by submission | Apr 9, 2022 | Story |
Author: Connor Milligan
Reece Elliot rushed into his manager’s office, Tim Woods with the last printout that the pre-Dic machine will print. The print said “The situation in the future is unprintable. The exit door has now closed.” Reece handed over the sheet to Tim. Reece explained to him what it said. They both had a look of confusion, but disbelief also. They both knew the trouble this will cause, and how much will have to go into finding out why.
Reece and Tim now stood in front of the big, green machine. With its enormous size, the Pre – Dic machine had huge circler buttons, and cogs that were always working. But now nothing was working. There was no sound emitting from it anymore. Reece turned and looked at Tim, ‘What will we do now?’ looking down at the piece of paper, Tim said ‘We have to get Roy here now’
Roy Logan had been in a re-education camp for 5 years. He was sent there because his government saw him as a social threat. Spreading secrets, and information on new technologies such as the Pre- Dic machine.
He now sits on his bed in his cell. The blue walls have lost their sense to him. His room felt smaller by the day. Roy thought he will never get out of this hell of a place. Roy was holding a book Called In Side Gods Mind. Suddenly a guard came to his door and ordered him to stand. The guard lets Roy know that he is being released on a day release for a certain project.
Outside, the prison Roy takes in a deep breath of fresh air. Taking in the moment, he still did not know what he had to do. Were there guards playing a game with him? A second later, a brown car was waiting. The horn beeped. Roy did not care because he liked the sound. After all, it felt known to him. Walking up with curious steps, he approached the drivers’ window. With a sure glance, he could not believe his eyes. ‘No! Whatever it is, I am not doing it.’ said Roy. Tim rolled down the window, and said ‘ We need you on this.’ Roy starts to walk back to the prison not bothering to listen to Tim. Roy starts to bang on the prison door, yelling for them to let them back in. Tim then shouts, ‘It’s the Pre Dic Machine’. On hearing this, Roy turns around.
In the car, Roy asks for a cigarette. Tim hands him over one. ‘You never truly understood me, did you?’ Roy asks Tim. ‘People say you are a man before his time.’ Replied Tim. Rolling down his window to blow out the smoke, Roy says, ‘Just like the Pre – Dic Machine’
Tim shows Roy into the room where the Pre – Dic Machine is. One look at this machine, Roy has many questions but takes a moment to be in ore of the machine. He turns to Tim who is now standing with Reece in the room. He asks what was the last note it had printed. Reece hands over the note to Roy.’How do we not know that the message has not been intercepted and changed by someone else?’ asks Roy. ‘We have been using this Machine for nearly seven years now. Everything it has printed has been right, or close to.’ Roy re-reads the message again.’ When you say “We” does that mean the government?’ Both Time and Reece look at each other. ‘I will take this as a yes then, If this machine can print out from here, but the messages are from the future, we don’t know who is sending them. It could be the Russians, Chinese, or even some other life form.’ Tim has a perplexed look on his face. He did not take into account that the messages could be from an enemy, trying to trick them. ‘So what do we do now?’ said Tim. ‘You have to hope that it starts to print more and whoever is sending them is on your side.’ replied Roy. ‘We will have to wait for now.’ Roy turns and starts to head for the exit door. ‘Wait! where are you going?’ says Reece.
From the closing exit door, Roy says’ To the future’ he leaves them with a wave.
by submission | Apr 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The speed at which Michiko’s roboto folded the origami crane was breathtaking. She would have her thousand orizuru in mere minutes and then her prayer must be answered. She knelt on the tatami resting her weary arms delicately on the edge of the kotatsu as the low table began to fill with the multi-colored cranes. With pride and relief, Michiko watched her roboto’s sleek beryllium digits deftly fold, crease and fan each paper square into an ancient symbol of hope—her only hope.
She’d already died once and was near death again. The cancer that gnawed at her bones would not be put off again. Men and medicine had saved her before, but it turned out to be only a two-year respite. Her fellow beings had tried and now could offer no salvation, so she turned to her own deus ex machina. Machinations of the divine.
Roboto.
An orphan and solitary being for thirty-six years, Michiko had almost refused the medidroid prescribed for her cancer care. At first, the droid’s presence in her flat, her refuge, had unnerved her. But she had no one and she could not care for herself.
Roboto did. It shopped, cooked, cleaned, obeying her silently after she had disabled its vocal features. Day after day in silent communion, roboto helped medicate, feed, bathe and dress her. Michiko had been grudging, then hesitant, then surprisingly curious, and one morning after a night of tortured dreams and anguish, she’d awakened with a strange sense of comfort, of peace, her wizened fingers clasping roboto’s cool digits.
