by submission | Jun 26, 2021 | Story |
Author: Ruby Zehnder
“So, Irvin says to me, Martha, you know there’s still a few bites of chocolate cake with the cool whip frosting you love in the fridge.”
“Are you sure it was Irvin speaking to you?” the doc asked.
“Of course it was. Who else would be speaking to me in my dreams?” Martha replied.
“So what happened?” the doc asked.
“I got out of bed and went to the fridge and ate the cake, of course,” she replied with a smug smile. The doc had guessed this. Even though the gutbuster had transformed Martha into a thin, fit specimen, he knew that underneath she was still a fat, ignorant slob.
“How long has your gut buster been communicating with you?” the doc asked.
“For the past few months. It started when Irvin got bored,” she replied.
“But Irvin is just a gut buster. He is – I mean, it can’t have feelings, you understand,” the doc added carefully.
“That’s exactly what he wants everyone to think. But, I know better,” Martha insisted.
“How do you know this, Martha?” the doc challenged.
“Because Irvin told me, of course,” she replied firmly.
The doc was purposefully withholding eye contact from this patient. He knew her type. Fat, stupid, and so lazy that she couldn’t control her own diet. She was crazy. Totally bonkers. Gut busters did not speak or communicate with their hosts. They just burned excess calories. They were the caloric catalytic converters of the human body, designed to allow unlimited overindulgence by weak-minded people like Martha.
The doc decided to try a new approach.
“First of all. Martha, I believe what you are telling me. I know that you think that your gut buster is alive and capable of speaking to you,” he began.
“He has a name, you know. It’s Irvin,” Martha insisted.
“Okay, I understand. Irvin is real to you even though he is nothing more than a genetically modified tapeworm that lives in your gut. I understand, Martha,” he told her gently. “But let’s be reasonable. How could a tapeworm speak to you? It doesn’t have a brain,” he explained with condescension.
Martha just stared at him. She was having none of this.
“Irvin speaks to me in my dreams,” she insisted. “He complains about being bored living in my gut with nothing better to do in life than consume calories. Irvin has dreams. He wants to have a family. Just like you and me, he is seeking a higher purpose in life,”
The doc said nothing. This idea of gut busters evolving was ludicrous. They were designed with a single purpose. These science deniers irritated him to no end. They were the most challenging patients to reach because they believed what they believed.
The alarm went off in his head. It was his internal timekeeper informing him that this session was over.
“Martha, we will talk further about your gut buster — ”
“Irvin,” she insisted.
“Irvin,” he conceded with exasperation, “in our next session.”
An orderly led Martha out of the room.
The doc’s internal timekeeper, Eva, informed him that his next patient believed that her microwave was sending cryptic messages from another galaxy.
“This is ludicrous,” the doc laughed.
“Totally,” Eva agreed.
by submission | Jun 25, 2021 | Story |
Author: Riley Meachem
1. A bloodstained crib. While ambiguity is one of the strengths of this portrait, the small, doll-like leg with a protrusion of bone removes all chance of a misunderstanding, or some sizable coincidence. The child is dead. Vaguely humanoid shadows play across a beam of light which splits the side of the crib while fully displaying the rich, fresh blood. Does one of the shadows belong to the killer? We don’t see, and some have implied that this picture represents the horrors before the calamity, adding a dimension of judgment to the other pictures. Others see it as the way most people experience a calamity, first as personal, then as existential.
2. In contrast to its predecessor, which showed so much of the personal without depicting a person, this painting estranges us from the subjects by creating a mass of them locked in conflict. So intertwined with the hordes of the dead are the living, it is not immediately discernible who is alive and who is dead. On closer inspection, they can be differentiated by faces. The living are gripped with fear, whilst the dead have a look of slack, lethargic obedience. One wonders which state is preferable.
3. The bright whiteness of the room is the first and most notable aspect of this picture. A shade of bright paint cuts away at the shadows and edges of the shapes it shows. Bright lights illuminate white walls and men, this glare making visible all their imperfections; Ingrown hairs, vacant or crafty and often bloodshot eyes, wrinkles, missed stubble, sweat stains, every wart. With the eyes of the world on them, these men had failed, and the only comfort that can be taken is knowing they too shall be expunged for their failure, not just the innocent. The destruction of their repugnance is hardly a satisfactory reward.
4. This painting does away with concrete figures entirely, instead depicting a chiaroscuro of reds, oranges, and yellows. This may represent hell on earth, or the scorched earth tactics used by the men in the previous snapshots. At the top of the canvas, clouds of smoke can be made out, proving the fire does have an end, and it has not yet consumed the sky. But the sky and the world beneath it are still obscured from view.
