by submission | Sep 29, 2021 | Story |
Author: Peter Tittle
It was understandable, really. By far, most of the crime— 97% in fact—was committed by men. Prisons are expensive to build and maintain. Prisoners are also expensive—they don’t work while they’re in prison, so we have to support them. Then there’s the expense of the police forces and courts that get them there. And the emergency services that take care of all the gunshot wounds, the knife slashes, the broken jaws…
She pushed. And pushed. The hospital room was white and sterile. The attending doctor said something to the assisting nurse from time to time, but things seemed to be progressing normally. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t excruciatingly painful.
Her husband mopped the sweat off her brow, and encouraged, and reassured.
“And push again,” the doctor said.
“It better be a girl,” she grunted as she pushed again when the wave of pain struck her.
“Don’t worry about that now, honey” her husband said. “Just focus, you’re doing good…”
Then there’s all the environmental stuff. All those beer cans, empty cigarette packs, fast food cartons—most of the litter along the highways was put there by men. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What are they driving on those highways? Big cars and pick-up trucks. Gas-guzzlers with high emissions. And the companies that dump toxic waste, and clear cut forests, and dam river systems…? All run by men.
“But I want a girl,” she cried. With exhaustion. With worry.
“Oh come now,” the nurse said. “Boys are harder, I know, had two of ‘em myself. Holy terrors half the time, but you love ‘em just the same.”
“Another push— ”
The insurance companies opened the door when they implemented higher premiums for men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six. They were the ones more likely to cause an accident. Can’t argue with the facts and figures.
“No, it’s not that,” she gasped, “It’s the money.”
“Shh, honey, we’ll find a way, it’ll be all right,” he wiped her brow again.
“One more, I think—”
She gave one final push then fell back against the pillows, drenched, exhausted. She waited anxiously for the announcement.
“It’s a boy!”
They called it the Gender Responsibility Tax— a $5,000 surtax was levied on each and every male. Payable annually, from birth. By the parents, of course, until the boy reached manhood.
(Thanks to June Stephenson. It was her idea.)
by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 28, 2021 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
He’d spent forty years running rescue and salvage operations in deep space, had hundreds of engagements, many responding to distress beacons, but he had never experienced anything like this.
His entire ship resonated at some experiential but otherwise unmeasurable frequency. His instrumentation registered nothing, it wasn’t designed to analyze whatever this was.
Rapierre himself felt more than heard the signal, and as he navigated the ship, zig-zagging in the direction where it became stronger, he found there was a sweet spot where, if he pointed the nose of the craft directly into it, the sensation became something more, a kind of beautiful, barely perceptible subliminal song, pulling at the edges of his consciousness.
There was nothing to lock his navigation system onto, only the sensation in his mind, so he flew manually for days, maybe weeks, time gradually losing meaning. He slept at intervals strapped into the pilot’s seat, trusting the ship’s collision avoidance systems, and that he’d wake up if the feeling changed in any way.
It was the proximity alarms that jolted him awake, and he strained through the forward observation to make out what had set them off.
The space ahead of the ship was shrouded in a particulate fog, and dimly visible in its midst, slowly rotating, hung a massive celestial remnant, edges lost in the cloud, its surface a vast rugged plain.
He synchronized their rotations in order that he might land.
As he approached, the features of the landscape below clarified, and he realized that the surface wasn’t space rock or condensed stardust at all, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of craft condensed into a single block of pancaked and intermingled wreckage.
He pulled back hard on the control stick and pushed the throttle to the pins to climb away, but his efforts had no effect. The ship shuddered against whatever force pulled it forward, the space frame vibrating in pained harmony with the siren’s song.
The collision with the surface was violent, the ship plowing through the debris field like a hot knife until its shielding failed, and then further still, the sounds of terrestrial wreckage tearing through the fuselage and venting atmosphere overwhelmed only by a myriad of warning klaxons. The cockpit safety doors slammed into place, sealing him off from the vacuum of space as everything ground to a halt.
