by submission | Jan 24, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Did you feel that?” Gilly asked.
A few steps ahead, Sampson sunk his ice axe into the crusty snow. “No. I didn’t feel anything.”
The couple was at nearly 9,000 feet resting on the edge of the glacier that corkscrewed precipitously to the top of Guth Peak, elevation 10,627. It was mid-morning, the early September sun bright and dangerous.
Gilly frowned, and he smiled serenely back, and she remembered why she was here. That smile. Sampson wasn’t all that memorable as a doctoral physics lab partner, but when he talked about climbing, he glowed like the Milky Way. Like she was staring into immense and mysterious power.
Gilly had wanted to experience that power first hand. Her work at the linear accelerator lab wasn’t enough anymore. It had opened the doors to mind-bending wonders of inflationary cosmology and the hidden realities of bubble universes.
When she had first been wrestling with the concept of cascading realities, Sampson had used the analogy of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay standing atop Everest. Their potential energy, should it be tipped by a small quake or gust of wind, could send them hurtling five hard miles down. The potential energy released in such a calamitous fall would engender a slew of realities. Inflaton fields such as these existed everywhere waiting for a quantum jitter to form one or more pocket universes.
Gilly had wanted to stand atop a mountain and feel that potential energy. And, yet, a dozen times during their ascent this morning she had felt a tremor, a jitter, rushing up her spine and spreading out along her shoulders and arms. Each jolt had left her tingling with trepidation. When she told Sampson about the sensation, he’d merely chalked it up to nerves.
She was sure it was nerves, though there was more. Her vision had begun to waver. As Sampson started to probe the path ahead of them, she began to see two of him. Two Sampsons, poking at the snow with his ice axe. One finding the safe path, the other plunging down the steep mountainside. A strange double vision, a splitting probability wave. Gilly knew she was sliding to the edge of what was real.
And here she was on a literal edge. She wondered if she was suffering from altitude sickness. Was she oxygen deprived? She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Thinking about Sampson’s cobalt blue eyes could leave her breathless. A strange sensation ran up her spine. She shivered and dug her fingers into the snow trying to steady her nerves.
“Remember, Professor Joiner’s lecture on the Inflationary Multiverse?” she asked suddenly. “Do you believe that stuff?”
Sampson stared back at her. “Stuff? We’re physicists. You want to be more specific?”
“Inflaton fields with enough potential energy, so that even a quantum nudge can bring a whole universe into being—birth a new reality.”
Sampson sighed. “Gilly, if we’re going to get into quantum jitters, I think we’re done for the day. You gotta focus on this reality if we’re going to make it safely to the top.”
“But don’t you wonder, if every step we take shakes a new reality into being, wouldn’t we feel it? Wouldn’t it somehow register?”
Sampson’s laugh boomed out over the glacier. “Not here. Mother Nature won’t suffer that kind of competition on a day like this.” He offered Gilly his hand. “Let’s go down. You’ve done amazing for a first ascent.”
Gilly felt an unexpected tingling in her neck that flowed down her shoulders to her fingertips. She squeezed Sampson’s hand firmly. “Let’s finish this.”
He eyed her carefully. “You sure? No jitters?”
“Plenty, but they’re not small enough yet.”
“Small enough?”
“Yup.”
Sampson considered the enigma that was his girlfriend for a moment, then he went into mountain guide mode. He checked her gear and his, then their ropes and, once more, went through the plan before they stepped out onto the glacier.
Gilly, still tingling, followed.
They made the summit in an hour and a half. After taking a few pictures of the magnificent view, Gilly went to Sampson who was carving their names in the ancient snow with his ice axe. She put her arm around his waist. He pulled her close.
A universe jittered. Theirs, too.
by Julian Miles | Jan 23, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
We swerve down an alleyway and tuck ourselves up against rubbish bins. Try to catch our breath. What a fiasco. Supposed to be the first demonstration against the British State Act, turned into a series of running battles.
Most of us were only there to object to the shitshow the government are running over us. The police had other ideas. With their new powers, they concluded we were all about to ‘engage in violent activities liable to intimidate or harm’ and decided to pre-emptively arrest everyone. Any attempt at reasoning was met with pepper spray and a spot conviction for resisting arrest. Faced with a situation where they were going to be done for fighting whether they fought or not, most people decided to get stuck in.
