by Julian Miles | Oct 24, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I watch the spheres orbit about one another as they spin within the space defined by the delimiter field. Fractal printers are fascinating. I find their intricate revolutions calming.
“What do you think it is, Derry?”
Gia’s always trying to predict what’s next.
“I have no idea, young being. What do you think it is?”
She grins delightedly. Rocking back and forth on the dampers of her work boots, she points to the delimiter field.
“It’s taller than it is wide. Makes me think it’s an established tree or something like that. Can’t be fauna, because it didn’t put a constraint wire down before starting.”
“Aren’t trees mandated to start as saplings?”
She purses her lips, then shrugs and whispers up her infoscreen. Being polite, she says the query out loud.
“Tree printing size law.”
The screen flashes a single line of text back to her. Looking across at me, she nods.
“Saplings without exception, so it’s not a tree, and not fauna.”
Today’s game is getting interesting.
“Some sort of bush or shrub? Something with berries?”
Gia whispers up another couple of laws, then shakes her head.
“Seedlings only.”
Natan enters the printbay, feathers rippling in the final stages of preening.
“Hello, you two. Guessed it yet?”
Gia stares at me, a look of revelation dawning on her face.
“Fungus! You’re printing a Plutochrome!”
The two of them share a knowing look. I sit there, waiting for someone to give me details.
Natan catches my expression. With a slight bow, they explain.
“Apologies, Leader Being. I received permission to print one of my world’s adaptive organisms. As it’s going to be dropped in the Salantium Marshes, I also received permission to print a mature specimen.”
I nod.
“What’s a Plutochrome, Natan?”
“An environment-salvaging toadstool appearing like a giant member of the earthly Russula class. A distinctive red cap sits above a metallic stipe from which the common name is derived.”
That’s part of the name explained.
“What about the ‘Pluto’ bit?”
Natan nods: “Before our races established relations, your decision to develop a base on Pluto caught us by surprise. We’d been there observing Earth for two of your decades. We levelled and abandoned our outpost, but part of our garden regrew. When you humans saw them, the name ‘Plutochrome’ arose.”
Gia leans in.
“So we’re using the wrong name. It came from your homeworld. What do you call it there?”
Natan coughs a quiet, surprised squawk.
“We have names for every variety, which are distinguished by cap colour and aroma. Unfortunately, the diversity of both fall outside human perceptive ranges. What I got permission to print-revive is a second-year growth Sholtri.”
The three of us watch it take shape. Once complete, a burgundy cap looks like heavy curtains have been cut to size and thrown over the top of a metre-tall stretch of reflective purple-grey stalk. Metallic shades shimmer in the unvarying light.
“That’s beautiful.” Gia breathes.
Natan dons a curious mask that covers both beak and proboscis-horn.
“One breath of the spores would turn you into a small crop of Sholtri within a week. Best leave now. I need to get this into a drop canister before it can sporulate.”
Gia nudges me as we leave.
“Do you think we’ll ever be able to print intelligent beings?”
“I’ve no doubt we would if we could, but the seat of consciousness is proving to be a difficult thing to locate. Besides, some plants exhibit advanced behaviours. Maybe we’re doing it already, but don’t know it?”
She looks startled.
“Hadn’t thought of that.”
by submission | Oct 23, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Kuiper-23917 tumbled lazily alongside the Ada Swann.
The conglomeration of dirty ice was on the small side, and worse, the market price was at an all-time low. When Perry was last on Vesta, folk were saying the Ice Rush was over.
She still had one throwaway booster left. Sensors scanned the stars for a fix, and software fired thrusters to keep the ice on track as it fell sunwards. All she needed was a buyer to collect six months from now.
Comms traffic was sparse out here, but there was that voice again, fading in and out. She fiddled with the settings.
“.… nav failed and life support went sour a week ago. Repeat. Wolf Moon calling Ada Swann…”
Perry looked up Wolf Moon. It was an old Lunar Industries craft. Crew of two. Ceres registry. L. Chekov, owner.
His voice was tinny over the speaker. Name was Lev, he explaind. His brother Yuri wasn’t doing too well.
“You got space for us?” he ventured.
The Ada Swan was a roomy six-berth. “There’s just Ada and me,” Perry answered after a pause.
Lev and Yuri exchanged looks. Had she been alone it would have been easy to surprise her.
