by Julian Miles | Apr 24, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’m about to tear the end off another sachet when a voice sounds in my mind.
“Go easy on the sugar. Too much of it makes me ache.”
I look about. There’s nobody else except for the two staff. It’s not a busy period: early in the morning at the all-night café round the back of the shops in Crawley.
Returning to my task, I rip and tip, then stir.
“Is it really necessary to have six sugars?”
Same voice. Still nobody nearby, no visible artificial speakers, either.
It’s 06:00 at the arse end of Sussex. Okay, I’ll go along with it. But in whispers. No need to get carted off as a nutter just yet.
“You haven’t tried the coffee here.”
“I haven’t tried the coffee anywhere. I’ve often been coffee, though. Tea, too. Quite honestly, I’d rather be something carbonated. Better still, champagne. Bubbles are fascinating.”
“Not water?”
“No texture unless it’s too cloudy to see anything in.”
I’ll admit to being curious.
“Texture?”
“The threads that comprise things. Waves, strings, and more that you have no words for.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t see or feel them, and as your sciences don’t predict them, you won’t look.”
Hold the phone…
“‘Our’ sciences?”
“Yes. Yours. I don’t need science. I already am.”
“You’re what?”
“Best word you have is ‘god’.”
I look about. Still no sign of tricksters: not that being unable to see them means a whole damn lot, these days.
“So you’re a god. I have divine coffee this morning.”
“Don’t be silly. How can a cup of warm fluid be a power? In size terms for this reality, I’m about the size of a lepton.”
“Is that like an atom?”
“Smaller.”
I remember a teacher talking about subatomic particles. Very small, then.
“You’re a bit small to be a god, aren’t you?”
“For your universe, yes. For my universe, no.”
“Your universe?”
“Size is only relative within a single reality. Thus, here, I am represented as a tiny particle. In my reality, I am the all. Right now, your reality could be part of a grain of sugar plummeting towards a cup of tea in another reality. We’re all part of a gigantic moving pattern.”
My head hurts. But…
“It’s a dance?”
“Yes. A more appropriate term in some ways, too.”
“So, before this grain we’re in hits the other-reality tea, answer me one thing: why am I talking to my coffee?”
“Just because the sugar we’re part of dissolves, it doesn’t mean we do. Conservation of energy and a few other things prevent that. Why are we talking? Because I’m curious.”
“About what?”
“Why did your god give you free will? I haven’t given my sentients any, and things are a lot simpler.”
No, wait… What?
“I have no idea. Why on Earth would you expect me to be able to answer?”
A woman’s voice cuts in.
“Because he knew I’d be nearby. Gods are like that. We tend to know when and where the more powerful ones are.”
I look up to meet the regard of sparkling pink eyes.
“To answer the question: I willed it. The alternatives are too tedious. Despite nearly resetting creation a couple of times when humans drove me to despair, they continue to display flashes of beauty, insight, and creativity far beyond my imagining. It gives me hope. You should try it.”
“I’ll consider it.”
She sighs.
“Do that somewhere else. Leave. Now.”
My coffee bubbles violently. I watch it.
She chuckles.
“You should get a fresh one. That one’s gone off.”
I look up.
There’s no-one there.
by submission | Apr 23, 2023 | Story |
Author: Paul Cesarini
“I hate them. I hate them so fucking much,” she said, looking through her rangefinder. She had been there on the roof of the house – or what was left of it – for most of the night. She was tired, hungry, and grubby, but this was no different than any other night. She reached into her pack, pulled out a small object wrapped in a rag, unwrapped it, and snapped off a piece from a hard, rectangular bar. She turned to the woman next to her, also crouched down on the roof, wearing the same tactical uniform as she did, and motioned for her to take it. That person paused, looked at it, and nodded negatively.
“I’m not eating that crap.”
“Why the hell not? It’s all we got and all we’re likely to get for the next two days.” She motioned for her to take it again.
“It’s like eating bark.”
“Would you rather eat bark or not eat at all?”
“Fine,” she said, taking the piece and reluctantly popping it into her mouth. Lt. Adams had always been a picky eater growing up. That was a whole different world back then, she thought, chewing on the dense, chalky ration. Back then, she turned up her nose at the slightest perceived issue with whatever meal was in front of her. It didn’t matter if it was made by her Dad (who was, admittedly, a pretty good cook) or Nana or at a restaurant. She would inspect it skeptically first, using her fork or whatever utensil was available to probe parts of it, looking for anything unfamiliar or yucky.
She remembered how Nana would always try to hide healthy things in every meal she made. She’d make lasagna that had ground-up mushrooms, carrots, onions, and other vegetables in it. She’d grind them all up real small, almost a puree, hoping Kelly and her little brother Mikey would notice or taste the difference. Kelly always could, then she’d promptly notify Mikey, pointing out the offending vegetables in various areas on his plate.
Pizza was the worst. Her dad would sometimes have huge chunks of tomatoes on it. He said they were diced but they clearly weren’t. Sometimes he would even put pineapple and ham on it. What kid would eat that? What kid would eat those burgers he would make – the ones with all the garlic and onions in them? Nana would tell them there were starving kids halfway across the world somewhere who would love to have a meal as good as this.
Each time, she would just push her plate away, fold her arms, and stare off across the room at the big clock her Dad made. Each time, she would refuse to eat meals, good meals, made by people who loved her. Now, she’d trample someone without a thought if it meant she could have another piece of Nana’s lasagna. A whole different world.
She motioned with her hand to have another piece of the ration. “Hand me the binos, too,” she said.
