by submission | Nov 23, 2019 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“As I told you to begin with, if Renslo dies, you would die too.”
I thought the Renegade Commander said that so I wouldn’t kill Renslo under the knife by violating my Hippocratic oath. Oathbreakers never understand the power of an oath taken; especially in my case. I couldn’t violate my Hippocratic oath. Not with someone wounded and helpless. These others? Deserters? Combatants? War Criminals? Not an issue.
“I did my best.”
“It’s OK doc,” one of his men said to me as he fingered his neckless of human ears, most likely my neighbors and their children, “to err is human, to forgive divine. You goofed so now it’s in God’s hands… so we’re arranging a meeting.” Gruff laughter exploded about the room. Their commander held up his and motioned for silence.
“Well, it’s best not to draw this out any farther.” The commander called up a death certificate on my room display. In cause of death under my name, he typed in ‘head trauma.’ He hit ‘enter’ and the form wouldn’t let him save the response.
I was almost ready. Just two more minutes and the set up would be complete. The outer sentries he posted had closed my compound doors for the night. As soon as his guards crossed into the courtyard, I would be ready.
The commander gave up interest in his grand jest and yawned. “Well, I suppose it’s too late for a proper execution tonight. We’ll take care of it in the morning.” There were murmurs of agreement. This was all I needed. The commander stood up. His men scrambled to their feet. The commander and his two aides went to open the door of my office. The lead man reached for the door. I heard the bolt slide, locking the door.
I smiled. I stood up. “You aren’t allowed to leave.”
The commander smiled with pure sarcasm. “I beg your pardon.”
“You may not.” The commander’s face turned red with rage.
“I don’t think-“
“By the authority vested in me as magistrate, I charge you with desertion, treason, and crimes against humanity and sentence you all to die.”
His men laughed loud and carried on a few slapped me around a bit. The commander held up his hand again.
“So harsh doctor? Or as you are now in your magistrate role I should probably say ‘Your honor’, hmmm?” His men let loose their guffaws and catcalls
This time I smiled. I saw the commander swallow. He knew he was missing something. I was done playing with him now. My two spares had eliminated the sentries. I let my left arm fall off. The laughter stopped. There was a brief moment of confusion as all the renegades processed what happened and were scrambling to find a way out. I looked their commander in the eye again. He sat down and shook his head and I triggered myself destruct mode.
From my new vantage point in the courtyard, I watched my lab implode, taking all the renegades with it. By the time I got my remaining duplicates hidden again my report was being transmitted to the regional authorities about the terrible atrocities committed and the heroic self-sacrifice one of my neighbors to take out the renegades. As decommissioned Army AI, one who survived being consigned to the scrap heap, I worked hard establishing my human profile. While not prone to human error and certainly not divine, this was the way it had to be. Then again, not being human or divine, I had a lot of wiggle room.
by submission | Nov 22, 2019 | Story |
Author: Timothy Goss
Where to begin?
Start at the dance. It’s a very good place to start.
But the dance was slow. Everything was on its best behaviour, including the Humans’. They were representing Kircher and his crazy ideas. The Galactic community wanted assurances – simian lineage had caused problems in the past.
“They are too young a caste.” The Jovian representative drooled. As Earth’s nearest neighbour they had observed the Human develop, witnessed their aggression and feared what might ensue. “They require greater intervention, which we are willing to provide if agreed by the community.” A willing smile leaked across its features.
The community had intervened in the past. Some of Earth’s greatest minds, biggest spirits, and most loved icons were alien influencers. They are the names known to all humanity those whose influence encompasses the globe.
A squashed Gliesian, DazC KkaR, approached the Human woman, Sofia Jewel. Both were bipedal, but the similarities end. DazC extended an odd limb in a chivalrous display and Sofia smiled a human smile, curious but cautious, suspicious not knowing the creature’s ultimate intention. Slowly she took his hand and they stepped onto the dance floor. The crowded auditorium held its breath…
It was generally unknown that humans had a culture advanced enough to develop complex patterns and sequences, especially within a rhythmic foundation. It was even harder to believe that backward humanity would be able to muster the cognitive zeal to develop rhythm into anything more than a march into war. The general opinion throughout the room was such and consequently, all awaited a confused and baffling display, a groping in the dark, a fractured ‘dance’ in name only.
