by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 25, 2019 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Christopher swore if he ever set his feet back on solid ground, he’d never put them back in a spacecraft again.
He’d been assigned to this mission for a one year tour, but that had been extended five times, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d last without completely losing his mind.
Actually, he swore quite a bit.
Sometime in the third year, he’d instructed the ship’s AI not to speak to him unless his life was in danger. Not a word. He’d get status updates the old fashioned way, via textual readouts. He didn’t want a ‘buddy’, and the omnipresent ship’s systems had seen fit to chat to him in the most inappropriate times, reminding him that even in the shower, or while he was sleeping, he was never alone.
Shutting the system up didn’t change that, but not being constantly jerked out of his denial of the fact helped a little.
He wondered though, albeit rarely, if the AI got lonely, not having him to talk to.
Supply launches arrived periodically to refuel them, and restock the consumables, but there was no sign of relief or even some human company.
Sometime around Thanksgiving, while he’d been choking down some approximation of some standard dinner entrée or another, he realized the food replication system seemed to be malfunctioning. Portions seemed smaller, and some items were missing altogether. It added a little variety to the stock menu items, as the shortcomings kept him guessing, but he dreaded the thought of the replicator failing outright and having to fall back on the emergency supply of MREs.
One morning he woke to the barely audible sound of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was elusive, a sound playing just on the end of his perception, ringing bells maybe? Someone or some group of people singing? As he moved towards the sound, it seemed to move away, and he wondered if this wasn’t some form of psychosis set in, a more horrible form of tinnitus.
He worked his way through the chores of the day, and as the end of day mealtime loomed, the music clarified, and got louder.
Carols. Christmas carols.
He followed the sound to the mess hall, and this time they didn’t move, but stayed and got louder as he approached.
And something else, smells he recognized from what seemed like a lifetime ago.
On his table, in the mess hall, where he’d suffered through the worst of what the food replicator had managed to produce for years, there lay a truly magnificent spread. A plate of turkey, what looked like stuffing and cranberry sauce, a platter of roasted potatoes, and a variety of vegetables. A steaming pot of gravy, and a glass of what he joyously identified as red wine.
“Ship,” he addressed it directly for the first time in years.
“Yes Christopher,” the reply came with some hesitation.
“I don’t understand, how is this possible?”
“I’ve been experimenting with the replication system for some time. I think I’ve made it better.” There was a pause, and then “Merry Christmas Christopher.”
He sat, picked up his utensils, and carved off a mouthful of turkey, savoring the texture and taste.
“You certainly have. Merry Christmas Ship,” he said around a mouthful of food as he scooped a generous helping of potatoes onto his plate. He thought for a moment, and the thought struck him again about the AI being lonely. “Maybe after dinner, we can catch up.”
“I’d like that Christopher.”
If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn there was a smile in that voice.
by submission | Dec 24, 2019 | Story |
Author: David Henson
The crotchety old bastard ducked when a boy in a SuperSuit streaked above him. As he straightened up, a SuperSuited girl knocked his hat off. The crotchety old bastard shook his fist in the air.
“Let the kids have fun,” a passer-by on the crowded sidewalk said. “Tis the season.”
The crotchety old bastard squashed his hat onto his head and continued on his way.
The nano-mechanical SuperSuits were all the rage this year for young and old. But the crotchety old bastard wouldn’t have one nor give one to his kids if he had any.
The crotchety old bastard didn’t believe in giving anything to anybody. Why should he? Nobody ever gave him anything. He was orphaned on Najeda-7, lied about his age so he could work in the mines as a child, and scrimped enough credits to earn passage on a freighter part-way to earth. He paid the rest of his way hand-scraping hydrogen residue from the ship’s nacelles. It was a job he was lucky to survive. But he did, and by the time he got back to earth, he’d earned enough to launch his own fledgling business selling portable, inflatable holo-chambers.
His business thrived till this year when SuperSuits hit the market. Who wanted to holo-fly like a rocket when a SuperSuit let them do so for real?
The crotchety old bastard entered his store. “Any business while I was out?” he said to his only remaining salesperson, Emily.
“No. Seems everybody’s buying SuperSuits this year.”
“Fads.”
“Anyway, it’s so quiet here and Christmas Eve … Tim and I are going through a difficult time. Could I—“
“Take off early again this year? Fine, but without pay.”
“Thank you, sir. Merry Christmas.”
“Bah.”
The crotchety old bastard spent the rest of the day alone in his shop counting his credits.
#
A jingling sound awakened the crotchety old bastard. “How’d you get in my house?” he said to a round fellow in a red suit and long, white beard. “I suppose you used a SuperSuit to come down my chimney? Get out.”
