by submission | Nov 5, 2021 | Story |
Author: Kiel M. Gregory
I live in a world where most things move too fast or not at all. Molasses or honey like water. Lives. I’m thinking more of others and less of myself and I think that’s precisely where this all started to go wrong.
What’s the point of doing anything at all when eventually the stars will burn out and there will be no light and literally nothing will happen forever? How can you escape that or rush toward it?
Imagine trillions of years in the future. We all look the same except we’re inside a cold alloy hull, dodging gravity wells or cannibalistic black holes. The interior of our domiciles is lit only artificially. We “print” everything useful. We recycle everything used, including us. We still fight and occasionally kill each other, but it’s usually over “food” (dinner wafers or quantities of nutritional quasi-solids) and not the color of our skin since we’re all coffee-and-cream colored. Not reproductive rights since we’re all the same sex and fuck ourselves full of kin. Finally, we found something else to feel a way about. Finally, we can be alone and hear only what we want. I can’t imagine what music sounds like in this future, but I can imagine a group of someones are still at the top, letting us own nothing and be happy.
Entropy has stretched the universal fabric to the point where we share thoughts. Occasionally this drives someone mad. This is how evolution works. Time means nothing.
The frictionless drive whispers its secrets along the ship’s expanse.
One of us is dreaming.
The shackled machines weep viscosity, capillary their own tears.
This doesn’t mean anything at all.
by submission | Nov 4, 2021 | Story |
Author: VH Ferguson
There’s a lick of wind that curls around me like satin ribbons, softly against my skin, in my hair. The view is unparalleled, out of this world.
The cliffs to the north west are a grey almost blushing pink, and make companion with the sapphire of the sky, the stars as counterparts to the bird-like shapes below them, circling the cliffs, all trills and whoops.
This place has been… unexpected. I always imagined its beauty but how could I have imagined its culture, as I can only wince and outspread my hands and admit that I never expected there to be one.
My grasp of their language is laughable, but the natives here are staggered and patient. Patient and quiet and pleasantly watchful. They seem to communicate telepathically, almost, with looks and touch and a biotic intimacy so that I feel embarrassed to realise that I am the otherness here.
To help me understand their stories they draw pictures in the alabaster sand of things I’ve never seen for hours, and later as I semi-drift to my bed as if in slow motion, I wonder if I’ll dream that night of shadows in a cave or of Orion Nebula.
I try the local dish, the district famous dish – they’re excited for my reaction as they are for all of my reactions as they’re certainly not used to tourists. It is a soup of sorts, I think. It seems oddly carbonated and lively but looks like liquid silk a shade of molten lava and it’s a highly unusual experience. The air smells not quite like hard-boiled eggs. I have that awkward creeping anxiety of trying to find a familiar sign with which to map their customs – is it rude for food to remain on the plate as in Japan, or is a drop in the bowl enough to quirk the eyebrow in distase like in China?
It makes me laugh, now, that even in the most extrinsic situation the human compulsion is to fit the world in a familiar place. It turns out, of course, that the custom is to bury your bowl in the ground when the meal is complete, the bowl having been made with organic material, which was obviously completely unexpected and sits conspicuous and unaccompanied in the library of my mind under ‘alien cultural dining etiquette’.
The wind picks up a little, as I stand here now, steeping in these last moments, the sun somewhere behind me, vast as it has ever been. I wonder how it will feel to be home, will I be changed?
The cliffs are to the north west. To the east is Earth, a dizzying succulent pinned in the sky, and I get the absurd sense that I could swim the distance.
by submission | Nov 3, 2021 | Story |
Author: Chana Kohl
People think the Moon is a tranquil place. I suppose that’s the impression one gets seeing the silvertone reflections of its hauntingly barren expanse from Earth. In reality, it is a painstaking maze of rugged terrain and deep crater mounds, open mouths gasping for breath beneath a cold and empty sky. Lunar dust clings everywhere, leaving lingering traces of saltpeter and sulfur. The most serene thought I have up here is of a long, hot shower, the one thing most scarce in supply.
I maneuver my SEV, like a slow, rumbling, metal crab, past the western ridge of “Mare Serenitatis.” From across the horizon, a lone habitation module comes into view: a small, white sugar cube in a vast bowl of basalt. Why anyone would choose to hole up here is a mystery. I guess Space Force Command believes I can unravel it.
Nearing the docking hatch, I make radio contact. A woman’s voice replies, dulcet and low, as if to convey she probably won’t shoot me, but don’t be too sure, “Who the hell are you?”
“Col. Lily Woodard, this is Capt. Thomas Spike, USSF. I was sent here with an urgent request. I..”
“Nobody calls me that anymore,” she breaks in. “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying. Pack it up and roll it out.”
“Ma’am,” I try not to sound desperate. “I also have a private message for you from Brent.”
