by submission | Aug 21, 2021 | Story |
Author: Philip G Hostetler
She was my dream girl before I laid myself to rest in the Dreamcell. Alright, that’s a little dramatic, I didn’t “lay myself to rest” as in six feet under. No, think of it like life insurance for your loved ones that pays out immediately. All you have to do is, and I quote, “Lay down, plug in and power up!”
Oh, the girl, yeah she was my dream girl before I signed on the dotted line to dream for the rest of my life. I know I’m dreaming now, it’s a perpetual lucid dream, life is blue grass and green skies and she’s always, always by my side.
My children, from waking life, get electricity, HVAC and plumbing because I’m the battery. And you know what the Arbiters say, “A family is not a family without a battery- today!”
Ugh. Whatever. Just watch out for the terror of the unconscious and horror of the unknown. Those weren’t in the user manual before I was plugged in. A crash course on basic psychology would’ve been helpful. Thanks doc.
But the dream girl never leaves my side, I never suffer alone. I guess that’s what we really need in the end.
I try not to think about my waking family, mostly because I feel like I’m better off without them. I’m just, guilty. It’s a hellscape out there. If the distillers malfunction, you’ll miss your daily 8oz ration of water. If, or rather, when the crop drones encounter rogue meteor storms, prepare to fast for a week. Work is menial at best, the social part of society excommunicated itself at the order of necessity.
And here I am blissfully entwined in understanding and mutual adoration with my dream girl. I only wish I knew who she was. She has the face of a thousand stunning expressions. The touch of family, friends and lovers.
My family are the strangers now, and I am better for it, damn me. Damn me and my dream girl, our perfect union fuels the dying gasps of a failed civilization.
It’s OK, she forgives me.
by submission | Aug 20, 2021 | Story |
Author: Heather R. Parker
What a long trip. Gone for four years, studying at Nivoria University in the Sao X3D Galaxy, and another whole year to get back to Earth. I couldn’t exactly pop home on the weekends or on holidays. Now, as my ship touches down on Earth for the first time in ages, I’m overwhelmed with emotion.
Everything looks so…vintage, I think laughingly as I make my way to my house. That’s the problem with being in space for too long. Everything looks archaic on Earth now. I couldn’t wait to see the look on my mother’s face. I smile at the thought. I’d been 18 when I’d left. She might not recognize me. I’m a for-real man now, with a beard and everything.
I walk up the short drive to our house. Only…it looks different. There is no two-car garage that was added on when I was six. The house looks even newer now than when I left. Odd. Maybe Mom had spruced up the place a bit since I had left.
I don’t have a key, so I knock. I don’t want to startle my poor mother. She wasn’t expecting me, as I had wanted to surprise her.
A young mother, three small children loudly playing in the living room behind her, answers the door. She looks oddly familiar. I step back and look at the numbers on the house again. 2476 Elm Drive. This is my house. Only…it isn’t…is it?
“May I help you, sir?” The woman’s kind eyes crinkle in a smile as she wipes her hands on her faded floral apron.
“Um, I’m sorry, I think I have the wrong house. My parents used to live here. But I’ve been at university in the Sao Galaxy for the last five years, they must’ve moved. It’s hard getting transmissions in that far into space sometimes,” I laugh, trying to hold in the unease I feel.
“Who are your parents? Maybe I can help you.” She steps onto the porch, leaving the door cracked to listen to her playing children.
“Well, my father passed when I was three, but my mother’s name is Sarah Golding.”
“How strange, I’m Sarah Golding!”
Suddenly the world tilts on its axis. The house, so new…the cars that look 20 years out of date…this kind young mother, who wasn’t just familiar, she was—
“Mother, is that you?”
by submission | Aug 19, 2021 | Story |
Author: Joe Prosit
I didn’t do much, really.
Well, I learned some German.
Sorry. Ich lerne Deutsch. See?
And I learned some Karate too.
Well, not Karate. Kendo.
I kind of had to do that because of the Time Nazis.
And I suppose you could say that’s why I learned German too.
Sorry. Deutsch. Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch.
