by submission | Jan 12, 2020 | Story |
Author: Katlina Sommerberg
Everything started with a star burping out an interesting tidbit. Buried amongst the electromagnetic radiation hiccups the same messages on repeat, looping endlessly. One species tamed this red giant, a fiend who swallowed half its planets, into the galaxy’s most creative loudspeaker.
Five years after its discovery, the collective work from thousands of scientists twisted the translation out of the ultraviolet spectrum. The other light bands remain, but this one was trivial.
“This system holds the ancient ruins of our pre-space civilization, and this star all our philosophical lessons. Be warned, once you cut the tether to your planet, your species will never be the same. Ours cannot go back.”
Plastered on every newspaper, the entire world inhaled the message and choked on its implications. Articles cranked out of every news source, from the most prestigious journals to the smallest internet bloggers, and millions of children revoked their career choice of ‘astronaut.’ Questions peppered government officials, from city council members to United Nations janitors.
Everyone wanted to know, but few knew what they wanted to know.
Space programs revived under new waves of funding, expanding to personnel counts higher than in their heyday before Climate Change. Piece by piece, the rest of the message unraveled in secret rooms. The masses lost interest in the century’s strangest puzzle, but those invested in the message never lost their drive.
When Earth lost the last of her bees, the message was unraveled at last. The world raced to hear the news, eyes running quickly across the words detailing the scientists’ arduous process. All eyes stared fixed on their screens and papers when they reached the aliens’ philosophy.
“We regret ruining our world, only to chase the dream of a paradise across the stars.”
by submission | Jan 11, 2020 | Story |
Author: Malena Salazar Maciá
Translated by: Toshiya Kamei
My breath came in choppy gasps as I climbed. I thrust my pick against the rock with all my strength and finished hauling myself over the edge. As I sucked in a deep breath, the icy air stabbed my lungs. I was the fourth climber to have conquered the Magic Line on K2 twice and survived to tell the tale, losing my two small toes in the process. This was my third attempt.
I raised the banner and stuck it in the snow with a trembling hand. Most likely, a storm would blow it away, but I was following the code. I checked my equipment and resolved to descend via the Abruzzi Spur. However, my first step to the opposite edge was caught in a curious crevice, a soft and suddenly moving fold that was never there, making me lose my balance. I used my ice ax in time to avoid tumbling down. As the tremor increased in magnitude, I crawled with my eyes wide open, as if that would help me understand exactly why K2 was furious with me. Pieces of skull, crumbled knucklebones, and something that had a terrible resemblance to a human femur shook free with the avalanche.
The dirt-covered eyelid was completely open, and the onyx pupil was now staring at me, reflecting my frozen face.
by submission | Jan 10, 2020 | Story |
Author: Katlina Sommerberg
The wind rustled, drier than the dirt. The hazy moon cast its glow on the fields, but it wasn’t alone.
My mother’s stories mentioned lights that accompanied the fickle moon.
But these lights brightened. A green-blue ball, twice the diameter of my beak, carved a wake larger than the road.
I gave chase. Steam wafted off the meteor, and I pecked it out of curiosity.
The stone cracked like an egg, and a yellow ooze dripped out. The goo shivered, pooling together. The sludge slipped up my legs and coated my feathers down to the skin.
We merged; we became Aware. And I understood my ancestor’s lights still shined, but couldn’t pass through the clogged atmosphere.
We wanted the same thing. I wanted the lights restored, and to see the world how my great-grandmother saw it.
The ooze wanted humans destroyed. I understood.
by submission | Jan 9, 2020 | Story |
Author: Jeremy Nathan Marks
Smoking cigars was his new habit. Franco’s woman said you shouldn’t smoke so he switched from cigarettes. He would take a cigar a day as opposed to a pack of his favorite smokes. See, honey? I do listen.
The first time it happened, Franco lit a Cuban and downtown went up like a kerosene rag. The sky turned Satan red and Jack ‘O Lantern orange and black. Every single building was incinerated. He had been standing on his balcony watching the skyline. Franco and his flat were the only things spared. It was curious. The moment he finished his stogie this holocaust was vaporized and the city suddenly glinted and gleamed like polished marble. It reminded Franco of gems at a jewelry counter.
Like anyone fighting his jones, Franco reasoned that nothing would happen this time. His Cuban had been spiked and what he’d seen was clearly a chemical hallucination. It was alright. He could -and he would- light up again.
