by submission | Jan 13, 2021 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Peter had noticed the hippy girl earlier, as he loitered near a tour party, eavesdropping on the French tour guide. The chap was enthusing about Marie de France, mediaeval author of tales of chivalry, who was born in this castle, but Peter’s French wasn’t up to it. In the end he trudged up the steps of the ruined tower instead.
At home, stairs with no railings, loose masonry and abrupt drops would have been fenced off, but the French just shrugged, put up a warning sign and left you to it. He emerged from a dark spiral staircase onto a rooftop with dazzling views across the valley.
And there was the girl, leaning over the battlements. Even in Peter’s youth, clothes like that had gone out of fashion; sandals just brushed by an Indian print skirt, lilac tie-die top and a bandanna.
“Careful,” Peter said, without thinking.
She turned to look, ravishingly pretty, with freckles.
“I mean, don’t trust the stonework. Eight hundred year old mortar.”
He busied himself with the view; she didn’t need her afternoon spoiled by some old fusspot.
“Do you know Marie de France’s tale of Guinevere and Sir Lanfal?” she asked. “Written when this mortar was still new.”
“No, I…”
“Sous le marteau du destin dur, la foi est l’enclume du cœur?”
“Um, under the hammer of fate, something something heart.”
“Faith is the anvil of the heart.” She inclined her head. “Well done.”
Under the hammer of being patronised, his favourable impression faded.
The blustery wind swelled her skirt like a sail. “A misjudged costume. From a distance all these years look the same.”
Despite appearances, something told him she wasn’t young at all.
“But these are safe times. Civilised times. Two travellers having a chat. Neither of us armed. Not like when this castle was built. Or when it’s flattened. Perhaps Marie de France stood where you are standing now.”
Peter studied the view thoughtfully.
“I did consider visiting her, but it involved knights and servants and horses. And speaking Anglo-Norman. Besides, she was just a child here.”
He’d known someone at Oxford who had episodes of schizophrenia. Did she hear voices? Was she pestered by Marie de France?
“I love conversations like this,” she went on. “Confronting the past and telling them where they went wrong.”
Everything about her was perfect. Perfect face. Perfect teeth. A perfect mad smile. Perhaps he should go back down now.
“This is a curious age. Somehow word got out the future was like a bad neighbourhood you drove through by mistake, with doors locked, staring straight ahead at stop lights while some undesirable raps on the window. But what you dreaded came and went.”
She began pacing about. “Global warming? The rising waters set us free of nationhood in vast armadas. And deserts are just unused solar farms. Go South, young man. Antarctica, land of opportunity!”
“Ha ha.” He’d read science fiction. “Should you be telling me this? Risking the fabric of time.”
“You were the greedy ones who devoured our share, who wanted nothing to change. Frankly, we despise you.”
Of course he felt sorry for her, but he didn’t need a madwoman spoiling his afternoon.
“You think I’m mad, and it’s true, we’re not like you, not like you at all. You’d hate our world.”
“That tour party will be up here soon, so…”
“Yes,” she added, calmer now. “Perhaps a mistake to reveal so much. But it’s no problem, I think I know your future.”
She followed him closely down the dark twisting staircase.
“Dangerous places, castles.”
by submission | Jan 12, 2021 | Story |
Author: Jeremy Marks
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
-Simon & Garfunkel
I am a plastic sac picker; I scour the streets collecting loose grocery sacs in the employ of my city. I live in a former metropolis whose every limb is now coated in disposable plastic.
My job is very repetitive, but not without its perks. Instead of wearing the standard issue orange and yellow municipal worker vest, I sport a blue oxford shirt, seer sucker slacks and burnished brown Italian leather loafers. My employer feels that I should work in style. My closets at home are filled with these outfits and I have never had to pay for a single one.
But what is most impressive about my deportment is that it is conductive: the garments transmit electricity. You see, when I shuffle my feet, the soles of my loafers generate a static current that is siphoned up my legs and torso, spun across my left deltoid muscle and shot down my bicep and into my forearm. The charge then crosses my wrist, and passes over my lefthand, into the fingers of a special rhinestone studded white glove that I use to grip the titanium handle of my “cane.”
This “cane” is a state-of-the-art trash picker, known as a “Sac Caesar.” But unlike your typical store bought litter management implement, my cane has a shaft crafted from rare mahogany. Inside that shaft is a copper conductor culminating in a tip of impermeable linen where a static pulse is released. To avoid any repetitive stress on my index finger, this pulse emission is automatic. I do not have to pull a trigger
The myriad sacs that litter our streets are attracted by this pulse and cling to the cane. I can attract up to half a dozen sacs with a single emission. The cane shrinks the sacs into a compact pellet, then fires that pellet up the conductor shaft and out the back of the titanium handle into a pouch that, once full, I simply detach and toss into a cloth sac slung over my right shoulder.
I am well paid. I have health insurance and benefits. And because my city knows that we are not likely to rid ourselves of this plastic sac scourge, I have guaranteed employment. There is a simple reason for all of this: the sacs that I collect are reproductive.
No one is entirely sure how it happened, but the story goes that because the sac manufactory is located along one of the continent’s most toxic rivers, the water from that river has mingled with polyethylene to create a singular mutation. We are left with something like a plastic prokaryote, an organism with neither heart nor brains, but a passion for procreation. A flatworm.