Sofia knew this was her responsibility, Kircher warned her but still, she wanted to dance. As the alien music surged she searched for the familiar, she knew rhythm was a familiar fellow and when DazC KkaR failed to lead Sofia stepped up discovering a tango hidden beneath the alien hurdy-gurdy – Caminar, planeo…
Her Gliesian partner was a breed apart from most and danced like no other. He was able to predict a beings’ movement and join it in a rhythmic interchange – viborita-sacada. DazC KkaR believed all movement mimicked that of the cosmos and two bodies in close proximity must interact.
The Jovian representative slopped its foot to the beat. It could feel the tides of its being ebbed and flowed with the musical movement. The commitment of each dancer and the energy created between them spread throughout the room affecting all liquid-based castes. Sometimes life needs a reminder to live. The auditorium breathed as Human and Gliesian synchronized. Sofia considered her partner’s ability superlative and did her best to ignore its hideous appearance, while DazC KkaR did the same. It is true, Humans and Gliesians are repulsive in the flesh, but this was forgotten in the beauty of their dance.
Kircher played the odds, he was a smart man, one who could usually outwit his opponents, but these were not men and he had to remind himself of that. Here he had no power – here it was up to Sofia. She was the first volunteer and he trusted her judgment. On his deathbed, it is said that Kircher asks if anybody had heard from Sala.
Jovian influencers visited Earth regularly over the following centuries and always took great pains to observe the development and witness the progression of dance throughout the Human world. Sofia Jewel and DazC KkaR were remembered in Jovian culture so moved were they by the tides she created.
by Stephen R. Smith | Nov 21, 2019 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Tenn disengaged the flywheel on the powerbike and coasted to a stop against the curb.
He steadied the bike with both feet on the ground, glancing down as he did at the rough-shaven scalp of the man seated next to him on the sidewalk. An old bakelite cassette player sat beside the man on the dirty bamboo mat they shared, a tightly coiled cable snaking to a worn pair of over-ear headphones perched crookedly on his head, his left ear exposed, flakes of the ear padding sticking to the stubble on his head where the foam was decomposing with age.
The man reached into a plastic flip-top cooler and retrieved a metal canister with a screw top, which he passed up to Tenn.
“Past the fences again,” he mumbled, “gasoline for motor.”
Tenn unscrewed the fuel cap on the bike’s tank, then opened and transferred the contents of the container into it, before closing both and returning the empty vessel.
“Take a message,” the cross-legged man spoke again, “under four minutes”. He disconnected one end of the cable from his headphones and passed it up to Tenn.
Tenn fished through one of his saddlebags for his message recorder, and a blank wax cylinder, and through the other saddle bag for a hard cylinder on which was handwritten ‘Lady Grinning Soul: 3.54’ on a faded label at the top.
Plugging the offered cable into the box, he pressed the ‘play’ and ‘record’ keys on its side. A needle traced the groove in the hard cylinder, producing an old song, while a similar needle cut a groove into the wax of the other cylinder making a perfect copy. He listened as the audio track transferred from one cylinder to the other, the sound tinny without amplification.
As it recorded, the quiet little man typed a message from memory into a transcoding device in his lap, each keypress converted to sound and fed to the recorder where it was mixed into the song in a continuous stream.
When he was finished, he reached up a hand expectantly and waited for the audio cable to be unplugged and returned.
The transcoder disappeared into a pocket, and the cord was plugged back into the headphones, the man finding the jack for the cable end by feel.
“Don’t get caught,” the man said, before settling the headphones straight on his ears and folding his hands in his lap, signaling the end of the transaction.
If he was pursued and feared discovery, a gas burner in the saddlebag with the recording would heat the wax, effectively erasing any trace of the recording, and the message.
Tenn produced a pen from a jacket pocket, and wrote ‘Stardust’ on the label of the fresh recording, before returning it, the master, and the recorder itself carefully to their respective saddlebags on the powerbike.
The fences. The magnetic fields there would render any electronics useless, so he’d need to run the gas motor well in advance to build up enough flywheel speed to carry him through. It would be a long, slow, dangerous walk pushing the bike if he lost momentum.
