by submission | Jan 22, 2020 | Story |
Author: Arkapravo Bhaumik
“No, it is not that. It is not bio-engineering. Bio-engineering is a lot slower. This is on a planetary scale. Bio-engineering cannot do this, this is mother nature.” Alec said.
“Then? The turtles just got together and found the secrets to the atomic structure? Higher mathematics? And they can work together as a hive mind spread across the entire planet? The latest reports suggest they had started with plans to design technology – somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.” I said in bewilderment.
“You see, it has been forty-three days and they already know more than what humanity has known in its entire existence. It is a leap of evolution. Have you never wondered how one fine day an ape started walking upright and in less than forty-thousand years we became a space-faring civilization?” Alec said.
“Alec, Gwen … have you read this?” It was John with his mobile phone.
“Oh God! Really? Why did the military attack them again?” I said as we read the news article.
“It seems they are using psyche as a technology. And, amalgamated across five billion turtle brains it really works well. One hundred seventy-three military and civilians dead, and like last time, the nuke has been rendered sterile. This scares me.” Alec said
“It will only get worse from here. The turtles know now that we are their enemy. As the second-best intelligent species – we may either be made to be their slaves, or worse, be eliminated” John said.
“A faster strand of evolution, we have enjoyed that privilege for a long time. Now, nature has made another selection. It was always in the cards – we never connected at a higher level of humanity, and hate, greed, and acquisition were our dominant social tools for cohesion” Alec said.
“Humanity, so, will it be Turtle-ity next? I am assuming that they are able to communicate at a level of language – social exchange of ideas” I said.
“Maybe they just don’t need to. It is as if each one of them opens up their minds to the rest of them, and they ‘see’ the thoughts like a movie on the screen of their minds – no language or gestures – walk into my mind. Turtles have often been connected to Zen Buddhism, it may be a link to their wisdom and their harmonious working, as they are showing now.” Alec said.
“So, what happens next?” I asked
“The two most intelligent species will contest for the planet, and one way or another, the lesser intelligent one will lose,” Alec said.
by Hari Navarro | Jan 21, 2020 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
I began in the winter. My sister’s legs spread as bloodied wings atop the kitchen table and I secrete from her womb. Into the breach I fold, a sluice of screaming muscle and I barge through shuddering thighs in a gush of amniotic tabletop wash.
My youth comes to me in fragments, violent images that flutter down like crumpled Polaroids and dissolve against my beading midnight skin. Flakes so vitriolic, so stunning in the purity of their agony that they would have me beg – no – crave to slip beneath the bubbling comfort of an acid bath’s sweet caustic wrap. Or, as the pain drew me to hate all that I saw, claw for the sickening release of a straight-edge razor’s slow corneal caress.
“What are you thinking father?”, asks my five-year-old self.
“I thought your sister an angel”.
I was six the last time I saw him, I was six and he was sick. His mind eaten through by the gorging worm of obsession. His intellect, sagging in the deep of the iris black like a chute caught hitched atop a tree of rapier thorns.
As my memory’s sticky filth clings as much as it molts, I taste again the stringent zing. It films the roof of my mouth and sings in notes of sweat and ripping pain. It crackles my jaw and dribbles down my thigh. It is doctrine. It is god and gods. See them, the devious daemons and voyeuristic deities that huddle between these words. Words I shouldn’t think let alone speak.
Beware their followers – the sycophant adherents whom mass at their feet. Fear them most, for they are not hobbled by the constraints of fiction. They that are men.
These slaves to an alien master would shepherd my youth, a few bad apples they say. But it is not apples that rip so ravenously at innocence, only to leave it to fester and curdle in darkness – voiceless and alone. They are rapists. But the analogy does hold true in that spoiling fruits do cast a furry cloak of ruin across all that stand at their side, where not even the basket that holds them escapes the creeping decay.
I was to grow up in such a building, one upon which the spores of abuse had long dusted every inch from sacristy to narthex. A tired old facade that shone no less as it enticed with its surly mask of goodness and light. A mask that slid askew the moment I first heard the cries in the night and knew there was darkness at bay.
It that tugs at my hair as I sleep alone in a room empty but for me. They the creeps that creep between stone and plaster and stand atop volumes of scripture, clambering to reach the hole in the wall that faces the foot of my bed. Supposed peers to peer upon my body – rest and motion. Their cold vitreous cradled in sockets caked with the shed scales of evil absolved. At once so celibate, so obedient; they who would anoint me with adoration most foul.
An old familiar scent brushes the edge of my pillow, and he again whispers into my ear.
“Don’t hate me, Frances, I was commanded to lay with your kind and propagate a god, to bring forth a true child of the heavens. I truly thought I was the one for you, as I did with your dear mother. But I step aside for the convocation has spoken, my replacement awaits… so go now, you have such wondrous work to do”.
by Julian Miles | Jan 20, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Caelsri stalks about the clearing, swearing softly, reading the signs. Her wolf pack has been chased off by her latest finds. Thinking of which, where are those ice-brained bucketheads, anyway?
