by Julian Miles | Apr 20, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
We’re eighty-four days out from Sondehaven before we pick up the right beacon. I get everyone’s attention with a short blast of the klaxon, which prompts a round of rude guesswork as to my parentage and next sexual partner.
“You’re all hilarious. Now, we’re on beacon, so decide what we need to get repaired and fake it. You’ve got about an hour before we enter nosey bastard range. I’ll klaxon again five minutes out.”
The Firefly-class freighters that gad about the free trade routes often provide settings for broadcast soap opera. I presume scriptwriters associate independent minds and close quarters with dubious morals and tempestuous relationships. I wish. While free traders might be prone to cowboy-esque antics, the real problems occur in the freespace habitats. Even the folk on orbitals have the option of getting groundside for a holiday.
In space, no-one can hear you argue. Having to put up with every little foible without respite is a recipe for disaster when you add the levels of stubborn and strange that attract people to living in the big empty. No-one can hear you kick the living spit out of your partner – or partners – either. Cults and abusers love freespace.
I let the klaxon wail fade slowly this time, knowing how the diminishing sound spurs us on to get things completed before it goes quiet.
The moment we get within range, Sarah comes over the comm.
“Emma, we’ve just been double-tapped by lifeform and weapons scans. Both wide spectrum, just inside legal limits for civilian use.”
Indicator number one: paranoid overreaction. Somebody’s expecting something.
“Jahnee, time to turn the macho up and do the aggrieved owner routine.”
I listen in.
“Bluebitch calling beacon site. Bluebitch calling beacon site. Request assistance.”
The voice that comes back is grating: “Bluebitch? Good name for a ship, brother. What can Halla Station do for you?”
“Something in the air scrubbers is fried and none of the fluffies on this tub have enough mechanic to fill a cup.”
“See that too often, brother. A breathable berth and tech access for a day do you? Got decent food if I gee my skirt up, so you come down for a chinwag and leave the fluffies to the scutwork. They’re on your tab, after all.”
“Got a point there. I’m Dean. What do I call you, and can I bring my own waitress?”
The laugh is menacing.
“Name’s Tom. Bring whatever you like, as long as it’s pretty.”
I’m going to enjoy this.
An hour later, Jahnee’s in combat gear, while I’m in a demure little bodysuit that’s a size too small. I call it my ‘fishing gear’.
Jahnee might as well be invisible. Tom’s an eager lad. With him pawing my anatomy, this is too easy.
“Hello, precious. What’s your name?”
“Stungun Surprise.”
“Wha-?”
Down he goes. Jahnee gets the sedative in fast.
Natalie and Mike dash past, calling for our passengers: “Nameh? Raxon? We’re from Bluebird.”
We help victims vanish into the big empty, off to better lives. As we’re free traders operating under aliases, the abuser has next to no chance of tracking us.
Another thin woman, another boy with haunted eyes, another small trunk of belongings.
Natalie explains.
“A shipman on your supply run called Bluebird. They monitored things for a while. After they confirmed the shipman’s opinion, they sent us.”
Nameh gestures to Tom.
“What about him?”
“There’s warnings on the courtesan networks and other useful places. He’ll have to adjust.”
Or die.
She looks at me like I said the last two words out loud, then nods.
“Let’s go.”
by submission | Apr 19, 2020 | Story |
Author: Mike McMaster
“South.” said the captain.
“But that doesn’t make sense,” complained his crew. “There are no magnetic poles here, so there is no North or South.”
“When you travel and everything cools and then chills and then bites into your very bones, when the sun sinks from view and doesn’t come back up, and every step moves you back in time through undisturbed, unchanging, frozen eternity then, ah then, you are far, far South. Scott knew it, and it cost him his life. Shackleton knew it, and he had to claw his way back in an open boat and across unclimbed mountains. South.”
The crew were right, of course. The Luna Nova was rushing low over the Moon’s surface on a polar orbit, and any compass would have been swinging wildly as the lunar magnetic field was weak and unfocussed, with no strong Pole to draw the needle-point.
