by Hari Navarro | Jun 14, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The porcelain pilot hovers just beneath the artificial swell of the valley lip. Once long ago a dam though now, after the water has long since fled, it is but a hill covered in lush deep grass and bluish grey flowers with petals that purr at the sun.
“It’s time…”
The days light has folded neatly beneath the horizon and the pilot can all but smell the rich stews being ladled onto famished plates and see the smiles as armour-plated bread struggles and then gives way between cracked dirt riven thumbs.
They’ll be tired. Their guards will be sagging. These whom turn soil that is not their own. They’ll be drinking. The grapes will be massaging the insides of muscle, and eyes will be shining and lids drooping.
Beneath thatched roofs long, tables accommodate ever-multiplying issue. Grubby urchins that will one day too rise to further dilute and molest my sacred home.
The village projects as a simple schematic onto a visor already fogging with the pilot’s ramping breath.
“Home…”
The settlement has but one road and it curves in from the left before cleaving down through the homesteads and then abruptly wearing off to the right. Targeted structures are represented with blue squares and names overlay each to designate ownership.
Bielawski
Bielawska
PIERZECKI
Bielawski — Barn
PIERZECKA
PIERZECKI
PIERZECKI — Barn
RABOWICZ
BORON
BULLFINCH
BULLFINCH
CHALY
“… ownership.”
The pilot’s teeth grit and ever so slightly chip and she runs ever-long porcelain fingers that are just as delicate as they sound across the under-glaze that covers her body entire. Dipped as a child into a holy greyish-blue tint of her grandmother’s making until all that remained of her pearlescent self was the round of her face.
She traces the bright red rose that blooms between her breasts and the thorn stems that connect to the white petals that adorn her shoulders and arms.
‘North designated division proceed and cleanse at will. South designation seal and eliminate any and all of the detritus rats that shear from this most glorious action.’
Amassing dots surge onto her monitors and she manages a smile as her creations relay the very first screams of the attack. She imagines the re-purposed sickles and pitchforks and hammers that extend from their wrists suckling on blood and spent bone.
“Cut down by the same tools you use to foul my land… war can be such perfect poetry.”
Tools to rip and gouge and the liquid flames that bubble and drip from lips to bawl fury upon the hacked and render all of their hovels to cinder.
Blinking surnames stratify into sub-branches that show each and every family member. As eliminated the names transition to red. Her intelligence has been oh, so precisely thorough.
“Interesting! Appears they’re destroying the children first. Why? I never programmed for this. Kill the children and the adults will remain and fight? Kill the adults and the children scatter as vermin. Such clever weapons you are… I have to see. Must bear witness”, she whispers pulling back on the controls and rising above the crest and at once marvelling at the pulsing beauty of the orange swath below.
The porcelain pilot moves her craft ever closer until she is directly above a very particular barn. She leans across the console and gazes down as her creations close in and herd a manically scampering form inside and out of her view.
“Bastards… I was watching that!”
The form’s blood-clotted screams relay and fill the cockpit and both it and the reflecting flames conspire to fill the pilot with another kind of heat. She shifts and adjusts the harness that rolls gripping at her thighs.
She thinks she may be more than a little sad as she remembers. Long wasted afternoons laying upon the straw-strewn floor now cooking beneath her. Days with nothing but her anxiety and the beautiful flowers beneath her lacquered skin for company and… another.
“Home… where I had a friend that looked just like me.”
Save the barn? No. Nothing good ever came from looking back. Cleanse and rebuild.
The porcelain pilot will never know why she fell. Why her perfect craft suddenly dropped without warning and crashed through and into the blazing barn of her youth. Maybe a long saved and carefully aimed bullet or maybe the gathering thick smoke choked her engines. Whatever the case, as she sits in the wreckage and as the heat enters the gaping jag hole where her shoulder once was, she screams.
A grotesque lost thing grins from the same straw-strewn floor upon which she would lose herself.
She is perhaps the exact same age. Severed clean in half with the soft furl of her tattooed belly rolled back to beneath her bare breasts as if perfectly laid back sheets.
She is smiling though she is not. It is but the fire’s glint on her teeth as now she is without any lips.
