by submission | May 13, 2022 | Story |
Author: Ruby Zehnder
“We can’t afford a flex pet,” she replied sharply.
Ben said nothing. He knew she was right, but it didn’t matter. This wasn’t about money.
“I’d love for Addie to have an emotional support pet, but–” she stopped speaking and wept. Ben took his young wife in his arms and comforted her. When she finished crying, she gave in. He was right. This wasn’t about money. This was about their dying child.
Ben retrieved the crate from his car and set the box on the floor. He carried Addie into the room and laid her next to it. She curled up in a fetal position, oblivious to the box.
The flex pet made a scratching noise.
“Look, Addie,” Ben gently coaxed. She slowly opened her eyes, and they gleamed with happiness at the sight of her father. Ben opened the box. A clump of fur rolled across the floor and snuggled up to Addie.
The child smiled. She clutched a handful of its soft pink fur, sucked her thumb, and fell asleep.
***
The flex pet chattered as it skimmed across the water’s surface on its tail. Then, it dived underwater and re-emerged, spouting water like a whale. The girls howled with delight when it got them wet.
Their mother sat silently, watching the two.
“Okay, girls, it’s bedtime–,” she announced firmly.
“No, mommy. We want to play,” the two begged.
Their pet fish came to the water’s surface. It blinked its big blue eyes, protected by goggles that looked like magnifying glasses.
“C’mon, girls. Bath time is over,” their mother insisted.
The girls hugged each other, refusing to leave their fun.
Then the fish let out a big fart that bubbled to the water’s surface.
“Eeeew,” the girls complained as they jumped out of the tub into their mother’s towel.
***
Addie threw the flex pet at her father and hit him squarely. She shrieked with delight when he fell over. The flex pet had transformed itself into a stuffed blue elephant, which Addie could swing by its trunk like a club. When he didn’t move, Addie approached him carefully to see if he was hurt. Immediately, he grabbed her and growled loudly while tickling her.
Her older sister joined in the fun and jumped on her dad. Addie’s mother watched the trio quietly, wondering how they could be having fun. Addie was dying. She was only three years old and —
***
“Happy Birthday to you–” the group sang out of tune. There were four candles on the cake, and the sickly child just recovering from another chemo treatment looked on listlessly.
Addie stroked the bright yellow fur of her flex pet’s head. Its’ tail swished back and forth, keeping time to the music like a metronome.
Addie named her flex pet, Snowdrop. She hoped that she would flex into Snowdrop one day because flex pets could change their form and never get sick.
***
Addie’s mother sat quietly in the dark, unable to process the death of her child. Snowdrop settled on her lap and began purring.
“Addie was taken unfairly,” she complained while stroking the cat’s head.
“Jennifer, Addie may be gone, but we will never forget her,” the pet replied and continued its soothing purring.
Jennifer was shocked when Snowdrop spoke. She had always assumed that Snowdrop was designed to provide emotional support for Addie. It had never occurred to her until that moment– that Snowdrop was her flex pet too.
by submission | May 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The last repairman sat in his cramped booth at the nano-mall. He hadn’t had a customer in months. Around him shoppers scurried with their latest purchases micro-manufactured in neighboring stores. The last repairman looked at his hands which should’ve been rougher and dirtier. He shook his head to clear his mind which should’ve been much more focused and engaged. He was here to help and no one needed him.
To pass the time he juggled a few too-shiny tools. Then he noticed a pair of eyes fixed upon his and he dropped the tools in clackering surprise. Rising just above the level of his low countertop was a hungry look, a young face intent upon his own.
“Hullo,” said the last repairman.
“Watcha doing?” asked a child with eager green eyes.
“Passing time,” he answered.
“What for?”
“Until I’m needed.”
“When’ll that be?”
The last repairman shrugged at the child. “Can’t say. I think this world’s too broke to know it needs fixing.”
The child with green eyes nodded. Then nodded again. “You can help me.”
“That so,” the repairman leaned forward. His brow crinkled like a warm blanket.
The child nodded again. “I’d like to fix things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?” The last repairman whistled and almost smiled. “That’s a tall order. Specially in this world. There’s so many things we’ve left undone. Such a backlog. We don’t fix our old problems; we just create newer and newer ones.”
