by submission | Apr 1, 2021 | Story |
Author: Matt Forshaw
It will not heal because I pick at it. I peel back little dry threads of skin from the edges of the wound, and they unwind around its circumference like old, coarse rope. When the scabs on the surface thicken like dirty ice growing solid over a lake, I lift them up, finding edges I can get a finger nail under. Sometimes I look at it under a small times ten magnifying hand lens, and I marvel at all the textures and layers; sometimes it’s like a tiny, obscure bas-relief sculpture, other times some vast open top mine, excavated from a convoluted plain of skin, seen from far away and high above. I chart the healing process, as I delay it by my constant interference.
~
Just another shitty, no stakes Damage night. Bunch of posers with the latest salve and designer scars. Come down to the Wallows from uplevel to spend half a night with us exotic scum, so very fucking legit. Take some full band simvids to parade in front of their friends back home, the ones who are too scared or too sensible to come themselves. They’re tolerated with varying degrees of grace – no one wants a dead rich kid on their hands after all, but there’s a lot of good mischief to be had short of that; scamming, robbing, beating, the occasional spot of kidnapping and my personal favourite, just plain fucking with ‘em. Maybe if we spent less time fighting each other over the scraps that drift down from uplevel we wouldn’t be in this mess.
~
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My arm disappears in a blaze of light and heat – that’s ultrawhite phosphorus for you – and I watch as the outline of my radius and ulna is described in glowing red before crumbling away to dust. I’d already slathered near on a whole pot of CSPA over my arm before holding the incendiary grenade tightly in my left hand and pulling the pin, and I was very pleased it was doing what it said on the tin, and I’m 1200 credits richer and I didn’t feel a thing, brilliant!
~
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~
Everything is very dark and I can’t stop moving walking scratching scratching hitting and my head hurts or it would if I could feel fucking SOMETHING but everything’s just empty emptying empty and slow and my mouth is full but can’t taste a thing then somewhere else where am I where is I what am I not am I everything tearing rending out and away and away away gone.
by submission | Mar 31, 2021 | Story |
Author: David Barber
“The procedure is not an estimate of your lifespan,” the voice said. “It is not like actuary tables. Nor will it tell you the cause of your death. All living things follow a trajectory in time which the scan tracks to the moment of your death. You can ask to know that date.”
Frank was here because of Amy. Amy was here because of cancer. For her, remission was like waiting under an anvil that hung by a thread, and she thought the Fate Scan would take away that uncertainty.
The idea of death left Frank in a panic, so at first he refused to talk about it. Then he embarrassed himself with a councillor.
“Look, it’s not about me being in charge,” he told the woman. “She just makes wrong choices!”
Amy and the counsellor exchanged a look.
Over the years, silicon had interacted less and less with flesh. We were like a divorcing couple sharing a house until one moved out. With a lot of resentment on our part. Then recently silicon had announced a process the media took to calling a Fate Scan.
“The procedure is already complete,” the voice said. “But the results will be withheld until I am satisfied you understand the consequences of knowing the outcome.”
They sat in a room that was all milky white glass, except for the huge mirrored sphere, hovering without visible means of support.
If silicon wanted to reassure people, they had misjudged badly.
“Are there any questions?”
Frank tore his gaze from the fun-house mirror reflections of themselves and glanced at Amy. She was intent on the sphere, though the voice came from all round them.
He couldn’t help himself. “So, this scan of yours is never wrong?”
“All living things have a trajectory in time which the procedure follows to its end. An analogy would be a security camera in this room. At some point the camera records you leaving. Do you doubt the camera could do that correctly?”
Frank was about to argue but Amy gripped his arm.
“Everything you have done and will do has a trajectory with a beginning and an end. It is a view of time you have yet to grasp.”
“The Appointment in Samarra,” murmured Amy.
There was a silence. Frank didn’t get it, but he wasn’t going to admit that.
“Are there any questions?”
“It’d be the same date even if you weren’t scanned then,” he declared.
“That is correct.”
“Then why…”
“Because knowing,” Amy interrupted. “You might choose to live your life differently.”
“So what’s in it for your sort? I mean, something’s going on here.”
Amy knew the signs. She could hear him getting angry.
“We offer the procedure because we always did. As I said, a concept of time you do not grasp.”
“I think we’re your lab rats…”
“The procedure is voluntary.”
“Sure, for now.”
“Frank, please.”
“Do you both wish to be told your dates?”
“No!” and “Just me,” said Frank and Amy over each other.
Frank went to wait outside, though there were some parting shots before he left.
He was slouching by the car. He didn’t look angry now, in fact Amy thought he looked scared.
“Hey, where you going?” he called when he saw her hesitate, then turn away.
To live my life differently, she thought.
by submission | Mar 30, 2021 | Story |
Author: Brian C. Mahon
Blank mind – you got to have a blank mind and no emotion out there. I do my thirty-second deep breathing routine, knock loose the naughty words from my cerebrum, and stare at the door latch. Is it worth it? A man needs to eat after all, but how badly?