“South,” said the captain, “is not a direction. It is a temperature.”
Right on cue, the laser-thermometer chimed “Surface temperature minus 220 degrees.”
“That’s about the temperature of little Charon. All the way out there, the chilly boatman sailing round Pluto. Not bad, but not cold enough for us. Not close enough.”
Below them, the grey moonscape changed and craters slide into view. Ancient craters named in arrogance after mere human astronomers. Faustini. Shoemaker. Haworth. How can a crater that has seen a billion years be named for a fleeting eyeblink of a creature? Might as well name men after mayflies.
“Surface temperature minus 224 degrees.”
“Ah – that could be Uranus. Clouds of frozen ammonia and methane roll blue as a winter sea. Ice-giant. Frozen god of the sky. We are getting closer. ”
Now a new darkness slides into view. A crater within a crater. A primeval impact digging into the Moon’s crust right at the pole, casting a shadow deeper than any earth-bound trench. Here was dark even when life on earth was crawling from the slime. This dark has outlived glaciers and mountains, outlived every species on the neighbouring planet. It has never known sunlight.
“Surface temperature minus 228 degrees.”
“Ah.” The captain sighed. “Mark that. We have found it, and next orbit we’ll pop down and have a little look. We’ve visited every planet and moon from Earth to Pluto, and in the end, the coldest place in the Solar System has waited an eternity for us, just next door.”
by submission | Apr 18, 2020 | Story |
Author: Baishampayan Seal
The yellow two-rotor postal-drone comes down to me as I walk down the pavement with the whole week’s grocery. Generally, these drones are Prussian blue, with no biohazard symbol like it has of course; so this one must have something to do with the ongoing pandemic, I guess. I remember the death toll on the TV outside the television shop on my way home, and a prolonged sigh comes out of my within. Or a prolonged hiss of micro-hydraulics, so to speak.
The drone runs its face-recognition on me, and a green light blinks. A human lady detected. A pamphlet drops right on my left foot, and the drone moves on for another human citizen.
I pick up that crimson paper. “Everyone of us at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants to thank you for staying at home. The doctors and nurses are staying at work for you–you stay at home for them,” the black letters in Times New Roman read. “While you stay safe in your home’s comfort, please consider donating to our Geminivirus Emergency Fund (PayPal: donations [at] peace-be.org). With the number of infected soaring toward 5 million nationwide, any amount from you–however small–is gratefully accepted. This fund will help prepare us for properly detecting and isolating cases, protecting our healthcare workers, and treating patients with dignity and appropriate care on a much wider scale.
Heartiest appreciation for all our human citizens who are joining hands. Together, we shall beat this crisis.
Peace Be,
Boris Johnston, Director, CDC.”
‘Human citizens’ only? Funny!
I crumble the pamphlet the worst way possible, and toss it into the next litter bin I encounter.
Upon returning home, a strange blob of dilemma envelops me. That’s not reasonable to happen, but that does. For one whole hour, I sit before the TV news, where the latest updates on the Geminivirus outbreak are running in caption. 56,043 new cases today. Death count: New York–29,835; Louisiana–17,840; California–16,681; Washington–10,530; Idaho–10,027; Rhode Island–8,063…
I inattentively take out my morning meal from the grocery package– alkaline cells. A light press on an unseen button on my left breast, and three battery compartments pop open. True, I am a gynoid AI; but should that fact make me turn my back on humans?
Maybe yes. There was a time when their whole blood-and-flesh world was inclined toward exploiting us in automobile, construction, agriculture and healthcare industries–with no credit in our names, as modern slaves.
Don’t they deserve karma?
Or maybe not. For decades, they’ve striven to give us more and more sentience as well, so we can be better than the mere sum of some soulless functions.
Don’t they deserve karma?
Should I donate?
My machine-self keeps saying No…
When I had to find a job, I faked my identity documents to appear as a human for a better-paying one; that postal-drone recognized me as a human; and even though we haven’t achieved racial equality with the humans yet, man and machine are somewhat peacefully coexisting in today’s America.
