by Julian Miles | Mar 15, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The sign on the small shack reads ‘Booth 7’. The gate next to it is a long steel pole with heavy chains hanging down.
The uniformed man looks unimpressed, in the way that gate guards have honed to perfection in the many centuries since guarding gates became a vocation.
“Department 51. Fifty… One? Like Area 51?”
The man sitting in the car blinks sweat from his eyes and sighs.
“Something like that.”
“So you’re here to see what the boys and girls brought in last night?”
The man in the car stops blinking. Sweat rolls across his glassy eyeballs as he stares at the guard.
“I wasn’t aware of anything of significance being discovered where that aircraft came down, soldier.”
The guard salutes. Another trait honed by gate guards since time immemorial is the ability to know, without question, when an odd-looking stranger trying to get in is actually so powerful he or she could bring all sorts of trouble down upon them.
“Sorry, sir. I’ll still have to call it in, sir.”
The man in the car nods.
The guard picks up the handset and punches a button.
“Colonel Edwards? Sayers, Booth Seven. I have someone from Department 51 demanding entry, sir.”
He listens for a moment, then puts the phone down, steps out, and walks the gate open. The driver goes by without acknowledging him.
After closing the gate, he re-enters the booth. His partner looks up from the screen she’d been pretending to work at so as not to get involved.
“Sounds like you dodged that right.”
He heaves a sigh of relief, then raises a finger.
“Funny how the Colonel didn’t ask for the bloke’s name.”
His partner pauses, then snatches the handset from the cradle.
“Line’s dead.”
They look at each other, grab their rifles, and dart round to the back of the booth.
“Where’s the line go?”
“We’re at the end of the spur that strings the booths together. It runs from Booth 1 to the base along the side of the main access road.”
“You stay here.”
He watches as she grubs in the earth until she pulls a cable into view. With a grin, she heads off along the fence, dirt spraying as the cable comes up. She disappears into the distance.
A fair while later, she comes sprinting back.
“The wire’s been cut! Our end is spliced into a line that runs out towards the woods beyond the fence. Our radios are dead, too.”
He grips his rifle tighter and looks about.
“What in tarnation is going on?”
The orange and blue flash of the base disappearing in a sphere of crackling energy is all the warning they get. She dives behind a weed-covered concrete divider left behind after resurfacing work on the road. He stands there and watches.
The blast tears him from his feet. His flailing form disappears over a low hill. She braces her back against the divider, willing it to hold. Heat sears exposed skin and chars clothing.
After what seems an age, she rolls to her knees and looks towards the base. A cigar-shaped turquoise object rises from the pall of smoke that shrouds what remains. It hovers, swings about, then accelerates away towards Edgewood.
She lifts her radio and switches it to a general military channel. It clicks and hisses reassuringly.
“Break-break. This is Private Mally Clarke at Camp Fitzgerald. Lone survivor, declaring security breach and disaster state. Emergency, emergency.”
While waiting for the helicopters to arrive, she decides on what will be left out of any reports she makes.
by submission | Mar 14, 2021 | Story |
Author: Christopher DePree
The probe was named Starchip. This marvel of miniaturization contained cameras, a battery and processors, and only weighed a few grams. Several of the wealthiest people on Earth had funded the tiny trillion-dollar spacecraft whose ambitious task was to sail to the nearest star.
On the Vernal Equinox of 2030, it was accelerated to 20% of the speed of light with the focused energy of an enormous laser on the surface of Earth. Rolling brownouts in Florida almost scuttled the launch. It would take 21 years to travel to Proxima Centauri, and 4 years for the first images to come back. The Green Bank Telescope would receive the signals.
Starchip was one light year away when the first radio signal reached the Green Bank Telescope in 2036. Its signal carried an image of the Sun seen from interstellar space, one tiny point among thousands. In the press release images, the Sun was circled in blue for emphasis. India and China were at war.
In 2048, when the second signal reached Earth, the miniature probe was 3 light years away from the Sun. It sent an image of Proxima Centauri, its target. The US had collapsed into smaller nation states, and West Virginia was part of the Appalachian Coalition. The Green Bank Telescope could no longer steer. Most of its internal electronics had been scavenged. Bullet holes dotted the 110-meter dish.
The first radio waves bearing images of an ocean-covered planet orbiting Proxima Centauri from Starchip washed over the campfire-dotted mountains of West Virginia in 2055. The Green Bank Telescope lay partially collapsed, its supporting beams jutting like the stripped ribs of a great beast.
by submission | Mar 13, 2021 | Story |
Author: Gorilla Sapiens
“You know, not everyone here, is… mortal?”, she said, as she sat down next to me.
A wedding feast, the ornate cake had been cut, the waitstaff had cleared away the tables, the DJ had played “their song”, the bride and groom had shared the first dance, the dancers now crowded the floor, and I? I…? I rested on a cheap plastic chair, on the sidelines.
