by submission | Mar 2, 2023 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
When I was eight years old, my step-dad put me in the hospital. One punch was all it took, but that punch eventually knocked me all the way through the social care system and out onto the streets. Funny to think that it might also have saved my life.
Being homeless, you get used to the religious types desperate to redeem themselves by redeeming you. If I’m honest, I can’t stand these Holy Willies, but as they often have hot food, I’m prepared to nod my head to their nonsense if that’s the price of a decent meal.
So, my hunger finds me in a soup kitchen run by the latest lot of kooky cultists, who are called the Celestial Brotherhood, if you can believe that. One of the glassy-eyed chosen hands me a plate of food but says “Please wait until Grace is said before eating.”
Eventually one of the true believers stands up to give the blessing, which is just as well as my belly is rumbling up a storm. He raises his hands and starts speaking. The funny thing is I’m not quite sure what he says. I can hear the words but they don’t seem to make sense. Suddenly, as he carries on, it’s as if I can physically see what he’s talking about, like a full-on religious vision. I kid you not. But instead of angels and demons I can see space and planets and somewhere called Tau Ceti. I even see an actual alien (a Celestial, I presume) and can feel the purity and the power radiating off of it. It seems to look at me directly and I feel, well, I feel whole for the first time in my life.
It takes me a minute to realise that the guy has stopped speaking. Tears are rolling down my cheeks. The old woman sitting across from me has what I can only describe as a beatific smile on her face.
Everybody is still, then, as if by unspoken command, they all stand and start silently walking to the far end of the hall. I’m still sitting but can feel something working away in my mind, wriggling like a worm, trying to eat my thoughts and excrete something else out, an idea as big as the galaxy but with a piece missing. It strikes me that my tinnitus, a legacy of my step-dad’s assault, means that I didn’t hear absolutely every word of the blessing. And that feels important.
I shake the stupor off, get up, push past the Brothers on the door and out onto the street. I don’t look back.
I’ve given that experience a lot of thought over the past few days. We have this streak of irrationality within us, a desire to believe, to have faith. What if there really were aliens out there and instead of them attacking our cities with space lasers and nuclear bombs, they attacked our minds with an idea, a spiritual concept tailored for maximum appeal. Like a virus, it could start small, converting those on the periphery of society, those that nobody notices or cares about. It would replicate over time, until eventually everyone in the world believes in the benevolent Celestials. Then, as one, we’ll turn our faces up towards the sky and down they will come in their spaceships, the new and unopposed masters of the world.
My advice to you? If someone asks if you’ve heard the good news about our Celestial Brothers, run for your life. In the meantime, if you’ve any spare change…
by submission | Mar 1, 2023 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“Ugh, what did I eat last night?” Marvin groaned, patting his belly. It protruded, solid and round, like a bowling ball. A pot-belly! Tracy, his girlfriend, wouldn’t be pleased. If Tracy bailed, he’d have to get a real job—until the next generous girlfriend came along.
He rubbed his temples, replaying last night’s events—what little he remembered. He’d gone to the corner bar, and met—Nikki the Naughty Animatronic Stripper.
Rifling through the pockets of last night’s clothes, he found receipts: one for the bar, and one from a nearby no-tell motel famous locally for renting rooms-by-the-hour, where Nikki perfected her “acts.”
Marvin microwaved a cup of tea and on inhaling its scented vapor, remembered—steam, like a hot shower in tiny motel bathroom. And in that motel, somebody—Nikki?—jabbed him in the back with an icy needle. He ran to the bathroom to look in the mirror. He in found a greenly glowing oval scab; worse, there was a network of fine lines radiating from it, criss-crossing his back. He poked the scab, the lines pulsed, and he yelped in pain as those pulses sent electric shocks through his limbs, leaving him momentarily paralyzed.
Now he remembered, when he left the bar, pow! He was taken by intergalactic aliens. Once Tracy saw the glowing scab with its throbbing web, she’d believe him.
Marvin glanced at the analog clock on the wall. Soon she’d be home, and he was still in his pj’s. He was, throwing on clean clothes, when he heard Tracy unlock the front door.
Marvin rushed to her.
“What’s wrong?” Tracy asked, concerned. Then she saw his pot-belly. ”Well, somebody’s leaking hydraulic fluid.” She thumped his bloated stomach; it sounded metallic and sloshy.
Confused, Marvin scoffed. Hydraulic fluid? Was she insane?