He sat in sudden silence, the shock of the crash slowly giving way to the reality of the situation he was now in.
He would die here.
Nobody was coming to rescue him, and if they did, if they picked up any beacon he might send, or the signal that brought him here, they’d suffer the same fate.
“Why have you come?”
He flinched, looking around to find the source of the words that had formed in his head.
“Why have you come?”
The question again.
“You called me here,” he spoke the words aloud to the empty cockpit, “your beacon, I followed your beacon.”
There was a long pause before new words formed.
“We called, but not for you.”
There was another long pause.
“Who are you, so arrogant that you would assume our call was meant for you to answer? You are not welcome.”
Rapierre had no reply, for the first, and what would be the last time in his life, he was at a loss for words.
by Julian Miles | Sep 27, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I can hear his controller yelling at him to shoot. His eyes flick left and right, then he stares at the woman with the kid a short distance behind me. That shouting must be deafening. It’s certainly not helping him do anything useful.
Overcast afternoon, leafy plaza, man in a suit pointing a gun at thin air while sweat runs down his face. People are starting to notice. I turn and raise my hand towards the CCTV, fingers spread. I start folding them down one by one.
4…
They’re still shouting.
3…
Single voice. Urgent. I check my position and step sideways to keep the woman and kid directly behind me.
2…
A single word being shouted. I see his finger go from frame to trigger. I crouch, he fires. A woman screams. I stand and walk away as the man falls to his knees. People run about screaming. I don’t look to see who he hit. I don’t look back when another shot sounds.
By the plaza entrance, a second operative rushes towards me, eyes roaming, desperately trying to find the menace they’re shouting about. I locate the nearest CCTV and raise my hand again.
4…
Frantic shouting over the headset. Confused, he charges at me. I step to one side.
3…
He stops and spins, gun coming up, finger on the trigger. I quickstep until I’m behind him. I was always the best at this game as a kid, and that was when my opponent could see me.
2…
We dance about as he frantically tries to turn to face me. The voices are getting louder. Any second –
Now. I see his elbow bend and duck to the opposite side of where he fires blind over his shoulder. Then I hop back as he swings the gun to shoot under the other arm. That second shot elicits a scream from behind us.
He spins to see who he hit. I bat his arms down, then open his throat with my bone knife. They grew it from a bit of my femur and a few stem cells after they became certain I couldn’t make normal objects be like me. A clever bit of thinking, and it works. Doesn’t keep an edge for very long, but they hone them very sharp, and have grown spares.
Drone!
There it is. Loaded with multiple ways to ignore my curious case of not being visible to the naked eye – the scientists have promised they’ll explain what happened, one day. I don’t think it’ll be anytime soon. At least it’s a useful mishap.
I raise my hand and make childish shooting gesture towards the drone. It drops, going up in flames as it does so. Laser! Tasty. I never know what my support will bring, but they do try to be appropriate, and monitor me for cues. Today’s theme is ‘invisible killer’.
We’re done here. I move my hand in a throat-cutting gesture. Support takes out the surveillance in the park and on two streets, one at either end. Then I run into the bushes next to this entrance and shimmy down the shaft opened by an unseen support team member. As I’m throwing on clothes, an unseen person closes the hatch. Nothing left to chance.
One day the opposition will get their act together. Until then, it’s open season.
I emerge from a distant storm drain. In a nearby car park is an SUV that recognises the key in my pocket. I’ll call for my next assignment in a week. Time to disappear properly for a bit.
by submission | Sep 26, 2021 | Story |
Author: Jason Graff
I was a child, asleep in a patchwork oxygen tent when he first appeared. Since I’d slept through it, my first encounter with him was in my imagination fueled as it often was by the ramblings of the others who shared the apartment with my family. He came out of the sky, people said. He came from Earth, they thought. He’d been sent to take us all back, save us; they were certain.
