by submission | Jun 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: Samuel Edney
He’d wandered too far. He’d wasn’t paying attention and had wandered too far and now it was darkening as the storm had descended upon them. Mother was going to shout at him. She was going to be so angry.
‘Darling, where are you?’
If he turned back now, maybe she wouldn’t be so mad but he couldn’t see the way back anymore, blotted out like the sun on the horizon. He called out but immediately clasped his mouth shut as the storm howled all around him and filled is mouth with sand. He tried to turn, to follow his footsteps back to Mother, but any trace of his journey to where he stood was erased now. His legs felt warm even through the fibres of his suit. He looked down to see his legs encased in the sand. She was going to be so disappointed in him. In his weakness.
‘Come back! Playtime is over now’
Shielding his eyes, he swore he saw the dunes move. Undulate. Melt.
Toward him.
He didn’t like it. It was too loud, the sand hurt his face as it cut his cheeks and now he didn’t care what Mother would say or what she would think of him. He called out to her but the noise! It was too much and the darkness closed in, the faint orange glow of the sun bouncing off of the sand’s surface shrinking away under the assault.
Something brushed past his feet.
‘If you don’t come back now I am leaving without you!’
He howled as a sharp pain struck up his leg. He heaved it free, blood pouring freely from two deep bite marks, ripped deep through the synthetic fabric of the trouser leg. Spittle dripped through his gritted teeth as he planted the leg back in the sand, then freed the other, hands hooked under the knee, dragging it forward.
A spit of orange fire in the storm as Mother fired up her engines.
‘Fine! Have it your way!’
One step. Two. Over and over. His head throbbed, his ears boomed, his legs screamed in pain and spewed blood from so, so many punctures and he lost his balance in the pitch blackness, fell forward, arms lost to the sand, dragged under by whatever it was under there that was tearing through his suit and feeding on his flesh in the midnight.
The puncture of dripping orange just beyond the rolling dunes popped to a blue. The roar of Mother’s engines punched through the rushing wind as she lifted up, up, further and further into the darkness and away.
Sand filled his throat as he screamed and screamed for her to come back and then his throat was nothing but sand and all he could think about was how much he let Mother down as he was shredded into a thousand pieces and pulled down into suffocating oblivion.
by submission | Jun 15, 2022 | Story |
Author: D. I. Dean
Room 2248 was quiet, save for the distant hum of the starship engines. She held Sarai’s good fingers in her hand, unsure if he even knew that she was there, but this was the least she could do; take up space next to him, watching the stuttering rise and fall of his chest.
She found the fingers of her free hand running along the warm glass of the bedside table. The sensation was a welcomed distraction. It was almost soothing, the way that the tips of her fingers prickled and cooled as she pulled – because it felt like she was pulling – frost to the glass beneath her palms. It traced where her fingers went along the surface, leaving intricate crystalline patterns behind.
She hadn’t told anyone about it yet. She wanted to know more about what this was before that, though she knew The Sodality would find out eventually. Their sigil branded everything in the room; the light-barrier entrance, the viewport window, the slowing heart rate monitor…
She cooled the glass again. It was cold where she had touched it, sure, but she didn’t feel cold. Her fingers felt frosty but not frost-bitten. Not like Sarai’s. She held the frost longer. She held it until her hand cramped and ached, and her fingers burned. No matter what she felt, her skin never turned purple. If she took her focus from the frost, then she knew her hand would feel normal again too.
She didn’t want this. She would give it up in a heartbeat if it meant saving Sarai. Maybe there was time. She could go to the Ministry of Science. They could study it, figure out something, and then- and then what? The heat of the room sent sweat rolling down her back and did nothing to stop the purple blisters creeping over Sarai’s chest. If she went to The Ministry’s marble chambers, part of her knew that she would never leave. And Sarai would still be dead by morning.
Despite the machines around them, the room remained eerily quiet. She looked at the monitors just to make sure they were still working. Lines and numbers that she didn’t understand still appeared on the screen, however useless they might be. Not just the machines, no, she was useless too. If such a strange ability were to show up in her life now, then why couldn’t it be useful? Healing?
Why couldn’t whatever was taking Sarai take her too? Maybe it would. After cold blisters started forming along the first doctor’s arms, the rest of them refused to even step foot in the room. It had spread quickly, but they took oaths of discovery, didn’t they? How could they cower floors away when Sarai needed them here?