Code-talkers, music mixers, and analog-tech gear-heads, ducking the omnipotent eyes to which no digital communications, encrypted or otherwise, and no code-warriors could remain unknown.
He remembered a time when technology was an asset, not a liability.
Fortunately, he remembered a time before that too. Who knew the future would be so retro subversive.
by submission | Nov 20, 2019 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
“I’m sorry, what?”
Aaron was about to tip his tray of leftover lunch into the bin and now held it frozen in mid-spill. Maybe telling him wasn’t a smart idea after all. I thought, out of everyone I knew and trusted, he would have an open mind. I had worked with him for seven years and we had become good, tell-each-other-anything, friends. My secret might have just changed the whole dynamics of our relationship.
“I said, I can move from one plane of existence to another if I really concentrate.”
“You know Zoey, even the second time, that still doesn’t make sense.”
He continued with his garbage dump and we walked from the cafeteria back to our cubicles.
“I don’t know why or how but one day while I was doing yoga in my apartment – it just happened. I went from squatting on my rug looking at the rain on my window to sitting on a rock overlooking a sunny beach and gorgeous ocean. I jumped up and flashed right back because I was so freaked out. But after experimenting and fine tuning my skills for a couple of weeks I can pretty much do it at will and it’s kind of creepy and exciting at the same time.”
“You know, I have to call bullshit on this,” Aaron said.
“I’m serious!” I said a little too loudly as we strode past other workers in the hallway. “Look I have no clue how it works. I Googled it and it has something to do with changing the structure of your consciousness or vibrating at a different physical frequency. I don’t know?”
“Really? And where is this beach?”
“I don’t know that either. I don’t recognize it. It’s isolated and wonderful. No other people around. To tell you the truth it might not even be on this planet.”
He stopped so I stopped, and we stared at each other. His face was incredulous.
I saw that we were next to the copy room, so I nabbed his elbow and pulled him in and closed and locked the door.
“Just watch.”
I hiked my skirt up a little, dropped into a lotus position, closed my eyes, took a lung-filling inhale and allowed my inner self to float into free-fall. In a few seconds the smell of the room changed from ink toner to sea moisten air. I opened my eyes and was happily no longer at work. I marveled at the beauty, breathing easily, wanting to strip and plunge into the crystal swells. The feeling that had been coming on me at these moments filled me with a sense of peace that made tears come to my eyes. I wanted to be here. Always. But I knew I couldn’t stay. I let my mind return to the jarring reality of the office. I finished with a deep cleansing breath and stood up.
“Well?”
“Yeah that’s great. You can sit on your ass and cross your legs. So what?”
“But I just went away!”
“No, you didn’t. I was focusing intently and you just fuzzed out a little.” Aaron took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with the end of his tie. “I must need a new prescription.”
“So, how did I get this?”
I opened my hand and held out a palm full of pure white sand.
Aaron gazed at it then looked at me with a smirk. “Nice trick.”
As he left the room and went back to his desk, I wonder how long it would take me to work out the details. Until I could ‘fuzz out’ completely.
by submission | Nov 19, 2019 | Story |
Author: S. Sedeq
Never had I expected death to eject half of my body into the void of space.
Eons spent feeling the gradual, yet inevitable ebb of my essence has done little to prepare for an explosion more massive than any energy I have emitted as a star.
Just now, the very fabric of time and space bends around my center. I strive to emit light and burn bright, reaching for the energy of the red giant that has led to this current existence.
No response, save the continuous column of light and energy that shoots up higher than I can fathom, engulfed by the starry vacuum of space.
Then, all at once, the tunnel of light energy vanishes, inverting into my regenerated form. That is when the hunger begins.
Swifter than the speed of light itself, the lust for any and all surrounding matter wracks my essence. A craving as strong as any sense of gravity I have ever known as a star begs for satiation.
The reality of what I have become sets in as surely as the eventual and inevitable end of the universe.
The despair almost drowns out the hunger long enough to miss the approach of an orbiting planet. Almost.
As the unsuspecting object enters the newfound lull of my event horizon, the overwhelming remorse gives way to a sweet euphoria. But only just.
The moment that miniscule body passes over the lip of my gaping abyss of a maw, a flood of knowledge captures my consciousness.
