by submission | Dec 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Thang Danang balanced the hypodermic on the tip of her index finger.
Reckless. Irresponsible. Crazy.
That’s what her cousin Luc had called her. He’d yelled that her visions of their family ancestors weren’t real, that she was hallucinating.
Thang had pointed to her great grandmother Binh sitting in her finest silk near the gene editing equipment in her lab. “Ask her if I’m hallucinating.”
Throwing up his hands, but trying to dial down his tone, Luc once again tried to explain. “Thang, I think you’ve got melioidosis. It’s caused by the bacteria Burkholderia pseudomallei. You’re a scientist. A very good scientist. Look it up. It’s a soil bacteria found here in parts of Vietnam. You must have gotten some dirt in a cut or rubbed your eyes when your hands were dirty. Melioidosis can cause an inflammation of the brain and induce hallucinations. You’ve got a disease. A disease that can be treated.”
“I’m not sick,” Thang said.
“You are!” He motioned around the room. “We’re the only ones here and yet you keep insisting our long dead ancestors are with us.”
“They are.”
“They are not, Thang!” Luc raised his voice again. “And they are not directing you to try this crazy experiment. It is wrong and it is dangerous. And you are sick!”
Luc was adamant. But Thang was certain. The certainty of her ancestors convinced her. For days they’d been appearing in her lab, exhorting her to listen to them. To believe in their dao duc, their virtue and integrity. Her many, many ancestors had come to provide her with the power to protect all her family past, present and future.
And Thang believed the world was her family. As a geneticist, she knew at the mitochondrial level we are all one. And at the behest of her ancestors she was ready to instigate a change at the cellular level that would bring humankind even closer together.
So many of her ancestors had been taken by violence and war, or by the dislocation, crime, disease and famine that war fosters. They were begging her to end humanity’s endless cycles of violence. And Thang could.
In the hypo balanced on her finger was the enzyme she’d developed over years and had methodically tested on a variety of mammals. These were lab animals that displayed overly aggressive and belligerent behavior. Thang’s enzyme radically altered that behavior. Eliminated it. At the genetic level.
Thang had a cure for violence. For war. Her ancestors were sure of it and told her so. Only Luc stood in her way. He was a neurologist. A good scientist, too, and Thang respected him. But, he said she was sick. Out of her mind.
Wild.
Thang looked from Luc to her long gone great grandmother. The living and the dead. The present and the past. She clasped the hypo. Who did she owe more to?
Wild Thang knew the only answer: the future.
Luc was too slow to react, as she plunged the hypo into the meat of her thigh and depressed the plunger.
by submission | Dec 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
A soldier – roving through the miasma streams of rended forms and spectral cores, the broken gangrene and the fractal pain pouring from the fading – an anxious, empty, frenzied atavism without love and without feeling, except for the instinct to preserve the fragment self in the chaos of emanations and microdrones; the third year of the counterinsurgency against the unified Sytokyn storm – decayed outposts and senescent cells, and the savage, indiscriminate, endless bombardments of the N’ar; carrying an interferon charger, firing into the dismal storm, and the exploding swirling, crashing in dim tones.
by Julian Miles | Dec 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“This is the Stop Fraud hotline of the Department of Employment Assistance. My name is Flynn. How can I help?”
“I want to report the woman across the road. She’s ripping you off.”
“I can certainly assist with that, madam. Do you know her name?”
“Louisa Templehoff. That’s with two effs.”
“Do you know her address?”
“19 Maidendrove Way, Barnet Wood, West Sussex, RH22 6KW.”
“Thank you. Can I take your evidence?”
“She’s stealing! Money that could help real poor people. It’s my taxes! I have a right to demand she get sorted out!”
“I do understand, madam, but I will need more details. After all, what would this country come to if all you had to do was point a finger and shout loudly to get people ostracised?”
“What?”
“Miss Templehoff gave herself away, and you spotted it. How?”
“Well, since you ask, it’s her fancy man. He turns up once a month, always near dark, in a swish car. It’s a long, low one that’s really quiet. Wears a nice suit, unloads big bags, only stays a night. Can’t be for her looks, handsome bloke that he is. Anyway, he always leaves early, and never with more than one bag. If you ask me, she’s selling drugs for him.
“When she always goes out with her brat on tow, he’s got one of them new watches with a holo-wotsit display. How can she afford that working at the farm shop? Maisie tells me she’s never brought her kid to work, either. How does she pay for day-care? And you should see her phone. Oh my God, I can’t afford a basic Z-Phone, let alone the big one in the etched chrome case like she has! Then there’s her home. No old stuff at all. It all looks new, and her main screen is huge! Maisie’s hubby Jeff works at the Entertainment Hub store outside Chi. He said it costs over two grand! How can she claim to be poor if she can afford that sort of-”
“Let me stop you there, madam. That’s a lot of information, and I need to clarify some things.”