“It seems to me then, that more than one of us here, is a god.”, I replied, factually. “Do you watch them, as I do, their brief lives moving in staged progression from birth to death, intersected with periods of love, horror, fascination, sadness, disgust, gladness, despair, enlightenment, and discovery? Or do you think of them as playthings, like the other gods?”, my eyes narrowed, “Take care in your response, it will color my reactions.”
“I think,” she paused, looking up at them… “that they are beautiful.”
And I will never forget her eternal smile, as I rose with purpose for the first time in a thousand years, “PREACHER!”, I roared, “YOU HAVE ANOTHER WEDDING TO PERFORM TONIGHT!”
by submission | Mar 12, 2021 | Story |
Author: Christopher Bresnahan
David clings to his notifier, its screen illuminating the unshaven shape of his face with implosive, blue light. He can flit to any camera screen in the world, and out of the millions of options he chose the Vishnick Ophthalmology Center.
8:32 am, and Dr. Laura Vishnick begins with a 25 milligram dose of sedative for the patient as well as eyeball analgesic.
The camera is adjusted to capture a top-down view of the patient’s eye, which stares at the light above it like some lantern-obsessed fly. David draws closer to the notifier so that his nose is pressed against the glass. For two weeks he has studied Robert Langston’s case of cortical cataracts from the confines of his apartment, and now the surgery has finally begun.
And Dr. Vishnick has made the initial incision: 6mm long, 0.3mm deep, with an AAO certified scalpel. Now for capsulorhexis, as she inserts forceps into the anterior capsule of the lens.
A grin reveals David’s plaque-plagued canines as he watches the spider fang instruments cut into Langston’s eyeball.
“Turn your volume down.”
David ignores the voice in the apartment: his girlfriend. Her elongated, yellow fingernails swipe at the notifier, attempting to adjust the volume herself. He hisses and pushes her away. She crawls to the opposite corner of the apartment and crouches over her own notifier, a carpet of unkempt hair hiding her face.
He returns to the screen. The doctor breaks the cataract into fragments, shattering the clouded veil over the eye. David’s trembling hands convulse the screen. He emits strange, erratic laughter with each savage swipe of the scalpel.
The doctor rotates the forceps to break the cataract free from the lens.
David wriggles into a dance, hunched over on the balls of his feet. A stifled, primal dance, moving his body as if he’s pulling a key out of a jammed lock. He is frustrated, excited, euphoric, and queasy, but he doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t even notice; emotions pass through him like light through a window.
Dr. Vishnick irrigates the eye to reduce any swelling or lingering pain, and the procedure is finished.
A dilated pupil is all that remains, unblinking. It stares, absorbing the light shining above it, experiencing a reality no longer contorted by superficial distractions. Enlightenment. Then, the reality that has consumed David’s mind for two weeks vanishes to black: the transmission ends.
He exhales, then recoils from the stale stench of his breath. He slips his notifier into his pocket and stretches his hands, which feel odd without that familiar square of metal between them. He combs his hair with his fingers. He walks over to his girlfriend, Rachel, to apologize, but she slithers out of his embrace, entranced by a transmission.
He opens the sole window of their apartment and is flooded with the fertile scent of spring. The wind orders the hairs along his arm to stand, and the birds outside beckon him. He decides to go for a walk, to feel the rays of the sun seep into his skin once again.
The notifier rings as he ties his shoelaces: breaking news. He opens it instinctually and sees the International Auto Racing transmission. Helicopter footage of the race track, a red car mangled on the side of the road, a toxic plume of smoke billowing out of it. There hasn’t been an accident this terrible in at least ten years, he realizes. It’s fresh; the ambulances haven’t even arrived yet. He hunches over the machine and turns up the volume.
by submission | Mar 11, 2021 | Story |
Author: D Mackey
I’m setting up as the Pleiades come on shift. Like a lighthouse, their beams cut through the dark and cast long shadows over the forecourt as they turn slowly towards the Sun. Orion cycles out, and switches off one by one until it’s just the galaxy on the belt left shining. The noise of construction barely lets up as hammers strike, drills drone and saws cut; building a star, piece by piece.
A klaxon blares out as the Moon announces the start of the night shift, and the forecourt is now properly illuminated as Polaris and the Ursae turn to us. It should be Cygnus this week, but they’re having trouble with production, I hear. I brush the rime off the counter and begin putting out cutlery and napkins; soon it’s the sounds of sizzling, chopping and frying that fill our hearing, pushing away the industrial cacophony going on over our heads. Takeda over there managed to get some fish, the lucky git, so he’s chopping and filleting with the precision reserved for drug dealers, inching out every square micrometre of ammonia-laden flesh onto a bed of rice and seaweed, bulking it out with whatever vegetables he could scrounge from the bank.
