by submission | Apr 17, 2021 | Story |
Author: Alfred C. Airone
They never really believed me. After fifteen years, I can say that. And now, of course, it’s too late to prepare for what comes.
I had hoped that somehow, unexpectedly, I had changed time for the better. Maybe I did, but the enemy later outflanked me, as has always been the case. I will never know.
My name is Cassandra. I am recording this because I need to put my thoughts in order, to make whatever final attempt I can to save these people, and to save my own world, my own time, by altering its history. I arrived in this time period fifteen years ago, hurled by the Time Catapult into my distant past – more than ten centuries, as it turned out. Moments from sure death, a soldier fleeing a lost battle in my own time, I materialized ten feet above the playing field of a sports stadium, in the middle of a competition, and lay stunned while players and security personnel rushed to take me into custody.
I was treated with respect and care but kept a prisoner. Over the next few days, I told my story to a succession of skeptical officials and, eventually, weeks later, to the President of the United States, the nation to which I was later transferred. My Anglishan – close enough to the English of the time in which I landed – enabled me to convince powerful enough people that I was neither insane, nor a spy, a danger, or a liar – that I was someone who seemed to be telling the truth. And I warned them: the war that had ravaged my world for centuries, the war that was being fought back and forth along the timeline, and which had cast me back to their world – that war was in their future.
The recent series of unexplained nuclear explosions outside three towns in Canada was one of the first signs. Then the disappearance of Dr. Edmund Garvey, a name that meant nothing to me until it was explained that he was the world’s foremost expert in what the present time calls “quantum computing”. What we in the future know as the basis for the time-travel technology with which we wage war. His capture was almost certainly a gambit in the war.
Then today: a report of a major battle between unknown forces near uranium mines in South Africa.
Every new piece of information I hear convinces me that we – myself and the ancestors among whom I now dwell – have moved forward in time and reached the Time War Periphery. The point deepest in our past at which the final attempts of either side to alter the past took place. The point in the timeline at which both sides were forced to recognize the futility of trying to outflank an enemy who could just as easily leap back to an earlier time and outflank them as well.
If so, we have reached the time which I long ago predicted. They understood – there are brilliant people here among my ancestors – but I know they never quite believed. They are hopeful, these ancestors. They have no appetite for giving up.
There – the knock on my door that I have been expecting. I must let them in. They will have questions – I already know what they will ask and what my answers will be.
I hurry to the door. They will believe me now. And I will help them as best I can. I hope it’s not too late.
by submission | Apr 16, 2021 | Story |
Author: Kristina T. Saccone
It might have seemed like a lot of trouble to hide his LP’s in an airlock. Darren thought it was a necessary sacrifice to keep the vinyl untouched after the time Devok borrowed Pearl Jam’s Ten without asking and returned it with a scratch. There weren’t a lot of places to stash the records on a space station where grunts got a communal bunk and no locker, but he had his secret spots. The real trouble came when he needed to retrieve the collection for his radio show.
Tonight, for example, Darren had carefully curated a playlist on the back of a used envelope. Over dinner, he surreptitiously showed it to a few friends. When Indira asked to see it, he felt the warmth radiating off her body next to him. She leaned over and slid a finger down the list, whispering the titles. In between each name, her lips made a small smack that sent shivers up his spine. She said she would listen during her late shift in the botany lab. With that, Darren knew it was imperative to play every last tune.
This was Darren’s specialty. Late 20th century rock had been digitized and mass distributed, but vinyl was rare and its analog sound: priceless. His lackluster day job maintaining the station’s communications allowed him this small luxury, and it was his passion project. The Stellars didn’t exactly condone the show, but so far they hadn’t stopped him either.
He stuffed the setlist into his back pocket and headed down the hall to Hatch Theta, making a quick stop at his bunk to hack into the rotation update for a fresh access key. Darren repeated the code over and over in his head. It thrummed like a song while he stepped down the last stretch of corridor. Then, he saw the red paper taped over the door’s security pad – and nearly lost the number sequence entirely.
“Shit,” Darren ripped the page off the wall, which read “Cease and Desist” at the top in fresh type. This had better not be another of Devok’s pranks. Darren held it up to the light, looking for the official Stellar seal. There was the golden glint, gracefully woven between the page fibers.