“Why did they leave you naked? Why did they defile us in such a way? I never programmed this. Such soul-less little weapons they are… But best that I die knowing full well who I am. To die old and broken and forgotten having only seen my deeds from the sky is such a hollow pointless pantomime. I regret nothing and I will use that lie as a balm as I blister and break and fall into the ash and my flowers bleach to nothing ”, said the porcelain pilot as she cracked and splintered in two.
by Julian Miles | Jun 13, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The planet Naduskar is a technological wonderland without visible natural surface, be it land or water. At some time in the distant past, an advanced race converted or covered every last piece of open ground.
There’s the mystery: is it nothing but a huge machine sitting upon the remains of the planet, or is it somehow a vast preserve, eternally maintaining an ideal environment for whatever dwells there?
I’m of the opinion they simply didn’t want anything interfering with their grand plan, and engineered accordingly.
“Go for entry.”
That’s Cheimo, over in Golden Hinde IV. He’s the instigator and leader of this venture, and to him the glory of taking the armoured bulk of his brainchild down to make planetfall.
His crew are so enthusiastic, verging on a devotion that makes my teeth ache. If they weren’t so nice, they’d be insufferable.
I reach out and touch Baylia on the shoulder.
“Follow them in as planned, but slow our descent to give them a thousand-kilometre lead.”
Hands flit across the control board, implementing my wishes.
It’s been a long trip from Earth 9. Two ships on a single mission, but of very different purpose. The Golden Hinde IV is designed to bludgeon through the debris rings about Naduskar, and whatever effect causes them. The Challenger XIX will be witness, following in its wake. Eventually it’ll act as space-side support, with the ultimate goal of becoming an orbital base.
My theories about Naduskar led to me being ridiculed, even after I accepted Cheimo’s open dare to join his expedition. Today, I’ll be eyewitness to being proven wrong, or I’ll be vindicated – and a hundred people will die.
“Hestor! You recording?”
“With everything we have, Cheimo. Whatever happens, it’ll be for posterity.”
“Still with the doubts, eh? Look at it! Those rings of debris are from a hitherto unencountered weaponization of Roche limits, I’m sure of it. The dynamic gravity field protecting this ship will obviate it.”
A concept so bizarre I still have trouble believing he won any support. That you can vary the gravitational effect of a celestial body so the tidal forces of that body will tear a chosen target apart isn’t theoretical, it’s fictional. Don’t even get me started on his ‘DGPF – dynamic gravity protection field’.
My postulation is that the creators of Naduskar equipped their world with something we need to observe before we seek to work round it. I said we should send a large, automated vessel instead. Nobody listened.
The Golden Hinde IV enters the outermost ring, impacts from debris sparking across its hull.
Ambu calls out: “Something’s happening. Multiple effects, multiple spectrums.”
I look across: “Their DGPF firing up?”
He shakes his head, then points to the monitor, eyes going wide. I spin to look.
The Golden Hinde IV is gone!
As I think it, debris spurts forth from a single point. Before our very eyes, Naduskar sprouts a new ring.
The replay is astonishing. The Golden Hinde IV collapses in upon itself until only a metre-wide black disc can be seen. That disc flashes white, debris shoots forth, then the disc vanishes.
The AI in our quantum computer considers the event for several minutes – a very long while in QAI subjective time – before advancing an initial hypothesis: a null-point wormhole. Both ends are mapped to the exact same place and moment. It collapses before anything can traverse the internal region: the debris being rejected, syncretised content.
My apologies, Cheimo. Compared to this, manipulating the Roche limits wasn’t such an outré idea, after all.
by submission | Jun 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Chana Kohl
When my ship touched down on the small moon of E’lyrvst III, nothing struck me particularly outside the ordinary. Host to the largest salvage yard in the sector, V’hara, the proprietor, was known across the explored galaxy for her business acumen and political influence. Visitors could anticipate technological expertise, unrivaled hospitality, and lively entertainment, all while buffered from the palpable heat of an unending desert landscape.
And I needed spare parts.