A minute of thumping silence passes before I hear clamping locks engage. I slide out my suit port and wait until the docking pressure equalizes. An older woman with smooth, umber skin and mahogany eyes opens the hatch. She motions for me to follow her inside.
“I don’t normally get guests out here. You’ve got two options: coffee or coffee.”
Sitting down at the drop-leaf table in the galley, “I’ll take coffee then,” I say. She sets down two, piping cups then sits across from me.
“To the point, Colonel, I’m here on behalf of Central Command. Know that your accomplishments are greatly admired on Earth still. New Columbia needs your expertise with the Mars deployment.”
“That’s not my job anymore, next item.” Reaching too fast for her cup, she misses the target, knocking it over. She freezes, like a kid with a hand caught in the cookie jar.
I stare at her, slowly piecing together what’s off. The peripheral eye contact. The shuffled walking. The harsh, bright lights…. Macular degeneration. Don’t know how I missed it before. “How bad is it?”
“20/180.”
Damn. Sending people to Mars and we still can’t reverse it.
She juts her chin up defiantly, “Still want me advising your pilots?” She wipes up the mess.
So this self-imposed exile isn’t about a falling-out with SF. This is personal. She’s coping with loss, not just of her sight but of her sense of self. New Columbia may have to manage this next operation without their retired hero.
Unless…
I reach into my pocket and place the data pod encrypted for ‘Aunt Lil’ into her open hand. “This is for you.”
She takes it to her port station to listen in private. As the message plays, I watch her expression soften. Something in her family ties connects, an invisible tether, drawing her back to the rest of humanity. When it finishes, she stands.
“I’ll be ready to leave in an hour.”
As the port retracts inside the SEV, I apologize for the odor of burnt gunpowder permeating the air.
“That’s alright, Tom,” she says, inching towards the shotgun seat and smiling. “I love the smell of Moondust in the morning.”
by Hari Navarro | Nov 2, 2021 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The thing walked the moons acid shore and it pissed. It did it because the alcohol that was within was knocking to get out and it was sad.
So sad.
So much that it then hardened and, well, then a bead of clear honesty seeped into and yawned out of its body.
It wanted something else.
This alien, this thing, it then looked down and it saw what it was pissing upon. A gentle scoop of time hammered porcelain, the hole into which we all purge that which distils within our gut.
A toilet. The necessary room.
Some filthy yellow bowl in a stall. I scratched my lips, as is done in search of wishes that are sought that resemble fervent prayer.
Would you like for me to tell you just what lay at these feet? To tell you just what it was at my war dusted toes?
You don’t, but I will.
Actually you do, I am sorry that I speak on your behalf. But, I know your kind. The quiet nothing of space and trickster time suckles, does it not?
It, this lost and dirtied thing.
It was, I say was, but… she still very much is – a woman.
She now wedged into a bouquet of broken sticks and sheared off things frosted in bits of plastic.
In a fucking gutter.
Her eyes are glass and her mouth is a pit of glue and broken crunchy things.
I pissed but this stream of twisting sour that drilled into her face it had words. I recall, as I did arch my back and plunge into the moment.
I’m going to back away just now and head off to bed, sleep it off. Add another day to this disintegration disgust of just what I am.
It’s not easy. I can smell.
I can smell the desecration.
Fumes like callipers where legs should be.
But I’ll flip my pillow and try and catch its coldest edge.
I don’t want to see her flesh as it drapes atop the lighthouse and crumples and stretches in the gust any more.
Who pisses on the dead?
Probably never happened.
My planet is dead. We failed us all.
by Julian Miles | Nov 1, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
My name was Walt. I hunted. Drank beer. Drove a truck. Met my wife, May, skinny dipping down at Hodgeson Creek. We married. Had kids. Lost two sons to wars in foreign countries. Lost a daughter to a war in another state. My other son, Rufus, came back from a war, then met his boyfriend skinny dipping at Hodgeson Creek.
I had trouble with that. Coming on top of my cancer, it didn’t seem fair. Then my youngest, Maisie, told me she had cancer. That broke May. She admitted she’d got the same diagnosis. Something had been seeping into the waters of Hodgeson Creek for a long time.
We mourned for each other as a family, then looked for ways to change things. No vengeance. Saw what that did to my father. We set out to make things better for those who didn’t have cancer yet.
Doc Moses, he saw it first. Some Professor at a fancy clinic over in Russia. Had tried it on animals. Started human trials. They were closed to the public. There were awful rumours, but Moses said he understood why.
Cashed in just about everything we had, took a flight: us, Rufus, his boyfriend, and Moses. Went to a place I couldn’t pronounce. Not surprising: the cancer in my throat meant I could barely talk.
The clinic was set in acres of mixed forests. It was beautiful.
