by submission | May 2, 2021 | Story |
Author : Brenatevi
Stuart was sitting on his couch, munching on orange-colored cheese-like puffs, and watching some horrible show on TV. No, wait; sitting didn’t exactly describe what he was doing. Slouching was maybe halfway there, but even then it doesn’t properly convey Stuart’s laziness. Stuart indolently ambled towards laziness and gave up before reaching it. Online TV was the altar that he would have worshiped on, except that would have required a job to pay for it, so he accepted network TV.
It was during a commercial break (a product that allegedly guaranteed to get anyone off the couch) that the lights came for him. It began with a slight electric charge in the air, just enough to cause the hairs to stand up on the neck. Then there was a flicker in the lights that was accompanied by multicolored motes of dust. Stuart noticed none of this, so the lights decided that it would skip to the main attraction: a blinding beam shot through his front door with such force that it was knocked off its hinges. The beam unceremoniously yanked him through the doorway. He was unconscious before he was out of his house.
Stuart’s awakening was just as abrupt.
“Congratulations from the Galactic Publishing Clearance House! You are the final winner from Earth of a one-way ticket to the refugee center on Omicron Omicron Omicron!”
Stuart attempted to roll his head around to see who was speaking, but he felt like he was frozen solid. Then the speaker came into view; a little gray man that could not have been the source of the booming voice danced a little patter, before letting out yet another announcer-like bellow.
“Now before you try asking any questions, I have some terms and conditions that you need to know. Number one: you are currently in a form of stasis because we’re about to warp to the wonderful OOO, and otherwise you would projectile vomit. Number two: you don’t need to talk because I have conversational precog, so I know what you’re about to say before you do!”
Then Gray made a conspiratorial aside, “Wonderful power you are about to think, but you try having this power while having three hundred wives and you would be begging to be sent to the asshole of the universe.
“But I digress because we have condition three: your planet is about to be turned into atomic ash! Yes, your world leaders have lost their ever-loving minds, and have decided that mutual self-destruction was the only way out! You are one of the last humans to exist! With that in mind, you are going to live out the last days of your life among the offspring we’ve genetically reconstructed from the DNA we’ve been stealing from you your entire life!”
The horror that was creeping into Stuart’s mind compared nothing to the soul heave that was the jump through warp.
“Yes, you’re doomed to be a zoo animal, along with the rest of your progeny, but think of this: sex with aliens. Yes, you can do the multi-appendage limbo with aliens from all across the galaxy!”
There was a lurch as the spaceship landed, and then a thunk as the door that Stuart didn’t know he’d been facing opened. What he saw outside that ramp made him thankful that he was still in stasis: there was a multi-limbed creature, with multiple mobile lumps that looked vaguely familiar crawling over it. Then it spoke.
“There’s your daddy!”
by submission | May 1, 2021 | Story |
Author : Christopher Edelen
Elly was on her way home from work, anxious to arrive. The light rail had never seemed slower, but the week was finally over. She was excited to get home and play with her toys. It will be like looking through her mind! she thought, excitedly.
Sure, she didn’t have an original drive. She had a clone, but it was authentic enough. The tech was super vintage. A genuine 5400 rpm 2.5 inch HDD, imaged with a compilation of Octavia Butler’s real hard drives from centuries ago.
The process of finding a way to open the drive had been twice as fun as finding the drive. Elly wanted the experience to be as authentic as possible. She wanted to root through the files the way Octavia would have, to look at the same GUI. She found a way through the friend of a friend.
This dude Zari had sold her a SATA connection adapter that would connect the drive to her in home system, leaving her with only the obstacle of running a 300 years old OS. Luckily, she had asked him about that too. It turned out he was also into vintage info. He pointed her in the direction of an emulator that was compatible with most in home system software. Over the week Elly spent her evenings getting the emulator installed and running. Now all she had to do was boot the virtual machine from the clone of Octavia’s drive, and she could spend the weekend meticulously combing through a brilliant life and mind. Sheer ecstasy.
Elly got off the light rail and walked the three blocks to her building. Somehow, as a result of installing the virtual machine for that ancient OS, her in home system started asking her to authenticate her thumb readouts before she could get into her apartment, but she’d fix that later. She opened the door and set her bag, and her body, down on the couch.
“Run Obselemulate.” She commanded aloud. Her in home system brought up its holographic interface. It launched the emulator, bringing up a holographic keyboard and mouse. Elly got up and fetched the hard drive from her safe. She walked over to the apartment’s i/o panel and plugged it in with the adapter Zari had sold her. Inside the emulator she launched OS XI, using “Octavia’s HD.”
