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.
by submission | Sep 23, 2021 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Know the right people and get your right place.” Ted Aaronson’s huge fingers straightened wrinkles in an undersized, blue t-shirt irritating his neck. “The right people get the best.” Aaronson twisted his powerful, athletic frame, popping noisy vertebrae in the crowded space station’s quarters.
“Is that what got you onboard? You’re not representing science.” Mirco Matteucci directed his focus to his computer pad, finishing reports about hull temperature effects from recent CMEs.
“Huh, I’m doing my part, punk. They aren’t sending weenie whackers off to Mars. Only the fit go. That’s my job here, testing vigor every day; ensuring how superior breeds maintain strength for a long haul. Maybe some of you will fly ships and build colony bases, but you won’t last long on the surface. Only advanced genetics will survive. And speaking of survival, I’m hungry as hell. What’s gizmo got in his fridge to munch?”
“Don’t, Aaronson. Devi worked on his tardigrade project for months. He keeps samples in there. Look at the label. See, it says ‘Warning, Biological Hazard.’ I sure as hell wouldn’t open that looking for eats.”
“No, and you’ll stay shriveled up—the slug you’ve always been. I’ve seen Jew boy hiding food away. He’s not fooling me. As far as how I got my ticket…it’s people…my people. My old man is the CEO of the country’s biggest mining company. The first Martian settlers get land grants, just like the Spanish elite in Mexico. I’m set for taking the mineral-rich Meridiani Plain. We’ll strip the crap out of it, making billions. I’ll come back as a fricking king. That’s the right people in the right place. Hmm, this looks good. A bunch of kosher bologna sliced up, but who cares there’s no bread? I need protein, baby!”
Mirco watched, horrified, as Aaronson swallowed a handful of meat slices in one huge gulp. “You idiot! That’s not deli meat. Devi’s been dissecting giant tardigrades from outside Section 5. That’s why he’s here. He predicted those things we released in space would live, thrive, and evolve into larger species as they fed on the bacterium we discovered living on the space station’s outer surface. Didn’t you read anything about our mission?”
Aaronson struggled with the last bite before answering. “Why should I? You’re an MIT whiz kid. I’m a top athlete at UCLA. What’s he? Some farm kid at a teacher’s college in Minnesota. He just doesn’t know he doesn’t belong at this elevation. I do. You do. His work means nothing. No Mars for his kind.”
Aaronson bent over, grabbing his stomach while holding his throat. Mirco watched the football star rush through the hatch door to the vacuum toilets. Devi Levine floated in a half-hour later.
“What the hell! Mirco, what did you do?” The color left Devi’s normally tanned face as he stretched his arms out to close his empty refrigerator door. The sample bio-wrapper remained suspended above it.
“Not me, bud. That ass Aaronson thought it was lunch meat. He ate it. I think he’s sorry. He’s got the runs.”
“No…no…oh God!” Levine pointed at the single view window behind Mirco. It permitted a panorama of Section 5’s rotating solar array. Along one panel crawled a large bloated shape wearing a shredded blue t-shirt over its eight fat, stubby legs, red hair, and bulging blue eyes. It stared back at them.
“What should I do?” Levine whispered, terrified at the grisly transmutation.
“Do?” Mirco whispered back. “Report that Aaronson got his rightful place in space.”
by submission | Sep 22, 2021 | Story |
Author: Morrow Brady
A silver float-stone fell silently, colliding with Birb the hover lamp. Birb flickered as his failing battery redirected power to his stabilisers. Shadow and sulphurous light warred over the silvery rock tunnel.
“Nice Birb, nice” I mumbled sarcastically.
Light-beams speared the glittering yellow haze and fell upon the newly exploded rock face while shadowy vent-snakes slithered overhead, clearing the humid air then spasmed reluctantly back into their dirty hide. Wrenched air wafted across my sweaty brow and I tongued the acidic taste of pure Cry, a powerful drug buried deep within a captured asteroid poised halfway to the moon. I down-dosed too late and the euphoria flooded through me. I tasted silver and licked my dust crusted lips in rapture.
Mesmerised before a jaundiced ore face, I snapped to when a water-spider ticked past my grubby moon-boot, dousing everything. I watched transfixed as the sulphurous dust formed into a mustardy mousse and danced in the low gravity like a salted slug.
Every detonator had fired and silver Crystone lay shattered across the tunnel floor like a broken mirror. I leaned into the ore face, examining the zig-zag line of precious commodity bound in stone. Truly the richest seam ever mined.