Michiko began to use the honorific robot-sama when addressing her companion. When her condition allowed, she would walk among the cherry trees in Nishi Koen with roboto at her side. She began to play the shamisen again. She had always spoken sparingly and that did not change, but she spoke gently to roboto when asking for help. She simply lived. At one point with her strength regaining, she dared to dream of freedom, and yet the heaviness returned, deep in her marrow. She knew. Men and medicine soon knew.
She wondered if roboto knew.
Weaker every day, Michiko mourned for herself. It was a new feeling. Though a solitary being, she was not the self-pitying sort. Yet, as she watched roboto care for her, she realized that she would miss the steadfastness, the complete presence, of her companion.
And so she began to pray. Why not call upon a greatness of spirit, something beyond her kind? A thousand cranes, the most perfect prayer. But she could not manage the delicate work. Roboto. It took the rest of her waning strength to teach the technique, but roboto soon mastered it.
Now, minutes from completion, she knelt revelling in the necessity of being.
Roboto finished folding the thousandth crane and began to link them into one long chain. Michiko, now supine on the tatami, reached out, one hand close enough to touch roboto, but not touching. Through a gathering dizziness, she whispered aloud her last thought, “What would you say to me, roboto-sama? What would you say?”
Roboto, as ever, gave immediate presence to her voice, though unfamiliar with the mortally soft inflection of the query. The anticipation of a thousand cranes ready to soar stilled the room.
“I am Michiko,” roboto answered, releasing the delicate creatures of its creation and reaching, naturally, for the shamisen.
by submission | Apr 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Andrew A Dunn
1. Check your ticket.
The starfish-shaped station is large. Yes, there are maps to help navigate faux marble floors and moving sidewalks to find your departure gate. Once you find it, check signs from time to time to make sure your gate hasn’t changed. Tickets tend to be non-refundable. If you miss your trip what else is there for you to do for two months almost off the grid – spend them at Aunt Harriet’s in Willoughby Cove?
2. The store on the right sells…
After checking your ticket for the umpteenth time, think about the standard issue garments the travel company sent. Outer clothing – survival suits, coveralls, diving attire – only comes from the travel company. Undersuits are different. Those gray one piece outfits that stretched on tight from neck to ankles felt thin and scratchy when you tried them on, right? You’re in luck!
The store on the right in the station’s main hall sells designer undersuits.
See what they’ve got in your size. You’ll find they offer a variety of colors and patterns. Designer undersuits are more than comfy, they’re warmer than standard issue too. While you’re at it pick up snacks, a book, or kitschy souvenirs to send relatives.
3. Look at the sky.
At around 200 meters underwater, sunlight will cease to be part of your world. Skylights in the station offer nice views of a sky you won’t see for sixty days, but there’s an even better place to make a memory.
Outside the store and around a corner, you’ll find nondescript stairs that lead to a plexiglass-domed lounge. Plush couches and a nautically-themed bar offer an excellent spot to savor an uninterrupted view of the sky before boarding call.
4. Try not to back out.
Second thoughts are common. Two months on the ocean floor sounded like the change you needed after the break up or whatever disillusionment placed you in front of a laptop in the wee hours pricing exotic travel packages. What seemed like a great idea then might not anymore.
The prospect of wearing coveralls over undersuits every day, in chilled corridors bathed in soft light, comes to mind. So does your stateroom with its skylight over your bunk – it looks upward into bathyal zone darkness, and creatures whose anatomies have adapted in wondrous if sometimes monstrous ways to survive at that depth in darkness.
You won’t be bored though. Communal gardening will take up a few hours each day. Other hours you’ll…well anyway, maybe there will be interesting people to meet and activities beyond gardening and watching the deep sea world through plexiglass to keep your mind off the creaking and popping.
Outposts creak and pop because, like videos say, aquatic pressure causes the outer hull to buckle like a soda can. But don’t worry – outposts are safe!
It’s best to forget second thoughts and board the submersible. The alternative? Aunt Harriet’s.
Back out and Aunt Harriet will scrutinize what you wear and insist you help her ready her garden for spring. That means hours spent outside her cold cottage – she refuses to use her furnace unless its below freezing. But there is also a chance the neighbor kid will come home to Willoughby Cove to visit while you’re there. That means a shot at conversation and maybe more to keep your mind off whatever led you to spend two months almost off the grid.
Board the submersible, or catch a bus to Willoughby Cove?
