by submission | Apr 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Gerri Brightwell
We travelled for years before finding a habitable planet. Its one continent would be enough—to the south volcanoes let out wisps of smoke, to the north winds tore across deserts, but between lay a fertile land of easy rivers, and plains creased by the roads of a lost civilisation.
We settled amongst that civilisation’s ruins. Our ships were designed to be taken apart, and from them we built our homes, our schools, our storehouses. Our ships’ machinery we adapted to clear fields long grown wild, while the systems that had protected us in space—the scanners, the alarms, the weapons—we converted to watch over us on this new world. Powering it all was simple enough when we could use the very fuel that had carried us here.
That fuel—in the end, what was spent would need to lie undisturbed for millennia. We scouted sites far from our settlements, far from fault lines and volcanoes, far from the hungry ocean. On the whole continent there was only one such place: beneath a vast northern mountain. To tunnel into it would take years.
By the time the tunnel was almost finished, we had picked clean the hulks of our ships. Children had been born who knew nothing of the dangers of space, and the rest of us gave barely a thought to the sirens perched high on their posts around our settlements. But one autumn afternoon when a cold northern wind was blowing, those sirens screeched to life. It was harvest time and we stood amongst our crops, gazing at the blank skies, at the empty horizon.
It took us too long to understand what that wind was carrying: the toxic decay of a vanished civilisation’s waste, buried deep in the one place it should have lain safe forever.
by submission | Apr 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
Eighty lights is a long way to go for a party, but Prosperina Station orbits Dis, the rogue gas giant PSO J318.5-22, and where there’s no sun, the nightlife never stops. More importantly, the Company had decided that I was due a good time, and they were footing the bill to get me there.
Why? Because I’d just landed the contract to supply exotic fuels for a new fleet of starliners. Without semi-biological gas derivatives, you’re just not leaving the Solar System, and we’re a big player in a cut-throat market. This was a big deal in every sense.
The congratulations came on my first office day back after a mandatory medical. “You’ve got the right stuff, Marty!” said CHRIS, the Corporate Human Resources Intelligence System. “Time we got you out beyond warp!”. An all expenses paid trip to a high class playground where most terrestrial laws don’t apply? How could I say no?
Two weeks later, I stepped off the transit liner Magellan, and settled in for a vacation to remember. Which it turned out to be, if not for the reasons I’d expected.
It started, of course, with a girl. Well okay, several, but this one stood out. No facepaint, which I liked: it was a fad I could do without. None of the obvious sensory implants favoured by the ostentatiously kinky, either; also good, I was still getting my bearings and wasn’t ready to experiment yet.
We ended up making out on a couch in a half-lit lounge with an amazing view of the luminous planetary bands. She scratched my neck in a moment of passion… and then I woke up under harsh ceiling lights, strapped down, with tubes inserted in my arms and unmentionables.
“Welcome back, loverboy,” said a honey-sweet voice in my ear. As she walked to the foot of the recliner that held me, I saw she’d swapped her party outfit for a white lab coat.
“What? Where…?”
“Welcome aboard the gas dredger Cerberus.”
“Not Prosperina?”
She laughed. “No, you’re taking a private cruise, courtesy of your employer.”
I started to get a sinking feeling. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s like this. Those exotic fuels you sell? Making them needs catalysts – specifically, blood antigens. Really rare ones. We can synthesise them, but we need to calibrate the process regularly using fresh samples. And guess what? You’re one in ten million, so management signed you up for the donation crew!”
“Empty space! You could have just asked.”
“You might have said no. Or worse, demanded a bonus. That’s not how things work.” She winked.
“So here’s the choice. You can yell and complain, in which case I’ll sedate you for a week, take the necessary anyway, and send you home. Or you go “okay ’Seph”, and I hook you up to the VR so you can have fun for a few days while we draw what we need. That way you get the tail end of your holiday. Or,” she leaned in closer, “you say “Yes please, Miss Persephone”, in which case I slip some of my personal content into the VR, reschedule you for a later flight back, and then show you what Prosperina really has to offer. Your call.” She smiled.
Well I mean, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse, right? I’ve already volunteered to go back and donate again next year. It would be irresponsible not to. After all, like HR said, I’m made of the right stuff.
by submission | Apr 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Bob Freeman
10:43
It was always 10:43
His classy watch, each beat synched with the atomic clock in Colorado, was stuck.
Scientists warned about the hole in the sun, the X-class magnetic burst.
No one paid attention.
“But the flaming telegraph wires in the mid-1800’s!”
He didn’t remember the ancient Morse code he learned in his youth and saw no reason to worry.
The electric car purchased to help the environment didn’t know Morse code either.
The couple lived a few miles from town, not off the grid, but at the far end of services in their quiet retreat, a nice place for retirement.
