by submission | Jan 19, 2021 | Story |
Author: Chris Preston
I just turned six years old and, for my birthday, Dad gave me a grown-up mask. It was supposed to be Mom’s, but she didn’t come home when she was supposed to. Before the sirens started.
I was only four years old when we went into our hideout under the basement. No mask fit me so only Dad could go back up into the dirty air outside.
Life in the hideout is boring. At first, there was a lot to do because Dad was very prepared. He worked as a scientist and his boss told him that something bad was coming. When it looked like we would be in our hideout for a long time, Dad even made rules for the different days of the week.
The weekend days are a “free-for-all,” as Dad says.
Mondays are cooking days. I don’t like the smell when Dad burns our soup, it stinks for hours.
Tuesdays, we read the whole time. My books, adult books, even some magazines. Sometimes, Dad thinks I am reading but only because I know which words always come next.
Wednesdays, we run the generator extra long to watch many shows and movies. Sometimes, we don’t if Dad hasn’t found any new gas.
Thursdays are grooming days. I always like the taste of minty toothpaste because Dad ran out of real mint a long time ago. We also trim our nails, wash ourselves with new water, and Dad cuts my hair. His hair is all gone. Mine is falling out too but Dad says that happens when you get older. After, I use a broom to collect the little bundles of blonde hair off the ground and put it in the trash can.
Fridays are my favorite day. Garbage day. Well, they used to be scary. Being alone is always scary for me. But now, it’s different. Dad made this new mask tight, as tight as it could go, so it fit my face. It was what I needed to leave our secret bunker again.
My heart was racing when I first left for my first garbage day with Dad. To get out, Dad as made a path through our house that fell over. It was daytime, but I wasn’t used to the sun anymore. I have what my dad calls indoor eyes. After I didn’t need to squint anymore, I remember saying, “what a mess!” Everything was different, like a big storm came through and knocked the whole world over. Our neighbours were all gone, it was just Dad and I left. Nothing like my television shows.
Since I started helping, almost our whole street is clean again. Dad says if we pick up all the garbage, and pluck all the weeds, people will come home again. Maybe even Mom too.
We would go out more, but Dad says we can only go once a week without getting sick. Our medicine would be gone if we did more.
I asked Dad when we can start cleaning up the next street.
“Next year, honey,” he said.
It will be a big job. There’s rocks and paper and bags everywhere. There’s even two people always asleep in the middle of the road. Dad said they’re just big plastic dolls. I don’t believe him.
I can’t wait until next year.
by Julian Miles | Jan 18, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“A different feeling since you’ve been gone.” Yeah, that’s it. Too many times I catch myself looking down and back, only to find some scrub looking horrified, or empty air because one ran off.
“Ten, left.”
This one has a different feel. She’s got this lilt to her voice. Fluent in some old language, too. Well, the swearing bits. Yet, when we’re in the thick of it, her accent disappears. Just this monotone that delivers what I need, when I need it.
“Seven, centre.”
Incoming. I rest my assault rifle against a building, taking the essential pause to make sure the building can take the weight, then crouch down, wind my arms back, preload my pectorals, and wait.
“Five, centre.”
I glance back.
“Take three steps left, miss.”
“Call me Riley.”
“I’m Olaf.”
She nods, then moves as instructed.
“Two, square.”
It’s coming right at me.
The shadow of wings flashes over us and I unwind, my arms swinging in so fast the air screams. I time it perfectly. The Gakdarbu is where it needs to be. My fists land on either side of its tubular head like gigantic hammers. Brutally effective: even if I get it wrong, I’ll stun it, maybe paralyse it.
I get it right. The skull compresses, then explodes. Purple brains, green flesh and pink blood spray everywhere as shards of black bone strafe the area like a warm rain of obsidian daggers.
Amazing mess. So pret-
Something slams into the back of my left knee. I stagger that way and the hurtling body only clips my shoulder, instead of hitting me square in the chest. Even that love tap knocks me flat. I might be a bioengineered war giant, but taking five thousand kilos of headless alien raptor dead centre will spread me like chunky salsa.
There’s a lot of incomprehensible swearing. I hear her take a huge breath, let it out, then something pounds on the side of my calf.
“Do you pause to watch the rain of bloody shite every time, or do you only indulge when it’s likely to get you killed, Olaf?”
I look down. She’s pinned under my leg, beating on my calf armour with the butt of a pistol. I can see sparks where her impact field is having trouble keeping my leg from squashing her like a bug. Looking closer, I see her right shoulder is dented, and lower than it should be.
“You tackled me?”
“Yes, you gigantic idjit. Can’t have you dying on my first day as your spotter. Now could you puh-leeze get the feck offa me?”
Oh, yeah. I move my leg.
