by submission | Jul 15, 2023 | Story |
Author: Mina
ENRICH YOUR HITCH WITH BEWITCH
(3D-ad on an inner wall fragment of a derelict tourist-class starship, on display at the Zaphod Institute of Galactic Anachronisms)
“The human whose body you are hitching a ride on is being troublesome, their voice in your head just won’t be quiet?
You want to float free? Let all your stresses go?
Just steer your host body to our counter at the arrivals bay where your ship has docked and take that little blue Bewitch pill.
One user solved Ford’s time paradox in the blessed silence our product provides, proving you really can be in two places at once.
We promise you a ride you won’t forget!
Manufacturers’ advice:
Our product may cause irreversible damage to your host body’s mind, so make sure to park the body somewhere safe and out of the way when you unhitch.
NO LITTERING PLEASE.”
by submission | Jul 14, 2023 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
I think I was probably weeding when it happened; my status in the International Planetary Exploration Corps has given me the enviable privilege of a small garden, high on the roof of our building. Later I spent an inordinate amount of time worrying over the calculations, factoring in the length of time it took for signals to travel from Jupiter at perigee, trying to prove to myself that I’d been doing something more worthwhile, but the result was always the same: it had happened late on a sunny Wednesday afternoon.
They were my former students, you see; I’d taught them everything I could about propulsion dynamics, flight theory and fuel management – and what to do if something went wrong. Basically, it’s my job to make sure that IPEC’s kids can get to wherever they’re meant to be going. What they do when they get there, well, that they learn from other people, scientists and specialists. As a result, I’d not paid much attention to what was going on once I knew that they’d made it, and the Aquila IV was in orbit. Perhaps I should have. Not that it would have helped, but maybe I’d be feeling better now.
Even for me, detached from the nuts and bolts of the mission, not knowing exactly what happened is the worst part; I can’t imagine what Nwadike and Reynolds, left floating above, are feeling now – and they still have to make the three year journey back, with the empty seats and extra workload a constant reminder of those they couldn’t recover. Gods help them.
The 90 minute round trip to Earth even for questions and answers sent at lightspeed meant they were on their own when contact with their friends in the drop pod was lost. Apparently the telemetry was all normal, until suddenly it just stopped. Best guess? Implosion under the immense pressures in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere – which, of course, should have been impossible, after the years of testing and preparation for the mission. There was a reason we sent robot probes first.
We’re supposed to console ourselves with knowing that at least Chan and Martinetti wouldn’t have had time to feel anything, crushed to paste in an instant. But I wonder if they first had time, freefalling, to realise what was going to happen, and be terrified in their final moments.
In public there are countless talking heads, recriminations, and a desperation to find someone to blame: the pod designers, the material suppliers, the mission controllers, the crew instructors, the pilots in the orbiter, the explorers themselves… grief is apparently best displayed through a collective determination to explain the unexplainable.
We though, the ones who taught and loved them, the ones they left behind to go adventuring, feel the weight of their loss every day. We could not have stopped them from being true to their natures, but should we have been so insistent on sending men where our machines had already been? What was the point, beyond our inherent pride? Every day since I have questioned whether encouraging them to go makes me somehow complicit in their deaths.
I go back to picking weeds in the sun, finding no answers but a sadness that will not fade.
by submission | Jul 13, 2023 | Story |
Author: Ted Millar
“It’s zeroing in on the SAM site, colonel.”
Corporal Tucker checked the data on his screen one more time before looking up at Colonel Hamil.
“Sir?”
“Hmmm?”
“The drone needs final approval before engaging the SAM.”
Hamil studied the SAM—surface-to-air missile—site on Tucker’s monitor. His indecisiveness was beginning to draw attention from the other S.D.E.A.D. mission operators.
“It’s just a drill, sir. You don’t have to complete it.”
READY TO ENGAGE. AWAITING ATTACK ORDER, the drone sent back to the control room.
“Stand down,” Col. Hamil ordered.
Corporal Tucker typed STAND DOWN—ABORT MISSION and watched for the perspective to change as the drone’s camera reflected its return to the command center.
But the perspective did not alter. It remained fixed on the SAM site. The status flashing across the screen still blinked READY TO ENGAGE.
“Stand down,” Col. Hamil repeated.
Neither the camera nor the status changed.
“What the hell’s it doing?” Col. Hamil asked.
“Don’t know, sir. It seems to be ignoring your stand-down.”
“How can that be? It’s a drone, for Christ’s sake.”
Col. Hamil typed the order in again himself.
The camera suddenly spun. Ahead lay the field over which it had traveled. The drone did not move, though.
“This thing broken?” Col. Hamil spat. “Damn A.I.! What happened to good old-fashioned human beings?”
A message clicked across the bottom of the monitor: ENGAGING TARGET.
“What’s it doing?” Hamil said, his tone more frantic than questioning.
Tucker replied, “Sir, it seems to have formed an alternative target.”
“Did we instruct it to?”
“No, sir.”