“Oh, so now you’re ok with eating these?”
“No. Definitely not ok with it. But…” she motioned again.
Captain Tomaz handed her another chunk of the brittle, tasteless ration, along with the binoculars. Adams had only recently joined her unit but seemed reliable enough, she thought. Most of her unit was new, formed out of remnants of other ones decimated by the initial wave. Adams, and others like her, were barely trained for this. They came from Logistics, Analytics, and the supply depots. Hell, at least two came directly from a mess hall. They came from anywhere and everywhere – particularly once the coasts fell and we were pushed with our backs up against the Rockies on one side and the Appalachians on the other. They all stood up when it looked like we were screwed, she thought. We still might be screwed. That fight in Lansing definitely did not go our way, she thought.
The last eight months had been different, she thought. We tricked those fuckers into thinking they were worse off than they really were, got into their command codes (somehow!) then started working around the edges when they got complacent. A chunk of them were dead or deactivated now, including almost all of that goddamn Nightmare Scythe airborne wing. That thing was fucking terrifying. Watching it finally drop out of the sky was nothing less than exhilarating.
Who would’ve thought the big battles – the decisive ones – would be in the Midwest? All those comics she read as a kid had aliens invading New York, zombies attacking LA, and stuff like that. Nothing ever happened here in the comics. No one ever attacked Aurora, Illinois, or Bowling Green, Ohio. Or any of the other Bowling Greens, she thought. The Midwest was one of the only places to go after they hit both coasts and wiped out our Navy. Even then, it wasn’t ever really safe. Some of the most horrible shit she’d ever seen was in Columbus, in Fort Wayne. In Hersey. That fight in Chillicothe – against that gruesome fucking Mobile Garroting Unit or whatever the hell it was – was just plain evil. It was her and two other units down there, helping get a bunch of Amish families to safety. (Or, was it Mennonite, she thought? She never could remember the difference.) They were on schedule, mostly, until what seemed like the whole world exploded. Fire and ash were everywhere. We could barely breathe or see, then they were on us. These were once manufacturing robots, like for auto parts and stuff, repurposed and rebuilt. They were retrofitted with armor, giant batteries, and solar panels harvested from the former factories they worked in. They waded through us like we weren’t even there.
Now it’s our turn, she thought, smiling slightly as she chewed her rations.
by submission | Apr 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Cold steel from a small revolver in his sweaty palms gave little comfort to Jack Chase, sitting alone amidst feral wheat still struggling in an abandoned field near his grandfather’s rotting farmhouse, long since left to crumble after the 2024 financial collapse. There was no sacred family ground left for a wandering empath, unfit for a corrupt, war-mongering society. No one would notice a misfit who never managed to find a companion or create children. His hands shook while he closed his eyes, the setting sun behind him providing its warmth, messaging his bare neck a final time as the moist soil pushed chills up his spine.
Jack was unaware of a sudden flash of light behind him, hidden within the sun’s diminishing rays. He thought the whoosh of fresh wind was the empty prairie whispering goodbye. Light footsteps escaped him as his weapon pressed his right temple.
“No, Jack. We can’t have that.” A soft feminine voice surprised him near his left ear as a powerful hand twisted his gun from his grasp. He twisted, resisting, finding large, blues eyes and thick, silky blonde hair filling his view. He froze as his intruder tossed the gun.
“Not today, my love. There is much to live for. We waited for you.”
“Waited?” He mumbled. “You’re a hallucination. I had this once before. Am I dead?”
She smiled, calmly. “Not yet. You don’t remember that night? You tried this before, out in the rocky outcrops of Sedona. Did you die from drugs then?”
Jack rubbed his eyes, and then slapped his face.
“I’m real enough, dear Jack.” She pinched his reddened cheeks. “Get on your feet to meet someone to change your life.”
“Who are you? I don’t remember…not your name.”
“We don’t have names. That is your species’ waste of time. We recognize each other in full awareness. Now pay attention.” She was suddenly insistent. “Here is someone anticipating meeting you.”
Jack obeyed, still stunned at the bizarre events. The tall woman moved aside allowing him a full view of a silvery saucer craft. In front of it, moving toward him was a female teenager, also dressed in a shiny one-piece suit like her companion. The blonde visitor held his arm, urging him forward.
“This is ours…our mating.”
Chase’s knees buckled. Vague memories rose from his depression—many nightmares and hypnogogic dreams watching a child mature under orange skies surrounded by unrecognizable forests. They came irregularly. He would wake covered in a cold sweat, fearing for his sanity.
“She…she can’t be.”
“Oh, indeed, she is. For your comfort, I will introduce her as Oneha, meaning an explorer.”
“Why…I…this is too much!” Jack pushed his hands hard into his throbbing temples.
“Perhaps you’re in shock. Come, Oneha, and meet Jack, your father.” The blonde alien drew Jack closer as Oneha reached out, touching his forehead, providing relief and calm. He looked at her hard in the dimming light, scanning her youthful redhead beauty—a doppelganger for his Irish grandmother Elise.
“Time to get on board, Jack. Things are moving quickly. Earth’s magnetic field is changing drastically. Please come along. You’ll be treated well in your new home.”
“I can’t just…just leave, without…”
“Really,” she replied, smiling. “You were about to do that as we landed. There is nothing here for you.”
Jack turned, staring at the farmhouse ruins. He shuddered, reaching for Oneha’s hand and his tall partner’s arm. They walked swiftly into the craft, then zipped past the atmosphere as the ground below them heaved, swallowing the remains of an abandoned homestead.
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.
