The End of the Hourglass

Author: Adrianna Voss

A series of flashes.
An orange marmalade disc cut into her forehead and wrists as she witnessed herself unfold. Her sugar eyes poured as Saskia reached into the surreal. Danced to music no one could hear, with someone who wasn’t there.
The Indivisible agents tilted while watching the blue lines materialize. Her slender silhouette came into the picture tiptoeing from one line to another as a shadow emerged like a halo around her.
Aloy adjusted his video display glasses and the scene dwindled. He disconnected for a reboot, blinked, and saw a flash. She put her arms up and melted in between the lines. The rutty surface made waves as she bobbled falling over an edge of something not far off but far in.
He pulled his glasses gently from his face and held them out, stunned. Saskia dangled her forming legs off the brim. She was the size of a fingernail and caught the light like a gemstone.
“I’m a visual illusion now. But I’m everywhere you are. It seems like we are far apart, but the surface is the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“I live on a planet that exists within the universal you; an immortal verse. The assumption that the universe is on the outside is false. The Elixirs know the truth.”
“So you were born inside me?”
“Sort of. We all switch bodies and planet projections often…The last time we met, you were Zanora and lived on planet Red Wing.”
“I’ve never heard of that place.”
“No one on the outside has, it is in the thoughts of beings that inhabit parts of the Vega constellation. You volunteered for an unconscious mission while incarnated there and fell into a loophole that left part of your soul drifting causing you to live simultaneous lives.”
Aloy shook his head with skepticism.
“The reason you can see me now is that your higher self brought me out when your memory aligned with the Indivisible stream. So I was able to come into a form that you would recognize.
Aloy shifted his feet creating static electricity. He looked out the window at the solitary star dangling like an earring in blank space.
Saskia jumped into his eyes like dust. He looked around as if he were a part of us watching and felt a deep pain in his chest.
“You can come with me. But you must think of yourself as a speck within time, within space that becomes no space. Everything you see on the outside is really happening inside. Visualize the blue light of a flame. The center is real. Feel the heat that doesn’t burn.
He warmed himself up visualizing molten lava. A marmalade disk cut into his forehead and wrists. In the background, he heard, “We’ve got another one.”
Sugar started pouring from his eyes as he disintegrated into tiny granules. He couldn’t move. He had become part of an eversion. He screamed and reached for Saskia but she too had become hardened granules. But he sensed her presence; heard her whispering.
“We will transform at the end of the hourglass. We only have to be compounds for a while before we turn into Elixirs. We are not fixed, but in perpetual motion; without renewal, nothing exists.”

Transmission From The Stars

Author: Alexandru Lamba

Do you enjoy our broadcast?
You watch it narrowly, so we are entitled to believe you do. But do you still know who we are? Unfair of us to ask. For we no longer know who you are. Once, your great-grandparents called us the wayfarers, the pioneers, the paradigm overturners. And we called them the settled ones.
We were humanity’s first deviation. Our nature was adapted through the profound transformation that conceived a new specie. We were to be no less human than you, who watch this show from the comfort of the Livingroom, no less machine than the computer managing the gadgets in your home. Like the receiver decoding this show.
But what is it that makes humanity, really? Can you call the electric current circling our tiny silicon circuits a conscience, not unlike your own?
Your elders thought so.
Incarnating chips of metal and shards of glass, propelled by the sunlight focused in our butterfly-wing-sails, we were the ones to take mankind’s dream of reaching the stars upon ourselves.
We all faced the same choice, generations ago, and each of us sacrificed something. Giving up limbs could only take one as far as to the giants and their moons. To reach the stars, biological organisms had to be discarded entirely. We accepted the deal; your ancestors kept their bodies, giving up the stars. But, while we were yet to learn the true scale of our disbursement, their relinquishment was merely a half measure. For though they would not live long enough, you, their offspring, would still see the celestial bodies. Through our tiny artificial eyes.
We are sorry for this interruption of our regular program.
Do not hate us for what we are about to do. Please do not render it as an act of retribution. Undressed of flesh, we no longer know vengeance or hatred. Take it as a gift. We offer you the choice you lost with our departure.
This message is the last you’ll hear from us. We end transmission now. From your perspective, the signal was discontinued half a century ago. So, there’s nothing you can do.
If you want to see the stars, embrace our becoming yourselves. And follow us.
Or stay. And truly surrender the dream of space. For in this choice lies your humanity.

