by submission | Nov 13, 2019 | Story |
Author: Ken Carlson
“Hello and welcome to Burger King. How may I help you,” said the disembodied out of the drive-through speaker in a dark parking lot off Interstate 5, Tacoma.
The voice belonged to Chad Stearns, 16 years old, 120 pounds and already drained of hope.
He mumbled to himself, off-mic. “Maybe to kiss my…”
“Chad!” Elizabeth Huckley crowed from the French fry station. Elizabeth was the miserable night manager. The two of them were the only ones to show up tonight.
“Sorry, just joking,” he said.
Elizabeth bellowed, “One more word and you’ll be out of a job!”
This sucked, but it wasn’t home where his drunken old man, the pontificator about the importance of hard work and a job well done loved smacking him around. Now Chad was out earning a few bucks, which Dad would skim to buy more booze.
Chad finally heard something from the drive-thru.“We are here,” a mechanical voice responded. Chad checked the monitor and spied a beaten-up black van, idling with its headlights off.
The voice returned. “Does this electric board feature all your establishment sells?”
“It’s called a menu, sir,” Chad said. “How about a Junior Whopper, some fries, and a shake?”
“We are hungry. The menu will be fine.”
“You want everything on the menu? That’s gonna take a while,” Chad laughed.
“Fine,” the voice said, “We’ll take all that you can. We are hungry.”
The van pulled up. Chad saw the dark interior, yet he knew someone was there. He was handed a wad of cash, thousands, just not with an actual hand, more of a disembodied force.
“Elizabeth! We have an order for everything we’ve got!”
She waddled up to Chad, “If this is your idea of a joke, Chad, I’ll…”
She saw the cash and looked out to the van. She grabbed the cash, put it in the register and got to work.
In an hour, the food was ready. Everything the two of them could prepare and bag in that time was done. The food was handed off. Chad and Elizabeth were exhausted. The van drove away.
“Chad, you’ll be punished for what you said earlier,” said a sweaty Elizabeth. “I’m going home. You have clean-up tonight. The grill, the trash bins. It will be off the clock and you will be here tomorrow at 6 am when Brian opens.”
Chad stared at the mess from the biggest night this store ever saw. Elizabeth returned to the overly stuffed register, pulled out several bills and stuffing them into her purse.
The van returned to the drive-thru, dark as midnight when you die.
Chad leaned out the window and said, “Welcome to Burger King. How may I help you.”
“We are still hungry,” said the van voice, “for something nice and fat.” More dollars were thrust at Chad, more than he could make in a month at this joint, maybe a year.
Chad nodded. The breeze blowing his brown hair poking out from under his BK cap.
“Liz, there’s a customer here that wants to speak to the manager.”
She shoved him out of the way, stomping back to the drive-thru station.
“Hello and welcome to Burger King,” she said. “How may I help…”
Her screams were muffled as her body was lifted through the courtesy window into the waiting van. Chad heard a crunching sound, but he was probably mistaken. He made his way to the back door, set the alarm, and locked up; ending a long day with a satisfied customer, the mark of a job well done.
by Hari Navarro | Nov 12, 2019 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The great starving horde marched through space. No, they didn’t. They swarmed and, just as the hive-minded are apt to do, they toiled relentlessly, each individual an integral part of the whole.
Every last one a citizen and willing slave to its place and function as the collective of this ancient civilisation rose up from its dying world and took the form of a single mass. A great black-winged wedge to glide through the ink in search of that one thing all life craves – sustenance.
I’m not sure if you’ve read or, perhaps, you’ve been told that in all of existence there are but two worlds that harbour sentient life.
The first, of course, is Earth with its hierarchy of intelligence that, arguably, staggers down from humans and then to things that can be shot or caught in nets and, then, to things that squash beneath the tips of shoes and then onto some other insignificant organisms even smaller than that.
The other world, I forget now its name, is the afore-mentioned now dead rock from which the horde had set out. A place where microscopic Goliaths devoured all the things that swam in its sea and all the furry and feathered and scaled creatures that wandered the land and then, finally, although they had long toyed with the possibility of their preservation, they also gulped down the humanoids. The creatures that looked just like you. Mostly, save for that thing with the ears.
So these insects, for want of a better word, they cleaned out their larder and then set out into the heavens in search of a bite to eat.
It is only by chance that they happened upon your minuscule backwater speck of life. A water gripped rock upon which their great wedge could swoop and divide. You saw didn’t you as they dispersed into precisely targeted legions that cut down through the clouds and shunted your day into night.
They targeted the sentient and the swarm did adhere to every last living, breathing and thinking one of you. The first wave hit and they locked together, interconnecting their exoskeletons so that, once again, the many become the one. All life freezes in situ and in an instant all sound ceases, a global silence before simultaneously you could hear them begin to chew.