He looked over the child to the teaming mass of shoppers, store bags full, dreams vacant. “I’m the last of my kind, I think. Probably no help to your generation.”
The child followed the repairman’s gaze. “You can help. That’s easy to see.”
“How you figure?”
“You’ve got the tool.”
The repairman glanced around his little shop. “The tool? Well, I got these here tools. What are you wanting to fix?”
“Everything.”
“Okay. But where do you want to start?”
The child raised finely formed hands to his eager green eyes and with a swift ratcheting motion unscrewed them and set them on the countertop. “I’d like to see with more empathy.”
The last repairman on earth stared into the eager green glow of the precision-crafted orbs at his fingertips. Worlds of possibility. He smiled, then gritted his teeth and rubbed his hands. He finally had work to do.
“We’ll have this done in a jiffy,” he softly told the waiting child as he reached far back into his mind for the Tool.
by submission | May 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: Michael Edwards
The Introduction.
“He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.”
— Lao Tzu
As for me, it may sound rather grand, but I am called a seventh degree master of The Mountain Pathway tai chi system: movement, mantra, and meditation. Since I cannot live forever, I have encoded some of the secret teachings from my path in this story. Therefore, I may now speak to you, and yet remain silent. So that you may know. Yes, even now.
The Story.
Go then and leave the city. City of the fathers, they call it: those who knew the name of salvation.
Go then and pass out through the gates, white in the sun, where the old men gather together. They, greeting you, calling you by name.
Or no. Set out so early only the guard can greet you. His breath smoking. Rising like incense.
Go then unto the hills—fragrant with dawn—and find there—what? You look upon the peak, highest, and it speaks to you: “whatever you seek.” Is it gold? Veining the flesh of the Earth? Go then.
Let your foot be bruised, purple, upon the backs of stones. Let your fingers be cut open, red, upon the spines of rocks.
Climbing, you will find—if nothing else—inclination dragging you down.
And then, standing, the sun in your forehead (like a surmise), you will find a shadow standing behind you.
And now, the sun straight-up overhead (like an inspiration, perhaps), the vista will reveal to you a valley, mazy with silver. Rivulets of water, shining in the sun. “That,” you think, “is life.”
And overbrimming with greenery. “And that, hope.”
And yet. And yet haunted by shadows.
“But what is that, now?” Beyond this valley, on the rim of the world, it seems—yet another peak.
There it stands: Lone. Majestic. Crowned with snow. The ribs of it, massy, like the laterals of a pyramid, ascending to glory.
Each angle of it, a shade of blue. A change of mood. A facet of mind.
Soft now. Powdery. Or pastel. — Now energetic. Electric. Or even grandiose. — Mystical. Glacial. Robin’s egg. Or midnight. Yet ever and always—some increment of color blue.
Across the distance, the mountain shimmers in the sunlight. Giving way, giving way, this side and that, before the waves of heat in air, it seems less real, somehow, than the emptiness all about it.
Is this then—a mirage? A trick of the light? Sent to deceive the eye? “No,” you think. “And yes.”
And it will speak to you: “This.”
by submission | May 10, 2022 | Story |
Author: Salvatore Difalco
Maintenance received a call from one of the bio-labs to come and replace a panel of flickering fluorescent lights. They were upsetting the mouse. “The mouse?” I asked Jerry, the shift boss. I’d only been working at the Polytechnic Institute for two weeks and barely knew my way around its brutalist, labyrinthine layout, let alone familiarized myself with its machinations. One thing was certain, they’d spared no concrete—if not architectural cruelty—constructing the joint.
Jerry chuckled. “They’ve got a special mouse up in bio-lab 14,” he said. “Something like an uber-maus. Roided up, I’d guess. This Dr. Ashbery from Stanford runs things. I hear he’s a bit of a mad scientist. But I don’t ask too many questions, you know.” He touched his temple as though a brilliancy sprang to mind. “Hey,” he said, “why don’t you go up to bio-lab 14, replace those lights—and you can meet the mouse yourself?”
His tone disquieted me for some reason. “What’s so special about the mouse?” I asked.
