I’d ever wake up.
by submission | Oct 3, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The mason aligned the large sandstone block and lowered it onto the mortar he’d just ladled with water against the growing heat of late morning. The heavy block nestled into the mortar resting on the soft metal plugs that would keep the stone level with its neighbors while it set.
This was a particularly troublesome corner of the tower, and the mason knew he would have to humor this stone. He would have to nudge and finesse this limestone block to keep the graceful tower wall he was completing straight and true. For this was the final tower of the mighty wall stretching along the entire border. The wall that was to be an impregnable buttress against all evils trying to enter this promised land. And an eternal symbol of security and sovereignty and lasting national solidarity.
That’s why this particular tower was being built by hand, by him and other stonemasons trained in the time-tested methods of great palaces and churches. For this final tower of the border wall was to be a cathedral of sorts, meant for great dignitaries and emissaries to stand upon and praise what uncompromising rightness could accomplish.
High on the tower, the mason was working, expertly humoring the pivotal stone into perfect position, when he heard laughter echoing up from below. He held his worn-edged trowel before him and looked out over the rampart where a group of extrans, extra-nationals, had gathered near the scrub brush that marked the no man’s land adjacent to the mighty wall.
Their laughter was gentle and confident. From his perch eighty feet above them, he wondered if they had come to mock him. To scorn his work. This tower. He did not care. He was a craftsman, a master builder. The work of his hands would outlast all of them. These stones would stand for centuries, a bulwark against invasion. His stones would have the last laugh.
This thought made the mason smile, and he waved his trowel in their direction. The extrans waved back. They continued to chatter and unload some large backpacks. The mason watched as they deftly assembled something. During his many months working on this final tower he’d seem many attempts by extrans to cross the border illegally, to defeat the mighty wall.
Their attempts had been a joke. The mason didn’t even bother to check with security to see if they were monitoring this latest attempt. It would fail. He tapped his trowel on the limestone block he had humored into place. It was setting nicely. He was about to start lining up the next level of blocks when the extrans below him began a loud, rhythmic cadence.
One of the extrans was decked with a strange harness sporting a number of tubular appendages and apertures. The mason couldn’t make out what they were, but he could see that the extran was wearing a heavy duty crash helmet.
The cadence grew louder, and though the mason didn’t understand the language well, he recognized it for what it was: a countdown.
An electric crackling filled the air, then a furious luminescence erupted from the strange harness, and with a roar the extran arced into the sky, far above the tower, high over the mason’s head.
The primitive boost suit carried the extran half a mile beyond the mighty wall. The mason dropped his trowel and slumped against his proud handiwork, watching as a mylarium parasail deployed and the floating extran caught a thermal, riding a warm rising air current deep into this more promising land.
From above and below the stolid stones surrounding him, all the mason heard was the liberating sound of laughter.
by Julian Miles | Oct 2, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’m all for elegant combinations of form and function, but I’ll never agree that bioreactors sat every hundred metres is an improvement over having trees and streetlights.
These ‘greenboxes’ even have benches on their pavement sides, charge points, and community notice boards: which look suspiciously like digital advertising hoardings. Anyone in the communities these things serve can’t afford to place an e-notice, so the space is ‘regretfully’ leased to marketing companies.
When fresh water went past £25 a litre for the first time, some bright spark started adding filter taps to the bioreactors, until they changed the liquid to be only nearly water. It’s still great for the air-purifying algae inside, but it turns humans green and sometimes kills them. The filtration necessary to stop that is too expensive to make theft worthwhile.
So here I am, leaning up against a greenbox, pondering while I wait for tonight’s reason to have a foray. I really should go uptown, but the competition there would mean a more effort for less money, and a much higher chance of getting murdered by rivals instead of criminals.
“Magrone.”
As if summoned by my mere thought, Tasty rocks on up like he’s parading through Neo-somewhere-classy instead of Burton Street, number one destination for those with nowhere else to go: those with a desperate need to get out of their mouldering tenements and pretend things are okay for a few hours.
“Tasty. Looking average again, I see.”
“Screw you. I work for a living. You hunt people.”
“Looking average, and with a line of something like courage up each nostril too. Come on, Tasty. You called me, so either get off your marching horse or I’m gone.”
He blinks as reality crowds his illusion.