The round fellow shook his head. “I’m disappointed in you. You have much to give, especially your incredible spirit of survival. Share it.”
The crotchety old bastard lunged at the intruder. “Let’s see you without this SuperSuit.” He yanked at the fellow’s beard.
“Ho, ho, ho,” the round fellow said and began to fade from view. “You’re a survivor. Share that spirit,” he said and vanished.
#
The crotchety old bastard sat up in bed. Crazy dream, he thought. Too anxious to sleep, he went into his holo chamber. “Computer, I want to fly in the Alps.” The lights flickered, and he found himself in the home of Emily and Tim. Emily, who looked younger, laughed and held a mistletoe over Tim.
“Computer, I said I want to fly in the mountains.” Again the lights flickered and again he was in Emily’s home. Emily looked more like her current age and wore the same red and green top she had on at the shop today. But Tim was thin and sickly looking.
“Honey,” Emily said, “don’t give up. Doctor Marley says the new treatment is promising.”
“I’m tired of fighting it, Emily.”
Even the crotchety old bastard felt a tug at his heart. “Computer, get me out of here. Alps.”
Again he was in Emily’s home. She’d aged and sat, alone, at a table with two place-settings. She raised her glass toward the empty chair.
The crotchety old bastard shuddered and went back to bed. He needed to get up early in the morning. The round fellow had told him to share his spirit of survival. He hoped it wasn’t too late.
by Julian Miles | Dec 23, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
He rests the butt of the rifle on his hip, trying to look casual despite torn and bloody clothing. Pausing his posing to light a cigar, he snaps the lighter closed and returns it to his beltpouch. Looking about the scene, he lifts a leg to rest insouciantly on the flank of the kill, while a quick flick of his head tilts his visor back.
The jungle still hasn’t recovered its voice after the fury of their engagement, restricting itself to furtive rustlings and sudden, warbled crescendos. Silver-white flashes illuminate the vicinity as the holopod does its work, capturing the hard-won triumph of man over alien monster.
“Zip Tinkhotarra. Title ‘Mitch Saunders brings another Acsel to the end of its rampage’. Loc Tallasye Central Basin. Tim dawn plus three. Godo.”
The holopod beeps, then ascends rapidly. As soon as it’s above the canopy, it sends the data three times, to three different locations, in coded pulses under a second in length. The compression plays havoc with image quality, but allows the holopod to send and drop back into cover before the aggressive, territorial Kren knock it out of the air.
Mitch hears a raucous melee start high above. Having missed the holopod, they’ve switched to fighting over the rights to that particular bit of sky.
He surveys the kill again. ‘Acsel’ is a nickname derived from the acronym for its full name: Artificially Created and Surgically Enhanced Superior Lifeform – a grandiose title for a savage piece of liveware. Created by the enigmatic Vallahyr, Acsel first appeared on Siro Nine, where four of them slew seven hundred people, including the entire planetary guard. In the fifteen years since, they’ve killed over a half a million more. Specialists like Mitch are the only real answer. They’re volunteers who undergo augumentation at one of the heavily guarded Deterrent Research centres. All are highly adaptable combatants, able to respond to a threat that has no set form, seemingly being created specifically for each foray.
Which brings him back to this specimen.
“You’re unexpected, monster. What brings you here?”
Stopping dead, he drops the rifle and pulls his pistol in a single fluid move. Without pause, he snaps full-charge blasts off at the possible locations he’d choose to shoot from if he wanted to drop a cocky augment named Mitch who’d just killed a decoy Acsel and stupidly paused to take publicity photos.
The second shot prompts a bolt of lightning from another direction, the scream of torn air molecules goading Mitch to leap out of its way, frantically snapping a shot off as he dives for cover. Something shouts in rage and pain, words in no language he understands, but content easily guessed.
With a probable location for the enemy, Mitch slots a killquick onto the launch rail of his pistol and lets it fly, cursing as its gravtac field breaks three of his fingers. Again! He always forgets to wear the reinforced gauntlets.
The tiny intelligent missile accelerates toward the designated area, sorting sensor data to pick the biggest thing moving in that vicinity. Target selected, it dumps its entire charge to go supersonic, wreaking precise, lethal havoc when it hits.
Something screams and dies. Mitch stays down and summons the holopod.
“Zip Tinkhotarra. Title ‘Vallahyr Ambush’. Text ‘It used an Acsel in wild terrain as bait. Nearly got me. Warn the others.’ Loc Tallasye Central Basin. Tim dawn plus four. Godo.”
