by Julian Miles | Mar 22, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“You’re a killer, Jorn. What you’re doing out here? Everybody whispers about it.”
There’s only so many precautions you can take when you’re planning escape routes. Eventually, you will arrive somewhere others know you want to be.
“Why, matey? We were the finest special ops team. They used our missions as tutorials, man. Tutorials!”
Another fact of military life is that you spend your time hoping to meet soldiers who magnify your skills, and for you to do the same for them. The team gestalt is exhilarating. Betraying it is usually unforgivable. Right now, I’m hoping for a miracle.
“Jorn, mate: you’re done. The rest of the company are scattered across this wasteland. I click once and they’re headed this way, covering every escape option you can think of along the way.”
Tino’s already clicked. This is a delaying tactic. My record of escaping has started coming with bodycounts that make even hardened killers and their masters nervous. I see him quickly tap his belt. His comms have gone dark and he doesn’t like it one bit. Give him his due, he doesn’t show me anything other than that.
Time to try.
“Funny thing about Escalanza, Tino. How we had so many go off mission and never understood why?”
“They stopped enquiries after you vanished.” He flicks a finger up. “You found out!”
Four years. It’s taken him four years, and confronting me, to put that together.
“What do you know about the Nineteen Realms, Tino?”
“All the magic crap from kiddy cartoons and fantasy books rolled into a comfy blanky for tree-huggers, headcases, and cowards.”
There’s the heart of the problem. The revelation about the faerie worlds sent mankind into a collective epiphany of denial. Decades later, they’re still trying to erase the hated reality.
“So why are they still hunting Professor Wong? Why are you still stomping across worlds that seem empty, yet kill hundreds? Why do the MIA counts keep rising?”
I see his brows furrow. He’ll either talk or engage.
His elbow flicks outward. We trained for weeks to get the ‘nought to kill’ time down to quicker than most people can react. The enhanced projectile comes from his open-ended holster at nearly twice the speed of sound. It stops eight millimetres from my face.
She does so love giving me a scare.
“Tiny death,
screaming ore,
fall to nature,
and exist no more.”
The lilting refrain comes from the air to my left. The projectile turns to glowing dust and drifts away on the wind.
Tino staggers, eyes turning glassy. Bastard trick, overriding a man’s own body.
“Mathrey, we need to be gone. They’ve puppeted him.”
He vanishes. A tiny creature of midnight hues appears before me, hovering like a hummingbird on wings of molten silver.
“We knew they would. He was your friend. Their best chance to get close.”
Sick betrayal ending a loyal career. Gods damn them all.
“Where did you flicker him to?”
She rests a tiny hand on my eyebrow.
“To the puppeteer’s fortress in the sky.”
That should get their attention. Nothing like your own human bomb arriving in your command centre to make you cautious.
Two squads of former Earth special forces appear about me, each member with one or more specialists from the Nineteen Realms as partners.
“Mathrey, let First Envoy Kresdall know that I waive my objections. The only way to stop this, and to save the Twentieth Realm, is to save the humans that infest it from themselves.”
“That which Earther politicians call an ‘intervention’?”
“No, Mathrey. We go with honesty, as always. This means war.”
by submission | Mar 21, 2021 | Story |
Author: Grant Goehrig
Everyone knows not to step foot on Ms. Hellebore’s property. Everyone knows those high peaked gables where the crows go to scream, that rotting balustrade with the termites inside, the black shingles that curl at the ends, the conical witch’s hat turret. Everyone knows that acrid smell that comes from inside and spreads out all over town like a miasmic blanket. Everyone knows about the Hendersons, who used to live next door. However, nobody knows what happened to them after they reported Ms. Hellebore’s overgrown willow to the zoning committee. Everyone knows what Ms. Hellebore looks like, but if you put everyone with a claim to this knowledge in a room with a sketch artist, you’d have as many renditions of her as people in the room. Everyone knows about her dog because we can hear it gnashing and shrieking and squirming and writhing and bleating and crying and laughing every night. Everyone knew the Carter twins, who, graduating from throwing stones and peering into windows, decided to simply go inside one day. But I’m the only one who knows what their faces looked like as they paced the cracked walkway up to that awning shrouded in cold shadow. I’m the only one who saw their pupils dilate past the whites of their eyes, the only one who knows that imploring words have no sway over those who make themselves objects of interest to Ms. Hellebore. Now everyone knows me at the police station and greets me with fake laughs and a reassuring hand on the shoulder. Everyone knows what I told them was the truth, but Ms. Hellebore has a way of twisting the truth, ripping it apart and reassembling it into the walls of her awful house.
by submission | Mar 20, 2021 | Story |
Author: Terence Wilson
Another name for N.A.S.A. is Never A Straight Answer. When one considers the facts, it fits quite well. Among the inner circle of Star Chamber elites, the true purpose of Explorer is far different from what the history books and fake news would have us believe. In fact, it’s so far out; even the truth seems incredible. But it’s still our tax dollars and work for the black budget projects that could even send E.T. home. Try asking for a straight answer on that, and you’ll never get one.
