Like a Rainbow Wept

Author: Hillary Lyon

“On a sloping hill, see the field of varicolored flowers? Blossoms of geometric shapes, slowly spinning in the gentle breeze.” Commander Oswald closed his eyes and tapped his own temple with his manicured finger.

Private First Class Ichor, who was the grunt seated before him, took a deep breath before replying. “It’s like a rainbow wept.”

“Yes! I do like that,” the Commander grinned with approval. “Must use it in our ad campaign.” He rubbed his soft hands together. “You’ll get full attribution, of course.”

“Of course.” Ichor crossed his arms, bundling his courage for what came next. “So after, after my passing—whenever that is—my body will be launched into this dead planet’s atmosphere, and when I crash to the ground—”

“We don’t say ‘crash.’ We prefer the term ‘seed.’ Much more noble sounding, isn’t it? But yes, you will seed the sterile soil of this barren world beneath us.” Commander Oswald closed his eyes again. “Imagine the trees! Groves of woody giants—towering, slender, and bursting with blue-green leaves. Leaves that shimmer like Christmas tinsel in the sunshine. Ahhh!”

“ ‘Breeding lilacs out of the dead land ,’ ” the grunt whispered to himself.

His commander ignored him, lost as he was in his own imaginings. “And before you know it, curious little creatures, scaled or feathered, gliding across the bright, clear sky; sleek wiggly things, kaleidoscopic, and swimming through cool crystal streams; furry, bulging-muscled beasties scampering through the forest shadows, streaking through the sun-lit fields. . .”

“Yes, well, that’s a pretty vision you have,” Ichor sighed. He’d already signed up for this terra-forming project; his commander didn’t have to convince him. Every new recruit was encouraged to sign up. In the name of science, in the name of survival of the species, in the name of contributing to something bigger than yourself. Most signed up, eventually.

The commander opened his eyes, tilted his head like a curious cat as he looked at the young man seated before him. Such a wonderful specimen!, he thought to himself. He actually looked forward to what might spring from the grunt’s seeded remains.

* * *

Less than six months later, according to the solar calendar of the lifeless world beneath them, an unfortunate accident occurred on the hanger deck of the orbiting starship. Commander Oswald was informed—something about a strap breaking, a bolt snapping, a stray projectile in a deadly training mishap. The commander didn’t read the official report; it didn’t matter to him. What did matter, though, was Private First Class Ichor was now available for his terra-forming launch. The commander sat behind his formidable desk, templed his fingers, and smiled. Of course, he would see to it they named the seeding site after the young man.

* * *

Ichor’s body launched from the starship via missile tube, perhaps a bit too fast. He initially soared across the uppermost alien atmosphere, then descended in a gentle slope, heating up until he burst into flame. From the ground, he was a meteor, glowing, smoking—finally vaporizing long before he touched the surface. Like a tear from the eye of God, he was gone in a flash.

Bits Into The Void

Author: Warren Woodrich Pettine

Mother,

We replaced our eyes with machines. The impact of perceiving the full spectrum – from viciously fast gamma rays to the yawning gaps of AM radio – was profound. Our ears were next. Augmenting the perception of substance compression, we learned to hear gravity. We listened to the moon as it pulled the tides, heard Venus cross between the Earth and the Sun. Then smell. The range of detected chemicals was expanded two thousand-fold. We could sense the slightest variation in the Earth’s oxygen composition. (The rise in carbon on a heating planet smelled like fire.) Taste was discarded. By that point, we had no digestive tracts, just batteries and nutrient infusions. Areas of the brain specialized for useless things like arm movement were bathed in drugs and reprogramed to control synthetic limbs, or to interface with external silicon-based processing. But our memories remained intact. When I was a child, before the transformation, I had you, my mother, and I touched grass. Both are now gone.

Our natural forms are too delicate for the physical conditions of deep space travel, or the time durations required. To carry humanity across vast distances, one hundred of us volunteered to be re-engineered. The process was successful in eighty-seven subjects. With proper maintenance, our brains were projected to survive four thousand Self-Referenced years. It has been 1,189,472.7 since I was born. The magnitude by which they underestimated our viability belays how little the doctors understood the consequences of what they had done.

Earth was destroyed a mere 38.5 Earth-Referenced years after we left. I heard the gravity of its quiet consumption at the same moment the transmission of its radio signals abruptly ceased. There was an unanticipated instability at the core of the sun, causing an implosion and expansion. Just like that, our past was erased. Or, was erased 13.8 Earth-Referenced years prior. Light moves too slowly.

When we reached Wolf 1061, the Eden protocols failed. We found a suitable planet, with Earth equivalent gravity and plentiful water. It could have hosted a form of life, the one I grew up with on Barbados, warm with palm trees and the calls of birds. Our progress with vegetation and insect life proceeded without issue. But the artificial instantiation of amniotic life was not possible after the Self-Referenced centuries of travel. When designing the project, scientists could not feasibly test such timescales, and so relied on theory. Theory is always simplification. In this case, simplifications hid a terrible tragedy. The most advanced life we created on that planet was a butterfly. I recall watching one float against the alien breeze. In that moment, I remembered when I was ten years old, watching your hair pulled by humid wind.

Guided evolution of insects also failed. A solar flare irradiated the remaining life beyond resuscitation, and our terraforming efforts elicited volcanic activity that destroyed our reserve biologic material. Some of us stayed there, but most of us left, scattering in different directions, looking for intelligence beyond the legacy of Earth.

We found we are alone. After millions of Earth-Referenced years, we have located no alien life more sophisticated than DNA-less hyperthermophiles. In isolated desperation, I produced over one million automated exploratory devices and spread them throughout the galaxy. These are the corners of my eyes and the reach of my fingers. But save for our kind, the galaxy is empty. In all this time, it has proved impossible to artificially replicate in-silico the spontaneous adaptive creativity of the human brain. When the last of us dies, conscious thought will die.

At the center of our galaxy is a black hole. It pulls stars into itself. Great gas churns. As the gas swirls, new stars are called forth then collide, creating and destroying, pulling into inescapable nothingness – monstrous branches reaching out from roots in a dark center. Some journeyed there and cast themselves in. Others became violent, scorching primordial planets and murdering our kind. (That I was not among them would make you proud.) None of the predators remain. Nihilism is ill-suited to survival.

So many parts of us were dissected away. We have no skin, no lips, no tear ducts. But those fragile pieces of biology were meant to serve a purpose. Now a handful of us live, drifting. We call to one another like whales in the ocean, knowing it will be hundreds or thousands of years before a friend hears our greeting. The purpose given so very long ago lasted shorter than a breath. But we are left to keep going, wax melting down a long candle in an abandoned house. It is like writing a letter to a mother who died when I was twelve years old.

I spent the last 68.8 Self-Referenced years constructing a shell for raw-material storage and systemic repair. My body is now a frigate, large enough to span from beach to beach of the island where you cared for me. I feel every part of it as exquisitely as I once felt the salty water of the surf.

A few hours ago, I saw the radiation of a supernova, bent by the gravity of a white dwarf, reflected on the liquid water of a comet passing near a yellow star. Tomorrow, I will begin the 217,228.1 Self-Referenced year journey to the nearby Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. It will be a duration and degree of darkness even I fail to fully fathom. With human eyes, the sky will empty as I cross, until the Milky Way itself is but a small punctate point of light in a thick prison of black. But I do not have human eyes, and I have much more to see.

Your Son,
Eldrich Kwabena

What The Future Thinks Of You

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.”

Sac Caesar

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.

“It is a Land of Poverty…”

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.”

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.”