by submission | Mar 7, 2020 | Story |
Author: Shannon O’Connor
I got the chip in my head so I could go faster and discover things nobody else knows, but I’m not supposed to tell anyone because my enemies could use the facts against me. I have to travel to search for new ideas to steal from scientists to find out the secret of eternal youth.
The implants won’t make us healthy. They can make our brains rapid and calculate information, but health comes from another seed. I am going to travel to the Eastern countries because they have hidden labs where they experiment on humans; we are not allowed to do such work in the West. I am from the West, and I have always lived here, but the world is becoming one, though laws still differ everywhere.
I had an Aunt Bettina who had a pacemaker, and when she went through airport security, she had to tell them she had a machine that helped her heart beat correctly, and she was forced to do an all-body scan to be allowed on a plane. She didn’t want them to think she had a gun or a bomb secreted in her body. She was an old lady. She didn’t travel much. But when she went to Florida, her medical secret had to be revealed. She died eventually, as everyone does.
The implant I have in my brain is made of plastic and metal, and nobody told me if it would set off an alarm at the airport. I don’t want to tell the security detail that I have a chip in my head because it’s top-secret, and I don’t know how I’ll get through. I have to go to the East on my mission. I focus to try to figure out my problem.
Nobody can discover my mission. They can’t know. I work for an agency, and if the boss told them I exposed my assignment, they would murder me.
I think of my Aunt Bettina and how delicate she was when she was old. Since she had a pacemaker, she couldn’t drink wine, and she could move her arms above her head. She could go line dancing, but not the wild dancing she did when she was young. It’s difficult to be old. That’s why I’m doing this. Because I don’t want people to wither and die, and burden society.
I think aging is a curse. I think people who live to be elderly are destined to suffer.
The idea comes to me when I am putting together a table for my entertainment system. I can tell the airport security I have a screw in my head. I could tell them I had surgery and it’s there to keep the procedure in place. I don’t think the guards know much about neurosurgery, so my ruse should work.
I wait in line for my plane to the East. I have my passport and boarding pass in hand. A sign that says, “People with pacemakers, ICDs, and other implantable devices, wait to the left.”
I go in the shorter line to the left.
“I had brain surgery, and I have a screw in my head,” I say.
“A screw?” the woman says.
“Yes, it keeps me together.”
“Okay.” She shrugs.
She scans my body. She finds the metal in my head.
I take my luggage and go to the correct gate.
I am helping unearth the path for humans to thrive. Almost forever.
by submission | Mar 6, 2020 | Story |
Author: Guy Preston
We were at Evan’s house when he asked me if I wanted an old record player. I told him I didn’t. He picked it up and made for the door.
‘Where are you taking it?’ I asked.
‘To the curb,’ he replied.
‘Why?’
‘It will disappear,’ he said.
He walked out and put it down. When I was leaving I noticed the record player was gone.
A few days later I went back to Evan’s house. On the lawn in front of the house, my skin prickled. There was a spectre of a machine in the place the record player had been: the ghost of a turntable.
When we were inside I asked Evan, ‘Have you done that before?’
‘Done what?’ he asked.
‘The thing with the record player,’ I said.
‘All the time.’
‘Does it always disappear?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he paused. ‘Why?’
‘Don’t you think it’s weird?’ I asked, ‘That it just disappears?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘this neighbourhood has a lot of foot traffic.’
I was silent for a while.
‘Is it always good stuff?’ I asked.
‘I think so, I mean, it’s good to me. Couches and stuff,’ Evan said. ‘I put an old shower curtain out there once and that disappeared.’
‘I would never take an old shower curtain,’ I said.
‘One man’s trash,’ said Evan.
‘Some trash is just trash,’ I replied.
One week later I came back with an old bedside table I had been keeping under my house. I put it on the curb and I made Evan sit with me and watch. When we were sure it was not evaporating, we left to paint figurines in the study. Thirty minutes later I checked and it was gone.
‘So fast!’ I said.
That same day we started taking real chaff to the curb. An orange, some lace, a cardboard box: after a while they all disappeared. Finally, Evan found an old shoe covered in mud and dust.
‘Here is something that absolutely no person would take,’ we thought. It was not a particularly nice shoe, and it was more dirt than shoe.