At first, it was just an innocent inconvenience: advertising on all streaming services, sponsored ads on every website, targeted ads embedded between your friends and friends of friends’ posts. Next big thing after cell phones was to go buy those sweet, sweet Toniq glasses, with enhanced personal identity security features that seamlessly integrated all your social media divines through a single visual aperture! By the power of mixed reality, you could safely navigate outdoors while live-streaming with up to five different social media providers!
Not so bad, right? It came with a security guarantee and customer service standing by in case of a compromised account.
Then Toniq, which had all the exclusive contracts with the Big Five, got bought by an offshoot of the Big Five’s largest player, Community. Community did one even better and combined Toniq’s internet-capable mixed reality package with GPS and the TAF, their proprietary Total Anonymity Filter. Now you could see in real-time whatever *anyone in sight* posted, whatever they said transcribed to their preferred service, while the TAF kept their identity safe from non-friends. After Community bought the smallest of the Big Five, it managed to convince people, one Terms of Service retcon too many, that facial recognition was the next needed convenience. Broadcast moods on the fly, auto-login to store accounts to see available discounts at participating vendors the moment you walk by.
Now when Community teamed up with the currency app developers to “streamline shopping into a more enjoyable purchasing experience”? That’s when it really started to slide. Staring at any participating company’s product for three seconds adds that consumable to their cloud-side cache of your desires. Probably not so bad if you’re in the country, but in the city? Product prostitution.
It’s a short walk to the bodega. Keeping your head down to avoid the flood of bullshit thought bubbles from invading your inner peace is now a soul survival tactic. The social web’s got us all ready to be picked apart. If you’re watching anything but your shoes, life is a rushing shit stream of “bet he sits when he pees”, “there’s one less person the world needs”, “ima punch his ass out lol”, et cetera, et cetera. The TAF gave us humanity at its unfiltered, unpasteurized finest.
I’d love to think we’d have resisted this mess if we saw it for a tidal wave than a creeping tide. This constant exposure, the dissolution of privacy, of self, is too much for the mind to stay right. Too much for mine at least.
But seriously – keep a blank mind, no emotion, and keep yourself close to your chest. Isolation is a steady zen.
by submission | Mar 29, 2021 | Story |
Author: Thomas E. Simmons
The rooms are less than luxurious. Indeed, there are no rooms as such. Instead, an assortment of squalid pup tents greets each visitor.
Pitched there haphazardly among the campsites nearest the inclines are numerous corrosive mists of carbon dioxide. There, in the fog, one almost stumbles upon them – the tents; rows of them but none too straight. Bent. Tarpaulin triangles with lightweight poles thrust harshly through ringlets in the canvas and lightly scratching the surface. Those poles will scrape away the gills from the fishless tourists – even the casual ones. (As if there are any other kind.)
The cheeky hurricanes overpopulating the less attractive neighborhoods are as insufferable as the boulders masquerading as maître d’s. They’ll tire you out before you’ve escaped the train depot. On a positive note, however, they rarely demand a tip.
Leave your gills at home or at least secured in your Samsonites with their adorable little locks and charmingly undersized wheels since the surface temperature exceeds the highest setting on most household ovens by 400° or so and the atmospheric pressure is a crushing 90 bars, making the possibility of palms trees, coral, or even seraphs remote at best. A consular mocking at worst. It’s hot.
One’s luggage locks will be replaced by soldered teardrops before one resets one’s wristwatch. And the wheels will drop out of their chassis like pregnant pits. There are no flies in the ointment because the flies are bits of ash. Torn muscle. Poorly crafted limericks. Jots. Invariably, they’ll stick in your teeth. Bring floss.
The black and white photographs of the country’s navel reveal something like the inside of a backyard grill that’s been left on all night to cook itself to death, while the color photographs disclose yellowed tints from the smeary mustard sands. Smeared vindictively. It’s as if she’s cooked her own navel and served it to herself on a platter too hot to touch and then finger-painted on herself with a slightly rotted flaxen rouge. It’s as if she’s shoved a moth into a candle’s flame and held it there, cauterizing her clenching.
It’s all rather banal. Like a mud-covered lantern, the coastlines are ignored by the locals and for good reason.
And it’s warmer than a blast oven – if its climate was a kiln it would bust itself apart and spill open like a gourd. Hotter than an apogee furnace into which someone might cram an accidentally suffocated corpse – to remove any trace of it. To make it go away. To make bones be bygone.
Cooking long after the springs are punched out. Cooking and cooking – roasting without rest.
So, consider sandals, a few smart linen outfits, a sun hat for the ladies or a rakish pith helmet for the gentlemen. Leave the wool blazers in Amiens. You won’t miss them. Even the evenings are stifling. They turn one’s crotch and armpits into soup. A soup without any seasoning and fit only for savages. And don’t even think of inquiring about croutons. They’re seldom available.
