by submission | May 24, 2023 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
They are everywhere and nowhere. The world passes beneath them, from the great, deep scar of the Valles Marineris, to the soaring, breathless heights of Olympus Mons. Time has lost its linear progression, yet they know that they have still to wait for the others to arrive.
Memories flash among them, delicious, aching moments that remind them of the lives that they have lived and lost.
The ship vibrating as it descends through the thin Martian atmosphere. No simulation could prepare them for the gamut of emotions they feel. Fear lurks, but is held at bay by well-rehearsed duties, by the joys of novelty and accomplishment. With the landing comes relief. Grins all round. They’ve made it. The first humans to land on Mars.
The work of building the first human outpost on the Red Planet begins. Knowing that this environment is harsh and unforgiving. A mistake here can kill. You have to be careful with everything. Check and double-check. Clean. Maintain. The orange dust gets everywhere, even inside your lungs.
Months pass, living off the land. Growing crops, processing minerals for fuel, building materials and oxygen. It’s hard physical work, even in the reduced Martian gravity.
When does it start, do you think? A sickness appearing from within. Its symptoms seem hard to pin down, at first. Perhaps just a hankering for the green and blue of home. Feeling fed up at the colour of the sky, at the ever-present orange dust. A longing to feel the sun and the wind on your bare skin.
Irritation and niggles build up. Minor ailments seem pervasive, you just can’t shake them off. Insomnia creeps in. Lethargy and dark moods seem the norm. Tempers fray. You all compare symptoms, jokingly call it the Mars Malaise.
Mission Control becomes concerned. Real-time conversation isn’t possible, so therapy sessions involve monologues and protracted waits for considered replies. Frustrations build.
Operating at below par in a hostile environment has the inevitable outcome. A serious decompression accident injures four of the crew. Things go downhill from there.
It’s MacLeod who has an epiphany about the Mars Malaise. He tries explaining it to a psychologist in a stilted conversation between worlds. When Mission Control order him confined to quarters and put on suicide watch, he knows that he failed to get his point across.
He has success with his fellow astronauts though. Their lived experience of Mars gives them understanding.
“They sent us here to colonise Mars, but we can’t do that, not as things stand. We’re all decaying, dying deaths by a thousand cuts.”
“We need to stop fighting it. This isn’t Earth. We’re on Mars, an empty world. We’ve no bones of our ancestors here, no spirit world to look after us. Our souls can’t exist here without these things, just as our bodies can’t exist without food and water.”
“Our role here isn’t to establish a colony. It’s to establish those things that will allow a colony to survive and thrive.”
“Our purpose here is to die, so that when the next mission arrives there’ll be a spirit world to commune with. Our ghosts will be here to protect the colonists, to give this world meaning.”
The first astronauts on Mars committed suicide en masse that evening, as a pale sun fell below a crimson horizon.
Memories fade, but understanding persists. Their spirits now claim this new world for humanity. They are everywhere and nowhere, patiently watching, waiting, for the inevitable arrival of more of Earth’s children. Then they will commence their role as guardians to the living, as the dead have always done.
by submission | May 23, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Barber
For as long as I can remember, any wish I made came true.
No, Reverend, let me finish, then I should be glad to hear your opinion.
Like that youth yesterday, over-revving his dirt-bike outside the window. Wishing things away is too easy.
You don’t remember jirts do you? I was afraid of them as a child, so they’re gone now, along with the colour chim and the singer Jimmy West, whose annoying summer hit was everywhere when I was twelve.
Consider for a moment the dangers of my gift, and you will understand why the world is such a damaged, incoherent place.
Thwarted as a child, I wished my parents away in anger, only to bring them back again in remorse, but now as strangers. Though that is not the worst of it.
I edited out Le Grande Peste which stopped the War in 1916, and we live with the consequences. A flu epidemic that felled 50 millions, and a catastrophic second war, ignited by some mad German.
I never tried to make the world a better place again.
A good question, Reverend, but no, I cannot explain my gift. It is nothing like fairy-tale wishing. I have wondered if the Many Worlds idea offers an answer.
In some world I must have won the Lottery, so wishing for it simply selects that alternative, though I recall it was one where I was born with a heart defect. Endlessly tinkering rarely improves things.
And what married man would not change some niggling habit in his spouse if he could? You cannot know the tragedy of the person you love warped into your creature.
Ah, of course you are sceptical, but proof is not easy. Unicorns must exist somewhere, so wishing for one would simply show you a common household pet. And if I made them vanish again, they would always have been fanciful nonsense.
Consider that Jamaican nurse who came in with my medication—
You say there has been no nurse?
Perhaps I am confused. After all, what sort of man would wish someone away simply to prove a point?