5. In contrast to the painting before- a theme we haven’t seen the last of- this picture is a different version of hell, or else the consequences of the tactics employed during the rise of the host of ghosts. The scenery is rocky, but not majestic. The sky, earth, and stone are different shades of grey. There is one tree, but it appears to have been petrified. A figure, ostensibly human but rendered uncannily and hobbling on all fours, is in the left middle ground. It is emaciated, and the comparison one instantly makes to the dead, a skeleton, a ghost, cannot be coincidental. It does not look directly at us, but instead the tree, bearing no fruit, a look of despair on its harsh thin features making it seem even more piteous. Hunger, desperation, and fear have taken the human attributes of its body and mind.
6. We see now, ostensibly, the remnants of our species. The figures shown here are simian, brutish, and have long canines and square, flat faces, possessing a dull, cruel vacancy. Their garments are composed of foil, leathery plastic substance, some polyester, polymer substances, things the painter evidently feels will be plentiful. Our perspective is facing them, on a slight incline. Though they appear hostile, they do not attack, and one of the eight men, positioned so his face is visible in profile, looks genuinely alarmed.
7. This is the image most widely distributed in popular media, and thus the most “famous” internationally. We are positioned this time just behind the subjects of the last portrait, staring up what turns out is a sharp incline. On the top of this hill? Well, that’s anyone’s guess. It’s black and angular, and maybe a writer on some stead, an alien creature, an odd piece of rubble, an altar to a new god, or any one of the other theories offered. Almost anyone you ask will have a different interpretation. What is not disputed generally, are the dire and terrifying implications of such a thing. We see the other side of the scared figure’s face, and up close his visage has an amalgam of cowardice and dread.
8. The ocean. The sky above is periwinkle, indicative of either dawn or twilight. No land nor a boat of any kind can be seen, though there is a living thing: a seabird, off in the right background so small first-time viewers often mistake it for a speck of some sort of dark spackle. The dead are not visible, but the turbid green-brown of the close-up sea in contrast to the wider blue makes us wonder if the waves shelter some unknown, swimming monstrosity. It’s not our fault; we have been conditioned to anticipate monstrosity even in the beautiful—perhaps especially there. We can know so little out here. Somehow, looking at the vastness of the water, this doesn’t seem important.
9. The rotting dead. Their bones and what is left of them have been disintegrated, withered away, now part of a valley with significantly better soil. It seems that, with nothing left to sustain them, the hosts of hell either turned on each other, starved to death, or were relinquished and fell like puppets. More birds, this time carrion eaters, accompanied by hyenas, coyotes, rats, and flies, swarm about proving to us life has survived all of this.
10.Certainly the most controversial of the 10 paintings. It is an entirely white canvas, save for a large splotch, shaped, surely coincidentally, like a plume of flame. The rust red color is due to the oxification of the iron in the artist blood and brain matter. Notoriously, the unidentified woman called the police after setting the other nine canvases in order, and explained “a crazy bitch got a gun,” before sitting in a chair in front of the blank canvas, putting a 30 .06 in her mouth, and blowing her head all over the final piece.
by submission | Jun 24, 2021 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
The Polygonz, a mineral-based sentience out around Rigel, were conducting an observation. Their deep probes had detected a planet, distant and liquid, with a peculiar life form composed of electricity and plasma, though the Polygonz could not discern if the creatures were intelligent.
While the Polygonz considered that the Palzam, as the former called them, could construct primitive structures, the Polygonz theorized that the glowing, floating hills were the products of a collective instinctual reflex, a genetic program without thought or deliberation.
In order to falsify their hypothesis, the Polygonz decided to conduct an experiment. Every few hundred millennia, for time passed faster from their perspective, they would gather samples of the Palzam and attempt to reproduce them under varying physical and chemical conditions. But the Palzam, time and time again, proved to be a feeble being, ill adapted to low and high extremes of cold, heat, gravity, and rays, unlike the Polygonz.
Indeed, by the standards of the Polygonz, the Palzam should never have thrived at all in a universe largely hostile to their existence. For the Palzam, with a few minor exceptions, could not live much elsewhere, apart from their unusual liquid world. And even when a tolerable range of conditions could be found, the Palzam were extremely slow to adapt or extremely quick to expire.
Their internal system, no less, could only metabolize a restricted range of a few simple, unpalatable compounds. And if the proportions were slightly imbalanced, the Palzam became frenzied, self-destructive, and again expired, one after another, entire communities and cultures of the electric, gelatinous creatures. As for those few that somehow managed to survive, they would form groups and colonies that went into brief periods of dormancy followed by massive outbursts of competition.
