by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 11, 2020 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The two technicians parked the ArVee down a side street and covered the last hundred meters on foot. They took up a position in the shelter of an alley behind a battered wall with a clear view of the square.
The combat frame they had the open trouble ticket on was seated on the broken rim of the fountain in the square’s center, its heavy weapon laid across its feet between its legs and a hand cannon gripped in its right hand. Behind it, a pair of concrete dolphins hovered in the air, part of some forgotten water feature now run dry.
As they watched, the humanoid frame raised the pistol to its temple, and a fraction of a second before it pulled the trigger, it jerked the barrel just enough to one side so the round missed its head completely, tearing noisily into a building in the distance.
“What the absolute fuck is it doing?” Zune, the more junior of the two gaped in disbelief. “Do these things even get depressed?”
The frame reloaded the hand cannon, paused, then repeated the motion exactly, pulling the barrel off target at the last instant so the round didn’t impact its cranial casing.
“It’s a troubleshooting indicator, it’s designed like that so that critical failures are conspicuous.” Dek was scrolling through pages of documentation as he spoke. “Same reason your cabin rebreather leaks onto your bunk when it backs up so you fix it. Stops you from ignoring a stuck pressure relief valve until the unit explodes and vents you and the contents of your cabin into space you while you sleep.” Not finding what he’d been looking for, he scrolled back to the top and began searching more slowly. “It can’t hurt itself, so the indicator’s not terminal. Love to meet the dumbass that didn’t think through the collateral damage on this thing though.”
Zune tried connecting to the frame from his console without success. “Remote diagnostics is down.”
“Of course it’s down, if remote dee was up, we wouldn’t be here, would we?”
Dek could swear these techs got thicker skulls every tour.
“Send the shutdown codes, then we can take a closer look. I don’t see that behaviour anywhere in the maintenance code list, I have no idea what failure that’s indicative of.”
Zune dialed up the frame overrides in his HUD, and sent the shutdown codes.
The frame turned to look in their direction, then placed the hand cannon on the fountain rim beside it, and rested both hands on its thighs and stopped moving.
Zune stayed in the alley watching the thermals on his HUD until the frame had been absolutely still for a full minute.
“Got it, stupid bucket’s a brick now, I’ll go jack in and see what it’s got to say for itself”
Dek turned to respond as Zune stepped out of the shelter of the alley mouth. The frame kicked its heavy weapon up off the ground into its waiting hands, and in a deafening barrage of slugs, Zune and most of the brickwork near where he’d just been standing disappeared into a cloud of dust and mist.
Dek didn’t wait to see if the frame was ambulatory, he dropped his gear and sprinted to the ArVee, reversing at full throttle until he was sure he was safely clear of the area.
“Control this is TK two one nine, that twitchy frame you sent us to check out? It’s got a faulty remote shutdown, and a faulty loyalty subsystem. I’m going to need an orbital strike with extreme prejudice. Frame is off-leash, asset irretrievable.”
Dek paused, trying to will his heart rate back down to something bordering mildly terrified.
“I’m going to need a new tech too,” he added after a few minutes, “and a day off.”
He turned the ArVee around without stopping, braking, steering, and hammering the gas again in one smooth practiced motion, then continued racing clear of the strike zone, glancing nervously skyward in anticipation of the hand of god railing down.
There was going to be hell to pay with the documents division when he got back to base.
by submission | Sep 10, 2020 | Story |
Author: Natalie J e Potts
Apparently, scientists had been debating the nature of time for years. Some thought it was linear, others circular, with a multitude of theories in between. Now there was a new, more frightening theory. Time was linear, but it ended in a squiggly knot that twisted in on itself. The squiggle had been dubbed the ‘Great Slowdown’ and many believed we were deep in the middle of it.
I glanced at my watch to confirm that the seconds were actually moving forward. It was barely quarter-past five, and while I’d only just got on the bus, it felt like I’d been sitting in the seat for a long time. All I wanted to do was get home, turn on the heater, and chow down on the lamb shanks I’d put in the slow cooker this morning. But the bus ride was taking forever, and judging by the overwhelming waves of deja vu, it wasn’t the first time I’d made the trip.
A few years ago, when only the government had access to time travel, the glitches were infrequent and exhilarating. The heady buzz you got with that rush of familiarity was exciting. Everyone would smile and nod knowingly at each other, safe in the knowledge that something important had just been set right.
Soon all the governments had it, and the effects started coming more frequently. People stopped acknowledging when it happened besides the occasional expletive or irritated huff. Just knowing you were doing something again became annoying, even if you had no actual recollection of it.
About six weeks ago the plans had been leaked on the web. Pretty much every comments section on any site with the hashtag #TickTock could be guaranteed to give you a link to an illegal blueprint or a pdf of the plans. That or a virus. Who knew which was worse?
