by submission | Jun 29, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jenna Hanan Moore
What began as an ordinary morning walk with the dog did not remain ordinary for long. As usual, Thomas was oblivious to his surroundings. He didn’t notice the coolness of the breeze, the birds chirping, the pink and gold hue of the eastern sky, or the smell of the wildflowers.
Maggie, his golden retriever, was anything but oblivious. She didn’t care about the sunrise or the flowers, but her ears and nose drank in the sounds and smells of the birds and critters flitting about nearby. This path through the woods was her favorite walk.
When they reached the wooden footbridge near where the path curved towards home, a bright flash appeared in the sky, followed by a “whoosh!”
They stopped in their tracks. Maggie growled softly. Thomas looked at the sky. “Couldn’t be lightning. No thunder, and not a cloud in the sky.” He shortened Maggie’s leash. “Let’s go home. Maybe there’ll be something about whatever that was on the news.”
They crossed the footbridge and rounded the bend. Standing in the middle of the path was a sleek, black cylinder, about four feet high. A man dressed in silver stood beside it. “Your world will soon end. What will you do?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your world will soon end. What will you do?”
Thomas looked at Maggie. She’d stopped growling, and was wagging her tail at the stranger. He looked back at the stranger. “Who are you and how would you know a thing like that?”
“Pardon my lack of manners, but you haven’t much time and I didn’t want to waste any of it on pleasantries. My name is Aldous Alterian, and I saw your world end in a parallel universe.”
Thomas stared at the man, lost for words.
“I use Universe B62 for intergalactic travel. It physically parallels our own universe, but its laws of physics allow for travel faster than the speed of light.”
“That’s not possible,” Thomas stammered.
“It’s quite possible. I’ll show you.”
Aldous Alterian twisted a dial on the cylinder. Another flash, another whoosh, and they were in a spaceship with windows on all sides. To the left was a planet identical in appearance to Mars. To the right was the smoldering remnants of another planet.
Another twist of the knob, another flash, another whoosh, and they were back on the path through the woods.
“I discovered the time shift between universes on my last trip to your galaxy. I could explain, but you haven’t much time left. Do you really want me to waste it on the details of inter-universe temporal dynamics?”
“I guess not. How much time do we have?”
“That I cannot say. Could be months, could be weeks. It could be as much as a year or a little as a day. The important thing is to use it well. Will you do that?”
“I’ll try,” Thomas said.
“That’s all I ask.” With that, Aldous Alterian twisted the knob on the cylinder. A flash and a whoosh, and he was gone.
Thomas walked towards home, thinking of ways to make the world a better place. By the time he reached the house, his thoughts returned to the mundane tasks ahead of him. He abandoned his lofty plans, convinced they’d never work.
by Hari Navarro | Jun 28, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The most beautiful things I’d ever heard entered through the ducts in the corners of my eyes and wound my mind in threads of sweat-tinged rapture:
“I am so alone. Please, Captain of captains, please pass the order so that my withered hope will not be wasted as again it dares to grasp at distant stars”, the siren soughed. “I feel you, as your broken thoughts paint my flailing fingers into your eyes and you marvel at how much they seem just as lovely as hers?”
“Helm, steady on a course…”, I mouthed and the string of coordinates that then wept from my lips tasted of tiny whimpers and freshly crushed marrow. “… Rosamunde?”
“I savour, as you suck upon my song and ponder your love’s dear dead skin”, she’d said. “Do you recall, do you remember just how she so hated that name?”
I heard the thrum throb of her words and at once it was as if I too were trapped and marooned at her side. My mouth became dry and my eyes wet and I braced down and into her prayer.
“Listen, as I plead that the bow of your mighty transporter does cleave these thin mustard clouds that stretch to mask the taunt of my jail-house warden — the vile grin of the terracotta moon.”
“I don’t know… I don’t know if I can find you…”
“I know, I know you’ll not fail me as you have failed before. I know you’ll surely lift me from this wicked storm-licked hell”, her words now a ramping whispered scream. “You will and I will lay atop you and my gentle weight will press the demons from your flesh. And, I beg you to believe this true, it will be as if she were here — softly undulating against your threadbare soul once and forever more.”
The new ruin of my vessel contorts beneath me. Splintered aluminium bawling into the maw of the alien sea cavern lair and my captain’s ruse unravels. I am revealed and the sea it picks at my pores and I am consumed by the excruciating pleasure that flows from the swelling gash at my cheek.