“You need something for that shoulder?”
She nods, rolls to her knees, and shucks the shoulder plate.
“I need you to straighten that while I deal with my wandering joint.”
Grabbing her right arm, she twists it, and then slams her right shoulder into my calf armour. There’s a wet ‘pop’. I feel a little sick. She screams.
I pick the armour plate up and carefully squeeze it back to true, then offer it to her.
She wipes her eyes and takes it. After locking it back into place, she grins.
“Nice job.”
“What next?”
“At least being nearly crushed kept me mostly free of shite. There’s a lake over in what used to be the city park. Wanna rinse?”
“Good idea, Riley.”
“Too right it is. I’m stinky. You reek.”
What? I take a deep breath and get a whiff of myself. Oof. The lady holding her nose and laughing at my expression has a point.
I like her.
by submission | Jan 17, 2021 | Story |
Author: Barry Boone
I could see Damian’s girlfriend wanted to sock me, but she knew she’d break her fist against my brass jaw. So she held back. Which I knew was hard for her. She was even more kickass than Damian. Damian might be her first love, but a good fight was a close second.
“Admit it,” she said. “You’re in love with him.”
She’d asked me to join her at her favorite dive to hash things out. My drinks were lined up in front of me — three martinis, untouched — my way of renting the barstool. She’d already downed hers and was onto a fourth.
“Impossible,” I said. “I’m a robot.”
“Then he’s in love with you.”
“Yeah, that’s why he waited a year to reinstate me from backup.”
She looked at me sideways.
“He didn’t know you were in the file system. You idiot.”
After I’d sacrificed myself to save his stupid life in the Milky Way’s ongoing skirmishes with Andromeda, it had taken Damian way too long to pour my historical copy into another shell. I had to say, though, I liked the improvements since my last self — especially the new weaponry in my fingertips.
“Catherine…”
“Don’t you dare call me that. I don’t even know your name.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but she cut me off.
“I know, I know,” she said wearily. “Robots don’t have names. As a way to keep your kind from gaining citizenship.”
I wouldn’t know about that; I wasn’t up on politics. Anyway, who cared about a name?
Still, I was starting to understand. She was jealous. Just like she was jealous of his new cat, who always hid whenever she stayed over. A cat, a girlfriend… I guess Damian really HAD missed me when he thought I’d died. He’d been looking for substitutes.
“Hey, if it isn’t a dish and her boyfriend!”
This from some creep stepping between the two of us. If I hadn’t been distracted by this ridiculous conversation, I’d have noticed the five of them crowding us.
“Don’t you know the rules here?” said a second, putting his arm around her and looking me over. “No mixed race couples.”
What came out of my mouth was, “Don’t you touch her!”
I know. It was a cliche. And I’m sorry. But my mind was still foggy from being archived all that time.
By way of reply, two of them lifted Catherine and tossed her behind the bar. I heard bottles smash as she fell out of sight.
“You’re gonna be sorry you ever thought you could be a loverboy, robot,” one said, raising a crowbar. “Better scram.”
As if. Have you ever been attacked by five thugs with metal pipes, broken bottles, and a baseball bat? Me neither.
My new fingertips were very useful, though, sending back electric shocks when they smashed at my face, and shattering the bottles in their hands via sound waves. Cool! There was a bit of blood, and some crunching, and I thought I’d gotten the better of them, when one of them pointed a reverse-ion-shooter at me.
Just when I thought I was about to be de-energized, Damian’s tabby was literally on his face, scratching his cheeks off. Where had SHE come from?
The guy reeled, screamed, then ran from the place.
Catherine knelt next to me. I guess I had a LOT of cobwebs to shake off. It just dawned on me she was a shapeshifter.
“Well, boyfriend,” she said. “Thanks for saving me, I guess.”
“It’s okay, Catherine. It’s what I do.”
“Call me Cat,” she said. “All my friends do.”
by submission | Jan 16, 2021 | Story |
Author: Sabrina E. Robinette
The choice was obvious for most, but I struggled. Should I die freely on Earth, or live in debt on Mars? “In debt”– that’s what they called it, but everyone knew better. There were rumors of labor camps and brutal mining colonies, none confirmed but all believable. Everyone knows what will happen to them when they board the Applewhite Corporation’s space shuttle to Mars, but they go anyway. It’s not like there’s a better fate to be found on Earth, where millions have been wiped out by the nearly unlivable atmosphere.
The trip to Mars requires a down payment of ten thousand dollars. The rest will be paid over a period of ten thousand years; generations of mining the land for resources to pay back the Applewhite family for saving the select few that could afford to evacuate Earth in the first place. Nearly everyone eligible had chosen to leave, and today, my family is among those lucky few at the boarding dock. My mind is still torn, even as we stand in line to board the shuttle.