I’m the Bomb!

Author: Barry Boone

“We’re not going to make it.”

This from Damian. Always worrying. Which is what humans do best. Unfortunately, in this case, he was right: our ship couldn’t outrun the aliens.

“How long til entry?” he asked, his voice tight.

“Fifty-two seconds,” I said. I used my Star Trek computer voice. Which I knew bugged him. One of my pastimes.

“How long til intercept?” he asked, ignoring the provocation. So — he really was frightened.

“Fifty seconds,” I said.

“I blame you,” Damian said.

I winked, but he didn’t see. He was staring at the heads-up display showing their green line intersecting our blue squiggle just outside the wormhole’s throbbing purple torus.

“You should’ve fired the torpedoes sooner,” I said, switching to my annoyed Harrison Ford voice.

“You should have told me to.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but my programming censored my reply at the last moment, tagging it as “Unhelpful.”

“If we had one more,” I said, “we could’ve fired it for a boost and made it out. Probably. Newton’s Third Law and all.”

“Well, we don’t have one more,” Damian said, “thanks to someone telling me to FIRE ALL THREE!”

“It was the right call, in the moment,” I said. “They’d have blown us up back there.”

“Great. So we delayed death ten minutes. Good job, robot.”

I wondered: what had as much mass as a torpedo? Hmm… I unstrapped myself from the co-pilot’s seat.

“Where’re you going?”

“To see if there’s a fourth somewhere.”

“Wow, does that ever smell like desperation.”

Of course there wasn’t a fourth torpedo. Sure, sometimes I struggled with rounding errors, such as when I was calculating tricky relativistic effects. But I can proudly say that counting from three down to zero was something of a specialty.

Still, I knew what I had to do. I’d meant to do it quietly, but my metal exoskeleton could be difficult to fold into small spaces.

“Don’t tell me you found one,” Damian said, hearing all the banging.

“I did,” I said.

He turned around in his seat and did a double take.

“Get the hell out of there!”

“If I don’t launch myself,” I said, “we’ll both die.”

“I’m ordering you…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said (C3PO voice). “I’m just a robot.”

“Don’t,” he said. “I’ll… I’ll miss you too much.”

“Sure, I’m amazing. The best. Also, I think you’ll get the boost you need.”

“They’ll capture you.”

“Not to worry,” I said cheerfully. “I already initiated self-destruct.”

“You WHAT?”

“Do me a favor. Play a game of computer chess when you get back. For old times’ sake.”

“I hate you,” he said.

“I hate you more,” I said.

I shot into space, and wow, what a ride!

Andromeda was a fairy-tale pinwheel. The alien ship looked big, even in the vastness. Its tentacles reached for me like a moon-sized squid. My sensors registered 3-degrees Kelvin — a tad chilly, so I dialed down all inputs. Anyway, less feeling would be good when I exploded.

9… 8… 7…

I know Damian. He’s a sentimental sap. He’ll play chess, just like I told him to.

The entertainment value will be lousy, so he’ll investigate, find something unlabeled taking up memory reserved for the gaming system.

6… 5… 4…

Turns out, a copy of me takes up a lot of yottabytes. He’s not getting rid of me that easily.

Damian’s ship wavered in the blurry edge of the wormhole, then vanished like a mirage. The aliens veered away.

Oh, look! I’m about to count from three down to zero. My specialty, remember?