I do not want a sermon, Reverend. In the end I am a monster and weary of everything. There, the power of confession.
Guilt? Ah, now we come to it. But isn’t every future but one murdered by our choices?
I have unmade countless lives – no, let me finish – and lately the world has all the substance of a passing carnival; clowns I never saw before, and lofty men on stilts I will never see again. And increasingly I wondered about wishing everything away, and my curse with it.
So I did.
But it seems the whole world is not so easy to dispose of, for here I am, and the world still haunts me. Doctors say this brain tumour is inoperable, and has been swelling inside me for years. I find myself in a hospital bed, though I remember otherwise. And of course, our world ceases to exist when we die.
I knew you would not understand. I wish I had never confided in you now.
The rise and fall of my heartbeat on that monitor predicts the future; it is the stock market of my fate, and in a day it unravel miles.
Ah, nurse. Time for my pills again? And if you see the Hospital Chaplain, would you ask him to drop in please?
by Julian Miles | May 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’m wondering about that human. It seems to be contemplating something. Probably violence. It’s the only reason why we allowed them membership, after all. Come to think of it, what is it doing sat in a cafe on the Aslencade anyway? I though civil zones were off limits to combat aspected beings.
At least that’s easily remedied. I tap my callcuff, and indicate a suspected zone violation.
Moments later, a Constable descends to attend at my side. My response to its polite query is delayed by the human giving me a little grin. There’s no mistake. It knows why the constable is here! How? They’re not telepathic except by genetic happenstance, and none of those are let out of Earth Empire space.
“To repeat: please indicate the suspected offender, Exalted.”
I use the cuff to direct it. No need to make things obvious.
“Thank you for reporting your suspicion, but the indicated being is an enfleshed Constable.”
A what?
Before I can work out who to route a pointed query to, the human rises and crosses to attend me.
“To answer your inevitable question, we found on Earth that criminals and police often share identifiable traits. Being ignored out here – where we are always assumed to be inferior brutes on the verge of criminality – turns our key talent into an advantage: the ability to spot a crook by the way they behave is something you lost when you switched to automated enforcement. While it is remarkably effective at intervention, it is noted that prevention is greatly reduced. In practice, if criminality is covert, and beings do not become suspicious enough to report it, your Constables are ineffective.”
The hovering Constable flashes a trio of green confirmation panels in agreement.
“Are you intimating that you can spot potential criminals by the way they behave, Constable?”
“Nothing potential about it. I know a crook when I see one, and you have a lot of crooks about. The only problem is in determining which are guilty of crimes of relevance, to use your terminology. To do that, I have to watch the suspect while colleagues investigate their data. Today, you have witnessed me doing that.”
Just a minim.
“Do you suspect me of criminality, Constable?”
An upward curve of their mouthparts indicates amusement, I believe.
“That would be something I cannot divulge, and for you to know the truth of anyway, would it not?”
How very irritating. Now I’m contemplating violence.
by submission | May 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Arthur Chappell
“It’s Adam taking the apple, not Eve. Genesis got it wrong.”
“Is this Eden, Herbert? Or a nudist camp with an orchard?”
“Very funny. Come on, before he takes a bite and drops us all in it.”
“Hey. Give me that apple back! Stop thief! Evie, get the angels. We’ve got trespassers.”
“Don’t be alarmed, Sir.”
“What are you wearing?”
“Clothes, Sir. Good old Savile Row tailoring.”
“Not cool, Man.”
“Man! Surely you’re the only man in creation, Ad.”
“So sorry Dear, Rest assured that we mean you no harm. Introductions are in order. I’m Herbert George Wells, and this is the esteemed Rudyard Kipling. “
“What God created you?”
“Hopefully the same one who married you to one of your own ribs, Adam.
We are here from your future. Mr Wells has a time machine while I learned about handling snakes during my years in India. We are here to stop you from committing Original Sin, thus saving humanity from great suffering.”
“Original what?”
“Never mind. Ah, my friend has the snake. Splendid. Wring the blighter’s neck, Rudyard. There. Done. Now I’ll chop down the tree and we’ll be off back to Edwardian splendor. Good day Sir, and you Lady Eve.”
“What strange men. Are you alright Adam?”
“Yes. Weirdos. Why destroy the apple tree and kill a harmless grass snake?”
“I’ll ask my friend the talking serpent. So glad those fools didn’t get him or the pomegranates on The Tree Of Knowledge.”