Robo-loco, the excavator, lurched down the tunnel, urging me onward with each heavy tread. Upon arrival, he’d fill his hopper with precious fragments of valuable ore and return to the processor. Pay would be good this week. The Cry was rich and pure.
At the ore face, I examined an unusual pattern of spiderweb cracks. Maybe a natural fault or pocket of low-grade Cry. Birb sensed my focus and piloted forward, miscalculated his deceleration and careened into the rock face. A deep crack sounded and I braced for depressurisation, my fingers hovering over the emergency crank. Stone shattered and collapsed into a dark cavity beyond followed immediately by Birb with an electronic shriek.
“Sake Birb! What’ve ya done?” I dismayed.
Clearing away loose rubble revealed a dark hole until Birb blinked on and ascended like a bad yoyo trick, glancing stupidly off my hat-shroud and bobbling into darkness. Slowly, I dragged myself through the hole and into an intricately carved stone chamber, hosting a strange mound of black orbs.
Birb haphazardly circled the odd mound, highlighting thick spears of silver that extended out from each orb like a sea urchin’s spines. Spears of pure Cry. Each spear planted against the carved chamber wall like steel placentae.
After a few adrenaline-filled moments, mirrored specks appeared on the face of the nearest orb, drawing together to form a new silvery spearhead. A deep shiver sounded and the spear shot towards me. An audible splat and the mirrored finger planted against Birb’s sensor array like a chameleon’s tongue and hauled him into the orb. I froze in shock as specks formed once again.
I awoke later beside the mound. The aeon-long story of the orbs embedded inside me and the new silver blood surging through my veins. Submitting fully, I would now bring Cry to my home-world and let my people taste its rapture until the threshold is met and the silent transformation begins. It was already too late for them. Out-number, then overcome, and in the end they will all become black orbs and launch into the void evermore.
In a dark corner lay Birb. Ruptured like a crushed can with a final message for Robo-loco.
I found a nest Brother.
Detonate.
In dark space, an asteroid illuminated from within and immediately vaporised.
by submission | Sep 21, 2021 | Story |
Author: Hayden Waller
It is impossible to determine where my body ends and the universe begins. My blood cells are stars, my veins their galaxies. Every muscle feels as if it were coated in a thin layer of cloud, cool and dewy, gently lifting me into the sky above like an offering to the sun. For once, my mind is at peace. The black tendrils of worry that worm their way through my broken brain have shriveled up, beaten back by this vanguard of Bliss.
There is a woman next to me. My wife. I reach out and touch her arm and remember we are in love. Visible waves of ecstasy roll off her and into me. My eyes roll back in my head as the warm current travels from the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes, bathing every inch of my form in golden light. Every neuron, alight. Je t’aime ma fleur I whisper. The words leave my mouth and hang in the air, swirling around our heads like a drop of dye in a glass of water. She smiles at me and lays down on her back. Mmm. A soft moan escapes her lips as she slowly writhes in the grass. I roll over onto my belly and drag my face back and forth across blades. It tickles. The smell of rich soil enters my nose and I begin to cry. Tears of pure joy.
When I raise my head, there is a beetle in front of me. I stare at it. It seems to stare back. The creature is stunning. A miracle of creation. Each hardened plate of its body reflects the sunlight in a different way, a kaleidoscope of shimmering purples, blues, and blacks. I set out an open hand and coax the creature onto my palm. Its legs articulate like an organic machine as it climbs up the flesh of my thumb. I bring it closer to my face. I study it. It seems to study me back. And then, without warning, it bites my flesh. I’m sorry Mr. Beetle, I did not mean to disturb you I say.
And then, I feel it. The warm blood in my hand turns to ice and the world around me begins to change. As the chill travels up my arm the lush carpet of soft grass disappears, revealing a concrete floor stained with dried blood and motor oil. The chill hits my shoulder. Above my head, the brilliant sun in the cloudless blue sky becomes a cracked ceiling with a flickering fluorescent bulb. By the time it reaches my chest, the beetle’s once-glistening exoskeleton has become matte and metallic. It scurries away across the floor on its six mechanical limbs and into the gloved hand of an armored patrol officer. The sobriety cocktail the scout drone injected into my thumb finally reaches my heart and the last remnants of Bliss are gone. My wife scrambles to prop herself up on her elbows. A look of terror washes over her as a second drone scurries away from her towards the officer. But I am not scared. I already know what happens next.
A synthetic voice comes through a tiny speaker on the side of the officer’s black, visored helmet. Users located it says. Proceeding with termination. The officer takes his sidearm from its holster and presses it to my forehead. Je t’aime ma fleur I whisper one last time, and my vision goes black.
