by submission | Oct 1, 2021 | Story |
Author: Shannon O’Connor
We met at a Star Trek convention in New York. I was dressed as Worf; she wasn’t dressed up, but she was wearing a Quark T-shirt, and she looked out of place.
“Have you ever been to a convention before?” I asked her.
“No English,” she said.
“What do you speak?”
“Deutsche.”
I didn’t know any German.
“Vjljathl!” I said.
She smiled. “Vjljatlh!”
We continued speaking in Klingon. It was the best day of my life.
Her name was Greta and she was a study abroad student. She looked up words in her English dictionary, but we liked speaking Klingon better because it’s a powerful language. She told me it’s a lot like German, people speak vehemently, emphasizing what they want to say. We decided English lacks strength that Klingon has.
We moved in together after six months. We watched Star Trek every night before we went to bed. She liked sex the Klingon way, and it was difficult to keep up with her, but I did my best.
There were some strange things about Greta. She didn’t like to eat American food all the time, sometimes she liked to eat worms that she dug up in Central Park. I asked her if that’s what they did in Germany, and she said in Germany things were different, and they ate live animals. I had never heard of that custom in Germany, I thought they ate sausages and drank beer. She said she and her Klingon-loving boyfriend ate live worms and bugs back home. She didn’t tell me if everyone else did such a thing.
And she could fight! One day a woman gave her strange looks when we were out at a bar, and she took out a bat she carried in her backpack and hit her with it over the head. I had to pull her away, but the woman screamed that she was going to sue her, so we ran out of the bar.
“Those pussies know nothing of honor!” Greta screamed in Klingon. “She would sue me because she cannot defend herself. Coward!”
“I agree.” I thought Greta might take the Klingon culture a little too seriously. I wanted to explain to her that we didn’t live in the Star Trek universe, but I wasn’t sure how she would react. I didn’t want her to think I didn’t have any honor.
Greta, with all her strange habits, was irresistible, but I had a feeling something terrible was going to happen.
“This is it,” she said. “I’m going home.”
“Are you going back to Germany?”
“No, stupid, I’m going to Kronos, the Klingon homeworld.”
“But that’s not real, Greta.”
“Why don’t you think it’s real? This is our culture, our passion. Don’t you have any honor?”
“Of course, I have honor, but sweetie, it’s only a TV show.”
“That’s what you think. It’s time for me to leave.”
“But how are you going to get there?”
“I will be energized, and then I’ll get to the ship! Do you think the ship is actually going to land here?”
“Greta, I think you need help.”
“I don’t need your help anymore. I’ve learned all there is to learn. Thank you for everything.”
She stood straight up. A light beamed on her, and she disappeared.
“But how could this be true?”
I thought it was a joke. She couldn’t be gone.
Was she Klingon, or was she crazy? Greta disappeared in a beam of light, and I knew I would never forget her.
by submission | Sep 30, 2021 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
Unlike what most people were used to seeing, the “Squirmers” were nothing like us. To begin with, though about our size, they were horizontal, flexible, and a deep murky grey, with tufts of neon green fur. They had twelve eyes and a mouth like a sideways S, and they were generalist omnivores. Originating far outside our system, they were adapted to a relatively temperate, high-gravity super-Earth. And they came to our terrene orb on unique vessels shaped like spirals, designed entirely to their form and build. Instead of seats, they had tubes. Instead of controls for five-fingered hands, they had ergonomic panels and smart screens for four hooked forelimbs.
The “Squirmers’s” purpose for visiting was much like our reasons for searching for new asteroids, planets, and stars: curiosity, exploration, habitats, resources, self-preservation, etc. What was really intriguing was that, unlike many who were petrified by or repulsed at the sight of the “Squirmers,” they were fascinated by and fond of the lanky, upright, walking reeds they found in our corner of the cosmos. Indeed, from the point of view of the “Squirmers,” human beings were adorable and cute looking, like pirouetting larva infants and babies.