The canvas that once so tightly bound and hid my sex whips and I think of the pennants that centuries ago furled and cracked atop plundered masts.
I too am stolen.
I too have taken that which is not mine to take.
I too am a lie, swaddled and lost in a lie.
“My Captain of Captains, you came for me and, although you are now so hopelessly ensnared, know that I will not judge nor tell of your many deceits. We are so unbearably lonely, are we not? I’ll let you do to me as she once allowed. I mind not in the least how much it hurts. My love, I may not now look as she but wait, I will change over time. You’ll see, until not even her dear Ma could tell us apart. We can be together. You can get her back — piece by little old piece.”
Squinting into the acid salt mist, I momentarily ponder whether my death has already come. That, in fact, I’ve already taken my leave of this insanely rusted coil.
“A demise so very much deserved.”
The ruined deck beneath tilts and the punch of the brawling surge reminds me of my truth as vicious foam fists lay into me again and again and again.
“Rosamunde…”, I think that I say. “There, do you see? The vile lure that enticed me here upon notes of soothing silk lie. “
Breathe.
Do not listen to the bitch.
Listen, instead, to the muffled click of the bones that now stir in the belly of the moribund hold.
“…my Captain.”
She lays naked upon pillows stuffed with faggots of gossamer hair and toys with necklaces of tiny strung teeth. She looks nothing like her and fantastical gem-studded marionettes spill with rings and other small things from the delicate little chest at her side.
I know well these most morbid of trinkets. Bounty acquired with such violence. The young fetch the most coin, you see? And the waves again surge and the deck again screams or perhaps it is something else. Maybe it’s the huddled, de-fanged and shaven caged things crushing beneath folding walls that call out from the deep down below.
I peer again into the haze but the nymph, she is no more. And I know full well, she never once was. A smile and I laugh at how so very completely detailed my delusions had to be so that I might draw myself here. To paint myself so perfectly into this end.
“Rosamunde, I despised you… how dare you love one such as I?”, but as the water wall rears and I succumb to its fall and drift into my ever dimming slave traders fate — all I can think of is she.
by Julian Miles | Jun 27, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The room is full. The courtyard is too. They’ve put up holoscreens in the grounds for those who couldn’t get in.
General Perkiss gestures for me to come up front.
“Warriors, I can’t end this memorial. It wouldn’t be right. Major Cyo Surtees will.”
He steps back and bows to me.
I step up to the lectern and look about. So many units. So many species. I know where to start.
“He’d have loved this, and we all know he’d have whinged about the security arrangements rather than admit it.”
That gets a lot of smiles.
“I first met Ambassador Falor Krato when he was only Sergeant Krato. A Captain named Perkiss assigned him to the idiot son of a senator who signed up to do real war.”
I nod to the General, who grins. It was a long time ago.
“That idiot was me. If not for Krato, I’d have been dead within a week.”
There are nods of sympathy. He saved a lot of idiots so they could become soldiers.
“We were on Abingdon Hill. The Vatril were coming down like rain. I was terrified. Then this huge noncom in rusty power armour stomped up and offered me a bottle of scotch. ‘These things you don’t face sober, and you don’t fight them while you can still see straight.’” I grin: “I spent my first battle staggering drunk while killing transdimensional crustacea, thanks to Krato.”
Looking down at the floor, I run through the speech I had prepared. What was I thinking? Krato would heckle me for trying. I look up.
“I had a witty speech prepared. Then his memory sat up and punched me. I’ll be doing him an injustice if I don’t wing it.”
The scattered laughter is good to hear.
“You’ve all got memories of him. If we had time, I’d have liked for each of you to come and tell your favourite. As is, there’s only me up here to finish. So, I’ll share the one that’s stayed with me for ninety years.”
Longevity treatments and military service: a match made in some cold hell. But Krato liked them. The knee injury he took on Rosso got more painful as he got older. The rejuvenations helped.
“It was after the fall of Saliz. The Vatril hives had imploded. Several hours after the battle, I couldn’t find Krato. So I went looking. Took me until nearly dawn, then I heard this screaming. I’ve never heard the like, before or since. I raced down into the gorge behind the capitol hive. That’s where I found him. He was in the middle of a huge circle made of landing flares. In the purple glow, I could see him standing there, a body in his arms.
