by submission | Dec 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Penn
Widespread among the civilized population of Semblant is a belief that they do not originate from the planet they presently inhabit.
They infer this from their world’s geology and long comparison of their own physiology to that of all its other life forms. Semblant is desert over almost all of its surface. Its scientists believe – correctly – that such conditions have persisted for two billion years and long pre-date the earliest fossils of their own species. All other creatures on their world are fully adapted to this environment, some insect-like, needing little water and able to take energy directly from the sun; some rodent-like, able to dig down to wetter levels. However, the bodies of the single civilized species are built differently, with soft central tissue protected only by a thin layer of bone-like shielding, projecting twelve tentacles, all of which end in twelve smaller tentacles. Their respiration system, though lung-like, retains gill elements. Their breathing becomes laboured even after mild effort and ineffective above a height of five hundred metres. Their locomotion along the flat has always seemed, even to themselves, ungainly, involving a twisting movement of their body and an inefficient lashing out and grasping with limbs.
Neither has it been lost on thoughtful Semblantines that their societies have only ever existed around scattered oases. Here they have long built houses and bathed for relief in the shallow water, or in special stone cisterns that have been in use for millennia. Much philosophical argument has centred on this extreme geographical specialisation, supporting the uneasy feeling of displacement that has grown up in the culture.
A century ago, one of the planet’s foremost scientists proposed a transport network that suited Semblantine physiology better than the natural flat terrain. She built an experimental branchway between two fixed points and, using herself as a test subject, climbed into it. She found, with a primal sense of relief and delight, that she could swing easily between the branches, employing all twelve limbs interchangeably, and after only a little practice cover the whole distance at great speed. After a few initial demonstrations and trials, branchways were quickly erected between every settlement. She further developed vastly enlarged water cisterns with similar branch-like structures placed inside them. As she had guessed, all members of her species found it easy to swim through the water and brachiate among the subaquatic “trees”. Some, as she had hoped, even found themselves able to breathe underwater – although it was found that this retention of the full gill function was not universal.
Partly due to such advances, in recent times the Semblantine lead-species population has grown enormously, albeit still limited to oases. Beyond these lie vast areas of desert, which even now remain unexplored, and in general the culture’s haunting sense of displacement, or unbelonging, has not diminished.
It is interesting to note that throughout the galaxy there are other populations who feel similarly alienated from their environment and indeed seem to live in some sort of disjunction with it. On Saltus there is a race of hoofed creatures who live in patches of land they must continually clear on an otherwise virulently tree-covered planet. On Deneb 4/Alpha there are bird-analogue inhabitants who live in a vast bubble, made of a self-repairing material, whose provenance and constitution are mysteries to them, floating in a uniformly globe-spanning ocean.
Considering such phenomena, some observers have begun to speculate about the possibility of a “mistranspermia” at some period in our universe’s history, where many species were transplanted to worlds with environments wholly unsuited to them, either by accident or design.
by submission | Dec 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The black hole formed quickly. The paper browning, crisping, then aflame as he held the match under the letter. He blew out the flame and stared into the smoky void it’d made. She’d written the letter, he’d read it, then burned it. So, what was left? What was lost?
Nothing according to quantum physics. Information could not be created or destroyed. Even by a black hole.
Setting her charred letter on his desk, he considered the ramifications. He’d have to set the terms. You couldn’t explain a thing in this or any other universe without defining the terms. For a time out of time, he stared at the equation filling his enormous office chalkboard, then began erasing.
All night he worked. Wracked his brain. Searched what was left of his heart. Did he have them all?
Betrayal. Deception. Treachery. Duplicity. Artifice. Perfidy.
Joy. Delight. Happiness. Exhilaration. Endearment. Contentment.
And a thousand more terms. Did he have them all?
Dawn outlined the heavy curtains, as he drew them aside and opened the old leaded window. Cool air rushed in from the courtyard, and he smiled recognizing this first autumn chill. That in itself was proof. He could feel.