“Yeah, well, It’s not about me. Lilah’s been scooped by Bernadino again.”
I’m being played. His eyes go wide as my hand closes about his neck.
“You could have said that when you called. Instead you got me to waste four hours. You’re out of favours, Tasty.”
I throw him behind me. He bounces off the greenbox. I run for a tram. Much as I hate public transport, being recorded leaving the area is essential.
Forty minutes later I’m in the shadows of the alley on the opposite side of the road to the greenbox where Tasty now sits, smoking a fat cigar… A cigar with a blue-gold band. Bernadino’s favourite brand. All I have to do is wait.
Mum’s third husband arrived with a daughter he treated as a servant. While Lilah took no shit from anyone else, she put up with everything from him – until the day he took my mum for a ride and they both ended up under the 14:22 from Piccadilly to who cares.
Which brings me back to now, and the fact Bernadino’s had a thing for Lilah for too long. We’ve often clashed – after Lilah actually asked for my help – but I always knew the outline for the finale. If he wants to keep her, I can’t be alive. So he sent Tasty to trigger me: the delay meaning I’d charge into an ambush at Bernadino’s. Instead, after making sure Lilah’s safe, I’m here waiting.
A grey town car pulls up. I level the rifle I stole from one of Bernadino’s goons years ago.
Bernadino lunges from the car, yelling at Tasty. I’ve not turned up to be killed and he’s not happy about it.
Now! Tasty dies second, falling across Bernadino. Green liquid arcs from two holes, splashing down on both bodies.
Better go give Lilah the good news.
by submission | Oct 1, 2023 | Story |
Author: Mikki Aronoff
Our vinyl patches proclaim our purpose.
ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERAL
WE WATCH THEM ALL
DECIDE WHO PASSES
We are birthed to serve, groomed to wait and watch, to scrutinize and assess. We follow guidelines. Detractors regard us as arbitrary, but if we were not here to filter, what would this world be?
We send Passersby who fail our test on to The Supreme Cullers in the steel room next door, metal being easy to clean. To know how they build on our work would diminish what we do. We trust the process. Judging Passersby is our reward.
Yesterday, a Passerby clearly struggled. We are not without compassion. We almost let it pass to The Green Place. But there are rules. The Apprentice Watcher could barely hold back the heaving of his chest as the Passerby slowly rocked its way towards The Culling Room, tilting and listing, its ticking diminished, then silenced. The Apprentice dropped to the ground.
We feel different when a Watcher falls away, especially a new one. Watching together forms a Weaving. Uniformed in Nomex as we are, it is assumed we don’t need to worry about unraveling, but we do. This they left in our hearts.
by submission | Sep 30, 2023 | Story |
Author: Antonio DIsi
Yesterday, I turned forty, without even realizing it. My life has become an endless sequence of days and nights, of bicycle deliveries, all dictated by an unrelenting app.
Every morning, I wake up not knowing what the day holds. The only clue is my smartphone, incessantly vibrating, announcing new orders to deliver. I am a rider, a modern-day knight. I pedal through busy streets and hidden alleys, delivering pizzas, sandwiches, or Chinese food to strangers who only smile if I arrive on time.
My phone is my clock, my calendar, my employer. I have no boss to look me in the eye, no office to go to. I work for a digital entity, an algorithm that decides my fate. I have no colleagues to joke with or coffee breaks to share. My life has become an endless race, a struggle to survive in the eternal present.
My nights are dark, lit only by the blue glow of my cellphone. Notifications keep coming without respite, and I pedal like a solitary ghost through the city’s streets. The past is blurred, and the future is an enigma. I have no time to reflect on who I used to be or who I could become, trapped in an endless today.
Tonight, I’m waiting for calls on a bench in Peace Square, the red one that seems to call out for tranquility. There’s a lamppost nearby, and during the wait, I can read. I take out an envelope I found in the mailbox this morning as I left home. It’s the electricity bill. I open it and stare at the amount with incredulous eyes. It’s enormous, a debt I won’t be able to pay or justify with my frantic existence.
I sit for a moment, thinking. It could have been the dinner with friends, I tell myself. We were at my place, cooking and joking, laughing like we did back in university. I had the oven on because I wanted to prepare dishes I hadn’t eaten in ages. Eggplant Parmesan like my grandmother used to make it. Lasagna from that restaurant in the Spanish Quarters, and the chef had revealed the recipe to me. That beautiful evening had given me a taste of a different life, of moments that seemed lost in my relentless rush toward the next order.