Communicating with the “Squirmers” was initially difficult and sometimes impossible. Not having arms, bodies, and mouths like ours, they gestured completely differently, and also not having vocal cords or hearing organs, they “spoke” and “listened” by signal odors, which smelled like uprooted grass weed. They had a writing system resembling blotches, but it was actually a series of abstract pictures, each representing a full sentence, whose senses and tenses depended on context. Needless to say, without a spoken equivalent, the script was and remains extremely hard to learn.
Not surprisingly, there was much misunderstanding after the “Squirmers” landed. Many people thought they were witless, though their technology belied the misperception. Nevertheless, despite the hostility the “Squirmers” faced in the beginning, they were benign. As a highly monistic species, they also did not worry about individual death. Revealingly, when the first alienist hate crimes against them occurred, the “Squirmers” literally did nothing, yet twenty-eight of their own had been mutilated and eviscerated. By their philosophical traditions, the living and the dead were a single mode of appearing and not clearly distinguished stages of corporeal existence.
The “Squirmers” certainly cherished life, of course, and strove to preserve their sentience in the violent, indifferent expanse, but mortality itself was never a source of heart sickness to them, in their ten hearts. Their lifespan was significantly long by human standards—five hundred and twelve years—and to be sure, the whole landing party that originally came was composed of some of the most venerable “Squirmers” around. However, physically, distinctions in age between grown “Squirmers” were not obvious, even among themselves. They could naturally slow down their aging process, and they had accelerated healing abilities as well.
So after coming in their spiral-shaped vessels, the “Squirmers” spent seven years introducing themselves around our world and establishing foreign missions for diplomatic relations, friendship exchanges, and inter-system trade. A full thirty years was needed for most people to get used to the “Squirmers,” but already in the ninth year after the arrival, the new generation did not see what the previous problem was about, and in fact, several kids wanted to be “Squirmers,” too.
The culture war between the old and the young seethed for a while, and today, there are still some rogue individuals and groups who revile the “Squirmers.” All the same, even though they look nothing at all like us, they never showed us any malice or harm over fifty-six years, so we last-remaining twenty-first-centurians may as well learn to accept their differences, as they accepted ours.
by submission | Sep 29, 2021 | Story |
Author: Peter Tittle
It was understandable, really. By far, most of the crime— 97% in fact—was committed by men. Prisons are expensive to build and maintain. Prisoners are also expensive—they don’t work while they’re in prison, so we have to support them. Then there’s the expense of the police forces and courts that get them there. And the emergency services that take care of all the gunshot wounds, the knife slashes, the broken jaws…
She pushed. And pushed. The hospital room was white and sterile. The attending doctor said something to the assisting nurse from time to time, but things seemed to be progressing normally. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t excruciatingly painful.
Her husband mopped the sweat off her brow, and encouraged, and reassured.
“And push again,” the doctor said.
“It better be a girl,” she grunted as she pushed again when the wave of pain struck her.
“Don’t worry about that now, honey” her husband said. “Just focus, you’re doing good…”
Then there’s all the environmental stuff. All those beer cans, empty cigarette packs, fast food cartons—most of the litter along the highways was put there by men. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What are they driving on those highways? Big cars and pick-up trucks. Gas-guzzlers with high emissions. And the companies that dump toxic waste, and clear cut forests, and dam river systems…? All run by men.
“But I want a girl,” she cried. With exhaustion. With worry.
“Oh come now,” the nurse said. “Boys are harder, I know, had two of ‘em myself. Holy terrors half the time, but you love ‘em just the same.”
“Another push— ”
The insurance companies opened the door when they implemented higher premiums for men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six. They were the ones more likely to cause an accident. Can’t argue with the facts and figures.
“No, it’s not that,” she gasped, “It’s the money.”
“Shh, honey, we’ll find a way, it’ll be all right,” he wiped her brow again.
“One more, I think—”
She gave one final push then fell back against the pillows, drenched, exhausted. She waited anxiously for the announcement.
“It’s a boy!”
They called it the Gender Responsibility Tax— a $5,000 surtax was levied on each and every male. Payable annually, from birth. By the parents, of course, until the boy reached manhood.
