by rogerley | Aug 4, 2020 | Story |
Author: Roger Ley
This is the story of two fairly skinny white men on a planet that was dying fast.
Of course, the men were men only in their own eyes, in the eyes of other species they would have looked quite different. Oh, and it wasn’t the planet that was dying it was the planet’s population.
‘How long will it be before we can take vacant possession,’ asked the larger of the two. They had been hovering over the Himalayas, admiring Mount Everest, but now they moved to ponder the vastness of the Saudi Arabian desert.
‘Well, it’s a half-life problem, master. The population will be halved in two planetary rotations and it will be halved again after the next two and so on,’ said the other. They had moved to look down on the magnificence of the nearly empty city of Moscow.
‘So, the hominids will always be here?’
‘Yes, master, but in very small numbers and in an aboriginal form. Their technology will collapse very soon.’
‘We would have preferred an uninhabited planet, but this solution is adequate, I suppose.’
‘The planet will be empty for all practical purposes, master, and it’s hardly our fault if a random virus jumped from one species to another with drastic results. It’s not as if we encouraged the process,’ said the junior of the two, glowing slightly yellow.
‘Just a lucky coincidence then,’ said the older entity wryly. ‘Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers and there’s really nothing left on Mars. We’ll take it. Arrange for the population to move across at the next conjunction. I expect you’ll get an enhancement for this.
‘Thank you, master, you won’t regret this. Let me show you the Antarctic, I’m sure you’ll like the penguins, jolly little fellows, so comical.’ They drifted away.
by Julian Miles | Aug 3, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
A thousand droplets of unseen dread. The sudden transition from person to pariah. You see me wipe my eyes and tear the mask from my face with that same tissue, crumpling the lot and sending them with sure aim into a nearby bin.
Without bothering to look up to see your looks of condemnation, I pull another mask from my pocket, slip it from the wrapper and put it on. That done, I take the two steps to the bin so I can dispose of the wrapper as well.
I look about. You all look away. I turn and exit the store.
I’m a block away by the time the active component in the mask reacts to my saliva. The resulting compound combines with the one soaked into the tissue. The wrapper adds the final ingredient.
Two blocks away: I hear a scream from behind.
Three blocks away: I turn into an alley and use a tissue from a different pocket to remove mask and face. The pile they make is starting to smoke before I’ve taken three steps.
After reversing my jacket, I emerge from the other end of the alley, a cheerful smiley face mask concealing my features while the reflective weave in it ruins any attempt at facial image capture.
The autocar is waiting in the taxi bay, a private hire booked by someone who only exists for the next twelve hours, and answered by an autocar that isn’t on the company’s books.
As it takes me to the train station, I watch the news about an incident downtown. Something about a suspected gas leak at a convenience store. There are unsubstantiated rumours of it being an attack.
They won’t be confirmed before I exit the train with a different jacket and mask, and disappear into the evening of a nearby town riding another autocar that doesn’t exist, booked by a new temporary digital ghost.
Some pandemics actually walk amongst you, taking advantage of what you sacrifice in the name of a freedom you never actually had.
by submission | Aug 2, 2020 | Story |
Author: Anjan Chatterjee
ROVID-87 decimated dogs. That was over 700 years ago.
For my research, I was combing through old books in Central Archive. Only a few books survived the disasters. I was trying to understand dogs and what happened to them.
A terrorists’ virus had spread through the Web and destroyed all digital information on drives and clouds before 2406. Later, in the aftermath of the climate catastrophe of 2442 to 2475, bacteria evolved that fed on paper, leaving few analog records intact. These remnants were sealed in sequestered libraries. Rarely did anyone, including scholars like me, get access this old knowledge. It took me three years to get permission.
After decontamination and quarantine in the Archive antechamber, I entered that hallowed space. The reading room had a hush about it. High ceilings, low light, private carrels. A few silent scholars glided by, their eyes downcast under the watchful eye of the librarian, who was ever vigilant for information anarchists.
I was fascinated by the animals called dogs. I had found an obscure reference to them being our best friend. What did that even mean? In the archives, I discovered that humans were carriers for the ROVID-87 virus that made its lethal jump into our canine companions. Some best friend we were. The descriptions of dogs were fantastical. These mythical creatures had worked on farms, pulled sleds, hunted with people, sniffed bombs and drugs, raced around tracks, and pranced in beauty pageants. Even more incredibly, dogs lived in people’s homes. People collected their excrement and lay with them in the same bed.
