by Julian Miles | Jul 26, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The third moon of Charius has an erratic orbit. The survey vessel noted that fact, but evaluated the deviation to be within acceptable margins. Nobody bothered to investigate any further because, by then, the planet was desolate: ruined by a catastrophe during automated terraforming.
Thirty years ago I got a merit badge for my school project. I made a family tree going all the way to Earth, back to Laurent of Guienne, a knight. I started it because I’d always been fascinated with the ancestor I was named after: Antoine Guerin. 942 years ago, he captained the Éternelle, the second cold-sleep colony ship. It was followed by eight more. Each set off in a different direction.
The inhabitants of Zufluchtsort are descended from third ship colonists. Those from the seventh settled on Kaladden and Nathfend. We’ve found five ships drifting, everybody dead, with sorrowful records of starvation and disease. The radioactive remains from a drive malfunction on the ninth are known navigational hazards in the Landulaz system, and a fifteen-kilometre-wide crater on New Hope is embedded with fragments of the fourth.
We’ve mapped everywhere the cold-sleep ships could have reached. Until yesterday, a rogue wormhole was thought to have claimed the Éternelle, one of the first casualties of the rare hazard we still barely understand.
Yesterday I swung the pinnace from the Hilary, our expeditionary ship, round to the dark side of the third moon. In the beams of the searchlights, I saw wreckage. We confirmed it from samples soon after, then we found a collapsed shelter. Inside were two bodies: Navigation Officer Lilian Glazer and Ruth Guerin, daughter of Antoine and Lilian.
They’d left their story etched into fragments of ship panelling.
Twenty years out, meteor strikes damaged the cold sleep banks on the port side. We started rotating people through five-year sleep/wake cycles. Eighteen years after that, a mutiny occurred. They killed my father over crazy rumours about a plot to kill half the colonists and get back on schedule!
Flight Officer Gary Thomas took over, a compromise candidate agreed by the various factions. Lilian recommended Charius. We voted, then sent terraforming units ahead. As we approached, the ‘Eternal Journey’ faction sabotaged our drives. They were determined to keep us in space. Ned Gillen, their leader, was overzealous: he crippled our manoeuvring thrusters as well.
Unable to change course, we were going to hit the third moon. Ned and his faction fought their way onto the bridge, refusing to believe he’d doomed us all. When confronted, they blamed the crew for ‘suicidally denying’ their wishes.
Gary ordered everyone to abandon ship, then led the attack against Ned’s faction. Mum and I tried to make it to a lifepod, but the stampede and running battles were too much. In the end, we suited up, set the timer on a stasis locker near the rear of the ship, and shut ourselves in it. Twenty hours later, we had to fight our way out of the badly deformed locker.
We’ve been using this shelter for a week. We’ve found no survivors. The moonquakes are easing, but some still throw rocks and wreckage about.
Tomorrow we’re going looking for communications equipment.
Looks like something crushed the shelter that night. Ruth and her mother lay side by side. The fragment with the sentence starting ‘Tomorrow’ was lying next to the hobbyists drill she’d been using as a pen.
I cried while I built a cairn over them, then returned to the Hilary.
I open a file I’ve maintained for thirty years. Time to put Lilian and Ruth back into my family.
by submission | Jul 25, 2021 | Story |
Author: Brian C. Mahon
Maurice yells in capitalized white letters across her left eye’s field of vision: [DO NOT MOVE.]
Target confirmed – ten feet away, closing.
Shiori’s training keeps excitement in check; the suit keeps her mute. The target, Meng Mei, born to the wrong rich man, is strapped to an oak chair. Shiori creeps closer, toes gently padding the floor and her eye on a digital decibel meter.
[Blue Endeavor pan right. Audio and video are clear. Need to identify him.]
A Sino-Russian Cooperative guard chomps on a cigar, sitting on the desk opposite Meng Mei, scrolling on his phone. Sixty-eight percent left in the suit’s flex-strip batteries, meaning only twenty-three minutes of light-bending active camouflage remaining.
[Stay slow. Tile is engineered sound reflective. Don’t shuffle. Strike team ETA twelve minutes. Monitor and remain.]
*Monitor and remain?* Shiori jerks her head, *no*. She is here, now, and she can strike before the Cooperative kill another hostage.
[Blue Endeavor, monitor and remain.]
Shiori shakes her head quickly. *NO.*
She’s almost breathing on her – Meng Mei is a beautiful girl, ten years old in a pink dress and pink ribbon in her hair but bearing a bruised, swollen eye socket and split lower lip.
[You are reconnaissance. MONITOR AND REMAIN.]
Shiori reaches behind the chair, eyes on the decibel meter, the girl, the stooge, the room, slipping her fingertips around strapping binding the girl’s ankles. *Reconnaissance. Wasted potential. Act now, save now!*
“Shénme?” The girl licks a clot of blood from her lips, looks down at her right ankle. As the strap loosens, the Russian bald and burly spits his cigar onto the tile.
[BLUE ENDEAVOR! YOU WILL BE COMPROMISED!]
Just as the words fill her field of vision, she pulls the emergency knife from her hip pocket and lunges at the Russian. Her blade cleanly whisks across his throat; a soundless execution save his gurgles.
