by submission | Jul 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: Lorna McGinnis
Dear Valued Employees,
As you may know, the world will be destroyed next Wednesday. A massive asteroid will strike the earth at approximately 4:00pm PST, and that will be the end of humanity.
Unfortunately, additional requests for paid time off (PTO) in the interim cannot be accommodated as this would violate our two months’ notice scheduling policy. We expect you to show up for work promptly at 8am and remain in the office until at least 5pm.
Employees who violate this rule will be written up by their immediate supervisor, and repeated write ups will result in termination.
Any employee calling in sick must provide a doctor’s note.
However, we are able to honor any PTO requests made before the imminent obliteration of the planet became known as those are in accordance with our policy.
If you are deceased after 4pm on Wednesday and cannot work a full day, you will not be issued a write up. The company regards this as an extenuating circumstance. No doctor’s note will be needed in this case.
Best wishes to all of you during this trying time.
Sincerely,
Jane T. Marshall
Chief Human Resources Officer
by submission | Jul 15, 2022 | Story |
Author: Brian Etta
“Breath through the nose and out through the mouth” Justin let that instruction carry him. Sitting in half lotus he resisted the urge to itch as he scanned his body for sensations and in so doing produced and amplified them. There had to be something to that he thought, then he thought, ”Damn…another thought”. He was chasing a dragon. That one time the one sweet, sweet time that everything had aligned just so… sleep cycles, nootropics, caffeine, temperature maybe even the price of beans and the exchange rate with China, who’s to say what? But in that soft almost dream he saw her. There’d been something about the frequency, the high end that caused his brain to synthesise something like a small and gentle fountain, like in a public park. By letting go, not trying to hold onto it, his brain rewarded him with a show. The imagery was red against red, like what you see when you give your eyes a good rub. Coupled with that still feeling that only comes when the mind is zeroed out and can undergo a phase transition to something more solid but yet easier. The fountain morphed into a hibiscus, stamen and all but in a way did not…like the mind is able to do. Riding the wave, looking inwards but more like letting go, Justin was treated to a further transformation. The hibiscus was now a dancing woman undulating her dress in a manner reminiscent of Carmen Miranda. She seemed to smile at him then vanished as a car outside his window announced its passing via doppler effect. Damn, so cool he thought. He was hooked on meditation and was going to figure out how to replicate the effect and conditions to see “Carmen” again.
This day he took micro doses of various and sundry things given him by his naturopath, volume up and on the same track, “Icelandic Wilderness” or “Trail of the Caribou”…who knows? He found his mind quieted and emptied itself with ease and rapidity, he was ecstatic. He felt himself drifting like in shallow water and allowed himself to be carried further still. He was in the center of the universe embedded in tangible and inky darkness. He was the center of the universe. He felt out of depth and tried to rewind his state but couldn’t. He became aware of a slight but growing sensation, somewhat like soft but insistent tendrils that wouldn’t let him up. He wasn’t going anywhere…looking around he saw silhouettes, other forms in various configurations that all seemed trapped and resigned. The universe wasn’t his dream but rather he was merely one of many dreams of the universe…and the universe was about to wake up.
by submission | Jul 14, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Her eyes were oceans of possibility. Blue and depthless.
And I was shipwrecked.
A fallen eyelash crushed the sails and within moments my ship foundered in the shoals of the iris. When I climbed, half drowned, upon the pupil, I was looking straight down into her optic nerve.
I almost puked.
Which is not a good thing when wearing the Radiculous 3000, a very expensive haptic suit. No, puking in gear that virtually amplified all your senses would be uber foul, not to mention costly to clean. So, I choked back my vertigo and lunch and tried to figure out how I was going to get off Marilyn Monroe.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one trapped on the miles-long icon that some hackstar had mic-dropped into the waters off New South Seoul last night. That kind of thing was happening all over the metaverse. Coders trying to make or keep their fame, à la Warhol and Banksy, with ever crazier creations. A lot more ancient mythical creatures made sense to me now. A Hydra or Medusa doesn’t seem so outlandish next to a pop icon whose hair is now its own Sargasso Sea.
Yup. Things were getting tangled, and I was certainly part of the problem. I’d taken the clickbait, wanting to be the first to stare into metaMarilyn’s acre-wide eyes. You never knew what portal or pitfalls awaited. It felt like old-time exploring, where-no-one-has-gone-before adventuring, because-it’s-there questing. But, without ever having to leave your comfy couch.
A brave new world, or a cowardly old refuge? Constructing alternate realities, cutting the ultimate umbilical cord, and, literally, living the dream.
Were there boundaries anymore?
Evidently, not on Manhattan-sized Marilyn. I climbed to the tip of her nose and gazed toward her stardust painted toenails bobbing just above the ocean swell. More virts were already landing and starting to claim their pound of digital flesh. Soon metaMarilyn would be colonized and the rush would be on to find the next big thing. The next unspoiled dream.