“What things?”
“Who is Maisie?”
“My best friend.”
“The swish car: did you notice the number plate?”
“648X701. Maisie’s Jeff thinks it’s a private plate. What’s someone who can afford those doing visiting a shop assistant in Barnet Wood?”
“A good question, madam. Now, I see you’ve called about this before. What made you call again?”
“She hasn’t been arrested!”
“You did receive the results of our last investigation, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But I’m sure her fancy man has friends in high places. Got the investigation shut down.”
“Madam, the investigation was not interfered with. It found no fraud.”
“That’s a lie. I’m not wrong. Maisie said it’s like those infovids you see online. You think they’re raving, until it happens to you. So you make sure your people do their jobs this time. Get her sent back home.”
Removing the headset, Flynn looks at the information laid out across his displays. ‘Louisa Templehoff’ has never claimed benefits. The diplomatic number plate gave him a clue. Routine queries and media archives provided enough to fill the gaps.
A princess from one of the asteroid belt monarchies had a fling while holidaying on Mars. Got pregnant. Refused to ‘do the right thing’. Disowned by her family, she quickly slipped from the news. Ten years later, it seems she’s settled, quietly raising her son in a little village on Earth.
It’s an unexpectedly happy ending – apart from the bigot who lives across the road.
by submission | Dec 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Hustle, hustle, hustle,” Selse hissed. “In this universe, you gotta go fast to go slow.”
Her training team was darting between a random course of high stone pillars, low walls and short ledges, crouching low, praying not to mess up. Selse was praying how to get away from this mess she’d been commanded to oversee. Ahead, one of her trainees careened into a ledge and swore loudly.
They’ll get themselves killed, Selse thought. Or worse, they wouldn’t get killed and would credit her. She didn’t want anything to do with this misfit outfit, but when Keeper said, “Train the bastards,” you did your best to train the bastards. Otherwise it was cut time. For real. And more than anyone in C-force, Selse knew what that meant.
And what it didn’t mean.
She cut to the trainee swearing and holding his head where he’d hit the ledge. “Quarkshit! Where’d you come from?” the stunned young man squeaked.
“From your worst nightmare, trainee.” Selse wasn’t even bothering to learn their names. It wouldn’t matter. Keeper would agree. “Your job is to learn this course. Your job is to learn to cut. You don’t have the luxury of hurting yourself. That’s my job.”
She backhanded his jaw, snapping his head up, so he’d see her pitiless eyes. “Now, get moving as fast as you can go slow.”
The trainee fled back to the course, but he looked more purposeful, more in the moment. Which was a good thing because the moment was about to get real.
Selse opened her connection with Keeper. “Cut ‘em,” she said.
The course evaporated. There was nothing. And everything.
Cut time still affected Selse. She’d been here as many times as anyone in C-force, and it still messed with her. No way to orient. No point of reference. No meaningful context. No fucking fun.
The only thing cut time left you was desire. The sheer desire to get back before the anchor of your memories pried loose in the relentless maelstrom of timelessness.
That was cut time. Being sheared from any construct of time. Everything happening at once and always. It was not something the average human handled well. In fact, very few handled it at all. But for those who survived cut time and made their way back to themselves, they developed the ability to temporize their immediate environment.
They could cut.
They could understand the rhythm of wave functions, the beat of quantum entanglement, the tempo of multiverses. They could hop, skip and jump across time. Fast forward in and out of their surroundings.
A useful skill. Very strategic. For those who could be trained to temporize. And those who trained them.
But these trainees, this chrono-cluster, Selse just didn’t get.
As she listened to the agonized cries, the absolute panic of her trainees, she wondered with ever-deepening misgiving, why Keeper had given her this bunch. How desperate could C-force be if Keeper thought musicians could handle cut time?
by submission | Dec 3, 2022 | Story |
Author: Michael Kerby
A guy, licking the carpet.
He’s on all fours, in a Doctor’s waiting room. And he’s licking the carpet.
Tongue out, dragging it across the rough blue carpet like it’s the most important job in the world. It’s the kind of carpet designed for maximum wear and tear. It’s probably seen millions of shoes, mud, crumbs, child vomit, adult vomit — probably even a few rectal explosions.
The guy stops and looks at us. He shrugs.
“So what? You should see what the other guys got.”
He resumes his sandpapery drag across the floor. Occasionally he winces as he reaches the furthest his neck can stretch, the limit of his tongues reach, his lingual frenulum straining against the back of his bottom teeth. He stops and shuffles his body forward, and resumes.