So there it is. That is how you ended, shredded away from the outside to the in by a bus load of ravenous tourists. The first wave passing back its masticated nutrition to the next wave that latches to its back and, then, back again to wave after wave until you have been replaced right down to your core.
But you had an unwitting surprise in store, didn’t you? You pass on a last little treat. A strand that twists within a tiny strand of your animal essence. A simple variation that locks their joints and closes them down and dooms them to never again budge.
They die, eventually, this time unable to escape from the hunger that throbs and claws in their heads. Though, even if they could, there is not but one crumb of sustenance left in the universe to be had.
At least the trees still look down, creaking in the wind above your morbid monuments. Statue remembrances as you bleach and flake in the sun.
So that’s the story, how in a single day the sentient life total for all of the cosmos was dialled back down to zero. Well, almost zero.
Zero, not counting me.
by Julian Miles | Nov 11, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
In the beginning, there was a world. It wasn’t a particularly unusual or outstanding one, just another ball of rock with a hot liquid interior and a solid lump at the centre. The usual early planetary phases passed without anything of note, then the meteor arrived. Sheer luck it hit water far enough from a volcano for the liquid to not be boiling. Sheerer luck it careened through the shallows before plunging into the deeps, fragmenting as it went. The microbes on that meteor hadn’t been anywhere so accommodating since their home planet blew apart. A rush of renewed life met the local forms and, surprisingly quickly, all sorts of interesting hybrids started ambling about.
“Are you doing the mental lecture to some hapless writer again?”
“Quiet. I’m not thinking at you.”
“There’s no need to snap.”
After a few false starts, life blundered from water onto land. Something like evolution got interrupted by another meteor loaded with flash-frozen biology from a dead planet. The results of that revamped the non-aquatic forms in many useful ways.
The first civilisation came and went, not achieving much. Likewise the second thru twenty-seventh. Every time it proved that reptilian sentients didn’t have much get up and go. The very few who did simply got up and went. Those that remained shrugged and went back to their day-to-day, waiting for the next extinction event.
“Still keeping us anonymous, eh?”
“What are you doing in my train of thought?”
“Admiring the view from First Class.”
Fast forward past a few millennia of same old, same old, and the reptilians were regularly being beaten to the top of the pile by primates. The smart apes tried several times to make something of themselves, but their two best attempts were foiled by subduction. After that, a couple of intervening ice ages didn’t help matters.
“Somewhat of an understatement.”
“I still don’t understand how – if we’re so smart – our expeditions missed out on the fact that sub-zero environments and cold-blooded researchers is always a recipe for disaster.”
“Overenthusiasm and no-one daring to ask some obvious questions of their venerated commanders, at a guess. We’re still terrible at challenging our own hierarchal structures.”
“You might just have hit the egg square on with that idea.”
Finally, a new civilisation achieved technological ascendancy, reaching peaks only attained by five of the ninety civilisations before them. Unusually, they reached that technology before their aggressive tendencies had been tempered, and managed to sustain the balancing act for several decades before the fundamental flaws of their founding premises started to erode the underpinnings of the societies that had evolved.
“Rather restrained. Last night we got to listen to you bang on for four hours about the shortcomings of their current civilisation model.”
“Last night I’d had enough recreational chemicals to reach evangelical. Today I’m merely dehydrated.”
It’s ironic that they’d just realised meteors had such a massive potential to influence life on the planet they’d come to call ‘Earth’ when, in a freak event, a trio of meteors ruined their failing civilisation and ushered in a new ice age.
When that’s over, it’ll be interesting to see what sentiences rise to the challenge of forming the next civilisation.
“‘A trio’?”
“I reckon they’ll take out the first, damage or even crack the second, but the remains of it, plus the third, will do for them.”
“I like that thinking, but I’d quietly put a cloaked super-dense core in the third. Just to be sure.”
“That’s underclawed of you. Consider it done.”
by submission | Nov 10, 2019 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
The incongruence of this bridge’s construction boggled Samm’s mind. Using her ship to cut, haul and position logs, if they could be called that, when they should be using carbon graphene girders. This planet didn’t have traditional trees but tall branchless cylindrical shafts that were nearly as hard as cement and reached above the layer of toxic surface mist where they sprouted a myriad of delicate flowers that absorbed fresh moisture and starlight. They were too hard to cut, and their roots went on for freaking ever into the moist soil of the lower terrain. A couple of shots from the blast cannon could snap them and if carefully caught, because if they fell into the murk below you would never recover them, hauled into place. There they were strapped together by her team on the ground using long ropey strands of some seemingly purposeless vine that cover the cliff face of the mountains were all these special quadrupeds lived.
