by submission | Aug 8, 2020 | Story |
Author: George Morales
I woke up early to make breakfast for my daughter and my wife. It was going to be a grinding day at work. Even though everybody denied it, it sure felt like there were quotas to fill up the cells. The immigrants had been in those cells before the current occupants. But the immigrants were gone now.
I heard Rebel stir in her room so I pulled out a panel of eggs and a loaf of bread from the fridge. I tossed a few slices of bread into the toaster and cracked the eggs into a bowl. I looked around the kitchen as I beat the eggs. When we moved in, Athena had marveled at the size and beauty of the kitchen. It was open concept, just like she had always wanted. I remember I walked her over to the little laundry room outside the kitchen and thinking it was the first time either of us lived in a place with a washer and dryer inside the unit. In fact, we were no longer in a unit. We were in a house.
I almost tripped over Felipe the cat as I moved to pour the eggs into a pan. A little bit of salt and some stirring to keep them from setting. They didn’t need much time, just a few minutes. Long enough to toast some bread. I heard Rebel yell in the room so I knew Athena was probably changing her diaper. This moment was probably one of Athena’s most difficult ones in the day – changing Rebel’s diaper before drinking her morning coffee. Her morning coffee!
I dashed over to the espresso grinds and scooped some into the coffee maker, grabbed some water and started brewing. Felipe followed me to the fridge where I grabbed some blueberries and strawberries. I cut the strawberries up into quarters how Rebel liked them and plated everything before the girls came downstairs. I felt like one of those fancy chefs on the telescreen shows. Chang was always watching those shows while we were on patrol.
But I wasn’t a fancy chef. I was just some schmuck. And cooking breakfast for my girls made me feel good. Working a job to provide for them made me feel good. And yeah, maybe it was selfish deep down inside but I was just like everybody else, caught up in a job that I didn’t really want to do. When it was the immigrants, I used to say – I could never do that to people. But when it became the robots that had gotten out of hand … well … I had my credit card bills and my conscience to deal with every night. And I could only pay one of them away to buy sleep.
Rebel ran straight to the table and pulled out her chair. She still struggled to get up on her own, but insisted on doing so. She’d get upset if we tried to help. Athena came over to give me a kiss and, more importantly, to grab her coffee. I smiled and hugged her. She grunted as I almost made her spill her coffee and Rebel yelled at me from the table for her breakfast.
“Rebel, ask politely!” Athena flung the words through the steam rising from her mug. Rebel pouted and signed for food by bringing her hands together a couple of times. I smiled and said “thank you” as I signed back by lowering my fingers from my chin.
Athena grabbed her plate and I grabbed the other two. “I’m going to call one of the gardening services to cut the shrubs out front,” Athena told me as we joined Rebel at the table.
“No, don’t do that,” I looked down at the bright creamy eggs, the slightly browned toast and the bright polished fruit in front of me. “I know a bot that’ll do it for cheaper.”
by submission | Aug 7, 2020 | Story |
Author: Ken Poyner
We used to eat whole herds of ballan, letting them first graze a while to get used to the slightly thinner atmosphere, adjust to the new gravity. Company issued, company raised, they were better having fed a few cycles on the native grass, taken in some unprocessed air, gotten foot-steady with their new weight. Sweeter. For the last few years, we noticed the shipments getting slightly further apart, the size of the herds delivered seeming just a bit smaller. We figured some transportation official was skimming the shipment, taking a ballan here, a ballan there, selling at pure profit on the black market. Maybe he thought we did not count, would not notice. But then they stopped coming altogether. We pointed out to the home office that there was nothing here suitable to eat. We could starve before farmers, if they shifted a few here, could set in a crop. And it might take years of good guesses to see what might actually in this soil grow. They said they understood, and would get right on it. A few more transmissions, and then the home office went silent. In fact, the home world went silent and we started to worry what forms we should fill out and where we might send them. No response, no ballan. After a few planetary cycles, it was beginning to look quite grim.
Then this new food source started coming. A bit smaller, but from the point of starvation, anything looks like a feast. We peeled the outer skin, discovered right away there was a thinner inner skin to peel as well. Not much work once you learn how to hook it with a crooked tentacle. We ate right away when they first came. It had been a while since the last ballan, and our rationing plan had not been all that well thought out. But once we had our fill, had backed away from the face of famine, we thought: maybe like the ballan, if we let them be for a while, perhaps they would grow softer, lose a little of that hard metal taste. So, for now, we let them go on, let them practice their small industries. We stay out of their way. When we think the meat has come to prime, we can harvest the whole lot of them.
by submission | Aug 6, 2020 | Story |
Author : Mark Renney
Despite the confines, we are encouraged to want things. Although we can only achieve so much, it is instilled into us, from birth, how important it is to be successful. Successful means a house and the ability to fill it with all that we need plus a little more; big, bright, shining things. A flat-screen TV, surround sound a car in the garage, something sleek and stylish. Despite everything, despite the constraints and the cut-off point, here in the mid-levels there is still a lot of choice.
