by B. York | Oct 18, 2005 | Story |
I’m floating. Well, it seems like I’m more submerged at the moment. It takes me a moment to realize where I am and that still doesn’t make sense. Everything is dark, my body feels weightless but it is not peaceful. My lungs begin to realize; I’m not breathing. Suddenly, it’s panic. Arms start flailing; my mouth shuts hard and contains what oxygen I have left for some reason unknown to me.
This is when I’m looking around, blurs of the moments through corporeal space of matter filtering into my mind; the moments that may be my last. I stop to realize it for what it is; my last moments. No, I tell myself unable to accept what it might be for reality. The key is not to panic. My eyes start focusing as best as they can and I start pulling up the metaphorical anchor that’s tugging me down further.
Up, the only way out is up. My arms stop flailing and they start acting methodical. I’m swimming, I believe. Pulling myself from floating, I can see the edges of my vision blurring in darkness and my head begins to spin inside. Thinking of what I have to live for, it has to keep me going after all. Mother, Father, and my future come to mind. Particularly the future I’ve squandered, the future I refused to act on. Never applied to those colleges, never went to Australia, and never got to see what I thought I was destined to be witness to. I am getting older and I haven’t yet made a move forward. How old was I now and my dreams were still the same distance away from me?
The focus was keeping me awake enough to push myself through the liquid. I can see something just beyond the surface. I can’t die like this! It can’t end this way! It’s getting darker, but I can see light. It’s getting much darker, but I know with that last strain of strength that I can break the surface.
“Welcome to re-life, Abe.†The next thing I can hear is the doctor saying this to me. My eyes are focusing again and I’m hardly panting for air now. The off-white allure of an office, the sterile scent of medicine, it’s all coming to me very slowly. My parents are here, smiling proudly. They have tears in their eyes; tears of worry. What just happened? What accident was I in?
“You passed the test; you get to go home now.†I’m confused. I don’t understand and I’m looking towards my mother and father for guidance. This isn’t real, is it? What is real anymore? The doctor is handing me a plastic card. Sitting up, I start to read it.
Abe Carter
Certified to Live
Issue Date: 10/25/2050
It was then that I realized, life will be better from here on out.
by J. Loseth | Oct 17, 2005 | Story |
The snow falls on my smile like that old fairy tale—you know, the one about the dwarves and the cannibal queen, the one with the apple. The tableau would be better if it was sunset, because I always liked sunsets best, but you take what you can get.
I’m drinking in the buildings, the river, the empty streets where cabbies used to curse at pedestrians who never bothered to listen. I’m eating the silence that comes with snow. Everything is filling up white, though there’s a grey cast to the new blanket, not like the picture books I used to read about Christmas when I was a kid.
I know they will have missed me by now, but no one will come back. The overseers won’t let them. It’s too dangerous now. I can’t feel it, though—my body’s still strong, still perfectly capable of walking and talking and breathing in the last of my home. They’ll say I was crazy, I’m sure, but I love this city, this state. I’d go crazy for real if I had to leave it all behind. I never got how people could live underground. It’s the air, I think, that would get me. I can’t live without the wind on my face.
The snow is thick now, and I think I can feel a little of the numbness setting in. That’s the way they said it would be: slow but painless. I did the research. I knew what I was getting into. My body feels stiff and I can’t quite tell if the snow is cold when I pick it up with my bare hands. It’s so beautiful. I know what it means, but all I can think is that it’s beautiful.
I throw my handful in the air and let it fall down with the rest, laughing out loud as it brushes my fading skin. In all my life, it has never snowed like this in New York.
by J.R. Blackwell | Oct 16, 2005 | Story |
“I don’t want to come home.â€
Reggie’s wife began to cry, tears sliding around her cheeks.
Reggie smiled beatifically. “Don’t cry Carol, its alright, really. You’re young and awfully perky. You’ll find another husband in no time.â€
“But I’m in love with you!â€
Looking at her open red mouth and the slobber on her lip, Reggie wondered how this had ever been enough for him. “Please try to understand, I’m very happy here. I don’t want to go back to earth. I don’t ever want to leave my Asas side, the only reason I did now was because she demanded that I commune with you.â€
“Commune? She?†Carol’s hands trembled. “Do you fuck it?â€
Reggie’s mouth twisted with revulsion. “What? No! That’s disgusting!†He folded his hands on his lap, his narrow face turning intense and cruel. “I say “she†because Asas is the female of her species, you sick hag, a life giver. What she does is nothing so banal as fucking. I myself have not had a sexual urge in weeks, well, not till now but I blame that on the fact that you’ve made me upset.â€
Carol wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “Oh Reggie, what have they done to you?â€
Reggie shook his head. “These creatures are transcendent, utterly fascinating. Socially, they are far more advanced than we are. Not knowing one, you can’t comprehend. You know one and you don’t want to leave.â€
Carols face went blank. “They’ve taken your mind.â€
Reggie sighed, rolling his eyes. “No, that’s not it at all. Listen, I’ve only contacted you because Asas asked me to, she is concerned because of all of the messages I’ve been getting from you and the government. I haven’t had a lot of time to read them because Asas and I have been very busy, but those I have read have been very disturbing. Asas asked me to contact you because she is worried that if I don’t humans will send more people and those people would just fall in love and want to stay. Asas doesn’t think that it’s good for us, as a race, to be so infatuated and frankly, I agree. Of course, she’s going to keep me.†He sighed. “We have a very special relationship. They aren’t a cruel species Carol, they really are thinking of our best interests.†He paused and the blissful expression on his face changed for a moment. “Its possible that if they sent humans that weren’t receptive to social signals, autistics perhaps…no, it shouldn’t be risked.â€
“Reggie, I miss you. Your mother is so worried, she asked me to-â€
Reggie interrupted her, waving his hand. “This is all very unpleasant. Asas feeding time begins soon and I don’t want to miss it. It’s so beautiful, I can’t even describe. Don’t send any more messages, okay?†He stood and grinned at the screen. “Good luck finding a new husband babe.†Reggie pointed his finger at the screen like a cocked blaster and then the transmission cut.
