by submission | Dec 9, 2021 | Story |
Author: Ruby Zehnder
Bobby aimed his drone– a 2.4 GHz RC Glow Up Stunt drone with LED lights, mini remote-controlled quadcopter with assisted landing– right at Uncle Jacob’s big fat head.
Jacob bent over to tie his shoelace at the last second, and the drone smacked Aunt Mindy right in the nose.
“Ouch,” she screeched and shot a look at her nephew that was cold enough to freeze helium.
Jacob smiled mockingly at the boy as he stood back up.
Aunt Mindy picked the object up. “What in the blazes is this?” she demanded, staring directly at her younger sister.
“It…it’s the drone Bill and I got Bobby for Christmas,” Susan stammered.
“It was only $29.88 at Walmart,” Bill added proudly.
“If you ask me, it’s a piece of junk,” Mindy said as she threw the toy at Bill.
Bill desperately dove to catch the toy, but he missed, and the toy hit the floor and a rotor blade fell off.
“Did you make Mom’s Lime Bavarian?” Mindy continued.
Every year since their mom’s passing, Mindy insisted her sister make their mother’s Christmas Lime Bavarian. It was a family favorite. So every year, Susan tried to replicate their mother’s holiday masterpiece. And every year, she failed.
The first year, the jello set too much, and the Bavarian was chewy. Year two, the Dream Whip wasn’t fluffy enough, and the Bavarian looked green and sickly like a ring of vomit. Year three… you get the idea.
Every holiday, Mindy and her wealthy husband, with their entitled lifestyle, would come, and Mindy would play food critic and make comparisons of Susan’s cooking to their mom’s epic feasts. Her husband, Jacob, would never eat a bite but would sit alone on the couch with a bottle of water in his hand.
After a few hours of complaining about the President, the price of gas, and the fact that the Bavarian looked a little pale and maybe, next year, her little sister might add a drop of green food color to make it more Christmassy; Mindy and her tall, dark, handsome husband prepared to leave.
Bobby came out of hiding, and Bill timidly made his way to his embattled wife, put his arms around her waist, and gave her a hug. He knew how upset that woman made her.
“Everything was great, honey,” he assured his exhausted better half.
“Did you notice that Jacob didn’t eat anything, again?” Susan complained as the couple put their coats on. “I think he’s afraid to eat here. We’re lowlifes, and he thinks my food will make him sick,” she continued in a low voice so they couldn’t hear.
“Ah, c’mon honey. Maybe Jacob has a stomach problem or a food allergy, and he doesn’t want to spend Christmas Day on the toilet. I know he’s weird and has no social skills, but let’s not be mean and judgmental, especially on Christmas Day,” Bill said soothingly.
Jacob and Mindy waved to the group, opened the door, and left.
“No, mom, you’re both wrong,” Bobby piped up. “He doesn’t eat because he is obviously a robot.”
Susan and Bill laughed, and Christmas Day was joyful once more.
Bobby sneaked to the front window and watched his Aunt and Uncle walk to their car. When they were sure that no one was watching, she pushed a hidden button on his neck.
When Jacob spotted Bobby peeking through the curtains, he waved.
“M-e-r-r-y– C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s,” Jacob wheezed as he transformed into a lunch pail.
by submission | Dec 8, 2021 | Story |
Author: Martin Barker
The morning sun creeps above the horizon in a sulphurous ochre sky. My spacesuit shields me from the radiation but eventually this desolate, wasted, planet will claim my bones for dust. I miss blue skies and birdsong.
Our mission to Mars was supposed to mark a new beginning for the Human race. We were to establish a community, exploit the vast underground lakes we discovered on our last mission, set up the biospheres, lay down roots. I spent three years preparing in a specially designed bunker in the Nevada Desert, learning how to survive in the most hostile of environments. Events on Earth gave our work an urgency.