“She’s running solo,” Yuri insisted.
“Ship’s named Ada. She’s just being cute.”
Lev shook his head at his brother..
“What if you’re wrong, and this Ada sends out a broadcast? No, we get aboard and wait our chance, right?”
“Alright,” muttered his brother.
“And why don’t we use that stupid gun of yours?”
Yuri said nothing.
“Because it needs to look like an accident. We want a nice legal salvage claim.” He glanced around at his ship. “There’s no future in this now.”
“Been having trouble with my main lock,” Perry radioed when the Wolf Moon drew close. “But I’ll open the hanger door.”
When the Ada Swann was shiny new, it boasted a runabout kept in a hanger off Engineering.
Lev pictured the Spacer meeting them. If she wasn’t in a suit, they’d just bundle her out the air lock and make it look like a faulty suit afterwards.
They were waiting for the hanger to repressurise when there was a thump from the hatch into Engineering.
“Sorry,” said Perry. “But that’s you locked in. You get cautious when you fly solo.” She didn’t sound sorry.
“See,” hissed Yuri.
“Just sit tight while I check out your story.”
Yuri began banging on the hatch.
Lev shrugged inside his suit. “She’ll have to let us go sometime, and later it’ll just be her word against ours.”
Wolf Moon smelled funny, and was grubbier and more cramped than Perry was used to, but life support was fine and every control panel was green. She’d felt there was something off about these two.
“Opening the hanger door now,” Perry said.
“There’s been a misunderstanding—” began Lev smoothly.
“Get back to your ship before I light up my drive.”
Lev grinned ruefully to himself. Some you win…
“See the throwaway booster?” said Perry, once the brothers had launched themselves back towards their ship.
She’d fixed her last booster to Wolf Moon, programmed to nudge the ship towards a rendezvous with Ceres in five months’ time.
“Best leave it alone,” she advised. “I took some of your motherboards, so that’s the only drive you’ve got that works now.”
She told them they’d get the chance to turn themselves in before she contacted Ceres Law. Then she switched off comms. No call for language like that.
It looked like she wouldn’t break even this trip either. There was no profit being honest these days.
by submission | Oct 22, 2022 | Story |
Author: Lori D’Angelo
The problem with the time machine wasn’t the motor, as I had first suspected. The problem was the inhabitant.
John, in his infinite wisdom or infinite stupidity depending on how you regarded it, had made it so that the machine would only work for Laurel. However, John hadn’t foreseen that Laurel would be pregnant at the time of his death. How could he have? I mean he wasn’t a mind reader. Though he had foreseen the probability of his death, he hadn’t foreseen the possibility of his wife’s pregnancy.
But the issue of Laurel’s pregnancy was complicated. John had knowledge, medical knowledge, that had proved to be, well, mistaken. And you can’t factor in variables that aren’t even on the table at the time you go to make the calculations.
I was trying to figure out how to break the news to Laurel. I settled on a metaphor. Laurel was in the hospital for monitoring. The shooting, John’s death, had given her quite a shock. It wasn’t something that she had foreseen. Laurel was resting when I entered. The hallways were quiet. She was in the nicest, newest part of the hospital. John was, had been, a major donor. She didn’t open her eyes. But, like John, she had a sense for things.
“Luther,” she said, “any news?”
“Laurel, do you know the gameshow, Deal or No Deal?
“I’m not in the mood to play games.”
“Just humor me, please.”
“Luther, I’m so tired.”
I poured her some water out of the pink pitcher by her bed. “If you could see John again, would you, even if it meant risking everything?”
“Deal or no deal?” she asked, finally understanding.
I nodded.
Her face was pale, her eyes were red, but a light came into them that had been absent before.
“I’d do anything,” she said, “to see John.”
“Okay, then,” I said, “come with me.”
“I’ve got all these monitors,” she said, pointing to the pulse oximeter, the heart monitor, the sensor measuring her respiratory rate.
“We’ll silence them,” I said, “but we’ll have to hurry. I brought you clothes.”
I handed them to her. “You can put them on once you’re inside. When we get to the machine, the doors will lock. I can’t go with you.”
Laurel nodded. I thought she would have more questions. But, like John, sometimes she operated on pure intuition.
“The world doesn’t make sense without John,” she said. “Tell me what I need to know.”
