by submission | Sep 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: Allie Nava
They say your life flashes before you as you fold into the arms of death, and perhaps that is what happened to me when I lost those eight minutes and twenty seconds.
I was a child peddling gleeful “whee’s” on a red bicycle, over a calming ocean of green hillocks. I was an adolescent pulling weeds, while inhaling rose and tangerine under a relentless yellow sun. I was a violinist sipping scalding tomato soup, alone, amidst a sea of fellow musicians taking their rehearsal breaks. That is, until someone pointed to the distant mountaintops and asked why I too was not heading in that direction.
I was an adolescent that packed my gear and walked in stride for years. I stumbled now and then, as if in a child’s jump rope game that had aimed to trip me. But I found my footing and reached the apex, even before some of the other mountaineers. I lived there many years and became productive, and a family grew before my eyes. But soon my hair turned gray and betrayed me, without remorse.
I was an adult who bid farewell and climbed down from the mountaintop and arrived to a reflecting pond at the foot of the hills. I imbibed sweet jasmine from flowering bushes. I held golden wheat berries past their harvest. I wondered what had happened to my violin and my garden and my bicycle.
I sat down and closed my eyes and drew my breath. I lost all sensation in my extremities, and I floated on the clouds, my body above the ocean. I had returned home to my intended destination, but wondered why I had walked so far away only to return to the path I knew was true.
Now it didn’t matter. My last eight minutes and twenty seconds were up, and so were everyone else’s. The whole planet had gone dark. We had lost our sun. It had taken eight minutes and twenty seconds for us to realize – the time it took for light to travel to our planet. And within a few days the temperatures were going to drop precipitously, and few humans would survive.
by xdhz8 | Sep 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Henson
“I’d rather not plug in now, Pop.”
“Robby, you and Sally do as your father asks. It’s good to relive family memories.”
Steven Matlink sees his wife, son and daughter enter the reminiscences room and put on their helmets. “Thanks, Dorothy. They always mind you better than me.”
“And whose fault is that?”
The four go into the reminiscences room, which contains an artificial brain that wouldn’t quite fit in a bathtub. The organ pulses to simulate blood flow. Lights flash to suggest firing synapses.
Steven puts on one of the helmets. “Family Brain, I want to relive our day at MarsLand.” He becomes immersed in memories of the enclosed amusement park on the red planet.
“Robby, Sally, stay close,” Dorothy says as the family strolls down the crowded midway. The mother takes her son’s hand. “Steven, pay attention and hold on to Sally, will you?”
Steven feels his daughter’s grip. When the girl strides ahead of her father, he feels the tug at his shoulder. He’s always amazed at how real the illusion seems. “Hey, Sally, slow down. Rocket Robot isn’t going anywhere.”
“Hurry, Pop,” Robby says, “before the line gets longer.”
The four Matlinks join hands, snake single file through the crowd, and clamber into one of the cabins of Rocket Robot.
“Blast off!” Robby shouts.
“No, it’s lift off, silly.” Sally tickles her brother in the ribs.
Robby’s giggles are interrupted by Rocket Robot shooting up toward the transparent dome. “I see Saturn,” the boy says.
“Oh, yeah? I see Pluto,” Sally says.
Suddenly the cage drops. The four Matlinks scream.
Steven feels giddy and weightless. “You should see your hair floating up,” he shouts to his wife.
Dorothy says something he can’t hear over the rush of the plunge.
Back on the ground, the family disembarks. “Can we get back in line?” Robby says.
Dorothy squeezes her son’s shoulder. “Don’t you want to try something different?”
Sally squats then jumps straight up. “I’m Rocket Robot.”
Robby copies his older sister. “I blasted off higher.”
Steven laughs. “It’s a tie. You both win … comet cones for all!”
“That’ll spoil their lunch,” Dorothy says. “Oh, well, life is short.”
Steven sighs and removes his helmet. He looks around at the three empty seats, helmets askew on the floor. He tells himself he has to get on with his existence in the real world. “But not today.” He puts his helmet back on. “Family Brain, repeat.” Steven sees his wife, son and daughter enter the reminiscences room and put on their helmets…
This time, when Dorothy says “Life is short,” he hears in her voice a tone he hadn’t previously noticed. Is that why she blocked her memories, he wonders. Was she already planning to —
“Knock, knock.”
The image of Steven at the family brain dissolves as Rob, his hair gray, removes the sensors from his temples. A woman, white hair framing her face, has stepped out of a beam of light.
“Hi, Sally, good to see you.”
“Popped in to say ‘hello’ to my brother. What’re you up to, Rob?”
Rob motions toward the baseball-size orb on the table next to his float recliner. “Reliving some of Pop’s memories. I hadn’t realized he spent so much time plugged in to the family brain after Mom and us moved out. He —”
“What are you doing, Sweetie?” Doris, Sally’s daughter, says.
