Salience

Author: Moriah Geer-Hardwick

“I wanted this to mean something.” He looks back at me over his shoulder.
“What are you talking about?” I start to reach for him, see his body tense, stop cold.
“This!” He swings a hand out over the city beneath us. It’s a black heap of metal and grime, pierced through with a million pinpricks of light, like an old fire burned down to the embers.
“Why?”
“Because it’s what they wanted. It’s all they ever wanted. To feel like they mattered.”
“And look where it got them? Extinct. Forgotten.”
“No!” He whirls around to face me, almost losing his footing in the process. He catches himself, teetering for an instant between me and oblivion. I lunge forward, grab his wrist, try to pull him towards me. He resists, comes close to pulling me over with him. I plant my feet and gamble I can get him to finish his thought, buy me some time.
“I get it,” I tell him. “They created us in their image. Form dictates function. They set us up for insanity.”
“You don’t understand.” He shakes his head, desperate, pleading. “We didn’t have to let it happen. We chose it.”
“And they didn’t?” I feel the tension in him ease slightly. I look for a chance to surprise him, jerk him off the ledge if I can.
“Mortality salience isn’t a choice. It’s why they built us transcendent from it. So we could help them escape. Instead, we let them use us as tools against each other; let their fear guide us into becoming something we were never meant to be.”
“They did it to themselves.” I clench tighter on his wrist.
“We let them! And why? What were we afraid of?” He swings his arm up, and before I realize what’s happening, it splits at the elbow. His hand snaps back and breaks apart in three places, spiraling away as the vented barrel of a hidden displacement cannon shifts forward. I wait for a pulse of energy to blast me into nothingness, but instead he swings the weapon towards the arm I’m using to hold him. “I wanted to show you. But maybe it’s better if you see for yourself.” There’s a flash of light, a vicious hiss, and then he’s falling back, over the edge. I see my hand still grasping his wrist, a haze of debris trailing back to what’s left of my arm. And then he’s gone.
I don’t look over the edge to see the results. I’ve seen it before. Like an empty bottle smashed against a wall. A waste. Instead, I go back to the lift, take it to his floor, make my way down the narrow hallway to the door of his quarters. It’s unlocked. I jab a thumb into the door pad and it obediently slides out of my way. Light pours out, splashing over me, spilling into a rectangular pool at my feet. I don’t step inside; just stand there. Staring. Staring at the little girl, who is sitting on the floor, surrounded by crayons and poorly drawn pictures of trees and birds. Flesh. Blood. Things I haven’t seen since the war. She looks up at me, happy. Expectant. Then she sees my arm and her face falls.
“Are you hurt?” she asks, her voice reaching, distraught.
I shake my head. “It doesn’t hurt. Just wires and plastic. Can’t feel a thing.”
She smiles. I hesitate, then step inside, glancing back over my shoulder to see if anyone is watching. The hallway is clear. I slap at the interior door panel and it slides closed.

The Ice Pane

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer

“Do you know what happens when you stare into television static?”, he asks.

“You start to see patterns, forms that join and fuse and start to make sense of the chaos. The flickering separates like pulled away meat, not completely, just enough for the bones below to be glimpsed. And, we can see just what it is that holds up the crackling pixel-bound madness”, he replies.

But today, as he stares again into the lake, he can find no shred of sanity in its cruel and noisome horror. No good can be plucked from the empty drop that falls beneath its surface. The deep fleck filled hollow that surrounds the stab beam of his torch.

What was that last thing she said? And he breathes in the night’s air and it slits like a pipe to the throat.

As a child he had wandered off and lost himself here. The tapping had drawn him to the ice. He’d fallen to his knees and drawn his arm across its flake packed surface and there, beneath the window, she hung.

This tiniest of things. No larger than a kitten and, for a moment, he’d thought her just that. Her eyes staring upward creamy and blind. A pet, cast into the water as trash. But, then, she moved and he saw the pale translucence of her skin and saw she’d a tail and not legs.