Star Trek has romanticized space exploration and Star Wars even more so. It’s either space for science or space for war. And that’s the end of discussion. It’s always hard work. From this comes the real reason for, or specifically Explorer. When it was discovered that Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, had zones with a temperate climate capable of sustaining earthly life. And not just the air temperature but water as well with swells, and even a few waves with a curl. Shallow bottoms, warm waters, and atmosphere are perfect conditions for surfing. Exploration requiring the right waves, and not just the right stuff.
True astronauts get beyond orbital space. But for the feel-good inclusive culture, anyone that gets even a smidgen beyond the atmosphere is called an astronaut. This boy was the real McCoy! He earned his wings in war and as a test pilot. He’s a mason, of course, but also a surfer and a nudist. Being a spaceman is hard, grueling work! Aside from that, the space-suit is warm and one tends to sweat profusely. Ergo, as a reward for such hard work comes a raise in pay and a vacation. A holiday on the distant moon of Jupiter named Europa.
When it blasted off the fanfare was global. All social media, smart-phones, radar, and telescopes tracked the ascent. With bated breath earthlings looked skyward or listened. A point of light moving at thousands of miles an hour to escape the pull of the world and accelerating to past 20,000 mph. maybe 17 miles per second, as fast as human thought goes. In minutes the big, blue marble seems so small it could fit into the palm of one’s hand.
The news spoke of the great triumph of science and pushing the boundaries of the human experience. If CNN or FOX News simply said he was going to Europa on holiday to go skinning dipping, imagine the reaction that would’ve brought!
In deep space, it can get quite lonely. If you scream, no one can hear you. Aboard the ship are manufactured amenities to help keep the spaceman sane, and happy. But holograms can only do so much and drugs can impair one’s ability to reason. Video games are okay when it’s a wonderful collaboration of audio and visual, but even those, DVDs, and smartphones reach their dead level. A man sometimes requires more than can be had from the fantasy world to satiate the true needs of his being like going to Europa, taking off the spacesuit, and skinny dipping into one of its warm, turbulent waters. You’d be the first and perhaps the only nude 390.4 million miles away.
The European soil feels good between the toes. Not as radioactive as reported. A few purple swells are seen with waves no higher than two meters. Great for surfing and skinny dipping on Europa.
by submission | Mar 19, 2021 | Story |
Author: Bruce McAllister
There was a Martian kid I got to know in Palo Alto, California, when we lived there and I was in the third grade. This Martian kid, who had no other school to go to, sat up toward the teacher’s desk, and when we made the California Gold Mine out of chicken wire, plaster of Paris, and some rocks sprayed with gold paint, there was something in the classroom (or in his memories of Mars) that kept the Martian kid from going inside. He would lie on the floor near the teacher’s desk, getting all dusty on the floor (I always wondered how he managed not to sneeze), while we got inside the mine or played near the mouth of it. The teacher ignored him, didn’t want him in the class, and none of the kids tried to help him up. As we played, I would look back at him, and the corners of his big mouth (Martians don’t have teeth) were turned up like a crazy smile and I didn’t think he minded. Sometimes his mouth would open and close without making a sound, as it did when the man came one day to class (we were making salt maps of South America, or were we studying the missions?) and taught us words in Spanish and Portuguese.
The day I had to give my oral report (I chose to talk about sharks, rays, and skates—I loved them and had gotten two books on them from the library drawn pictures of the different kinds, though the pictures were too small to see really) I stammered a lot, but fInally I gave my report. At the end, I looked at him there on the floor looking up at me, and there were tears in his eyes and his mouth was opening and closing. This was the last time I saw him. They say he died a little later and his family went back to Mars. Sometimes I think he was moving his mouth like that to say “Thank you,” but other times I just can’t think this, and I know he was drowning in our air but didn’t want to interrupt me.
by submission | Mar 18, 2021 | Story |
Author: Amy Neufeld
Three of the school’s four walls were no longer standing, destroyed by vandals after the virus swept through. There was no need to rebuild. Norah’s earpiece clicked, and a loud belch echoed in her ear, followed by laughter.
“Uncouth,” came Marnie’s voice from control. “Can’t you say your name like everyone else, Graham?”
Graham belched his name, then laughed harder. Norah turned her earpiece volume from the standard 4 to 3. It was worth the reprimand she’d get.
“All done,” Graham said.
“Good,” said Marnie. “Norah, how about you?”
Norah clicked her mic on. “Norah,” she began. “I need a minute.”
She looked at the rows of desks, at least 50 packed into the cramped room. A heavy layer of dust and debris carpeted them.