Braced, he returned to the chalkboard, to the terms. Could it be proven? Was it worth proving? Her letter had told all, but explained nothing. Information, however conserved, was nothing without an explanation. Without proof.
He worked at it all morning. All afternoon. All night again. All week. All month. All fall and winter. In spring, a warm breeze from the window reminded him. He was close. Either he’d solve it, or he’d yield to Time and accept the paradox.
Accept that, like anything else, Beauty in all forms could be obliterated. The very heart of existence could become non-existent. Like the black hole he’d created in her letter. No record remaining of what was once there between them. Not even the dark energy of his feelings which he could no longer be sure had been real.
The large chalkboard was filled with signs and symbols defining each term and its relationship to the whole. He found himself gripping the chalk stick painfully hard. He put it in the tray and rubbed his fingertips. Chalk dust covered them. Lightly, he pressed his thumb against the mostly blank lower right corner of the chalkboard, leaving a delicate print. He studied the mark, his singular touch.
He was stuck. Stuck on her. Something he could never solve for.
Brushing some dust from the tray into his palm, he took it to his desk where her burnt letter hadn’t been moved. He sifted the fine particles through his fingers, dusting what remained of the letter, and then carefully blew the excess off.
A single fingerprint of hers emerged. A tiny treasure map of the world she was to him. A clue that whatever motives he imagined, whatever terms he defined, whatever equations he created, whatever answers he sought, it did not matter as much as this tangible X marking the spot where every journey of the heart begins and ends.
by Julian Miles | Dec 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
These words are not my mother tongue, and my name is not Allen Gordon. Using your letters, I am Gendordo Kl Ecz Ulyn. Gendordo is my homeland. Kl means I derive my strength from that place. Ecz is the name of the first enemy I killed. I thought I was good at killing, until they came.
Many years have passed since I watched a monster in what I’d now call a crimson bodysuit murder my family with a weapon your science still has no name for. So many years since I chose vengeance. The monster stopped killing and started fiddling with its forearm. I took that opportunity to hurl myself from the branches where I hid, making myself one with the spear I aimed at the crimson back below.
My spear impaled the monster. It shrieked and struck at me with an arm shrouded in crackling purple energy. The pain was so intense, I blacked out, convinced I was about to be reunited with my family.
I woke up in a hospital on this world. Soon after, I was transferred to a psychiatric facility. Ten years after that, I walked free of that place, declared cured of my delusions.
While recovering, I had a lot of opportunity to read. So I got letters, and mathematics, and science. But nowhere did I find mention of crimson bodysuits or the physics that enabled them.
My life now is as a junior technician on a university science campus. I get tasked with all the jobs the seniors and scientists don’t want to do, on top of studying all the while.
I know what I think happened to me: interdimensional travel. I’m also sure the crimson traveller didn’t come from this world.
Did I interrupt him before he came here?
Or was it a defensive move to send me somewhere at random?
Could my arriving here be a freak incident caused by it hitting me with the device on its forearm?
Why did my alien biology not cause problems?
As it didn’t, why are the beings on my world and humans so similar?
One question leads to another, and I have to stop to save my sanity before I reach one I can answer.
One day I’ll learn enough to start.
Until then, I have equipment to calibrate and beakers to clean.
by submission | Dec 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jordan McClymont
He didn’t even hear the man slip into his home. Six foot tall, ring glasses and seemingly invisible to all security sensors.
“You should be asleep,” the man said, turning to the bedroom.
“Wait, I-”
The man’s expression told him he had seconds.
“This, it’s tearing me apart,’ it was a struggle to look at his own warped reflection in those glasses, “she’s not been the same since the first time. I was hoping that while you’re here, you could make me forget that I ever made her forget.”
“You understand, I’d be doing myself out of business?”
“I’ll pay extra. Anything, please.”
The man nodded and began the procedure.
Unknown to him, his wife kept a diary. She asked, “are you drugging me, is that it?”
He called her crazy.