I told her about the elevator down the hall, which wasn’t really an elevator, but a machine to take her back in time. “It will only work for you.”
It was maddening sometimes how much they trusted each other, and each other alone. But then why had he told me and not her about the machine?
She understood before I did, and she smiled. “He didn’t want me to worry in case his death never came to pass.”
“He didn’t know you were pregnant when he built it. So we don’t know how,” I began.
“Luther,” said Laurel, her nerves now steely, “it’s okay. I’ll go back in time and save him, so he can see his child grow up.”
“You will?” I said, for her utter confidence astounded me.
“This is one game that I will not lose,” she said. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to match her confidence with my own. “Go save your husband.”
by submission | Oct 21, 2022 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood everywhere!
It’s okay, it’s not mine. Breathe. Just breathe.
Slow it all down. Don’t look at Jones, or the others. Don’t look.
The explosion, I’ll bet it was that problem with the gas supply that we reported. Those useless idiots in Maintenance, always too busy stuffing their faces to do anything helpful!
Never mind. Work the problem. The virus is in the air now. The laboratory is sealed, so I can’t get out. Help will be coming, but I don’t know when.
I count six dead bodies around me. Jones, the two lab techs, the intern whose name I can’t remember, Jo, Daisy. Oh, Daisy, I just had coffee in the cafeteria with you an hour ago. You were busy bitching about how selfish your boyfriend was, how he never showed you any affection. I just wanted to slap some sense into you and now…no, work the damn problem Jean, you can do this. Think! The virus only works on necrotic tissue. Thirty minutes from mortality till reanimation.
How long was I unconscious? It can’t have been long. I think it was just a minute or two, let’s say five minutes. So, twenty-five minutes until those six corpses get up again and start looking for protein to sustain the viral reaction going on inside their bodies. I won’t last a minute!
Did Jones’ hand just move? No, no, no, too soon. Relax. Work the problem.
So, the lab will have sealed automatically. The doors and windows are bio-level four secure, so it would take a rocket-launcher to even scratch them. There’s rubble over there where the blast came from, but there’s no way I could shift that without a JCB. So, I can’t get out of the lab myself. If someone from security finally deigns to show their face then they can open the doors, but otherwise I’m stuck. Bugger!
So, the virus. Developed to reanimate dead soldiers on the battlefield, so that they can continue to attack the enemy after death. There was going to be a method that would allow them to distinguish friend from foe, but that was stage three, which we haven’t got around to yet. So, at the moment they will just attack anybody and everybody. Brilliant!
But, the bodies. If I dismember them, they can’t move and won’t be able to get me. Yes! That’s it! All I’ve to do is chop off the arms and legs of my co-workers and everything will be fine! Ha! Wonder how that’ll look on my next performance review!
What can I use, what can I use? Six people, four limbs each, that’s twenty-four limbs. I have less than twenty-five minutes till reanimation, so that’s a limb per minute. I’ll need something heavy-duty to cut through bone. Come on, there must be something here!
“Attention!”
The tannoy! Are they trying to give me a heart attack?
“Due to a containment breach, Pompeii protocol will be enacted in sixty seconds.”
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Pompeii protocol! They can’t be serious. Napalm the whole level! Don’t they know I’m still down here? They can’t! They can’t!
Ah bugger. Daisy’s moving! I thought I was only unconscious for five minutes, but it must have been more. So, in the next sixty seconds I’m either going to be torn apart by ravenous zombies (Oh, they’re all moving now) or I’m going to be burned alive in a napalm firestorm.
Heh, my horoscope was right.
Work is going to be challenging this week!
by submission | Oct 20, 2022 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
We were fifty light years beyond Tau Ceti when the screaming started. The sound came up from the open hatch at the back of the flight deck, and if I hadn’t been strapped in my head would have hit the ceiling. It was inhuman, a wailing that rose to a shriek as if there was a banshee in this old bucket with us – which should have been impossible, but this far out, who knew?
In the sensies, another ship would appear in the nick of time, its gorgeous captain floating over in person to deal with our sudden emergency… but believing in fantasies like that is for fools and dead men. The glossy travel mags never mention it, and the recruiters who dig up the crews for gas haulers like ours brush it aside, but the most terrifying thing about space is its sheer scale. Even the great miles-long pleasure cruisers are infinitesimal in the vastness of the Void. How many ships drift alone out here, never to be found in the cold blackness? How many mutinies and desperate acts of heroism have gone unnoticed and unknown in the immense depths of space?