Nothing covered her arms, save for cracks from the dry heat. Maybe there was a delay for her. Maybe that would be for the better. Her throat tightened. He wouldn’t want this for her. She doubted that he would wish it on anyone. She played with the frost on the tabletop again/ She could be here with Sarai when everyone else feared trying. She wanted him back, moons she wanted him back, but if that wasn’t possible then she was going to be here beside him. She would pretend to know how he felt.
by Hari Navarro | Jun 14, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The porcelain pilot hovers just beneath the artificial swell of the valley lip. Once long ago a dam though now, after the water has long since fled, it is but a hill covered in lush deep grass and bluish grey flowers with petals that purr at the sun.
“It’s time…”
The days light has folded neatly beneath the horizon and the pilot can all but smell the rich stews being ladled onto famished plates and see the smiles as armour-plated bread struggles and then gives way between cracked dirt riven thumbs.
They’ll be tired. Their guards will be sagging. These whom turn soil that is not their own. They’ll be drinking. The grapes will be massaging the insides of muscle, and eyes will be shining and lids drooping.
Beneath thatched roofs long, tables accommodate ever-multiplying issue. Grubby urchins that will one day too rise to further dilute and molest my sacred home.
The village projects as a simple schematic onto a visor already fogging with the pilot’s ramping breath.
“Home…”
The settlement has but one road and it curves in from the left before cleaving down through the homesteads and then abruptly wearing off to the right. Targeted structures are represented with blue squares and names overlay each to designate ownership.
Bielawski
Bielawska
PIERZECKI
Bielawski — Barn
PIERZECKA
PIERZECKI
PIERZECKI — Barn
RABOWICZ
BORON
BULLFINCH
BULLFINCH
CHALY
“… ownership.”
The pilot’s teeth grit and ever so slightly chip and she runs ever-long porcelain fingers that are just as delicate as they sound across the under-glaze that covers her body entire. Dipped as a child into a holy greyish-blue tint of her grandmother’s making until all that remained of her pearlescent self was the round of her face.
She traces the bright red rose that blooms between her breasts and the thorn stems that connect to the white petals that adorn her shoulders and arms.
‘North designated division proceed and cleanse at will. South designation seal and eliminate any and all of the detritus rats that shear from this most glorious action.’
Amassing dots surge onto her monitors and she manages a smile as her creations relay the very first screams of the attack. She imagines the re-purposed sickles and pitchforks and hammers that extend from their wrists suckling on blood and spent bone.
“Cut down by the same tools you use to foul my land… war can be such perfect poetry.”
Tools to rip and gouge and the liquid flames that bubble and drip from lips to bawl fury upon the hacked and render all of their hovels to cinder.
Blinking surnames stratify into sub-branches that show each and every family member. As eliminated the names transition to red. Her intelligence has been oh, so precisely thorough.
“Interesting! Appears they’re destroying the children first. Why? I never programmed for this. Kill the children and the adults will remain and fight? Kill the adults and the children scatter as vermin. Such clever weapons you are… I have to see. Must bear witness”, she whispers pulling back on the controls and rising above the crest and at once marvelling at the pulsing beauty of the orange swath below.
The porcelain pilot moves her craft ever closer until she is directly above a very particular barn. She leans across the console and gazes down as her creations close in and herd a manically scampering form inside and out of her view.
“Bastards… I was watching that!”
The form’s blood-clotted screams relay and fill the cockpit and both it and the reflecting flames conspire to fill the pilot with another kind of heat. She shifts and adjusts the harness that rolls gripping at her thighs.
She thinks she may be more than a little sad as she remembers. Long wasted afternoons laying upon the straw-strewn floor now cooking beneath her. Days with nothing but her anxiety and the beautiful flowers beneath her lacquered skin for company and… another.
“Home… where I had a friend that looked just like me.”
Save the barn? No. Nothing good ever came from looking back. Cleanse and rebuild.
The porcelain pilot will never know why she fell. Why her perfect craft suddenly dropped without warning and crashed through and into the blazing barn of her youth. Maybe a long saved and carefully aimed bullet or maybe the gathering thick smoke choked her engines. Whatever the case, as she sits in the wreckage and as the heat enters the gaping jag hole where her shoulder once was, she screams.
A grotesque lost thing grins from the same straw-strewn floor upon which she would lose herself.