We made it out thanks to a group of sabs who were helping oiks like us get clear. After that, Tommy, Bet, Col, and me ran for it. Ended up huddling against these stinking bins.
We set off again. It’s a couple of short runs before we realise we’re a man down. None of us saw what got Col, but all of sudden we’re very aware of being in an industrial area with nobody on the streets except us.
That’s when I hear it. The soft ‘shupshupshup’ of ultra-stealth rotor blades.
“Listen!”
Bet pulls up short and snarls: “Don’t start with your ghostly helicopter shit.”
I peer upwards, then point towards a dark teardrop shape between us and the stars.
Tommy cuffs me round the back of the head: “She’s right. We’ve got enough to deal with.”
The shape is gone.
“But-”
He rounds on me, expression turning hard: “She’s right. Focus on running.”
There’s no use arguing the toss when he’s got a cob on. But running away from whatever that was works for me.
Crossing a main road is a dash from dark to light and back into dark. Tommy goes first, I follow. The rotor noise intensifies as I cross the road, but the lights about hide the sky from me.
I pull up next to Tommy. We look back at the black rectangle of the alley we came from. There’s no sign of Bet.
“Danno, what the fuck did I just hear?”
I look at Tommy.
“Don’t ask me, mate. Nobody knows what they are. All I know is we’ve attracted the attention of one. You want my advice? Fucking leg it.”
We do.
Over in the states, they have black helicopters. After I found some of the articles that opened my grandfather’s eyes, he lent me a couple of books, then told me about the more dangerous variety we have over here. Back in the seventies there were all sorts of sightings – even official investigations – of ‘phantom helicopters’, but they petered out. The authorities said most of the reports were hysteria. Grandpa pointed out they said ‘most’. He reckoned the phantom helicopters just got better at disappearing anyone who cottoned on to them.
“Tommy? Tommy! Where are ya, mate?”
Fuck.
I’m toast. Still running, police far behind, but fucked anyway. I need to be among people and in the light to avoid it. But if I’m out there, the police will likely have me…
Might happen, might not. But being banged up is better than being disappeared. I run faster. Got to get somewhere crowded and bright – and do it soon.
There’s a lull in the traffic noise. The noise comes again. Somewhere up there is an urban legend, and it’s coming for me.
by submission | Jan 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jeremy Nathan Marks
There was a little boy in Jeanette’s care whom she called “my last hope.” She said he was unique because he would laugh and shower curiosity on the world. He was the only child who ever tried conversing with her.
She kept a bird feeder by her window that still attracted a bird here and there. She had a few sickly trees in her yard, a clutch of oaks that were the sole tree cover left in the neighborhood. At one time, Jeanette enjoyed seeing dozens of birds every hour. Now, she was lucky to see two birds every few hours.
Whenever a bird showed up at her feeder, the little boy would stop what he was doing and stare. He was mesmerized at how the few sparrows and an occasional finch pecked at the seeds and fat that formed a bell shape. He loved it when a sparrow would hang practically upside down to get the seeds on the bottom of the bell. It made him giggle with delight.
Jeanette told him about other birds of many colors she used to see. She showed him their pictures in a book: Cardinal, Nuthatch, Red-Headed Woodpecker, Oriole, Grosbeak, and Chickadee. He loved the photos, marveling at their brilliant plumage. Jeanette pointed to one of a Painted Bunting, a bird she once saw on a trip down south. The boy ran to the art table and immediately tried sketching one.
One winter afternoon, Jeanette took her troupe of children for a walk. She wanted to find birds and whatever remaining plants might house them. She did not have high hopes of finding either but enjoyed the optimism of the boy who screeched with delight every time something fluttered along the ground, even if that fluttering was a wrapper or synthetic paper. He would shout, “A bird! It’s a bird!” And Jeanette would say gently, “No, that’s not a bird. But you’re right. It is fluttering.”
When they were standing in the middle of a dull brown field, the boy thrust out his palm and asked, “What’s this?”
Jeanette looked at his hand and saw a tiny blue flower embedded in the middle of the palm. The flower, a blue aster, was nestled inside his skin. When she recovered from her initial shock, Jeanette asked, “How did that get there?”
“It show up!” the boy said with a big smile.
“When?”
“Now!” he giggled.
Jeanette immediately called his parents and left each one of them a message explaining what she had seen. She said their son was doing fine, that he was happy, but that she would consult a doctor. When she called her personal physician, he dismissed what she said as lunacy. “Jeanette, you are too old to make crank calls,” and he hung up the phone.
