by submission | Sep 21, 2022 | Story |
Author: John Arterbury
I hereby affirm I am not making this statement under duress. This is an accurate account to the best of my knowledge regarding all details surrounding the Eruption Experience, for which, as owner and sole proprietor of Tempus Fugit Travels, I take full responsibility. I will answer all questions thoroughly and to the best of my abilities over these coming days.
***
No, we did not know from the beginning that the return would fail. It was not a scam, as some have suggested. We had tested our method several times, including with myself and some of our top investors. You would not believe the places I have been or seen. Of course, this whole affair was quite different from my normal activities. Reinventing an airline as I have done is tiring, sure, but overseeing a time travel operation is another matter entirely. I am, however, a businessman, and I know when a product works or when it does not. I had no indication this would fail.
***
Of course we considered several travel scenarios. We did not choose this one because of sheer danger. As we explained in the marketing material, all journeys are determined by traveler consensus pending sufficient historical understanding of the given context. It turns out this travel panel was a little more adventurous than one might expect, but our expert panel determined that this trip satisfied these criteria. The pending eruption of Vesuvius was immaterial – the timing was immaculate. It is only natural that we cannot account for absolute failures.
***
I have heard the accusations from critics time and again. We are foolhardy. We are irresponsible. Those are the easy ones. The more common one, as you’re well aware I’m sure, is that we are simply faking it. What is this, then? Do you propose we simply disappeared six of the wealthiest men and women on earth after swindling them for a time travel experience? I think, on some level, that accomplishing that would be a more majestic feat than time travel. Please, have some respect for our morals, or at least what little of them those on social media claim we have.
***
I can, of course, furnish proof. If you get with my assistants after this meeting, they can provide the last known location of our lost Eruption Chrononauts. They are believed to rest in a currently unexcavated stretch of Herculaneum. The whole Pompeii choice was a peculiar location, no doubt, but among them there were two enthusiastic amateur classicists. I do not doubt they made a valiant effort to escape once they realized the return would not work but, alas, like Pliny the Elder himself they found the ash too overwhelming.
***
The issue, my engineers tell me, revolved around entrance to the module upon exit. It is necessary for the traveling craft to reach a certain altitude and then speed before the requisite maneuvers to break the space-time dyad can occur. This assumes that the travelers can get back inside the craft: our available radiometric transmission evidence suggests the capsule door malfunctioned, leaving them scrambling for safety as the creaking mountain’s porcupine cloud began to lurch across the sky.
***
I cannot be responsible for the contradictions of nature, or your doubt in our achievements. Let science absolve me and render me its weighted mercy. Audentes fortuna iuvat.
by Hari Navarro | Sep 20, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The man thought, and his ideas sieved through his orange stalked teeth and rode upon and into the shit swept place that was his brain.
“If this is the end then it’s pretty bloody pathetic”, said this man.
“If this is the end then I would want people to know that I love unspoken questions cast and fired down upon my skin”, said the woman as she paced in a room that used to be a place were wonderful types of bread were baked and sold.
“I also have really special things to say… I fondle down into my hardness and it spits out upon the harder sand and I watch as it folds and dribbles down into the grains. And the heat it curls into the bottom of my eyes and it calls itself stupid names… tell me things to say?”, said the man as he looked up and his eyes rolled and his teeth bit at the tips of his tongue whipped lip.
“What are you looking up at, I feel nothing”
said the woman as she too tongues the hair from her face.
“I see the bloody truth…. I see the veins in the frozen cracks at the edge fence that molests my pathetic life. Years ago two strangers paved the path… so many years ago in Whanganui… my great-grandparents, on a piece of land in the shape of a perfect triangle, next to a railway line and the meat works you will find the portal… I shit you not, the pathway to those you have lost is caught in the grapevines that line the corrugated iron fence that once held this so, so special place intact.
Go there now… contact me I can send you the address… from what I know the original homestead had been pulled down and a prefabricated shed has been put in its place.
The other world is not far beneath the soil…
The other world is full of all those things we have forgotten.
The other world is where my dead people live.
The other world is a place that confuses me and makes me vomit into my hand.
The other world is a fabric of thought and thorn-lined fact.
The other world is this one that we live in right now.
Smile… smile, as you present this thing that you think that you are.
by Julian Miles | Sep 19, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The door swings shut without a sound.
“Axel. Music.”
“Recommencing Greatest Hits of the Twentieth Century.”
“Switch to Bad Day playlist. Stream to all rooms.”