The smile lit up Elly’s face. This was fantastic. Always systematic, Elly launched the earliest drive first. These earlier images were often more fruitful, Elly found. Made in the days when computers stored correspondence locally. After all, human correspondence, human characteristics made the drive worth going through. She sat back, letting her body melt into the couch. This is going to be a good night, she thought.
by submission | Apr 30, 2021 | Story |
Author : Canis Mortuus
His dusted eyes ached while opening. Heavy clouds hung over the unfamiliar, monotonous grey wasteland which was surrounding him. He had no idea how he got there and couldn’t even recall his own name…
The dusty grey desert stretched flat as far as eye could see. Here and there some concrete ruins protruded from the dust like broken fangs. The wind blew incessantly, whistling on rusted metal bars and carrying clouds of grey dust.
He found an old pouch lying next to him. Hidden inside was a metal cylinder with a single red button and two bright yellow labels. He wiped off the dust and read:
“EMP-2 ELECTROMAGNETIC GRENADE”
The second label, on the other side of the cylinder proclaimed: „Warning! Possible brain damage. Use only as a last resort.”
He put the cylinder back into the pouch, grabbed it and turned around the nearest wall. What he saw made him fall back into the dust, terrified.
In front of him lay a horrific creature – a nightmarish parody of a rat or monkey of some type. It was bald and skinny, grey as the dust in which it was dwelling. Its elongated body was completed by abnormally long and thin tail, resembling an umbilical cord. Its four sinewy paws were armed with long, black claws. The miniature head looked nearly human if not for the long snout with many triangular teeth. From within the sunken eye sockets two dark eyes were staring at him. The creature was dead.
He stood up slowly. There were more corpses of similar creatures everywhere around. Suddenly he heard something in the whistling wind. Something like hoarse voice screaming. Above distant concrete wreckage he saw another rat-like creature staring at him with cold hatred. It whistled another howl and jumped closer…
He was fleeing blindly, hearing the patter of many clawed paws just behind him. The creatures were communicating in some sort of grating language of growls and croaks. They were almost upon him.
Rushing forward, he fell into shallow, oblong cavity. There were remnants of walls still protruding from its edges. When he got up from the dust, he was already ambushed. The creatures were staring at him, coming closer one by one. The boldest of them sprung like a shot with its claws outstretched. Dodging aside he felt a wrench followed by a sharp pain in his left shoulder. He grabbed the pouch, took the cylinder out and placed it in front of him. Hesitatingly he pressed the button. It started blinking red and a high pitched sound grew from within the device. Suddenly the sound went quiet and the air around him vibrated. He fell into darkness…
His dusted eyes ached while opening. Heavy clouds hung over the unfamiliar, monotonous grey wasteland which was surrounding him. He had no idea how he got there and couldn’t even recall his own name…
by submission | Apr 29, 2021 | Story |
Author: Rani Jayakumar
Gizo and I were digging in the backyard when we hit it. She had hopped in the hole and whipped her tail around, and could sense the vibrations below.
We dug it out – a metallic box, with a clasp that was locked tight. I hit it with the shovel and it came apart. Inside, several processed tree carcasses covered with ink. Some form of writing on it, which we’d have to analyze later. A small blue metallic vehicle with four wheels. A circular disk coated in iridescent metal. And a model of them – their shape, molded in plastic.
Finally, a picture. It showed several of them together, their teeth showing, holding up small vessels of glass containing liquid. Their arms were interlocked, their bodies covered with woven materials of various colors. Behind them, the sun, the blue sky, the clouds.
Gizo gave me a look and chirped a warning. This could change everything.
I looked up at the sky. Just in my lifetime had it turned blue again, the sun showing, the air breathable. We all thought the last of us had made this happen.
“They told us we conquered them. That we rose up from the depths to take over…” she squealed. She was sobbing now, her fins covering her snout and eyes.
“They were wrong,” I said, nodding, resting my own fin on her head. I slid down beside her and leaned against her, sending a warm series of trills of calm.
“They did this to themselves,” I said. “And that means that we could, too.”
We both looked at the picture of the humans again, living their lives as we now do, on land, breathing clean air in a blue sky. They created their own destruction, and unless we dolphins didn’t change our behavior soon, we would be next.
by submission | Apr 28, 2021 | Story |
Author: Susmita Ramani
“It’s you,” I say, though we both know it’s not. Still…
“It’s me,” she says; her voice, so on-the-nose, knifes my heart. She’s sitting in our living room, on our red sofa.
I take a step toward her. “Do you…mind?”
“That’s why I’m here.” She opens her arms to me. I sit next to her, lean over to gently kiss her…then instead, bury my face in her honey-gold hair, creamy neck — which smells like her lavender-vanilla lotion — and moon-pale breasts, encased in a pale-pink bra whose cups were edged with a froth of lace. Over it she’s wearing one of my favorite dresses, red silk with flowers. She looks like she did the day we got married. Everything about her is as it was before cancer turned her into a ghost ship of a person, all skeletal mast and ragged sails that wouldn’t let any air through.
