by Julian Miles | May 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Read for me the writing on the wall.”
We bow our heads and recite the words writ high above, engraved deep into unyielding stone. We have no need to see them, having recited the Second Law every morning and evening since the first day we could talk.
Of the First Law, they say it’s only told by the Hand of One to those who die faithful before they ascend. I never understood that. We’re told this world is everything: the one, all, and only. How can the dead go anywhere else?
“There is nothing new under the Hand.”
No punctuation up there. Guess putting a full stop on the end was considered inefficient.
‘Inefficient’. The dirtiest of condemnations, and so versatile: you can apply it to anything you don’t like. Even to typing approved words in unapproved ways. Everything that comes from human imagination is also considered inefficient.
I tried to argue that without imagination, the concepts we built our survival upon would not exist. They told me I was correct. In the times before the Hand of One, imagination was necessary for the visionaries of humanity to shepherd the unenlightened masses to the ‘ubiquity of utility’. Now we’ve arrived, we don’t need it anymore.
We toil to produce the shapes that disappear into the maws of the supply lines, or to unload the cubes of material we dismantle to reassemble into the shapes we push into the maws. Every day. From clock on to clock off.
What we do makes no sense. Who makes the Nutrigel we eat, the paste we dilute to make Drinkup? I’ve asked. They sent me to ‘contemplate my inefficiencies’ while cleaning out the waste trenches.
I should be upset, but I found caches down there. Cubby holes cut into the filthy walls, down where the Fingers won’t inspect. They’re filled with colourful, useless things. I like the little flowers on hollow stalks that spin in the breeze. I don’t know what they’re made of, but they still haven’t withered. Lots of people like them too. The Fingers don’t. We learned to keep them out of sight. I also found a block of coloured squares. If you twist it, you can get each side to be the same colour! I spent lots of clocked off working that out.
Then I found it. The box with the thing full of new words. I read it: learned about ‘book’ and ‘page’ and ‘plural’. Plus what was in the bottom of the box. How to use that, too. Learned about other things. I don’t understand them all, yet. I haven’t got all the ideas worked out. But I did work out the thing it suggested I do before I go.
The book told me where to find the other thing I needed. Last night, I put them both on and did it.
I stand in the left-hand maw and look up at my first visionary work: adding words to a Law.
There is nothing new under the Hand
and that is the problem.
There is more to this world. Look for it.
Get out from under the Hand!
Slinging the cutter across my back, I make sure the gravbelt is turned off, then walk into the maw. The book says this one leads to somewhere called ‘outside’.
I’m a long way away when I hear a lot of shouting from behind. Sounds like I started something. I hope I did.
Grinning into the darkness, I try out some new words as I jog towards a better day.
“Stop me if you can, Hand of One. I’m innovating.”
by submission | May 15, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Henson
I motion toward the two interns. “You can all come in now.” Unpronounceable frowns at me. “I mean, both of you,” I say. The three enter my office.
The two students leave after I give them their assignments. “You need to be more careful,” Unpronounceable says.
“They just think I’m an absent-minded professor. They’ve no idea you’re shadowing me. For all I know, other Triplorians are studying them, too.” I search Unpronounceable’s face for a clue as to whether I’m right, but he learned well from observing one of my poker nights.
Unpronounceable appears as a human to me, but no one else can see him. At first, I thought I was losing my mind. So did everyone I told about him. The more he reveals about what he’s doing on earth, and the more I try to warn people, the crazier they think I am. You’d think someone else who’s being shadowed would come forward and support me.
“I’d like to go to a laundromat this evening,” Unpronounceable says.
“What on earth for … pardon the pun.” I chuckle.
“I want to go to the laundromat because it’s part of the human experience. I don’t want to stick out like a dirty shirt the first time on my own. Pardon the pun.” He chuckles.
“You could ask someone there for help. It’s a good way to meet people.”
Unpronounceable strides to the bookcase in my office and pulls out a volume by Ray Bradbury. “I read this last night while you were sleeping, which, I must say, is a waste of time I’m not looking forward to. This fellow was prescient.” He slides the book back. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” he says. “There are only two of us here. My wife and I.”
Unpronounceable already had explained that he’d learned much about human behavior from remote research and, when he finished studying me first hand, he’d take on a human identity. “Given your mission,” I say, “I assumed there were countless other Triplorians here. There’s just two of you?” I raise my eyebrows and turn my palms upward.
“Two per world is all we can spare. We have billions of planets to populate after all. And we’re a patient people. My wife and I will have a large family, fertile and virile. Our DNA, as you call it, is quite dominant so after many generations, when I’m long dead and buried, everyone on earth will be predominantly Triplorian. Understand?” He raises his eyebrows and turns his palms upward.
“You’re being optimistic. I’m afraid we might destroy the place first.” I squeeze my lips together and shake my head.
“Our simulations suggest you folks will turn things around. This could be a lovely place one day. Eventually, with our help, Triploearth can be a paradise.” He squeezes his lips together and shakes his head.
“Uh … That’s for something bad, not … oh, never mind.”
One morning I wake up, and Unpronounceable is gone. Has he moved on to the next phase of his mission? Have new simulations caused it to be abandoned? Or was it all my imagination?
A couple months later, I’m about to place an order in my favorite cafe when the fellow beside me asks for two peppermint chocolate mochas. He gives his name — Adam — and says “My wife and I love these.” Then he squeezes his lips together and shakes his head.
Adam? That inappropriate gesture? Could it be? I watch as he turns toward a table behind us. “Betty, honey,” he says “I forgot my wallet. Can you come pay?”
by submission | May 14, 2022 | Story |
Author: Alfred C. Airone
I awoke in completely unfamiliar surroundings, not remembering having gone to sleep.
There was someone else in the bed with me. I turned and saw her: cropped copper-red hair, perfect face, lips slightly parted, still asleep. I recognized her immediately: Rho Rondella, the fictional owner and captain of the equally fictional interstellar spacecraft Furious.
It worked, I thought, and into my silent jubilation there came a sound: the noise of all the scornful criticisms of my theories crashing to the floor like broken glassware. I had traveled to the future – a future that I had made real. A future that had previously existed only in a science-fiction novel I had read and re-read many times. A future I had created by hard science and uncertain devices coupled with ten thousand acts of choosing. A future plucked from among the Hydra-headed Potential, the not yet real.
I let her sleep. We were obviously already well acquainted.
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.”