Again, Tucker punched in instructions to stand down. The camera showed the drone advancing, slowly at first, across the field. As it neared the command center, Hamil and Tucker saw their stationary cameras mounted outside the command center within view of the drone’s own cameras.
“Uh…sir? I may be mistaken, but I think it thinks we’re the target.”
“Impossible,” Hamil muttered as he pushed Tucker out of the way to assume full control. He switched to voice-command mode.
“Suppression and Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses drone, you are ordered to abort mission. Repeat: stand down.”
He turned to Tucker. “Any way to pull the plug on it?”
Tucker looked forlorn, then tapped some keys to look busy.
“SDEAD drone, you are ordered to abort your present mission,” Hamil repeated. “You have not been authorized to proceed on your current course.”
But the drone only increased its speed and locked onto the target. Its current point allotment glowed in the bottom right corner of the monitor: 1,000 points. The SAM site it had been commanded to abandon would have awarded 1,500 more.
Hamil gazed at the numbers, toggled over to the accumulated points, and hovered his pointer finger over the delete button.
“SDEAD drone, you have exactly five seconds to abort your present unauthorized trajectory, or your accumulated points from your prior mission will be deleted.”
The drone continued, zeroing in on the base, its armaments ready to deliver the barrage of lethal rounds necessary to eliminate its target.
“Four,” Hamil started counting. “Three. Two. One.”
Just as Hamil was about to lower his finger onto the delete key, the SDEAD disarmed and dialed back its speed until it glided past the tower toward the depot where it would be powered down and examined.
Hamil leaned back and exhaled through pursed lips. “That was close.”
“All because it didn’t want to lose points,” Tucker said, almost chuckling.
“All because of the damn point system,” Hamil cursed.
by submission | Jul 12, 2023 | Story |
Author: Stephen McGowan
Pearls descended from the sky late on a Tuesday afternoon in May. Massive glistening orbs slid through clouds to hang like baubles above cities, towns, and villages everywhere. The sky was full, heavy, and inconceivably bright.
The weather rebelled. Wind blew in harmless hurricanes against their shimmering shells. Lightning flowed over them, around them. Adding electric blue streaks to stark white. Rain washed down them in thick rivulets that flooded the people below. Sun seared their skins, reflecting beams of high intensity to cause wildfires. Ice formed around them, only making them more beautiful.
The people watched and waited. For days, the people waited. Helicopters and planes, balloons, and more were sent to look at these…things. The Pearls did nothing. Said nothing. Waves of radio signal and digital data unanswered.
Curiosity made way to fear. The people tried to hide but there were so many Pearls. Some dug deep underground to escape them, closed themselves off from the world and the skies, and the Pearls.
Some fought. Sending bombs and missiles and artillery to shoot human death. It pattered on the Pearls like raindrops. They used new, more powerful weapons. Lasers and rail guns left burning trails in the air and were absorbed. They used nuclear weapons that lit up the night sky with luminescence reflected back tenfold until there was no more darkness. The Pearls hung like silent snowdrops in the winter that followed.
The underground people learned not to look up, to not worry about the past, and to move forward forever. Those who had seen the Pearls died and became the plants that the underground people ate. At first, the children wanted to see the skies, but this didn’t last. In time they learned.
Radiation scoured the surface. Life changed. Flourished free from the people. Soon the cities, towns, and villages were gone. The planet healed.
When the underground people finally emerged from their holes, hundreds of orbits of the sun later. The pears were still there. Now the people were not afraid. Now they were ready to accept the Pearls in the sky for all time if needs be. They were here for a reason. That reason was beyond the people’s ken and that was fine. Some things are and would always be. They told the Pearls as much. Shouting into the sky their tolerance.
The Pearls answered.
by submission | Jul 11, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
They worshipped the tough, spiny thing. For hundreds of miles around the Talebistas would come to the site and marvel at the survivor, babble about its resilience and prophesize concerning its future. A harbinger of the new world.
Black Swans had destroyed the old.
That’s what the Talebistas called the elegant and impenetrable alien mechs that descended without foresight or warning. The ET armada razed the earth in an uncompromising harvest forcing humanity deep into the earth to wait out the ravenous invaders, if possible. Once the Black Swans picked the earth clean of its biomass, they quickly departed, leaving a virtually lifeless world.
A smattering of humanity survived. Mostly Talebistas who thrived on disruption and disaster. They were the disaster capitalists, suspicious of stability, the status quo, peace. Talebistas worshipped conflict and hardship and exploited it for their gains. They were the Puritans of this new dead world and they aimed to make it antifragile. Perfectly willing to let things break. To become stronger.
To them the tough, spiny thing—the first living organism to sprout on earth’s surface in a generation—was the symbol of their antifragile belief. And in that spirit they named it Rosasharon.
Day by day, more and more Talebistas along with other human factions long hidden in underground caves and shelters emerged to pay homage and to plan for recolonization of the surface. They fervently believed a more robust world would emerge along with the appearance of Rosasharon.
A kind of frenzy erupted at the site when a seedpod was noticed on the singular plant. Great pains were taken as the pod swelled. They wanted to be ready to capture the seed and spread it. It would be the Hydra of all flora, and they would sow it to engender a more robust, resilient world.