Tracy turned him around to examine his back.
“Your skin sensors are distressed. Have any unsettling thoughts today?”
“I was abducted by silvery aliens—taken to a seedy motel, jabbed with a needle-sharp probe then abandoned in a . . .”
“Steamy shower?”
“Yes! How did you—”
“You’re programmed to enjoy hot showers, hot tubs, steam rooms, et cetera.”
“Programmed? They injected me with a paralyzing radioactive toxin—you saw my back!”
“Marvin, when your innards are out of whack, you get bizarre. Let’s see if your inny is now an outy.”
She pulled up his t-shirt, then gently pushed his protruding belly-button. Her finger went deep into his stomach. Inside his abdomen, he heard a hiss, then a muffled series of beeps. Tracy turned him around, popped off the green scab, then shoved her finger into the glowing hole.
Marvin’s head cleared. He laughed.
Tracy led him to the large closet in the hallway next to the bedroom. Opening the door, she gestured to the comfy recliner inside. Exhausted, Marvin plopped down. As she hooked him up to the console beside the chair, she chided:
“You’re not supposed to actually eat or drink anything; it clogs up your works, giving you crazy ideas, painful sensations, and false memories. Plus, makes you worthless for days. Now I have to do the household chores myself. If you do this again, I’ll complain to your manufacturer.”
Smiling sheepishly, Marvin shut his eyes.
Tracy pressed the re-boot button and closed the door. As the machine inside the closet hummed, she walked to the bedroom and kicked off her shoes. The humming made the floor vibrate slightly, sending a rhythmic thrill from her bare feet all the way up her legs—and beyond.
Damn, she’d have to call her real-life boyfriend for company tonight.
by submission | Feb 28, 2023 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Come in, Hanson. Close the door. What’s up?” A worn senior manager, with tie askew over his crumpled white shirt, sat hunched while peering at three connected computer screens.
His visitor took deep breaths, removing his horn-rimmed glasses, twirling them for effect before sliding his lanky frame into the Director’s tall-backed leather chair facing the massive mahogany desk.
“Jack, we’ve got a problem. I need support.”
“Huh,” Mason grunted, focusing on his screens. “C’mon Phil. Don’t come in late on Friday throwing bullshit. Christ’s sake, you’re the public information officer. What’s so important it can’t wait till after the holiday?”
“This one’s under the radar, Jack. I need your full attention. This is black box stuff.”
The Director stopped, turning toward the PIO. He pulled his lips tight.
“Mr. Hanson,” Mason spoke slowly, with emphasis. “We don’t use that phrase unless the sky is falling.”
Phillip Hanson sat upright, fiddling with a file folder. “We got this FOIA. It just came in. It’s from the Times. They’re sniffing around about Silent Sam.”
“What!” Mason yelled back. “Let me see that. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I couldn’t risk sending it in-house or calling.”
“So you brought a damn hard copy? What if you croaked on the way over? Your dad would’ve had a conniption fit.” Mason grabbed the folder and flipped open the top-secret cover sheet. He grunted hard again, this time turning his head askew. “Your job was to stop snoops poking at our envelope. Were you sleeping?”
Hanson’s neck turned bright red as he put his glasses back over his bulbous nose.
“Okay, I’ll take that. This journalist came out of Cornell. He was doing a piece on Sagan for an anniversary issue when he got the scent on Project A119. I swear I’ve got all the NDAs from everybody who worked on the Moon nuking project. We told the public it was canceled. It was slammed shut and no one, until now, has dug into it.”
“Where did he get this stuff about the Moon and Mars? Do we have a leak?”
Hanson leaned over the desk, looking deep into his mentor’s glare. “I farmed every e-mail. The Agency checked every employee and contractor working on the LCross Mission. There’s nothing. I don’t know how this kid knows. Maybe he’s an amateur remote viewer. Hell, there’s no trail. If anyone knew we nuked that alien base on the dark side in ’09, there was no sign. We covered it with the story about crashing some piece of junk on our side, saying it was about searching for water. Luckily, the PRC never made a fuss about the crater after they mapped it.”
“Skip the history lesson, Mason. Remember, I was Assistant Director then. We worked the Chicoms. But how did this rat figure out about the massive bombardment we did on Mars in March and April in 2012? Damn pesky amateurs saw the plumes, but even top Pentagon brass were left out. Musk knows, but hell, he was part of the terraforming planning. He got his payback in 2010. If this gets out, that we already started the process, without the President, Congress, or the idiot public knowing…it’ll be a shit storm.”
