by Hari Navarro | Nov 9, 2021 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
I walk into this thing. The big ugly sign calls it a private bar and it smells like badly washed groin and fizzing plastic.
The wound on my shoulder and the one at the back of my right eye pulse and I unintentionally lean forward and take a deep dark breath of the nonsense that here apes as air.
This is a new world — one I have but no other choice to frequent. They are all so very small in their massive gentle axial grind and I eternally hope better for each being that I meet upon them and I place my splayed broken fingers upon the greasy screen before me.
– Are you a man or a woman?
– Repeat…
– Are you a man or a woman?
– Who asks?
– I do and I am the asker.
– What gives you right?
– Interesting…
– What is?
– That you are perplexed by my simple question. You are not from here I see.
– How is it a simple thing to shelve one entity above or below or alongside of another?
– You shun the word that defines you?
– Am I allowed but one?
——– Beard
————- Coat
—— Penis
———— Fingers
——— Lint
——– Vagina
——– Breasts ——–
——–
——–
——–
– You stalled.
– I was just wondering, scanning… no…no… no, I wasn’t.
– Is processing such a bitter word for you?
– We don’t do that any more.
– You do not think?
– No, we do nothing of the sort. It… singes…it grates into my… my face.
– Why? Oh… inter-face. I’m rusty on your slang. Though I have read many of your founders collected works. Genius. That is why I am here. Their words they spoke and spiked my dreams and screamed up at me from the never drunk tear drop that distilled in the bottom of my flask.
– You think to much and to be sure nothing good ever came of a good thought.
– Whoever said that?
– Me.
– What are you?
– What am I?
– Yes.
– I am your waiter and the very best and the sum total of all that is or ever will be… what are you? A man or a woman?
by Julian Miles | Nov 8, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The grey muffling my senses relinquishes it’s hold. I find myself lying in the same chair I sat down in. I’m in the same clothes. My digital chronograph tells me eight seconds have passed. I look to my other wrist. The vintage analogue watch has stopped. I’ll do for that antiques dealer. He said it was in full working order. I wound it just before we set off.
I lift my head and look to my right. I can’t see Sasha, but I can see her arms where they play across the control panels mounted above her chair.
“Did we do it?”
She raises a finger in a ‘wait’ gesture. Time crawls by.
“Lewis, we’ve succeeded.”
Lifting my head again, I see her green eyes sparkling with tears. Triumph! We took a chance to do something people said was impossible, and it worked!
“Where are we?”
She stops smiling, looks puzzled.
“No idea. Beyond charted space.”
I roll myself up so I can gaze her way without straining my neck.
“What do you mean ‘beyond charted space’?”
“You remember the speech that Doctor Krakor gave? The one where he said that while wormholes were navigable, we had no way to tell the endpoint because the act of traversing a wormhole would collapse it?”
“Yes. But probes…”
She shakes her head.
“We couldn’t send a probe because that would collapse the wormhole.”
How on earth can you go somewhere without knowing where you’re going? GPS navigation doesn’t do that.
“So where are we?”
She shrugs.
“A long way from the planet we grew up on, and all its woes.”
This is why I hate working with people who can’t grasp the complexities of life.
“That I know. How do we let them know I was right?”
Sasha just stares at me.
“Alright. How long to get back and deliver the news?”
“Longer than the lifespan of anybody on this ship.”
I release my upper belt so I can sit up.
“What? How can we not live long enough to get back when we got here so quickly?”
“Did we? My ten chronographs show varying elapsed times. The lowest is one second. The highest is 18,142 years. We may have inadvertently outlived human life on Earth.”
We what? The woman is babbling.
“Let me spell it out for you: find the wormhole and take us back.”
Sasha grins at me.
“What wormhole? It collapsed when we used it.”
I thought wormholes collapsing was like fuel. Not the one we were using!
“Then find another!”
“No point. The chances of finding one that will deliver us back to Earth within a reasonable time frame at that end are negligible. Plus, you’ll need to go and tell our single-use Casimir-Bordeg field generator to stop being dead metal.”
‘Single-use’…!
“So we were never going to be able to go back?”
Sasha rolls out of her chair and floats across to me.
“What part of ‘one-way trip’ did you not understand? How many of the rich backers who joined the mob of scientific misfits I recruited are expecting to get home for tea?”
“I don’t know. I gave each of them the same manual you gave me.”
She folds herself about to sit cross-legged in mid-air.
“Let’s hope they paid attention. We’ve got about a year to find a habitable world. There won’t be waiters, waitresses, or concierge services for a very long time.”
Sasha leans forwards.
“All the life replication equipment is keyed to people I trust, and none of it to me. We’re going to make a better society, not another hell on Earth.”
by submission | Nov 7, 2021 | Story |
Author: A.M. Miles
Somewhere in the Amazon Desert, a cactus bloomed in a fractured riverbed.