The first time I saw him was several years later. Despite his failure to do anything to improve our lives, he retained a messianic aura. It was thought to be an auspicious sign to actually see him in the, well, I guess it could be called flesh. Wandering an alley searching for a signal burst, I heard a noise from above. There he teetered several stories above my head, feeding on a metal blast cap while walking a copper wire between buildings — a monstrously oversized acrobat. Following behind him, the small army of rats that he’d amassed since his arrival formed an unbroken chain.
I was on a patch job for the city when I came face to face with him. He wore a Hazsuit that looked newer and more advanced than the ones still seen hanging in people’s closets, reminders of the ruined world our kind had to leave. Not only rats but pigeons and stray cats were gathered around him. He was affixing what I took to be some sort of tracking device to each one.
The number of stray animals soon began to diminish. It reached the point that the black market became unaffordable. My stomach grumbled and growled as it did everyone’s but I didn’t say a word about what I’d seen. The simple act of survival had made us all rumor mongers. No one else was really talking about him by then.
The growing scarcity of strays grew more and more apparent. I figured the government was trying to thin out our numbers again by starving us. Yet, I still said nothing about my encounter, not that it would’ve made any difference. He’d come here to do a job and no one I knew would’ve been able to stop him.
By the time he finally caught up with me, I was weak from hunger. A stinging rain was falling that morning. My threadbare shirt had melted to my skin. He was above me, perched on a street lamp. He put a collar on me not unlike those I’d witnessed him putting on the stray animals. You’re not going home, he said, but to serve a higher purpose.
I next found myself in a holding tank with a number of others, many even thinner and more wasted away than me. Some cried out or moaned into the din but most of us kept silent. Gradually the collar tightened around my neck as shocks pulsed through me. I could smell my own flesh frying. I kicked out, my legs moving independent of me. The collar tightened against every motion I attempted to make. My body was no longer my own. Then, I fell into a paralyzed state.
When the animals were let through the gate into the tank, they began to feed indiscriminately. The rats fed in packs. While the pigeons pecked on people here and there, showing no sense of urgency. Only the cats showed any discrimination, plopping themselves down and sniffing at people. All I could do was close my eyes and wait my turn.
by submission | Sep 25, 2021 | Story |
Author: Andrew Dunn
Araceli’s stars sparkled like diamonds in a patchwork piece of sky, ringed by the edge of the caldera that towered over the city. Jennifer had a story about why she wanted that sky, and Araceli’s stars, inked into her skin, droplet after droplet of ink. Araceli absorbed Jennifer’s story as she freshened a palette of colors and maneuvered her machine-needle over Jennifer’s arm, while keeping a watchful eye on the window. At that hour patrolling orcs often bored of the bars and clubs where humans drank and danced. When orcs did, they ventured down alleys to enforce the Shadow Prophet’s edicts against magic.
The magic in the stars Araceli crafted was strong in ways she never felt as a child of human and elven bloodlines. Her life straddled two worlds, two divergent cultures – she was inexorably wedded to both, but she felt the way human eyes studied her cerulean skin with suspicion, and the way the elven spoke in ancient tongues Araceli had never learned when the elven worried her humanoid ears were spying on them.
Somehow, Araceli managed to apprentice under an elder who helped channel her duality – human instincts and elven magic – into a potent force she later learned to hide. Overhead, goblins in zeppelins were touring skies clothed in thick, industrial smoke, tending to ember-colored crystals and glass lenses to find evidence of forbidden magic. Araceli kept her trade quiet, and vetted each customer meticulously.