A Good Host

Author: Tripp Watson

Lucy sat on her bedside and stared at the tiny gap between two of the many grey, plastic panels that composed her bedroom wall. The entirety of Station Bravo’s interior was built of these plastic panels, but only these two with the tiny gap between held Lucy’s gaze. Because this is where it came, she thought. Maybe it only came because this is where she had first left food out, but nonetheless, this is where it came. She slid a small screwdriver into the gap and snapped open one of the panels. She produced a morsel of dried meat from her pocket and pushed it onto the sharp line made between the fluorescent light and the inky darkness beyond the wall.

She knew she couldn’t continue this for much longer. Although she only took a small amount from each crew members’ rations per day—barely an ounce—it was beginning to be evident. Where once the commander’s jumpsuit clung to his arms in a tailored, if not flattering manner, it now began to sag and seem ill-fitted. The chief engineer was hollowing in the cheeks, and even some of the med-staff looked fatigued. The entire crew ate their allotted calories and worked out in the gravity pod as instructed, but the feeling of unease was spreading.

Someone would die eventually; Lucy assumed that. Maybe a few before anyone figured her out, but she didn’t find that important. This was important. This small square of darkness in front of her. This was why mankind pushed the boundaries of exploration.

From somewhere behind the wall she heard a small bump and then a slow, dragging rustle. She watched as a small coil of wire was pushed to the side and a hand—no bigger than a doll’s—emerged from the darkness. It’s skin was black and wet with a viscous film that reflected the fluorescent light. The hand had sharp claws the color of flesh on three of its fingers. The fourth, something like a thumb, Lucy had once noted, was really more of a black talon like that on a bird of prey. It picked up the morsel of food slowly and purposefully but with no sign of timidity. Then, with Lucy peering from her bedside, the otherworldly doll’s hand retracted into the darkness.

The years of preparation and briefing didn’t matter. What ground control would say if they found out was of no consequence; for Lucy, her mission was clear.

The Gravity Machine

Author: Andrew Dunn

Tijani queued with other girls alongside a block wall, its once brightly painted designs sun-bleached and flaking. It was September, dry and hot. Sweat jeweled like dewdrops on her face, moistening on her skin. The clatter of an air conditioner teased the possibility of a cool classroom inside. They were students.

Students being a simple term that belied the gravity of the situation. Lunar gravity specifically. A generation of moon mining lessened the mass of Earth’s largest satellite. The lunar cycle was off, ever more erratic each year, altering tides and seasons. But not Septembers. It was as hot as any Tijani remembered.

Tijani’s teacher was a scientist. Mr. Ikego’s skin was light, the color of teeth Tijani thought. His hair was gray, and he stooped and shuffled like her grandpa, leaning on a cane. But Mr. Ikego hadn’t lived his years in the markets and fields. Mr. Ikego spoke of Tokyo, and a dozen trips he made into space when he was young.

Tijani was walking into the cool of the classroom. Mr. Ikego was saying “Good morning” and imploring students to take seats.

“I have exciting news.” Mr. Ikego said. “Your work is showing progress. I will put an email I received on the bulletin board later so you can see.”

Tijani was reading what the teacher scribbled on the board months before. ‘The world depends on you.’ She mumbled, “And the gravity machine,” mopping sweat from her skin before sticking electrodes to her temple and base of her neck. Their wires snaked down the leg of her desk into a conduit with others, and then past the teacher’s desk through a hole in the wall. The gravity machine was on the other side.

Tijani hadn’t seen it, but Fa’izah had. Fa’izah stayed after school once to wait for her brother to finish soccer practice. Fa’izah was strolling corridors, listening to sounds filtering in from outside. And she was listening to the hum from behind a closed door one down from their classroom.

“I looked inside.” Fa’izah told Tijani, “It was big and grey with wires and blinking lights.”

Tijani didn’t know whether to believe Fa’izah. There was no reason not to, and there was no denying that whatever was inside the room was tethered to a dish antenna on the school’s roof.

Mr. Ikego was shuffling down the rows, laying folders on desks. Inside Tijani would find a stack of punch cards and math problems.

Electrodes would siphon synaptic energy she and other students expended solving the problems and punching cards. Mr. Ikego would collect cards every hour and hurry them to the machine. The gravity machine would check their work, and combine them with synaptic energy into pulses the rooftop antenna beamed into space.

