by submission | Sep 17, 2021 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Over the generations, many scoundrels had sat in the Pilot’s chair, though folk said this one was the worst, presiding over the scandal of the dark decks, and the blight years of algae and roachcake. Now the corridors echoed with angry voices.
Men wearing the red sash of the Law guarded the Bridge, a show of strength in these troubled times. The Navigator, here to complain about the Church of Denial vandalising her telescope, was made to wait.
No one would guess this stern, clever woman had burst into tears when she realised it was the splintered mirror crunching beneath her feet.
Eventually she was shown into a room big enough for two families, where the Pilot lounged behind a desk. Navigator was an honorary post, of little importance, and he didn’t waste a smile on her.
Yes, he’d heard what happened.
She was so angry she hardly knew where to begin. Did he know that in the years since the remote telescope failed, the smaller instrument in the observatory – a barely adequate Cassegrain – had been their only means of observing Centauri?
The Pilot lost interest. He and this fusspot would be long dead before telescopes mattered.
“What do you want from me?”
That stopped her. Mirror grinding was a lost art. She’d wondered about binoculars, family heirlooms perhaps. But she’d come to complain and hadn’t finished yet.
“You promised a guard for the observatory,” she began, when the door burst open and Lawmen bundled a man into the room. He’d been roughly handled and there was blood on his face.
This was the Denier Prophet, who’d promised to lead his followers outside.
The Lawmen could barely restrain him. Instinctively she drew back from such passion.
The Pilot studied the man. “So you’re the one who claims this is a prison, and we’re trapped here by lies.”
He gestured at the Navigator. “And that telescopes are blasphemy.”
“While you promise we land in paradise tomorrow,” raged the Prophet.
The Pilot waved the Lawmen away.
“All that claptrap, yes,” he shrugged. “You know there are too many of us, that we barely manage. Do rules not apply to you?”
“Render unto…”
It was too much for the Navigator. “How can you preach the stars are just lamps hung in the dark?”
The Prophet turned his blazing gaze on her. “You wear the blue sash of Crew and are well fed. Peering down your telescope has made you blind. Look around you.”
“Madness to think all this is a trick…”
“A greater madness to believe you are imprisoned on an endless journey.”
“I could have shown you our destination,” she said bitterly.
A sly look crossed the Pilot’s face. “Lead your flock outside then, if that is what you believe. I can open the cargo lock.”
The Navigator was not sure why she trailed the Prophet and his jubilant followers to the vast cargo bay. She normally avoided these teeming shanties.
Outside, the faithful would find freedom and everything that was lacking here. This is what the Prophet preached. The huge inner door swung wide and the waiting crowd surged into the lock.
At his desk the Pilot shrugged. Fewer troublesome mouths to feed. At least it bought more time.
The Navigator was sure the Ship would arrive one day, that there would be a last auction of birthrights, an end to blights and dark decks. She believed in all that claptrap, though it would not happen in her lifetime.
As the door began to close, she could hear joyful singing. For a moment she envied them.
by submission | Sep 16, 2021 | Story |
Author: Josh Price
Everyone watches television. It’s the law, dummy. We sign in our hours so we can get our credits; we get prizes and stuff. I got a gift certificate to the online store and got a super cute blouse for picture day. The blouse has flowers on it. I’ve never seen flowers in real life. Going outside is forbidden by The Teachers.
I wore my blouse on Allegiance Day, when The Teachers shot Tommy and Billy McLane both for stealing food. Their heads blew up. The Teachers only execute the bad kids, and who needs them?
Trisha Body got blood in her braids. She’s really popular but we all laughed at her, even her best friend. She cried and went to the nurse’s office. The Teachers suspended her for not being a Real Patriot.
I laughed longer than the others because I hate Trisha; she likes the same boy as me. Sam Dillon and Trisha are going steady now—I’m going to try to get Trisha in trouble for stealing.
I get extra credits when I answer the essay questions at the end of the Patriotism tests. The tests are easy and I always do a good job.
Mom has to watch the programming as part of The Teacher’s breeding mandates. Since my dad was taken to the camps, Mom has to have babies with whoever The Teachers choose for her now. There are security codes for the breeding shows but moms are lazy and think kids are dumb. I come home from Patriotism Church sometimes and catch my brother watching the breeding movies. He’s so gross.
I tell on him and he gets in trouble, even though I know it hurts when The Teachers do the shocks, he has to go to the dark place for a week and they don’t give him any food or water. I get 25 extra credits every time.
