by submission | Jun 26, 2020 | Story |
Author: Arkapravo Bhaumik
As I recall, at first it was a middle-aged woman from Sicily, Ariana Antonella. It was then I realized that though the feminine anatomy is a work of art but it felt out of context as I am derived from a man. On the brighter side, it was very satisfying to see the sights of Sicily, it was not Milan or Venice but better than most of my later experiences. I felt reinvigorated with the salty air of the Mediterranean. The language, or rather its dialect was different from the one known to me, but it hadn’t changed by a lot. Another delight was to see people fly in air. As many as 500 people can fly together for great distances in long metal vessels with wings which were called aeroplanes. Finally – we had imitated birds. As a downside, I could not get her to engage in the arts, her thick fingers and stubby palm just would not work a paintbrush, but Ariana was a good cook.
Next excursion was a man from the orient, Honshu islands in Japan. Junichi Koizumi, he was a politician at a city council. How disconnected can such a pair feel! A body from the orient in the 21st century and a mind from 16th century Milan. Never had tasted uncooked fish, but it was a fair experience, maybe a wee bit too spicy for my liking. I was aghast to know about the second world war. How could the entire world go to war? That too with weapons which can kill millions at one go! From Junichi I also learned about Lord Buddha and his teachings.
A week later, I found myself in the body of a whale and I spent most of my time hunting for food. It was fascinating to observe its swimming mechanism – the synchronous flapping of the fins and the tail which helped it to negotiate through the water. I missed my sketchbook.
Next was Brian, a scientist from Manchester. I wasn’t with him for long but it was a learning experience. The world had been reduced to 108 building blocks which are called as atoms, molecules sometimes. This modular structure of the world was brilliant – God indeed had a recipe to make this universe.
Now as I think about my previous experiences, I am probably in the body of a philosopher. His taste in food is nothing too great but he has an assortment of likable wines.
I really wonder if my mind is genuine or another illusion created in this world of future. How much future this future is? Or is it black magic? Have wizards and sorcerers taken on the reign of society? How can my mind be restored after six hundred years? What happened to my body? These surrogate bodies are they genuine, or just another magical manifestation of the new age? Can I add such minds, streams of thoughts to my paintings?
Clearly, the body is a vehicle, and the mind is the lesser of the two illusions. The mind and the body are not unique, not really meant for each other rather their convergence helps form reality. Or alternatively, it is a sick game and we are all monikers for chess pieces.
Am I a painter and sculptor or Ariana, Junichi, Brian, or the whale? Or another collection of atoms which had acquired some sort of an identity and values and which will once again assimilate into the womb of the universe.
… maybe atoms are also a lesser reality.
by submission | Jun 25, 2020 | Story |
Author: Morrow Brady
The four magic words.
Complimentary Bed and Breakfast.
Javed smiled. Somewhere, someone needed his critique.
Rolling green countryside sprawled forever below the single white dot of a departing pod-cab. Mossy grey granite outcrops peppered the treeless landscape that terminated abruptly at a sharp cliff edge beyond which the horizon capped a blue sea, calloused with worn lonely rock stacks.
Nothing artificial. Just beautiful nature.
Nearby a distinctive rock formation lay like piled whale corpses, teetering at the cliff’s edge. Within a shadowy overhang throbbed recognisable fine blue hologram lines. They faded and an intricate curved silver door opened to reveal a pale blue circular lobby. Sealed inside the lobby’s stainless steel tube, the familiar hum of hidden energies tickled the skin, neutralising viral loads.
Javed waited in expectation for the grand reveal. He imagined a futuristic open white space, populated with revolutionary furniture overlooking an exhilarating sea view. The ideal human habitat. He quivered at the potential of this content to increase his followers.
The micro-needles came from all sides of the tube’s reflective curved walls. Their menacing sharp tips inched slowly toward a terrified Javed. Panic pounding at a solid curved lid as it lowered to mould around his skull. Futile screams of pain at thousands of puncture wounds and a final glimpse of red lines of blood.
He wailed into unconsciousness.
A white floor and ceiling came into focus. Javid felt revitalised like he just woke from an afternoon nap on a luxurious couch. The memory of needles wiped.
Light rippled outward as he rose, revealing a perfectly formed white room. Organic and relaxing. Familiar shapes gathered here and there, giving unspoken meaning. A space to live, a space to dine, a space to dream. Refined, rational, functional and ergonomic. An idealised realisation of pure design evolution. He became deeply emotional at the beauty before him.
