by submission | Nov 8, 2019 | Story |
Author: Lance J. Mushung
The man standing in my doorway was me wearing different clothes.
He smiled and extended his right hand. “Hello, Brad.”
After a couple of seconds, he grabbed my hand and pumped it. “You should close your dropped jaw and invite me in.”
He released my hand and I stepped out of his way. He walked past me into my family room.
I closed the door, and my mouth, and followed him to the stone-colored sectional sofa. After we sat down, I did nothing but stare. His bald head, olive tone skin, hazel eyes, and other distinguishing features all matched mine. He even had the small scar under his left eye from my skin cancer surgery.
He broke the awkward silence. “You want to know why I look like you.”
I almost laughed. “That’s a safe bet. Is this a prank for some sort of hidden-camera TV show?”
“No. I am not native to Earth.”
“Yeah, right!”
“I understand your skepticism, but it is true. Can you guess why I appear to be your doppelganger?”
“Why should I?”
“I will explain later if you try.”
I shrugged. “All right, I’ll play along for a bit. Are you a shape-shifter or some sort of holographic creation?”
“No.”
“Are you a robot made to look like me, or my clone grown by your people?”
“No.”
“Are you using telepathy to just make me think I’m seeing myself, or maybe you’re me from an alternate reality?”
“Sorry, no.”
“I’m running out of ideas here.”
“Are you going to suggest time travel?”
“Time travel is crap. As a matter of fact, this is all complete crap. Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?” I stood up and pointed to the door. “Start talking or get out.”
He got up and grasped my hand. “You should go to the garage with me.”
He let go of me and walked toward the garage, and I realized I was following him. Why had I accepted his suggestions twice?
Once in the garage, he stopped at the front of my Mustang and lifted the front end with one hand the way I’d pick up a box of cereal.
He said, “I am a nonorganic being modified to look like you for the moment.”
“So, you are a robot.”
His eyes narrowed almost too little to notice. “I am a nonorganic being.”
I’d struck a nerve, so I put up my open palms. “Sorry, I meant no insult. I’d really like to know what’s going on.”
“My people have come to test 8,192 humans to assess your potential as a species. You are part of the random sample.”
“When does the test start?”
“It is done.” He put down my car. “It is time for me to go. Thank you for your time.”
The garage door opener began pulling the door up.
He shook my hand. “You should remain in the garage.”
He walked away and the garage door began closing the second he stepped onto the driveway. I wanted to follow him, but my legs wouldn’t move.
“Wait,” I shouted. “Why are you testing our potential? What happens after the testing? What was the test? How did I do?”
He smiled and waved. The door hid him from sight seconds later. All I could do is wonder if anyone would believe the story, if I told it.
by submission | Nov 7, 2019 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
I saw the black limo outside our cottage. I knew why the angel of death was here. It was for my partner Andrew. He hasn’t looked well for over a week. What’s more, he’s been grumpy- as grumpy as his actual age of 337, rather than the 42 he presents here in the Home.
The Home. Once they were actual, physical, warehouses for the aged and infirmed, the Alzheimer’s, and the ones forgotten by their relatives. Thank the stars those are no longer issues for us but even so, humans still eventually wear out. In this case, our neural paths degrade after a time so not even our perfect VR simulation will work anymore. I’m sure one day science will figure out a way to keep us alive indefinitely through VR, and then the debate will be “who wants to live forever?” I think at age 204, the age I came to the home, plus the additional 136 years I’ve lived here, I could go anytime without making a fuss. 16 careers, four spouses, 232 descendants (can’t keep track of all the grandkids, but love ‘em all and they visit.) I think when my time comes, I’ll be ready.
I turned up the walk of our Block Island simulation cottage. On my wrist set, I dialed “showered” and chose “gray suit, business formal.” Andrew was so stuffy. He was always overdressed and insisted that I was perpetually underdressed. I got a little misty. I knew this day would arrive I just thought we’d have a little more time- but then, isn’t that what we all say in the real world as well?