“Ideas? I’m fresh out.” Hanson sighed.
“Get the kid in here.” Mason ordered.
“Seriously?” Hanson replied, his voice an octave higher.
“We’ve bought reporters before. Call the networks. Find a juicy spot on camera. You can’t imagine these journalists’ egos. And if that doesn’t work…”
Hanson gulped, “I know the protocol. He’d better damn well bite. Traffic can be dangerous in New York.”
by Julian Miles | Feb 27, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Captain Jennie Ray arrives on the bridge to find her entire executive team bent over monitors or indicating things to one another on diagnostics displays. It’s a picture of activity she’d usually associate with blaring alarms and an air of mild panic. This is too calm. She coughs loudly. The 2XO spins about.
“Sorry, Captain. Good morning. We were hoping to resolve this before you arose.”
“Too late. As you’re not all running around, I presume nothing is broken. So what have you lot discovered to make my watch interesting?”
The 2XO looks almost embarrassed.
“A derelict.”
Jennie claps her hands together.
“Marvellous! You know I love coming across old vessels. What have we got? Freighter? Battleship? Liner?”
“Freight and passenger.”
“A free trader? Out here? That’s got to be a Barsoomian Soomsak. When would that be?” She gazes off into thin air for a moment before nodding to herself: “24th century, 23rd if we’re lucky.”
The Engineering XO turns from his sensor screens, shaking his head.
“Try 19th century, and Jasoomian.”
Jennie elbows a couple of slow-reacting subordinates out of the way so she can see the main display. Her eyes widen.
“You cannot be serious…”
The vessel is covered in ice, sparkling in the light from the nearby star. Between the two masts a single funnel protrudes from the minimal upperworks. The hull is long and rather narrow.
She reaches out to magnify the view.
“There are people standing on the deck!”
The 2XO moves up next to her.
“Flash frozen at point of transit is the most likely explanation.”
She looks at him.
“Portal uptake casualty?”
“That’s what we were trying to confirm. Back then, the only vessels touching Jasoom were Blemenase or Zetaret raiders. That ship is over 90 metres in length. Which means it could only have been scooped up by the portal field of a Blemenase Vortern. Even they should have recorded a transit uptake error of that size.”
Jennie gives a low whistle.
“Those things were huge. Would have taken this and a fair swathe of ocean along with it. I pity those on board, but at least it was quick.”
“I’m not sure how close to absolute zero portal non-space gets, but you’re right. They would have frozen solid before they realised anything.”
“Why are you having problems?”
“That sailed centuries ago. Even in the twentieth, records were minimal. Now? It’s barely above guesswork.”
“Get the scout to move aft. They often had the name and other identifiers painted on the stern back then.”
Surprised looks are exchanged. The image blurs, then stabilises.
The Engineering XO mutters the strange words under his breath before speaking out loud.
“S.S. Ismailia, Glasgow.”
There’s a flurry of activity. The Navigation XO speaks up first.
“1873. Lost with all souls aboard on the way from New York City to Glasgow.”
Jennie turns to the 2XO.
“Permission granted for Freespace Grave Beacon placement. Send notice that some of those once lost have been found.”
She looks about. Everybody on the bridge straightens up. Head coverings are removed. Jennie takes a slow breath, then says the words they all hope never to have read for them.
“There lies another vessel that did not return to port. Grant those who fared forth upon her peace, oh powers, and let them return at last from the long night to the heavens they call home. Blessed Be.”
by submission | Feb 25, 2023 | Story |
Author: Timothy Goss
I awake with a start, like something bit my toe. Its dark, early hours of the morning when sound if muted and amplified simultaneously. I sit up and gently shake my head while caressing the sore appendage. My mouth is dry and thick with yesterday’s dreams; moving slowly I reach the kitchen and fill an empty cup with water. Droplets cling onto beard and moustache and I stare absently out of the back window into the darkness of the railway sidings. They are pitch-black at this sunless hour and strange reflections hover on the glass, a shadow play where foxes howl, or whatever foxes do. The houses on the other side of the railway yard are large, semi-detached; our back gardens face each other over the debris ridden wasteland, some three hundred metres apart.