(Thanks to June Stephenson. It was her idea.)
by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 28, 2021 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
He’d spent forty years running rescue and salvage operations in deep space, had hundreds of engagements, many responding to distress beacons, but he had never experienced anything like this.
His entire ship resonated at some experiential but otherwise unmeasurable frequency. His instrumentation registered nothing, it wasn’t designed to analyze whatever this was.
Rapierre himself felt more than heard the signal, and as he navigated the ship, zig-zagging in the direction where it became stronger, he found there was a sweet spot where, if he pointed the nose of the craft directly into it, the sensation became something more, a kind of beautiful, barely perceptible subliminal song, pulling at the edges of his consciousness.
There was nothing to lock his navigation system onto, only the sensation in his mind, so he flew manually for days, maybe weeks, time gradually losing meaning. He slept at intervals strapped into the pilot’s seat, trusting the ship’s collision avoidance systems, and that he’d wake up if the feeling changed in any way.
It was the proximity alarms that jolted him awake, and he strained through the forward observation to make out what had set them off.
The space ahead of the ship was shrouded in a particulate fog, and dimly visible in its midst, slowly rotating, hung a massive celestial remnant, edges lost in the cloud, its surface a vast rugged plain.
He synchronized their rotations in order that he might land.
As he approached, the features of the landscape below clarified, and he realized that the surface wasn’t space rock or condensed stardust at all, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of craft condensed into a single block of pancaked and intermingled wreckage.
He pulled back hard on the control stick and pushed the throttle to the pins to climb away, but his efforts had no effect. The ship shuddered against whatever force pulled it forward, the space frame vibrating in pained harmony with the siren’s song.
The collision with the surface was violent, the ship plowing through the debris field like a hot knife until its shielding failed, and then further still, the sounds of terrestrial wreckage tearing through the fuselage and venting atmosphere overwhelmed only by a myriad of warning klaxons. The cockpit safety doors slammed into place, sealing him off from the vacuum of space as everything ground to a halt.
He sat in sudden silence, the shock of the crash slowly giving way to the reality of the situation he was now in.
He would die here.
Nobody was coming to rescue him, and if they did, if they picked up any beacon he might send, or the signal that brought him here, they’d suffer the same fate.
“Why have you come?”
He flinched, looking around to find the source of the words that had formed in his head.
“Why have you come?”
The question again.
“You called me here,” he spoke the words aloud to the empty cockpit, “your beacon, I followed your beacon.”
There was a long pause before new words formed.
“We called, but not for you.”
There was another long pause.
“Who are you, so arrogant that you would assume our call was meant for you to answer? You are not welcome.”
Rapierre had no reply, for the first, and what would be the last time in his life, he was at a loss for words.
by Julian Miles | Sep 27, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I can hear his controller yelling at him to shoot. His eyes flick left and right, then he stares at the woman with the kid a short distance behind me. That shouting must be deafening. It’s certainly not helping him do anything useful.
Overcast afternoon, leafy plaza, man in a suit pointing a gun at thin air while sweat runs down his face. People are starting to notice. I turn and raise my hand towards the CCTV, fingers spread. I start folding them down one by one.
4…
They’re still shouting.
3…
Single voice. Urgent. I check my position and step sideways to keep the woman and kid directly behind me.
2…
A single word being shouted. I see his finger go from frame to trigger. I crouch, he fires. A woman screams. I stand and walk away as the man falls to his knees. People run about screaming. I don’t look to see who he hit. I don’t look back when another shot sounds.
By the plaza entrance, a second operative rushes towards me, eyes roaming, desperately trying to find the menace they’re shouting about. I locate the nearest CCTV and raise my hand again.
4…
Frantic shouting over the headset. Confused, he charges at me. I step to one side.
3…
He stops and spins, gun coming up, finger on the trigger. I quickstep until I’m behind him. I was always the best at this game as a kid, and that was when my opponent could see me.