“Nothing as far as I could tell with the naked eye,” Jerry said. “But something’s up with it.”
I went to the utility room and grabbed foldable stepladder and a box of fluorescent lamps. I made my way up to bio-lab 14—on the seventh floor somehow—and a gaunt man in a white coat behind a blinking console buzzed open the reinforced steel door. A light panel in the middle of the lab was on the fritz. The man in the white coat approached me.
“I’m Dr. Ashbery,” he said. “How long will this take? The mouse is in distress, as am I.”
“It’ll be just a jiffy,” I said, glancing at the cage housing the mouse as I unfolded my stepladder.
The little gray mouse in the cage appeared normal, except it kept staring at me. I mean, its moist black eyes locked on to me the moment I stepped into the lab and had not looked away. Its forepaws even grasped the cage wire like the tiny hands of a Lilliputian prisoner. No matter where I stood, and even as I mounted the stepladder, I could still feel those beady black eyes peering at me.
I completed the task, restoring normal luminescence, and presumably saving the mouse from further distress or an epileptic seizure. The mouse continued peering at me, though it had stopped clutching the cage wire and lightened the pitiful vibe.
“Does he have a name?” I asked.
Dr. Ashbery nodded. “He answers to Maurice.”
“Looks like Maurice wants to say something.”
Dr. Ashbery smiled. “He does. He does want to communicate. He’s aching to to so. But we’ve yet to figure out a way. Of course he lacks a voice box—and his physiology also militates against any available sign language. We’ve tried alphabet boxes and pointing charts and so on. In vain. Perhaps he can learn to tap a keyboard. That’s where the breakthrough will occur, I believe.”
What was he talking about here? Mickey Mouse goes to college? To my simple ears, it sounded like some freak-Frankenstein show. My confusion—indeed, alarm—must have been etched on my face.
“You see,” Dr. Ashbery explained, “since he was a fetus, Maurice has been enriched with human neural and cerebral organoids.”
He what? This was all above my pay grade and perhaps more than my nervous system could endure. “So you think …”
“That he has consciousness?” Dr. Ashbery sighed. “I believe so, yes.”
I shakily folded up my stepladder and glanced at Maurice again. He winked at me.
by Julian Miles | May 9, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Good afternoon. My name is Deut Wallis. I’m from the Galactic Encyclopaedia Update Department.”
Perry regards the bespectacled gent with suspicion. The last one who turned up in a suit that smart wanted to sell folk funeral plots on the moon, never mind that nobody here buried anything anyway.
“What you selling, guv’nor?”
Deut waves his hands in horror: “Oh, good grief, no. I’m not a salesman. I simply need your help. People I’ve spoken to tell me you’re the one to deal with my problem.”
Perry puts the hammer and chisel down. Pulling off gloves and goggles, he looks the suit up and down.
“Mister Wallis, I’m no dealer with problems. I make figures.”
Deut looks about the cluttered store. The side he’d already taken in is typical of a general store on any frontier world. The side he hasn’t is more like, well, an art gallery. The place is filled with statues, abstracts, and dioramas, all carved from a glossy blue-black rock.
“Precisely. You’re by the Magma Fields. That’s what I’m here about. The spelling mistake. My father noted it years ago, but it’s been so far down the ‘to do’ list we’ve only just gotten around to it for the centenary edition of the Galactic Encyclopaedia.”
“I’ve heard of it. What’s the problem?”
“Well, on seeing images of this planet, I saw the typographic error had crept into you local signage, so I thought I’d come and start the process of getting corrections applied in time for the release of the centenary edition.”
Perry shakes his head.
“I’m not getting you.”
Deut shakes his head.
“The Magma Fields. Such a wonderful view, I’m surprised it hasn’t attracted more tourists. When I saw the spelling mistake, I understood. You could be sitting on a fortune in tourist revenue, and I’m sure your figure-making business would benefit.”
Perry’s eyes widen.
“Oh. Now you say it again, I see the problem. Come with me, Mister Wallis.”
He beckons Deut through the shop and out the rear door. He grabs two pairs of tinted goggles and hands one set to his visitor.
“Put these on.”
Deut looks at them, then shrugs and does so.