See, I wanted to learn Karate but…
Kendo uses swords,
and with all the Nazis coming through the Time Portal,
Sorry. Die Zeittür,
With all the Time Nazis coming through the Zeittür I needed swords.
Sorry. A katana and wakizashi, and the years of kendo training needed to weld them.
See, the Zeittür goes both ways, and I figured my trip to ancient highland Japan and the harsh tutelage under Master Masamana Yojibo, learning to dance the Ashi Sabaki, and the months spent in his mountain forge birthing my blades from raw ore and shaping them into the gleaming teeth of revenge I needed to right all the wrongs that had beset my city since the Zeittür appeared was time well spent.
And the German lessons.
I mean, Ich lerne Deutsch und ich lerne die Klinge.
But really, those things didn’t happen this summer. That was years in the past.
See, the only way the Nazis could escape their fates on the dusk of the Second World War,
Was to escape the timeline all together. And when they emerged through the Zeittür,
Filed hard from years of a failed war, full of the kind of hate that fuels genocides,
Strung out and desperate for meth, leaderless and displaced,
They came ready… fertig… for a fight.
I wasn’t.
Fertig.
That means “ready.” I wasn’t ready.
Didn’t even know what they were screaming when they stormed through the city,
Waving their guns, executing families randomly in the street,
Executing my family in the street,
And saying something to me,
I didn’t know what,
When they shot my mother and father but let me go.
Some of the first words I picked up?
Dein Vater und deine Mutter.
My father and mother.
I learned others.
Out of spite.
And I learned weapons other than the gun.
Because guns didn’t work for me. Zu schnell und billig.
Entschuldigung. Too quick and cheap.
I wanted them to know my words,
I wanted them to see my face,
When I killed them.
So I went through the Zeittür,
And when I realized what it was, I took full advantage of it.
Ich lerne Deutsch. Ich lerne die Klinge. Ich suche Rache.
Days learning German.
Weeks traveling.
Months forging my blades.
Years spent training. Getting ready.
But, wirklich, that wasn’t this summer. That was back in time.
This summer? I came back to this summer just before the Zeittür opened.
And I waited for them.
When they came through, still covered in the dust of their bombed-out city,
Still running in fear, still bloodied and drug-addled and strung out,
The first thing they saw was me and my blades.
The only thing they heard was mein Deutsch.
Kommt, mein Shatz.
Kommt mit mich und ich zeige dir deine Zukunft.
Ich werde dir den Tod zeigen.
Ich bin fertig.
It only took a few minuten.
I spent most of my summer just laying around.
Not doing much, wirklich.
Besides killing Time Nazis?
The rest was pretty…
Sheiße.
by submission | Aug 18, 2021 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
The hyoum had left after his four-and-a half-year visitation. He had not been entirely satisfied, though in the beginning, he had a broadly favorable impression.
Disembarking on the southwestern region of Otoa, he had appreciated its warmth and the colorful suns, which he believed would heal his physical and internal pains. He did not know why he was ailing, even with prescriptions, for he maintained a generally healthy diet, and he regularly exercised.
But the pace of life on the sphere, while a welcomed change, was increasingly too sedate and monotonous for him, being one who had lived and worked all his years on fast-paced, super-city worlds. Otoa, despite its normal size as a habitable planet, was rather like a widespread small town, something out of a bygone age, though Otoa had been a member of the United Interstellar Territories for almost two centuries.
Surely, a hundred and sixty-eight years was enough time to catch up with modernity, he once thought. However, the reality proved otherwise.
The Otoans were a communal, outwardly decent, hierarchical population of hexapoids, divided into two caste-like classes of monitors and workers, something like Old Planet ants, termites, and bees, but not quite. After all, the Otoans, despite appearances, were self-conscious, rational, and deliberative, yet they reasoned and emoted in manners unfamiliar to him in spite of his many travels.
A few individual Otoans were approachable, even if briefly, but they were mostly unremarkable. They accepted duties as they were and never openly questioned routines. And they worked in allotted, designated roles with intense specialization. Indeed, outside specific tasks, the Otoans had difficulty generalizing, and they usually did not know what others were doing.