Was there such a thing?
Where was the magic in wanting, having, in being, everything?
I leapt from Marilyn’s nose, hoping to be kissed by inspiration before I was swallowed into the belly of our beast.
by submission | Jul 13, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jim Anderson
A bell rang and the finding room fell silent.
The finder — a small, silver-haired woman in a lavender robe — turned to Ulrich and said, “A simple question, Citizen. Do you believe in one objective, mechanistic reality governed by the laws of Newtonian physics?”
“I don’t believe in any reality in which that’s a simple question.”
“Yes or no, Citizen.”
The wise strategy was to lie. But Ulrich had already showed a lack of wisdom.
“No, then.”
“Heretic!” The prosecutor sprang to his feet. “He admits his guilt.”
“Finder, my client is insane,” the defender said. She stayed seated and seemed bored by the proceeding.
“Thank you both,” the finder said. She turned again to Ulrich. “Explain your view.”
“Why? So that you can declare me a heretic or a lunatic? The punishment is the same.”
“There is no punishment. Only treatment. Admittedly, the treatments are similar, but that’s to be expected. The law defines heresy as a type of insanity.”
A brain-wash either way, Ulrich thought. He understood why others ran. Had Julie? Maybe. He only knew that the apartment was empty when he came home from his shift supervising the Sector 112 excavations. His mistake was looking for Gil and Vega. The Doctrine cops had their place staked out.
Julie, Gil and Vega. All gone. Disappeared. Were they hiding? Were they being held incommunicado? Washed and witless? Dead?
“Big fish seldom make it to a public finding,” Julie once told him. “Stay small. If you get caught in the net, profess your love for Newton’s Laws.”
Staying small meant staying away from her. Ulrich couldn’t do that. He couldn’t lie about his view of reality, either. Now he’d get a proper washing. He’d be a new man. He’d forget Julie.
“Will you explain your view?”
Ulrich shrugged. “Reality is like an onion.”
“Odorous?”
“Multi-layered. We only live in one.”
“How do you know other layers exist?”
“It’s a model put forward generations ago, along with several others that came after Newton. The state banned them all and destroyed much of the supporting evidence.”
“Why destroy knowledge?”
“The models led to technologies we weren’t ready to control, to weapons that rendered the surface of the planet uninhabitable.”
“That sounds like recitation. Have you simply replaced one doctrine with another?”
“I’m an engineer, not a physicist. Newtonian physics works fine for me. I understand it. But people I trust have studied the other models and found some compelling. They are peeling the onion. I want to help.”
The prosecutor was on his feet again. “Finder, the state no longer seeks a determination of heresy. An insanity finding serves our purpose. Anything to shut him up!”
“Far from shutting up, I’d want him to sing,” the finder said. “Enhanced interrogation is my order. Call my team.”
Three officers in helmets and body-armor entered from a side door.
The defender stood. “The defense asks the finder to reconsider.”
The finder waved her off.
Ulrich marched out of the room between two of the officers. Each grasped one of his arms above the elbow with a power-glove. Beyond the door, the third officer came up behind him and dropped a hood over his head.
Denied sight, Ulrich stopped walking. He expected to be dragged, but the power-gloves released him.
The floor gave way, and he… floated downward.
Not far. His feet touched a firm surface. He heard familiar voices.
Somebody pulled off the hood. Air moved around him, fresh and fragrant.
Julie leaned in and kissed him.
“Ick,” she said. “Have you been eating onions?”
by Hari Navarro | Jul 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
This is where we end.
Tucked so neatly under the aftermath.
I stare at my now long dead cat as its fur fuses and its stench fills the sill upon which it lays. I see its flesh sag and melt and my mind shifts to the meat in my moribund fridge. I think maybe it is time to have sex, but my flesh is also limp and I can feel as the life at my groin curdles and dies in the shimmer.
Hai rotto il cazzo.
Looking up I can tell you, I can paint for you how it looks. You want to know, right? Then allow me to regale you of this portrait, this abomination we all so clumsily wrought.
The sky is wet and dripping.
The smeared bowl above, after all we have done to it, is done.
It is done and it hangs and it weeps like napalm tears through the cherub puff of newborn cheeks.
It is done and it purges down upon every last one of us; all of the refuse, all that we infused for so very, very long up and into its veins.
Vaffanculo.
It seemed to happen so fast, although of course it did not. This bitch brew had been fermenting for years. But then, on a staggeringly hot Sunday morning last winter it all just — broke.
The weather congealed. Lightning forgot its thunder as rain tumbled as bawling fangs from an acid-loosened jaw. And a black wind did lick all with a most putrid and sticky caress.
There was someone I paid to love me once. I wonder if they are still working? Might even get in for free, being as its the end of days and all.
Genesis was her name, though surely it wasn’t. I think her name was Ane — I don’t know why, I just do.