That was the other thing that annoyed Samm. Her production company was sent here to relocate this tribe of highly developed beings without airlifting them. For lack of an easier word, they were called ‘Horses;’ she couldn’t remember their scientific name. Long full-bodied manes of hair shrouded a four-legged creature with hoof/hands ending in octopi tentacles. Their feelers had a chemical connection with the soil. The collective occurrences of the planet including knowledge, energy, emotion, and sustenance were transmitted from the natural surroundings straight through into their appendages. They were essentially a moving manifestation of their world.
But their intelligence factor was so phenomenal that human specialists had to create new charts to try and categorize their brainpower. All members of their breed could do remarkable swerve mathematical calculations. Straight math any handheld computer could handle but these creatures, in their head, manipulated formula’s around the time/space continuum that the smartest scientist on earth couldn’t even understand. But it was working. And its applications were allowing unprecedented vehicle engineering and travel throughout the universe. Yet their feet could not leave the soil of this planet. They literally would not jump to save their own life. One part of their anatomy always had to be in contact with the surface or they would instantly go into an unsurvivable seizure. So, you couldn’t just transport them to safety which would have taken all of ten minutes.
A millennium ago what was left of the Horses’ population migrated out of the lowlands that had become poisonous and settled in the undebased rocky upper hills. In the last thousand years, an erosion crevasse opened isolating them from the rest of the expansive region. Yet they managed to live comfortably in their limited surroundings, regulating their population. They didn’t need nutrients or water as they absorbed it from the ground. But now their little piece of home was continuing to crumble, and the slippage was precarious. The research people that were working with the Horses contacted earth and told them that the plateau they lived on was falling off the side of a mountain. The government contracted her company and sent her to find a way to move them to safety. The only way to save them was to get them to the more stable center of the continent, traveling only on items that were indigenous to the planet, like a home-grown bridge made of trees and twigs, that they could traverse.
So, she had to construct a primitive annihilation-preventing conduit so humans could ride the brains of an extraterrestrial species into the exploration of the cosmos. And Samm thought figuring out her mother-in-law was confusing.
by submission | Nov 9, 2019 | Story |
Author: Glenn Leung
‘Activate Neuro-Computer link.’
I concentrated on the implants in my brain as I thought those words. I immediately got a sense that I knew more than I used to, and I mentally scanned for knowledge of the ship’s map. Having it in my head would not help me see in the dark, though it would fill my consciousness with annoying foreign thoughts. Normally I would have just told the main computer to turn the emergency power back on, but the aliens destroyed the relay.
‘Move ten meters forward and make a left.’
Imagine following somebody else’s instructions while moving through a maze blindfolded. By my estimates, I had about ten minutes before the ship sank to crush depth. If I had not destroyed my flashlight in the fight, that would have been plenty of time. It was too late for regrets now. All I could do was take rapid three-quarter steps, back bent and arms outstretched for the inevitable mishap.
I nearly fell over something soft as I made the left. A quick feel told me it was human, one of my shipmates killed in combat. There was a sickly warm patch which corroborated the smell. Just as I was about to throw up, I heard a ghostly moan. The shock made me swallow everything that was on its way out.
‘All in the mind,’ I composed myself.
Bonnet had warned me this might happen. Linking with the ship’s network while deprived of the senses could cause very vivid hallucinations, amplified by the combined computing power of the brain and the ship’s computers. Filtering out scary thoughts was difficult when the deadly battle was still fresh in my memory. Screaming ghosts of shipmates were not helping with the grotesque tripping hazards. At least some of those ghosts pointed me in the right direction, saving me precious time.
It would have been better if they had flashlights.
At long last, I arrived at the stairs leading to the emergency generator. I had never imagined that the sight of that old rickety thing would bring me so much joy.
I then realized I could see the stairs.
At first, I thought someone else had turned on the emergency power, but the ship’s engine was still silent. Were my brain and the ship’s computers working together to create an accurate projection? Maybe there is a separate generator for the engine room’s lights, just as there are for the computers and everything else. My excitement was dashed when I saw one of the aliens waiting for me at the top, its proboscis twitching in anticipation of my flesh. Did we not kill them all?
I had to assume it was not a hallucination. I pulled out my pistol and started shooting. Sure enough, blue blood sputtered from its head as it let out a piercing shriek. It fell down the stairs, splattering its goo across the guard rails.
‘Emergency power activated. Returning to surface.’
The shock of the sudden thought was an extra kick to my already frenetic heart. I would have shot at the figure that appeared at the top of the stairs had it not let out a very human cry.
“Sergeant! Stand down immediately! You just shot the Captain!”
Bonnet’s shouts awoke something within me. I looked at where the alien had fallen and saw the mangled body of the Captain. My head grew impossibly heavy and my vision went dim as I struggled to make a coherent deactivation command. I remember seeing Bonnet running down the stairs before all went dark again.
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.