He’ll get the Dog Rush when Sirius comes online, I know it, so I stop rushing and set out a couple of plastic chairs to sit and drink my coffee while I run some numbers in my head. Little does he know, but I found pork. Proper pork, too – not enough for, like, a chop or anything, but I could make a proper broth. Eke It out. I look under the counter and see the mushrooms are coming in well, so scrape a couple of layers off into a box. Should add some flavour.
Right on cue, Sirius crew starts yapping and Takeda’s throwing rolls and rice as fast as he can make them. I’m back behind the screen, boiling the broth and coercing the last scraps of miso from the jar. I’ve barely got my first bowls out by the time a crewman’s come up to take a break. She almost forgets to put her matter back on, but all I need to do is glance at the sign. “No Mass, No Meal”. She fawns apologetically and exhales a cloud of phlogiston around her hair as she takes up the noodles. I pass her the sesame grinder.
More follow; I dish up the broth, swirling and fatty, steaming in the cold light. A handful of flash-boiled noodles. Mushrooms. Onions. My last eggs, marinated in soy for what seems like decades. A pinch of garlic and chilli. The number of bowls on the counter stays almost constant at four as empty dishes replace full ones. Workers slurp on their noodles, getting them tangled in their projectors or in their helmets, splashing broth on the tools and jumpsuits. One goads their colleague into trying the jar of pickled naga I keep at the edge of the counter, and they’re soon gasping for water. The chaotic hubbub of relaxation keeps out the cold better than the moth-encrusted heat lamps.
The hours pass, and my supplies dwindle. The careless lights of Scorpio begin to chase away the Ursae, the Moon turns to its side and the horn blares out again. I start packing up. Above me, another chunk of star is riveted in place and blazes into life as it comes online. Tomorrow night I’ll be back with pancakes.
by submission | Mar 10, 2021 | Story |
Author: Connor D Trulock
The Captain of the deep orbital station opened their eyes as they came back to life.
They shivered, but not from cold, the artificial thaw ensuring the entire body was nearly instantaneously and uniformly raised out of the cold near absolute zero.
After acclimation they moved forward, towards what they were resigned to see and to their one last task.
Alone they floated limp over the viewing port and despondently gazed down at the brown planet below, a planet of ashes.
Welcome Home.
***
The station was shaded on the far side of Neptune during the event.
It orbited Triton, studying the microbial life that flourished under its surface.
The Captain had laid the groundwork before the long transit and the longer sleep.
Instructions given, the ships bio lab machinery went to work, producing proper amino acids, peptides, and proteins from its databanks.
It had plenty of time to weave strands of DNA together, base pair by base pair.
Life’s genesis by machine.
***
The Captain looked with red puffy eyes at the monitor and the shots taken of a world from the sky.
The grid shape was there along with some of the place’s structure; steel and concrete still remained. Memories of a life sketched in charcoal.
The Captain turned, away from the city where they were born, where together they grew up, made a family in, where they wouldn’t see them again.
The synthesizing machines had done thier heavy lifting, the rest was up to the Captain.
Faltering only for an instant, thoughts of return to the safety of the frozen nonexistence, but though now left alone, they would do it.
For Them.
Cargo secured, trembling gloves pulled and the pod jettisoned making its final journey to the dead planet below.
***
The event seamed a cosmic fluke.
Humans rushed headlong towards a self-imposed extinction, but in the end, we were beaten there.
A star’s dying breath, a pinch with the light of a billon suns, and a singularity came into existence, exhaling a geyser of compacted light.
A gamma ray burst.
Only being glanced was still enough for a billion years of constructed information to come crashing down.
***
The Captain lay down by the sprout under whose shade they will never would.
Somewhat off-color yellow, it was making its way to healthy green.
The pod landed on the side of the planet not directly struck to afford the new life a better chance.
The Captain spread the load of synthesized organics far across the land and sea surrounding the drop site, to maximize the microorganism’s habitat, though still almost microscopic compared to the size of the desolate planet.
The majority of the seeds had failed to sprout or had died shortly afterwards, but there was power in numbers and the vastness of time.
One last bit of sustenance they could offer.
Ashes to Ashes.
The Captain shut eyes to the light of suit alarms, as cold from the medical unit ushered one final death.
Pod resources gone, the little specks of life would have to make it on their own.
Then again, they managed the planet far better than Humans ever had, just maybe without them there they could do so once more.
***
Much, Much latter, the first lieutenant of the deep orbital station opened their eyes as they came back to life.
Around them the rest of the pods were opening, crew emerging.
Together they dressed and moved forward to the main viewing port.
With small gasps and tear-filled eyes, together they look down at the green planet below.
Welcome Home.