We are middle-management material and work only for particular corporations and particular government departments rising only so far in the ranks. I think it is harder for us here in the mid-levels because we are so close and many of us could easily make that little leap upwards if allowed.
I often stay on at the office after my colleagues have left for the day. I don’t use the computer nor my own devices. I don’t want my presence recorded. I am not breaking any rules but am aware that my behaviour would be considered a little odd.
The lighting drops to an energy-saving level and in the half-light I sit with a newspaper trying to read. But mostly I listen to the noise coming from above where they remain hard at work. At regular intervals, I fetch a drink from the vending machine. Carrying the little plastic cup, I wander as I sip from it. The coffee is always too hot and bitter. I listen to their laughter and I try to pick out individual voices, one-sided telephone conversations. I can’t make out the words but it all sounds so focused and urgent.
I hear those that leave out in the lobby and I flinch but they don’t look in through the glass doors. They don’t see me. They are far too pre-occupied, eager to get home, or perhaps they are heading for a restaurant or bar. Maybe their day’s work isn’t over and they still have much to debate and decide.
Eventually, I have to think about leaving in order to catch the last train. It is still a hive of activity up there and this annoys me. I want to outlast them, be here when they aren’t. I consider booking a hotel in the city or sleeping here in the office. A clean shirt, a different tie, and who, come the morning, would be any the wiser. But I don’t bring in that shirt and tie. After all, it’s only one floor and what would a lull, in the early hours of the morning, prove?
Many in the mid-levels decide not to enter these tall buildings. Despite the fact that they have garnered the necessary experience, ticking the right boxes, they choose to keep working for the smaller companies, those that operate out of the storefront offices both here and in the suburbs. They don’t have the security, the retirement plans, extra holidays, and bonuses but if they work hard they can earn almost as much out there. They call it the ’Real World’ and this is frowned upon by those above but ultimately they haven’t any choice but to accept it.
I made that leap from there to here as soon as I could. And that is all I have managed to do. I step into the lobby, push through the doors, and make my way to my desk in the far corner. I haven’t ever been required elsewhere, I haven’t even as much as stood on the stairs.
by submission | Aug 5, 2020 | Story |
Author: Mina
– Daddy, tell me the story of how we were saved.
– OK, love. Have you got your bear Benji?
– Yes, he wants to hear the story too.
– Then let’s start…
In the final days of an ancient planet, four ships were sent out to the four corners of the universe to seek a new home. The planet’s resources were severely depleted at this point and the escalation of natural disasters had wiped out a large percentage of its population. But the survivors pooled what resources they had left to launch their ships into space. Each ship carried a crew of two hundred and the genetic material for thousands of plant and animal species. After six months, each ship passed beyond maximum communications range and was left alone to face its fate. No more was heard of three of the ships. We know only the fate of the fourth ship, Fortuna.
– Fortuna was our ship, wasn’t it?
– Yes, that was our ship. And after four centuries of travel, it was battered and overcrowded, its population having tripled during its journey. One day, it was hit by a meteor and left so badly damaged that it could no longer sustain itself as it had successfully done for so long. It was in these desperate times that they met a god.
– What did the god look like?
– At first, the crew thought they had drifted into a dense nebula, vibrant with colours. Most of the crew heard a haunting melody in their minds, resonating with loss and loneliness. But the Captain heard an actual voice asking him what their purpose was. He wondered if he had gone mad but he replied that they were the remnants of a dying civilisation, seeking a new home. The ship had enough stores to feed its crew for two more months with strict rationing. The voice said it could get the ship to a viable planet in that time. In exchange, it asked the Captain only for his company. The Captain agreed mainly for the sake of his crew but also because he was lonely too, as his wife had been one of the fifteen killed when the ship was damaged.
– What happened next?
– The nebula contracted around the ship and pulled it along faster than it had ever moved before. For six weeks, the Captain talked to the voice inside his head, sharing his life and his people’s past history. In the first week, the Captain asked the voice its name, but the nebula had forgotten if it ever had a name – it believed it was the last of its kind. In the second week, he gave the voice a name, Sola, and introduced it to centuries of literature. In the third week, he discovered that the voice liked music, especially the blues. In the fourth week, the crew were relieved when the melody in their minds lightened, streaked through with notes of hope and tentative joy. In the fifth week, the crew acquired a new addition to its science team, yet it was as if she had always been with them – her whole lifetime suddenly part of the fabric of their minds. In the sixth week, the Captain married Science Officer Sola and the ship arrived at its destination, a habitable planet with verdant continents and sapphire oceans. The nebula disappeared and the crew wondered if it had all been a dream.
– But mummy stayed with us?
– Yes, but that’s our secret. Mummy chose to become one of us. For the others, she has always been one of us, but she wanted you to know the truth. She kept her vast knowledge, which allowed her to help us settle here, but she became frail and human, giving up her immortality to be with us. You know what that means, don’t you?
– Yes, you and me and Benji must love her as hard as we can for the rest of our lives because it’s the only way we can thank her.
– That’s right, love. Now, time you were asleep.
– Night daddy.
– Night, night princess.
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.