I turn around to observe our shipmates. Their eyes are glazed over, pamphlets in their hands, grim expressions settling on their faces. Lambs to the slaughter. I can see the reality of the situation hitting them; the condemnation of future generations to lifetimes of labor, the horror of thousands of years of indentured servitude. My mind is made up; I’ll be the first to break this cycle. I pull my father aside, and we argue in urgent, hushed voices.
“You’re going to burn if you stay here,” he reminds me, one hand clasped tightly on my shoulder. “Or die in a hurricane, or a flood. You’ve seen the news, haven’t you?”
I can’t play dumb. I know what will happen to me, and I know it’s going to be a painful death. But when I look at my father, I see a lifetime of slavery and servitude ahead of him, and I’m not sure which one of us will have it the worst. “I know what I want to do, Dad,” I assure him. “I’ll be happier here than I would be if I came with you. There are survivalist colonies all over the world, you know– I have a chance at life here.”
“Sweetheart.” My father’s grip tightens, but tears begin to form in his eyes; he knows I’m slipping away, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. “Life on Mars won’t be ideal, but it will be structured, and certain. Any chance you have at survival here would be entirely unstable. If the weather doesn’t kill you, the radiation will.”
“I know,” I whisper, taking his hand in mine. “But you have to let me go, Dad. I’m twenty, and I can make my own decisions. And I choose not to go through with this.”
My father considers me for a moment, then pulls me into a tight embrace, resting his head on mine. He squeezes me so hard that I can barely get a breath in. “I already knew you were going to do this,” he murmurs, his voice resigned and broken.
“I love you,” is all I can manage without breaking down.
There are tears leaking down his cheeks; he gives me a quivering smile and kisses my forehead, returning to the line. I say my last goodbyes to my mother and brothers as well, and as I leave the boarding dock, I look back to catch my father’s eye. We exchange looks one last time, each contemplating the other’s fate, resolved in our own choices.
by submission | Jan 15, 2021 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“On a sloping hill, see the field of varicolored flowers? Blossoms of geometric shapes, slowly spinning in the gentle breeze.” Commander Oswald closed his eyes and tapped his own temple with his manicured finger.
Private First Class Ichor, who was the grunt seated before him, took a deep breath before replying. “It’s like a rainbow wept.”
“Yes! I do like that,” the Commander grinned with approval. “Must use it in our ad campaign.” He rubbed his soft hands together. “You’ll get full attribution, of course.”
“Of course.” Ichor crossed his arms, bundling his courage for what came next. “So after, after my passing—whenever that is—my body will be launched into this dead planet’s atmosphere, and when I crash to the ground—”
“We don’t say ‘crash.’ We prefer the term ‘seed.’ Much more noble sounding, isn’t it? But yes, you will seed the sterile soil of this barren world beneath us.” Commander Oswald closed his eyes again. “Imagine the trees! Groves of woody giants—towering, slender, and bursting with blue-green leaves. Leaves that shimmer like Christmas tinsel in the sunshine. Ahhh!”
“ ‘Breeding lilacs out of the dead land ,’ ” the grunt whispered to himself.
His commander ignored him, lost as he was in his own imaginings. “And before you know it, curious little creatures, scaled or feathered, gliding across the bright, clear sky; sleek wiggly things, kaleidoscopic, and swimming through cool crystal streams; furry, bulging-muscled beasties scampering through the forest shadows, streaking through the sun-lit fields. . .”
“Yes, well, that’s a pretty vision you have,” Ichor sighed. He’d already signed up for this terra-forming project; his commander didn’t have to convince him. Every new recruit was encouraged to sign up. In the name of science, in the name of survival of the species, in the name of contributing to something bigger than yourself. Most signed up, eventually.
The commander opened his eyes, tilted his head like a curious cat as he looked at the young man seated before him. Such a wonderful specimen!, he thought to himself. He actually looked forward to what might spring from the grunt’s seeded remains.
* * *
Less than six months later, according to the solar calendar of the lifeless world beneath them, an unfortunate accident occurred on the hanger deck of the orbiting starship. Commander Oswald was informed—something about a strap breaking, a bolt snapping, a stray projectile in a deadly training mishap. The commander didn’t read the official report; it didn’t matter to him. What did matter, though, was Private First Class Ichor was now available for his terra-forming launch. The commander sat behind his formidable desk, templed his fingers, and smiled. Of course, he would see to it they named the seeding site after the young man.