He sits up on his knees. He spits. Pleh. A bit of fluff, hair, caught in his mouth. He looks at us.
“You know — it’s rude to stare.”
We avert our gaze. It feels woozy and groggy to move our eyes. We notice the door, but our legs don’t seem to move.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t concern yourself with that if I were you.”
Next to the door, on the wall, is a cork pinboard covered in poorly rendered crayon and felt pen interpretations of the humanoid form. Some have extra long arms, some have extra long feet. All of them have oversized black eyes. They’d be menacing if they weren’t smiling.
“They try their best but, when you get down to it, they’re still just kids. They try to make something that could please them, but they just don’t have the artistry, or the coordination. But, you know, they’re still learning–hey!”
He looks straight at us, a bit of lint hanging off his chin.
“I thought I told you to stop staring at me. I still have my dignity.”
We look away. Our eyes seem to skid like socks on a polished floor. We twiddle our thumbs and stare at the drawings.
“Y’nearly done yet, Bill?”
Bill stops. He sits bolt upright on his knees.
“Yes sir! Just a few patches left, around the edges!”
Bill hurries back down to his work, as a noodle-limbed humanoid lopes into the room on long flipper-like feet, holding a clipboard.
It reaches out and gives Bill a pat on the head, ruffling his hair. He pushes back against it like a dog.
“Haha, ok, ok. Good boy, Bill, good boy.”
It notes something down on its clipboard and Bill returns to work, his tongue running alongside the edge of the room where the carpet meets the wall, painstakingly clearing out years of packed in dust and dirt. He peers up at the humanoid.
“Mm. Gritty.”
It watches Bill work for a moment, makes a few notes, then turns and fixes its oversized black eyes on us.
It smiles serenely.
“Hey! You’re awake. Welcome, welcome.”
It reaches out its long spindly arm and pats us on the head.
“I hope you like linoleum.”
by submission | Dec 2, 2022 | Story |
Author: T. Francis Curran
People stand in the vestibule peering in, hoping to spot someone they know. Some enter, making that “am in the right room?” face. Some linger out there, pretending they are waiting for someone but sooner or later, everyone summons the courage and enters. Once inside, they pretty much know how to act; what to do and they blend in and disappear. Wallpaper. That’s all anyone really wants.
There’s an easel with a bunch of pictures pasted on it near one of the couches. It’s pathetic; the saddest thing you could imagine, as if no one had ever heard of a laptop. There aren’t even enough pictures to properly fill it. Somebody tried signing their name in the blank space, as if this was a birthday or a graduation party. They probably just panicked because you can only stand there for so long pretending to reminisce about good times that never happened or happened without you. After a while the line forming behind them nudges them along.
The Aunt Team finally showed up, the three of them, traveling together because there’s strength in numbers. They’re late, of course, and they hardly talked to anyone. Dad greeted them or acknowledged them anyway. He stood with them, shaking his head. They didn’t embrace or anything. The Aunts aren’t huggers.
When someone new arrived Dad excused himself, made his getaway. The Aunts scanned the room, looking for end seats so they wouldn’t have to climb all over other people to sit together. That’s what happens when you travel in groups. They finally gave up and wandered over to the embarrassing picture-board.
They didn’t address me but I did make out something about how I looked like my grandmother, their mother. It bothered me because they never say I looked like my father or my mother, which I do, each of them, a little. My mom more. Still, you had to feel sorry for the Aunts, looking at those pictures and not being in them. It was their own fault, they went everywhere together but never anywhere. Still, it must have been hard for them.
People started getting less uncomfortable. They got louder and louder. A small crowd by the door was laughing. It was too noisy to make out what anyone was saying but it wasn’t just that. I felt my peripheral vision was fading, my hearing too. That happens to me in crowds. It had been happening for a little while but now it felt like the process was speeding up. I felt cold and, for the first time, I felt scared. Like I was shrinking as the crowd got bigger.
I thought one of my safe thoughts, the one about falling asleep in the car when I was little. My father driving; the windows up; the doors locked. Me, cozy, wrapped up in a blanket in my car seat, serenaded to sleep by my parents’ chatter. Too little to know anything except trust. But that memory kept fading, changing to a different night. They thought I was asleep. They were fighting. Their voices scared me with a fear that had mass, density that pressed on me, enwrapping me.
Soon I sensed a claustrophobic deafness descending upon me. I felt a breathless muteness that I tried in vain to scream away. I peeked around the room. No one was looking at me. No one had heard. Then I saw a glimpse of my dad, he was crying but the Aunts were with him, consoling him, embracing him. It was brief but for that moment, I felt warm.