The image of Rob and Sally dissolves as the girl disconnects from her brain chip. “Visiting some of Great Uncle Rob’s memories. Mom, can we go to MarsLand? I —”
The image of Doris and her daughter dissolves …
by Julian Miles | Sep 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The two personages in blue suits look at me like I’m an ornament. One that grandma got from her mama, only kept because of that, and never found a soul who liked it anyway.
Tall blue suit flicks a glance towards skinny blue suit, who’s standing slightly behind and to the left.
“It appears we have an unbeliever, Robert.”
Robert the Skinny nods like he’s received the wisdom of the ages.
“That is unfortunate, Malcolm.”
Malcolm the Tall gives the slightest nod. Acknowledging the act, not in any way a thanks for the agreement. After all, when one is always right, such niceties are irrelevant.
“My humble apologies, personages. I find myself between places of avode.”
Malcolm passes my card to Robert, who slips it into the reader in the top pocket of his suit jacket. Woven in: very discreet. Perceptions, after all, are everything.
Less than a minute passes before they both grunt, almost in unison. Neither are approving in tone.
Malcolm crouches down while Robert takes a step back, flicking his jacket clear of his holsters. Not one, but two. That’s not the customary wear, and what’s in them gleams like metal, not the dull sheen of tasers. Seems I’ll not be getting out of this one easily: I’ve been cornered by Obligators.
Malcolm notes my gaze.
“You are perspicacious, unbeliever. Which surprises me, because your record shows you to be between avodes far too often for one who presents themselves as well as you. Surely one as observant as yourself wouldn’t be so clumsy as to leave gaps in their record? After all, there are many places of registration that fail to keep as lovingly close a watch over their flocks as the Edicts suggest.”
As if I need to sign up to a dodge shop, where – for a monthly fee – my devout labour history could be maintained while I got on with defying the Torble: which is the officially blasphemous but far easier to pronounce nickname for the ‘Sainted Edicts of Labour for the Common Good, Being the Highest Way to Know God, as set down by His Prophets Oliver and Siraj’.
Robert picks up the sermon started by his elder.
“It could lead a pair of righteous personages like ourselves to believe you might have alternative means of support. So, what are you? A dogsbody, a money-changer or a prostitute?”
No mention of mercenary? They don’t have a high opinion of me.
My implanted comm vibrates.
Malcolm perks up. Robert draws a pair of military issue magnums.
“You have an implant? We may have cornered ourselves a dealer, Robert. Truly our avode is blessed this night.”
I smile.
“I presume you’d prefer me not to check or answer that?”
Malcolm raises his eyebrows.
“Both audio and messaging in an implant? Your sinning must be profitable. For shame that dealing in blasphemous wares isn’t considered avode, for all that you’ve clearly worked so assiduously at it.”
Robert grins anticipatorily.
This is about to get a little too real. Time to stop.
“Let me show you my other ID.”
“The unbeliever sees the light.”
Something like that. I raise and clench my fist, pressing down with my little finger. The subdermal tag on the outside of my hand lights up.
They scan it, exchanging looks of disbelief. The confirmation comes back. Robert looks sick.
Malcolm sighs.
“I’d heard Anointed President Gregory the Seventeenth was a reformed unbeliever. Seems the rumour is true.”
I smile.
“It’s not that bad. As far as I’m aware, I’m his only bastard. You have a good eve, Obligators. Ciao.”
by submission | Sep 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jackson Lanzer
“Do you ever just want to feel sad?” A young woman said, looking into the eyes of a young man.
“Sometimes it’s all I want to feel,” he responded. “Sometimes sadness is even sweeter than the purest joy.”
The man and woman strolled up to a ticket office. Their faces were illuminated by the glowing words of a marquee: “Cinema Memory.”
“Two tickets, please.”
“Same memory as last week?” The box office attendant asked.
“Yes, sir.”
The attendant handed them their tickets.
“Screen 5. And no need for a brain scan. We’ve got the memory recorded now.”
“Do you do that for all the regulars?” The woman asked.
“Not usually. But you two watch the same memory every week. We figured it’s the least we could do.”
As the man and woman walked through the theater doors, the woman turned her head and gazed into the man’s eyes.
“Are you okay?” She said.
“I’m surviving,” he responded, his eyes bloodshot and tear-stained. “I’ve been counting down the days to feel again.”
“Me too.”
The man and woman opened the door to screen 5. Silver light illuminated the room, and they sat in the back row next to each other. Every other seat was empty.
Their final moment as a couple flickered before their eyes.
“How’d it come to this,” the young woman whispered between bites of popcorn.
“Life, I guess,” the man responded.
