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.”
by submission | Apr 3, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jude Curtis Greaves
I stared in disbelief at the fracture, in reality, contemplating its sudden appearance in my apartment. Hypnotized by the apparition, my muscles moved in the direction of the fortuitous scientific hypothesis while my consciousness told me it might not be a good idea to do so. However, my body was an unresponsive wreck and I found myself twenty feet in the air, above a large pond.
Like an osprey that suddenly lost its wings in the middle of a ferocious dive, I plummeted toward the ground. The force of my body hitting the murky pool knocked all of the air out of the interior of my now-bruised rib cage. For a few dazed seconds, I thought I was dead. Then the pain came back to my lagged nervous system in a ferocious forest fire of agony. In my suffering, I managed to surface and expel the water that had been previously trapped in my lungs.
Bruised and scraped, I trudged out of the muddy pool of water and surveyed my surroundings. I was in the middle of a grassy plain dotted with wildflowers and distorted with the occasional knoll. About a mile away, I perceived what looked to be a small town. Wandering over to this single sign of intellectual life, I realized that it wasn’t just a town, but the beginnings of a city.
Entering the outskirts, I discovered that I was in The same town that my dad had resided in over thirty years ago. Since my dad had recently passed away, I ran to where I thought the location of my father’s old home was, full of excitement. Strutting down the streets of the conurbation, I tripped on some badly-set pavement and crashed into the cement. Because of this, I hit a rather unassuming red skateboard and watched it woefully as it tumbled down the street. Quickly, I got up and tried to get away from the place as fast as possible hoping with all my might that the owner wasn’t nearby.
Continuing on my travels, I witnessed a red skateboard soar into the air and knock a primitive chachalaca out of the sky. “What in the name of…” my sentence was broken off by the sudden occurrence of the unfortunate bird landing on a jackhammer, activating the powerful device and sending it haywire. The jackhammer shredded the base of a telephone pole, cracking the aged wood and causing it to fall on top of a building.
The building collapsed in on itself as I realized in horror that the building was the same one that my dad lived in. As the realization of this event made contact with my brain’s processing unit, I Ran over to the foundations of the building and located the dying body of my dad. In despair, I climbed over to him. “Dad!?” I called out to him as he lay there paralyzed in his near-lifeless body. “I’m a dad?” A cracked voice answered in confusion as I witnessed my soon-to-be dad die. Again. Reality blacked out around me as my mind went into a turmoil of anguish.
I stared in disbelief at the fracture, in reality, contemplating its sudden appearance in my apartment. Hypnotized by the apparition, my muscles moved in the direction of the fortuitous scientific hypothesis while my consciousness told me it might not be a good idea to do so. However, my body was an unresponsive wreck and I found myself twenty feet in the air, above a large pond.
by submission | Apr 2, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
It was fiction to be sure. High fantasy even. A hinter world, Malazan. And, yet, there it was: children are dying. Simple. Direct. A plea, a dire call to action, a binding recrimination.
What manner of world fictional or otherwise would deny these three words with the shrug of shoulders or stammering prevarication? We know that there are those who would walk away from Omelas. We know of those that would take up arms on Arrakis. Or sacrifice themselves on Hyperion. Still, children are dying.
Here, too. Mariupol. Aleppo. Homs. Taiz. Bamako. Port-au-Prince. Lahore. Dhaka. Sao Paulo. Detroit. Our hinter worlds. Children are dying. And we let it be.
But deathdouspart did not. When the three words children are dying flashed on the megatron of Super Bowl LXII—and stayed on. When every electronic transmission from that moment on included the tag children are dying. The world uproared and tried hard to ignore those three words, much like once-printed glossy, guilting images of innocents with bloated bellies and cleft palates.
Deathdouspart gave no succor. They were relentless and their message pervasive. The words children are dying were burned into humanity’s collective retina.
And words have meaning.
Worldwide, electronic media almost collapsed, but deathdouspart, the secretive holocracy that engineered the global campaign, would not let it. They provided a tool to act. Dubbed freeagency, the device was made freely available to be implanted in willing adults over the age of 30. The freeagency device was designed to release a deadly toxin when activated.