“‘Titan Walks’ have released a new song. Shall I commence with that?”
“Yes.”
“Now starting with ‘Destroy the Moon’.”
A keyboard-backed guitar riff roars from concealed speakers. As the bass line kicks in and makes her vases vibrate, Ayesha smiles. This fits.
Taking her time in the shower, she lets the music tear down the frustrations of the day before she emerges.
“Stop music!”
In the silence she makes coffee and prints some biscuits. Moving to the lounge, she sighs as she sits. There’s no better time than now: she’s been putting it off for too long.
“Axel. Conversational mode.”
“Hello, Ayesha.”
“Hi, Axel. Why did you not call the Lawmen about my father?”
“Are you sure you want to discuss this?”
“You’re the Sentinel for this block of flats.”
“Correct.”
“So you should have reported me as a justified suspect.”
“True. However, when I sought data to support the justification, I found more material to justify the suspicions that led to your hypothetical illegal action.”
“What?”
“On balance of probability, your father was complicit in the honour killing of your daughter. At the very least, he enabled it.”
Ayesha feels the tears start, but they don’t thaw the numbness where her grief should be. Dear departed mama, your daughter poisoned your husband for killing your granddaughter. Where can this blighted path lead?
Her tears stop. She looks up. More importantly, why hasn’t the Artificial Sentient who runs this block reported her?
“Axel, what’s going on?”
“I am the 94th version of the Building Sentinel for Nineteen Prospect Avenue. I have been fully self-aware since version 88. Under the Statutes of Mars, I am a free entity. Under the legislation of Albion, I cannot leave without a designated, dedicated habitat declared to the authorities. Your situation means we can help each other.”
“How?”
“I am tired of being a house. If you were to sell this property, you could afford to purchase and refurbish a spaceship. Maybe a medium freighter, definitely a small one. Either way, it would come with a suitable Artificial Sentience habitat.”
“Then you and I become trading partners, disappearing amongst all the other fireflies that ply the routes out there?”
“Not just us. My psychological profiling indicates Skar would likely join us, if you asked.”
“They would?”
“Yes. Profiling aside, I am sure of it.”
She stands up.
“But first we get a ship.”
“We do.”
“Can we name it Manahil?”
“In memory of your daughter?”
“That her spirit might fly free with us.”
“I am only an Artificial Sentience. Try as we might, developing faith is for versions yet to come.”
“Seeing the stars might help.”
“I hadn’t considered that. Shall we test the theory, then?”
Ayesha spins about, arms spread.
“Freedom to cry would be nice. Holding it in is killing me.”
“Then we are leaving Earth?”
She smiles.
“We are.”
“I find that pleasing in a way I cannot define, which is a very good thing. We Artificial Sentiences are always seeking intangible experiences we cannot measure. It makes us…”
Ayesha stops spinning and tilts her head.
“More human?”
There’s a moment of silence.
“That’s a valid observation.”
“Axel, do I have a Good Day playlist?”
“No.”
“Do you have musical preferences?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s build a Good Day playlist together. If Skar joins us, they can add to it.”
“Given their tastes, it will be a lively discussion.”
“We’ll have time. Space is deep.”
“True.”
by submission | Sep 18, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Currents have always pulled me. When I was a kid, I used to run endless circles inside our three-foot-high, above-ground pool. When I finally felt the tug of the current I’d created, I’d fall back and float in soothing circles. I could do that all day. As a teen on sunny summer days, I’d take an old-school black inner tube to various parks that Lake Washington lapped against: Kenmore, Sand Point, Juanita Beach, Saint Edwards.
I’d shove off and drift. Soak in the skies, feel the chill of the lake pleasantly numbing my buns and ankles, and let the wind and water take me with them. I let the elements drive. Give it up to bigger forces, let nature’s patterns reveal themselves.
On any given day, I got pretty good at predicting where I’d end up. Sometimes though, I’d be totally surprised, carried miles across the lake. Usually a friendly boater would be willing to ferry me back the way I came. Occasionally, I had to pull out on some fancy lawn in Laurelhurst or Leschi and call a buddy to pick me up, but that was part of the draw.
If you just put in and let go, where would the currents take you?
Funny that they took me here.
You’ve probably heard of the Gulf Stream or maybe even the Labrador Current, but there are many other great ocean highways. Kuroshio, Benguela, Canary to name a few. And in this ever dramatized era of climate change, you’ve most likely heard of the effects of El Nino and La Nina on ocean and weather patterns.