It happened that three years ago, a grocery chain opened in our city for the first time in two decades. Folks like me, who had only been able to buy our meals from gas stations and corner stores were delighted that we finally had fresh options. It didn’t take long before every city resident sported the dirty-white plastic sacs of that grocery. Even the squirrels, pigeons and sparrows took the plastic into their nests. I remember averting my eyes as the sacs started clogging gutters and storm drains, causing sewer line backups. Like my neighbors, I shrugged my shoulders when our city was visited by little windy plastic spirals whipping across our parking lots and back alleys. Much as I hate to admit it, I even accepted that some of our trees were ornamented with plastic banners.
But then, about a year after the grocery opened, things grew out of control. Like some strange algae, the sacs bloomed and covered every last inch of turf. I recall walking outside one morning to find my entire block coated in plastic: the cityscape was shrouded in a giant, dingy tarp. Not a single window or door was visible on any dwelling.
When I got to work, I learned of my promotion. After years of diligent service, I was now the city’s “Chief Sac Technician.” For forty hours a week, city streets has become my beat. I swing my “Sac Caesar” and don my conductive outfit. I have been granted the privilege of setting my work hours and picking my staff.
The problem is, my work is a fool’s errand. Every time two sacs come into contact they generate a third. It is literally impossible for me to make any headway whatsoever; the beat I walk rests atop a glacier of plastic. It won’t be long and I will be picking sacs off of the spires of our downtown’s tallest towers.
There is nearly nothing left to see these days, just plastic layering plastic. The city is very quiet, too. Gone are those morning when I’d wake to birds mingling their song with honking horns, crankshafts, and the groan of air breaks.
Still, I have a job and a reason to be. I have someplace to go each morning. In the silence, I sometimes imagine that the sea of dirty white is freshly fallen snow. For a moment, the Earth looks like it has shaken off its dingy condition and our sac-induced silence grows pregnant with meaning.
by Julian Miles | Jan 11, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Midnight, the witching hour. I could do with a flying broom, come to think of it. On that topic, I suspect I’ve more chance of getting to know a broom than any witch that might flit about on one. Right, all geared up – or am I?
Phone, keys, medical cards, proof of being me, both permits to carry, handset, mask? No, wait. The evening DAQI was 11 with warnings about it hitting teens before dawn because of smog blowing in from the burning portions of Europe. Best go with the respirator and tuck the mask into the rucksack along with the thermos and food.
Check tonight’s route while riding down to the car park. Oh joy: Bognor. At least I left my box of nitrile gloves in the rucksack. I can double glove before gauntlets without paying company rates for extras. The phone chirps. Good timing! Delly’s outside. Saves me pollution charges from the commute.
Out through the triple doors into the cold.
It fills my view: cross a refuse wagon with a windowless coach, paint it brown, add twin fat black stripes round the cab. The modern dead-cart. No need to bring them out, we’ll take them from where they fell at no extra cost.
I swing up into the changing room and shout through the open door to the cab.
“What you doing bringing a company limo out to fetch staff?”
Delly laughs.
“In case you missed it, your place is on a B-optimal route to Bognor. As there’s pile-ups or roadworks on the A-optimals, I thought I’d show due diligence, and do you a favour.”
“It’s brass primate castration season out there. Tonight could be a bad one.”
“You need to use bigger words in your fancy slang. I can still make out what you mean.”
“And your sarcasm needs work. I’m not bleeding. So, tonight?”
She nods.
“You’re not wrong. We’ve got three police call-outs already. Good news is those gave me priority for Arnie.”
I swing open the door to the cadaver processor – which I can only do because it’s not in use yet – and grin at the bulky, four-armed robot.
“Hello, Arnie.”
The bucket-shaped head turns my way. Lenses whine as it focusses on me. Takes a few moments for facial recognition, then it waves.
“Hello, Poppy. Are we playing chess tonight?”
“Don’t think so, Arnie. It looks busy.”
“I like to be busy.”
“See you later.”
I close the door and it goes back to doing whatever it does when no-one is looking.
We take the old road to Bognor. As we traverse the long, curved bridge just before we hit the outskirts, I see blue lights ahead.
An officer flags us down.
“You lot on duty?”
Delly nods.
“Cart 68, constable. What you got for us?”
The officer gestures towards the roof of a car just visible in the cutting.
“Whole family. I’d say the car holds everything they owned.”
Delly looks at me. I glance back towards cadaver processing.
“Thank the gods for Arnie. Never thought we’d start the night with another UC failure.”
She shrugs.
“A lot of these coastal towns never picked up after the depression of ’21, and UC always causes financial problems. This week’s been the first really cold one. Guess they decided to go as a family rather than wait for winter to take them piecemeal.”
I press the ‘Retrieval’ button. Arnie deploys. We’re all pretending to be blasé until a teddy bear falls from the smallest body as it’s carried in.
Delly chokes out: “Early break?”
I wipe my eyes.
“Yeah. Somewhere bright.”
by submission | Jan 10, 2021 | Story |
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.”
by submission | Jan 9, 2021 | Story |
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.
by submission | Jan 8, 2021 | Story |
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?