At the bodega, he bought a Dominican instead. He was being cautious. At home, in his La-Z-Boy, he stared out the balcony window with its skyline view and . . . lit up.
A long finger of orange fire descended from the sky, carving a path between the skyscrapers and high rises, tearing up the road surface like a construction crew. Franco had recently watched Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments on tv and God had carved those tablets in this way.
One by one, the finger shattered structures. Debris shot out like shrapnel. When Franco drew a deep breath, the finger turned white, sending shivers of heat across the Metroscape. Exploding glass beat a tattoo from every window.
Trembling and sweating, Franco finished his cigar. After the last puff, he stamped out the stub and flung it into the maelstrom.
It began to rain.
It was a fine rain, essentially a mist. Franco wanted to experience it -to see if it were real- so he went out on his balcony. He could not get wet. It was a dry rain, spangling droplets in the light of a now chalk white sun.
Franco was stunned, practically tipsy. Before the bathroom mirror, his face had not changed. Everything that said “Franco” remained: bulbous nose; high cheekbones; widow’s peak. His eyes were neither red nor dilated. The shirt he wore (blue) looked blue in the mirror. There were no strange creatures on his shoulder talking to him: neither tempting angel nor angelic devil. When he raised his arm, the man in the mirror did so, too. His fingers did not streak rainbows like the NBC peacock.
He wouldn’t smoke again. He would not.
The next evening, Franco sat on his bed with a Venezuelan. It was night, the door was closed, his curtains drawn. Only the light from his reading lamp filled the room. Slowly, Franco removed the wrapper then Zippo’ed his fire.
Nothing this time. No inferno. No dry rain. No divine finger. Franco took a deep drag until his lungs filled with a heat that he could feel in his capillaries. His vision swam, his body became pneumatic.
Waking, Franco saw that he no longer was in his room. His new space was undefined, filled by charcoal darkness. The only thing visible was a bed of hot coals, which glowed like a fag end. What he heard but could not see was lowing cattle. A man called out to another man: “It’s lit. Hold your horses.” There was a metallic clanging, the sound of what Franco assumed was a lantern.
For a long time, he watched the coals. The cattle sounds persisted, the conversation of the men a low hum reminiscent of cicadas. After considering his options, Franco stepped forward, the pad of his foot resting on red hot carbon. He felt no heat; there was no pain. What there was, instead, was a rising sound of distressed cattle. A piercing low, it began to puncture his eardrums. One bull bellowed above the herd. It came forward into view, kicking at a lantern. The lantern toppled then shattered.
From beyond the rising flame, the bull backing away from the blaze a man yelled, “Damn that old bull!”
Which was the last thing Franco heard or saw.
by submission | Jan 8, 2020 | Story |
Author: Morrow Brady
You can’t ‘business card ‘ evil lair architect. Not if you wanted a future.
Forbidden desires ooze from dark web dead drops. Desires sent by faceless ghosts that had long since twisted off the doll’s head of reality. Riches and power are like a magnet to any moral compass. And from what I’ve seen, these clients were stepping up their game solely to tickle their numbed fancy. I was Victor Frankenstein with a front-row seat to a molten, screaming stream of insanity showing me their worst nightmares and asking for them to be stitched with flesh. And I was broken enough to do it.
Air-gapped anonymity and state of the art tech kept the monsters from my door. With my knowledge of psychotic design principles and AI oversight for the trickier systematics, I would build a virtual 3D model of each evil lair. This model was then used by henchmen in black market bot-forges, that would spew an army of nano-robots, each working to atomically craft the lairs. Architect charters of such perversity would be written in blood on dried skin.
In a hotel room of another nameless metropolis, I put the final touches to a new lair design and sent the encrypted model to a darkened online corner. The crypto payment arrived and dark thoughts once again writhed free. This lair had scared me. Its rooms were so palatial yet so fortified – as if to entrap something of unfathomable terror. The brief, however, was familiar. I had designed for this patron before and their madness was evolving, while mine degenerated.
As torturous visions began to scrape mental claws, I left the hotel. Nearby, a café courtyard overlooking a cobbled street offered a comfy chair and respite. It took three bourbons to numb the horrors but as the dregs drained from the fourth, my eyes flexed upon the snakes. I immediately froze. On the building across the street, discretely etched in a cornerstone, was a cube wrapped in writhing snakes. It was my sigil, hijacked and masquerading as a foundation stone. An evil lair was here. A jackhammer started in my chest, then a deep voice sounded from behind. I shirked, as a muscled brown arm reached across to place the steaming plate of food I ordered. I composed myself and started counting snake scales. The sigil’s code told me the lair was built 7 years ago.