The change of attention saves her life.
She ducks as a slavering warlupe lunges for her head, it’s two companions charging from the side. Crouching hard, she unwinds and launches herself between them.
“Stinky, ungrateful, half-thawed…!”
She slashes her dagger along the gut of the nearest. Drag from that angles her rightward and drops her sooner than anticipated: the tips of her ears get sprayed in drool as the jaws of the first attacker snap shut where her head would have been.
Backflipping out of the way, she braces herself. Things are about to get-
Something flashes past her and tears into the nearest warlupe.
Funny how – for all that his chassis is a cat skeleton – Skreetas always reminds her of a snake when he’s fighting. It’s the straight line striking. No curves. No evasion. All focussed aggression while relying on the ancient alloys of his hide to baffle any retaliation.
The warlupe not engaged in disentangling it’s back legs from its entrails wheels about and charges – for two steps. Graal slams down from the cliff above, using the warlupe as a soft landing. It explodes, covering everything for a dozen strides in gore.
“They really do smell worse on the inside.”
Graal rolls off the impromptu cadaver rug, stands up and shakes himself before she can do anything. Something wet, warm and trailing wires bounces off her head.
“Whatever that was, I don’t want to know.”
“Urff.”
She slaps the angular, long-fanged head away.
“No, I’m not happy about it. You could have just torn its head off.”
“Noffun.”
“Fun? I’ve lost my wolves and the three oldest bio-enhanced I’ve ever thawed. Five moons to bring them back. Five moons! What am I going to do for numbers now? You’re good but you’re unique. Likewise Skreetas. If I could get another one of either of you, I could claim pack right.”
There’s a yelp and a gristly ‘crunch’.
All three of them spin to see the back half of a warlupe hanging from the fangs of a sizeable reptile. The eviscerated warlupe had chewed its guts off and leapt to attack. The lizard had simply lunged from cover to catch airborne prey.
Worn golden armour is bonded to its already impressive scales. Bright eyes regard them with more than brute curiosity. It spits the half-carcass out.
“Thorry. Y’rr kill?”
Caelsri waves her hand: “Enough to share. I thought Dahans gone for good?”
“M’exile.”
Another stray predator, and a smart one at that. With a smile, she looks toward Graal. He nods. Beyond him, Skreetas settles, lifting his claws so he can scour them using the heat ray mounted in his tail. No objections, then.
“We need reliable fighters to make a pack.” She gestures to the bodies: “These turned on me.”
The half-carcass disappears in two gulps and minimal chewing.
“Join?”
Graal ambles over to the Dahan. They sniff each other. Graal pushes the other half-carcass over. Caelsri joins them as the reptile finishes eating that warlupe and starts eyeing up the other recognisable carcass.
“You have a name?”
“Eth’l.”
“I’m Caelsri. Wolf-thing is Graal. Cat-thing is Skreetas.”
“We?”
“Are Sturmgeirr. We roam, we collect, we defend if called. The horizon is our home.”
“And food?”
She chuckles: “Yes, you can eat the other carcass. After that, we’re off hunting for treasure, and more walking relics.”
Skreetas squalls in outrage.
Graal barks a laugh.
by submission | Jan 19, 2020 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Would you finish the ceremonies, please?” The Prime, the sanctuary’s leader in white robes with gold armbands, stood over the clear casing where the body of an honored captain lay in state, waiting for family and friends to attend.
“Yes, thank you for this tribute opportunity,” the assistant responded, proceeding to read standard litany, as his master licked his tongues across the corpse’s imperceptible containment:
Sky onward, dark or light, though
I cast the shadow of my way
Let all who touch this hallowed space
Renew all memories of my place
That I spared not my regard
To travel far
Anew
To open pathways for my race
“Have any arrived yet to touch his crystal?” asked the Prime. His assistant searched a monitor behind the preservation casings for news.
“None, sir,” he replied. Full red robes draped over the attention prelate, slightly drifting over dark stone floors. Endless rows of embalmed pilots stretched beyond the cave’s light, miles beyond to other caverns.
“I have savored in his travels, by licking his casing. How wonderful to have genetic memories transmitted simply through taste. What marvel to know his life and its burdens, successes, and wonders. May the tongue always know the tale.”
“May the tongue always know the tale,” repeated the prelate.
A shudder struck the cave walls for a moment.
“We were safe here, once,” the Prime stated, coldly. “And yet they come again, drilling down into this deep sanctuary. For millions of years, we promised those who traveled and explored space’s farthest regions this blue oasis for eternal memory and blessed rest. We have hidden away in such inaccessible corners, beneath this world’s most inhospitable lands of desert, snow, jungle…and far underneath the deepest surfaces of sea and rock. Still, these intruders come, to defile sanctified places for our dead.”
“Can we preserve our beloved wanderers?”
“Yes,” the Prime replied. “We have interfered far too long by stabilizing this planet’s atmosphere while diverting enormous numbers of rocky intruders from this solar system as these hairy beings evolved. No more. We have tried to sit with their leaders…tried to warn them away by establishing our mausoleums in dreadful locations, too dangerous for their travel, so our resting places became feared as evil and haunted. These two-legged ones have no respect for consecrated ground…not even their own.”