5. Choose wisely.
by submission | Apr 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Adam Three Horses shuffled past an unmarked drab gray metal door into a cold sparse room filled with file cabinets and a single, elongated metal desk with one laptop in front of a squinting goat-faced military officer bearing colorful astronaut patches on his chest. Captain Yagar didn’t look up as he opened a fresh manila folder from a leaning pile marked Top Secret.
“You Three Horses?” Yagar asked in an emotionless drone.
“Hmm. My people don’t like to be called by our last names. Adam will do.” Adam stood feet apart, staying away from the metal folding chair positioned across from Yagar.
“Don’t give a shit. Your people aren’t here. This is Space Corps. I’m Captain Yagar. I’ll call you pony poop if I want. Now sit your ass down!” Yagar looked up, bristling, still squinting with jowls tightened. Adam quietly complied, remembering his maltreatment after being kidnapped in a rendition from his reservation home at night by Homeland Security thugs.
“You got down the entire hall in one piece. Huh. It’s amazingly quiet out there for a change. None of the others made it past two cages.”
“What cages,” Adam asked, perplexed. He saw no animals or bars.
“Every one of those ten rooms holds a person barely human by my count, filled with rage, madness, and horrible intent. They’re too violent to serve in the Corps or to ever be let out. You don’t seem worse for the exposure. Your predecessors all needed special care.”
“Was this some sort of test? You know I’m not part of your silly space travel. You don’t let Indigenous Natives serve…right?”
“Correct. You’re from your own independent nation in South Dakota so we can’t draft you, but we can still sequester anyone on U.S. soil who has special talents for our programs. Says here you’re a heyoka empath. Haven’t had one before. First one of your kind in here. Maybe that explains the hallway.” Yagar continued staring down while studying Adam’s dossier.
“I never called myself that. None of The People do. I get it. I’m just another redskin to do your bidding. You take our words just as you steal everything else from us, even our sacred ceremonies. You know nothing. You want everything, no matter the cost.”
“Sorry, chief. I’m not here for a philosophy lesson. I’m head of intelligence. Says here as a child you always wanted to travel to other worlds. We might have an offer for you. We’re working on the 369 Protocol, named after Nicola Tesla. Ever hear of him?”
“I’m not an idiot,” Adam snapped.
“We’ll see. We can’t send new enlarged transport craft into deep space for mining operations if we store more than 369 new recruits aboard. They freak out en masse—shrinks call it group cogenesis. We need shock absorbers…empaths to quiet three thousand we send at once.”
“Not recruits, Yagar. Those are inmate slaves. No one volunteers for space mining. You whites never learn.”
“Point taken, but you’ll go and you’ll keep them sane enough to mine for us after they catch the vacuum willies. We need that shit off 16 Psyche near Mars before the Chinks get it.”
Adam leaned forward. “Captain, heyókȟa means standing water…a mirror. We reflect” He touched Yagar’s right hand, watching him scream, as all the hallway madness transferred from Adam, now requiring Yagar’s special care later after Adam walked unimpeded from the base, protected by the Wakíŋyaŋ—Thunder Spirits— in saucers overhead, ready to continue Adam’s travels to other sacred beings on nearby planets and moons.
by submission | Apr 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
It’s time I let you in on my secret, doctor. You deserve to know, because you made me what I am.
After all, you were there when I was de-tubed; it was you that called me Jane, though it was years before I found out that my surname was Doe. Of all the newborns in the nursery, you chose me to be your model, your canvas, your masterpiece. I will never forget that.
Like any artist, you tinkered for years in pursuit of your ideal. There were growth accelerators, drugs to make my bones stronger, changes to make my reflexes faster, a chipset in my brain, a thousand body mods, minor and major upgrades along the way.
Sometimes, your surgeons removed an ability I’d thought was innate; I can’t twitch my nose like Samantha and pretend I’m Tabitha any more. And I only dreamed when you sent messages to my subconscious; no relief in fantasies, but no nightmares beyond what happened in the daytime.
Other blessings were mixed. I remember that when they replaced my eyes I couldn’t even cry, because they’d taken the tear ducts too. But I see more colours now, and my peripheral vision is extraordinary.
You gave me an education and an exhaustive, intricate knowledge of the Megacity. I’m an expert in biology, physics, motion and dynamics. Your staff showed me how to evade society’s ubiquitous watchers, using makeup and prosthetics to avoid facial recognition, and dressing to fit in. “Plain Jane,” you said, never allowing me to be pretty in case I stood out in a crowd.
You provided expert tutors in physical fitness, self defence and use of weapons for me to test myself against; I bettered them, becoming proud of my body and what it can do.
