by submission | Jul 5, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
When I’m out for a walk in my neighborhood I can’t help looking in open garages. Few have cars parked in them. Many are crammed with overloaded shelves and teetering stacks of boxes like that Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse.
I totally get it. We are a nation of consumers and looky-loos. But, what really slows my step as I pass an open garage is catching the flicker of fluorescent tubes in a back corner. That clinical glow makes me strain for a better look, hoping to catch the glint of finely machined metal hanging from great rectangles of pegboard. It usually means one thing back there: a workbench.
A workbench.
That post-primordial place of refuge, possibility, failure and triumph. It works like a magnet on me. God, I always want to poke my head into those open garages and marvel at the workspace, the tools, the hardware: twenty-pound pipe wrenches with Pleistocene patinas; bent nails piled high in antediluvian Folger’s coffee cans; endangered saber-toothed saws that might’ve felled the great Saharan forests. The very sweat and blood of history, of civilization, written in countless garages.
Yet the tools and hardware aren’t even the best part. The workbench is. The actual surface on which it’s all built. From worn hardwoods with grains glowing like luminescent creatures from the Mariana Trench. To polished metal sheens rivaling chrome accents on 1950s Cadillac fins. To faded and scored linoleum as thick as a buffalo hide.
It gives me shivers.
Funny thing is, my current workbench never struck me as a thing of beauty. I didn’t build it. It came with the house I’d recently bought. A heavy duty tin-covered behemoth that looks like it might’ve come from a Depression era foundry, carelessly wedged between my furnace and outer garage wall. The dented and discolored metal surface is supported by a sturdy gray-green cabinet with a staggering array of tiny drawers that appear stupidly impractical.
No, my new workbench is not a thing of beauty. It is stolid and inscrutable. What I found in it later—or what found me—is the terrible attraction of the thing.
The other reason I like looking into other folks’ garages is that I can’t get into mine anymore. My garage is inaccessible. I can’t go in. No one can. No one should. Not ever.
I’m afraid something’s at work in there. At my workbench. And it isn’t me. Remember I mentioned the crazy arrangement of drawers and cupboards my workbench has. When I moved in and wanted to put my tools away, I discovered the funky drawers weren’t empty. Every drawer of my workbench had a little pyramid object in it. A tetrahedron about an inch and half a side made of a translucent composite material.
Very odd. I piled all the pyramids on top of the workbench. There were 42. One in each of the drawers.
Though puzzling, I was in unpacking mode and started organizing my hardware and tools in and around the workbench, finding a prominent place to hang my vintage twenty-pound pipe wrench which I’d never used yet had to have. Just because.
Under the glow of my fluorescent shop lights, I finished unpacking late in the evening. I was pretty tired, but not too tired to notice that when I headed back into the house and turned out the garage lights the pile of little pyramids was glowing. Like I said, I was tired. Lots of materials naturally absorb light and glow in the dark. I slept soundly.
For the last time.
The next morning, I went to work. My car was parked outside because the garage was full of boxes still needing to be unpacked. When I got home I was too tired to do anymore unpacking and fell asleep on the couch. Until.
You know where this is going. Until the noise in the garage woke me. A deep low thrumming.
Somewhat disoriented, I made my way towards the noise, and when I entered the garage vertigo hit me hard. I leaned against the door frame trying to make sense of what I was experiencing. The whole garage floor seemed to be moving, the unpacked boxes, everything.
And over on my workbench, a strange glowing shape filled that entire surface, too. Hundreds and hundreds of little pyramids, tetrahedrons, were restlessly shifting, assembling and reassembling. And moving things. My tools and hardware, everything.
I slammed the door to the garage and deadbolted it. I haven’t been in there since. No one has. No one should.
I still walk my neighborhood looking in other open garages in admiration of all those workspaces, that primal maker inclination we have.
And maybe we aren’t alone in that. Some kind of maker is in my garage. Something still figuring it out, figuring us out, in a place of refuge, possibility, failure and triumph.