The long open space flowed toward a wall of blue specks that pecked at whiteness until the view revealed itself. A glassless opening like a catfish yawn. Clear blue skies met white breakers on a living sea. Grey stone stacks remembered each passing wave. Javed thought this was truly the ideal place for a peaceful life. This was content.
Exquisite cuisine appeared when he hungered. The comfort chair was where it needed to be. Chaos was silently dealt with behind the scenes. And that scent. Like honey and true love.
Cradled in comfort and the warmth of a perfect beverage, he watched the most beautiful sunset. He knew instinctually where his bed would be. A fluffy cloud-like womb that gently hugged him to sleep. A protected niche for dreams.
In the morning, blue light filtered through from the yawn, softly teasing him from a dream of monarchs. At the ideal state of consciousness, the aroma of a ready-made bedside breakfast lured him into life.
From a misty ceiling crevice poured a temperate rain shower, backed by an unrivalled sea vista. Dried in a sympathetically warm breezeway and adorned in pre-pressed attire hovering on a silken web. At his first thought of departure, he blinked and stood blissful before the open pod-cab.
He turned to gaze one last time upon the weathered rocks, longing to return and spend the remainder of his days in its delights.
As he sped over the rolling green hills, he put the final words together for his critical review and uploaded it for public viewing.
The VR capture and suspension log registered the outstanding online review and published the first of its worldwide advertising campaign.
The optics were off-the-chart.
by submission | Jun 24, 2020 | Story |
Author: Renée Jessica Tan
When we had isolated the predator gene, it was with all good intentions. The idea was to build a hyper-focused, unrelentingly driven, unapologetic and fearless Alpha. We knew these characteristics aren’t always considered a positive in society, but these are also traits exhibited by the greatest people in history, from heads of state, athletes, inventors, artists.
Lead by pioneer geneticist, Dr. Joan Gudas, we created two specimens with the same material. They were not identical in the classic sense. They were two separately mapped and successfully fertilized zygotes. The only difference was the XX and the XY chromosome.
They were both implanted into one volunteer hostess. Everything was proceeding well until the fifth month when our researchers noted Fetus A overtook Fetus B in size. We don’t know why. It was only two millimeters. But it was enough.
Two days after the inequity was recorded, the hostess reported discharge and bleeding. An ultrasound showed that Fetus A had consumed the partially developed brain of its wombmate. In disbelief and somewhat stupefied by grief, the team rushed back to the lab to document and to develop a hypothesis as to what went wrong. We failed to administer to the hostess as we left her alone to heal. It was a field intern who found her three days later. Her abdomen had been eaten through by Fetus A, who itself was near death from malnutrition.
Despite the hell it had wrought, we tried to save Fetus A, but we were unsuccessful.
There was heated debate as to how to handle the death of the volunteer. While we all felt tremendous guilt, the primary concern was that filing a fully transparent account would alert the government to the nature of our research. Considering the outcome, we realized what we created could easily be weaponized. Many championed the proposal to pass it off the volunteer’s death as the tragic outcome of an unsanctioned late-term abortion. Ultimately Dr. Gudas felt such a profound ethical breach was unjustifiable. Instead, the body was simply delivered to the coroner with the signed volunteer waiver, which disclosed the name of our laboratory.
It took a few months for the harassment to begin. It started with emails sent from official-looking addresses demanding we provide a comprehensive detail of our field study. People from various agencies started calling and showing up at our workplaces and homes. Some implied we were under criminal investigation. It was suggested that implicating others would be to our individual benefit. When we proved uncooperative, unmarked vehicles began to circle our neighborhoods and follow our children to school. Bank accounts were frozen, distant relatives contacted. Foreign colleagues were told their work visas would be revoked and their families deported. Some of us started receiving death threats.
Dr. Gudas finally made the decision to submit a carefully edited dossier of our failed experiment. We all agreed the best way to mitigate the worst possible outcome was to only provide data on the unknown variable. In other words, we omitted the existence of Fetus A. The government was only given the genome for Fetus B. After this report was submitted, all data from our years of research was destroyed.
The situation is now out of our hands. The government has barred any of us from their highly classified project based on the information we were forced to provide. But we are out there, keeping tabs on all the new hostesses who have no idea what they are carrying inside them.