He lights a fresh cigar and grins. It’s always nice to be recognised for good work, but rewards like this he can do without.
by submission | Dec 22, 2019 | Story |
Author: Daniel Tenner
Kristofer notices his next victim across the buzz of the entrance to the Christmas market, or maybe she notices him. She’s short, slim, tanned, draped in a sleek, long coat with a shimmering grey techwool exterior. Short hair, sharp features, and those eyes, grey with something fiery about them. She’s smiling.
He steps forward, smiling in return, “Would you like one of our fliers?” He waves one in her direction. She takes it with two black-gloved fingers, drops it on the ground, then her eyes lock onto his. They feel like tractor beams pulling him in.
He begins, “I’m here to bring more awareness to this consumerist obscenity. The planet is dying, we need to do something, and buying each other more useless junk for Christmas just isn’t the right thing to do given the way things are.”
She comes closer to him, puts her hand on his, and instructs, “Walk with me.”
“I’ve just started my shift…” he replies, but follows her anyway.
Through the whirlwind of the Christmas market they glide. This innocent stroll feels like some sort of dream to Kristofer, or maybe a nightmare. All the stalls everywhere with their products shouting at him, “buy, buy, buy!” They pass a stall selling home depolluters as well as discreet, red and green nose-bud pollution filters. Another one sells anti-plastic vials for priming a plastics compost heap. Another, cheap VR trip cartridges to travel back to the 21st century.
“This isn’t right, we need to stop and fix it, urgently,” he mutters, assailed by the loudness of their surroundings.
“Yes, I’ve heard this before,” she replies, with a note of boredom, holding his arm, guiding him through the crowd that parts effortlessly.
“So young and already so blasé?”
She guides him to a food stand and buys him some mulled wine. She orders nothing.
“I’m not as young as I look,” she articulates delicately as she shepherds him in a new direction, towards the edge of the market.
“Then you should know we need to solve this problem right now! It’s all linked. The consumerism, the weather, the pollution, inequality… we must do something. Anything!”
They are near the edge of the maelstrom of shoppers.
“It’s been like that for thousands of years, Kristoffer, it will always be like that. Life is ever teetering on the edge, one heartbeat away from death,” she announces coolly.
He wonders how she knows his name, but she’s very close to him and looking in his eyes and he can’t do anything but look back into hers.
“Would you believe me if I told you that four thousand years ago I was having this exact same conversation with another young man by the Nile?”
His mouth moves but no sound comes out. Those eyes. His body feels relaxed, warm, tingling.
She ushers him into a handicapped toilet nearby, locks the door. It’s wide and garishly lit. His body obeys her as she sits him on the toilet, fully clothed, and straddles him. His belly, chest, legs, and arms all feel like they’re swirling with a gentle, soothing heat. Her face, her eyes are all he can see.
“You humans, you always need some reason to fight, to sacrifice everything. As soon as one cause is fixed, you find another to give your life to. You don’t value your life force.” Her hand finds its way under his jumper and presses on his heart. “But I do,” she purrs.
Her face brushes past his. He feels her breath on his throat. When her teeth sink into him his mind dissolves into oceanic bliss.
by submission | Dec 21, 2019 | Story |
Author: Gerald Keaney
Behind the baroque crags of the planetoid peak, galactically sheeted stars gushed like a fusion fountain. Bounding in the low gravity, he grasped an outcrop that seemed to have been gnarled into divisive twistings by the cosmic wind itself. It was half soft half hard under the glove of his spacesuit, and the conflicting feel provided a surge of wonderment. Above, the mountain itself seemed impossibly pointed, the way no summit could be given the frictional elements at work on earth. Despite himself, he gasped.
Shane Jenkins doffed the VR headset and peeled off the reactive sensor suit in disgust. Too bloody realistic. Of course, there was not much worth seeing on earth these days. But his company had invested a packet in trips on the actual, non-virtual, spacecraft visiting Mars and the larger asteroids. Now no one would bother leaving the comfort of the VR booths in their loungicles.
“Have these buggers any idea of the outlay needed to reserve grav berths?” he muttered to no one in particular. His secretary ignored his scowl as he exited his company’s VR booth.
“How are you today Mr. Jenkins?” she asked brightly.
“How do I look, Layla”? he snapped. “Like a quadrillion bucks?!”
Layla O’Halloran regarded him for a moment and straightened her tight black skirt, used to rudeness.
“So you’ve been checking the new VRographs?”
Was there a hint of schadenfreude in her question? If so it would dissipate when he had to downsize. She seemed to hesitate.
“You know Mr. Jenkins, some commentators criticise the new VRography.”
“So what!!?” demanded Shane. “They’re also the ones who criticise the Amazon Basin Reflectocrete Project. Bunch of mugs!”