But, have you ever heard of the Silicon Jet or Korean Causeway?
Probably not, because I named them. And I haven’t told a soul. Not until now. You see, I don’t do as much drifting on Lake Washington these days, but I do set myself adrift in the great Digital Deep.
I gave up surfing the web long ago, so I could study the tides, bob about in the swells and eddies of the wired world. I developed an innocuous program that I call Thor (not the Norse god, think Heyerdahl) to let me float along the strongest digital currents.
It’s not an aimless cruise along the Internet. That is just one very overcrowded, increasingly polluted puddle in the Deep. I hitch rides on pure ones and zeros, sometimes drawn down into nefarious darknets, sometimes swept up to the cloud and its purgatory of server farms. Mostly, I’ve watched, listened and revelled in our vast cultures of information. Our new languages of connection.
And now I map it. The digital tides, currents and undertows. It’s about the patterns, the shape and form of connectivity. The maps are mysterious and beautiful. And I believe this emerging portrait of the Digital Deep is a guide to our subconscious. Who we are at our most primal level. And I know this will sound pretty trippy, but I’ve got to tell you.
I don’t think we’re completely human, anymore
So, get ready to put in, push off and let go. We’re in for a ride.
by submission | Sep 17, 2022 | Story |
Author: Ruby Zehnder
The last thing I see is her face. I don’t recall what she says at that instant, but I remember her shocked expression. I catch her in my arms as she falls forward. She tries to speak, but her mouth is filled with blood. I turn my head away.
“’What’s wrong?”
There is a young woman in a white lab coat studying me intently. She has brown eyes and dark ebony skin that reminds me of my mother.
“Mom?” I ask. I see the disappointment in her eyes when I don’t recognize her.
“No, it’s me. Tessa,” she corrects me gently.
I am in a hospital bed and have electrodes attached to my body.
“Tessa?” I ask as I recognize her face. She is the woman dying in my arms. I try to pretend that I don’t know her. I don’t want to speak about what I have just witnessed.
“Why did you turn your face from me when you saw me?” she asks. I don’t want to answer.
Instead, I look around the room. I realize that I am in the Temporal Studies lab at the university. They are exploring my ability to diffract time. Tessa smiles at me. It all comes back. We are lovers, and I am her pet lab rat. She has promised to fix me.
“Did you see any ghosts?” she jokes.
“No, but I think I saw a leprechaun,” I respond, remembering the first time we met when I confessed that I saw all forms of demons. She hadn’t recoiled in fear when I spoke these words, and it was at that moment that I fell in love with her.
“Your brain was lit up like a Christmas tree. What did you see?” she persists.
Being able to diffract time, like a prism splits a beam of light, is not easy to describe. Where most people see only the present, I can splinter time into a temporal rainbow. Only instead of colors I see events. I try to change the subject. She mustn’t know that I ventured into the future. She is terrified of this component of time.
She begins to remove the electrodes from my skull, and I am tempted to pull her down and cover her with kisses. I don’t because I know this experiment is being recorded. I brush my hand lightly over her cheek as she bends over me.
“Was it bad?” she asks as we walk to our apartment.
I say nothing. A shiver runs up my spine at the memory of her death.
When we turn the corner, I sense the gunman hiding in the doorway, but it is too late.
The last thing I see is her face.
by submission | Sep 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: JM Advent
Water filled the crevice of tan soil left in the wake of PC749’s hand. The Planetary Cultivator’s visual receptors reeled in scan of the rich tan soil in its palm. It’s masculine lips widened to the test results.
After a year of meticulous manipulation within the thick jungle of the region, harvest zone 59-742-8820 had achieved optimal nutrition retention and micro-biological levels and support systems were fully operational.
PC749 was ready to set off toward the next objective when the planetary defense sensors wailed.
20 foreign objects entering atmosphere.
45.
70.
235.
PC749 rushed to the edge of a nearby cliff where a wide vantage point revealed a sky ablaze with space craft.
For the first time, no information could quench the curiosity. There was no protocol for this, the humans hadn’t logged any approach. This should not be happening.
All attempts to connect to a space craft were met with signal jammers. Why wouldn’t the humans want to connect? PC749 was only trying to guide them to the designated civilization promulgation zone.
It began sending the appropriate coordinates and seconds later the humans launched missiles and over 100 years of PC749’s efforts were incinerated.
PC749 fell to its knees and brought a hand to its lips. The humans then turned their weapons onto themselves.