We tied a piece of string to the shoe and put it on the curb. Inside the house, we closed the front door and sat on the floor. After twenty minutes there was nothing, another ten, still nothing, and then, after an hour of dozing and talking about our lives, zip, and the string was ripped out of our hands. We opened the door and saw no sneaker, and what little remained of the string lay next to the curb, leading toward Evan’s house.
‘Okay,’ I said. We went back into the house and tied a rope around my waist. ‘Wish me luck,’ I said. I went and stood on the curb. I waited.
by submission | Mar 5, 2020 | Story |
Author: Katlina Sommerberg
Kye rolled an unlit joint between her fingers. Miserably pining for a long-gone sky in the middle of Golden Gate Park, she couldn’t relax with tomorrow looming on the horizon. Next morning, she’d wake up to the same monotonous life. The world turned without noticing the presence of ants. Without noticing humans, either.
Kye shivered, staring up at the empty night sky. Wind ripped through her scarf, racing over her skin. Past the neon laser shows, the pine trees swayed. Their tops twinkled blue, back to green, then hazy navy. Huh, she hadn’t seen a rave with lights on the trees before.
Years ago, stars hung in tree branches like Christmas ornaments; she loved to pour over old pictures, searching through her mother’s camping trips to glimpse the cosmos.
Now nothing came through the light pollution. Not the stars. Not comets. Not even satellites. Not even at the highest mountain. The only way to look above now rested in NASA’s hands, but those hands rotted away.
How could space travel find funding, when everyday people never tilted their chin up; instead they stared blankly at whatever thirty-year-old technology masqueraded as trendy. When had humanity fallen out of love with space?
Kye never did, and for what? To stare up at the black sky, surrounded by empty cans and single-use plastics? Every step on the trail crunched one underfoot.
She stared at her joint against a backdrop of fluorescent lasers flickering in tune with bass heavy enough to vibrate the brain. The one night she wanted to brood coincided with the largest outdoor rave on the planet. The air stank of flavored vaporizers layered over human sweat. Even standing well away from the various stadiums, the wind still carried the stink.
Especially when a gaggle of ravers passed by, their voices turned up to maximum volume. They dressed according to the unwritten rules of rave culture, slathered in neon and showing off chrome-painted wearables shimmering under the fireworks. A choice few wore LED implants under their skin, shifting hue and intensity in time with the beat. Piquant weed smoke rolled off them, a punch to the nose only a designer strand could throw.
“What the hell,” Kye grumbled to herself, thumbing her lighter. The flame folded in the wind like grass, missing the joint and singing her skin.
Four tries later, and she took a hit.
The wind kicked up, this time it rose to a roar drowning out all sound. Even the biggest stereos couldn’t compete, and the black boxes crashed to the ground in defeat. The people scattered, running back to their cars and away from the dangerously swaying trees.
One oak crashed down to Kye’s right, so close a leaf cut her face. But she didn’t turn to see it. Disbelieving, she watched a giant ship shimmer like a mirage right before her. When it landed, the joint in her hand burned down to her fingers.
Kye snapped out of the daze.
“Take me with you!” she screamed, sprinting towards the blinking saucer. Stumbling, her hand grazed the shimmering metal, but nothing pressed back against her flesh.
She fell through the wall, into a dark vat of boiling water. Rainbows swirled in her eyes, and fuzzy figures blurred into the hues. “Take me with you,” she pleaded again, the air bubbling out of her mouth, and incomprehensible to the aliens.
Kye died in there, but not before the ship shot back into the depths of space. She was humanity’s only interstellar astronaut.