Professor Ed was a nice man. Couldn’t speak English worth a damn, but his assistant was really good at it. She explained why the process was hidden from the public. We sort of got the idea, but Ed said that if we were interested, we had to see before we could join.
May liked the idea. Maisie too. We signed and went to see the changing room. After that, we were all different. It’s not a thing you want to see, until you know where it leads, and what it offers. We talked it over and decided to do it. For the future.
The day came and Rufus formally introduced me to Terry. My boy said he thought it was a wonderful thing we were doing. I called him a poof. He called me a bigot. We laughed. I kissed my son and gave him my blessing, then took May and Maisie’s hands. We went through the hissing doors to our next life.
It’s not death. Those who object are wrong. We’ll grow for centuries. How can we be recognisable to anything that lasts only ninety years? Sure, we talk to each other. We can’t communicate with you except by using devices like the one that created this article. Experts from the clinic brought it. They come by every few years to check in on us. All too easy for doubters to say it’s made up.
If you believe, trust me when I say the change is hard. You can’t wait until you’re about to die. If you die during the vivilig transformation, your corpse will be partially lignified. The process doesn’t stop all neat and tidy because your soul lit out for sunnier climes. Your kin will be left to bury a coffin full of stinking compost.
If you don’t believe, kindly let people have their peace amongst the trees planted in memory of their lost ones. Take your hate away. Better still: let it go.
Rufus and Terry visit the three of us every month, down in the copse on the shore, our roots slowly leeching the toxins from Hodgeson Creek.
by submission | Oct 31, 2021 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“In regione caecorum rex est luscus.”
Captain Robert Cunningham screamed at his weasel-faced brother-in-law, grasping Milo’s uniform tight against his scrawny pale neck, slamming him against their spaceship’s bridge wall. “You assaulted the sleeping Cetan girl!”
“Back off, Bobby. Wouldn’t want sis to divorce your ass… if we get back.” Lieutenant Surpo strained his soft hands, pushing back his attacker.
“You idiot! You were a last-minute add-on to avoid your death sentence for pedophilia on Mars. Damn your family influence! I thought I could contain you with only men aboard, and the Cetan guarded…but now…it’s too late. I won’t be able to tell anyone why the mission failed. They’ll suspect Mercury Retrograde terrorist cells. That means war!”
Surpo straightened his shirt while feigning superiority. “So what? She’s an alien— no eyes, can’t hear or speak. Nobody’s going to know if you keep your mouth shut. I’ve been on this wreck for six months going through Oort Cloud ice, wondering if we’d get crushed. I needed the R&R. Now back off! Remember your birth class, brother-in-law. You married up, remember?”
“If I had time to eject you out an airlock, I would, but she’ll take care of that.”
“She’ll what?” Surpo’s wide-eyed questioning stopped. Men’s cries of agony filled the ship’s intercom. “What the hell?”
“That’s forty brave men dying because of you.” Cunningham pointed at the speakers, pushing Surpo back against the scorching wall. “That Cetan guide was our ticket for humans to voyage through the fiery plasma barriers around our solar system that’s keeping us out of deep space travel. She guided me telepathically through frozen Oort reefs, but you had no need to know. Years ago, I lived with Ait Haddidu Berbers on Earth; learning ancient dialects Cetans used millennia ago when they last visited. I was the only one trained for first contact. Only I could interpret her telepathic directions. My life…a waste, for what? So my sister’s criminal brother could cause billions of deaths in a conflict between Mercury and Saturn? They’ll blame all this on me— a lower-class defective.”
“Who cares? What’s happening? Those screams?” Surpo struggled to free himself, still pinned by Cunningham to a scorching panel against his back.
“You’ll know soon enough. She wasn’t some longhaired teenage victim like those you tortured on Mars. No, she’s on loan from a superior race. She’s over ten thousand years old. She was in stasis, in dormancy, providing peaceful intent to us unless assaulted. The Cetans once aided Libyans in battle in ancient history. No army stood before them. That’s why Greeks named Cetan warrior women ‘Protectors.’ They tested us on this voyage. Could we evolve beyond our violent ancestors? No, we failed, thanks to you.”
Cunningham choked in thick gas clouds filling the room as he yelled over the horrific cries for help echoing around him.
“Feel the heat on the wall? It’s from a quarter-million degrees Kelvin melting our ship. We’re off course in the plasma barrier. This blue smoke billowing from our ventilation, that’s hull liquefying…but you won’t die that easy.”
Cunningham looked away as bright sapphire flashes rushed past his shoulders. He watched his in-law morph into a scorched skeletal statue, oozing from blistering laser fire. The Captain felt light breezes and heard light flapping sounds from behind him, wafting toxic blue haze about, knowing her dreadful eye was open, above her winged shoulders. He was last to fall from the gazes of the Cetan Medusa, her telepathic pineal gland flailing snakelike from her forehead, fulfilling her role as guardian of the Ring Pass Not.