She is perhaps the exact same age. Severed clean in half with the soft furl of her tattooed belly rolled back to beneath her bare breasts as if perfectly laid back sheets.
She is smiling though she is not. It is but the fire’s glint on her teeth as now she is without any lips.
“Why did they leave you naked? Why did they defile us in such a way? I never programmed this. Such soul-less little weapons they are… But best that I die knowing full well who I am. To die old and broken and forgotten having only seen my deeds from the sky is such a hollow pointless pantomime. I regret nothing and I will use that lie as a balm as I blister and break and fall into the ash and my flowers bleach to nothing ”, said the porcelain pilot as she cracked and splintered in two.
by Julian Miles | Jun 13, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The planet Naduskar is a technological wonderland without visible natural surface, be it land or water. At some time in the distant past, an advanced race converted or covered every last piece of open ground.
There’s the mystery: is it nothing but a huge machine sitting upon the remains of the planet, or is it somehow a vast preserve, eternally maintaining an ideal environment for whatever dwells there?
I’m of the opinion they simply didn’t want anything interfering with their grand plan, and engineered accordingly.
“Go for entry.”
That’s Cheimo, over in Golden Hinde IV. He’s the instigator and leader of this venture, and to him the glory of taking the armoured bulk of his brainchild down to make planetfall.
His crew are so enthusiastic, verging on a devotion that makes my teeth ache. If they weren’t so nice, they’d be insufferable.
I reach out and touch Baylia on the shoulder.
“Follow them in as planned, but slow our descent to give them a thousand-kilometre lead.”
Hands flit across the control board, implementing my wishes.
It’s been a long trip from Earth 9. Two ships on a single mission, but of very different purpose. The Golden Hinde IV is designed to bludgeon through the debris rings about Naduskar, and whatever effect causes them. The Challenger XIX will be witness, following in its wake. Eventually it’ll act as space-side support, with the ultimate goal of becoming an orbital base.
My theories about Naduskar led to me being ridiculed, even after I accepted Cheimo’s open dare to join his expedition. Today, I’ll be eyewitness to being proven wrong, or I’ll be vindicated – and a hundred people will die.
“Hestor! You recording?”
“With everything we have, Cheimo. Whatever happens, it’ll be for posterity.”
“Still with the doubts, eh? Look at it! Those rings of debris are from a hitherto unencountered weaponization of Roche limits, I’m sure of it. The dynamic gravity field protecting this ship will obviate it.”
A concept so bizarre I still have trouble believing he won any support. That you can vary the gravitational effect of a celestial body so the tidal forces of that body will tear a chosen target apart isn’t theoretical, it’s fictional. Don’t even get me started on his ‘DGPF – dynamic gravity protection field’.
My postulation is that the creators of Naduskar equipped their world with something we need to observe before we seek to work round it. I said we should send a large, automated vessel instead. Nobody listened.
The Golden Hinde IV enters the outermost ring, impacts from debris sparking across its hull.
Ambu calls out: “Something’s happening. Multiple effects, multiple spectrums.”
I look across: “Their DGPF firing up?”
He shakes his head, then points to the monitor, eyes going wide. I spin to look.
The Golden Hinde IV is gone!
As I think it, debris spurts forth from a single point. Before our very eyes, Naduskar sprouts a new ring.
The replay is astonishing. The Golden Hinde IV collapses in upon itself until only a metre-wide black disc can be seen. That disc flashes white, debris shoots forth, then the disc vanishes.
The AI in our quantum computer considers the event for several minutes – a very long while in QAI subjective time – before advancing an initial hypothesis: a null-point wormhole. Both ends are mapped to the exact same place and moment. It collapses before anything can traverse the internal region: the debris being rejected, syncretised content.
My apologies, Cheimo. Compared to this, manipulating the Roche limits wasn’t such an outré idea, after all.
by submission | Jun 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Chana Kohl
When my ship touched down on the small moon of E’lyrvst III, nothing struck me particularly outside the ordinary. Host to the largest salvage yard in the sector, V’hara, the proprietor, was known across the explored galaxy for her business acumen and political influence. Visitors could anticipate technological expertise, unrivaled hospitality, and lively entertainment, all while buffered from the palpable heat of an unending desert landscape.
And I needed spare parts.