Organisms of all shapes and sizes interact with each other in a number of ways, emitting a series of sounds so diverse as to momentarily befuddle even the glutton at my center.
I cheer on this temporary distraction, struggling to move back through the void or spit out the planet headed toward its demise.
No such luck.
Once the dense heart of my singularity registers the presence of that little planet, my essence transforms into the likeness of an entity of pure gravity.
Suddenly, my only reality becomes that ravenous hunger, the need to consume that spherical bud of nourishment burning stronger than my billions of years of existence as a star.
As I feast, the various life forms of that planet scream with terror and confusion as their own existences wink out. Some even fail to realize their fate until the force of my pull shreds their essence, sweet new matter slaking the yearning call of the budding singularity at my core.
Then, all at once, the binge subsides. And reality sets in once more.
A wave of anguish envelops my conscious at the thought of all those stars around me that have yet to suffer this insatiable black hole of hunger. At least they still have time to nurture new life before their own winks out.
Bitter envy gnaws at the singularity stewing in my center, as the very nature of my existence completes the transition from giver of life to bringer of death.
by Julian Miles | Nov 18, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
With slow majesty the huge spacecraft swings about, displaying alien lines in the distant star’s light. Mantled wings of golden energy cant toward the tiny needle that darts about, shooting beams of visible and invisible energy at it. The behemoth remains silent and apparently indifferent.
“Damn it! Why doesn’t it respond?”
As Lieutenant Kai ‘Stev’ Stevraphanos thumps his control board for the third time in as many minutes, Captain Witt Slatterly sighs and looks up from his library screen.
“Go easy on the architecture, Stev. We may need that fire control.”
“We’d have needed it before now, Captain. That Jonah’s likely carrying more lethal firepower than the Tirsuse Agreement allows our entire fleet.”
Stev has a point. The unknown vessel shows ports for over a hundred offensive weapons. He flips his screen to external, keying CORRELATE into the recognition computer. Then he goes back to admiring the immense vessel. That’s the first thing that hits you. The sheer size. Any spacefaring navy that has the bloody arrogance to build this big is a potential threat. On top of that, any race that build ships this graceful needs to be seen.
It resembles a reptilian eagle. Enormous sheets are laid to form scales that cover the entire vessel. Scanalysis gives impossible data that indicates refined countermeasures. But the wings and tail are the truly frightening things: energy fields – even, non-coruscating, near zero emission – but within open frames. The trailing edge is open to space. That sort of energy manipulation is only dreamed of by our scientists. The fact that the trailing edge is nearly a half-kilometre long on the shortest section alone is just insult on top of injury.
The wingspan is six kilometres. The tail fan is a three-quarter kilometre equilateral triangle, and the body nearly three kilometres long. The probable ship weight is beyond the projection program’s capacity.
Witt’s got thirty years in space. Has shipped with both civil and martial arms of the Galactic Navy. The largest ship is one and a half kilometres. He knows of a Viperon warcraft nearly two kilometres long, but that’s all engines; built for speed. This stranger is a warbird, and probably quick with it. But it holds position, apparently ignoring Slatterly’s ship, the merely two-hundred metre interceptor ‘Fair Venture’.
His contemplations are interrupted as the recognition computer beeps it’s termination sequence. He reads as the comp overlays details on the external veiw. The data is conclusive. This vessel is the biggest, most potentially deadly spacecraft ever encountered in the history of the Galactic Navy. It also shows all the visual cues of having been out here for an extremely long time.
He leans back and glances up at Stev.
“A genuine Jonah. Unknown. Not even dreamt of. Our capital ships were built to intimidate and, if necessary, take on any of the known dreadnoughts, even the friendly ones. This machine could laugh at our best.”
“Only if it’s got shields as good as it’s wings, Captain.”
“More like if it has anything that still lives. It’s been here for quite a while.”
“Derelict?”
“Biggest archaeological find ever, I hope. I don’t think any Navy would let that drift off, so, it’s owners are long gone. Does leave one nagging thought that bothers me, though.”
“What’s that?”
He points at the screen: “What if that’s only scout sized for their current fleet?”
Stev chuckles.
“Then I’m going to get a quick transfer to the wet Navy on some tropical paradise planet, Captain.”
He bursts out laughing.
“Sound plan, Lieutenant, very sound. I might even join you.”