2…
We dance about as he frantically tries to turn to face me. The voices are getting louder. Any second –
Now. I see his elbow bend and duck to the opposite side of where he fires blind over his shoulder. Then I hop back as he swings the gun to shoot under the other arm. That second shot elicits a scream from behind us.
He spins to see who he hit. I bat his arms down, then open his throat with my bone knife. They grew it from a bit of my femur and a few stem cells after they became certain I couldn’t make normal objects be like me. A clever bit of thinking, and it works. Doesn’t keep an edge for very long, but they hone them very sharp, and have grown spares.
Drone!
There it is. Loaded with multiple ways to ignore my curious case of not being visible to the naked eye – the scientists have promised they’ll explain what happened, one day. I don’t think it’ll be anytime soon. At least it’s a useful mishap.
I raise my hand and make childish shooting gesture towards the drone. It drops, going up in flames as it does so. Laser! Tasty. I never know what my support will bring, but they do try to be appropriate, and monitor me for cues. Today’s theme is ‘invisible killer’.
We’re done here. I move my hand in a throat-cutting gesture. Support takes out the surveillance in the park and on two streets, one at either end. Then I run into the bushes next to this entrance and shimmy down the shaft opened by an unseen support team member. As I’m throwing on clothes, an unseen person closes the hatch. Nothing left to chance.
One day the opposition will get their act together. Until then, it’s open season.
I emerge from a distant storm drain. In a nearby car park is an SUV that recognises the key in my pocket. I’ll call for my next assignment in a week. Time to disappear properly for a bit.
by submission | Sep 26, 2021 | Story |
Author: Jason Graff
I was a child, asleep in a patchwork oxygen tent when he first appeared. Since I’d slept through it, my first encounter with him was in my imagination fueled as it often was by the ramblings of the others who shared the apartment with my family. He came out of the sky, people said. He came from Earth, they thought. He’d been sent to take us all back, save us; they were certain.
The first time I saw him was several years later. Despite his failure to do anything to improve our lives, he retained a messianic aura. It was thought to be an auspicious sign to actually see him in the, well, I guess it could be called flesh. Wandering an alley searching for a signal burst, I heard a noise from above. There he teetered several stories above my head, feeding on a metal blast cap while walking a copper wire between buildings — a monstrously oversized acrobat. Following behind him, the small army of rats that he’d amassed since his arrival formed an unbroken chain.
I was on a patch job for the city when I came face to face with him. He wore a Hazsuit that looked newer and more advanced than the ones still seen hanging in people’s closets, reminders of the ruined world our kind had to leave. Not only rats but pigeons and stray cats were gathered around him. He was affixing what I took to be some sort of tracking device to each one.
The number of stray animals soon began to diminish. It reached the point that the black market became unaffordable. My stomach grumbled and growled as it did everyone’s but I didn’t say a word about what I’d seen. The simple act of survival had made us all rumor mongers. No one else was really talking about him by then.
The growing scarcity of strays grew more and more apparent. I figured the government was trying to thin out our numbers again by starving us. Yet, I still said nothing about my encounter, not that it would’ve made any difference. He’d come here to do a job and no one I knew would’ve been able to stop him.
By the time he finally caught up with me, I was weak from hunger. A stinging rain was falling that morning. My threadbare shirt had melted to my skin. He was above me, perched on a street lamp. He put a collar on me not unlike those I’d witnessed him putting on the stray animals. You’re not going home, he said, but to serve a higher purpose.
I next found myself in a holding tank with a number of others, many even thinner and more wasted away than me. Some cried out or moaned into the din but most of us kept silent. Gradually the collar tightened around my neck as shocks pulsed through me. I could smell my own flesh frying. I kicked out, my legs moving independent of me. The collar tightened against every motion I attempted to make. My body was no longer my own. Then, I fell into a paralyzed state.
When the animals were let through the gate into the tank, they began to feed indiscriminately. The rats fed in packs. While the pigeons pecked on people here and there, showing no sense of urgency. Only the cats showed any discrimination, plopping themselves down and sniffing at people. All I could do was close my eyes and wait my turn.