That activation was random.
When a child anywhere in the world died a wholly preventable death—as clearly defined by deathdouspart—a random freeagency device released its toxin and killed the “agent”.
Deemed ridiculous and suicidal by the establishment, freeagency nonetheless caught on. Look around: life is cheap while martyrs are chic. Not surprisingly, deathdouspart’s martyrdom got results. A lone child’s egregious death in Ukraine or Syria or Haiti, once local and virtually unnoticed and unsuffered, now had adult collateral damage.
Swift and random.
Sometimes high profile. Sometimes in dramatic fashion. A newscaster in Sydney keeling over on air. A world-famous athlete expiring mid stride during a game.
Freeagency didn’t solve the immediate crisis. It didn’t get at the root causes of why children are dying. But it called attention. Caused second thoughts. It slowly changed decision-making and behaviors. Every child’s fate was being linked to a greater network of adults, their destinies intertwined in a most tortured sense.
The stakes had been raised. And that’s how the hand was now played. With caution. With a good deal more intentionality. Wild cards were buried in the deck and gamblers didn’t know the odds—and they didn’t know whose numbers (or whose money) they were playing with anymore.
Children are dying, though not as many. Not as carelessly. And free agency is always ours to commit to until death do us part.
by submission | Apr 1, 2022 | Story |
Author: B.K. O’Brien
Her breath fogged before her, a small ghost in the air. She walked slowly, each step precious, eyes roving as she continued to take in the unfathomable.
Every now and then she’d stop to watch as flakes danced in their slow amble to the ground, already thick with their kin. She jumped in a nearby drifted pile and a laugh escaped her. She stomped her feet, marveling at the muffled sounds her shoes made. Everything around her was a novelty, and it almost made her breathless.
Spruces rose through the gray thicket, and she ran fingers along the borough nearest her, reveling in the feeling of needles against nearly numb skin.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” She asked, unable to tear her eyes from the landscape before her. The snow was exactly as she’d always pictured, though the cold nipped at her more viciously than expected. She drew her arms in tight against her chest, but still shivers racked her body and rattled her teeth.
She waited a few more moments. “You’re really not going to talk to me? Look at this place. We can forget we’re even here.”
A dry laugh huffed behind her, “I can’t.”
She didn’t want to turn around to face him. Doing so would mean leaving this small place carved out in time, where the needle to come didn’t exist. The hulking mass of steel and gray in which they lived was instead a world of deep green and winter chill. Turning back meant seeing his uniform, seeing the long gun cradled securely against his body. Bumps had risen uncomfortably across her skin, fighting desperately to keep her warm. She’d forgotten what they felt like after years in the climate-controlled ship.
She whirled around suddenly. “Did you know how cold it would be?”
He looked taken aback, “Yeah. We’ve done a few simulations in the snow before. My class had to train in a blizzard once,” he shrugged at her raised eyebrow, “just in case.”
“And no one thought I might need a jacket or anything?”
He laughed then. “You’re nuts, you know that?” But his smile wavered as she stared, until his expression was rewritten in solemnness. “It’s your last hour, Girl. I don’t think they really care if you’re comfortable. Even this is more of a tradition than anything.”
It was what she expected to hear. But seeing the sudden sadness in Guard’s face hit her in a way she didn’t like. She didn’t refer to the other guards as anything at all, even in her own head. Their existence morphed more with monsters, if she did give them any thought. But Guard had always been kind to her; had always been ready for a robust skirmish with sarcastic words. His humanity had kept her sane.
She turned back to her forest, unable to look at him any longer. The spruces seemed sympathetic in their stoic, snowy haze. They understand, she thought. They’re bigger than the petty misdemeanors of humans – they forgive. She wished for nothing more than to be able to slip between the depths of their trunks, lost in the darkness of their chilled family.
She’d already served her penance in her years here. She would view this only as an escape, even if it was not of her design. She raised her face to the falling snow, and sighed.
“That’s it.” The melancholy in Guard’s voice made it almost unrecognizable.
She nodded, turning slowly, memorizing the scene around her. She’d be back in a few minutes, she told herself. She’d be able to stay forever.