There is another super cute dress on the internet store that I can’t wait to get. I only need a hundred more credits. The dress is really short; Trisha and her stupid friends are going to be way jealous. The Teachers encourage us to spend our credits on things like clothes and make-up.
I’m going join The Teachers breeding effort when I turn 18. Then Sam Dillon and I can be Real Patriots and have a lot of kids. Sam says he can’t wait to sign up, like he has a choice.
The men are taken to the camps when they can’t perform their breeding duties anymore.
The Teachers look and act mostly like people, but their eyes are wrong and they don’t walk like we do. They move with little tiny, hummingbird-fast steps. I’ve only seen hummingbirds in movies they show us at school about the old times.
The most important thing we learn in school is that we will all return to the Great Place when we die. The Teachers say we will all be True Patriots if we are good; we will have pets and everything when we get to the Great Place.
Some people say that The Teachers came to our planet to use us as their food supply, like they did with all the living creatures on the planet they came from, but it’s always kids like Tommy and Billy McLane. I don’t believe the bad kids; they will never make it to the Great Place, because they don’t believe in Patriotism.
I love The Teachers, and I love being a Good Patriot.
by submission | Sep 15, 2021 | Story |
Author: Jessie Atkin
The pairs line up at the life tubes. They wait patiently. It has been nine months; a few extra moments will not break them. When the white light begins to flash everyone stands a little straighter. The first pairs in each queue step toward the receiving trays. There are four receptacles, each matched to a color: red, yellow, blue, and green.
An alarm begins to ring in rhythm with the flashing light. The whoosh of air sounds through the pneumatic tubes. The first row of couples leans forward to retrieve their offspring. Each life form, at its beginning, looks the same. Only the identity labels on the outer surface of each pod differentiate them. Each pod is printed with the four identity factors on which society is built: Color, Belief, Home, and Style.
The Reds, of course, retrieve a red offspring, who comes into the world labeled with Neo-Messianism, Great White North, and Eastern. They move toward the well-marked exit.
The Yellows beside them retrieve a pod labeled: Yellow, Paleo-Messianism, Southern White and Blue Sky, Pale.
The Greens retrieve a pod labeled: Green, Atheistic, Old World, Native.
And the Blues pick up their pod, with an identity label reading: Blue, Poly-Eternalism, Subcontinent, Pacific.
The exit to the life center is not as well manned as the entrance. Protesters have to be allowed somewhere within view of the premises, the world is a democracy after all, and it is thought that a pair of happy parents are less susceptible to the bile being spilled than a couple nervously approaching the possibility of family.
The digital display boards raised above shouting faces bare the same generic messages seen beside life centers the world over. Labels = Lies. We Live Life While You Write Fiction. And, My Body My Choice.
The yellow couple tries to make eye contact with the red parents beside them, likely to shake their heads at the stupidity, the ignorant display across the street; but the red couple refuses to acknowledge their presence. The varied belief designations on their newly procured capsules is likely to blame.
Trying to look at the new red family means that the yellow couple knocks the shoulder of the green pair exiting on their left. There is no apology, no laugh, no congratulations, despite the shared joy they all just left behind. Instead, the green male shakes a fist in the air. “Already lax with your attentions?” he shouts. “Shocking they still hand offspring to the likes of you. You must have staggered out of the southern hemisphere.”
“Countries are a myth!” a protester shouts.
“Borders went away with the Third World War!”
The green couple huff, and hug their pod tighter, moving closer to the protesters and farther from the yellow designated family.
“Only one style! The human style!” the protesters chant.
The blue couple look at one another, their mouths turned down in sadness rather than fear. How must their parents’ feel? For once, a long time ago, those in the shouting mob had parents too. What must it feel like, the couple think, to lose the precious gift, once exactly like the one in their arms, to a cruel and rudderless existence? To see a child stumble out into a nameless horde, of all colors, and none at all. These people once had parents, and beliefs, homes, and styles too. Then they just threw them away, as if they were meaningless. As if they were wicked. As if they were just made up.
by submission | Sep 14, 2021 | Story |
Author: Jeremy Nathan Marks
Franco had fainted. It was 105 degrees in the city, and despite all the warnings on radio and television, he had insisted that he would go birdwatching.
Franco had heard that a male bobolink had been sighted in one of Detroit’s many tallgrass prairies. Local birders were posting breathless reports that a bobolink was in Detroit for the first time in decades.
@nighthawk2001 wrote: “It’s like I keep saying. Detroit is the future of birding. Detroit is the future of everything. If you believe in re-wilding, move to Detroit! #Detroitisbirds #Detroitwillsavestheworld
@warblerprothonos added: “We must talk to the city about turning our city prairies into parks. #parksavespecies #endangeredetroit
When Franco came to, the bird he’d come to see was sitting on his chest. It kept flapping its black and white wings furiously, sending tiny breezes Franco felt on his chin. The bird’s flapping wings broke Detroit’s oven-like stillness.