I know why this feels so real; they don’t let us even temporarily forget. When we were setting this up, they didn’t merely say, “Hand over your dead wife’s picture,” like at some agencies (that admittedly charge a fraction of what this costs; you get what you pay for). They asked me to bring my full library of videos of Sarah, photo albums, leftover lotions and shampoos, even some pieces of her clothing. Those guys at the See Corp. are pros. Through tears, I smile.
Sarah says, “We have six days together, honey. You booked us for a rainforest adventure. To do the full thing, we should leave soon.”
For a split second, it registers that that’s how long I’ll be lying in a glass pod at the See Corp on a nutritional IV drip, hooked up to machines.
Shaking that off, I nod and stand. “Let’s go.”
As we exit the front door, Sarah and I both are now suddenly wearing hiking boots, khakis, and T-shirts.
We exit the front door. Outside our house — and it’s an exact replica of our house — I gasp to see not our own boring but tidy front yard, but unimaginably tall trees. It’s raining, but the rain is warm and velvety soft.
Sarah kneels to pet a snake in a way reminiscent of the way she petted our dog, Riley. “Hey, green mamba.” She turns to me. “Remember, nothing here can hurt you.”
The snake sort of looks like Riley, actually, despite its coloring, which is fluorescent green, with a yellow-green underbelly. Its jewellike eyes glint in a familiar way. It follows alongside, weaving through the foliage and around fallen branches. Sarah points out dazzlingly colored tree frogs, elephants, antelopes, gorillas, armadillos, anteaters, pigs, frogs, bats, birds, and scorpions.
She beams. “George, this is how rainforests should look…and did look, before people destroyed them.”
I can’t help laughing. That’s the Sarah I know and love: activist to the core, always looking for pristine patches of nature.
We go on a canopy bridge walk, traversing back and forth for as long as we want. I feel amazing, like I could walk forever…and I never feel hungry or have to use a restroom.
I quicken my pace to match her normally brisk Sarah-pace. “What next?”
“After the jungle walk, let’s swim with pink dolphins in the river. There are also black caimans and crocodiles there, but remember: none of them would harm each other any more than they’d harm us, because this place is better than nature. It’s sugarcoated for us easily-distressed humans.”
We laugh.
I almost say, “But you’re not human.” But I don’t, of course.
It’s going to be a good day.
by submission | Apr 27, 2021 | Story |
Author: Ryan Hyatt
Since Jenica broke up with Bobby, she noticed a change in mood.
Getting rid of that creep, no matter how good the sex, should have been a cause for celebration.
Instead, every day felt like being buried deeper from her feelings.
“A split is difficult, even if it’s with a guy you hate,” says Cherice, sipping a latte, “or you think you hate. It was like that when I cut off my ex. We get used to what we know, and we don’t respond well to change.”
“Why do you think it was difficult for me to dump him?” says Jenica, eyes wandering from patron to patron at the Bittersweet Café.
Four men wearing white scarves with latex fringe.
Six women wearing bright jackets made with synthetic suede.
All of them looking straight out of a fashion zine, appearing happy to be hip.
Jenica thought she was happy, too. Then, she found Bobby cheating on her, and their relationship finally made sense.
She stormed out of his penthouse, but now, nothing seemed to satisfy her.
Even coffee didn’t taste right.
“How’s your drink?” says Jenica, trying to change the subject.
“Great,” says Cherice. “Just the right amount of foam, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Yours?”
Jenica sips her mocha, lets the liquid dance on her lips.
“Tastes like water.”
“That guy really took you for a spin, didn’t he?” Cherice says. “It is water. Your mood modifier just makes you think it isn’t.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” says Jenica, eyes widening. “My mood modifier isn’t working.”
“Check your app.”
Jenica places her cup on the table. She stares into the facelet wrapped around her wrist. She taps on the screen.
“Must be on the fritz,” she says, flinging her wrist. She checks again. “Wait, what? Oh, no. I think I’ve been hacked.”
“How?” Cherice says. “Who has access?”
“Not sure,” Jenica says. “I left my facelet at Bobby’s one morning when I was late to work –”
“Would he toy with you like that?”
“I can’t think of anyone else who’d screw with my settings …”
“Oh, girl,” Cherice says. “He’s trying to get back at you!”
“With him, it’s probably more than that,” Jenica says. “This is his way of trying get me back.”
“No wonder you’re in such a funk!” Cherice says. “He’s been holding your feelings hostage!”
“Next thing I know, he’ll make me feel like I miss him,” Jenica says. “What should I do?”
Cherice grabs her purse, stands.
“We’re going to the doctor,” she says, “to disable your mood account.”
“That’s invasive surgery, could cost me thousands …”
“Do you want this jackass out of your life?”
“Forever.”
“Then you’ve got one more fight to win, girl, to turn back into the person you were before Bobby snuck into your head and messed with your mind.”