Her establishment looked much like the caravanserai of Old Earth. An oasis by day, courtyards and alleyways hummed with the bustle of traders and merchants. But as the sun dipped lower, I felt the atmosphere change: hand drummers thumped ancient rhythms as patrons placed their bets. Tellers behind impenetrable windows took wagers from over thirty worlds. Something of importance was taking place and the entire sector was invested.
“Captain Roiz,” V’hara greeted me graciously, “I’m glad you agreed to spend the night planet side while your order is prepared. You’ll find the waiting less terribly dull.” Her eyes glinted like almandine jewels.
After a round of drinks and a light repast, the open courtyard dimmed. A circle of torches kindled, and a ring announcer’s voice boomed, “Distinguished guests, spectators from across this system and beyond, welcome to the match you’ve all been waiting for!”
The stomping of feet by viewers in the stands reverberated like a herd of wildebeests.
“To my right, the emperor of Talsya IV, the tenth-generation successor to the throne,” raising his hand towards the balding, heavy-set man next to him. “Perhaps after tonight, the Talsyans will need to crown the eleventh!”
“And on my left, President Ulrysus Aixt. After 72 consecutive years in elected office, he has served planet Lexuros with distinction. Unfortunately, tonight might be his permanent retirement!”
“Is this for real?” I glanced at my hostess in disbelief. She simply popped an hors d’oeuvre and smiled, “Did you place your bet?”
A brass gong resounded, and the Emperor made the opening move, lunging for the President. The older man, more spry than I first gave him credit for, dodged in time. Both fists came down hard between his opponent’s shoulder blades. The emperor fell to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” my concerns finally found their voice. “What exactly am I watching right now??”
“In our sector, whenever two worlds cannot resolve their disagreements through civil negotiation, the leaders of those worlds must resolve it here, in a fight to the death. It’s the law,” she added, “by popular vote.”
“And you condone this, this…” I reached for the right word. “Brutality?”
“Condone it? I lobbied for it myself! More than half of this sector’s population are of fighting age, likely to be drafted at the whim of any given autocrat. ‘Why can’t everyone get the chance to grow old and fat?’ I asked myself.
“Getting the legislation passed was a piece of cake,” she continued. “The maternal demographic is what did it, actually. Once mothers realized they no longer had to send their daughters and sons to war anymore, the corpus politicus didn’t stand a chance.”
The President had the Emperor in a camel clutch, gnawing at his ear. “C’mon!’ I shot her serious side-eye. “That’s legal??”
A sudden, awful crunch of cartilage and bone echoed through the arena. The Emperor was face down, arms spread defenseless, one leg akimbo. An eerie hush fell, then the crowd roared approval.
“This is barbaric!” I told her. “There’s absolutely no place for something like this in civilized society.”
“Maybe,” she answered, taking a long draw from a gold-plated hookah, “But the ratings are through the roof!”
by submission | Jun 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: Fatemah Albader
The only certainty in life is that it will eventually come to an end.
But what if there was a way to know exactly, with 100-percent certainty, when your life will end? Would you want to know?
If you said yes, I’d rethink that if I were you.
Consider Pete. He was one of the first to go through The Program. He got his death date three years ago when it was still in beta testing. Back then, you wouldn’t know the exact date, just the day of the week. Pete got Wednesday. Every week, he follows the same routine. He arrives at Mercy Hospital on Tuesday evening, and, by early morning on Thursday, he checks himself out. I wondered if that was Pete’s way of cheating death. Then again, Pete didn’t know how he’d die, just when. Yet, being at the hospital on Wednesdays seemed to bring Pete some comfort, at least that’s what it looked like to me.
And the problem is, once you go through The Program, you cannot go through it again. Even though it has changed drastically since it first began, Pete’s stuck with knowing that his death date will fall on a Wednesday, and never the exact day.
Then there’s Emily. She won the lottery and got her death date six months ago, back when going through The Program was still a choice. Ever since, she’s been too afraid to leave her home. She was told that her death date would take place between 40 and 45. She’s 43 now.
And one mustn’t forget about Leah. She didn’t want her newborn to go through The Program. But they came for him about a month ago, on the day that he was born, now that it’s the law. It’s considered necessary for the efficient use of each person and his role in society. Her kid Noah was given a death date of seven years from now. Deemed untrainable, he was taken from Leah and sent to live out the rest of his days in The Group Home for Untrainables.
As for me, I have no qualms of retaliation from The Program for writing this short. My death date is tomorrow.
And sooner or later, you’re next. And when death calls, you’ll have no choice but to answer.