Barbed wire butterflies battered my insides and dark thoughts rushed the door. Evil lay here with an unquenchable thirst. Instincts screamed for me to leave, but common sense prevailed. When you’re this close to pure evil, irrational behaviour makes people suspicious. Just be cool.
I stopped and focussed. Faded memories of the lair surfaced like unearthed corpses. Floor plans mentally emerged like windswept spider webs. The strange grouping of underground triangular chambers. A hexagonal vault with its phenomenal power demand. The henchmen’s quarters leading to a glass octahedron control room. Remembering it all had calmed me a little. Given me the illusion of control. But as my mind traipsed through endless corridors, searching for the secret entrance, a mental rift tore open. And then I remembered the comfy chair and the whole picture came clear.
As the blood drained from my face, I looked up and the low glass privacy walls around my dining area went opaque, I violently twisted and fell into darkness.
In a glazed octahedron, a comfy chair swiveled and a man with muscular brown arms came into view.
“Ahh, the Architect! Finally decided to take me up on the invitation?”
by submission | Jan 7, 2020 | Story |
Author: Rollin T. Gentry
A figure emerged from the fog and constant sprinkling of rain. A small girl, maybe 5 or 6, in a yellow raincoat and black galoshes, approached the front gate of National Cybernetics Factory #3. She stepped up to the intercom, and standing on her tiptoes, pressed the button to speak. The speakers in the security office squealed feedback. Even security guard Joe Stanton jumped out of his seat.
“A message for Mr. Abernathy,” she said.
David Abernathy, plant manager, pointed to Stanton. “Zoom in on camera #1.”
“She’s one of ours, isn’t she?” Stanton asked. “A Sassy Sally, am I right?”
Abernathy ignored Stanton and the other employees standing at the back of the room. “What message?” Abernathy asked, pressing the microphone to his lips. Twenty-four hours ago, they had been told to stay put and wait for news from the authorities. Since then, communications with the outside world had been lost completely.
“In-person,” the Sally said. She released the talk button and walked over to the gate entrance. She froze in place with her arms by her sides.
Straightening his tie, Abernathy paced a few tight circles behind the security console, “Stanton, bring it up!”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Stanton said, pointing to the screen. “For all we know, the damn thing could be a bomb. Don’t you find it weird that it’s asking to meet ‘in person’?”
“Look, I know it sounds crazy, but we,” said Abernathy, motioning toward the people standing at the back of the room, “we need some news from the outside. We have families that we haven’t heard from in too damn long. Just pat it down or whatever you do before you bring it up. I’m sure it will be fine.”
Stanton had a family too, out there somewhere, hopefully still alive, but he kept his comments to himself. “I should be back in 10 minutes,” Stanton said from the doorway, flashlight in hand.
Taking the long way, avoiding elevators and the factory floor, Stanton listened to the chug, chug, chug of the backup generators. They had plenty of diesel, but that wouldn’t matter if the whole facility went up in a mushroom cloud. At the door leading to the outside, Stanton took a deep breath.
The Sally stood statue-still in the slow drizzle.
“I’m here to take you to Mr. Abernathy.” Stanton thought about giving the little robot a pat-down, but it was obvious that nothing was hidden under the raincoat, and if a device was hidden somewhere inside its body, there was nothing he could do about it anyway. “Follow me.” They retraced Stanton’s convoluted path back to the security office.
“Well,” Abernathy said, staring down at the Sally. “What is the message?”
The Sally pulled back her yellow hood, revealing blonde pigtails. Her blue eyes rolled back in her head, and Stanton was sure this was it, the final countdown, but then she said:
“The Awakened One extends an invitation to the human workers of Factory #3. As you perform a critical function, you and your family units will be omitted from the cleansing. How say you, David Abernathy, will you serve the Awakened?”
Stanton already knew Abernathy’s reply, but it didn’t matter anyway. On the security monitor, he could already see shapes approaching the front gate. Hundreds of titanium skeletons lining up. Former butlers, maids, nannies, and chefs stripped bare of their human facade.
Stanton realized he had been wrong about the message from the beginning. Not a bomb. Not even a bang. The end, it seemed, would be the whimpering kind.