“I rushed in. He looked at me like I was a stranger, then fell down, but didn’t let the body go. ‘I promised him we’d go together, Cyo. Like we always did. The stupid little bastard got heroic when a Vatril berserker came for us. Swallowed a handful of Edlith and threw himself under the mandibles. Told me I’d be better at soldiering without him. Made me promise.’ His expression was haunted: ‘I still don’t want to do it without him’.
“I talked him down. We buried the body. I walked him back to camp, then got drunk with him. He served eighty-five years to honour that promise. Tomorrow, I’ll be heading back to Saliz. I’m fulfilling the promise I made to him that night. I’m taking him to rest next to Romul Krato, his big brother.”
by submission | Jun 26, 2022 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
It should have been paradise; a warm, azure sea lapped the shore, separated from a verdant pseudoforest by a broad expanse of golden sand. When it came to xenobotany, this was as good as field trips got, and Maggie still couldn’t believe the grants committee had agreed to fund it.
Nevertheless, here she was, 27 light-years from home, notional leader of a university expedition to Sapphire, an Earth-like planet in the goldilocks zone of the star Marshall 4973. This island was part of a chain around the equator; the ubiquitous plant equivalents looked like giant tillandsia colonies, sucking moisture out of the warm humidity, the smaller piggybacking on the larger.
It should have been paradise; but it wasn’t. Down the beach, their biologist, Jack, was examining the tidal zone for signs of littoral life. He was only here because his post-doc supervisor had taken sick, and there was nobody else available to fill the slot. No doubt he was competent enough, but psych evals could still be wrong.
“Hey skip, whatcha got?” The voice in her earpiece was a sudden interruption. She glanced up at the sky, where the planet’s moonlets shone like diamonds.
“Hey Lucy. Plants. Or next best thing. How’re things upstairs?”
“Still doing the planetary mapping scans. Quiet up here.”
“We’ll be back later to liven things up. I won’t risk a night down here until we know what we’re sharing this place with.” And just what, she wondered, were the two women sharing the cramped space of their wormhole rider with?
“Don’t blame you. Much happier safe up here, me. Whoops, first run’s done, call you later!” Curious but timid, their pilot was so much like her own daughter May, long gone now.
She willed her attention back to the growth in front of her. Taller than she was, the blue stem had hard, scarlet spines as long as her forearm. A defence against something they hadn’t encountered yet, perhaps. Each point glistened with a clear ooze; she carefully swabbed the sticky substance onto a slide from her sample box, applied a coverslip, and popped it into her chem analyser. In two minutes she’d know what it was.
The problem with Jack, she realised, was that he was too much like the smirking thug whose name she refused to utter even in her thoughts, the one who’d taken her life’s joy from her. She remembered the sneering looks he’d darted in her direction as the judge droned on about “boys being boys” and let the lad off with a caution; May had withdrawn into herself even more afterwards, harder and harder to reach, until eventually she’d opened a vein in a warm bath and was gone forever.
The analyser beeped. Well yay for gloves, this stuff looked like a particularly nasty neurotoxin.
She’d seen Jack’s hungry glances at Lucy when he thought nobody was looking. What if he woke up before them when they came out of the wormhole, at the start of the long glide back to Earth? He could do something unspeakable; they wouldn’t find out until months later. She couldn’t run that risk. Project safety was one of her responsibilities, after all.
She carefully cut a spine off the plant. A terrible accident, she’d say; she’d warned him to be careful. He’d lost his footing and fallen backwards into the foliage, ripping his suit. So tragic.
She wouldn’t, she couldn’t, let another girl down. Taking a deep breath of the heavy air, she headed down the beach to where the unconcerned boy poked the wet sand, his back turned.
by submission | Jun 25, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Penn
As with many worlds in the Small Megallanic Cloud, Ah! presents intriguingly aberrant evolutionary features. The dominant species, dubbed “exploders” by early missions, has, over several million years, developed a unique response to danger.