“Does it hurt, your flower?” she asked the boy.
“No. The flower feels good.”
“It doesn’t hurt you?”
“Flowers can’t hurt me,” he said.
When Jeanette stopped to consider what to do next, she noticed that none of the other children had looked at the boy’s hand. They stood and stared off into space or kicked at rocks and other ground litter. Jeanette was surprised. She said to the boy, “Can you hold your hand up for the other children to see?”
When he did, the children looked but said nothing.
“Do you see the flower?” Jeanette asked them.
The children looked confused.
“Do you see the little flower in his hand?” she asked again.
They shook their heads. Jeanette was puzzled and upset.
Jeanette brought the group back to her house, and the boy stood in front of the window. He waited for the birds to come to the feeder. To her astonishment, they came immediately; many different birds she had not seen in years. There were cardinals, woodpeckers, nuthatches even blue jays. To Jeanette, this was a miracle, and it made her cry.
The boy with the aster in his palm came over to her and asked, “Why you cry?”
She took a deep breath and whispered, “The birds. I have not seen them in so long.”
“Now they come every day!” he said. “They come see my flower!” The boy raised his hand to the window where a female cardinal, brown and orange, stopped eating for a moment and looked at him. Then another cardinal, her mate in a brilliant red suit, fluttered beside her in the air.
All afternoon, more and more birds arrived. Jeanette went to the boy and asked, “Can I touch your flower?” To which he said, “Yes!”
When Jeanette dragged her index finger across the face of the flower, there was a sudden frenzy of activity at the window. A cacophony of squawks, chirps, and even some singing. She could not recall when she had heard more than an occasional chirp. As the noise grew louder, the boy shouted with delight, and so did Jeanette.
None of the other children noticed.
by submission | Jan 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Shannon O’Connor
The year I lived on Arachnida was the worst year of my life. It was a real dump back then. People say it’s changed, but I haven’t been back in a long time.
When I lived there, pawnshops selling all kinds of junk filled the town center. The spiders who populated the area where all a bunch of racist drunks. I didn’t feel safe walking around at night. I thought I would be attacked, being an Earthling, and a Black one at that. Alien spiders don’t understand beings who are different.
I had to walk a long way to go to the grocery store, and I had to walk across a highway to get there and back. My life was in a bad place back then. I was ending my career in academia, and I needed another job, but I didn’t know what I wanted. I had wanted to get married, but that didn’t happen, because my boyfriend was eaten by the spiders.
Those spiders are so inconsiderate! They only think of their needs. They don’t care who they swallow, or who it hurts when they do. I began to hate them intensely.
I moved away from Arachnida, and close to the city planet, Rutonia. I didn’t have to go grocery shopping because there were so many restaurants with Earth food close by. I liked the action of the city: the noise, the crowds, the anonymity.
I got a job at the planet clerk’s office, printing birth certificates, and talking money for parking tickets. It was much easier than my old jobs had been. I ate a lot of good food, and lived my life.
I talked to someone who had always lived in Arachnida, who said it had changed. She wasn’t one of the bad spiders, but she couldn’t afford to move, because everything was so expensive. She said a Starbucks was plopped down in the middle of the town center, and everything had become more upscale, with yoga studios, and wine shops and microbreweries. The old spiders were still there, but the surface looked cleaner, and they behaved themselves better.
I still think of Arachnida as a dangerous, depressing place. The worst year of my life was spent there, and it doesn’t matter if they put all the microbreweries or yoga studios there, you can’t put lipstick on a spider and call it pretty. Arachnida holds a dark place in my heart, and I hope I’ll never have to go back.
by submission | Jan 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Berger
“I hate bleeding,” Nora said to her friend Allison out of nowhere.
Allison screwed up her face in response.
“Don’t look at me that way,” Nora went on. “I don’t mean the tampon stuff! I mean this twice a year shit. They take a pint out, give us a lollipop and fifty bucks. And twice a year we go home feeling all weird and dizzy.”
“Well I don’t get weird or dizzy,” Allison said.
“No black spots or feeling nauseas?
“No-o-o.”
“Well lucky you,” Nora said.
“Remember two years ago when it was only once?”
“Yeah,” Nora said. “And also they’re dropping the age limit to twelve. And I hear next year they’re going to drop it to eleven.”