Now it was quieter, with no power and only a wood stove for heat and cooking.
Water came from a nearby creek, schlepped up the hill, filtered, and boiled to remove the residue of their upstream neighbors and their failing septic tanks.
They were more fortunate than most, still young enough to handle the rough living, and reasonably healthy for their ages.
Solar power was an option, but the north-facing hill and installation cost never made it from their to-do list to to-done. They could get by with batteries and an emergency, hand-cranked radio. A gas generator would have been nice, but gas needed electricity to pump and distribute.
Promises of power and normalcy could be years away. Until then, the options were to move into town and find a cold, tiny apartment or tough it out with the surrounding forest community.
The scientists chimed in. “It was a 500-year solar event,” conveniently forgetting how to do math.
Earth’s dominant species would do as they always do, wait for the disaster to peak, pick up the pieces, and start over. The couple would wait until age, infirmity, or boredom forced them to leave. After all, they had at least another 300 years, more or less, to prepare.
by submission | Apr 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: Amanda E. Phillips
“Mechaornithology,” he said, stumbling over the word in his agitated state, “is a valid and incredibly undervalued field of study.” He tapped the tri-folded letter in his lap as if it somehow proved his point.
“Field of study,” I repeated in a measured voice. He was as flighty as the mechanical birds he studied and anything too loud or too quick would be liable to scare him off. “But you wouldn’t really be studying anything, would you?” I envisioned myself ripping the letter from him and tearing it to pieces. Little pieces, too. Small enough to swallow so that he’d be forced to call up Rubicon Fowl and make them mail off another contract.
“I’d be doing a lot of good work out there.”
“You’d be trekking through a trashed city,” I said, disregarding that if I wasn’t more delicate with how I spoke to him, he’d fly away, “and winding up a bunch of clocks. You’d be leaving me. You get that, right? Those things out there aren’t even real. I’m real.”
“I’d be saving an entire population.”
I rolled my eyes.
“You’re rolling your eyes,” he said. “You always do that. You know what they say about that, don’t you?”
I widened my eyes for effect and rolled them again. I’d read the same article about eye-rolling and relationships. I straightened. “If you sign that piece of paper, it’s pretty much over, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’m signing,” he said, clearly resolute, but it was too late. I already had the contract in my hands, shoved into my mouth, eyes rolling, laughing, choking on the paper as I ripped and chewed.
He only shook his head. He had nothing to say, and if he did, he wouldn’t say it.
In the end, Rubicon Fowl didn’t require that he actually sign the contract. Sending it through the mail had only been a formality. It was just a way, they said, to give the job offer more weight, to make it feel more real.
“I love you,” he said later, the one-way SeaTube ticket pulled up on the screen of his phone. I only shrugged and quietly gloated over the fact that maybe I was the temperamental one after all.
“I’m going to be doing a lot of good work out there,” he said, taking my hands. I pulled them away, crossed my arms, and hid them in my armpits.
“They’re dying out there,” he said. “They’re running low and there’s no one who cares enough to get them back into the air.”
“Are you crying?”
“No,” he lied, the proof already pooling over onto his cheeks.
“There are other things to care about,” I said, manufacturing a frown to make him stay. It wouldn’t be enough, I knew already knew that.
“Wait for me?” he asked.
“It’s a long job,” I said curtly. “You said so yourself.”
“That’s right,” he said. “But will you wait?”
I left him below at the Embarcadero SeaTube Station without answering. He’d have to think about me not answering it over 3,809 kilometers through the watery depths beneath those choppy, uncaring waves. I imagined him out there in the Hawaiian humidity, recovering, restoring, and releasing those mechanical Belted Kingfishers and Blue Lorikeets for the next ten years so that the rest of the world could rest easy with the knowledge that these manufactured birds were not yet wiped out like their predecessors before them, all flesh and blood and feathers.
Mechaornithology had taken my husband away and, unlike the kingfishers, it hadn’t even tried to offer me a replacement full of gears and wiring.
by Julian Miles | Apr 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Pack, pack, package.”
I jump, then look down.
Seated neatly by the fallen trunk I’m lying on is a trifox. This one’s got amazing green eyes, the pair offset to the right of the long nose, with the third pretty much dead centre in the forehead. It’s wearing a Post Office coat, and it’s tails are wagging slowly, almost in time with the rise and fall of its chest.
“Hello, postie. What’s coming?”
“Pack, basket, snacks.”