I met the Angel of Death at our door. Dressed in a black rifle rock coat and bolo tie, he was young- looked to be in his twenties. Only his eyes gave away his real age- while they were clear and bright, there was a depth that told me this was no twenty-something.
“Mr. Philip Sinclair?”
“Yes, I’m him.” Before he could speak, I cut him off, “Does Andrew know?”
Death, or rather, the death notification avatar from the Home nodded. “He’s been made aware.”
“How’s he taking it?”
“About as well as can be well as can be expected.” Death opened the door for me. I sighed and walked in. The French doors in our vestibule were shut and when I opened them our cute little cape was transformed into what can only be described as a wedding venue- lots of white, strings of lights, champagne, hors d’oeuvres and all my relatives- oh. This is not Andrew’s time. It’s mine.
I turned to Death. “Not Andrew. Me.”
There was a look of shock and then sadness. “I’m sorry sir. I thought you understood. Death only meets with the decedent. It’s made very clear in the brochure.”
I nodded. “May I ask what’s happened?”
Death nodded. “Neural cascade failure. Our techs figure out we can loop you for no more than 30, possibly 40 minutes.”
I nodded. “Well, let’s do this shall we?” I winked at Death and he smiled. Andrew took my hand. I kissed him on the cheek and dried his tears.
Death walking ahead of us, our relatives all around us, we reached a set of doors and stopped.
“This is as far as we can go.” Death said solemnly.
Andrew was weeping. It broke my heart. He hated it when he lost control like this. I kissed him again.
Death opened the door. I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, then stepped through the door into a blinding white light.
by submission | Nov 6, 2019 | Story |
Author: Thomas Fitzgerald McCarthy
— An excerpt taken from Pioteer Gigan Trilorgh’s Anthropology on Extinct Pathologies
Two Anecdotes On the Fragility of the Human Mind
In the 24th century, a human biotech engineer designated Angeline Mateo was heralded by the Earth press as the new saint of protection. After years of research, she’d finally solved the Static Bubble Equation and created the first interstellar shield that protected against rogue particles of dark matter. Fatalities from collisions during interstellar journeys dropped by ninety-four percent. All remaining accidents were classified as technical failures or intentional sabotage. No casualties. Human entities from her home territory of New Zealand created holographic representations of her in their windows to serve as charms of protection.
On the cycle marking her fifty-eighth solar rotation, when a monetary payment failed to process during a planet-wide plasma storm that obstructed the banking networks, subject Mateo’s previous polar-gendered mate confronted her at her work quarters at Biotech Laboratories, accusing her of deliberately withholding compensation from him. When she turned away to call for security, he struck her in the back of her skull with a figurine composed of quartz and bronze metals. Her biological functions ceased immediately and she was dissolved.
Despite all of her technological achievements, the human body remained as it was five-hundred thousand solar cycles earlier — nothing more than soft, vulnerable tissue encumbering a consciousness that could connect star systems.
Ninety solar rotations before Mateo’s termination, one of her biological predecessors, twice removed from direct biogenesis, was killed in transit to Alpha Centauri in an incident which inspired her life’s research. A stagnant asteroid, trapped for centuries in a mini nebula by the twin stars’ gravitational pull, was abruptly thrust out into space by a massive solar flare. It collided headlong with the Artomis, the flagship of the human race’s luxury cruise fleet. Mateo’s ancestor was eliminated almost instantly, along with nearly a thousand others.
A rear admiral named Gesius Magellan, a biological relation to one of the dematerialized humans, commandeered a military warship and pursued the rogue asteroid. This decision was made in full knowledge that the asteroid was headed out of the system, into extrasolar darkness. Before it could be intercepted, it passed into a subspace slipstream and accelerated beyond his reach. Magellan took his ship into the slipstream and across the quadrant—a journey spanning more than seven thousand light-years and eighteen solar rotations.
During this trek, Magellan’s ship experienced numerous problems that quickly turned fatal. Seven human crew members and two semi-conscious androids perished during an attack by a hostile race of anthropoids from the Caleos System. Nine more were killed when one of the engines imploded due to structural fatigue. Three more terminated their own biological functions due to psychological degradation resulting from their longterm isolation.