“Oh shit!” Allison said. “That’s not good. But think about this, Norie. At least, like Mrs. Grant says in History, we’re in the generation who may have finished death.”
“Yeah. But I hear each dose of the stuff cost $5 million. And only rich people are getting it. And as they get older, they’re gonna need more and more. That sucks.”
“Yeah,” Allison answered. But when me and you become rich celebrities, we’ll be able to afford it, and we can help all our families and friends get it too. That’s so cool, isn’t it?
“But Allie,” Nora said. “My Mom says my Uncle Eddie was up to 12 bleedings a year, and he got very sick.”
“Too bad for him, but we all got to donate.”
“That’s cold, Allie. But think about this. A guy gets born with a zillion dollars, and he gets the treatment all his life and maybe lives forever. And most of us just get to donate to make the serum. That’s not fair.
“Who says what’s fair and what’s not fair, Nore? Anyway, you and I are gonna be rich, and we’re gonna help people. Make sure people get the serum.
“But what … .”
“Listen, I gotta go.”
“Als, there’s never gonna be enough for everybody!
“Who says?” Allison asked over her shoulder?
“My Uncle Eddie said it. Before he died!”
by submission | Jan 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Stephen C. Curro
Phobos had just set when I exited Mark’s airlock and stepped into the little antechamber that served as a mud room. I popped my EVA helmet off and kicked the door open into the living room.
“Where is it?!” I shouted. I raised my particle gun and scanned the lavish room. Everything from the intricate rugs to the paintings on the wall to the elaborate furniture screamed sophistication. Or, knowing Mark, the desire to be sophisticated.
Mark’s eyes peered from behind the posh sofa, like one of those ancient Kilroy Was Here pictures. “Truce?” he offered with a nervous chuckle.
I answered by firing an energy bolt into his crystal imagizer. The entertainment system shattered, sending sparks jumping like scared insects.
Mark’s jaw slack as if I had struck him. “Quill, are you crazy?! That thing cost two-thousand—”
“I don’t give a damn!” I aimed my pistol at his balding head. “Where. Is. It?”
Mark’s hands eased upward, putting up a smile that was trying hard to look convincing. He was wearing a white bathrobe, as if I’d caught him at the spa. “It’s not here, if that’s what you mean.”
I’d have believed anyone else, but Mark had burned me before, and I wasn’t about to graduate to the “shame on me” part of that old adage. I fired another blast, burning a hole through a posh armchair.
“Really?” Mark whined. “I imported that all the way from Earth!”
“How about I import you to Hell?”
“Well, technically that would be an export—”
Mark’s balding head reflected the light of another beam I shot at the wall. He whimpered and ducked down like a prairie dog. “Okay! You’re upset, but consider this…everything is replaceable with enough money, right? You’re going back to Earth, and what you got ain’t readily available off-world. I know a buyer on Enceladus—”
“Shut up!” My anger burned like a hot tar on my skin. I stomped to the sofa and seized the collar of that stupid bathrobe. “You don’t buy new family,” I snarled. “Now tell me, or I’ll blow you out your airlock.”
Mark sniggered. “You wouldn’t.”
I hoisted him over the sofa and dragged him into the mudroom. Mark’s bravado vanished and he flailed like a crab on its back. “Wait! Jesus Christ, wait!”
Trembling as if he’d been exposed to the Martian chill, he pointed to a gaudy marbled vase on a stand. I let him go and picked up the vase. Doing so released a switch that opened a compartment in the floor.
I dropped the vase and ignored Mark’s groan when it shattered. I stooped over the compartment, my heart pounding. The pod was there, an ugly metal pill one meter by one meter across. Green lights danced on the cover, indicating its cargo was secure.
I hefted the heavy pod in one arm. Once more I aimed my pistol at Mark. “If I ever whiff your scent again, you’ll wish I blew your airlock today.”
Mark cowered in the corner as I went into the airlock. I put my helmet on and cycled out. Once I’d cycled into my clunky rover, I took off my EVA suit. Eagerly I opened the pod and a burst of steam wafted into the rover.
When it cleared, I smiled, and felt my eyes grow moist. “Hey, honey,” I said. “You okay?”
Trudy, my eighteen-month-old miniature poodle, lazily opened her eyes. I gently stroked her black, velvet fur, relief flooding my limbs. She looked at me and, still half asleep from the pod hibernation, wagged her stubby little tail.