Cara couldn’t take her eyes off it. Vibrant, cool pink in a sea of dead, ruined red. A single flower with head held high to the raging sun, defiant and unapologetic. She ran her cracked fingers along its petals, and the sensation was alien—smooth, soft, welcoming.
“Bacon, the fisher was right.”
Her daughter, carried on Cara’s back roused. “Mommy?” Her arms were strapped across Cara’s shoulders in a harness to keep her from falling.
They’d met the fisher on the coast of what used to be Suriname, living on a desolate beach of endless sand dunes, watching over an Atlantic filled with the acidified corpses of reefs and the bones of fish colonies. He’d told them of something miraculous; of life in a dead desert.
“It’s a flower.”
Bacon opened her yellowed, sunken eyes. “Where?”
With a grunt, Cara bent to her knees and unstrapped Bacon from the harness. The girl collapsed.
“You’re okay,” Cara said, and took her into her arms.
She brought her daughter closer to the flower’s brazen pink and motionless gaze to the sky.
Bacon’s arm, made of twigs with jaundiced stretches of skin bandaged around bone splayed out before the flower. Her glowing blonde hair had turned to straw in both colour and texture. Her knees had started protruding out, heads to the sharp pins that were her legs, and her belly had become bulbous and large. She was balding. She was twelve.
“It’s right here, Bacon.” Cara brought Bacon’s head further up, closer to the flower, and pushed her towards it like she was an offering. “It’s right here.”
“Mommy.”
Shaking, Cara pulled their mud-caked water bottle out and unscrewed the cap, begging Bacon to drink. No drops came out against her fissured lips.
It was incredible, in a devastating way, how fast water became ephemeral—how fast civilisation did. There had been a century of warnings, and then, within a year, collapse. In January, Cara was preparing to defend a murderer in court. In December she murdered a 17 year-old boy for food.
She still remembered the first messages and posts on social media when it began. Runaway ecological collapse. To be so blind.
“You wanted to see one, and I found it. I did.”
Bacon spoke small, smothered nothings. So small her mother couldn’t hear them. It was only her lips moving in slow motion, pointed towards the unrelenting sun.
“Please look, Bacon.”
Bacon turned her head by only a few inches, and even that made her whimper. Her eyes struggled up to the flower. An eyelash snapped off and lodged itself in her eyelid. She didn’t wince, and Cara couldn’t find the energy to fish it out.
“Can you see it?”
Bacon’s lips moved, but again there were no words.
“Please tell me you see it.”
Her fingers twitched against the puzzle piece of riverbed dirt, her nails long since fallen off like leaves in mythologised Winters.
“Mommy,” Bacon said, then stopped.
“Bacon?”
Cara rubbed her thumb across her daughter’s cheek. Bacon’s eyes wobbled, and saw nothing.
And Cara didn’t cry, because there was nothing left inside her that could.
She pulled the pistol from her belt and turned it over in her hand. Checked the cartridge, and was satisfied. It was a simple decision—she’d made up her mind months ago.
The crack of man-made thunder rang out for miles, and as fast as it came, it vanished.
The cactus continued to bloom.
by xdhz8 | Nov 6, 2021 | Story |
Author: David Henson
Tilson Henderson gets out of bed and realizes his back’s not stiff. Hasn’t happened since he stopped doing the exercises his chiropractor prescribed. He feels so vigorous, he joins his wife, Gloria, in the shower. Been a while for that, too.
Late getting to the office, he can’t blame yet another flat tire. He tries to slink in without getting caught, but as soon as Tilson’s butt hits his desk chair, Mr. Rogers heads his way. Tilson braces himself hoping he doesn’t get fired from another job.
Rogers puts his hand on Tilson’s shoulder. “Looking forward to your presentation, Henderson.”
As Tilson talks through his PowerPoint slides, he finds the words flow effortlessly. A memory of studying the data late into the night streams into his mind. He’d thought that was a dream. When Tilson finishes speaking, Mr. Rogers claps him on the back. “I see a raise and promotion in your future, Henderson.”
Tilson gets home from work first and decides to surprise Gloria by making dinner.
“Lasagna’s in the oven,” he says, greeting his wife at the door with a hug and kiss. “You have an hour.”
“Wonderful, Honey.”
A few minutes later, Tilson hears the shower and goes to join his wife.
After dinner, Tilson tells Gloria about his day. “I’d given up on getting ahead at work, but I think if I apply myself, the sky’s the limit. It almost seems too good to be true.”
Later that evening, as Tilson enters the bedroom, he catches Gloria on her phone. “Should you dial it back a bit?” she’s saying.
“Dial what back?” Tilson says.
Gloria disconnects the call. “Oh, hi. I … gave Patricia Jansen my green bean casserole recipe. She said it was a little dry so I said to dial back the temperature next time.”
Thinking about recent events, Tilson sits on the bed beside his wife and takes her hand. “Gloria, I love you and the way I’ve felt today. But something doesn’t seem right. How —”
“I confess. A special app.”
“App?”