“Then we must move from this promised place?”
“No, the changes will come soon. The Council has withdrawn its protective fields. After the planet’s surface renews we will continue our work without interruption.”
“And the furry ones’ space voyagers? No use for a place here to honor their brave travelers when their species is gone?”
“That opportunity has long passed. The Russians considered our offer once but withdrew, but the others…they are not ready for such admiration. They deny we exist. They deny we visit or have worked diligently to prevent harmful impacts on their genetic growth, withholding our advanced influence. In due course, we must return that favor of apartheid by ignoring their existence. Now, let us go to our latest arrival and lick to her memory of glory.”
The two ancient Earth beings slid slowly to a newly opened section of the cavern beneath Mount Shasta as the previous pilot’s family circled through California airspace, waiting to penetrate the primordial volcano’s landing-bay entrance.
by submission | Jan 18, 2020 | Story |
Author: Janet Shell Anderson
Years ago, a grad student reviewing data from a radio telescope in Ohio, found indications that a signal, possibly from a ship in space, was among all the meaningless noise the telescope had detected. He marked “Wow” in the margin.
Alien Abduction! Little green men!! Hurricanes!!! World’s End!!!
Hurricane Elspeth’s bearing down on Perry Austrian Baldwin, the Vice Pres, and his estate, Florabella, in Florida. I’m Eudora Pennifer, divorce attorney, Perry’s fifth cousin. He’s in a panic. Someone just got another Wow signal on the Ohio State University radio telescope that had been mothballed for ages. Something out there is angry.
POTUS had some kind of episode tweeting here at my cuz’s mansion in DelRay/GulfStream, at three a.m. last night. Did something out there pick up the transmission?
Has POTUS infuriated Little Green Men? He’s called whole continents shitholes, worse. What exactly did he tweet? Is there going to be divine retribution, or just lunch?
The atmosphere’s tense.
In the Coastal Waterway at the end of the lawn just beyond Perry’s yacht, the talking manatees have heard about the Wow signal. A teacup, pot-bellied pig strolls by and says something in German. Rainbow marmosets scream obscenities, and all Perry’s hybrid pygmy mammoths are huddled at the shallow end of his infinity pool and refuse to come out.
I’m here to talk to Perry about the Wow Signal. Does it mean my cuz is Pres? Was POTUS too crazy?
Hurricane Elspeth’s bearing down on us all, but the jets are on full blast in the tub upstairs, the Pres–or is he ex Pres–is still tweeting.
Perry’s trying to get me to explain the 25th Amendment to him. At the infinity pool under a blackening sky, he keeps looking at his hands. What has he done? The mammoths look alarmed, as if they sense he has committed a crime. The pig makes a nasty mess by a jacaranda.
I don’t think Perry has a clear idea about the 25th Amendment. No one ever understood the first Wow signal. The Tweeter in chief will probably dry off, insult someone, get on AIRFORCE ONE.
One thing I know from years of coastal living.
That hurricane will come.
by submission | Jan 17, 2020 | Story |
Author: Katlina Sommerberg
The library doors opened, after scanning Erica’s face and bags. She came every Thursday, chocolate crescent in hand, and curled into her favorite armchair. Erica usually created digital art, but she dabbled in the ancient craft of pencil and paper today, despite the abysmal demand for traditional drawings.
After all, automation and universal basic income wrecked economics. Climate change wrecked the environment. And the fallout wrecked the human population.
The only surviving settlement, descended from the Oceanix City design, contained ten machines for every human.
In the library, more robots organized the shelves than humans visited in a week. One flew over Erica’s head as she followed it with her eyes, doodling a replica in her journal.
She had ten pages of cartoon drones by the time Joana appeared, her luminous neon green hoodie casting shifting geometric designs across the walls. Erica twirled her brown hair around the pencil, fidgeting as she looked out the window.
Last Thursday, Erica saw the woman’s screen as she labored over a poem and crawled through Twitter flash fiction hashtags; she became one of JoanaTheWanderer’s three hundred followers. Then she practiced initiating a conversation with her mirror, as she trusted AI coaches more than the old school advice blogs – even if those blogs, too, were probably written by machines.
She tripped over her feet as she walked over to Joana’s table, smiling awkwardly. “You’re Joana, right? I read your micropoem about… honestly, I read all of them.” She could’ve smacked her head; the AI said that was too much, too fast.
“I’m sorry, most of them are trash. I can’t stand to reread anything I tweet.” The oversized hoodie obscured her eyes, but her voice was friendly.
“I don’t think they are.”
“Thank you. Your journal… can I see those?”
Erica passed her the journal, and a long moment passed as Joana slowly flipped through the pages. A giggle came from the hoodie, and Erica died inside, until the other woman spoke again.
“Say, let’s get a coffee. Your whimsical sketches and my trash poems aren’t too different.”