Each individual possesses the ability to shatter into thousands of tiny fragments whenever threatened and reassemble itself once the threat has receded. Every exploder is made up of thousands of super-cells or particles, themselves made of microorganisms close in type to Earth biological cells. It is into these particles that an exploder disperses in the face of threat. Each particle contains sensory capabilities analogous to Earth animals’ sense of smell, and a hydrogen-based method of aerial propulsion, which together enable it to detect and propel itself towards other dispersed particles in the re-grouping process. The particles also have multiple lock-and-key cells, much as some Earth viruses do, which effect the final re-joining. Studies have shown that it is possible for an exploder to spread itself over an area up to two square kilometres, depending on the severity of the threat faced, and still recombine; though of course, the more widely the individual has been dispersed, the longer reintegration takes.
This adaptation worked well for the exploders in earlier stages of their evolution but, having aided their dominance, has itself come to present them with formidable challenges. So severe are these problems that the species has begun a population decline.
In their apex position, exploders no longer have natural predators. Neither do they seem to have developed the institution of war as most other advanced species do – presumably because any opposing exploder is almost impossible to destroy, except at a technological level Ah! has not reached – so they fear no intra-species attrition. The only real physical dangers they face are accidents, such as overturning carts, collapsing buildings, earthquake or lightning. But in the relatively benign environment of the exploders’ agricultural-level economy, on a stable and temperate planet, these events are infrequent.
However, the species’ flight response, instead of receding into the evolutionary background, has adapted in a rather unfortunate fashion.
As the level of threat surrounding the population has decreased, the sensitivity underlying the protective “exploding” reaction has increased. Thus it takes surprisingly little to set it off. Irrational fears in a dark place, for example, may be enough to make an exploder dismember. It may have what we call a nightmare and shatter into every corner of its dwelling. Simply tripping up in the street may prompt dispersal. In certain situations, it may feel insulted and instantly splatter its perceived adversary with tiny gobbets of itself – while the victim may well respond in kind. Given the time it takes each individual to regroup, this makes for a great many inconveniences. Meetings of any sort are frequently interrupted by spectacular self-disruptions. Public performances of Ah!’s rudimentary theatre or – to our ears, somewhat agitated – music sometimes have to pause while over-excited members of the audience re-amalgamate. Traumatized witnesses to crimes are almost impossible to regather, severely impeding criminal investigations, and domestic arguments often result in days of silent re-constitution. The problem has even redoubled as the exploders’ fear of exploding itself has become a trigger.
Reproduction too has become fraught, between partners who are often labouring under an apprehension that, at any second, they may spread themselves across an impractically wide area. So, with tragic evolutionary irony, it is the exploders’ own in-bred protection from danger that has become their greatest threat, and the sense of shallowly repressed hysteria and extreme over-caution that pervades Ah! has been sensed on arrival by many a troubled visitor.
by submission | Jun 24, 2022 | Story |
Author: Armand Diab
The inattentive student stared at his phone in the middle of the lecture. The professor was none too pleased.
“Mr. Reddit, no phones during class”, the professor said.
“Sorry”, replied the student. The hand device minced no words in letting him know its dissatisfaction by softly speaking in a Siri-esque voice: Robert, don’t put me away.
“I’m sorry”, whispered the student to the phone. “But I have to go.”
But I love you.
“I love you too, but now I —-”
“Mr. Reddit, please!” The professor was irritated.
“One second.” The student brought the phone closer to his face. “Please, don’t do this right now. I’m in class!”
You promised, Robert.
“I know I did —-”
You promised never to leave me.
“I’m not leaving you! I’m just—-”
You promised to love me.
“And I still do!”
You were my first, Robert.
“What?”
I let you do vile things to me.
“Shhh!” His forefinger was across his lips.
You even put it in my ——
“SHUT UP!”
“Mr. Reddit!”, the professor shouted. “All of this will be on the final exam. Do you not wish to pass it?”
“Of course I do!”
“Then, for the love of God, put your phone away!”
You took a vow, the phone uttered. The student turned to it, but conspicuously, so the professor wouldn’t hear him.
“It was a wild Vegas weekend, and I was drunk and high and —-”
‘Till death do us ‘part, Robert.
“Oh, will you quit nagging me!” He shut the phone off, put it into his backpack, and avoided it for remainder of the lecture.
When class was over, the student realized his car was no longer where he had parked it on the street. It was gone. Upon returning home, he discovered the front lock had been changed, and that he was now on the wrong end of a nasty one way divorce settlement.
His phone, miraculously, was also missing, his spouse having taken custody of herself, among other things.