Of course, you also taught me to kill. Insects first, the images sent into my sleeping mind to be made real the following day. Later small rodents, gassed and crushed and cut up as training progressed. After that, we moved on to cats and dogs, then when I was older, monkeys in cages. Ultimately, people in cages too; I remember how you called them “dregs”, and made sure I had no respect for them. They were my inferiors.
Now I remove the people that come into my dreams. Last week it was the woman in the park, the needles under my nails scratching her as she jogged past, the neurotoxin taking her down. A fortnight ago it was the banker and his entourage, a flechette gun turning a bar into a charnel house. Before that, a journalist in a café. And so on, back through the years.
I don’t even know who you work for – the government, a corporation, freelance. Someone watches my targets, so my dreams can tell me where to find them, but who, or why, I have no idea. I understand: I can’t tell anyone what I don’t know. And of course, I’m a deniable weapon: even under truth drugs you could say that nobody ever gave me instructions.
But now we come to it; recently, I’ve started dreaming for myself. Flowers, vistas, visions of things I’ve only seen on screens, and which I know you’d never allow me. I never expected anything, was never encouraged to imagine, but now I can.
Telling you this is a weight off my shoulders. I know what’s going to happen next. Your blue eyes have already turned thoughtful, like they always do for the unpredicted, but this time it’s too late; you see, doctor, last night, I dreamed about you.
by Julian Miles | Apr 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Dawn breaks as we head uphill, the path laid on top of the trench that covers the power cables. Passing through the bulwark, the noise of the chillers drowns out all natural sounds.
Patrick gestures to the viewport. I pull the lever that works the wipers. We peer through.
The valley below is covered in snow, dead trees sticking through the drifts. At the cliff end, great doors can be seen above the remains of the old landslide that obstructed them. I can feel the cold through the transparent pane.
I look to Patrick.
“Don’t they suspect?”
He nods.
“I’d be a fool if I thought there aren’t people in there asking questions. But, so far, we’ve detected no activity that indicates attempts to open the doors or to tunnel out.”
“It’s been twenty-eight years. How long before their predictive models disagree with what we’re showing them?”
“Most were in the forty-year range. Many of the counter-arguments would’ve fallen by the wayside when ‘Nuclear Summer’ or similar changes hadn’t occurred after five years. As for what they’re thinking now, nobody out here knows.”
I step back and take a seat. These duties might be tedious, but everyone agrees they’re essential.
“Patrick, how many bunkers are there?”
“Thirty-five remain under management. The Integration Commission decides if and when they will be approached. Sadly, the six major ones will never be breached. Those inside are considered irredeemable.”
“What about others?”
“We’ve brought seventeen back into the world. Most were astonished at the subterfuge, but on seeing the result have agreed to participate.”
“Most? What happened to those who disagreed?”
Patrick frowns.
“We offered them a chance to transfer to one of the isolationist communities. There are three bunkers that contain voluntary withdrawals: those in Kentucky and Siberia are full. The latest, and biggest, is in the Taklamakan Desert.”
“Weren’t there some disturbances?”
“Yes. Texas and England. In both cases, lethal force was used. A lot of us aren’t happy about that. The next time we’ve resolved to do better.”
“Will the isolationists ever be released?”
“I suspect a couple of generations will be needed before negotiations can start.”
“What about nukes?”
Patrick grins.
“Full of questions this morning, aren’t you? The last unsealed stockpile is somewhere in what was Wyoming. I’m told research is ‘ongoing’. I’m also told that research may have to be forcibly stopped. Old greeds are surfacing.”
“Warminds? Nationalism?”
“Many people still remember how it was. Most don’t care. A few do, and some care too much. The switching out of nuclear warheads was a clandestine international initiative, the start of the nationless world. When the warminds pressed the buttons, enough first wave tactical nukes remained to drive them underground, convinced that ushering in the end of the world to stop people from thinking differently was reasonable. Luckily, all the strategic warheads fired had been swapped to conventional explosives. They made a mess, but nothing toxic.”
“That’s when United World stepped in and set up the cold zones about each bunker?”
“They didn’t openly declare themselves until the bunkers were secure, and after the hold-outs had been dealt with, but yes.”
I look at the man I chose to be my father figure. His eyes have narrowed.
“You’re not convinced United World is the solution, are you?”
Patrick smiles.
“There are signs of totalitarianism within the hierarchy. Too many older folk with lying smiles. I want to start something to set things right. Work out how to stop history repeating itself.”
“Not I. ‘We’.”
He smiles, then nods.
“Alright, then. Welcome to the beginning of a fresh start.”