There are lights during the evening, family homes like light, usually they are orange or white, sometimes red, but now they are green, an unearthly green pulsating ever-so slightly. Something in its glow, in its pulse, its wavelength, it’s rhythm, and things change shape without motion or motive, fizzing and popping as they mutate. A silhouette, unconscious, controlled or blindly obedient, stands naked in the thickening atmosphere, I can see it clearly over the distance, sexless. I can taste something, smell something too, not unpleasant but wrong, something is wrong, something that doesn’t belong here and now.
Above the house, above the trees, a spherical distortion warps focus and an empty space, like a missing pixel on a cinema screen, barely perceptible to the eye, but our senses are fine tuned, becomes the focus and the silhouette rises toward it, up and up, through the build and beams in a point of pale green photons. I trace its path, take a sip of water and darkness congeals around me; then, for a millisecond only, the sphere focuses upon itself and rips the silhouette from here to there, forcing a square peg through a round hole. The sudden release of energy is blinding and the darkness melts the world around us.
Something enthralling – focus locks for eternity, or it is perceived – Things change shape and a silhouette unconscious, controlled – atmosphere thickens and I can taste something, smell something wrong, something that doesn’t belong – A sphere warps and focuses, hung above the house, the trees, and the silhouette rises through the building guided by congealing ether like dark matter everywhere – It finally tears us from here to there forcing hot portals to drop in and mop up – and my cup is empty and I move to fill it again…
The displaced sphere is gone, disappeared long before I register it leaving, imperceptible, like the blending of sea and sky. And then the house is dark and the distance is as it should be, everything turns black and grey, and dull and finaly vanishes, like the sphere, into the grey black shadows of the approaching day.
by submission | Feb 24, 2023 | Story |
Author: Aric Coppola
The machine whirred and abruptly stopped. It had never stopped on its own before; it had to be told to stop. Yet now, the machine had come to a halt.
“What did you do?” Alphonse asked, peering over his computer.
“Me? What did you do?” Marie asked, staring over her own computer, nostrils flaring.
“Nothing,” said Alphonse. “I was the one who turned it on.”
Marie stood up and walked across the laboratory towards the machine, Alphonse at her heels.
They stared at the readout on the computer terminal: .000000000000000000000001.
“That can’t be,” said Alphonse. “C’est impossible.”
Marie ignored him and punched a series of numbers into the machine’s keypad. The machine’s digital readout went black and then showed a long readout of equations and commands. “There,” she said. But as soon as she’d spoken, the terminal again read: .000000000000000000000001.
“Can we reproduce it?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. “It was the simplest one yet.”
Alphonse’s bottom lip quivered. “I can’t believe it. That was it? That was all? That was the solution?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It seems so.”
Alphonse straightened. “We must inform the directorate. Secondary tests must be conducted immediately, and then the public has to be informed so that—”
Marie grabbed his wrist. Her grip was strong, surprisingly strong, much stronger than most prize-winning physicists.
Alphonse peered into her bloodshot eyes. Behind the red twists of veins and the cool blue irises, there was real-time processing. It wasn’t an unfamiliar look. He’d seen this every time they’d made a breakthrough together. And yet this time, there was something eerily different about her gaze.
“What?” he asked, suddenly feeling uneasy, the excitement of their discovery slipping.
“No,” she said. “No one can know.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, face reddening. “It’s the solution to all of it, Marie, all of it. If we can reproduce this at scale… that’s it! You know that’s it!” He wrenched his wrist free of her grip and tried to rub away the blossoming bruise she’d created.
“Non,” Marie whispered.
A small shiver ran up Alphonse’s back. “Non?”
Marie turned from him abruptly and slid into the chair at her own computer terminal. Alphonse hovered behind her.
DELETE CODE 33.1.18, she typed.
“What are you doing!” He reached across her, panic setting in fully now. “You can’t do that!”
With the push of her index finger, she pressed a single key. The screen went black.
“Vous êtes fous! Why would you do that? What is wrong with you?” He ripped her from her chair and flung her body to the tile floors. “You’re crazy!” he cried, spittle flying from his mouth. “Why, Marie? At least tell me why!”
Marie the brilliant scholar, and even more brilliant scientist, stared up at him from the floor. For the first time, Alphonse saw exhaustion in the woman’s gaunt face.
“Because,” she said simply.
“Because why, Marie? We’re all going to die because of you.”
“I know,” she said, eyes watering. “We deserve it.”