“Indeed Eve, God be praised for that.”
by submission | May 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Philip G Hostetler
I met Maggie at an open mic in an art gallery. Well, I met her music first, if a distinction could be made. I didn’t expect such a big sound from such a small woman as she sat at the antique Ancient Earth piano. She pounded, no, attacked the keys like a Mongol horde descending on the Great Wall, and no master stonemason could devise a wall that would stand up to her vibrations. Her voice resounded like a howled funeral ululation, the light in the room poured into and emerged synaesthetically from her. It was dark in the room but for her voice. Light went in and emerged as a sonic phenomena that could be heard even in the vacuum of my heart.
The art gallery itself had been built on a rogue planetoid, so pinning down where and when it was, was a nightmare of trigonometry and telemetry. But it was worth it to hear her. The more I learned about her, the more intrigued I was. As though, like quantum mechanics, as soon as I thought I’d gotten an understanding, a new emergence would baffle and inspire me. That, perhaps, by the simple act of observing her, she changed and always in magical ways.
I’d been lost in the doldrums of plasma plumbing for so long that I didn’t quite know how to act. Inspired would have to do.
This was long before we’d met Dr. Maxell, and was a halcyon time of exploration, traveling by more conventional hypersleep transports rather than Dr. Maxell’s Disentangling Teleporter. We saw worlds, yes, but Maggie always wanted to find places that hadn’t been found, like being in a new place brought out a new ‘her’.
Those journeys are nostalgic for me now, now that I’ve lost her somewhere in the subatomic soup in the pillars of creation. She was always building something great. That was the problem of experiencing the universe from a subatomic perspective, you didn’t always come back together the same way, and a change, sometimes an aloofness about day to day life, would set in.
I’m still lightrope walking, still minding the plasma plumbing and wondering this time where she’s gone, what she’s feeling and if she’s alright. But I’m not worrying too terribly, because of course, it’s where she wants to be, and when she returns she’ll have such stories and sights to share and she’ll do so with eloquence and grace.
by submission | May 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“It’s amazing how easily we accessed this vault, considering how long these buildings were subjected to seawater.” He ran his three fingers over the outside of the corroded steel doors, five inches thick, but still smooth and glistening on the inside under the dull red starlight. “This species may have transmitted those partially garbled messages. We have no idea about this species’ origins.” Zolonko slid over the marble floors, peering down the murky corridors beyond the star’s meager glow.
“It’s a first, Zolonko,” replied his celestial historian assistant, Cabu Bot. She stood three feet above him as his squat form’s slime trail kept pace toward the vault’s recesses. They pressed their forearms, activating personal bioluminescence, exposing their path forward, revealing any wreckage to avoid. “We might find some remnants of their likeness…even language to guide further understanding of their messages from this fabled race. We still have some partial radio recordings onboard.”
“It appears there are several immediate offshoots to visit. Should we stay together or explore separately?” Zolonko rubbed his single, yellow eye, pushing aside his nictitating membrane overreacting to the structure’s cloying atmosphere.
“Together, I think. This air could be treacherous. If one of us starts to fail the other can retrieve the power sled for extraction to safety before serious damage occurs.”
“Mmmmmmm,” Zolonko responded in a low, repeating hum. “Always the smart play. Ah, here are the first remains we can evaluate for collection. What’s the material look like at your level?” Zolonko waited but there was a delay from his usually talkative companion. “Is there a problem?” he probed.
“This is not what we expected. No…not at all. If these are what the master race looked like, then nothing we know of in our travels correlates. Let me send you a view.” She put her arm near the high wall, made a flash of light, and then looked intently at her partner.
“Revolting, Cabu…beyond horrifying! I’m erasing the memory of it! That is an abomination of the natural order for great cultures on all known worlds. How could they have?” He rested, looking about, trembling.
“I can’t imagine,” Cabu whispered, also with fear in her voice. “If they took this form, and this vessel survived, then these things could still be lurking back in the darkness. We are not armed or prepared to deal with mutant races like these. I’ll capture the script under the presentation to see if our system can decipher it. There seems to be a unity in the format.” Another flash came from her arm before she and Zolonko made careful progress to exit the void.
Once secure in their ship, their computer indicated it had decoded the captured symbols.
“Play it, Cabu. Maybe it will explain the mystery of these aliens.”
Cabu rubbed her webbed digits over the flat, blue wall, under the glaring interior green lights as a refreshing mist of their home world’s swamp fog covered their scales. A gurgling voice emerged from a small cube below them.
“It may mean Picasso Nude and Still Life.”
“What can that be, Cabu? Is it a myth or legend?”
“I cannot say, dear one. But it may mean that this is what they looked like as their race declined. They must have mutated to the point they could no longer maintain anything. It could be a caution for anyone staying on this lifeless planet before the star completely fails. Depart immediately. That container is a warning buoy.”