Her establishment looked much like the caravanserai of Old Earth. An oasis by day, courtyards and alleyways hummed with the bustle of traders and merchants. But as the sun dipped lower, I felt the atmosphere change: hand drummers thumped ancient rhythms as patrons placed their bets. Tellers behind impenetrable windows took wagers from over thirty worlds. Something of importance was taking place and the entire sector was invested.
“Captain Roiz,” V’hara greeted me graciously, “I’m glad you agreed to spend the night planet side while your order is prepared. You’ll find the waiting less terribly dull.” Her eyes glinted like almandine jewels.
After a round of drinks and a light repast, the open courtyard dimmed. A circle of torches kindled, and a ring announcer’s voice boomed, “Distinguished guests, spectators from across this system and beyond, welcome to the match you’ve all been waiting for!”
The stomping of feet by viewers in the stands reverberated like a herd of wildebeests.
“To my right, the emperor of Talsya IV, the tenth-generation successor to the throne,” raising his hand towards the balding, heavy-set man next to him. “Perhaps after tonight, the Talsyans will need to crown the eleventh!”
“And on my left, President Ulrysus Aixt. After 72 consecutive years in elected office, he has served planet Lexuros with distinction. Unfortunately, tonight might be his permanent retirement!”
“Is this for real?” I glanced at my hostess in disbelief. She simply popped an hors d’oeuvre and smiled, “Did you place your bet?”
A brass gong resounded, and the Emperor made the opening move, lunging for the President. The older man, more spry than I first gave him credit for, dodged in time. Both fists came down hard between his opponent’s shoulder blades. The emperor fell to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” my concerns finally found their voice. “What exactly am I watching right now??”
“In our sector, whenever two worlds cannot resolve their disagreements through civil negotiation, the leaders of those worlds must resolve it here, in a fight to the death. It’s the law,” she added, “by popular vote.”
“And you condone this, this…” I reached for the right word. “Brutality?”
“Condone it? I lobbied for it myself! More than half of this sector’s population are of fighting age, likely to be drafted at the whim of any given autocrat. ‘Why can’t everyone get the chance to grow old and fat?’ I asked myself.
“Getting the legislation passed was a piece of cake,” she continued. “The maternal demographic is what did it, actually. Once mothers realized they no longer had to send their daughters and sons to war anymore, the corpus politicus didn’t stand a chance.”
The President had the Emperor in a camel clutch, gnawing at his ear. “C’mon!’ I shot her serious side-eye. “That’s legal??”
A sudden, awful crunch of cartilage and bone echoed through the arena. The Emperor was face down, arms spread defenseless, one leg akimbo. An eerie hush fell, then the crowd roared approval.
“This is barbaric!” I told her. “There’s absolutely no place for something like this in civilized society.”
“Maybe,” she answered, taking a long draw from a gold-plated hookah, “But the ratings are through the roof!”
by submission | Jun 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: Fatemah Albader
The only certainty in life is that it will eventually come to an end.
But what if there was a way to know exactly, with 100-percent certainty, when your life will end? Would you want to know?
If you said yes, I’d rethink that if I were you.
Consider Pete. He was one of the first to go through The Program. He got his death date three years ago when it was still in beta testing. Back then, you wouldn’t know the exact date, just the day of the week. Pete got Wednesday. Every week, he follows the same routine. He arrives at Mercy Hospital on Tuesday evening, and, by early morning on Thursday, he checks himself out. I wondered if that was Pete’s way of cheating death. Then again, Pete didn’t know how he’d die, just when. Yet, being at the hospital on Wednesdays seemed to bring Pete some comfort, at least that’s what it looked like to me.
And the problem is, once you go through The Program, you cannot go through it again. Even though it has changed drastically since it first began, Pete’s stuck with knowing that his death date will fall on a Wednesday, and never the exact day.
Then there’s Emily. She won the lottery and got her death date six months ago, back when going through The Program was still a choice. Ever since, she’s been too afraid to leave her home. She was told that her death date would take place between 40 and 45. She’s 43 now.