When the hyoum had concerns and spoke, they became panicked. When he sought reasons, they responded in circles. When he maintained principles, they thought he was indifferent. Yet, for all the divergences, the Otoans never terminated his visitation, but renewed his obligations every year for the full duration of his invited training lectures.
Might it have been better to have left after a year? he contemplated twenty-four months after experiencing the conceptual chasm separating the Otoans and himself.
To his discontentment, and despite his credentials as an educationist and a poet on four UIT territories, the Otoans regarded him as plain, or so his Otoan monitor spontaneously articulated in a gurgle, with its flat beak, carapace plates, and segmented form. What a bizarre place, he thought. Not knowing what else to do, he decided to make expressions of goodwill and maintain consistent actions, which, to his perplexity, seemed to drive his monitor and a handful of Otoans a bit mad.
The other hyoums on Otoa, a small grey tribe who had made home there two to three generations ago, hobnobbed under the multicolored suns, assuring him, “It’s not a bad place,” and, “They will take your side.” Did the tribe really know, or had they grown comfortable living with hexapoid partners on an isolated, provincial world?
The term limit was nearing, and another hyoum urged him to apply for a renewal, even if for one year. The prospect was somber, but after a month, he messaged his Otoan monitor with a pro forma expression of interest, and the hexapoid referred him to Otoan workers. The visitation ended seven months later as scheduled, and he was fortunate his health had improved in the final year. Discreetly, he departed, taking an assignment off world, which he had planned two years in advance, and sent gifts of gratitude to one neighborly Otoan and seven of the old hyoums.
Overlooking glassy waters and the panorama of a super-city world revolving on the shoulder of Sagittarius, he breathed in deeply … and exhaled.
by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 17, 2021 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Alex stood next to James and tried to make sense of what he was looking at. He had been annoyed at being called from his bed at this ungodly hour, but that feeling was slowly being replaced by curiosity.
“It’s a time machine, kind of,” James was explaining, “it lets me lock onto memories and revisit the time and space they occurred.”
Alex needed coffee. Or sleep. He was on the fence as to which was the better idea at this point.
“I need you to watch me, monitor the journey, if anything goes wrong I need you to pull me out.”
Alex surveyed the room, the seat in the middle of overlapping egg-shaped coils of copper, what looked like a series of high-voltage transformers chained together and the cables tethering them to each other and the rig, massive conductors straining apart as if trying to escape each other’s proximity.
“What are you going to do? No, never mind, monitor how? What’s going to go wrong, and how would I know unless…” he paused and waved at the equipment “unless this all explodes?”
James pointed to the desk, to a bank of green phosphor displays.
“There, watch the log output, if the controller panics, you’ll know, then power it down there.” He pointed to a large red shutoff on a breaker panel by the door. “Then get out.”
Alex shook his head, grunted, then nodded. Too late for coffee, and it was clear he wasn’t getting any sleep now.
“Nadia and I got together the very last time at a bar, right before she ran off with…”, he winced, the name was burned so vividly he couldn’t bring himself to say it, “with Fuckwit von Shit-for-brains.” He paused, remembering. “We had drinks, we ate, we talked until closing time. She came home with me, and we had the most amazing…” He paused again, blushed. “It was amazing. She was amazing. I need to get back there, find out what I did wrong, fix it.”
Alex didn’t say a word. What would be the point?
James keyed the start-up sequence, then as the machine started to hum, he sat in the chair in the middle of the coils, buckled himself in, and closed his eyes.
The hum rose to a whine, then a deafening roar, then silence.
***
James opened his eyes, he was in a bar. No, the bar. He’d never forget this place. There was a low-frequency buzz, conversation maybe, just out of earshot? Glasses appeared and disappeared on tables, at the bar. The big ornate clock that almost filled one wall spun, the hands a blur.
In the corner, the table they’d sat at. He worked his way across the room, focused only on that space. The closer he got, the harder it became to move, as though the air were getting thicker.
He forged on, leaning now into an invisible gale force, willing himself to that corner until he could reach out and touch the back of the chair he’d sat in, so long ago.