On the one hand, we pray for their survival. On the other hand, we pray for them to fail.
by submission | Jun 23, 2020 | Story |
Author: David Barber
“Yes, I remember this one. His ex called it in. We found a bookcase full of porn. Vintage 2D on magnetic tape,” said Frank.
The woman sitting on the other side of the desk is Jan Fierro, the Department chief.
“When you say we, for the record.”
“Frank Scott, Officer with the GenderPol. And Jen Johanssen. She was my partner at the time.”
“But you and Officer Johanssen disagreed about it.”
“What to do about it, yes. We all know porn’s linked to gynocrime, but he was a collector. It was all shelved by date. Jacks collect stuff. I mean, friend of mine has a Toyota classic that runs on gasoline.”
Fierro is about to put him right.
“Yes, yes, I know what the law says, but he was never going to rape anybody.”
“In your opinion. And what did the courts decide?”
“Oh, biochemical castration. Behaviour mods. Temporal lobe remodeling, the lot.”
“And you don’t approve.”
“Crime against women’s down isn’t it? It’s just… No. Nothing.”
He shrugs at the next file.
“Thought you’d bring this one up. Yes, I may have mentioned victimless crimes and Jen really stomped me. Desensitisation theory, learning to think about women as objects, you know?”
Fierro was a looker, a fatal mix of desirability and the unattainable. He’d never had much to do with her, even when GenderPol was first set up and they were still the same rank. He was just a jack, right? But when somebody pinned up a photoshopped picture of her in the men’s locker room, he was the one who took it down.
“Jen hated virtual stuff. Said you never knew what you were plugging into. The jack had a silverlace on and…”
“For the record.”
“A silverlace, a neural interface for total immersion software. He was under the spell; didn’t even hear us crash his door. A work colleague apparently. All it takes is a picture and some code.”
Wearily, he explains how the software morphs faces onto bodies, so a jack can have sex with any woman he wants. Virtual sex. Under the spell.
“Yes, I know a lot about it, it’s my job. And I resent the implication.”
Fierro hands over a statement she wants reading out. For the record.
“I have never used morphing software involving… who said this?”
“Sit down Officer Scott. Unless you’re resigning?”
On the street it’s what they call being jackknifed. “I never thought about Jen like that. We were partners.”
He realises he’s clenching his teeth so hard they hurt.
“Yes, I’ve heard about the new scanners. I’ve heard they can hack your dreams. I also know my rights.”
Fierro smiles, something she only does on special occasions. She knows something, the bitch.
“Yeh. That’s my signature.”
The tech adjusts the silverlace on his scalp. “Try to relax,” she says.
“Easy for you to say. Even thinking about women will be a crime soon.”
“All gynocrime begins in men’s heads,” the tech says primly.
“And how long before this is compulsory?”
“Ask yourself what you have to hide.”
“What, from the Thought Police?”
“From women.”
This is a test. The scanner will record your brain state while you are under the spell. Here is a picture of Jan Fierro.
Begin.
by Julian Miles | Jun 22, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
A savage chorus rises about us and I start running, dragging Mitchell with me.
“What? Why are we running? I didn’t see anything.”
I say nothing and try to hit my sprinting speed with a hundred-kilo doughball in tow.
“Slow down! They’re not chasing us.”
Again, I don’t have the breath to reply. Ahead of us, I see an angular shape amidst the foliage. That’ll do! Slamming into the side of an old storage pod, I roll to one side so Mitchell doesn’t slam into me.
“Some warning would have been nice.”
He squeaks when he sees my expression, then wails as I yank him toward the wide end of the pod. He’s still making unhappy noises when I whip him round the corner and stuff him through the door. His whining peaks as I kick him in the bum to get him inside so I can shut the door behind me.
“Now we’re trapped. We should have stayed in the open.”
I look about. It’s an old military model. Solid walls, lever-action rear door, small skylight above, which is covered in green stains and blown leaves.
“Are you even listening to me?”
Scrabbling through the junk and plant life on the floor, I don’t bother to reply. Of all the men to be caught outside with. I’d been dumped on patrol with Mitchell Liverston so he could meet his quota of ‘menial duties’ – a requirement all scientific personnel on this trip have to fulfil.
Not sure what happened, but whatever it was, it happened fast. I’ve never been on a planet like this: everything regards humans as prey. There’s nothing we’ve found that doesn’t want to feed on us in some way. Our base is an artificial hill that towers high above the forest canopy: I kept having dreams about the gigantic alien anteater that would end us all. Sadly, this disaster isn’t that epic.