It was obvious that people had started building them straight away. The sense of ‘normal’ and ‘novel’ fast disappeared. The one saving grace was that time travel was limited to a hard four hours into the past. Enough time to go back and revise the right answers to an exam or not say that career limiting comment, but not enough time to go back and contain a pandemic or stop an uprising.
Suddenly days felt like weeks. While our clocks all showed the days passing as usual, the bone-deep fatigue told a different story. It was true, there were only 24 hours in a day, 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds – but there was no limit to how many times you could live them. Today felt like it had been at least a century long.
Eventually, so the theory went, we’d have so many people sending us back by four hours that we’d stop moving forward altogether. What that looked like, no-one knew. How close we were to that was also open to speculation. I just hoped that I’d manage to get home in time to crank up the heater and eat my
by Julian Miles | Sep 9, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I can’t find the words to describe what Jerome is eating.
“How can you?”
He grins around a mouthful.
“Crash land on Lear II. Spend a month waiting for Integral Retrieval to realise your beacon is not a test, and a further six months waiting for the rescue ship to traverse a significant portion of the known universe to collect you. Started out there were six of us. Only me and Gerd made it, because we discovered that Alentl can be eaten raw. You cook them and these,” he flicks an off-white pod from the meat to land on a little pile of matching pods, “burst and drench the whole thing in poison.”
“I understand that. What I don’t understand is: you’re not on Lear II anymore. Why still eat this?”
He finishes his mouthful and grimaces at me.
“Like I said, we survived because we found we could eat Alentl raw. But, I’m still here because Gerd ate less Alentl than me.”
“Still don’t understand.”
He points to the pods.
“They’re the eggs of a critter the Contraxans have named ‘Jerochymia’. They’re also the reason Alentl can eat Posrium, the poisonous weeds that grow all over Lear II. The pods start off as microscopic spores, absorb the toxins, and grow. It seems to be an accident of nature, because while they absorb the toxins, the same toxins keep them from transforming into intermediate forms. When an Alentl dies, it stops eating, the toxin levels drop, and matured parasites eventually hatch from the corpse. They’re really pretty: like long-legged spider crabs made of amethysts and rubies.”
I reach a shaking hand for my drink.
“If you’re a human, when you eat Alentl, you ingest the tiny spores that will eventually grow into pods. When you stop eating Alentl, you stop getting the residual toxins that prevent those spores from transforming into the larval form of Jerochymia that will eat you from the inside out. They’re not so pretty. Look like sabre-toothed hagfish.”
Another pod is flicked from another chunk of flesh.
“I hate this stuff.”
He chews and swallows.
by submission | Sep 8, 2020 | Story |
Author: Warren Benedetto
The last man on Earth leaned on his shovel, then wiped the sweat from his face.
He was almost finished.
He had been digging for hours. He started around noon, when the sun was high overhead, when his shadow was nothing more than a puddle of darkness under his feet. Now his shadow had transformed into an alien figure with elongated limbs and an elliptical head, as if his soul had drained out through his shoes and smeared like ink across the desiccated landscape.
With a sigh, he tossed the shovel aside and picked up a whitewashed slat torn from a picket fence. He drove the sharp end into the ground in front of the newly-filled mound of earth, then used the flat side of the shovel to pound the board into the dirt. Then he stepped back to read what he had written on it.
Rest in Peace
SARAH CRAWFORD
1980 – 2042
Believer
“Believer,” he thought, mouthing the word at the bottom of the grave marker. If there was one word that best described Sarah, that was it. She believed that everything happened for a reason, that there had to be some grand plan to explain all the death and suffering that had befallen them. Humankind had been wiped out at an extraordinary rate by something nobody could explain, and yet her belief never wavered.
It wasn’t a belief in God, per se. It was just a belief in positive outcomes, a belief that — on a long enough timeline — everything would turn out for the best.
Unfortunately, her timeline ran out.
The man had found her in bed, eyes open, lips blue, hands cold. He knew she was gone. Still, he laid down next to her, wrapped his arm around her waist, nestled his head against her neck, and held her. He fell asleep like that, dreaming of the first time they met.
It wasn’t your typical romantic meet-cute. They weren’t high school sweethearts. He had been looting an abandoned grocery warehouse, gorging himself on canned peaches, his chin and chest sticky with sweet, sugary syrup. Sarah snuck up behind him and held a knife to his jugular, ready to cut his throat. He grabbed her wrist and flipped her over his shoulder, intending to strangle her. But there was something about the way she looked up at him, the utter fearlessness in her eyes, that made him stop.
Up until then, he wasn’t even sure why he had kept going, why he had bothered staying alive. But once he met Sarah, he knew the reason. He understood. He believed.
The memory faded as he drifted awake. He carried her body outside, grabbed a shovel from the barn, and began to dig.
Now, as he watched the sun setting between the trees, he realized what he had to do next.
He picked up the shovel.
It was getting late. It would be dark soon. He had to hurry.