When he returned home the next day, she was gone and to this day he has no idea why.
by submission | Dec 16, 2023 | Story |
Author: Laura Shell
He has ten minutes to go from point A to point B, or he will lose his coveted spot in line, but he’s arrived early, so he will make it in time.
Point A. He enters the elevator, forlorn, his head down, dressed in a suit. He hates suits. They’re for show. For his family, his friends. He’s tired of them all, tired of the people he has to be friendly to, the people he has to lie to, all the compromises, the pretending. It’s not him, not his true self. Shit, he even hates the family pets.
The elevator stops at the bottom floor. He squeezes the handle of his briefcase, the briefcase that holds fake documents he’s passed off as his own work, just to make his family and friends believe his job is real. He’s tired of doing that too.
Straight off the elevator, down the hall, he flings his briefcase, doesn’t care where it lands. Off comes the tie, he starts to breathe a little easier, one corner of his mouth inches up, a half smile. Point B is just around the corner.
His shirt comes off. Next, his belt, his shoes. He pauses in the hall to remove his pants, his underwear, his socks.
Naked now, he turns the corner, goes through the double doors, lifts his bare chest to the fresh air of the expansive forest before him, a forest full of human prey.
Full, deep breaths now. He deserves them. He deserves to breathe deep. And then the change happens. He doesn’t mind the pain. It pales in comparison to being a family man.
Some bones, tendons and ligaments lengthen. Some shorten. So much hair now, all over.
Blood trickles from his toenails, fingernails and teeth as they elongate and thicken.
His howl is so loud, it makes his own ears ring.
This is who he truly is, this beast.
And he begins the hunt, the hunt for human flesh.
These are the people he likes.
by submission | Dec 15, 2023 | Story |
Author: Soramimi Hanarejima
At 35,000 feet, somewhere over the middle of the ocean, your memory filter fails, altering your inflight lunch in a minor but telling way: the small salad reminds you of the cafeteria salads you ate during middle school, those little nests of baby arugula with a single cherry tomato in the center—a detail from the pre-adult decades you usually block from consciousness. If past travel is any indication, this is one of the times you really need your memory filter. Flights have been rife with spontaneous remembering—a hodgepodge of personal history with episodes running the gamut from days ago to decades ago—probably because there’s little else to do while in high-altitude transit, especially in economy seating.
So you quickly eat the salad to get rid of this reminder of your years as a tween, then turn your attention to the screen on the seat back in front of you, searching through the movie options for something that will keep your mind occupied. You pick the movie that’s least likely to remind you of your childhood and adolescence: a recent space-adventure blockbuster. Unfortunately, the sidekick character bears a striking resemblance to a high school classmate, and that immediately brings back awkward moments in shop class, among other memories. But even just 4 minutes in, the plot is so riveting that you stick with the movie.
During the lull after the midpoint reversal, you imagine the movie’s events as part of a secret life led by that high school classmate. Somehow it seems plausible that after volleyball practice she’d go home and teleport or project herself into this world of high-tech, interstellar escapades. In economics class, she always looked attentive but also relaxed and distracted, like school could have been just a hobby, a way to take a break from her true self—which could very well have been a space jockey wunderkind who loves barrel spinning through asteroid fields.
Later, a flashback montage gets you wondering about the secret lives your college classmates and former coworkers could have had. It’s all too easy to imagine your sophomore lab partner as a super-categorizer adept at rapidly scanning through survey data and sorting people into personality types for the Bureau of Population Statistics.
As the credits roll, you begin doing what you now know you must: plan out your own secret life. You’ll scout out abandoned lots and neglected parks, even median strips that could be beautified. Then you’ll buy seedlings and saplings, a hand trowel and garden fork. And of course dark clothes.
You’ve long felt that you’d benefit from more stimulation or at least more time outside. You’ve all but given up though, after fiddling with side projects and flirting with outdoor exercise, nothing really resonating. Now you know why. You were looking for something that would be an extension of your identity, but what you need is a completely different identity—one that’s centered around covert horticulture.