by submission | Mar 4, 2020 | Story |
Author: Debra Cazalet
That’ll be you out there floating free in the crush of space, the sea of stars
between thought and the heaviness of absence
when all here spins, insentient and weightless
objects collected by Pater_on, the one who commissioned
your thoughts, who allowed your limited self-learning, who died
as mortals die. Another Cy:Bod would have tilted it’s head in the way of logic and said, ‘a human would have cried. Tears are fascinating aren’t they?’ And you, you would tilt your head in perfect symmetry and say Fascinating as if tasting the word for the first time because you
would
be tasting the word for the first time, with no receptors for the flavour but
in any case you are alone so you’ll not be tilting your head
you’ll only scoop up the lifeless Pater_on who kept his collection of artefacts
in this churning-clump-of-cosmic-clutter and
be watching his ejected limbs look strangely rubbery, colliding, flailing, bouncing through the gaps in the expansive array of detritus
not knowing how fascinated your imaginary Cy-Bod companion
might
have been
instead you’ll wander the ship for days, weeks, years not knowing so many other things, like
your raison d’être or the meaning of it all
instead you’ll check the list and check the list and check the list and
smile each time as you were programmed to do and walk the ship
and walk the ship and
look through viewing portals at the great infinite
and walk the ship, and walk, and walk and sometimes
be anchored and drifting outside to patch the ailing vessel and
the thing is, you’ll not stop talking because you were programmed
to talk and words come whether Pater_on is there or dead and crushed by space, so you’ll recite the list as you look upon it, verbally announcing the presence of each item
of each manoeuvre performed
of each object that presents itself to your field of vision
you’ll say, ‘hatch B ahead, walking through hatch B, to my left; viewing portal, stopping; checking view’ and
you’ll be ceaseless and faithful. The cosmos holding you as
you recite the list, recite the list and
^glitch^
and ^glitch^ the list
‘checking,’ you’ll say in modulating tones ‘item catalogue reference such-and-such’
‘automaton torso, sixteenth century
walking to display cabinet, corresponding artefact sighted, no visible signs of additional disrepair’
and one day, you’ll continue with ‘next item on my list’
as somehow it’s stopped being his and you’ll continue down the list in this way, alone and smiling-by-command-string until the last object
which bears the label
Melancholia
archived in your memory will be
words
ferreting blindly as baby kittens to the teat, the words – love and betrayal, freedom and loss
you’ll smile that inorganic smile watching the globe of swirling translucent liquid form the undeniable limbs of Woman – as she does – though you won’t use the pronoun as Pater_on did and you won’t know how this little fragment of living glass came to be in your collection, for somehow it has stopped being his and
has become yours
along with the list and the ship and
the diminishing view of the once-blue planet and
knowledge of what is to come
of what is to
to come
knowledge
of
[]
[] and
you’ll never know this but if you were that other imaginary Cy-Bod, you’d smile with no prompt while delicately, inquisitively freeing Melancholia from her case
by Julian Miles | Mar 3, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s a fat bloke in the corner sitting on some woman’s body. I do hope she’s dead, because he’s not a small mammal. From another view, knowing he crushed a woman to death might help offset the shock when they tell him that isn’t claret he’s sucking from his chubby fingers.
You want someone quietly dead, hire an assassin. You want someone filled-with-projectiles dead, hire a contractor. You want everyone nearby dead, use a bomb.
“But,” I hear you think, “what about all that hypersec?”
And you’d be right. The ultra-rich and similarly paranoid wankers don’t get offed by assassins or contractors, and bombs only get to decorate the scenery with guests and staff. Same goes for any long-range fucking about. You might crack the crockery and torch the flowers, but you’ve got about as much chance of getting your mark as I have of waking up tomorrow next to anyone who isn’t still in my bed because of a stasis field.
No, the ‘cyborg soldier’ thing won’t work either. One mark dumped an ice bucket over a ‘killer robot’ and shorted the thing out. For that tactical hiccup, an ex-colleague found out it’s all fun and games until you get hung from an anti-grav platform by your intestines.
Closed environments, nano-filtration, force screens, the list goes ever on. It’s why the top-end of prospective targets are considered off limits. That’s what you’ll be told, anyway. The fact that they’re beyond conventional hit strategies won’t be mentioned. After all, you might be determined and rich. Hits get paid up front, with bonuses for success. Multiple attempts pay better than a completion fee, and you usually get to survive long enough to collect.
So, you want some hypersecured wanker ended? Either wait for them to die, or message my contact point. I’ll check you and your life out. If I don’t like the look of you, nothing will happen. If I think you’re bait, you’re going to die. Otherwise, we’ll have a chat. Then you’ll ship several tonnes of valuables to some obscure frontier planet. After that, you’ll wait.
The problem with being good at this is that the opposition aren’t fuckwits, either. Each novel killing method can only be used once.
Take tonight’s little get together: top-tier, whole space platform, private army, private space navy, no hired help, and nobody gets in without an invite.