She reached for his hand, and they embraced each other while, on the screen, the young man screamed at the young woman.
“Remember Prague?” The woman asked, looking away from the film.
“Of course. I fell for you that day.”
She smiled and squeezed his hand.
On the screen, the woman slammed the front door and marched away from the man’s house.
The film cut to the man standing at the window, watching the woman drive away. “Time in a Bottle” played over the speakers, and tears began streaming down the face of the technicolor man.
“Our favorite song,” she said.
“Our song,” he agreed with a lone tear slipping from his eye. “I usually can’t listen to it. Too many memories.”
“That’s exactly why I listen to it. When it’s playing, I almost feel like I’m getting to be us one more time.”
The man on the screen turned from the window, grabbed a half-empty bottle of wine, and walked out of frame. The screen faded to black, and the credits began to roll.
The man and woman stood from their seats.
“It was nice seeing you.”
“You too.”
“Are we still on for the same time next week?”
“Sounds lovely.”
The man waved at the woman and began walking away. He stopped for a brief moment and looked back.
“I loved you.”
“I loved you too.”
by submission | Sep 16, 2023 | Story |
Author: Eli Hastings
The man turns a circle in the intersection, the four way crimson stop light flashing overhead, so he is encircled in crimson glow now, and now, not. The yellow Walkman gripped like a handgun in his right fist. The headphones nearly the age of the Walkman and the cassette clipped into it. When he was young, and lived with his rich mother and pacifist stepfather in a leafy neighborhood, there was a wolf-dog. The naturopath couple that owned the dog were proud of it—3/4ths wolf, ¼ Husky, 130 pounds of which at least 30 was matted once-white fur. That dog upon a warm day would take to the manhole cover in the intersection. Lay across it dead center of four streets that were getting busier the more people flooded into the neighborhood. But 12 cars a day or 120 that dog didn’t move for a horn’s idiocy, much less the shriek of a yuppy commuter. Threatening tire squelches caused him to look up, and give a side eye to the receding coups of the era—Subaru XLTs, Miatas. The boy loved that dog. He never got near him, never met his eyes, just scooted along to the bus stop and back again, admiring the wolf, eyes peeled for the popular predators of his block.
The artist is Soundgarden, the album is Louder Than Ever, the song is “Hands All Over.” Once he listened to it religiously, such as the day that the boy got head-locked on his way home from the bus by Travis Scalley. It wasn’t the first time, just the first time on this block. The hard drums tried to help the boy wrench free, but Travis had grappling with smaller beings down cold. When the boy found himself facing the cerulean blue of the sky and blackness closing down his vision, Soundgarden split by one ear phone’s slippage, he quit protesting. Spine against humid, May-damp grasses, he just stared up at Travis, hoping to scare the fucker away with the nihilistic apathy in his glare. But Travis’s sneer filled the sky of the boy’s world like a sickle moon, nothing else to look at but that blade. And then suddenly the cloud-cut cerulean again, Travis backstepping up the block. The boy rolled his head the other direction and the wolf had stood up, taken one step—most of its torso still covering the manhole. One quiver of its wet snout and it circled the manhole and laid its burden down again upon the steel, huffed.
The man stands now on a manhole cover in the center of the intersection, Soundgarden has plowed into “Gun,” and the light rain has made the steel beneath his sneakers as slick as oil. He wouldn’t have believed it, but headlights seem to approach from all four directions at an even speed and even distances. He knows this because he spins on his slick soles. Eight headlights pin him into blindness and the silly bitchery of horn bleat. He sticks the banana yellow 80s Walkman into his belt. He brings his hands up like claws. He pulls his lips back from his teeth and spins, waiting to understand in which direction he must move.
by submission | Sep 15, 2023 | Story |
Author: Ann Tandy
Good morning, and welcome! You may be feeling a little disoriented: this is the natural result (and, indeed, intent!) of the stimulating effects of the musk exuded by the Great Beast. Your appendages may feel a bit stiff, but they will grow strong and agile once more, never fear!
You may be confused (and perhaps alarmed) by some crunching noises around you. There is no need for concern and, in fact, great cause for celebration! The fact that you are awake and hearing crunching noises, rather than experiencing the crunching, means that you are one of the fortunate Chosen Few set aside by the Great Beast for later glories. Congratulations!
Please use this time to take stock of any changes you notice in your exterior form: extra/fewer limbs, nodes, fur patches, sensory organs, teeth, claws, openings, etc. Please note all changes on the form provided in this packet; a little effort on your part now will make your processing more efficient, and will have the added benefit of distracting you from the crunching and (no doubt by now) screaming.
Soon the Great Beast will have satiated its centuries-long-denied appetites on your less-worthy compatriots and retreated to its lair, at which point it will be safe to come collect you. We are excited to have you join our team, and look forward to working with you!