Mr. Ikego connected his laptop to a projector to explain it all once. A dozens places on Earth were beaming pulses up to satellites that amplified the signals, and swirled them around Earth the way the ceiling fan in the corridor churned stale September air – a long shot at keeping a wayward moon from stealing too much more of an already thinned atmosphere.

“There aren’t many like you.” Mr. Ikego said, depositing the last folder on Fa’izah’s desk.

Tijani was reading again what the teacher had written on the dry-erase board.

Mr. Ikego was staring at his stopwatch. “Ready. Set.”

And Tijani was scraping pencil on paper, new dewdrops of sweat beading on her forehead as the weight of it all levied heavy on her spirit.

The Punishment of Cage E. Fox

Author: David Henson

When a buzzing sound distracts Cage Edward Fox, he stumbles at the top step and cartwheels to the bottom. He lies motionless a moment then gets to his feet and continues to the garage.

#

Cage parks his car and takes his fishing tackle from the trunk. Short-cutting to a pond in the hills, he howls as something chomps his ankle. He reaches down and strains apart the jaws of the bear trap enough to free his foot.

Hopping in circles, he stirs up an underground hornets’ nest. Screaming, he stumbles toward the water to escape the wasps but loses his bearings and tumbles off a cliff.

When he comes to, his whole body aches like a bad tooth.

#

The next morning Cage goes to the front porch for the Sunday paper and finds a package marked EMCA. He opens it, and an explosion sends him flying. As he looks down on the roof, he thinks he must be dead. But when he thuds to the ground, he realizes a ghost wouldn’t feel such pain.

#

Cage is walking down the crowded sidewalk toward work when people start shouting and diving aside. Seeing a growing shadow at his feet, he looks up at a falling piano. It crushes him with the sound of a dozen minor chords. He lies under the piano in a puddle of hurt then extricates himself.

#

“OK, Fox. You’re free,” the guard says.

Cage’s eyes flutter. “What … ?”

“The disorientation’ll clear up. I’m John Peters. You’re Cage Fox. You’ve been serving time under Forced Dream Punishment protocols.”

The electrodes buzz as Peters removes them from Cage’s temples. “Damn feedback,” Peters says. “Your sentence has been commuted. They’ve decided it was self-defense when you beat that guy to a pulp.”

Cage leaves his cell and heads for the exit sign. After a few steps, a looped rope tightens around his foot and yanks him toward the ceiling. As Cage dangles upside down, Peters morphs into a cartoon and whacks him with a stick as if he were a piñata.

#

“OK, Fox, you’re getting out.” Peters removes the electrodes from Cage’s temples. “Enjoy your freedom.”

“You’re not fooling me again.” Cage stays in his cell.

#

“This is Cage Fox,” Peters says to a younger man. “He lives here. He’s been free to leave for years, but prefers not to. Cage, I’m retiring. Sanders is my replacement.” Peters nods toward the exit. “Old friend, it’d warm my heart cockles to see you walk out that door.”

Cage guffaws. “Still trying to flim my flam, aren’t you?”

#

“Cage, you’ve a visitor,” Sanders says.

After Cage and the young woman chat a few minutes, she hands him her phone. “Dad, this is a picture of Sally, your granddaughter. Don’t you want to see her?”

“I’d love to, Honey. Can you bring her in?”

“If you want to see her, you have to leave this place once and for all.”

Cage sighs. OK, he thinks. Life’s passing me by. Sally looks so cute. Eyeing the floor with every step, he makes his way to the door without incident. “I can’t believe it. All this time I was free to go?”

Sanders shrugs.

“After you, Dad.”

Cage grins and opens the door. A freight train roars through it. The train grinds to a stop, and Cage slides off the front of the engine. After a moment, he climbs to his feet, groaning. Then Cage E. Fox hears a buzz and is hit with an irresistible urge to buy a vintage Plymouth muscle car and pedal-to-the-metal it on Breakneck Road. Beep beep.