“I uploaded your behavioral profile, and the app helps you … improve.”
“I should’ve known. I don’t know how an app could do that, but please delete it.”
Gloria reaches for her phone, then hesitates. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t want to depend on an app. I’ll be better on my own. I promise.”
#
“So,” Gloria says, “when my husband wakes up, he’ll be a changed man?”
The technician from Deep Makeovers removes a computerized helmet from Tilson Henderson. “Correct. He’ll no longer be such a loser. If you don’t notice anything at first, be patient. He’ll be committed to self-improvement based on the illusion we’ve just streamed into his mind. Stand by him. Give him plenty of encouragement.”
#
“So,” Tilson says, “when my wife wakes up, she won’t be on my case always?”
“Correct, Mr. Henderson.” The technician from Deep Makeovers removes a computerized helmet from Gloria Henderson. “Your wife will be under the illusion you’re the one who’s undergone treatment and that you’re now dedicated to self-improvement. You won’t have to make major alterations in your behavior. Just be a bit more attentive and don’t get sacked. Her thought processes have been modified such that she’ll think you’re Mr. Wonderful.”
#
The technician from Deep Makeovers removes a helmet from Tilson Henderson.
“Well?” Gloria says.
“It’s my first double-switcheroo, but I’m confident you’ll see some improvement. He’ll pay a little more attention to you and finally hold down a steady job. Mind you — he’ll never be Mr. Wonderful. But I believe you’ll find him to be adequate.”
by submission | Nov 5, 2021 | Story |
Author: Kiel M. Gregory
I live in a world where most things move too fast or not at all. Molasses or honey like water. Lives. I’m thinking more of others and less of myself and I think that’s precisely where this all started to go wrong.
What’s the point of doing anything at all when eventually the stars will burn out and there will be no light and literally nothing will happen forever? How can you escape that or rush toward it?
Imagine trillions of years in the future. We all look the same except we’re inside a cold alloy hull, dodging gravity wells or cannibalistic black holes. The interior of our domiciles is lit only artificially. We “print” everything useful. We recycle everything used, including us. We still fight and occasionally kill each other, but it’s usually over “food” (dinner wafers or quantities of nutritional quasi-solids) and not the color of our skin since we’re all coffee-and-cream colored. Not reproductive rights since we’re all the same sex and fuck ourselves full of kin. Finally, we found something else to feel a way about. Finally, we can be alone and hear only what we want. I can’t imagine what music sounds like in this future, but I can imagine a group of someones are still at the top, letting us own nothing and be happy.
Entropy has stretched the universal fabric to the point where we share thoughts. Occasionally this drives someone mad. This is how evolution works. Time means nothing.
The frictionless drive whispers its secrets along the ship’s expanse.
One of us is dreaming.
The shackled machines weep viscosity, capillary their own tears.
This doesn’t mean anything at all.
by submission | Nov 4, 2021 | Story |
Author: VH Ferguson
There’s a lick of wind that curls around me like satin ribbons, softly against my skin, in my hair. The view is unparalleled, out of this world.
The cliffs to the north west are a grey almost blushing pink, and make companion with the sapphire of the sky, the stars as counterparts to the bird-like shapes below them, circling the cliffs, all trills and whoops.
This place has been… unexpected. I always imagined its beauty but how could I have imagined its culture, as I can only wince and outspread my hands and admit that I never expected there to be one.
My grasp of their language is laughable, but the natives here are staggered and patient. Patient and quiet and pleasantly watchful. They seem to communicate telepathically, almost, with looks and touch and a biotic intimacy so that I feel embarrassed to realise that I am the otherness here.
To help me understand their stories they draw pictures in the alabaster sand of things I’ve never seen for hours, and later as I semi-drift to my bed as if in slow motion, I wonder if I’ll dream that night of shadows in a cave or of Orion Nebula.
I try the local dish, the district famous dish – they’re excited for my reaction as they are for all of my reactions as they’re certainly not used to tourists. It is a soup of sorts, I think. It seems oddly carbonated and lively but looks like liquid silk a shade of molten lava and it’s a highly unusual experience. The air smells not quite like hard-boiled eggs. I have that awkward creeping anxiety of trying to find a familiar sign with which to map their customs – is it rude for food to remain on the plate as in Japan, or is a drop in the bowl enough to quirk the eyebrow in distase like in China?
It makes me laugh, now, that even in the most extrinsic situation the human compulsion is to fit the world in a familiar place. It turns out, of course, that the custom is to bury your bowl in the ground when the meal is complete, the bowl having been made with organic material, which was obviously completely unexpected and sits conspicuous and unaccompanied in the library of my mind under ‘alien cultural dining etiquette’.
The wind picks up a little, as I stand here now, steeping in these last moments, the sun somewhere behind me, vast as it has ever been. I wonder how it will feel to be home, will I be changed?
The cliffs are to the north west. To the east is Earth, a dizzying succulent pinned in the sky, and I get the absurd sense that I could swim the distance.