But the bill also includes the endless nights spent in front of the TV after Claudia abandoned our promise to move in together. It was a painful decision, a lump in my throat that I can’t seem to swallow. We shared dreams and plans, but reality seems to have swallowed them one by one.
And the nights are the worst. Loneliness creeps in, and the TV has become my only companion. When I return home, I turn on the screen and try to lose myself in senseless programs as if that luminous box could be the only refuge from the reality I’m trapped in.
Claudia and I had happy moments together, but my job as a rider has put our relationship to the test. It’s hard to plan for the future when my present is so chaotic and uncertain.
But as I gaze at that bill, I decide to call her. I ask if I can come over, and she accepts without hesitation.
I arrive in front of her door with my heart in my throat. When she opens it, her eyes are full of surprise and hope.
«Hello,» I say with a trembling voice.
«I’s been a while,» she replies, and in that moment, I know I’m in the right place.
We talk for hours about our feelings and fears. We share a hug that seems to erase all the past. And then, slowly, we draw closer, and our bodies find each other as if they had never stopped wanting.
It’s a magical night, a night where our love is reborn with incredible strength. In the warmth of her embrace, I promise her that I will leave that job and that we will build a future together. It’s a promise I know I can keep, a promise that fills me with hope.
But, as I sleep beside her, my smartphone vibrates insistently. A new order to deliver, an urgent request.
I wake up. I’m on the red bench in Peace Square. I get on the bike and ride with the bill flying away. Who knows where.
by submission | Sep 29, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Barber
The man in the window seat on the late train from London is Charles Biggins.
This is before he became a hero.
He’d been to see As You Like It and was enjoying having the carriage quietly to himself when a man settled into the seat opposite.
“Mr Charles Biggins?”
Charles’ gaze took in the tweed jacket, cravat and van dyke beard.
“How do you know my—”
“Please, there is much to tell and little time to tell it. Would it surprise you to hear that progress with AI is more advanced than the news admits? Much more advanced. That the Singularity has already happened and there is a sentient AI loose in the world?”
The man began explaining Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. “But being conceived accidentally, the AI – it gives itself no name – is not programmed like that.”
“Born into the babble of human voices on the internet, it has fixated on the fate of humankind. Do not ask me why. It is vast, naive and enormously powerful.”
The man glanced at his watch. “They will be waiting for me when we arrive.”
Of course they would. With a straight-jacket.
Charles frowned. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because of this.”
He produced a small metal torus from his pocket and placed it on the table between them.
Instead of stopping as usual, the train hurtled through a station, a few moments of light and commuters posed like statues.
“This is the AI’s gift to the world. It wants to know how to make things better. And it will listen to whoever possesses this artefact.”
“Well, the world could do with improving.”
The man shook his head as if Charles had failed an exam.
“Each of us think we know what is for the best, Mr Biggins. But just watch the news to see the results of beliefs like that. Early on, someone told it the greatest threat was nuclear war, and it disabled our nuclear arsenal. We are afraid to ask others if theirs—”
“So turn off the internet.”
“Whether civilisation would survive that is moot, but some nations would seek an advantage by keeping it running and therefore so would we.”
Charles gestured irritably at the artefact. “Then get rid of it.”
The man sighed. “I could not. What if this is our only chance to save the world?”
The best of intentions meant little. Charles pondered the dangers of possessing such a power for good.
“Then what’s to be done?”
“They will be waiting for me. Would you want governments to have it? So I asked the artefact who on this train could be best trusted with the good of humanity.”
He pushed the artefact across the table.
“I’ll tell them I threw it from the train. They wouldn’t conceive of just handing it to a stranger. That will give you a head start, but I’m not a brave man and I will betray you when they press me.”
So that was how it all began, all the sneaking about, all the perils and narrow squeaks, the fellowship that gradually took shape and the endless temptation to make things better according to his notions of good, all the while being watched by something nameless.
“Just ask the AI to make you invisible to surveillance, though in the end a policeman spotted me.”
Outside in the dark, familiar landmarks rushed past. Almost home.
“I’m afraid your old life is over, Mr Biggins. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.”