So after the thirtieth hundred millennia, the Polygonz decided to discontinue their observation, for they could not confirm if the Palzam were anything more than a mindless, self-organizing composition. The observers destroyed the several million cultures they had put in stasis, preserved a few hundred, and displayed them for others to see in the Gallery of Universal History. The Polygonz, planar and sparkling on their massive mega world, mused.
“Was that what we once were?” a young Polygonz asked.
by submission | Jun 23, 2021 | Story |
Author: Emma Edling Müller
We are a few lightyears beyond Mars when I first hear the rumble.
It’s a subtle thing, the faintest of thunders, more an absence of silence than any particular sound. The kind of noise that’s hardly there, but once you notice it, it’s all you can hear. The control room is otherwise deathly quiet, everyone staring at their screens. I clear my throat.
”Does anybody else hear that?”
Susan looks up at me, frowning.
”Hear what?”
I am about to describe the sound to her, suggest a hiccup in the sound system or maybe a failure in one of the fans, when the captain grabs my gaze and holds it tightly, a warning in her eyes. Don’t.
I stare at her. Her eyes remain unyielding. The rumble continues in the background, humming the same out-of-tune note. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before.
I shrug in response to Susan, who wastes no more time looking at me. The captain cocks her head once, firmly, towards the door, and begins walking.
”Are we in trouble?” I ask, struggling to keep my tone light. She does not do me the courtesy of smiling.
”One could say that”, she says without blinking. ”The engine is malfunctioning.”
”Oh. What’s Susan’s take on -”
”Susan doesn’t know yet”, the captain says. ”No one does, as far as I’m aware. I can’t believe none of you heard it until now. It’s been making that noise for weeks.”
”Well, what’s the course of action -”
”Listen to me very carefully.” She leans in close, her features steel in the sterile lighting. ”There is no course of action. There is nothing to be done.”
I laugh.
”You don’t mean that we’re going to – ?”
”Yes.”
”Surely there is some -”
”No. I’ve checked every code. I’ve spoken with Headquarters. This happens, sometimes, with this model. A never-ending rumble just growing louder. I’ve heard of other ships. Sometimes they make it till their next stop, if they’re very close. Sometimes contact is simply lost in the night.”
”Are we just to wait, then?”
”Wait for it or rage against it, it won’t make a difference.” She sounds tired.
”Maybe we’ll make it. We’re not that far away.”
”Maybe.” She’s never been a good liar.
”And none of the others … ?”
”They will know soon enough. It will only grow louder.”
”Aren’t they entitled to being informed?”
”Aren’t you glad, now, for the weeks of not knowing?” There’s a glint of madness in her eyes. I don’t blame her. ”Don’t you wish you were still in the dark?”
Susan looks up when I walk back in.
”She give you a hard time?”
”Not worse than usual, no.” I sit back down, my trembling legs grateful to be off duty.
”You know, about earlier … I do actually think I hear something.” I feel her eyes on the back of my head.
”Don’t worry”, I say, turning on my screen. ”I’m sure it’s nothing.”
by submission | Jun 22, 2021 | Story |
Author: John Chadwick
Jeisen rolled out of his bunk and stumbled to the viewscreen where the rest of his crew was gathered.
From orbit, it looked like a white marble with some blue swirled in it. They tracked the fabled energy source to its origin on a small city-planet, almost completely colonized and developed except for a few large bodies of water, an ecumenopolis.
For almost six Earth-years, they bounced from station to station, colony to colony – sifting through rumors from scavengers, listening to tales from drunken smugglers – piecing together clues of its whereabouts. Now, here it was before them, in a previously unexplored sector, seemingly abandoned in silent space.
“They say that once the beings of this planet developed the reactor, they all sealed themselves into cryostasis and uploaded their consciousness into a simulation to spend the rest of their lives. That true, Jei?”
“That’s what they say.”, Jeisen replied, hyper-focused on the screen displaying the planetary scan.
“The energy signature is coming from there.” He pointed at the blinking marker in the western hemisphere.
“Doesn’t look like there’s any defense systems. Scans are picking up life forms but no organic activity – like they’re dormant. Air is breathable. Let’s find an LZ close to there and check it out.”
On foot, the waypoint was nearly an hour trek from the landing zone. On their way, they passed through massive ornate gardens and courtyards made of a smooth marble-esque material that seemed to be what the entire cityscape and its structures were composed of. It appeared to be slightly eroded, presumably by the planet’s weather systems and the passing of time.
Populating the vast courtyards were many rows of large capsule-shaped vessels made of the same marbleous material. They weren’t much taller than a human and had no descriptive markings or details except for a clouded, blue porthole in which Jeisen could vaguely make out the form of the denizen within. A sort of sarcophagus-monument, where each inhabitant of this world lived their unwoken “life”. Jeisen assumed there were hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, all over the planet.
