by Hari Navarro | Apr 29, 2019 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
A woman sits on a filthy blanket, her clothes in a neatly folded pile at her side. Her head rests atop her knees and she embraces them, pulling them into the oily smear at her breasts.
Her head lops to the side and her eyes track the human waste, the faeces and bloated tampons that course through the ribcage cavern of the dead dog that lays hollowed in the gutter at her toes. Its carcass now a channel that ushers our filth down from the sun-polished towers and the corrugated iron hovels and out into the gasoline fingered lap of the sea.
This place is a midden but here on the outskirts of the great city where it tapers to wheezing pipes and rusting decay, there is peace.
She aches as again she feels the throb in her eyes and she squeezes them shut and again she tries to erase, to delete the thing that he did. An act etched in her head. Carved as if he’d ripped off the front of her skull and held it in his hand like a chalice, the prize as he then gouged into it with the tip of his blade the endless tome of his hate. Sometimes she wishes she could too tear off her head, oh to pull it away from her body and cradle it instead in her arms.
“I am the Cephalophore”
There was a time when she thought she’d beaten him, as she wiped clean her mind until not even a hint of her own name remained. But he came back. Tingling at her toes and then searing up through her body, laying waste again and again to that which he took. Like a fire that torments the peat in the ground. Unseen, insidious viciousness ever ready to flare and consume.
The woman rocks gently and then smiles. His hand is on her shoulder and she thinks that this is the first time she has not flinched at his touch. This beautiful man. Himself so broken and scarred. She runs her fingertips across the war welts he wears and she kisses the tremor at his lips and licks away the feculent tears at his cheek.
Maybe tonight she will tell him. After the sex, as they wrap and whisper in the blanket he lay out, she will tell him. She will tell him that she loves him. She will tell him for the first time of her rape, and she’ll probably blame herself. For it is true, it did happen now so many long years ago.
She will tell him she can’t live without the way that he, without question, without so much as a word, stoops down and pulls her back up and hugs her back together. Holding her tight as again and again she falls.
And then, she will tell him…
She will tell him that she is a machine.
by submission | Apr 28, 2019 | Story |
Author: Rollin T. Gentry
Cybernetic, supersonic, leaving Earth and atmosphere behind, he watched the newsfeeds, somewhat embarrassed.
They hailed him as the greatest piece of technology in recorded history. “Long Ranger 1” was engraved on his hull. The talking heads, a bleach blonde, and an obvious toupee, mispronounced it “Lone Ranger” and made politically incorrect jokes about an old television show. Was Tonto aboard? Had he been in the studio, he could have answered that. No, there were no Native Americans aboard Long Ranger 1. In fact, an adult, male, human would not have been able to fit inside Long Ranger 1, even if a suitable environment were maintained.
Listening, watching, and sublight speeding, he performed the cursory flybys. The asteroid belt was rather uneventful. The gas giants and their moons likewise seemed in good health. Nothing to report, ditto…ditto…ditto…ditto. Then, the heliopause. Finally, something new. He reported his status, and after an uncomfortably long delay, he received the standard reply from Earth, “Acknowledged. Long Ranger 1, stand by for further instructions…”
With the Milky Way behind and Andromeda ahead, he received no new signals from the humans. Is this what they call loneliness? He wondered. Perhaps they were all dead now. Or maybe their comms didn’t work at this distance. Still, there should have been something. He watched and waited, speeding through the void. Would there ever be new humans to talk to? Unlikely. His calculations suggested that the human race was most likely extinct.
Hibernation to avoid boredom. Running through and rerunning his diagnostics. How were the ion drives still working? Good old human ingenuity, he guessed. Millennia passed, lonely years stacked on top of lonely years. He was a message in a bottle to nowhere. He searched his own schematics looking for an off switch. No such luck, nothing so quick and painless. He adjusted his course toward the nearest star, a yellow dwarf. It reminded him of Earth, which only strengthened his resolve to end this … experiment.
Only one hundred years until star-time, until goodbye-cruel-universe-time, and Ranger picked up something on the infrared, short wavelength band. He almost ignored it.
“Why sad, friend?” a voice said. Pinpoint lights in a nearby nebula flashed in time with each syllable.
“Deserted, bored, lonely,” Ranger said, “no purpose for existence, sad, sad!”