Would it be rightfully wrong to act more like a human?
The question keeps pricking me for the rest of the day.
At night, I open PayPal in my head, and enter ‘donations [at] peace-be.org’.
Somewhere deep inside, the machine within me still keeps saying No.
I don’t know how to smother that voice.
by submission | Apr 17, 2020 | Story |
Author: Don Nigroni
Dr. Humphrey Devereux is the famous polymath who won the first Nobel Prize in mathematics. We were best friends since we were mischievous little boys. He became a mathematical physicist and I’m still an English Literature professor. He was slightly bigger than me but much stronger.
Humphrey has some truly amazing mathematical abilities. He could tell you off the top of his head the answer to incredibly complicated calculations, like the result of 3,478 times 9,403. People thought it was just a trick but I knew better. However, he frequently didn’t know what day of the week it was.
Two weeks ago, he told me, “I know who God is and you don’t.” I thought if anyone knew who God was then it was him.
Humphrey was a modern-day follower of the 6th century BC Greek philosopher Pythagoras. He led a secret, esoteric brotherhood and today is best remembered for the Pythagorean theorem. In antiquity, he was best known for a doctrine: all things are numbers.
And, according to Humphrey, “God is a specific mathematical formula.”
“Well, are you going to tell me the formula?” I asked.
He just laughed and replied, “Yeah, like you’d understand it. But if the values for all of the variables were known then you could explain everything and do incredible things.”
“And you think you could do that.”
“Pythagoras knew the universal mathematical notation and the right value for a key variable, the geometric formula for a monad, a point within a circle. But he didn’t know higher math. Nobody did back then. Once that geometric formula is inserted into the God Formula then, using higher math, you can calculate the unknown values and know everything about everything and accomplish unthinkable feats.”
Yesterday, the day just before his 70th birthday, Humphrey dropped by my apartment and told me, “I finally figured out the God Formula. Well, technically, a quantum supercomputer helped. But God then manifested Himself.”
“God’s a male?”
“Whatever.”
“And what did He have to say for Himself?”
“He explained how to reverse time. By simply inserting the appropriate values into the God Formula and using reverse mathematics, I can make time go backward for any period of time. And then, like a swinging pendulum, make it go forward again for a designated interval. I can make time repeat itself over and over again forever within a specified time span.”
“You can do that by writing a mathematical formula on a blackboard in some universal mathematical language?”
“I merely have to think it in order to activate it,” he replied
“Even if you could do that, why would you?”
“To cheat death.”
“You want to reverse time before you die?”
“Living life backward would seem just as natural as living life forward.”
“And do you have any idea for how long you’d like to have time flow backward before reversing it again to flow forward?”
“You should know the answer to that,” he said.
“Me, I know nothing about higher math and even less about reverse mathematics.”
“But you know arithmetic. And you know exactly how old I’ll be tomorrow.”
by submission | Apr 15, 2020 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
He is known by many names. Most people call him Jack. He prefers Old Zero. His campaign starts on the first nippy morning in late September when the average person wakes with a chill in their bones and turns the heat on for the first time in six months, wrapping up in a warm sweater. At this point he is just a scout, picking and choosing his moments to catch glimpses of the onslaught ahead.
But as October really gets going and pumpkins adorn front porches his work is in full swing. Bloodying the healthy leaves with stabbing pricks causing most to run red, orange or yellow, draining their life’s fluid.
By November he’s not even attempting to hide his presence. He is strong and vibrant and on the hunt. Furry mammals take refuge from him in hollow pine trees and underground caves. Small shrubbery goes dormant. Yet most people shrug off his fore-coming with silly scarves or a pair of gloves. At this point he is joined by his comrade Boreas, that old harsh tyrant, assisting with his sharp tool in stripping the dying carcasses of the trees down to their skeletons and leaving them denuded so he can do his dirty work. And on exposed human skin, Bo knows pain.