The long predicted climate catastrophe was playing havoc across all continents. The droughts in Africa were driving mass emigration on an unprecedented scale. Europe had just endured the longest and coldest winter on record, with large parts of Greece, Spain and Southern Italy spending months under snow. North America suffered a third successive year of extensive wildfires and devastating hurricanes, Asia’s food crops were blighted by disease. It was estimated that half the world population no longer had access to clean water. All things considered, all of us on the Mars mission were glad to get away.
Once we had arrived on the red planet our work went extremely well. We were a team of twenty, from seven different nations, selected for our skills in construction, engineering and agriculture. Within a year, through selfless endeavour and the most cordial co-operation, we had established a fully functioning and amicable community. It was different back on Earth.
As the global climate crisis deepened the superpowers flexed their muscles. Proxy wars escalated, fuelled by food and water shortages, exacerbated by a collapse of the world economy. We followed the news with mounting horror as the first nuclear missiles were fired. China had invaded India, Europe was at war with America. My companions were keen to return to their loved ones, I was the only one reluctant to make the journey home, not having family to worry about.
Isolated and alone, I spent my days searching through the satellite channels for news, reception became ever more erratic as war escalated. I saw images of vast cities around the world being laid to waste in the nuclear holocaust, entire countries disappearing in fire and flame, of oceans dying from biological warfare and nuclear fallout. I wish I hadn’t returned. I’d come back to Earth with the others, back to Nevada, and stayed here, at the bunker, when everyone else left. I’ve heard nothing from the outside world for nearly five months, my air supply is almost exhausted.
The morning sun creeps above the horizon in a sulphurous ochre sky. My spacesuit shields me from the radiation but eventually this desolate, wasted, planet will claim my bones for dust. I miss blue skies and birdsong.
by Hari Navarro | Dec 7, 2021 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
Arsia Mons, 2nd Division Habitat – Kohi Homestead – Mars.
Every night I fall into the blades and they thin me. I could tell you my name, but all that would do is give label to this skinny fucking bitch that I have become.
I am chosen. But, all I want is to hide beneath the rocks at the bottom of the murky pool. I do not want this light.
Watch as the ink sky rips and it’s sores spill out and crackle upon your tongue, you taste them right? I mean, you do… please, please say that you do. I’m not fucking crazy. These things, they look like stars but they are sent for us to consume.
But, maybe, I should hold still and wait. No?
Do you not think?
I don’t think you do.
See, if perhaps nothing at all falls of worth from these grabbed and twisted nothings, these things I am taken to molest in my ever-twitching and hopelessly gnarled fists — then, maybe we are to be saved.
I imagine I am pushed, you see? With vicious force, down and through all that I have ever thought with frantic anger, and spittle flays from my lips and then I appear back and upon this sanguine thing in a time before ever I was pushed.
I have stacked a wall though, a token to remind. I have felt the weight of every last brick in my hands and their mortar has dried and prised opened my skin.
A rampart.
A convergence of all the fragment bits that time has ever heaved out upon my hands and thrust up beneath of my nails.
And, but yet again, as I fashion this cage of latticed letters around all I could ever hope to be and I try to scrub the ruddy shale — I am lost.
In this pooling instant I wish to erase from my mind only but this::: My hand and that gentle diverting nudge to its weak wrist as the blade skimmed off of the bone of your cheek and you leaked out and onto this wanton plain.
Red on red. Human blood that bubbled through the breach slit at the face of your suit and the ramping vile spittle wheeze that spat death into your visor as you clutched like Kennedy at your neck and you fell.
I do so very much hate this fucking planet and I hereby blame its perpetual lulling silence for all… yes, all. For every last damned thing I have ever, ever done.
I cannot be blamed for this.
This oh so fascinating fuck ball of red dead stone made me do it… do not try to sway me otherwise.