The pictures of dogs made it hard to imagine that they were one species. There were tiny dogs, large dogs, skinny dogs, fat dogs. Dogs with long hair, dogs with short hair. Dogs with droopy ears, with pointy ears. Alert dogs, lazy dogs. Long tails, no tails. Every shape and color imaginable. That diversity ended with ROVID-87. The pure breeds were the first to go, delicate creatures that they were. Then curated mixed breeds and precious ones. Scientists observed that when left to their own mating devices, dogs converged into the same phenotype. They weighed thirty to forty pounds and were brown and wiry. Junkyard dogs. From the aftermath of ROVID-87 to the climate catastrophe these feral dogs were the only ones that roamed the earth.
Deep Hunger followed the climate catastrophe. It was the second time that humans betrayed their best friend. This time intentionally. Dogs died so people could live.
There it was. The history of dogs. The history of our duplicity. It was a lot to take in. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a world of dogs, a world before ROVID-87.
As I opened my eyes, I saw my reflection in the glass of my carrel. The seeds of a thought grew from the pit of my stomach. I am brown. Wiry. About 150 pounds. Across the way, I looked at the vigilant librarian. She was brown and wiry. About 130 pounds. Another scholar walked by, lost in thought. An inch or two shorter than I am, they were brown and wiry. Maybe 145 pounds.
I thought of everyone I knew. Young, middle-aged, old. Family, friends, lovers, colleagues, strangers. Brown and wiry. One and all. Could it be that we humans were also physically diverse before the disasters? Some short, some tall? Some slender, some broad? Thin noses, wide noses? Round eyes, narrow eyes? Straight hair, curly hair? Every shape and color imaginable?
I laughed at myself. What a silly idea. My imagination was running wild. Just like feral dogs of yore.
by submission | Aug 1, 2020 | Story |
Author: H.B. Varley
She held the baby close. One hand nuzzled his head, the other laid upon his mouth. They laid curled in the back of the car, below the seat and the windows. She didn’t let him see, and kept him close to her chest, so that her heartbeat might calm him. He was quiet… for now.
There was still bloody glass where the creature had struck through the front window, puncturing the driver’s chest, the stinger passing through bone and muscle and the leather seat as if they were all cotton. He had died instantly, and for that she was glad; his sputters and gasps for life would surely have panicked the child. After that, the great shadow had stalked away, and slowly, quietly, she brought the baby close and climbed into the back.
And there she waited with him, waiting for him to try to speak, to cry, anything that would give them away. It had not gone far, she knew this. They never did. They stayed close until they were certain there was nothing left to eat.
She heard a bristling crunch nearby, a claw upon concrete. Again, and again, drawing closer and closer to the stopped car in the middle of the road. She felt her heart race, and she wanted to scream, but to make a sound was to kill them both. She held the baby a little closer, begging whatever would listen that he stayed quiet, stayed asleep.
And there was a cry, a baby’s howling. It sent through the air and she could hear it clearly.
It was far away, above them. A young child cried, a baby no older than the little boy she kept so close.
And the bristling stride turned to a charge, a pounce off of the ground. She heard wings spread and buzz off, droning on loudly, sailing away, the baby’s cry instantly drowned out.
She heard the cry go silent, start up again, as if fighting restraint. But soon the beat of the wings stopped, and another scream joined the cry.
by submission | Jul 31, 2020 | Story |
Author: David K Scholes
“It’s the third time this week I’ve tried to put through holographic calls via the real-time galactic link,” Mary sounded frustrated. “Nor have I done any better using instantaneous or delayed messages on the Universe Net. I can’t run a business this way!”
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“With the holographic calls I can’t get through to a physical being or an AI or even a limited intelligence, limited response AI. If I’m lucky I get a mindless pseudo-sympathetic automatic audio-only response which won’t let me leave a message. If not there’s either the most eerie silence or some very scary run-arounds.
“With the Universe Net,” Mary continued “I get the response that my message cannot be delivered within a meaningful time frame. Or I get a message undeliverable response. Or the e-mail gets re-routed to some exotic planet the other side of the Universe and if I get a reply it’s too weird to understand. Even with advanced Universe translation software”.
Have you considered the Universe Dark Net or even the Extra-Dimensional Dark Net?” I asked. “The criminal elements have a vested interest in keeping communications reliable.”
Mary looked at me with distaste. “I wouldn’t be caught dead using the Universe Dark Net, all those vile alien criminals nosing into my business and as for the Extra-dimensional Dark Net – who knows but I might unwittingly bring down an extra-dimensional alien invasion upon us.”
“If it’s important enough could you try teleporting to a world where galactic communications are more reliable?” I asked.
“Teleportation links are down for most places of worth,” responded Mary.
“A crude tele-shunt would be out of the question?” I enquired receiving no reply other than another look of distaste.