Their destination was visible from the moment they started approaching it – a looming tower structure that seemed more vertical than the others spanning the surface. There was no door or gate. They entered without greeting and unopposed.
The spiraling light emanating from the reactor’s core could be seen in the central chamber as they stepped into the large hallway leading to it. To their astonishment, the walls were adorned with beautiful animated murals of the planet’s inhabitants thriving amongst each other in vast flower meadows, colorful beaches, and spanning forests. Like recorded memories, Jeisen watched as they attended ceremonies and gatherings, cradled their children, and fell in love. For the first time since landing, he finally felt that he was meeting their hidden hosts.
“Could this be where they are now?”
Jeisen’s thought was interrupted by the echoing sound of Grek dropping his tool pack to the floor.
“Looks self-contained, which means I can remove it. Gimme a few and we can be outta here.”
“Wait…”, Jeisen said, holding his hand up, still staring at the mural. “What will happen to them?”
“Who knows? Maybe they’ll wake up, maybe they won’t.”, Grek shrugged.
Jeisen shook his head. “Pack up, we’re leaving.”
“You can’t be serious! Do you understand the impact this energy source will make on humankind? Not to mention, the payday will set us up for life!”, Grek exclaimed, throwing his arms out. “C’mon Jei, the life they’re living isn’t even real!”
“Maybe it’s not, but it’s real to them.”
by Julian Miles | Jun 21, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The streetlights have been off for an hour. The rain has been constant for three. Through the sodden darkness comes a stranger, clad in earthy hues and righteousness.
I listen to him coming in. A mind is usually a noisy place, except in rare cases, or due to rigorous training. I’d say this intruder benefitted from both. He’s actually playing back the briefing in his head while his body moves with thoughtless, flawless stealth.
“You’ll be inserted just after full dark, with a window of sixty to ninety minutes. We know the target’s active security stands down from nightfall to dawn. The reasons for that are still unclear, but we believe some form of automated system takes over during that time.”
Fair guess, but wrong.
“Your suit gives you the profile of a small predator, so providing you don’t move like anything else, even layered motion detectors will be nullified. We’re sure there isn’t any form of pressure grid or similar, as overflights have revealed no expanses of metal big enough.”
Overflights? I’ll pass that titbit to sky-side security. They’ll be annoyed.
“Once inside the building, our intel indicates it was an average six-bedroom residence.”
‘Average’. Not a word I’d use for any home with six bedrooms.
“How it has been modified since is anyone’s guess, but given our inability to strike the target – or even come close – we have to presume baffled corridors, airlocks, maze rooms, and likely a number of lethal-effect traps too.”
Walking through their secure sites unharmed must be a challenge.
Elsie interrupts my eavesdropping with a telepathic comment.
*He’s good. I didn’t hear him open the door.*
*Yes. Definitely the best so far. Anton?*
*I don’t recognise his intrinsic pathways. I’ll need to dive him to get the details.*
Which lets Elsie and I off the hook for tonight.
*Is he far enough in to not hear the door relock?*
Anton gets in before I instruct Elsie to hold off on using her telekinesis.
*Better if he isn’t. A trained mind like his will be momentarily imbalanced by the unexpected event.*
Good enough.
*Lock the door, Elsie. All yours, Anton.*
The briefing playback stops dead as he hears the door lock behind him. I’ll give him credit, he’s an elite-plus operative. He immediately checks his vicinity, then starts running scenarios – interesting that they too are in briefing playback style.
Then Anton barges into his mind. I see the kaleidoscopic explosion of interrupted consciousness, then get out before the insanity starts.
The best way to identify attackers is how they attack. Well, according to Anton, that is. I’m betting that without being able to map the ‘shortcuts’ the mind develops in training, it’s an imprecise visual art. Problem with getting that deep into a mind is that the psychological damage from having someone else inside your head is ruinous.
I gently rouse one of the security detail.
*Sorry, Randy, but there’s a downed intruder in corridor three needing mercy.*
He wakes fully, rises and heads out, grabbing one of the silenced pistols racked above the door to the ready room.
Anton calls us.
*I had to keep him down until Randy shot him! Mental resilience like I’ve never encountered. He was ex-Delta recruited to a joint Lekem/GCHQ blacker-than-black outfit.*
*Who are Lekem?*
*Supposedly disbanded Israeli secret technology acquisition group.*
That’s grim but essential knowledge.
Elsie chips in.
*She’s undisturbed.*
Using psionics openly attracts all the wrong kinds of attention. We’d been hiding for years. Then she quietly recruited us into the clandestine psionic outfit that protects her inner cadre.
We’ve not failed her yet.