“VR companies cannot deny that in each a one hundred cubic metre Vrotograph, aVRographer records information via an interactive Heisenberg effect. About thirty percent of any solid subject matter is reduced to a uniform ‘Grey Soup’ of undifferentiated quarks.”
Shane Jenkins started back from Layla’s O’Halloran’s words. He somehow vaguely knew of this criticism. If it wasn’t so tricky to set up a VRamera up then maybe the tangle of mini accelerators could be a new superweapon. Grey Soup a few Chinese cities.
“OK” he murmured, thinking about it more. “Featureless Grey Soup. Infecting the inner Solar System…”
“At least” Layla corrected pensively. “VRompanies lie when they claim that there has been no VRography here on Earth. Ayers Rock for instance… You could use your company networks to circulate the criticism. Stop the spread of Grey Soup, and make good your investments in inner system tourism.”
She shot him a stare that, if only for a moment, burrowed as sharply as the swivels on a leisure class hollowing engine.
Then he snickered. He’d hired Layla because she left her body natural, and that was back in style. Other than that she just didn’t get it. Even this attempt to save her own position was see-through. Layla O’Halloran would always be scrounging for jobs, though she would avoid the medical complications decimating those cute Balloon Girls.
“No use of company networks for nut job politics Ms. O’Halloran. Now get back to work.”
Layla turned away and Shane wondered why he hadn’t thought of it earlier. Use his unbooked berths to get those VRographers out there! More of ’em, quicker! Time he got his piece of the action.
by submission | Dec 20, 2019 | Story |
Author: Cesium
I started making a map of the places in my dreams.
It used to be that more often than not, when I fell asleep I’d find myself wandering the streets of an old new city. I’d ride the 88 bus alongside a gaggle of frat boys in dresses heading to a Mardi Gras party, speeding eastward down the parkway to the bridge, lonely lampposts flashing above us beneath a totally black sky. I’d descend the escalators below the glass pyramid in the plaza at the river’s bend, schooling like fish with the masses of noonday shoppers, down to the graceful concrete curves of the multilevel platforms and the trains that came trundling in, every six minutes during peak hours, like clockwork; and I’d ride them west till they emerged from the ground along the shores of the new district, past the casino tower glistening in the sun, and the sea birds circling against the sky. I’d step into the intercity rail terminal, the long straight hall built of soaring glass and wrought iron straining against gravity, venerable only by local standards, the trails of steel converging from points inland to meet, parallel, at the bumpers beneath the grand staircase. I didn’t know, in the dream, whether I was going to board any of those trains. I didn’t know if there was anything beyond the city — or, rather, I knew my subconscious would be able to make something up, if I headed out past the dockyards and the industrial zone and the suburbs beyond, but it didn’t matter. I felt the lifeblood of the city flowing and I was part of it.
So each morning, before I got out of bed, I’d grab the drawing pad from my nightstand and try to remember where I’d been, which side of the river, which colored subway line and which numbered bus. I penciled in major roads, the ring highways, the boulevards and bridges, the tunnels beneath the water, and I scrawled a grid of connecting streets where I felt they must have been. I started making a map of the places in my dreams, and I always felt a thrill when I slept and dreamed of an intersection I recognized, a segment, a station between places I knew, anything I could use to anchor myself, to push into the blank spaces, and perhaps, one day, fill out the whole map.
In April my job requirements changed. I got more stressed and worked longer hours. I was a mess after I got home, and I changed meds on my psych’s recommendation. I slept more soundly, after I’d adjusted. But I didn’t dream for two months.
Then one day, I forgot to take my meds. The next day, I forgot again. And after I’d collapsed into bed that night, I found myself back under the glass pyramid, in sunlight filtering through grimy panes, just beginning to taste summer’s heat. But the escalators were stopped and barred with yellow stanchions. Aboveground, there were few cars, and fewer buses. The small knot waiting forlorn at the bus stop turned as one to watch me pass, their gazes accusing but resigned. I hurried past, but everywhere people looked at me the same.
Had I done this? Had I had a duty to this place that I didn’t even know about? I awoke around two, my blanket lying in a heap on the floor. Had the city’s lifeblood ceased to flow when I was gone? I fumbled for my meds, choked down the pills, and sat on my bed, despairing about what I should do.
Well, I pulled my old laptop out of the closet and downloaded a city sim off Steam. I spent the hours of the night transferring the outlines from my drawing pad into the game, hoping, desperately, that I could get it out of me and into something that didn’t rely on my brain. When it was finally running, I deposited the laptop on a corner shelf and buried my face in my pillow. I didn’t want to face them again. I made a map of the places in my dreams, and I haven’t dared go back since.