By my not telling anyone, you’d think I was okay with whatever is going on in my garage. The truth is, I could really use my twenty-pound pipe wrench. I’d sleep better…with it underneath my pillow.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 4, 2023 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Rip cleared everything off the dining room table, piling books on top of placements on the sideboard, and his discarded sweater over the back of one of the chairs.
“Doris, give me a map of the continent.”
He’d been dreaming of making the trip from his home on the shores of Hudson Bay to Southern California for as long as he could remember. A roadtrip to end all roadtrips.
“Continental map. Topographical, weather, street…”
Rip cut off the disembodied voice mid-sentence.
“Street maps. Local destinations, points of interest”
The surface of the table was bathed in monochromatic light, a surface map of the continent in three dimensions, with a softly strobing green light at the point at the edge of the bay where they lived.
“Plot me a route to Baja.”
A point at the southwestern point of the map glowed blue, and a spider web of light traces crawled across the map, highlighting highways and city streets as Doris carefully routed multiple possible ways of making the journey.
“No extreme right-wing towns or cities, I don’t want to deal with any crazies on the way.”
Doris dutifully dimmed large segments of the map, the light paths through those areas rerouting around them or winking out completely.
“Plot appropriate fuel stops, give us twenty percent margin for extenuating circumstances.”
Red lights peppered the routes at intervals, Doris adjusting routes as necessary so as not to leave segments too long for the range of the Land Cruiser.
“Steer clear of any super religious communities. You know how I get into trouble with those book thumpers.”
More large pockets of the map dimmed, more routes were moved, and still more winked out of existence.
“No rest stops or overnights in vegan territory. I mean, I don’t begrudge them their diet, but it’s not for me.”
Large portions of the western edge of the map were lost in gloom, the number of paths now easily countable.
“No guns. I don’t want to see them. No concealed carry states either.”
Most of the rest of the map dimmed out of focus.
“No forest fire zones, no drought zones.”
Small pockets and a handful of wildly snaking paths remained.
“And make sure there’s healthcare, just in case anything happens.”
The map all but disappeared, leaving only a green and blue point of light glowing in the darkness at opposite corners of the table, worlds apart.
Doris locked the door, and her disembodied voice asked gently “Shall I just order some Thai food and find a nice movie to watch.”
Rip stared at the darkened table glumly before nodding and wandering off to the living room without another word.
by Julian Miles | Jul 3, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“I once met an elven prince, did you know?”
Grandma’s been in and out of deliria for a week, it’s good to hear her sound so strong.
I smile down at her.
“You told us all about that in ‘The Elf from Mars’.”
Her eyes catch mine and she gives me the little smile I love. It’s the one that means grandma’s about to share a secret.
“Oh, tosh. They were all based on him. If I’d written a book about a girl getting lost in the woods and meeting an alien, it’s the only book I’d have ever done. A space elf and his daring human girlfriend roaming the galaxies? Same core, but way more room for adventures.”
The smile turns rueful.
“Meant I could weave a romance from the infatuation I had.”
“Infatuation? With who?”
She chuckles.
“Do a dying woman a favour, Addie. Put the pieces together.”
Is she serious, or seriously off in la-la land while sounding sane?
“I can read you like a book, young lady. I’m back. This is my last day, I’d guess. Clearer in my head than it’s been for a long time. So, get me a sip of something and I’ll tell you one last story.”
After drinking, she settles back with a sigh.
“I was fifteen. Didn’t have a clue what to do with the good looks that had come upon me. People started paying attention. Jealousy, lechery, teenage betrayals, and hormones. It didn’t mix well. I lit out for the woods to sort my mind.”
She chuckles.
“By the time I’d sorted my mind, I’d gotten myself lost. In my own back yard! My grandpaw woulda been ashamed of me. Well, there I was, trying to think of a way out when it strolled into the clearing looking like a render of the perfect man done by a lady artist. Plus pointed ears, but lacking dangly bits.”
“Shame on her.”
We both giggle, then she carries on.
“We walked and talked. Elbadirel was a prince doing his hundred years of civic duty by scouting frontier star systems.” She sighs: “By the time he escorted me home, I was in love.”