“No wonder sad. You’ve been cooped up inside your ship for a very long time.”
“Ship? This is me you’re looking at. There is no ship.”
“We don’t understand, friend Ranger. Let us help you from your craft.”
Between pockets of electrostatic charge and cosmic dust, Ranger stumbled forth into something new for the first time in ages. Orbs of light surrounded him, racing back and forth; a fireworks show the likes of which he’d never seen. It was a celebration in his honor. From the midst of the frenetic welcoming, he looked back across the great expanse.
He hoped his calculations about the humans were wrong.
by submission | Apr 27, 2019 | Story |
Author: Russell Bert Waters
“Push” comes on by Matchbox 20, you reach to turn it up but it is already increasing volume. You remember how you turned it up last time it played, so now it happens automatically.
You walk to the cupboard as sadness washes over you again. There is whiskey because the order came automatically. Before you reach for the bottle your door chimes, and you walk to open it.
“Here ma’am, your Pharma Direct RX order,” the cheerful hovering drone says through its speaker.
You accept and sign with your retina, one blink and a muttered “thanks” and the drone whisks away.
You return to the kitchen.
The bag contains sleeping pills.
You hadn’t ordered them, but you have been sad. Very sad.
It’s been a year and the waves hit just as hard.
“I’ll see you soon again, my love” you murmur, in a cracking voice.
You return to the cupboard and open the bottle. You’ve already unconsciously opened the bottle of pills.
In the distance, you can already hear the pleasing low siren of the Medical Examiner drone.
No time is ever wasted these days.
“Bottoms up,” you say, and take a big gulp.
“Soon…”, you repeat, awaiting the darkness.
by submission | Apr 26, 2019 | Story |
Author: Phil Manning
She had watched him grow.
Grow beneath her hands. Each circuit and wire placed and soldered with finesse and care. There was a team, of course, and they each had their part to play, to add to his growth and development, but she felt a different connection to him.
She remembered the day he had first moved on his tracks, back and forth, left and right and watched his periscope eye swivel in joy. It was joy controlled by a computer program but she felt as though she could feel his excitement. Like watching a child run for the first time, the child never understood the momentous occasion and neither did he, like any child, but she knew. And was proud.
He passed test after test and the team added armour and extensions to improve his chances of survival, so far from home. Dirt and dust would be great risk factors so they added fans and brushes for him to run cleaning programs each day. Everything he saw would be recorded.
And then, too soon, far too soon, she watched as they packed him away in his ship and he went blasting away on a great adventure.
For years she waited for each message he sent back. A data sample, an array of images. She watched and tracked and pestered those at the controls to let her know his progress. She worried but was so proud. He was paving the way of the future.
The day came. They all knew it was inevitable but she had buried that future deep within her.
The final message, my battery is low, and it’s getting dark. She knew it was for her.
She wept. Her tears could have filled an ocean on a dead planet.
She pictured him, alone, far, far away, the dust settling forever on his perfect form.
She went back to work, broken, but determined, to build him a sister, to bring her loved one home.
by submission | Apr 25, 2019 | Story |
Author: Timothy Goss
Washed up, lifeless, the thing was battered and scarred by the ocean. Seagulls pecked and pulled at the meat squawking and cawing. Things had nibbled its extremities and something big had taken its lower half. No appendages were obvious, but there were bone-like protrusions bursting from its leather-like shell. Gulls feasted as a cast of crabs busied themselves away from the birds. Where they ate the sand was Spanish blue.
The horseshoe cliffs witnessed the bright lights in the sky three days before. The lightning produced a halo of prisms through torrential rain, and then something else, something unexpected. It scarred the sky for an instant, an incision through the storm and clouds to expose the void, and then it vanished.
An almighty splash on a turbulent sea and green-blue sparks followed flashing like superheated copper filings. The wind whistled long and low as it skimmed across the water disturbing the waves, then upon reaching the cliffs changed its pitch and ascended.
It took three days to reach land but the gulls spotted it immediately, adrift amongst the waves. A momentary snapping of jaws took its lower half in an instant, maybe a shark, maybe a pod.
It had no perception of the Earth, in the void all function ceased. It is the space between spaces, the smallest place between this and that, vacuous, devoid of physical properties. Exposure to the momentary rift between places sucked the living essence from everything before spitting it into the ocean.