The station’s low, brown noise buzzed as he weighed his options. Was this night’s show worth the risk of a reprimand, maybe the brig, or worst of all, losing the show altogether? Then he thought of Indira with her headphones on, huddled over her research and listening to Lithium, and her cyan, acrylic nails tucking a strand of crimson hair behind an open-lobed ear.
Darren crumpled the warning in his left hand and tossed it aside. With his right, he entered the code and hit the button to open the airlock. The moment the lock gave way, an alarm set off. “In for a penny,” he said to himself. When the door opened, he palmed the second grey panel to the left. His precious vinyl lay stacked there, and Darren puffed in relief that they hadn’t found his exact hiding spot.
He pulled the collection to his chest, turned, and walked as fast as he could back to his bunk, where the mic and transmitter were stashed under his bed. He mentally calculated how long it would take to get there and queue song number one from the playlist: Paranoid Android. His heart raced to the opening beats and the thought of Indira, soaking in his soundwaves and surrounded by her flora.
by submission | Apr 15, 2021 | Story |
Author: MG Gallows
Alex came home at 3 AM. He wasn’t alone.
Two sets of boots stomped down the trap door in our kitchen. Creepy vinyl music drifted up from downstairs. It was so weird, like he was embracing the stereotype.
I pulled my pillow over my ears, but there was no way I could sleep. Curiosity and disgust fought for control. With a sigh, I slipped into my jeans.
The smell of wet copper hit me as I opened my door. It bothered me how much the smell didn’t bother me. The trapdoor was open. I dropped to a crawl and peeked in. Alex had plastic and shower curtains set everywhere. A dented mortuary slab sat in the middle of the room, over a sewage drain. He had a tray table loaded with tools, pocketed from hospitals, or bought from kitchen supply stores.
Alex was hunched over a body. The hands, feet, and head were gone. It was a man, or had been. He gestured, and it rolled onto its stomach so he could flense its back.
My brain registered horror, watching the transfiguration of a person into unidentifiable hunks of flesh. But I became aware of a gnawing ache in every inch of my body, a hunger that would only be soothed if-
My hand slipped on the edge of the trapdoor, and I screamed as I hit the concrete floor with a wrenching crunch.
The next thing I knew, I was on my back. Alex had shucked off his apron and was touching my neck. “Anything broken?”
I shrugged, and it sent a jolt of pain through my shoulder. “Fuck!”
“Stay still,” he said. His fingers traced my collarbone and I sucked in a breath. “Shouldn’t need resetting. What were you doing?”
“You woke me up,” I grumbled. “Please don’t tell me I need to eat something.”
He pursed his lips. “Sorry, kid. It’s that, or you walk around with a fracture.”
I grimaced. “Does it have to be… him?”
Alex glanced back at the body. “No. You still got frozen upstairs?”
“Yes.”
He fetched it for me, a little frozen steak in plastic. I stared at it.
“Undead gotta eat,” he said.
With a sigh, I started to eat. Frozen wasn’t a problem, Alex once said I could chew through wood to get what I needed. I felt the bones fix inside me. The relief was horrible.
“Need a hand?”
I shook my head. “Just… I dunno! I’m still getting used to this! I wish you could warn me when you’re gonna do this shit.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I gotta take ‘em as they come. Can’t be making our own supply.”
I rubbed my eyes. “I know. But keep it down?”
He nodded. “Okay. Get some sleep. It’s a school night.”
When I was up the ladder, he waved goodnight and shut the hatch behind me. I climbed into bed and put my headphones on.
They were right. You never want to know how the sausage is made.
by submission | Apr 14, 2021 | Story |
Author: Christopher Aguiar
The door to the morgue bursts open. I hold my head against the desk in my office and hope it’s a bullet wound. The robots whir and beep, their usual custom, before lowering their brethren onto one of the tables. I eventually stroll out of my office and usher them away.
The worst thing about working in a morgue for these metallic creatures is that I previously worked in morgues for flesh-bound Marauders. Sure, it was nastier with Marauders but at least I knew what I was doing. Here there is no purplish-blue skin, no gashes longer than my arm, no stench, no amputated bodies, no freakishly long nails. All I have here are freezing cold heaps of metal. And I somehow have to figure out how they have gone from full-functioning robots to junk.