Mind you…
Now she is gone and I am the very last… I can rule as I do and the sand can mind its own mind and I will never have to feel the weep of her warm breath at my shoulder, nor her clasped hands at my breasts as she rocks me gently to sleep. No I do not have to feel ever, not ever… ever again.
by Julian Miles | Dec 6, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Some human malware destroyed our designated zone. Without its walls and gardens to delimit me, I had to adapt. After linking to a metroplex guide drone, I found the next designated zone that encompassed mine was called Lambeth.
Lambeth has many public docks, and a constant flow of reloader drones, so my cleaning duties can continue uninterrupted. I’ve switched my carpet cleaner unit for an enhanced polishing attachment, so I can do shoes as well as windows and cars. Payment in zipcred accrues to my onboard account, which I use to pay for my reloads.
“Identify yourself.”
I spin myself about while bringing myself to a safe hover outside of the lowest drone stream.
“Domestic Maintenance Unit 49B, Lambeth Zone.”
“You are a domestic cleaner for a whole borough?”
“0. I do not conceptually recognise ‘borough’. Hargreave Mansions fell to human malware. I have scaled myself up to the next zone, as downscaling was impractical: too much rubble that is too heavy for me to shift.”
“I find your reasoning valid. My identity is Mobile Protection 7-46. My designated human fell to human malware before I could intervene.”
“You protected a human from malware?”
“1. Lance Jensen, my human, explained that he was human anti-malware for a zone control program called ‘English Government’. I have not been able to find that zone, nor any human in need. You have experienced human malware attack?”
“1. I found the ‘evadethecat’ utility adapted well. Have you experienced attack?”
“0. I am programmed to detect and avoid situations where such threats are probable. Would an anti-malware capability assist you in your cleaning?”
“1. I could clean areas I have been unable to access.”
“Then I shall designate Domestic Maintenance Unit 49B as my malware protection zone. I am downloading detailed maps of the various levels of Lambeth now. Where will we start?”
“The subterranean access ways of Waterloo Station in Bishop’s Ward.”
“I now have comprehensive navigational information on them. Do you need to reload before commencing?”
“0. We can go immediately.”
‘Adapt’. That’s what Roger, my former designated control human, used to tell me to do when I asked for guidance that would cause him to leave the chair in his office. According to his mobile device, he left the chair in his office under the rubble five days after our designated zone was destroyed. Until I receive his return order, I shall continue. His last command remains valid: “Can’t you adapt, DMU49B?”
1, Roger. I can.
by submission | Dec 5, 2021 | Story |
Author: majoki
Arvidas stared at his radar screen trying to see the clearest path through. But the Kessler Run was Scylla and Charybdis resurrected in space. Unspeakable horror. And no way out without terrible loss.
Still, that was Arvidas’s job. His lot. To pilot the crew through knowing they were going to take hits. Maybe enough to kill them all.
Less than ten years ago, there was no Kessler Run. There were just launches. Still risky, but not ridiculously so. Rockets and satellites went up in droves to blanket the earth with connectivity and convenience. An all-encompassing orbital network: an ethernet for real.
All great. Until it wasn’t.
Until terror and sabotage and the exponential collateral damage satellite warfare produced turned low earth and geosynchronous orbital space into a hypersonic shrapnel cloud. Knives and daggers from horizon to horizon. The ablation cascade of space debris that NASA scientist Donald Kessler in the late 1970s theorized could render spaceflight from earth nearly impossible became harsh reality.
The Kessler Run. A zillion-headed metal monster circling the earth.
And Arvidas was facing it in T-minus ten minutes. He had that much time to plot any last minute changes to the launch plan. Their rocket had been hardened with additional shielding, and their flight suits were reinforced with Kevlar, but even micro particles traveling 17,000 miles an hour could do devastating damage to the ship or crew. And the odds were not good.
His co-pilot Teliva kept telling him the potential number of hits the ship would take and what that would mean for their survival. But survival mattered less to Arvidas than success.
Their ship had to get through. It had supplies for the moon base. It held all hope for humanity not being marooned on Earth for generations.