Countess Pari Marchand had a discreet procedure six weeks ago. It all went very well. Lord Geoffrey Carnes had a rejuvenation, including replacement kneecaps, especially for tonight’s bash.
Which meant that neither had seen each other for nearly two months. Predictably, they slid away for some quiet time. The heat of passion is a useful thing. Elevated body functions can trigger all sorts of mischief implanted while being operated on by substitutes in my pay. The private room they retreated to let the resulting aristocratic goop ferment nicely. The closed environment circulated the vapour exactly where I needed it to be: everywhere.
Hallucinations and chronic polyphagia were the main effects of that bastard concoction, plus a few things to make people very enthusiastic about consumption. End result was that everyone at the party went berserk. They tried to eat everything, including each other. Most importantly, they ate Sir Douglas Stourbridge, my target.
I’m monitoring the emergency services feed. It’s being treated as the worst terrorist atrocity for twenty years: another invisible kill for my unseen tally. Nice. Never underestimate anonymity.
You need an atrocity to get the job done? Need extinction performed on an individual, nation, or planet? Got treasures to spare? Contact me.
by submission | Mar 2, 2020 | Story |
Author: Helen Merrick
Cigarette smoke. No doubt about it. What idiot was smoking in the cinema? I take the steps two at a time determined to find the culprit before the smoke alarms go off. Bursting through the door, I intend to head for the toilets – the usual hiding place – but there’s no need: a tall blonde is leaning against the wall by the balcony doors, cigarette dangling from scarlet lips. Startled, she stubs it out in a wall-mounted ashtray.
“Sorry,” she says with a nervous smile, “I was gasping for a ciggie. You going in?” She winks. “Sneaky peek?”
She hauls the door open before I can reply and the chastisement on the tip of my tongue dissolves into mute horror as the blaring soundtrack hits my ears. Oh no! My heart lurches violently. I’d recognise the soundtrack for Blade Runner anywhere and Sean Young’s heavily made-up, emotionless eyes stare at me from the screen. What’s happened to Toy Story 4, my Saturday Kid’s matinee?
Panicked, I turn tail and charge full-tilt for the projection box. I prepare to stop the film and mentally rehearse my apology to the audience. But, through the viewing window, I see Woody enjoying a tearful reunion with Bo Peep. The audience, silhouettes against the screen, jostle gently as they laugh.
“What the…” I stare at the screen, afraid to look away. Everything seems normal and the digital projector purrs placidly. I clutch my head. What is going on? I try to think, rationalise. Did I just hallucinate? Surely not. My thoughts whirl and something nags at me, something’s not right. Think!
“The ashtray…” Of course. We don’t have ashtrays in the cinema, haven’t for years. “I’m going mad,” I mutter, “totally mad.” Then another whiff of cigarettes sends me hurtling back downstairs.
She’s there again – the blonde, smoking.
“Sorry,” she says with the same nervous smile. “I was gasping for a ciggie.”
For the first time, I notice she’s wearing a navy button-down dress; the uniform ushers wore, years ago. I remember them complaining that they looked like airline stewardesses. And the carpet beneath her patent leather heels is red, not blue.
“Going in?” She winks. “Sneaky peek?”
I can already hear Blade Runner. “No. I… I’ve got to…”
Waving a hand, I dash back to the projection box but that, to my horror, is different too. The noise is wrong; even before I’m upstairs I can tell it’s not the digital projector making the clanging clatter. “Victoria five,” I murmur as the familiar, hulking shape looms into view, a bent spool clanking against the frame as it turns.
I rub my eyes. I know this projector: I used it, loved it before it was scrapped in favour of digital technology.
“Did you get a look?”
The voice startles me and, turning, I catch my breath. It’s an incredible moment. Astonished, I study the face of a woman I thought never to see again – auburn hair, laughter lines, lopsided smile. My mother.
“How…” My voice is weak, head filled with memories, emotions – Mum bringing me to work, letting me watch her lace the projector, teaching me how it’s done. Her warmth as she hugged me. Her scent. Mum…
My head hurts.
“Darling, you okay?”
My hands are shaking and raising them, I see they look different: no wrinkles, no wedding ring. I touch my head, feel hair that’s soft and long. Then, looking down, I see the body of a child.
“Sweetie?”
Tears of joy fill my eyes.
