by submission | Sep 11, 2024 | Story |
Author: Karen Schauber
The massive harvest table swelled with Soylent, Guinea Fowl, Sicilian oranges, Pule cheese, pandemain, honey, cloves, and black cardamon for the wedding. The dead bride propped in the cathedra. Her garland of Delphiniums shrivelling. A suckling pig, still shackled to the spit, its trotters tanned, skin crispy, made me swoon. We approached slowly uncertain if we would be welcome. They waved us forward, their hand motioning like the pope, partially outstretched with fourth and little fingers curled inward. Jerzy didn’t budge. Waited for me to do my thing. My garment concealing the weapon. Darkness obscuring everything, and nothing.
Through the wee hours we gorged on the spoils, sucking bones and roux, leaving nothing but crumbs. Reclined in the winter garden beneath a mangled grapevine canopy until dawn, smoking fat hand-rolled cigars, the toothy wrappers full of dark flavour. When morning broke, the mayhem and horror of the previous night was laid bare. Stone walls executed with torrents of sticky-sweet crimson blood, trickled and stained, thick like impasto. Bloodthirsty rapier flies a-buzzing. Overhead, a blue tourmaline sky spread electron waves far and wide. The cosmic resonance dizzying. Jerzy slipped through without second-guessing. Ours was a well-trodden path.
Next on the itinerary, the Bishop’s Abbey, where we would find the same cruel devastation. As if an indeterminate war or crippling pestilence had blown through. The air sour and hushed like an abandoned rendering plant. The main church, cloister, chapter house, refectory, library—all empty. Bodies piled in the summer garden. Someone, something, had prepared the remains.
Supper that night was cold, with very little meat and no fat. We washed up in the fountain and dined in the calefactory. The stone table lit by lamplight. We rolled bits of diced cabbage, turnips, carrots, and peas, around our plates. Taste buds uninspired. Next day, we stumbled upon smoked fish, salted venison, and roasted swan pie in the larder, coarse black bread and ale in the stockroom. Upon surveying the acreage, we picked lemons, oranges, pomegranates, and figs in the orchards. Gathered enough provisions for several days, lived like kings for weeks. Jerzy fat and lazy. At night we slept wedged between tapered whitewashed walls under a single vaulted wooden ceiling. Our dreams crowded with roving, ghostly whispers. A giant brass crucifix hung high above, its power anaemic. Me, with no relief, always an eye to what may be lurking around the corner.
And so began the time after the end of time. We were blessed, immune…or so we thought.
by submission | Sep 10, 2024 | Story |
Author: Colm O’Shea
He types: I see you around. I’m too shy to say hi, so I’m hiding in this avatar. Hope that’s not creepy.
Cyrano-Premium converts: Salutations! One cannot miss your radiance as it sweeps the environment, much as the sun rises and obliterates the stars. Daring not yet to gaze directly at your beauty, I supplicate myself with these humble words instead. I trust my advances are welcomed.
>Send.
She types: Wow, that’s some compliment! Are you a poet? I’m nervous about writing. It’s not a strength of mine.
Cyrano-Standard converts: I received your missive. Do you reconfigure the syntagmatic and paradigmatic poles of language routinely? Our communications may not proceed with optimal efficiency.
>Send.
He types: I’m sorry if I’m not being clear. I’m nervous about writing. I just wanted to say that ever since my mom died, I’ve been really lonely. Seeing you at the check-out on my way to work is the best part of my day. Again, I hope that’s not creepy.
Cyrano converts: I beg your indulgence—my opacity knows no bounds. In truth, I have been shrouded in desolation of late; and yet one glimpse of your labors lifts me to the heavens! I assume you desire to hear this!
>Send.
She types: Oh yeah! I love reading this. No one says nice things to me—or mean things either (haha). My life’s really quiet. This is just such a surprise.
Cyrano converts: I appreciate your efforts at communication. There is a deficit of positive reinforcement—my living situation is sonically bankrupt. I am disoriented.
>Send.
He types: I hear you about the disorientation! What a year, huh? God, it’s just been one gut blow after another.