“You wrote nine books after an alien encounter?”
“Not just one. I was thirty-five when he rescued me after my car broke down one winter night. He hadn’t aged a day. I nearly died of shock. We talked for hours, he escorted me home, and I realised I was forever in love.”
Half-jokingly, I ask: “Again at fifty-five?”
“Yes. It was wonderful. Seventy-five, too.”
“You’re ninety-four next month.”
She shakes her head.
“I’m not going to make it, Addie.”
* YES, YOU ARE. *
The room fills with rippling light. Something comes through the wall!
* TIME WAS, I ASKED YOU TO BECOME MY ELIADREL. TWICE. NEVER HAS IT BEEN ASKED THRICE. UNTIL TONIGHT. WILL YOU COME AWAY, GENEVIEVE? *
Grandma gives him a smile that nearly breaks my heart.
“I should have said yes that first time, but I was scared. No longer. I accept.” She points at me: “What of Addie?”
* WRITE THE NOTE SHE WOULD HAVE FOUND. THIS WILL BECOME A DREAM. *
The most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen smiles at me while rippling light drowns my mind.
*
I called the police after spending hours frantically searching the snowy woodland. Her note said she’d gone to walk forever among the trees, and not to cry as it was her choice.
They never found her.
Sometimes I dream the Elf from Mars came and took her away. I think she’d have liked that.
by submission | Jul 1, 2023 | Story |
Author: Autumn Bettinger
If you were here, I would tell you how delicate the birth of a star is, not violent like they always told us, but beautiful and pale, like those fireworks we used to set off behind the school. If you were here, I would tell you how I looked for you in the crowd that watched us board the ship. It was so loud. There was so much screaming. Someone threw money at me. Real money. Money we always wanted and never had. Money to trade places. I wish I could have, but that’s not how the lottery works. And money doesn’t matter anymore anyway. If you were here, I would tell you that I knew you wouldn’t be in the crowd, because you would be in our old treehouse, the one that overlooked the base, where we used to watch space probes and satellites launch into the stratosphere. If you were here, I would tell you that earth looked so small when we were swept away in a bath of pressure and preservatives. If you were here, I would tell you that they told us you all died in an instant, that it was painless, just one big rock colliding with another, billions of living things snuffed out like a candle. But I know it wasn’t that way. I know you burned inside out, boiling and peeling away, watching as the ocean evaporated and every single bird fell from the sky.
by submission | Jun 30, 2023 | Story |
Author: Timothy Goss
He lingering in thought, prodding, poking, unforgettable.
Mannhoff revealed the math like a seasoned magician. We expected a cape and top hat, from which he might produce a rabbit, or a pigeon, but we were all in open-toed Sandals so who was I to talk. I noticed a striped discolouration infecting his right middle toe. He told us this was the way it was.
“There’s no mistake.” He said triumphantly, “Everything adds up.” And tapped the white board on the wall. He had scrawled a couple of equations to illustrate his point, and he was right, everything did add up.
We offered a half-assed applause, dazed by the revelations. It seemed obvious, if unbelievable; the notion of self dissolved away along with the concept of here and now, and fragments of history and culture. As the informed majority, we witnessed the shattering of dreams and illusions, and the delusion of time, beginning and ending, a universal rhythm, that was our truth, our shared delusion, but now…
“The masses will look for a way back, ” he warned, “A short cut back to the beginning, so they can have it all again.”
Even Mannhoff had squirreled enough away to maintain himself and those he loved, despite his knowledge. Some thought him fantasist and those chose loneliness, isolation, but Mannhoff poo-pooed their choices and promoted community:
“I still pay my insurance.” He said, mockingly honest to all.
Of course whatever it was in the long run would be revealed in the vulnerability of everything else. When fundamentals crack and splinter, and finally dissolved into the remainder, the remainder is all there can be.
Mannhoff package it for the assembled, but it was difficult to hear and like tofu at a barbeque, hard to digest. Some tried to wash it down with the champagne, but bulked at its meaning, others just dismissed it out of hand, shaking their heads and muttering softly. We all knew that nothing would be the same again.