It refused to move, fixed in place as if welded to the floor, and he had to force himself between the arms and the table, to finally slump into the seat itself, the force now pushing him into the seatback making it hard to breathe.
Glasses and plates came and went in a blur, and across the table, where Nadia had sat that entire night, smiling, talking.
Nothing.
The seat was and remained empty.
There was a violent tug, the pushing force now a fist wrapped around his spine, yanking him back, through the chair, the bar, from the past into the present to deposit him, aching and gasping for breath in the seat in his lab.
He looked up into the curious and concerned eyes of his friend.
“Well,” Alex asked, “what happened?”
James struggled with what had just happened.
“I must have missed something, miscalculated something, everything was there, just the way I remember it, but I was alone. She wasn’t there.”
Alex stepped back and shoved his hands into his pockets.
“James,” he said gently, “you know she was already gone long before that night. Why would you expect her to have waited in that memory the way you did?”
by Julian Miles | Aug 16, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Is all she asks. Four bloody words. I stand there like an idiot. Meanwhile, buildings burn and people run about screaming. Alarms, sirens and explosions blend into a constant din. The news said it was a ‘massive layered drone swarm attack’. Whatever that is, it’s turned my life into an apocalypse movie.
I stare blankly at Esther. Giorgio, on the other hand, is ready.
“We need to get to high ground so we can see what’s going on.”
Smooth-talking bastard. I hate him.
She looks at Giorgio.
“I know what’s going on. I’m trying to survive it.”
He looks confused.
“Okay, then. Supplies. What first?”
That kicks him into gear.
“Weapons! Tools or kitchen knives.”
That gives me an idea.
“We should head for Steve’s. His place is above the kitchen shop a couple of streets down.”
Giorgio waves his hands.
“No, my dude, no. Can’t rely on anyone except ourselves. Can’t guarantee what people are planning.”
‘My dude’? Really?
Esther slaps the back of his head.
“It’s a start. If this Steve’s in, we might get lucky. If not, it’s still a place where one of us is known. Less risk of confrontation if he comes home to find we broke in.”
She looks at me.
“We run to Steve’s. You lead.”
Sounds simple enough. I never really thought about running through a disaster. I mean, who does? I manage about a bus length before some woman slams into me, knocks me down, then punches a stiletto heel through my hand as she scrambles up and runs off.
I scream. Esther wads tissues either side of the wound, then uses her hair thingy to keep them in place.
“We need to get a better dressing on that. Let’s go.”
Giorgio gets to the next junction ahead of us. A wheel comes in at chest height. He turns to face it, arms up. By the time we get there, he’s down, face ripped apart where the trials bike went over him.
Esther spits in the direction of the departing rider.
“With spikes on? Cocksucker.”
I look down at my smooth-talking bastard dead best friend. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck th-
Esther slaps me.
“Tears later. Run now.”
Her stare could melt metal. I run.
Steve’s door is open. Sounds of a fight upstairs. She pushes me in, swings the door closed, then bolts it and puts the chains on. After that, she squeezes past and takes the stairs two at a time, dagger in hand. Where did that come from?
I’m halfway up the stairs when there’s a scream. I enter the lounge to find her helping Steve onto his settee. The room’s wrecked. I can see three sprawled bodies.
Steve waves to me.
“So this is the hottie you’ve been pining over, Andrei?”
Okay, floor. Swallow me now.
He grins.
“Always best to tell the hitter up front, so she can allow for it.”
She crouches by him.
“What happened?”
“Went out for more water. Got some, came back to find three tossers taking advantage. Was doing okay until one of them knifed me.”
“Bad?”
He nods.
“Past saving.”
Sticking his hand in a pocket, he pulls out a set of keys and gives them to her.
“Place is yours. You can shelter here. Dump the bodies, including mine, down the road. Got supplies for a week if you’re careful. Things should have settled by then. Be nice to Andrei. He’s a great guy when he’s not overthi-”
No dramatic pause.
Just gone.
She closes his eyes with a trembling hand.
“Now it’s time for tears.”
True.