The heat fascinated Franco. A few years before, he’d travelled to Death Valley in summer and parked his car in Badwater Basin. Locals told him he was trying to kill himself, but Franco said, you don’t go to Death Valley trying to avoid the possibility of death. It had been 126 degrees the day he’d gone down into the valley. That morning, Franco told the prostitute he’d hired to stay with him all night, “I’m going to make sure my body remembers this day until I die.” She told him, “Why don’t you just stick your head in an oven? It’d be about the same.”
The bobolink fanned its wings and hopped up to the top of Franco’s chest. It turned one eye to him and then the other but said nothing. Franco could hardly believe what was happening. When his father died, he’d been sitting in a lawn chair in the backyard of his childhood home. Franco was almost asleep when a sparrow landed on his arm to wake him. The bird didn’t move even when he opened his eyes and his arm quivered despite his best attempts at remaining perfectly still. The sparrow -a male- stared at him for many moments before flying off.
The bobolink ambled up to Franco’s chin and stood looking down at him. The bird could have pecked his eyes, but Franco felt no danger. Why was the bird interested in him? Had it decided to save his life?
He watched the bird preen itself. It dropped a wing feather on the point of his chin, which Franco could feel balancing there like a seesaw. Then the bobolink bent forward and tapped Franco’s bottom lip with its beak before flying off.
In his pocket, Franco kept a flask of whiskey. It was a local product, Canadian Club, manufactured across the river in Windsor. He’d taken a tour of the Walkerville plant once, watching the distillers do their work. The guide told him all about the barley they brought in on boxcars, most of it coming from far away. “Why don’t you use local barley” Franco wanted to know. “It’s not the proper quality,” the guide said.
The whiskey felt good going down, but Franco knew he’d better get back to his car and drink some water. He had no idea how long he’d been out. The bobolink had not told him, but Franco figured that the bird had watched him faint and knew, in its birdlike way, just how long he’d been unconscious. If only he spoke the language of bobolinks.
Just that morning Franco had listened repeatedly to a recording made by ornithologists at Cornell University. He planned to use it to help him track down the bird he was searching for. Was there some Ph.D. who knew how to talk to these birds? Of course, there was. They just needed to spend the necessary time watching and listening, making their recordings, then taking them back to their big computers where they could break the chatter and songs down to the old binary of 1s and 0s. Then they needed some more time to set up an immersion program where all they heard was bobolink speech for weeks at a time.
Franco suddenly realized how badly humans needed birds. Human beings needed to make sure that birds were around to provide details about the many changes happening in the city at any given moment. Think about how many things birds saw that humans couldn’t because they lacked wings or couldn’t fit through the many keyhole spaces that make up any urban landscape. How many crimes might a bird help the police solve because of what they’d heard or the microscopic bits of evidence they found?
Then again, there were dozens of different bird species, so why did bobolinks matter more than, say, starlings or sparrows? Was it because they were prettier? Or was it because their absence made the human heart grow fonder?
At his car, Franco drank a thermos of water. Then he tried to start his engine, but the motor failed to turn over. He opened the hood and discovered that the starter wire, the power lead, was frayed. It was covered in tiny teeth marks.
by Julian Miles | Sep 13, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’m running down a corridor lined with tall computers. There’s a government goon hot on my tail. What scares me most is his non-stop shouting about “can’t fire on the slippery bastard because hitting a system will ruin my shot at promotion”.
The phone chirps. It’s a strange sound, like no ringtone I’ve ever heard. Certainly nothing I chose. I tap my earpiece and wait for the hissing to subside. Her voice is calm.
“How are you doing?”
“Coming to the end of a hall lined with computers. I’m being chased.”
“Go through the door, then smash the security panel.”
“Speaking of that security panel…”
“02411.”
I punch the code. The door opens. A bullet from behind spins me through it. Screaming in pain, I bounce off the wall opposite and stagger back to slam my elbow into the panel on this side. The door slides shut, cutting off the view of the goon sprinting my way from the crouch he took to shoot me. I hear him hit the door. Hear him shoot the door.
“Can you continue?”
“Yes. He only shot me in the bulletproof vest.”
Listen to me, all fired up on near-hysteria and CCE.
“Sounds like that Chemical Combat Enhancement is working.”
“So let’s get going before it runs out.”