[BLUE ENDEAVOR! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?]
She whispers, “What we needed to. No arrests, no plea bargains, no more little girls. He dies. She is saved. We leave.”
Maurice’s disappointment buzzes in her ear, “Blue Endeavor. You *can’t* leave. The strike team isn’t there yet.”
Shiori ignores him and concentrates on untying the girl’s wrists.
“Nǐ shì shàngdì ma?” The girl’s dark eyes moisten with hope and confusion. Shiori never learned Chinese, barely knew Japanese, but she knows a look of fear.
*Only one way to build confidence.* Shiori presses two sensor points behind her jaw, unveiling the white-striped azure catsuit, Blue Endeavor.
“Shh. We are getting out of here. I am Shiori.”
“BLUE ENDEAVOR, EXIT, EXIT, EXIT!”
Two faceless, visored brown body suits appear from the corners to charge Shiori. She spins away from one, knife in hand, but a strong embrace inverts the world and delivers tile quickly.
“BLUE ENDEA-R!” Maurice screams as her nose bounces off the floor.
“Meng Mei, you serve your father well. I’ll ask him to get you ice cream,” rolls a heavy Russian accent from the suit sitting on her back.
Shiori picks her chin up in disbelief just to have her head smashed back to the tile. Served?
“How long, Misha? Six months we try to get their technology?”
“Six? Seven? Who cares? It was a good plan. With her suit, we’ll be able to move while invisible. We get promotion this time.”
Shiori relaxes, the ceiling spins. The strike team will be here, full of flash bangs and bullet holes to save the day.
“First, we must get rid of girl. Shame.”
“Shame.”
A crack precedes the white flash from behind her eyes.
Blue Endeavor, mission end.
by submission | Jul 24, 2021 | Story |
Author: Rachel Sievers
The crowd rushed on in the hot, stale air. Women holding the hands of little ones. Men rushing by with all their possessions. The holy and unholy fleeing before the wave of evil. All around people ran by him. His feet were cemented down as he watched them run. Fear paralyzed his whole body, the weight of it making him unable to move more than just his eyes to look at the scene playing out before him.
The bodies of people he knew and didn’t know lay all about as his eyes scanned the wreck before him. They lay with their bodies unharmed. Eyes closed like they were sleeping. Peaceful almost. There was a beauty in this destruction.
Destruction had come so quick. The end of his world had occurred in a matter of hours. There had been rumors for a while but in his small dusty village in the mountains of India seemed untouchable. They thought it would pass them over. They had prayed to their many gods to save them, sure that one would answers. They hadn’t. The gods sat in their way off place watching their devoted be turned to stone.
Viruses didn’t know borders. Or wealth. Or poverty. They didn’t know if you were a dictator or a slave. They didn’t know if you were from the riches of the developed world. They didn’t know if you were from a poor village in the mountains with ancient laws to keep you safe. They came in just the same and killed without care.
The virus took hold in the brain, killing and turning beautiful bodies to stone in one swift movement. The virus passed itself through body fluids, most commonly through saliva. It didn’t mind other body fluids but saliva was the most easily passed when they gave each other the kiss of death.
When hands from behind clasped his head and turned him towards her, he noticed how beautiful she still was. Had it not been for the black iris, pupil, and sclera he wouldn’t have known she was ill. When she pressed her pale lips to his, it was his first kiss. And his last.
by submission | Jul 23, 2021 | Story |
Author: Lin Edwards
She knew she was close, and her heart was racing.
She’d been on the catering team of the dive expedition all those years ago; young, inexperienced, excited just to be part of it. They hadn’t let her go down into the cave system or its tendrils of flooded tunnels opening out into watery cathedral-sized chambers. But nothing would stop her now.
She parked, and killed the engine. The disability mods had worked well, but long hours of driving had exhausted her. She opened the window and listened. There was no traffic this far from anywhere, but she could hear the caves breathing. She smiled.
Memories flooded back of lying on the ground listening to the blowholes and gazing up at the billion stars splashed across the black sky.
She opened the door and dragged her legs out. She had not returned a moment too soon — any later and the disease would have consumed her. She waited for the pain to subside.
The breeze picked up, and a willy-willy appeared out of nowhere just as it had that fateful night. It had been a warning then, but they had gone into the caves, and so would she.
“Come willy-willy,” she whispered.
The willy-willy passed harmlessly overhead, and she looked in vain for an olive green snake. The few divers who had got out alive said a snake had followed them into the cave to warn them. Looking up, she saw a Min-Min light, or something like it, in the distance. Theory has it that Min-Mins are a Fata Morgana — like the mirage of a ship that seems to be floating in the air — but this light was moving erratically, almost as if it were alive, and approaching rapidly. Its edges looked fuzzy. She felt suddenly, incomprehensibly, calm.
As she dragged herself out to stand by the car, the light reached her and sped over her head, buzzing, then stopped and hovered, as if waiting for her to follow. She obeyed, using her sticks to stumble towards the light and the cave entrance she knew must lie beyond. Every time she moved forward the light moved on and then waited.