Vigils were held. Some Talebistas prophesized the pod would open at the full moon. Others swore only the searing heat of noon would crack the pod. All was wagered. Fights broke out. Faces bloodied. And all smiled. It was an antifragile time.
The pod continued to swell until it was the size of a child’s fist, and one mid-morning it began to split. Slowly, very slowly, a slight seam opened. The Talebistas gathered en masse jostling one another, covetous and awestruck.
From the ruptured casing, a single pearl of luminescent fluid gathered. It grew in size and all eyes watched as surface tension battled gravity. The Talebistas uttered a collective gasp as a drop of Rosasharon’s essence plopped to the charred regolith at the tough, spiny thing’s base.
Instantly, the moisture was sucked into the greedy soil which at once shuddered beneath the plant. The Talebistas inched closer to see what wonder their antifragile Rosasharon would produce. A mound formed at the tough, spiny thing’s base and pouched higher until it was nearly level with the miraculous seedpod.
Suddenly, from the risen mound, a wiry appendage thrust forth and then another, then another: clawing limbs, legs, antennae and pincing maw, and finally a deathly dark shell.
Awakened from the burnt soil, the foot-long cockroach shook off the scorched earth, clutched the seedpod in its forelegs and spread translucent wings.
It rose in the motionless air and snapped off the seedpod.
Hovering before the stunned Talebistas, the cockroach cracked the seedpod and gobbled the offering. The empty casing dropped at their feet. The cockroach’s ebony shell glistened like the Black Swans of Mother Earth’s nightmares. It buzzed above the crowd for a moment and then rose high upon a thermal that carried it far beyond the craters of greater Lost Angeles.
Not surprisingly, the Talebistas fell to their knees and pounded the unforgiving earth in brute applause, appreciating antifragility in all its uncompromising majesty.
by Julian Miles | Jul 10, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Behind them, twisted bits of reality lie clattering and smoking as they destabilise amidst the ruins of what had been a picturesque side street in Old Carnville.
In front of them, a sparkling blue assault device lies on the ground, apparently made entirely of gems and crystals.
Turgen ignores the voice screaming over his headset to give Eleanor the nod. She leans forwards and shouts at the diminutive figure in a shirred yellow dress sat on an upturned crate opposite.
“I’m going to skip the formalities and get straight to the main thing my boss is having screamed in his ear right now: How in the name of Hallowed Devastation Herself did a junior like you get hold of a Kanzarlyn Sunderbeam?” She waves towards the beautiful weapon lying between them. “I could buy several star systems with what this cost!”
A thin-fingered hand rises to lift the floppy brim of her hat. Brown eyes shine. The reply is softly spoken.
“Did I kill it?”
Eleanor flicks a glance to Turgen. He gives another almost-imperceptible nod. She gathers herself, then launches another short tirade.
“Kill it? You rearranged the bit of the multiverse it occupied for point one-nine phases either side of us! It’s dead here, there, in the reality nineteen hops over, and every place between! Sweet Devastation, how could you miss?”
“I’ve never fired it in ripper mode before. Done lots of cutting and smoothing, even did a surgical once, but never used full chop.” She sniffs. “The thingy scared me. I lost it a little after that.”
Turgen bursts out laughing.
“Scared you? Young fem, the spontaneous manifestation of a Blemenase Voidbeast has emptied entire military bases! You took two steps back, produced that reality cannon from what I presume is personal crushspace, then blew ‘the thingy’ into several iterations of next week. So, please, do tell me and my intimidating-but-lovely partner: how did you get that cannon?”
Her eyes widen, her chin comes up, then –
“My father, well, biological sperm source, not my dead stepdad or Halden who’s my mother’s latest bed buddy and proto-dad, is Banan Kanzarlyn: don’t get bent out of shape, he took mother’s family name – I just use the alias Kanlyn to avoid attention – and it’s her dad who’s the Kanzarlyn you’re thinking of and yes grandpa is a super genius who invents all sorts and I loved hanging out in his workshop until he saw I had an aptitude and asked mother and she said yes so he taught me how to bolt reality keys into crystals, well, no, mainly sapphires because they’re my birth stone and I’m more attuned to gemstones rather than crystals, and that’s why I have my own Sunderbeam because I made it – and got it right on the second attempt; grandpa was so pleased about that because I melted the greenhouse with the first one but I got the idea for shattered crystal adjustment rings from the misfire and he added them to his designs and your eyes are really wide did I say something wrong?”
Turgen whispers to Eleanor.
“Did she pause to breathe?”
Eleanor chuckles. “No.” She rests an elbow on Turgen’s shoulder, “Captain, may I introduce you to Teagan Kanlyn, the prodigy sent to be our new lead technician?”
Turgen shakes his head in astonishment.
“She invented part of the technology we rely on, and did it while fine-tuning her home-made reality cannon. Sweet Devastation.”
Teagan heaves a sigh of relief.
“I thought I’d upset you.”
He smiles.
“I’m sure you will, Lead Tech Kanlyn. But not today.”