I remember Ane’s tears as they gathered in the gutter beneath the deep green pools of her eyes as she came. And, the welts as they swam shimmering below the glow of the sweat that glazed and dribbled from the arch of her stomach. Or do I?
I have lesions of my own now, legions of lesions and if we were together again oh, how we would compare. What fun!
I wonder if she remembers me? I wonder… if she managed to find whatever it was she was looking for. Everyone’s looking for something. I just hope that Ane beat this bitch, that she gouged out its eyes and beat this bitch to pulp.
Troia.
Sorry, this is a bit embarrassing… but that’s the end. Of everything, everything that is or will ever be — for us, that is. Not sure how I know, but I do.
All that is left is the bit where my heart gives out and I fall to the floor and curl into a foetal ball like my poor dead cat. I didn’t think I even owned a cat, but maybe my husband did… yeah, maybe it was his.
Anyway, all this is of little importance. What is important is what comes next. What follows as our dick-headed reign finally succumbs to the storm.
Che tadd arriva nu cazz in cap.
Epilogue.
There are two heavily pregnant corpses laying in a cave. Simultaneously their blackened flesh begins to shudder and undulate and bulge and rent. The cave fills with cries of the type of fear that accompanies the swallowing of first breath and life again returns to the plain.
The creatures that slide forth are not infants but rather grown adults and the ruin of their womb-caskets fall away as they claw out and scratch at the stone.
Their wet naked forms inch ever closer until, at last, they meet and outstretched fingers sweep together and interlock and they smile.
“So nice to meet you”, they say at once as a new kind of heat kicks within the furnace that ignites in the pit of their chests.
Vuoi scopare?
And so again it begins…
by Julian Miles | Jul 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The tennis-court sized office is lit like a summer afternoon. Everything within is red, but each item is a different shade.
“You must tell me who makes those soft ownership collars for you. I’ve only seen that shade of purple once before.”
Rooney turns to meet the six-eyed gaze of Tokok. Courtesies taken care of, the grey and mauve spider-mantis noble unwinds its five-metre body from the undoubtedly painful crouch necessary to be at eye level with a human.
“We call them ties, Tokok. Would you like some?”
He’d got fifty, part of a bulk salvage acquisition.
“Could you get me twenty? Laktik will be in a frightful rage over my staff wearing her bridal colours as ownership apparel.”
“I’ll send thirty. Her rage might damage some.”
“Thoughtful of you. Would a kilo of green rocks be acceptable?”
Rooney keeps his expression neutral. The Doktup come from a gem world: ‘coloured rocks’ like emeralds mean nothing to them.
“Entirely.”
“This trade is completed.”
He sits in the only piece of human-sized furniture in the office.
“I presume you called about something a little more serious than ties, Tokok?”
The monster waves it’s fighting pincers about: an expression of great mirth.
“Dressing ones staff correctly is terribly serious, dear Rooney. But, in this case, your insight is correct… I have received a complaint.”
“How did that happen?”
“The human female,” Tokok checks a nearby screen, “Wendie Smith, identifier NKH22492, insisted the problem be escalated to the highest level. My staff understand humans assigned here are to be treated on par with full-fledged Notaries of Doktup like myself. Each passed the complaint to their senior, who spoke to this Wendie, then passed the complaint to their senior. I wished to talk with you before speaking to her.”
Rooney pulls out a datapad and looks her up, then does a double-take. 27 complaints against retail staff this year? It’s only the 23rd February!
“When will you be calling her?”
“I couldn’t treat her with such disrespect. She is in reception.”
“Tokok, would it be acceptable if I accompanied you, and handled the opening discussion?”
The flesh-eating predator sags back into its chair in relief.
“Thank you, Rooney. She is apparently quite strident.”
Funny how the screams of captives being dismembered doesn’t disturb them, but being shouted at stresses them out.
“One thing, Tokok? Please come down without holographic disguise. I think the situation will be swiftly resolved when Wendie realises she faces a Notary of Doktup.”
“I will accept your guidance.”
Rooney smiles. Doktup look like upright-walking cartoonish locusts with their disguise fields on. Plus, the ones who serve are smaller: they don’t have the dietary advantages of Notaries.
“I’ve been waiting over an hour! The rudeness of these Dock Tops! Call this service? Hah! This really isn’t good enough! These aliens don’t understand when you order a triple-syrup mocha with marshmallows and sprinkles it has to come in a jumbo cup or the froth leaks out! They ruined my skirt! I expect the insect who served me to be – Sweet Barnabus! It’s a monster! Who let it in? Get it away from me! Help! Help!”
The outside door swings wildly in the wake of her exit.
Tokok looks down at me.
“Does a screaming retreat mean the same on your worlds as it does on ours?”
“You can’t chase her home and eat the whole clan.”
“Sure?”
“Absolutely. But, it wouldn’t be right to ask any Doktup to engage with one so blatantly defeated. Instruct your staff to forward any further calls to me.”
“Thoughtful of you, again. Many thanks.”