“Did you bring anything to drink?”
I rock back into a crouch and glare at him.
“Yes. I have the same trail gear as you.”
He blushes. Where’s his harness?
“It was chafing. I took it off when we rested.”
Fantastic. Two people with only an afternoon’s trekking rations for one.
“What happened?”
I shake my head.
“No idea. Comms said something about gorillapards rampaging about inside. Then a killgator escaped from the pool room. The last I heard was Professor Nipde yelling about some ‘lull’ not working. I think that’s what he said. Difficult to make out because of the screaming.”
Mitchell’s gone white.
“What did I say to make you wet yourself?”
I resist the urge to add the words ‘even more’.
“I didn’t- Err, no- You see…”
For pity’s sake.
“It’s a figure of speech. Now, why are you white and shaking? Something about ‘lull’?”
He looks like my kid brother did after mum caught him masturbating in her wardrobe: guilty, embarrassed, and little bit excited.
“‘Lull’ is the name I gave my aggression suppression gas. Designed to make the animals here less hostile toward humans.”
Fuck.
“You got that wrong.”
“Absolutely not. It’s perfectly designed for their biology. I really don’t understand why it failed to work.”
“No, I mean there’s a fundamental error in your analysis.”
That got his attention.
“How dare y-”
“Shut up! You’re suppressing their aggression, but the problem is they’re not angry, they’re hungry. You gave them a chilled-out feeding frenzy. Pray the orbital station sends something to rescue us before the locals calmly work out how to crack open this pod.”
He starts crying.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
by submission | Jun 21, 2020 | Story |
Author: Timothy Goss
Mother watched from the kitchen. Johnny witnessed her disgust, she no longer recognised her son, neither recognised nor understood him.
It was strange, one night three weeks ago he went to bed and everybody was acting and speaking normally, using words he understood, expressions that related, his mother and father said goodnight as he ascended the stairway. The following morning everything was changed, every action, every reaction, and every goddamn word was gibberish, like they were speaking in tongues, it was frightening.
Johnny watched them all dumbfounded. He knew what he was saying, he could hear what he was saying, he had not changed his vernacular and spoke as he always had. But mother and father and everyone else had changed. Presenters on the TV, with their recognisable smiles, spoke the same gobbledegook, the radio, the internet, everybody. He tried writing things down, but his parent’s just gesticulated their confusion and frustration. He used a couple of expletives in an attempt to provoke a reaction but achieved nothing. Neighbours came to examine him and asked questions he couldn’t understand in a language which made no sense. Everybody sounded the same using syntax with no rhythmic pattern, no formalised structure, they either grunted, groaned, or growled, it was positively simian in simplicity.
One morning Mother and father dragged young Johnny out of bed early, yelling their simian lingo as they did so. He was dressed and packed into the car within three minutes, breathless and befuddled. When they arrived he didn’t know where he was, the buildings were grey and ominous, hanging over the roadway ready to pounce.
They were introduced to an elderly man, who looked barely human, in a small blue office with a small white window. He was sat behind a small wooden frame desk with only a few things on it. He knew of mother and father shaking their hands knowingly, he then wiped his on an anti-bacterial disposable. This man opened a file on the desk in front of him and began to read aloud. Mother and father nodded their heads in unison, occasionally they looked at Johnny. Meanwhile, Johnny looked on bewitched, bewildered, and bemused by the entire affair.
After they had listened to the man behind the desk mother spoke for an extended period, father continued nodding. The man then spoke again raising two then three fingers. Next, he jotted something on a prescription pad. This was not Johnny’s usual surgery and he certainly wasn’t his Doctor. The Quack passed the script to mother and they left. He saw father wink at the receptionist as they passed.
Over the next few weeks and months, Johnny was forced to apply a topical gel to his throat, and he noticed that his food tasted strange. Mother and father showed him bottles of pills with odd markings on them, no words, no logical patterns, so he didn’t know what he was taking, but he took the pills anyway even though they gave him terrible gas. But still, his world became more and more isolated, weirder and weirder. Good friends visited less and less and Johnny retreated further and further from everybody and everything shutting himself away from an alien world.
In his room at night, his favoured place and time now, when the world outside was quieter and all the aliens were tucked up in bed, Johnny would stare out the window listening keenly for the words he understood. They had to be out there somewhere. His world, his people, his mother and father, had to be out there somewhere, he couldn’t be the only one?