* * *
Ichor’s body launched from the starship via missile tube, perhaps a bit too fast. He initially soared across the uppermost alien atmosphere, then descended in a gentle slope, heating up until he burst into flame. From the ground, he was a meteor, glowing, smoking—finally vaporizing long before he touched the surface. Like a tear from the eye of God, he was gone in a flash.
by submission | Jan 14, 2021 | Story |
Author: Warren Woodrich Pettine
Mother,
We replaced our eyes with machines. The impact of perceiving the full spectrum – from viciously fast gamma rays to the yawning gaps of AM radio – was profound. Our ears were next. Augmenting the perception of substance compression, we learned to hear gravity. We listened to the moon as it pulled the tides, heard Venus cross between the Earth and the Sun. Then smell. The range of detected chemicals was expanded two thousand-fold. We could sense the slightest variation in the Earth’s oxygen composition. (The rise in carbon on a heating planet smelled like fire.) Taste was discarded. By that point, we had no digestive tracts, just batteries and nutrient infusions. Areas of the brain specialized for useless things like arm movement were bathed in drugs and reprogramed to control synthetic limbs, or to interface with external silicon-based processing. But our memories remained intact. When I was a child, before the transformation, I had you, my mother, and I touched grass. Both are now gone.
Our natural forms are too delicate for the physical conditions of deep space travel, or the time durations required. To carry humanity across vast distances, one hundred of us volunteered to be re-engineered. The process was successful in eighty-seven subjects. With proper maintenance, our brains were projected to survive four thousand Self-Referenced years. It has been 1,189,472.7 since I was born. The magnitude by which they underestimated our viability belays how little the doctors understood the consequences of what they had done.
Earth was destroyed a mere 38.5 Earth-Referenced years after we left. I heard the gravity of its quiet consumption at the same moment the transmission of its radio signals abruptly ceased. There was an unanticipated instability at the core of the sun, causing an implosion and expansion. Just like that, our past was erased. Or, was erased 13.8 Earth-Referenced years prior. Light moves too slowly.
When we reached Wolf 1061, the Eden protocols failed. We found a suitable planet, with Earth equivalent gravity and plentiful water. It could have hosted a form of life, the one I grew up with on Barbados, warm with palm trees and the calls of birds. Our progress with vegetation and insect life proceeded without issue. But the artificial instantiation of amniotic life was not possible after the Self-Referenced centuries of travel. When designing the project, scientists could not feasibly test such timescales, and so relied on theory. Theory is always simplification. In this case, simplifications hid a terrible tragedy. The most advanced life we created on that planet was a butterfly. I recall watching one float against the alien breeze. In that moment, I remembered when I was ten years old, watching your hair pulled by humid wind.
Guided evolution of insects also failed. A solar flare irradiated the remaining life beyond resuscitation, and our terraforming efforts elicited volcanic activity that destroyed our reserve biologic material. Some of us stayed there, but most of us left, scattering in different directions, looking for intelligence beyond the legacy of Earth.
We found we are alone. After millions of Earth-Referenced years, we have located no alien life more sophisticated than DNA-less hyperthermophiles. In isolated desperation, I produced over one million automated exploratory devices and spread them throughout the galaxy. These are the corners of my eyes and the reach of my fingers. But save for our kind, the galaxy is empty. In all this time, it has proved impossible to artificially replicate in-silico the spontaneous adaptive creativity of the human brain. When the last of us dies, conscious thought will die.
At the center of our galaxy is a black hole. It pulls stars into itself. Great gas churns. As the gas swirls, new stars are called forth then collide, creating and destroying, pulling into inescapable nothingness – monstrous branches reaching out from roots in a dark center. Some journeyed there and cast themselves in. Others became violent, scorching primordial planets and murdering our kind. (That I was not among them would make you proud.) None of the predators remain. Nihilism is ill-suited to survival.
So many parts of us were dissected away. We have no skin, no lips, no tear ducts. But those fragile pieces of biology were meant to serve a purpose. Now a handful of us live, drifting. We call to one another like whales in the ocean, knowing it will be hundreds or thousands of years before a friend hears our greeting. The purpose given so very long ago lasted shorter than a breath. But we are left to keep going, wax melting down a long candle in an abandoned house. It is like writing a letter to a mother who died when I was twelve years old.
I spent the last 68.8 Self-Referenced years constructing a shell for raw-material storage and systemic repair. My body is now a frigate, large enough to span from beach to beach of the island where you cared for me. I feel every part of it as exquisitely as I once felt the salty water of the surf.
A few hours ago, I saw the radiation of a supernova, bent by the gravity of a white dwarf, reflected on the liquid water of a comet passing near a yellow star. Tomorrow, I will begin the 217,228.1 Self-Referenced year journey to the nearby Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. It will be a duration and degree of darkness even I fail to fully fathom. With human eyes, the sky will empty as I cross, until the Milky Way itself is but a small punctate point of light in a thick prison of black. But I do not have human eyes, and I have much more to see.
Your Son,
Eldrich Kwabena