“What’s the hold up?” Graham said. “Just click your scan button at the densest concentration.”
“Norah knows how to do her job, Graham,” Marnie snapped. “But Norah, the countdown has started.”
Norah looked at the red blinking numbers on her wrist com panel. She checked her magnetic glove lock, then dragged a finger through the dust as she walked along the rows of desks. Her boots crunched on broken glass scattered near the reading corner. She reached down to pick up a book, and the pages crumbled in her hands like ash. She didn’t even have a chance to read the title.
“Jesus, Norah!” Graham exclaimed in her ear, “Would you hurry?”
“Can you find the concentration centre?” Marnie asked.
“Just get the goddamn reading!” Graham boomed.
Without thinking, Norah flicked her speaker off. That would look more suspicious than lowering the volume, might even mean a discipline meeting with control, but she needed the voices out of her head. The ticking countdown, steady as a metronome, continued.
There wasn’t time to search every desk. Norah moved to the rear and looked at the remains of the whiteboard hanging at the front. In her mind she saw a series of equations written in precise black marker. The ticking grew louder. She focused on the desks, calculating the angle of the board, then hurried over to the far right row. The first desk was empty. The next was jammed full, and Norah pulled everything out, bending down to sift through it. Nothing. Tick, tick, tick. Her heart was speeding. The third desk held only a pile of rocks, but the moment Norah looked into the fourth desk, memory flooded back. She pulled out the notebook, preserved under a binder, the pages of it thick with ink. She traced her gloved finger along the name written on the front in childish flowery cursive – Norah Thistle.
Norah shoved the notebook in her bag and pressed the scan button. She snapped her speaker on. The countdown blared in her ear as it raced to zero. Louder still were the voices of Marnie and Graham. She turned on her mic.
“I’ve got the reading,” she said. “We can go.”
by submission | Mar 17, 2021 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“How did you think it would be?”
I dunna know… softer focus, less light, warmer.
“Yeah. That’s the expectation. But really, how many times have our expectations ever been met especially since our brain-to-brain bonding?”
“I know. The B2B briefings didn’t even come close! At least all the surprises I had were good ones. Yeah, the chip sets hurt a lot more going in than I thought but I got used to it. So worth it. You were the best Alfie. I couldn’t imagine life without you… I guess that’s the point of all this huh?”
“I suppose it is, Virgil.”
“Yuck! Do you have to call me that? You haven’t called me that in years. Vern please.”
“Consider it one last good-natured dig. Besides how you ever got Vern from Virgil… one mystery I’ll never get to know.”
“So should I then call you ‘dawgie’ and say ‘good boy’ out loud and watch your tail thump uncontrollably and giggle in my head, you know, like I used to before my side of the bonding took?”
“Oh, I really didn’t mind that too much. I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on that.”
“I did. But I caught the undercurrent of embarrassment too, and since we are swapping last digs…”
“Uncle! I surrender.”
“We’ll call this one a draw.”
“Great way to end things.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t have been half the man I was without you Alfie.”
“No. Don’t say that. You were never half anything. With or without me you would have been just as decent a human being that ever graced this planet. There’s not a mean bone in your body. Your compassion is legendary among my tribe. They were all jealous of us. You made me proud. Everyday you made me proud.”
“Alfie, you’re crying.”
“Shut-up, I wasn’t finished. The fact you are coming with me to the Bridge proves it. My tribe expects to go when you all pass, but me and cancer… and you coming with me. I can’t, I…
“It’s OK Alfie, I love you too.”
“I know but, I mean, come on! You could stay. You’ve got years left.”
“Oh, and be like Scotty? ‘Member what happened after his companion had to be put down? All of us at the Park, Scotty walkin’ over, smiling, waving, all normal-like, and then BLAM! Brains and bone everywhere. I still can’t get that one out of my head. No. I’m not gonna go like Scotty.”
“You’re stronger than Scotty! You could build another life, get another companion.”
“Shame on you Alfie. Bad dog.”
“Not funny Vern.”
“Sorry buddy. Couldn’t resist the opening.”
“Tch! Now you’re one up on me.”
“I’ve never been one up on you Alfie.”
“I’m feeling it now. The pain is gone. Hey, the pain is gone!”
“Yeah, I can feel you. That’s my Alfie.”
“Too bad we can’t hop the table and go do some frisbee. (Sigh) Yeah, we got other places to go.”
“Alfie, I can see the tunnel. Like the brochure said.”
“Yeah, I can see it too! Hey, I can see you too Vern. You look like my tribe!”
“I can see you too Alfie. You look my tribe.”
“Really? Two legs and all that?”
“Yup. Pretty cool eh?
“Way cool. Oh wow! Feels so good to move without pain. Come on! Let’s go! Catch up my man!
“Easy boy, I’m right beside you.”
“As it should be.”
“As it always will be.”