Carol began to cry again, reaching toward the static of the dead screen. Light years away, Reggie ran joyfully to find Asas, the unpleasantness of the encounter with his wife fading quickly in the euphoria of new love.
by Jared Axelrod | Oct 15, 2005 | Story |
Jack Strap didn’t bother burying the men. Buzzards’ gotta eat, he thought. Same as worms. A man makes his own funeral. You wander in the Desert, you’ll go the same way all Desert creatures do. In the belly of something else.
Buzzards weren’t gonna do a thing with the corpse’s shooting irons, so Jack took that scavenging upon himself. Turned out not to be worth the effort; damn pieces might as well be wood for the good they’d be. Cursing, Jack tossed them aside. No wonder he’d plugged them so easily. You couldn’t hit a broadside with those things, corroded as they were.
These men were amateurs. Wouldn’t have lasted long, not out here, not if they didn’t know how to protect their weapons. If they hadn’t caught up with him so quickly, the Desert would have chewed them up the same way. The Desert was eating away at him, too, Jack knew that. He was not a young man, and what skill he’d once had was now little more than luck. If it wasn’t men like these, out for the price on his head, it would be a night when the campfire that kept the spiders at bay would blow out. Or he wouldn’t treat a cut properly, and would collapse, his blood turning to powder. Or the caustic sand would get into his eyes, and he wouldn’t be a predator anymore, just prey. Or it would be one of a million other deaths the Desert had in wait, and his bones would bleach and crumble same way these fellas’ would.
That which is built on sand is destined to fall, the saying goes.
Jack wasted no time going through their pockets, tossing out the paper money that was already crumbling and pocketing the coins. But it was the bigger of the two that had what he was really after: a satellite link-up. No bounty hunter traveled without them now, not in the Desert. A GPS signal was your best hope of getting out once you were in, and even that was no guarantee. There it was, in a inside pocket, its plastic protective case already being eaten away. The small red LED on top slowly pulsing, signaling the connection was solid. Jack opened it and thumbed an orbital view. It had been months since the Desert had gotten to the last one he took. He was comforted by the little lights that represented the cities. What was left of the cities.
It had been a long time since he had seen an orbital view, but even Jack could tell there were fewer lights.
Jack Strap placed the link-up in the pouch on his belt where the old one used to stay, and was surprised at how much space was left. “Things keep getting smaller,†he said, to no one in particular, and left his would-be arrestors to the belly of the Desert.
by Kathy Kachelries | Oct 14, 2005 | Story |
Sometimes I pretend I have a metawomb inside me.
Things would grow there. Children, I mean. Dozens at a time. Girls and boys. I might not be able to stop. I’d populate my entire livingspace with pudgy pinkfaced versions of myself, and when I went to the recreation floor, strangers would come up and ask me how I managed to adopt so many. How strange, they’d remark. Some of them even look like you.
I’d never tell anyone. I’d just smile and watch those tumbly bright-eyed beings chase eachother from wall to wall.
At night, when I can’t sleep, I press my hand to the soft space above my hips and think of my body filled with pink goo and hundreds of tiny, tiny people, growing like unspoken words.
by J.R. Blackwell | Oct 13, 2005 | Story |
“It’s a family business.†The shopkeeper trembled, his telltale American face-lights blinking. “My daughter and my wife make the simulations themselves. Very good, high resolution, but they don’t do any touching, they’re good girls, they don’t touch.
“He didn’t want the Sims, did he?†said the thin man, running his fingers over the crystal display, inside which two women winked at him suggestively. The tiny store was filled with animated images of the same two women wearing different costumes and teasing the viewer with repeating loops from their Sims.
The shopkeeper put his palms against the sides of the simulation pods and blinked, drops catching in his eyelashes. “He made them do it real-time here. They were laughing and moaning and then he left and took the feeling with him. My daughter won’t leave her room and my wife is so ashamed she can’t speak. Neither of them have the heart to produce the Sims over the Network. Sims are the family business and without them working, we will be taken to the Steam camps by our creditors.â€
“Psychics are brutes.†The thin man shoved his hands into his thick wool coat, oblivious to the Martian heat.
“Beasts.†said the shopkeeper.
The thin man winced and his brow wrinkled. “He’s coming here now, isn’t he?â€
“Compadre, please, I need your help. He is coming here to rape my wife and daughter. Altec said that you could help, that when the zift was on the road you were the man to call.â€
“You didn’t tell me he was coming here now. You knew, and you didn’t tell me.†The thin man shivered and pulled his coat tighter. “I don’t help liars.â€
‘Papa?†A small voice drifted from upstairs. Little feet padded down the narrow broken staircase and a tiny woman came into view. She held herself against the wall and looked at the thin man as she spoke. “Are you okay Papa?â€
“Yes baby. Papa is fine. This man is the one I told you about, he is going to help us.†The shopkeeper looked up, his face lights oscillating on the grey cheek of the thin man.
“Fuck you, yes. I’ll deal with him.†The thin man pulled out an illegal cigarette and lit it. “Psychics are brutes, but we take care of our own.â€