Stepping through a metal door, a wave of heat strikes them. Many metres below, glowing, molten rock moves like an enormous sea. Deut raises his gaze to find it is a sea. From here to the shimmering horizon, there is nothing but heaving lava.
Perry reaches into a large fridge and pulls out a can of drink. He offers one to Deut.
“No, thanks. Not while I’m on the clock.”
Perry smiles and closes the upper door. Opening the lower door, he pulls out a chunk of ice and tosses it over the edge.
Deut leans forward to watch it explode into steam on contact with the lava below.
Perry reaches out and pulls him back.
“Wait for it, Mister Update Department.”
Deut’s about to reply when a rippling mass rises from the fiery sea below. The heat coming off it is like a body blow. Two eyes of shining black open. Deut sees a hole open that goes right through the mass. Air whistles and roars. Perry nods.
“Rolthsar is delighted to see you. They wonder if you have an offering?”
Perry’s eyes flick to the fridge. Deut takes the hint and grabs a can from the it. As one, they throw cans into the rippling mass.
Air howls and whispers. The mass subsides back into the magma.
Perry catches Deut before he collapses.
“Your book doesn’t say Magma Fiends in error, Mister Wallis.”
by viraltwit | May 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: G. J. Poirier
”Is that your dependent?” The woman with the too-close eyes leaned in, her breath hitting Elma like a wall of rancid fog.
Elma suppressed a gag and nodded.
“Yes. The one with the red cap.” She shifted down the bench a few inches.
“Mine isn’t working out,” she confided. “Her submission score is really low and she keeps asking questions.”
Elma nodded vaguely.
“I spoke to the Gatherer and they said she could have one more chance. Between you and me, I don’t think she should get more chances. I’ve been very clear. Once she turned seven cycles, there were no more questions. Do you know what she did?” The woman furrowed her brow, her black eyes boring into the side of Elma’s face.
Elma gave her a short head shake, thinking of the notice she’d received through the Voice Machine in her pod last week. *The Gatherer has accused you of the crime of Reticence. The Unifier has corroborated this charge. You have been placed on Enhanced Observation*. She had to think of Talya. The next Nurturer wouldn’t be like Elma.
Elma glanced at the girl in question, a spritely child with close-cropped black hair who was standing atop a slide pretending to look through a telescope. She turned back to the woman. The woman’s mouth smiled, but her eyes remained unchanged.
“When it was reflection time, she scribbled all over the inside of her pod. The little monster had taken a *permanent* marker out of my carry-sack! I suspended her morning intake for three days after that.”
The woman smiled smugly.
“When I told the Gatherer about that they said I had acted *accordantly*.” She smiled nervously. “I didn’t know what that meant so I studied my Acts of Solidarity. Accordantly means that I ‘acted without self-interest and in the true spirit of the Community of Deliverance.’” She concluded with a note of smug satisfaction.
A shrill tone signalled the end of Play. Elma stood and walked over to the little girl with the red cap, who was whispering conspiratorially with the black-haired girl under grey plastic turtle.
“Ok, Talya. Time to go.” Talya looked up, briefly considered arguing, then scuttled out from under the turtle.
Elma crouched down near the girl in the black hair, who sat defiantly in the turtle-fort and said, “Hi sweetie, you keep asking questions, ok?”
The black-haired girls eyes widened, and she nodded slowly.
“I was just like you when I was a little girl. Do one thing for me though?”
“Ok,” the black-haired girl whispered. Elma imagined the battle going on inside the child, between natural curiosity and the methodical crushing of that curiosity into conditioned obedience. With effort, Elma held back tears.
“You keep those questions inside your head for now. Do what your Nurturer says no matter what. One day it will be time for all those questions to come out. But not today, or tomorrow, or next cycle. Can you do that for me?”
The black-haired girl smiled and nodded, eager to respond to Elma’s simple act of trust.
The pig-eyed woman clumped heavily over, crouching on her formidable haunches beside Elma. “You get yourself out of there before you earn yourself another three days of half-intakes.” She looked over her shoulder at Elma, her jaw set, flat eyes now in accordance with the drooping scowl of her thin lips.
Elma walked over to where Talya stood patiently and took her hand.
“Come, let’s go home.”