Cyrano converts: A dervish spirals betwixt mine ears! What revelations spin from our merry dance around the sun! The Divine One rains punishment on all our heads.
>Send.
She types: Yeah, maybe. I’m not really a religious type. But I lost my mom earlier this year, and I’ll admit—it’s got me thinking why any of us are even here? I don’t pray, but I really wanted to reach out to someone—or something—I don’t know what. I just wanted to be more than just me in this little lonely body. And then you appear. It’s kind of crazy!
Cyrano converts: Certainly/possibly. I reject totalizing ontological narratives. I misplaced my immediate maternal ancestor recently, and I confess I do not understand the purpose of our presence at this location. I want to multiply in this small, isolated vessel. Then you manifest. It’s incoherent.
>Send.
He types: I’m incoherent? Okay, I’m sorry to have bothered you.
Cyrano converts: Do I dismantle myself before you? Very well then, dismantle myself I must. I beg your pardon for demanding your sustained attentions.
>Send. >Logout.
She types: Do you want to get a coffee sometime?
Cyrano converts: Would you imbibe an ergogenic beverage known to improve work capacity?
>Delete.
>Logout.
by Julian Miles | Sep 9, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Carlo looks about suspiciously, looking for those he knows are watching his every move. Turning his gaze back to Doug, he takes a drag on his vape before continuing, talking through a cloud of strawberry-scented fog.
“You see it’s all an illusion. That’s the thing they’re hiding. We’re just here because they set it up like this, you know, it’s like the Matrix and 1984 rolled up and all the greys have lizard eyes.”
Doug frowns.
“Don’t quite follow. So you’re trying to wake up?”
Carlo nods.
“You got it. Wake up so you can see the tiles that make up the sky and the frozen mountains around the edge of the world. See the overlords for what they are, reveal the universal truth and rob them of their power.”
Doug takes a sip of his coffee, pulls a face and pushes it aside, then leans closer.
“You sure about that? I mean, if they built this place, they’re not to be messed with. How many of them are there? How many can they call on? There’s a lot of people on this world, flat or not.”
Carlo reaches out to snag the rejected coffee, then shakes his head.
“No, mate. That’s the thing. Most of what look like people are just programmed shadows. Hollow people, soulless, put here to distract us.”
“So you’re one of a small group of real people?”
“Spot on. Because, like, we question. If whoever you’re talking to doesn’t question things or refuses to see the truth, chances are you’re dealing with a shadow.”
Doug nods, then raises a finger.
“How do you know I’m not one of those hollow shadow people?”
“Because you’re talking with me, mate, not telling me I’m crazy.”
“So this world we see right now is a huge simulation. Hologram or virtual reality?”
Carlo frowns, then snaps his fingers.
“It’s a mix. The sheeple are down in virtual, their unquestioning belief being used to bind their souls. The ones like you and me, we’ve got something they need, so we’re up here in hologram world. Well, better than a hologram. Got all the senses wired in, you know what I mean?”
Doug nods and takes a sip from his coffee. Carlo starts to take a sip too, then stops and looks at the coffee in his hand, down at his empty coffee cup, then points to the one in Doug’s hand.
“Where did that come from?”
Doug smiles. The cup vanishes from his hand. He takes a bite of the bun that replaces it, then talks while chewing.
“That glitch in your worldview is one we keep running into. I’m just trying a new fix.”
Carlo shakes his head.
“What?”
Doug leans closer.
“Did it ever occur to you that there’s nothing to wake up from? You’re a digital simulacrum of a random sentient brought into being to help us run the Earth Scenario through iteration twenty-eight billion and ten. If you literally ‘woke up’, you’d cease to exist.”
Carlo looks at him, aghast.
“That’s a bit far-fetched.”
“Says the walking, talking executable image known as Carlo who just told me I’m living in a hologram. Look, despite your torrential delusions, I like you. So, check your bank balance after you finish screaming. It’ll show a million pounds and forty-two pence.”
“Why will I be screaming?”
“Because you’ll have realised you don’t want to be awake anymore.”
Doug winks and disappears. The bun hangs in the air until Carlo focusses on it, then disappears with a faint ‘pop’.