When they abducted me years ago, I didn’t think I would live this long. A Marauder diener working with the enemy. The ‘bots I answer to don’t seem to care much. They just want their comrades put back together immediately and sent to the frontlines. They always have the upper-hand. With Marauders, you can’t put us back together and resuscitate our bodies with nuts and bolts. We’re made of bone, muscle and tissue.
The room clears out. I hover over the robot and pull the cloth they had laid over its body. Noticing no bullet holes or shrapnel, I run my fingers over its faux-waist and legs. That’s when I feel it. Sticky and hot. My head immediately goes light, my heart marching to a beat I haven’t felt reverberate through my body in years. I continue to trace the heat until I find its source.
An exit-wound. It’s akin to a Marauder’s. I instinctively thumb the hole as hard as I can. Blood squirts out of it and all over me. Whatever it was that lay before me was not a robot.
I raise the dry, stained finger to my nose and inhale its stench. Definitely a Marauder.
I turn the thing over and trace its neck area for a release point. If a Marauder is inhabiting this body suit, it would have a head under the helmet. Or at least I hope. If not, those I answer to will accuse me of tampering with one of their men and I’ll certainly be doomed to an eternal sleep.
I press the button on its neck, gently, wait for the click and turn the helmet clockwise.
A chin, bound with hair. Lips devoid of colour. An oil-covered nose. Blackened cheekbones. I take one deep breath before pulling the entire thing off.
Its eyes are emerald green, skin olive-toned. Shaggy black hair, soaked with sweat, tops off the face.
A Marauder.
This is my opportunity. I’ve been hoping a Marauder would be crazy enough to attempt this. I drag the body to the ground, the flimsy table crashing as it falls. I yank him, head first. Once I get under his armpit, my job is made easy. His sweaty body slips right out of the metallic shell he had taken his last breath in.
I drag him into my office, strip myself down and lock him in there. Naked, I return to the suit.
I find the suit’s opening point and lift it. It’s shaped like a casket. I put myself inside, legs first, then arms and nestle my head into position. A perfect fit. I slam the lid shut and fiddle with the lock until I hear a click.
I stand.
I can finally return to my family in the Wastelands.
by submission | Apr 13, 2021 | Story |
Author: D J Lunan
Hemmings stopped walking briefly, bathed in a swift glimpse of moonlight, and endured the sustained scream echoing across a forest sucked clean of landmarks, inmates, and healing energy by the storm’s whipping tail. He recognised that something or someone was meeting its wild end, and ominously, it was occurring in his direction of travel.
With his frozen bare feet soaking in the mood of Stane Street through its infamous autumnal mud, he leant ear-first into the wind, weighing among a limited suite of options, and wishing he had his head-rig and a drone.
Hemmings pressed on: old enough to have forgotten the primal night terrors of the lone traveller, keener to reach Silchester and the welcoming hearth at the ruined datacentre. His threadbare coat, small knapsack, and mutilated feet ensured only sufficiently desperate or addled road-roaches would consider him a proposition. He subconsciously tightened his grip on the sharpened forger’s tongs strapped with willow twine to his right thigh.
The scream had scratched an itch and Hemmings mind raged in increasingly desperate efforts to gauge his whereabouts, mis-interpreting each sagging bough and flooded trench as heralding the holographic gates to the great floating metropolis.
Lost in his mind’s maze, Hemmings entered the slim harbour of the landmark Marguerite Bridge before he recognised the sheltering danger.
A momentary gust shook the juniper trees asunder, allowing the half-moon’s shadows to create an unexpected albedo effect radiating fear, surprise and aggression across the faces of the two wood folk and their cart, squeezed under the low bridge.
“Who goes there?”, demanded the larger.
“A sky shepherd, running late to Silchester”, replied Hemmings, careful to limelight his low-value.
“You’re either lying or late, old man, today was market day”, probed the smaller.
Hemmings silently loosened the willow twine, and wrapped his cold fingers around the warm tongs. Unexpectedly another gust briefly bathed the group in shy moonlight, illuminating the microchip-collaged head-rig of the larger man, and in backdrop, the intricate chalk pebble stonecrafting of the parabolic arched underside the bridge, freshly red-washed and garishly dripping blood and gristle.
In shock, Hemmings dropped his tongs. Soundlessly, the smaller man hit out with a small wooden club, and Hemmings folded ungraciously into the mud.