At the end of his journey, Admiral Magellan finally reached the asteroid when it encountered a pocket of interstellar gases that slowed its inertia. Despite threats of mutiny from his remaining officers for depleting the ship’s energy reserves, Magellan destroyed the asteroid and deployed a message buoy to alert Earth’s central command that his mission was complete.
Never having returned to port, with no further communications, the ship was assumed lost by historians.
Human languages are quite complex in their subtleties. A recurring issue in my research is the differences between the brain and the mind. In my research, I have found that one represents the physical, and the other, the metaphysical. Yet, both are extraordinarily vulnerable in their condition, and with it, the human condition itself, capable of magnificent feats and inexplicable obsessions.
by Hari Navarro | Nov 5, 2019 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The ancient evil that lives and breathes and seethes beneath my grandmother’s house has nothing to do with Hell. This rotting husk is not the place that villains go when they die. It is not some construct tasked with offering context and balance to those who need to have a notion of evil so as they know just how it is to be good.
It is a craft. A ship of enormous dimensions and it is a prison and it is failing.
You see these creatures thrive on the exact flavour of toxicity that our planet now finds itself bound. How gleeful as they pulled images of our slow demise down through the dirt and they watched and they plotted and they waited.
Such jealousy as they wish to walk upon the surface as we, but cannot. They pray for the day to arrive when they can wade out into the acid lake. To drink our rank filth down into their pores until it courses through every last ounce of their being.
And so for now they can but dream of a time, now many millennia ago. When their refugee barge spiralled like a great sycamore pod through the endless folds of the cosmos sea. When they crashed down into a world still in the bawling throws of its birth.
At first they thrived in their newly found acid realm. But, then, came the filtering trees and the animals and the greenery and, then… and, then, there came us. They retreated back into their craft and they watched with hungry eyes the march of time as the sediment and waste and the filth layered and layered and it layered.
At the end of one of my grandmother’s many winding garden paths, there is a rock that juts up from the earth. Only it’s not a rock. It is the very tip of a wing. That of a craft of enormous dimensions. As a child, I’d lay my hand upon it and feel its crackle warmth even on the coldest of days and Grandmother would tell me this tale.
How my own mother had been digging in the garden one day and that it was she who discovered the craft. That a tiny door had opened in it and she crawled through and was never seen again.
The monsters used her to create me. They created me so that I would speak to the world. I had to be female and when my time came to make known my voice I had to be young. I had to be sixteen. Surely, nobody would listen and the world would rail against me and belligerently stick to its course.
The monsters knew that the earth was at a tipping point. All it needed was for arrogance and greed to continue its trudge and the end would be nigh and they could slither on up to feed.
It’s just fiction, I know. Just a funny little tale that grandmothers tell. Not a fleck of truth in it at all.
But today, as I stand before the leaders of the world and some mock me and call out my differences, I smile.
I smile because I can feel that so many others can smell the stink of their uranium breath. I see change jostling just at the ends of my fingers. I smile because for now the monsters will remain down in the shell of their crumbling hell.
For now…
… They will, at least, for now.
by Julian Miles | Nov 4, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Rex Christus, I ache this morning. Forgive the profanity, Lord, but it feels like my bones loosened themselves in their joints overnight.
There’s a harsh light on the streets, as if Heaven is searching the dimmest corners of its mighty demesne for sinners. Ha! They’ll find more than a few in these twisted ways. Titheport is a planet filled with bile, turning the masses into sinners who feel the gloria militarius does not enrich their lives. Which is true: those who serve Caesar get only dust, so it is written. The planetary authorities are improving, but there’s a long road ahead. Lucifer spake truth when he said that “the woes of man were ever of man’s making, whilst angels look on.”
“Utterest thou, Leftenant?”
I shake my head to loosen the devil’s maudlin grip.