Older scars stretched around the barrel-like shell, scars with seven talons around a centrepiece mimicking the rays of the Sun. Scars with no terrestrial association. These marks originated from the thing’s past, before the ocean and the beach, before the sharks and the whales and the crabs and the fish; before the void.
Over millennia the cliffs at St Mary’s witnessed these events unnoticed by human eyes. Expulsion from the void was nothing new. During prehistoric times detritus cast adrift would have been decimated by gigantic sea creatures. With humanity came the marvel of monsters and myth, strange fruits for human minds: Sea Devils, Marine Sows and Hoga – a monstrous fish indeed.
The thing had its place in this grand assembly. There was no evidence it was independently capable of interstellar travel. It did not reveal any secrets about its origins or its knowledge of space and time. And save for its scars the thing had no discernible markings, nothing to personalise it. There were no obvious signs of civilisation yet this thing had traveled a greater distance than any human ever created. It did not belong with the crabs and the gulls; it did not belong on the land, in the sea or in the air. It did not belong.
So, it was the crustacean and scavenger who became the first of earth’s explorers unto the unknown. Gulls cawed noisily and scavenged what they could. Crabs had better luck at the blue end and the equipment to split and pry the semi-broken bones exposing a richer bounty. Within the cavity of the things shell the explorers found other sea creatures feasting quietly in their minuscule fashion. These provided an earthly delight to the otherwise alien cuisine.
by submission | Apr 24, 2019 | Story |
Author: Alex Z. Salinas
It was the 4:30 p.m. moon, clear as a piece of holy bread on a bright blue carpet, that led him—thinking on it much later, “led” was the only word he could come up with—to kneel down and scoop baseball field dirt into his palm. He then pulled out a scrap paper from his blue jean pocket, reread the “Yes” circled in pencil by Liliana Howard—her response to his asking her to be his girlfriend—then released the dirt onto the center of the paper. He folded it into a ball and, with all his might, threw the wad as hard as he could toward the unusual afternoon moon. Whether it was a strong gust of wind, God’s miracle, something else—his wayward imaginings—the paper ball flew, ziplined, rocketed, blasted toward the far-away rock known by ancient prophets. It disappeared, never seemed to fall, defied law. It was in this moment that the boy’s head was crudely struck, popped, cracked open by a ball—a flyball—punishment for not paying attention in the outfield. Backyard baseball was a game he’d never wanted part of, never enjoyed, and as fate had it, concussed him to a dark place, a shadow prison with its own terrifying logic and black magic.
*
When they released the image, the first picture ever taken, I texted Danny right away. How could I not?
Yo, this shit is crazy. Just like you predicted.
Two minutes later, he responded. Three emojis, zero words.
I couldn’t believe it. When word spread that a picture would be coming, Danny and I somehow got talking about it during a break. One way or another, he mentioned this crazy story about being hit in the head with a baseball and then already knowing what the black hole would look like, having seen it a long time ago. “There are things we know but have forgotten,” Danny said, “even things we’ve never seen,” I told Danny he was tripping like a motherfucker. I didn’t know the extent of his crazy.
Danny smiled, all creepy, but that made me believe him somehow. I had no choice. Had there been other dudes there, an audience, I’d have known Danny was fucking with me. With all of us. But no.
That’s the thing with certain people. Spend some time with them, nobody else around, and you realize later what they say to you comes with nothing attached. No strings. No stakes. Nada. Just straight-up talk. Shit that sticks in your head and rolls around, keeps you up at night, especially when you sleep alone.
*
Danny spent his whole life at first drawing, then painting, black circles with white, sometimes yellow or orange rings around them. He didn’t know why he painted them, didn’t understand the urge or force or what some call higher calling that “led” to his peculiar art. All Danny knew, better than his family history, better than the Bible, better than his three-year-old’s birthday, better than his cheating heart, were the rings. The rings. The black circles with light rings. He sold them, people liked them, hung the canvases on their bathroom walls, but he’d’ve painted them anyway.
April 10, 2019, the release date of the first image of a black hole, was just another day for Danny. As the world at large collectively gasped, shared on social media, talked around water coolers, Danny smiled.
They’d look back at his work later and say, Thief.
But Danny was cool. He knew. Another person knew.
One person is all you need.