“I suppose you could actually go there – to some of your more important business locations using a transportation of last resort mechanism. If you can communicate from one of these locations then you won’t need to actually visit the rest of them.
“Dismissing any suggestion of the mystical approach I assume you are talking about virtual reality travel which is just that!” Mary was dismissive.
“A sufficiently advanced mind can re-program the travel machines so they can’t tell the difference between real and virtual locations,” I responded. “Also with the inbuilt fail-safe switch if you did “accidentally” go to the real rather than virtual destination you can always hit the switch and return to your real point of origin”.
“These are desperation measures not to be seriously considered!” Mary lectured me. “For mystics and thrill-seekers only and not the way to run off-system businesses. It’s getting so you can’t run a business off-system anymore,” she sighed.
I wondered if this increasing unreliability might spell the death knell for intergalactic commerce. It vastly increased the opportunities for fraud on a galactic level.
“You might have to consider more limited near-space investments in the future. Such as within Sol including the outer Sol stations. Where both the galactic link and physical transportation still seem reliable.” This was the only sound advice I could provide to Mary.
How strange I thought. Back in the day when communications and many forms of transportation here on Earth were unreliable. Telephone failures, mobile phone black spots and network failures, problems with access to the internet, early problems with holographic calls and local teleportation. Now in a world of near-perfect on Earth planetary communications and transportation it seems that all the problems have gone off-planet.
Perhaps, as we did on Earth, they will iron out these bugs.
It was a big perhaps.
by submission | Jul 30, 2020 | Story |
Author: Craig Finlay
You’ve kept a list of firsts ever since you were six and learned you were the first generation of humans to be born on a generational space ship. You knew this earlier, but for some reason six is when it clicked, what first really meant. While reading a book about Leif Erikson you looked at the cold, miserable-looking men in their little open-topped boat battling through the North Atlantic and realized you’d be in a book someday too. So you started keeping lists of firsts, for posterity.
They were mostly mundane. You couldn’t tell the difference between the historically important and the personally important so you just recorded everything. Sorting it out would be a job for historians. First goal scored in soccer. First A on a math test. First time you saw a dead body. First time your fingers crested a girl’s hip and found their way down that eternally mysterious landscape you’d been obsessing over for years. First prayer and, several minutes later, first time a prayer wasn’t answered. First kill.
You were on the weekly trip to the greenhouse with Mom and Dad and Stella holding your hand the whole way as you skipped 10 meters at a time through the light gravity of the inner ring. It was warmer there, drawing heat from the power core. Perfect for plants and the misting sprays hung so long in the light gravity you didn’t need to pretend like you’d ever seen a cloud.
The odd way things impose when you’re too damn small to use the world correctly. Not just the adults and the air you could see but the banks of ferns and the ever-novel soil that held them. You’d taste it, quickly. And every time knew you missed it somehow, despite never having had it, never having walked on Earth.
And really, that was it. The knowing of it all. What Stella told you. That we’d never leave the ship. That we were born to fly the ship and we would die, too. We’d teach our children the ways and workings. Let them fly into the orbit of some other sun. Your parents were so angry when you asked them about death and children and Stella promised to never ever tell you a secret again you little twerp.
So it seemed fine, you found a tree frog in the greenhouse that clung to the underside of a hemp tree leaf. There were very few but you found one. Low, where you could see just fine. Uncle Mack said you could be a Southerner, not a Yankee yet. As if such had meaning still.
And it clung to glass when you placed it there. And to your hand when they told you to put it back, clung green and still. You managed it into your hands. It seemed fine that you squeezed tighter and tried one great leap to get out but your hands closed too quickly. And fine too when you returned it limp to the leaves.
Stella was right and she had a way of saying something that was self-evidently true and somehow make it seem profound. But you had nothing to say to Mom and Dad and Uncle Mack when they asked you again and again about the frog and why you squeezed it until it went limp and laid it back on the leaf. Staring then, just staring and not saying anything, at the same knot of grain on the tabletop Mom’s heirloom, real wood. Staring and hoping you could bore into the rings of the knot and make a hole big enough to climb in, just you and a frog that still breathes and clings, and finally make an escape. Later, you wrote it in your journal – the first thing you killed. Small frog, April 5, 2127.
They didn’t ask you if you ever wanted to be a part of this trip, of course – how could they? Who has the luxury of being asked permission before they’re born? And everyone finds themselves in odd atmospheres now and then, something that felt fine, because they’re moving through it for the first time, too. There’s no damn reason for it, no greater take.
Not when you’re six.
Six is such a goddamned mystery.
The following week you ate your first pickle, and recorded that it was yucky.