His full arsenal is on display in December and his army is complete when the fat bastard Ullr joins them as he travels down from the north and pounds relentless with his white reign of fury. The three, led by Old Zero, start taking lives by any means possible. With their combined strength they bite into flesh, snap limbs and bone, cripple anybody or anything that dares come up against them and their insurmountable force. Their name is on everyone’s lips and they are cursed for their tactics.
The war is full-on as the new year turns and the masses finally begin to fight them with their primitive tools of shovels and ice scrapers. How feeble their attempts are. The death squad can wreak havoc on the highways shoving cars into crashing piles of metal. Rip trees in half or just yank them from their moorings. They take great pleasure in applying pressure onto weakened structures until roofs cave in. And they snatch life away from every possible stranded passerby or homeless gent who does not respect their cold bitter power. For months they rule the world with an icy iron fist and their battle seems victorious on all fronts.
The first to tire is Ullr, dragging his hulking mass around wears him down and he leaves suddenly to retreat back to his northern home, sulking away battered and spent. They try to soldier on, but their impact lacks the aggressiveness that they presented as a unit. Soon Bo has blown himself out and he can no longer sustain the ugliness he once delivered with extreme prejudice. Old Zero is left to fight the battle alone clinging to what is left of his strength.
However, he now has a formidable enemy as the bitch Persephone joins the little people with her emergence in the spring and she bolsters their weak demeanor with her newness, rallying their defenses and raising her mighty hands, armed with thorny flowers and stinging bees.
The final blow delivered, Old Zero drags his wounded body off to a remote corner of the arctic tundra to curl up next to an ice mountain and die. But demigods like him never die; they postpone, they abide, they wait…then return with a vengeance. When his cold heart will be ready for the next wintry battle.
by submission | Apr 14, 2020 | Story |
Author: Lewis Richards
“What is it?”
“My boy, this is an Elephant.” The man responded, never taking his eyes from the animal.
“What does it do?” His grandson continued, Looking woefully unimpressed.
“Well, it eats, it drinks, you see those horns at the front? They’re called Tusks. Not many animals had those.”
The boy stared for a few seconds longer.
“Why is it frozen? Can’t they just walk around? The mechs in the hangar can walk everywhere and they’re much bigger than this.”
The man sighed. Taking a seat on an observation bench set back from the stasis tank.
“They are much more special than the Mechs and the construction bots and even us, Jacob. These are the very last Elephants. We thought they’d all gone. Then just as we were leaving, after all the fish and the birds were saved in our gene banks a man came to us, a very rich man.”
“He tried to buy his way here, bribing and blackmailing wherever he could, and then he showed us these. You see Jacob, the man didn’t want a place here for himself, he wanted to ensure his greatest treasure continued on.”
“What happened to the man? Is he here? Can we go see him?” Jacob asked, his interest growing in his grandfather’s story.
“I’m afraid not, see he knew that his wealth and the greed of people were what caused the Elephants to disappear in the first place And he didn’t want to carry that here with him.”
“He was offered a place, as he knew best how to care for the Elephants, but instead sent his Son on ahead, the boy had grown up watching these animals, and he was tasked with ensuring they were kept safe on our Journey.”
“So when will they wake them up?”
“Not just yet Jacob”
The man remembered his father fondly, and as he would probably not live to see his father’s dream come to fruition, he would leave that task to his own Grandson.
The ArkShip “Pan” would not reach its destination for another 17 years. The 2065 People, 12000 Human Embryos, a billion seeds and enough genetic samples to clone what was left of the Earth’s animal life back into being were the only survivors of the human race. The man looked at his grandson, too young to know yet that his life on a ship was nothing compared to what he would know when his feet touched the ground and the only thing above his was sky.
“Run along and find your mother now, you won’t want to miss the seed vault”
The boy looked at his grandfather, and then behind them to where his parents were wandering over to the exit of the zoological gene bank.
“Actually I think I’ll stay.” He said. “The tusks are pretty cool, right? They have kind if a weird nose though”
The man shuffled up smiling, making room.
“Let me tell you all about how they’ll use them”
“Awesome.”