Jennifer checked out. She said she’d found an oracle’s voice on a radio for sale in a dwarven pawn shop. The oracle’s voice was sandwiched between the daily recitation of the Shadow Prophet’s dissertations delivered by some schlub of an acolyte, and dance tracks that hadn’t changed in generations. The dwarf sitting behind the counter snarled as Jennifer turned the radio’s dial back and forth to find the oracle’s voice. Listening to that voice carried a death sentence, but Jennifer didn’t back down. Instead, she took in every word the oracle said no matter how loudly the dwarf protested. Araceli had seen it all – hacking into the pawn shop’s security system was easy, and it was no problem to find archived audio-video footage that matched Jennifer’s story.
“I need your stars,” Jennifer begged Araceli, “but I don’t have a dime to my name.”
Araceli didn’t need money to ink her work into Jennifer’s flesh. Jennifer had listened to the oracle. That meant there was a chance she could take what the oracle told her, and wield the magic Araceli lent her in stars to drop goblins in their zeppelins out of the sky. If that happened, there could be more in the city that had never felt strong before, but would when they saw those zeppelins fall from the sky. If so, maybe they would rise up and run orcs out of the ghetto and then pull the Shadow Prophet down off his throne.
by submission | Sep 24, 2021 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
Pellucidar Corp. had launched a new campaign: “7 million dollars for the year 7 million.”
In a time of mega-trillionaires, the price was cheap change, and the prospect was attractive. Decisively, the distant future promised wonders the year 2143 did not: a pristine world, thoroughly renewed after the deforestations, extinctions, and pollutions of the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries—a New Pangaea free of the human stain, repopulated by newly adapted and varied forms of life, and home to gorgeous oceans gleaming like topaz and zircon.
The only catch was that the journey was one way, meaning the investment was a permanent commitment. Yet the well-heeled rationalized that the year 7 million was the ultimate tax remission—their Utopia, their Shangri-la, their Erewhon—free of regulations, controls, and constraints. So six hundred and ninety-three of them held a remote conference on how to divide and settle the future. They would go with self-assembling technologies, autonomous AI systems, 3D food printers, solar-powered VTOLs, android servants, virtual entertainments, fine clothes, and art collections and then build city-state communes for themselves, their families, and their posterity and inherit the next seven million years.
An attending male representative, mid-forties, from Pellucidar Corp. spoke smoothly to the remote audience, explaining that the company would add a bonus for an additional million dollars per adult traveler—a lifetime supply of bourbon, bonbons, or berberine, delivered in bulk every year—though the deal was technically limited to twenty-five years, as the small print of the company contract said. Nevertheless, the mega-trillionaires were won over. Everything would be to their advantage: no governments, no proletarians, no wars—a communism of the crème de la crème.
So when they were ready, the six hundred and ninety-three signed up to board the Time Trestle®, a massive and elaborate loop conveyer Pellucidar Corp. had constructed deep in the wilderness of historic Virginia, USA. The entire emigration would take a year, but the company explained that each wave of trestle passengers would arrive more or less simultaneously, as if no time had passed at all. Chronotopic oscillators energized, warping the tapestry of twenty-six dimensions, and shuttle after shuttle of high-society men, women, and others were transported to the distant tomorrow.
As promised, the mega-trillionaires found themselves in the year 7 million. There were no other higher intelligences; the air and the oceans were fragrant; and the animals and the plants were strange, gargantuan, and beautiful. Satisfied, the settlers assembled their city-states and, in a year, began to populate their New Pangaea.
But after twenty-eight years, the communities had dwindled to half their size in face of a little-appreciated problem: aggressive, bizarre, and unrecognizable molecules that slowly ravaged the wealthy habitants from 2143. After all, with the disappearance of what was humanity in the previous million-plus years, the world became host to more archaic and primordial forebears—those mindless genetic fragments that existed for the sole purpose of viral replication. Another twenty-eight years later, and defenseless, the people were gone, leaving only the myriad artifacts and entertainments they had brought to relish the time.
In the year 7 million and sixty, a new wave of expatriates arrived, except this time, they were not another group of mega-trillionaires, but the richer and more powerful CEOs of Pellucidar Corp.