She told me where to find it, how to use it, even warned me about taking too much.
“Don’t worry. It’s only a short way now.”
I run down the corridor, then go through a blast door and hurry down a long staircase.
“There’s a guard at the bottom. They’ll be wary. Have the amber card in your hand ready to show them.”
“Halt! Identify yourself.”
The guard is partway up the stairs.
I raise a hand.
“I’m getting ID from my back pocket.”
It seems to take ages to get the card out. The guard visibly relaxes, then salutes and steps to one side so I can pass. I nod as I rush past. Very soon now, he’s going to be told the truth, and his gun is a lot bigger than the one the goon in the corridor has.
“The amber card goes in the slot on the door.”
It opens to reveal another corridor, then closes behind me. I pass several doors on my way to the one at the end, a faded green door that leads into a place that looks like a dirty workshop. Over in a corner is a cage containing a woman in a stained lab coat.
“Say nothing. I’m here to get you out.”
She looks puzzled, and relieved. I use a club hammer to smash the padlock off the door.
Time to get more guidance.
“What now?”
“Lever up the manhole cover in the centre of the room, then the one under the big tool trolley. Help her into that one, close it, then put the trolley back. You take the other one. Leave the lid off.”
“I’m a decoy?”
“Yes. You’ll be safe. They’ll fixate on finding her.”
The voice hasn’t let me down for a year. Helped me make a new identity, and enough to live comfortably forever.
After exiting the maze of sewers, I yield to curiosity.
“Before I throw this phone into the incinerator across the road as instructed, please satisfy my curiosity.”
“She’ll be my mother. She told me about the mystery man who helped her escape certain death. Then one of the prototypes she built connected me to a phone destroyed years before I was born.”
Huh?
“After you told me when you were, I realised what I had to do.”
by submission | Sep 12, 2021 | Story |
Author: Daniel Mainwaring
“Fuck! He’s not breathing,” whimpered Kai. His friend was delirious when they dragged him from the crashed vehicle but he had slipped into unconsciousness as they laid him out on the desert floor.
“Stop freaking out, Kai,” Eli retorted. “He’s breathing, he just fainted. My Dad is going to fucking kill me. He hasn’t let anyone drive this yet and now I’ve wrecked it.”
“I am telling you he is not going to make it,” insisted Kai. His comment was greeted with a finger to the mouth as the operator finally answered Eli’s call.
“Emergency rescue, please state your need,” said the robotic voice on the end of the phone.
“We’ve had an accident. My friend needs emergency attention. I don’t know where we are. We are lost.” Eli and his friends had never ventured far from home. This area was completely alien to them.
“Don’t worry,” replied the operator, “we have your location. Emergency rescue is on the way. Due to the remoteness of your location, the ETA is 60 minutes.”
“Shit,” shrieked Eli. “It’s going to take them an hour to get here, Kai.”
“He’s breathing again,” replied his friend, “but we need to find help.”
The darkness was suddenly disturbed by the introduction of two bright lights beaming in the distance.
“Look,” said Kai, “someone is coming. They can help us.”
The lights were heading rapidly in their direction, sending plumes of dust into the air as a noisy engine headed in their direction. Unnerved, Eli grabbed Kai by the neck and dragged him behind a sand dune as a small truck pulled up alongside their unconscious friend.
“We don’t know anything about the folks around here,” whispered Eli, “they could be dangerous.” Kai nodded in agreement as a mysterious figure dressed in khaki and white emerged from the truck. The hairy creature was like nothing they’d ever seen before.
“What the fuck?” squealed Kai, “it’s an alien.”
“Grow up,” retorted Eli, “It’s just some joker in fancy dress.”
“No,” insisted Kai, “look at its face. It’s mutated.”
Eli peered at the mysterious figure who was now crouched over their helpless friend. Its monstrous nose hung over its gaping mouth. Hair protruded from its eyes, and its ears were like small moons circling a sun.
“Fuck,” whispered Eli, “it’s an alien, it’s a fucking alien. It’s probably psychic or something. It’s going to drag us off to a lab and experiment on us.”
The ground seemed to move as a series of metallic vehicles suddenly emerged from the darkness. Bizarre looking figures dressed in green, emerged from angular machines and seized remnants of the duo’s wrecked vehicle. A figure, with a green bowl on his head spoke into a small black device.
“This is Major Jesse Marcel,” said the creature, “we have a bogey down and one body. Our location is just outside of Roswell, New Mexico.”
Looking on in horror, Kai grasped his friend’s slimy green hand.
“I don’t understand their language,” he mumbled meekly, “but I think they’re hostile.”