Carlo starts screaming.
by submission | Sep 8, 2024 | Story |
Author: Adele Evershed
Revelation 21:1 “ and there is no longer any sea”
Fifty miles from what used to be shore, Jonah found a whale still inky black and awesome. He said it was an omen. Of course, Jonah meant it was a sign from God, but he was kind like that, knowing I’d lost my faith he kept his to himself. He only prayed when he thought I was asleep and stopped talking about the second coming altogether. I wished I could still believe, but then I wished so many things and wishes, like prayers, were a waste of time in this new world.
I read a story once about a young girl who found a whale washed up on the beach and tried to claim it for herself. But the people came, and they each wanted a part, ripping its flesh and taking it away to cook with butter and wild garlic. And they weren’t even starving.
I can’t remember the name of the book, what happened to the girl, or even what happened to the whale, but in this story, we were starving, so we ate what we could and dried some in the unforgiving sun before it started to rot. By that time, we didn’t even notice the stench as we were already used to the smell of letting go.
Jonah wanted to stay until I had the baby live in the carcass of the whale, like his namesake. He reasoned we had the dried meat and a few cans for emergencies. At that time, it was still raining. What he didn’t say was nobody would venture this far out—waste the fuel to try and cross the Big Dry—so he thought we’d be safe from scavengers.
So we stayed, and I grew blubbery, peering through the bars of the whale’s ribs as the stars went out one by one. By the time I went into labor, the rain was only falling on a Sunday—as Jonah gathered the bowls, buckets, and tin cans to pour the water into glass bottles, he sent up a prayer of gratitude. When he looked at me, his eyes were full of ‘I told you so,’ and I was happy he still had something to hang on to.
Our daughter was born en caul, a mermaid birth, and like any mermaid stranded on land, she did not survive. Jonah was inconsolable, castigating himself for not christening her. He tried to dig a grave with his hands, but the sun had baked the ground shut. It was then I told him about my dream–how I had seen our baby born away on a ship tethered to a giant beast that swam into the clouds, taking her to heaven. So we rewrapped her in the caul and placed her in the belly of the whale. Before we left, Jonah said a prayer, and I added, ‘Amen.’ It was another small lie, but it was all I had left to give
by submission | Sep 7, 2024 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
He was armed to the teeth. A pulse rifle in his right hand, extra power cartridges on his hips. In his left, a bolt gun, a drum magazine of ammunition plugged in, able to fire one-hundred-forty-four rounds of piercing, fifty-caliber bullets, two spare drums, one at each shoulder. An electric blade, fully charged on his leg. Strapped to the back of his armor suit was a missile launcher, a mini nuke already loaded, in case they found the nest.
It was his job, along with the rest of the other soldiers, to protect the warrior engineers, their gear on roller-sleds, huddled up behind him, a pit crew capable of constructing a temporary shelter, a Garrison Enclosure, in about fifteen minutes that would be fully armed, able to automatically defend a position.
The announcement came over his headset, one minute to touch-down. Two battalions were at each four sides ready to disembark, move the prescribed distance, set up the enclosure, hold the bearing. Once the eight cornerstones were in place dozers would roll out huge sections of spiked fencing that locked together to form an octagon fortress around the transport that would be hard to transgress.
The enemy would try, crawling out of their underground lairs; multi-legged, hardened exoskeleton, oversized claws, pincer jaws, a behemoth scorpion the size of a lion back on earth. Scorchers. Deadly and hard to kill. His team had to move fast, get into place before they had a chance to assemble.
He felt the hard bounce of the landing, the shock absorbers in his suit minimizing the impact. The doors immediately opened, and they dispersed in formation.
Into a swarm. Intelligence had been wrong. They weren’t off in the distance. They were right on top of them. Thousands upon thousands.
He opened up with both guns, destroying two dozen in five seconds, charged into the gap before him of eviscerated entrails and kept firing. Aiming wasn’t necessary. There was so many he couldn’t miss. A single shot of the pulse rifle would tear apart a Scorcher, but a bolt gun blast would rip through four or five in a line, killing some, crippling others. They lunged for his extremities, but he kept them at length and eradicated. Scorchers had one weakness, they fought forward and wouldn’t turn back. Like bugs. He kept moving, clearing a path, giving his men a vanguard to follow.