Indeed, culinary options are limited. A rival travel guide warns: ‘Unpacking, you’ll find only a too-thick-hot-gelatin or overcooked magma on the room service list of options’ (tactfully omitting the wrench-like mercury-filled bread sticks, despite their repetitive prominence on every menu).
Another hisses: ‘Spare, terse, desiccated, uncompromising.’
“A life-changing destination for the suicidal,’ wisecracks the last.
Accordingly, we recommend arranging one’s exit visa prior to arrival. Don’t rely on the expertise of their functionaries. The agents are irredeemable. It’s almost as if custom and immigration forms haven’t beset – or been invented there – yet.
One and one-half stars.
Editor’s Note: ‘Ms Lonely Planet’ was previously published by Rue Scribe
by submission | Mar 28, 2021 | Story |
Author: Kim Farrell
The thick foggy sky seemed to press down on her in the empty lot. A tangle of leaves and branches scraped across the vacant space where the kitchen used to be. She could she her mother standing before the hot stove, stirring a large pot of bubbling tomato sauce, as she and her four siblings waiting anxiously around the table—plates piled high with naked spaghetti.
Tears pricked the back of her eyes at the memory, but she was not grieving. A jumble of emotions fought for dominance in her heart, but grief was not among them. Those were joyful times that she would carry with her forever, no matter which houses stood or fell. Glancing around the lot she imagined where the living room would have been and stepped into it. The space looked so much smaller from this perspective. Without the definition of the room itself–all its colors, smells, and sounds–it was just a twelve-by-twelve-foot square of dead grass. To think this exact spot held such significance for so long. She pictured herself laid out on the pink floral couch—a decorative piece that she had always mocked, but her mother adored for its vintage qualities. She was leaned up against her older sister, holding open the page of a picture book with one hand and clutching a teddy bear with the other. She could almost feel her mother’s presence—walking into the room with two bowls of ice cream and smiling softly as she observed her daughters enjoying the lazy evening before bedtime.
Only when the calls of her own young son behind her jolted her out of her daydream did she notice she was now crying freely. Tears brimmed from her eyelids and rolled down her cheeks like an overflowing kettle. And she smiled.
by submission | Mar 27, 2021 | Story |
Author: Bryan Pastor
“It started over a year ago because I couldn’t find a pair of wireless earbuds that worked.” Tom began telling the stranger sitting next to him his story.
He paused, looking around. The diner was crowded for a Wednesday. There was a youth soccer team, four business types in suits of varying shades of grey, and a couple of bikers milling around the door, arguing over whether they wanted the seats near Tom at the counter or the booth in the back by the can.
“You were saying?” the stranger’s voice was soft, with a melodic quality like a puff of verbal serotonin. Tom calmed noticeably; he came here on Wednesdays specifically because it was always dead.
“Sorry,” Tom apologized, “I ended up going through seven pairs of wireless earbuds. The cheapos, after that the brands you heard of, then the expensive ones no one’s ever heard of, each time the left channel was fuzzy. I was getting frustrated because I like being able to walk around the house without having to have the phone on me, all that radiation.”
Tom paused and took a sip of water. He glanced over at the stranger, but couldn’t tell what he looked like. Maybe it was both the bright fluorescent lights washing out his features, and the broad brim of the man’s Stetson casting his face in a deep shadow.
“Just when I think all is lost, my friend John gets this idea and asks if I have a metal plate in my head. He explains that he knows a guy at the VA who picked up a couple of grenade fragments back when he did a tour through Kosovo. The docs told him that the metal in his head was distorting the signal.”
“And then…” the stranger asked, laying a hand on Tom’s arm, just above the wrist. Tom watched the hair on his forearm stand on end in undulating waves that rippled up and down his arm. The stranger’s touch was both clammy and electric and Tom felt a mild uneasiness at the pallid skin sticking to the strangers’ emaciated fingers.
“Then,” Tom continued, “I said what the heck and talked to my doctor. Surprisingly, he humored me. I guess he makes good money ordering MRIs. Yada, yada, yada, they find something just below the skin attached near the base of my skull.”
“What was it?”
“Here, I’ll show you.” Tom scrounged through his fanny pack. After a few minutes, he removed a glass vial four inches long and an inch in diameter. Inside was a metallic object the length of a paperclip and as thick and round as the lead in a number two pencil.
“Once they removed it, my earbuds worked fine, every pair of them.”
Tom admired the object in his hand, set it on the counter then took a bite of pie. He savored the flavor for a long time.
“Wait, Rita, where did it go?” he blurted out.
“Where did what go?” she asked irritably.
“The thing they took out of my head. And where’s the guy I was talking to?
“You’re the only person here,” She replied, giving him her patented you’re crazy look. “Have been all night.” She stomped down to the other end of the counter to fill the salt and pepper shakers.
Tom sat dumbfounded, slowly chewing the last few bites of his cherry pie, lamenting that in a few days he would have to go back to headphones.