Whatever was happening here, we would have to deal with it alone.
I tried raising Madison, our other notional officer, but there was no reply. The captain and I looked at each other, and she jerked her head at the bulkhead. I nodded. She couldn’t leave the bridge – trouble loves company, and Murphy would make sure something else went horribly wrong if she did. Plus, someone had to be here to answer the hailer if a gallant hero did defy the odds to swing by.
I unbuckled, and took the pistol from the bracket on the wall. Yeah, I know, use only in case of piracy – but something weird was going on, and I wasn’t about to take chances. Out here, you make your own luck.
I popped down the hatchway, and floated along the passageway beneath. We’re not like those fancy liners, we don’t have power to waste on maintaining gravity all the time – something else the sensies don’t tell you. The screeching was getting louder as I made my way aft, and I fancied there were words in it; or baby talk. But there were no kids aboard. I could see smears of what might have been blood on the walls. This didn’t look good at all.
I rounded the corner to the drive control room, and I could instantly see why Maddie hadn’t answered: she was huddled around our other crew member, Ali, the ship’s cat, as she struggled loudly to bring new kittens into the zero gee.
“Here,” I said, putting up the gun. “Let me help.” New lives in the enormous emptiness, and a whole new challenge.
by submission | Oct 19, 2022 | Story |
Author: Bryant Benson
Timothy sat in a brightly lit, featureless room. Across from him was a woman with thick glasses and a tight bun. She was as institutional as the room and had yet to look up from her clipboard. After an agonizing amount of time passed, she clicked her pen closed and spoke.
“Timothy, how long have you known Margaret?”
Timothy bolted awake and replied with a smile.
“Oh, we’ve been friends as far back as I can remember. Yes, we’re…well, we were quite close.”
His tone dropped as his smile dissipated.
“Friends? Close?” The woman glanced up at Timothy for the first time and raised an eyebrow.
“It’s okay. We expect you to care. That attention to detail is why we’re the best in the business.” She continued, without feeling, “So you do understand that Margaret is no longer with us?”
Timothy looked down at his fidgeting hands and breathed, “Yes.”
The woman clicked her pen open and scribbled on her clipboard before speaking again, “Now tell me Timothy, do you miss her?”
Timothy closed his eyes and thought back to Margaret’s fragile skin that would break often. He would tend to her tiny wounds while she told him of the concert halls her hands would fill when they were once capable of playing the piano. He remembered that she was afraid of thunder and would lay her graying head on his shoulder on rainy nights until she would fall asleep. He would stay there all night, wondering how it would feel to sleep like her.
He knew what he had to say. Timothy opened his eyes and replied, “No.”
She proceeded, “Excellent, we will have a new assignment for you tomorrow morning.”
She stood up and turned toward the door.
“Wait,” Timothy stammered, “So soon?”
She turned toward him with a perplexed look and spoke sternly, “Well yes, I didn’t think the time would be so relevant.”
Timothy hung his head and stared at his reflection in the cold metal table. The woman slid back into her chair and leaned forward.
Quietly, she asked, “Are you…sad?”
He nodded in agreement.
She glanced back at the large mirror behind her and raised one finger.
In the most sincere sounding voice she could muster, the woman asked, “Why are you sad Timothy?”
Timothy’s voice cracked as he spoke, “I loved her.”
The woman inhaled as she placed her hand on Timothy’s and whispered, “I know you did.”
The interviewer nodded toward the mirror. She let go of his hand, stood up, and walked out. Before the door closed behind her it was pushed open by three figures in bulky yellow hazmat suits. They grabbed Timothy as if they were simply moving furniture.
Timothy returned to his memories of Margaret. He saw her smile as she danced in her living quarters back when her legs still worked. She was all he ever wanted to care about.
He accepted his fate and was escorted out of the interview room. He was led into a much larger room with a massive exam table. Timothy was docile and silent as a long cylinder was driven through the base of his skull. His lifeless body was shoved into a chute where it landed atop a pile of other underperforming drones.
In the days that followed, his synthetic skin was melted down to be recycled as a cost saving measure. The device that pumped circulatory fluid through his veins was disassembled to be refurbished. His brain was incinerated along with whatever belongings Margaret left behind that went unclaimed by her surviving family.