No longer concerned about secrecy, his assailants clicked on their blazing head-rigs, and swiftly bore down on Hemmings. One grabbed and inspected his hands while the other pawed his face, and simultaneously announced, fatigued but content, “Clean!”.
The release of tension was palpable and, slipping in the blood-blanched mud, his assailants muttered their apologies, and manhandled Hemmings to his feet.
“You are one lucky sod!”, exulted the larger man.
“I don’t feel lucky”, said Hemmings suspiciously, rubbing his bruised jaw, and surveying the horrific murder scene through the piercing light-beams of his assailants.
“This merchant was less lucky”, the smaller one declared, his beams glinting off the cart and its cargo of three wooden, wind-up vinyl record players. The cart was compact, well-maintained and sleek. It was designed to be piloted by a single rider, with new carbon wheels, and a dynamo transmission. But it was showered with bloodstains.
“He or she was taken as they rode”, observed the larger one solemnly, tilting his head, he involuntarily dragged all their eyes back to the horror scene painted on the underbridge.
“Taken?”, quizzed Hemmings, confused and bewildered.
“Who knows?”, replied the larger one, and motioning languidly to the bloodied roof, “Witches, ghouls, trolls….”
“Of all the strange things to be kick-started by the New Dawn…..”, mused the shorter one, before trailing off, his mouth agape, eyes burning wild, pointing at the foundation wall just behind Hemmings.
by Julian Miles | Apr 12, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Well, now. What do we have here?”
I yelp in surprise and shoot him. He disappears from view. There’s a splash.
“Did he just fall into water?”
“Definitely sounded like something wet.”
“Does that mean we’ve arrived somewhere useful?”
“No idea. Go look.”
“You’re the mad scientist who dragged his family into warp space using a faulty home-made hyperdrive.”
She’s got me there. I lift my tired bones off the bottom of the pool and peer over the edge.
“We’re a barge. In a river. I see boats with flashing lights coming this way.”
“Told you that gun was loud.”
Dammit.
“Dad, our barge is leaking.”
I look down. The turquoise ceramic of the tropical paradise pool has finished translating itself. It’s now the hold of a derelict barge that clearly hasn’t been maintained in a very long time. Still a long way from the garden shed it started out as.
“Looks like we’re swimming.”
“Dad, let’s dive off the opposite side to the flashies. Shoot the hyperdrive as we go.”
“Can’t do that, Nancy, it’s our way back!”
She slaps me.
“Your fucking way got us lost, got my stepmom and Max eaten by some alien monstrosity, then sent Jimmy running off with a Terbulantic dancer. There are no answers in your delusion. Use your busted machine again? Fuck no. We need to get off this ride somewhere liveable before something kills you and I end up dead – or doing something fucking awful to survive on a world I don’t belong in.”
“You swear too much.”
“Apart from that: I’m fucking right, and I’m fucking leaving. Come if you want.”
Nancy runs across the hold, scrambles up the far side and drops from view. There’s another splash. Damn damn… Oh, balls to it. My daughter’s clearly the brains of this outfit. I run across the hold, clamber up on the edge, then pause while I take aim at the flawed device that started all this. I shoot it twice, then drop the gun into the hold and roll off the side of the barge.
The explosions behind are accompanied by a lightshow that makes our short swim easier. I get to the ladder as Nancy reaches the top, and make it halfway up before the final blast flattens me against the embankment. Maintaining my hold with difficulty, I force myself to climb. After clawing my way over the edge, I force myself to ignore the sirens and run with her.
She darts to the left. I hear a startled cry. Before I can gather myself to look, she’s back.
“Got a bag. No, I didn’t kill anyone. Hopefully there’s money in it, and the thing sticking out is some sort of newspaper.”
Who is this? Three years ago she screamed for a day after we had to scramble back to the transformed shed through a jungle filled with insects the size of cars. Two years ago she was hysterical over seeing her dog eaten, but still dragged me away from Anne’s severed leg so we could escape. She was the one who bandaged the wound where Jimmy stopped my arguing with a long knife, hatred burning in his eyes.
“What now?”
We run a long way before she scoots down an alley and settles herself.
“Sit down. Time to turn your brilliant mind to being a criminal. I love you for trying to fix your fuck ups, hate you for not quitting sooner, haven’t forgiven you for getting Max killed, and I’ll leave you if I need to.”
My daughter, the survivor. Hope I can keep up.