“Heed me not, crusaders. I’m in a dark mood this morn. Prepare thyselves. We have good work to perform.”
Placing a hand on the hilt of my pistol, I gesture toward the double doors that mark our destination.
“At last, we shall purge the brothels!”
Sergeant Malcolm. His father survived the Calvinist Rescripture and that faith’s view of the secular world is so dark I often wonder if they actually fell instead of discovering a new gospel.
“Sergeant, the Magdalene Missions are a blessed outreach and you know my stance on the preaching of minor creeds whilst on duty.”
“I ask forgiveness, Leftenant.”
“Not mine to grant. Pray well.”
I’ll not leave any to stew on the matter. Taking the steps two at a time, I swing the portal wide.
“Templars!” There’s fear in her tone.
I raise a hand: “Let none who wash the feet of the worthy fear our tread this day. Let those who hailed us approach.”
“Be welcome, Knight Leftenant.”
Her voice is throaty and her eyes make the sinner inside me howl.
“Thou callest, matron?”
She gestures towards a waif in a homespun robe.
“Not me. The little one spots things my footwashers won’t.”
Ever a truth. Fear of attracting God’s wrath via those elected to his service is the biggest reason so much goes unaddressed. Some of my fellows are brutal sinners. They disgrace the service. One day, I shall chase them from my temple, and I will use something a lot less forgiving than a whip. Your pardon, Lord. ’Tis naught but righteous anger.
“Step forward, child. What seest thou?”
Raising a hand, he points toward the high ceiling off to the left.
“There’s a devil in the rafters, Sirrah. I seen it watching the girls and wiping it’s mouth.”
“Describe the infernal to me, child.”
“Ruddy and blue with grey teeth and wings like wet towels.”
A pleasure-addicted Ferrucatoan telepath. The wings atrophy and go limp. By the time they look like ‘wet towels’ the creature is but days away from final frenzy, driving all within a dozen city blocks insane.
“Sergeant Malcolm!”
“Leftenant?”
“There’s a sodden Brothel Creeper somewhere in the main hall. Bring it down.”
“By your command.”
The advantage of a strict upbringing is near-immunity to sinful influences. Even I can’t confront a Ferrucatoan.
Malcolm storms in trailed by Chaplain Flanders. Both have Gatling carbines at the ready. No energy weapons here, there isn’t a Tesla grid to support them.
“We see thee, sinner!”
The Gatlings fire with a hammer-on-steel percussion and something wails until it hits the floor.
As the corpse is dragged out, a familiar figure steps round the matron, hand raised. I pause, then reach out to lay armoured palm against her delicate hand.
“Blessed Be, dear son.”
“Ever near, mother.”
“Amen.”
by submission | Nov 3, 2019 | Story |
Author: David Updike
A shadow slid along the crowded sidewalk, and we instinctively stepped aside and opened a path for it to pass. Looking up, we saw that it was a Mini, the kind they dispatched for someone who wasn’t going to mount much of a fight. A sleek, white wafer the size and shape of a manta ray, it cut its way through the rush-hour crush of bodies until there was just one man standing alone, back pressed against the side of a building, clutching a black briefcase to his chest. The drone zoomed in and hovered above his head. The man opened his mouth as if to say something, but then the beam hit him squarely between the eyes and he fell face down on the pavement. The drone lingered, monitoring his vitals to make sure its task was complete. Satisfied, it swooped down, extended a slim metal arm, and picked up the briefcase in its pincers, then rose straight into the sky and was gone. Scavenger bots would be along soon enough to pick the body clean of organs, prosthetics, and other recyclables. No need to multiply the tragedy through senseless waste. And was it a tragedy, really? Who knew what that guy was up to? Maybe he had a bomb in the briefcase. Perhaps the Laserdrone had just saved all our lives. Though if he’d had a bomb, wouldn’t he have. . . . Ah well, no sense in speculating. Whatever the situation, it was resolved. Scattered applause broke out among the bystanders, and then we all resumed our different trajectories, feeling a new sense of urgency about getting where we were going.