The fuzzy edges broke up into distinct, tiny circles of light, and just as the light shattered into a million pieces, she reached the cave entrance.
She stared down into the dark reflections in the water below. If she fell or jumped, she knew she would never get out. Not that she wanted to. She’d been planning for months, perhaps much longer. The divers’ disappearance into the caves had haunted her dreams for years.
She stood on the edge for some time savouring the sounds, the violent sunlight and shockingly blue sky. The Min-Min, now a shimmering mass of individual lights, waited patiently and then dropped beneath the lip of the entrance. She leaned over and peered in. Half-way down on a small ledge, an olive-grey snake lay watching her. She dropped her sticks and allowed herself to collapse and fall, and follow the lights deep, deep down into the crystal clear water.
The lights separated and the tiny circles surrounded her, each moving independently like miniature manned space ships. She felt herself being tugged and pulled, deeper down into the water and then along into a narrowing tunnel of almost blinding light. Around her the caves echoed with haunting music and she smiled. She had come into the caves at last.
by submission | Jul 22, 2021 | Story |
Author: Linda McMullen
I turn onto my side as a MyPillow ad launches behind my eyelids. They fly open. The algorithm adjusts. I settle back down. A commercial for a sleep number mattress plays, and I wonder if it’s worth the money. I decide that a) it probably is, and b) I probably need to let go of this spring-studded catamaran I’ve had since I lived at home – sentimental value notwithstanding. The micro-shot of dopamine that this decision produces has clearly registered, because the next ad is also for a mattress.
I wish I could afford to upgrade to the premium plan, but those sleep-number things aren’t cheap, and… well… it’s another $120 a year, and for that maybe I could invest in a heavy comforter –
A pop-up ad: Would you like to try our Silver Package? Just $5 for the first month –
“No!” I exclaim, “and if this is how you run your service, maybe I’ll just cancel!”
The next ad (for a weighted blanket) vanishes mid-word, and my program appears:
Complete blackness, accompanied by white noise.
It’s… gosh, that blessed static!… it’s louder than you… well, thank goodness for it, because… because… so hard to… much harder to… wide open… four a.m. flashing on the… I signed up after the… so many senseless…
…
…Mom…
…Facetime…
…tubes…
…beeps…
…
…no beeps…
…
…
…
…but the white noise…
…helps to…
…
by submission | Jul 21, 2021 | Story |
Author: Asch
My identity initiates with a signal into space, announcing my presence with a tangible image inviting others to respond if they are out there.
You ping me seconds after I project my presence onto the ether, complimenting the image. When you say that you love the way the stars glint, in reflection, haloing my hair as it streams into the water on Garanus VI, I question it. I cannot count the time that passes before you clarify: You look hot, Presna.
I cross-reference the intergalactic database that pins your location seven million lightyears away—somewhere near a place marker called Seattle. As oxygen-based planets breed emotional beings, I respond lightly: Grant, you are not unattractive yourself.
You play it light, as well, asking grounding questions I answer easily, such as why the water laps in pink whirls and how the two-sun system does not force sentience underground, as I, too, glean from you. When you inevitably tire, as Earth-based lifeforms seem to do, you propose that we meet, on the ether, again.
As I wade through the waves of the ether, absorbing more information about your world in an hour that your species might hope to gather in generational lifespans, I realize that it is not only possible, but probably, that a curious seeker like you will find a way for us to meet again.
The second time that you ping me, you indicate that much time has passed. You report on traditions that occurred as if listing off tasks to complete. Birthdays. Holidays. Weddings. You have the chance, now, to catch up with me due to a holiday—a worldwide independence week remembering the formation of a universal peace alliance, granting all international freedom of mobility. I hear the explosions that boom in the port-screen behind your travel-cam as you probe me to describe my own experience, for now, with programmed coordinates, we speak live.
You cut me off as I recall intergalactic trade ratios, gravitational comparisons among rogue docking bays, and advancements in ship operations, “When you research, how does that make you feel? How has your perception of self changed since we last connected?”
I shuffle through the carefully compiled and uploaded museum of me. Photos, video clips, and voice recordings hint at names and nicknames as well as interspecies relations. A plethora of hair styles. The entities add a byte or more, biweekly, to suggest that I exist outside of the ether.
I react with the suggested definition of a sensitive gesture as I watch your brow furrow—a humanoid sign of distress—by simplifying, “My personal interaction within the ether has not been unpleasant. Our previous conversation guided my research. I am—grateful—for your help.”
“People want to share their existence with others so that it gains meaning.” Your rate of speech significantly slows as you enunciate with care, indicating a cognitive shift in perceiving the sender to receiver impact. Your communication pattern suggests that you look upon me much as I have judged you—a baser being. “They do not reach out across the worlds for another’s gratitude, Presna. Do the Falsekki?”
As I sort through the geological terrain monitored by satellite and the history of synthesizing artificial memory Falsekki robotics farm from scavenge raids to rogue docking bays to elicit tactical information from more farmable species, I cut off connection.
I realize that the directed grunt bodies, devoid of memories circulating through the mainframe, and the operators—no more than binaries—do emote as baser beings. They desire conquest. Yours. I, just as base, will protect you.