He had one more grave to dig.
by submission | Sep 7, 2020 | Story |
Author: Don Nigroni
I replied, “So it’s an open and shut case. Your client was seen by three witnesses entering the room through the only door. The window was latched from the inside. They heard a thud or two and upon entering the room seconds later saw the victim lying on the floor with his head cracked open. A marble bust of Apollo was lying on the floor beside the deceased and your client’s shirt and pants were spattered with blood. The police determined said blood was from the victim and your client’s fingerprints were found on the bust.”
“That about sums it up,” my law partner said.
“Yet you pled not guilty today even though you know an insanity defense is rarely successful.”
“He’s perfectly sane and he had a good motive. My client was not only recently passed over for a partnership because the victim blackballed him, which he took mighty hard, but the victim was sleeping with my client’s pretty wife, which devastated him. He had married an attractive student twelve years younger than him who had very expensive tastes. He left academia for Wall Street to make a fortune for her sake.”
“So try for a plea bargain.”
“Nobody wants to bargain. The prosecutor figures she can’t lose and my client is convinced he’s innocent.
He was a brilliant mathematical physicist working as a professor at a small Midwestern college. Only eight people in the entire world understood his mathematical equations. They indicated that there are around 350,000 linked alternate universes containing as many alternatives to us.
He’s convinced his equations proved conclusively that shared ubiquitous background static (SUBS) must exist. It’s not detectable by today’s instruments but, without SUBS, his equations would blow up. When the SUBS in the linked auxiliary universes builds up to a critical level then each mind in every related world is simultaneously and instantly ejected. They all jump into another world in the direction of the SUBS spin.
So, according to his calculations, after about 15 minutes in any universe, our consciousness leaps into another universe and then another until after around ten years we complete the circuit and are back to where we started, albeit very briefly.
But, when we enter a new alternate us, we don’t have access to any memories stored in our previous alternate us. That new brain already contains experiences, values, and beliefs that we tend to accept as our own. And that shapes our personality and motives so that we normally behave like the previous occupants of that body. But there’s a lone wild card, whim. So, he claims, whoever clobbered the victim is now in another world.
I figure he’ll get life without the possibility of parole and, considering his age and health, that would translate into about thirty years.
But, according to him, that will mean the real murderer would only be incarcerated for less than an hour. And, although he disapproves of the real murderer’s actions and insists he himself could never kill anyone, he did sympathize with the murderer and didn’t blame him. My client wasn’t upset that the culprit basically got away with murder and framed a series of innocent people in the process.”
“So what’s your defense?”
“I just told you. His case will be argued in court using his mathematical evidence but, conceivably, not by this me.”
by submission | Sep 6, 2020 | Story |
Author: Richard Albeen
I was in New Beirut. Another planet. Another aftermath of another war.
I was walking down a bombed-out boulevard that had once been majestic. It would never be so again.
Craters half-filled with rancid water festered on each side of the street. Blasted buildings graced the avenues as far as the horizon, dimly obscured by lingering smokes of destruction. It would take a very long time to repair and rebuild the city. It wouldn’t be easy, either. Nor would it ever quite recapture its lost glory. At least not in the eyes of those who elected to remain there. Whatever was erected in the future, no matter how well-intentioned, it would only trigger memories. Memories that evoked destruction and death alongside those that faintly recalled a distant, antique beauty.
I stopped and leaned against the side of a building, lit a cigarette. I watched the darkness. It was peaceful, and quiet. A stark contrast to a few hours ago, when buildings erupted in devastation and people descended into despair.
I heard a sound not far away and put my hand on the flechette pistol in my pocket. Waited in the dimness.
A young boy of indeterminate age came into view. He had no legs, and was propelling himself along the ravaged street on a home-made cart with small wheels.
I briefly wondered how he had lost his legs. Then I stopped wondering because I knew how, all too well. I had lost count of all the dismemberments and disfigurements I had seen. I had almost lost count of all the wars I had been in. Mercenaries go where the wars are, and war never takes into consideration the ages or statures of its victims.
He stopped in front of me, there in those shadows of disaster, regarded me calmly in his rags of clothing.
“What do you think?” he finally asked.
2
I looked at him and considered. “About what?” I answered.
He made a gesture. “About all of this.”
“I try not to think,” I said. “It hurts.”
The boy nodded. “I used to try not to think. But it’s hard, living … here.” Again he gestured at
the surroundings.
I nodded.
He said, “You can go, you know. Your job here is done. You don’t have to live here.”
I nodded again, and said, “You’re right. I can. And I’ll probably end up somewhere else light-years away, someplace just like this, in time.”
He smiled, soft and sad, and looked at me with eyes of tired truth.
“You may,” he agreed. “And I’ll always be in this place. Always.”
“I’m sorry for that,” I said. “I wish it were otherwise.”
“We all do,” he answered. “We always will.”
He turned away and hand-pedaled himself into the night.
I walked back to the barracks under stinking skies.
He was right, that kid, all those years ago. I still wonder whatever became of him. Part of me thinks that I shouldn’t, as it happened so long ago.
Another part of me can’t stop.