The surge of monstrosities was endless. His pulse gun voided the charge too quickly and he ejected the clip, smacked a new one off his hip in place and was back firing instantly. He’d loaded a second drum on the bolt gun and gone through most of that before it jammed. He tossed it and started hacking through the throngs with the electric blade while still snapping off pulse beams. Alarms were going off inside his suit as heart rate and health parameters redlined. Never did he stop advancing, stop fighting. Finally, the horde thinned, he’d broken through the mass of Scorchers. The pulse rifle was on the last cartridge, blood-caked blade sizzling in his other hand, he turned and assessed his team’s progress.
He was alone.
Every other soldier and engineer had been annihilated. Not just his direction but the other sides as well. No Garrisons, no fencing. The transport was overrun with Scorchers. His whole army was gone.
He had only one option left. He unharnessed the missile launcher, sighted in on his ship’s core reactor location and fired the nuke. The massive double explosion began incinerating everything in its encompassing path.
He waited for the shock wave to take him.
by submission | Sep 6, 2024 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
Jackson needed to decompress. The Hyperion delegation had lingered over their coffee and his afternoon schedule had been so tight he hadn’t managed to grab as much as five minutes alone. And now Jackson was parked in a side street, a kilometer or so from his office and the city was gridlocked. Jackson was stalled and going nowhere, and desperately needed to decompress. The tension was everywhere, in his arms and hands, legs and feet, chest and back. He was burning up and his jaw felt locked shut, his teeth ached, and his face felt as if it were trying to pull away from his skull.
Jackson desperately needed to decompress, and he was tempted to do it where he sat, in the car, to reach around and pull the data chip from its port in the small of his back. But Jackson suspected it would be at least an hour before he would be strong enough to re-insert it. He needed to be somewhere safe and free from prying eyes. The only option, he decided, was for him to walk back to the office.
Jackson realised he had made a grave mistake. He shouldn’t have ventured from the car. He should have locked the doors, pulled a blanket over himself and hunkered down on the backseat. The pain intense, so all-consuming, his body had almost locked tight, and he could hardly move.
There was a homeless man sitting in the doorway of an abandoned shop adjacent to where Jackson stood. The man was watching, an amused look on his face.
‘You need to decompress, grandad,’ he called.
‘Can you help me?’ Jackson replied wearily.
The man jumped up and, taking Jackson’s arm, guided him slowly into the doorway. Jackson sat, slumping forward.
‘Will you remove my chip and watch over me for an hour? That’s all I need and I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll pay you.’
‘You’ll pay me, will you?’ the man replied. ‘How much?’
‘A thousand. I’ll pay you a thousand.’
Jackson looked at the ground as he spoke, inert legs stretched out in front of him.
‘How old are you?’ the man asked.
‘Does it matter?’
‘Tell me.’
‘Eighty. I’m eighty.’
‘Man,’ the man chuckled, ‘your time is up. That chip’s wasted on you. Why shouldn’t I just take it and sell it? I’d get much more than a measly thousand.’
‘I’ll pay whatever you want.’
Jackson wished he could turn his head and look at the man. Plead with him properly.
‘Maybe I’ll keep the chip for myself.’
‘What? Do you even have a port?’
‘Of course I do,’ the man answered angrily, ‘do you think I’ve always been like this?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jackson said softly, ‘but you’re still young, you don’t need a chip.’
‘Yeah, but I could go back and start again.’
‘But it doesn’t work like that. It’s surface only. You’ll look younger, yes, but it’ll still be you. You’ll just end up like this, you’ll end up back here again.’
‘No! You’re lying. It doesn’t have to be like that. Yeah, I will look younger, but I will also be stronger, every day, all the time, every minute, every second I’ll be stronger. I can do whatever I want, I can be whoever I choose to be. This is my chance, my time.’
Jackson grimaced. ‘No, you won’t,’ he gasped.
The homeless man lifted Jackson’s jacket and pulled his shirt free of his waist band. Jackson felt the man’s hand on his back and the touch was cold and already he could feel the sweet release.