I saw Paris on the platform and over heard his mobile conversation , as did the remaining commuters. He threatened Apollo over some unpaid deals and the air was blood blue. Before his train departed Paris threw a javelin through the security guard stationed on the platform. The man cried out before toppling onto the tracks. Things were unravelling.
Still Mannhoff’s words prodded me, and I wasted days, weeks, after his talk figuring out the knot, trying find something more, and all the while we unwound like comic book mummies. What if he had said nothing, did nothing and stopped the math before it redefined things. Then again maybe he considered everything before his revelations, maybe it was too large a burden to shoulder alone. Or maybe he just thought people should know. Whatever the process, the out come was never certain.
Other teams began looking at the numbers and opening new fields of interest. The remainder however was illusive, either by accident or design, and was reluctant to be described as anything we understand.
And then the true character of humanity and it’s relationship to the remainder, as promised, was discovered and it was Mannhoff’s team who eventually came through. The equations were elegant, deceptive, and finally irrefutable, and the interpretation as difficult to accept as Mannhoff’s original presentation. Ten billion humans it identified, every last one of us cast from the whole, excreted by the remainder, our energy and essence expelled from the spiritual sphincter.
by submission | Jun 29, 2023 | Story |
Author: Lewis Richards
“Good morning sleepy head, you’re just in time for breakfast! I suppose this must be a bit confusing huh?”
“No no, don’t get up, it can take some time to adjust to the gravity up here” Leroy crooned with a reassuring smile and a firm shove.
“Me? I’m Leroy #47, which would make you Leroy #48 now wouldn’t it you silly goose!?”
“What? Oh.. its just like a bird I suppose?”
“A bird.. with like wings and.. oh well nevermind we can come back to this later. We have a few pressing issues. Hold tight just a second, I’ll be right back” Leroy #48 said with a slightly too wide smile before darting away.
“Here see, look look, I’m you, or well you’re me I suppose depending on if we’re going all chronological here” Leroy #47 held up a chrome plate for Leroy #48. One mirror, two Leroys.
“So it all started basically when Leroy #8.. no wait, let me start fresh.”
Leroy #47 collected himself. A deep breath, composed.
“It all began with Leroy. In the beginning, there were Leroys, and there were Beckys. At first the Leroys and the Beckys got along just fine, they kept us afloat and when they couldn’t a new Leroy and a new Becky were supplied to take over. The trouble.. Hey! Don’t pull on the straps! There’s not many left.” Leroy #47 snapped.”The trouble began during the reign of Leroy #8 and the premature handover from Becky #8 to Becky #9 after a glitch in the cloning bay, it was a whole thing. Two Beckys for such a long period though strained the nutrient printers and then poof!”
“No more nutrients” Leroy #47 whispered for dramatic effect, Shaking his head.
“They ate through the food store before they could fix the printer and then things got ugly. Becky vs Leroy, Leroy vs Becky.” He said, shuddering at the thought.
“Times were desperate, and just when things were at their darkest, Becky #9 died. But then, Becky #10! And when Leroy saw her, he felt all that hunger knawing inside him and well..”
“No more Beckys”
“After that Leroy just had to settle for good old fashioned Leroys, Eventually he died and the next Leroy took over, but with all the Beckys gone it’s been difficult keeping the place up to scratch so excuse the mess.” Leroys eyes darted around the room, settling shamefully on something out of sight.
“Anyway this brings us back to you! When the nutrient printer worked, Leroy #1 – #7 loved nothing more than programming a home made roast goose with all the trimmings.” His voice rich with excitement.
“No no don’t panic, you’ll ruin the flavour. Here now, let’s get this mask back on you so we can get you ready!. It’s been lovely chatting. It gets a bit quiet up here sometimes but I’ll get another #48 in a week or two, I’ll make sure to tell them all about you!”
Leroy #47 placed the sedative mask onto Leroy #48.
“Sweet Dreams” He murmured, before leaving to light the grill.