And one mustn’t forget about Leah. She didn’t want her newborn to go through The Program. But they came for him about a month ago, on the day that he was born, now that it’s the law. It’s considered necessary for the efficient use of each person and his role in society. Her kid Noah was given a death date of seven years from now. Deemed untrainable, he was taken from Leah and sent to live out the rest of his days in The Group Home for Untrainables.
As for me, I have no qualms of retaliation from The Program for writing this short. My death date is tomorrow.
And sooner or later, you’re next. And when death calls, you’ll have no choice but to answer.
by submission | Jun 10, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rosie Oliver
An idealised woman never existed. She is an imagined blend of traits in a single glorious perfection, a beautiful Frankenstein of personalities. Not one considered as part of the crowd or an asset to be used or abused by another, but a woman who stands out for her learning, physique, skills and above all, bravery in the face of threats and worse.
She has a virtue for every occasion. There is the courage of Saint Catherine who faced the might of Rome to stay true to her faith. Here is practicality of Saint Dorothea who fled with nothing but the clothes on her back from a brutal marriage. Over there is the independent-thinking Hypatia, martyred because she dared to speak the truth to rulers. All these lived and died in ancient Alexandria. Think what a melding of these women could have done for ancient civilisation.
We want someone like this now to stop the worldwide eco-destabilisation, supply failures and fear-engendered riots. Who would have thought this could happen in 3,222 when we control so much? We even have designer genes to fit us into our environment no matter where we are in our Solar System. Maybe we have made our souls too simplistic. Who knows?
The expanse of our history produced so few who come anywhere close to the nurturing leader we need. One such is Artemisia Gentileschi. Her self-portrait as Saint Catherine shows signs of her vitality, common sense and empathy. She faced her own ordeals, but put the horror of her rape and consequent trial with its torture by thumbscrews behind her. As a prolific court painter, her art demonstrated verve and energy. A loophole in the law of the day let her paint live model nudes when men could not, giving her portraits the cultural edge. She understood Galileo’s discoveries in science and maths well enough to include his results in her pictures like ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes’.
We need an inspiring leader to plan, explain what needs to be done and do so in a nuanced way to satisfy all politicians. Artemisia with her progressive depiction, delicate shading and perspective promises much for this profile. She is a good a starting point.
I did my best to reconstruct her genome using the DNA of distant relatives. There were gaps, some blank, others with choices. Her history helped me estimate how environmental factors would shape her gene expression. Known leadership genes plugged many gaps and I edited out her weaknesses, a lot were shrewd guesses.
We inserted this genome into a ‘blank’ clone. The result looks viable and so like her. Her pale skin has touches of pink where the blood flows near its surface. Her arched eyebrows and short fuzz of hair are brown. Her long fingers are developed for delicate work. She is ready to come out of her induced coma and lead us away from insanity.
I, a woman, give the order to waken Artemisia’s ghost, more like her shadow made into a superlative leader.
by submission | Jun 9, 2022 | Story |
Author: Maryfaith Ocampo
I authorize the usage, study, and replication of my gametic cells.
I grant the genetic clinics permission to edit my Genetically Modified Human (GMH) as they deem fit. I understand that there are unknown risks of experimentation with newer sequences and synthesized proteins.
I confirm that the financial information I provided is correct. The genetic clinics are not responsible for money lost after transferring is complete (please allow 3 to 5 business days for this transaction).
Due to the extreme changes in the environment, I understand that scientists will prioritize survival over aesthetics. These traits may include, but are not limited to, the production of toxic substances, intolerance to certain temperatures, and vulnerability to certain food. If I cannot provide care that meets these demands, I will return my GMH to the nearest gene clinic.
If I am in immediate danger due to my GMH’s genetic modifications, I am obligated to trigger “Total Apoptosis” with the fob provided. I understand that this will permanently scramble the modified sequences of my GMH and cause the cells responsible for the expression of genetically modified traits to self-destruct. Possible side effects of “Total Apoptosis” include, but are not limited to, increased vulnerability to environmental changes (extreme temperature, acidity, air quality, etc.) and death. If I do not trigger “Total Apoptosis” I risk endangering myself and those around me.
The genetic clinics who created my GMH are not responsible for destruction of property or loss of human life caused by it.