Of all the races we’ve come across – or have stumbled across us – only the Panduluryacth make homes outside of dedicated colonies on Earth. They’ve come to be known as trifoxes, because they look like long skinny vulpines, despite having three eyes and six legs. Well, actually it’s two legs in the middle and a pair of multi-purpose limbs front and back. They’re arboreal, love all creatures below horse size, and have an unerring knack of being able to find people. All they need is a cherished possession, or for one of their kind to have met the human in need of being found. From there, they will lead whoever accompanies them – usually via drone, because trifoxes are quick and regard every surface as pavement – to the one they seek. While assorted agencies and organisations are keen on engaging their services, they only take long-term employment with postal services. They find the idea quaint, plus they consider the occupation honourable, unlike tracking fugitives and similar.
The few early incidents with fox hunters and suchlike are never mentioned. However, for those interested, the score stands at Trifoxes 138, foxhunters 3. It’s a situation that almost cured itself, being as hunting hounds and suchlike invariably side with the trifox involved.
Trifoxes also make superb beer, and delight in growing orchids.
All in all, we get on well with our quirky neighbours, except for tastes in music. They have a much wider hearing range than humans: what they consider refined tunes can be painful to us, and what they consider raucous is best avoided.
“I’ll take delivery here, postie.”
“Good. Yes. Confirmed.”
Moments later, a drone descends to drop a picnic basket next to the trifox. I jump down from the branch.
“Can I offer you a drink, postie? You’ve had a long ramble to get here.”
“Yes. Thirsty. Thanks.”
I offer a carton of berry juice. The trifox sits, rotates it’s fore-shoulders to handling mode, then takes it. With a little bark, it holds the carton up and bites into it, sucking the contents through four ‘drainfangs’ as they’re called. A long time ago, the ancestors of the trifox were the apex predators of a forest world. How they went from that to their FTL-capable needle-prowed vessels roaming the galaxies is a story we’ve yet to get. One day, I hope to hear it.
It puts the carton down next to the basket, then gives me a little nod.
“Delivered. Away. Time.”
I nod back.
“Thank you.”
After rotating the fore-shoulders into running mode, it spins about and is gone – quite literally in a cloud of dust. I grin. Something about them… It’s just right.
by submission | Apr 16, 2023 | Story |
Author: Joe Wood
Most folks hide the question at first. Maybe they’ve seen me on patrol. Maybe they find me tearing thistles out of my lawn, or walking over to pick my daughter up from school. It starts so casually. Just a chat between neighbors. Somehow, in the haze of how my day is going, my thoughts on the weather, and an innocent question about work, they’ll hit me with it. Kids at least don’t take cover behind pleasantries. Every time a pack of boys spots me walking my dog Messy, they’ll hit the brakes, and blast me with, “Nice duster! How many guys have you shot?”
Last week a kid – maybe fifteen – pointed at my gun. I thought I had it concealed under my shirt, but just enough of the chrome pistol poked out to catch the sun. When the kid asked me the usual question, I turned to make sure there was no one watching. Then, I took the duster out of its holster and tossed it at him.
Lord, how his eyes went wide. But the boy caught it. Unfortunately, he didn’t count on how light it was, and fumbled the gun onto the pavement. Whether he was more scared of me or breaking the duster, I wasn’t too sure. I nodded at the kid, and the boy cautiously retrieved it.
“At ease, rookie,” I said, grinning. “It’s not charged.”
Last time I charged it was three months ago. If you told my brothers in the precinct that, they would send you to our staff psychologist. Harris or Jang would say, “Sandman turned his duster off? You’re high.” Not that I blame them. I once found myself caught between two gangs using lead bullets to turn Peach St. into rubble. By the time backup arrived it was just me and twenty-five piles of sand. They needed half-an-hour to vacuum the remains into body bags.
Imagine a pile of sand blow-torched until each grain burned like a coal. That’s all a person is when they get disintegrated. The second my pointer finger passed a sensor on the trigger, my duster made them disappear. Oh, civilians loved it. Instead of swat teams smashing down doors and putting down criminals with the force of a hurricane, justice is quiet. One officer spots the target on infrared, the other takes the shot. A few flashes of light, and they’re neutralized without any lingering blood stains. Lots of problems disappeared once our boys got dusters six years ago.
Lots of people disappeared too. Not that anyone really noticed, or cared. I sure didn’t, until the night when a few officers chased a man clutching a “mysterious item.” When I found the suspect, he had cornered a young girl. After grabbing her shoulders and yelling something, he slipped something into her pocket. I couldn’t risk using the duster without hitting her. So, I walked towards him with my hands at my side.
Maybe it was my expression, or my tone. The man let go of her, and turned to me. We stood there motionless, silently watching each other as the girl ran into a nearby alley.
“Alright. Stop,” he said as his body turned to dust.
The suspect did not “lunge” at me like the report said. I don’t know which of the four officers pursing him claimed that, or even which one fired. But in the same moment the man’s eyes pleaded with me, he ceased to exist. Any memory of that man was erased – his life reduced to a cloud of molten dust. With a gust of wind, his embers singed my body.