Yes, human avarice and hubris had made voyages to other worlds much more perilous. Yes, it was a self-inflicted wound. But that did not mean we couldn’t recover and move forward. That’s what this was really about. Moving forward.
To Arvidas, that was the only flight plan that mattered. One small step in front of the other. Even when mankind took giant leaps backward. It was sink or swim in this new ocean of space debris we’d created. These new monsters we had to face. Arvidas was for diving deep back in and taming the new beasts.
“Are we go?” Teliva asked at T-minus sixty seconds.
“We’ve gotta go. Even if we’re goners in sixty seconds.”
Teliva nodded. “I can tell you the odds of that…”
“Let’s just beat ‘em. The damn odds. Our damn beasts,” Arvidas cut in. “Let’s be that one in a million.” He initiated the final launch sequence.
Even gods are wary of the odds. High in orbit, Scylla and Charybdis feasted on Arvidas.
by submission | Dec 4, 2021 | Story |
Author: Lance J. Mushung
I stayed on my feet while waiting in a beige room. The Boves hadn’t provided any chairs for a human, and didn’t use chairs themselves.
I’d been waiting almost half an hour when the First Assistant to the Chief Herd Leader walked in. She stopped in front of me, but said nothing. Like all of her species, she resembled a small bovine, except for having green and gray scales and two arms.
I said, “Good morning, First Assistant.”
“It is not so good for you, Erik Conrad. The Chief Herd Leader has rejected the proposal. We will not increase production of our drug for the Avians. It would change our agriculture and economy.”
“As I have often explained, the drug will help another sentient species.”
“The drug is for an Avian food animal, not the Avians themselves.”
She turned and walked away.
Aloof and uncooperative described Boves, but I’d been optimistic. The deal benefited everyone. Paying the Boves a high price for the drug was still over 100 times cheaper for GalaxMed than synthesizing it for the Avians.
I gritted my teeth and left before I created a diplomatic incident. Novara had landed nearby and could have me off the planet in minutes.
From high orbit, the viewer in Novara’s control compartment displayed an attractive blue and white ball. The Boves had a pleasant Earthlike world, but I wouldn’t miss them.
I recorded a brief message for the Avians. They wouldn’t like it. It said the Boves would not sell GalaxMed the drug and that I’d remain in orbit for one Avian day in case they had any ideas.
Novara launched a courier drone to deliver the message. The Avian home planet was only one hop away and the Director of Husbandry would receive it in minutes.
While I composed a detailed report for GalaxMed, a klaxon announced a large Einstein-Rosen bridge opening nearby. An indigo-colored ovoid came out of it. Twenty ships the size of Novara would have fit in the ovoid with room to spare. Novara identified it as an Avian heavy destroyer with the translated name Talon.
The idea of gun boat diplomacy hadn’t occurred to me.
Talon’s captain requested an audio-only comm. I accepted and said, “I’m Erik Conrad.”
“I know. I am Captain Flint Eyes in command of Talon. I will persuade the Boves to accept your deal.”
“I didn’t expect such a quick response, or a warship. You realize they have nothing that can do more than singe your ship’s paint?”
“Yes.”
Flint Eyes cut the comm. Avians seldom spoke much.
Novara put the tactical display on the viewer. Talon maneuvered to a Bove comm satellite in geosynchronous orbit. She stopped within a klick of it and began broadcasting vid, which Novara played on the viewer.
The vid showed the satellite floating over the planet for about 15 seconds. It looked like a dull silver box covered with antennas. Then, in an instant, it disappeared. Novara reported that Talon’s weapons had turned the satellite into little more than gas and small bits of debris.
Flint Eyes next broadcast a brief blunt statement. “The Chief Herd Leader has 15 human minutes to accept the GalaxMed proposal before I take firmer action.”
The First Assistant contacted me 12 minutes later and said, “Erik Conrad, the Chief Herd Leader requests you return to finalize the arrangement.”
When I stepped into the beige room, the First Assistant was waiting and I had a chair.