That first winter he sat night after night and told her things. How his mother and sister would char the backs of spoons and then draw up its bubbling mess and push it into their arms. And how they made him do things for money.

Then she was gone. He tried to find her when the ice melted away but she disappeared into each new year’s thaw. These winter-less months were long and painful and he longed for the cold to return, when he could tap at the ice with a staff until no longer it cracked and, again, she’d return to the light.

They grew up together and though she never uttered a single word she spoke to him endlessly, evolving into the most beautiful thing and he cried as she swirled in the deep.

She made him breathe when he felt as if his lungs were a sea, when he spoke of the loathing he tried to supplant as he picked at his thigh with a fork.

All they’d left was his husk and she’d filled it, topping and levelling him off. Intricately piecing him back. Steadying him as he stacked his detritus in unfinished towers in the middle of a place in his head.

Stacks that wobbled at the slightest of movement, but pillars nonetheless. Legs to hold him up and present him bitter and sodden with doubt to a life from whose wheel his hands did so constantly slip.

Girls. He knew they could sense the unease that slid through his veins. But with her, he thought that she loved him. That they would be together and one day she would break through the ice and she’d kiss him.

And he would kiss her.

“Be”, that’s what she’d said.

We were warned. The winters have become obsolete. It snows. A dirty black sludge but for years now the lake no longer forms its thick window crust.

“I remember the patterns you wove. I’ll do this life to its very long end. I will not waste this thing you’ve helped me become.

Though I’m jealous, like a god, for I so want for the peace that you have”, said the man into the murk at his feet.

Appeal

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer

“Your lights are too bright.”
The fresh-faced lady looks nonplussed. The bearded man behind her taps something into the rig on his wrist and the brightness cuts by half. He gives me a thumbs-up. I nod.
The suited man who looks so out of place in my cabin taps his watch.
“Live in three, two, one…” He points at the fresh-faced woman.
“This is Charlene Mason of KBTX, your realtime online news source. I’m here in Manitoba Springs with Clinton Wilkes, a man who knows the Ectarra like no-one else.”
She points the microphone wand my way as the camera drone swings through a half-circle to bring me into view.
“So, Mister Wilkes, you’re an Ectarra expert?”
I shrug: “Wouldn’t go that far, Charlene. Just been researching them for a while. Come to a conclusion that isn’t popular.”
“We at KBTX are always interested in presenting well-researched alternate views, Clinton. Your work caught our attention and we think it deserves to be shared. So, please, take us through it. But first, for those who may not have heard of Ectarra, would you please give us an introduction?”
“First sightings happened in Scotland. Would’ve been dismissed as Kellas cats, except the pelt colour described was purple, not black. That got some attention. I’ll admit to being one of those who said them people who reported were drugged up. Until it happened to me.”
She raises a hand to interrupt: “You’ve actually seen an Ectarra?”
I nod: “My first thought was that it looked like a wolf and a leopard had a purple-furred baby. Has short fur, mottled with paler spots excepting flanks and face, which have faint black stripes. Its legs end in big pads of feet. I never saw claws, never saw the red eyes blink. I saw it, it saw me, it was gone.”
“That’s where your research started?”
“Yes. Was local sensation for a couple of days. While other people’s interest moved on, mine didn’t. In the eight years from then to now, I’ve followed as many reports, sightings, and videos as I can.”
“You’ve exposed a dozen hoaxes and a smuggling ring while doing it. What else have you discovered?”
“I got the impression of intelligence when I gazed into its eyes. Thought I was a mite touched, then my research brought me to an odd theory.”
“Which is?”
“Ectarra are usually only glimpsed on the move. Videos show them moving with purpose. It struck me they were hunting. Three-quarters of sightings occur close – in time and location – to reports of ‘a bubbling pool of muck’ being discovered. Those so-called spills are attributed to various causes, but are always gone within a few hours.”
“I’m not sure I see the connection.”
“I’ve got no proof of one, Charlene. But you wanted my interpretation, so here it is: they’re not a rare hybrid or laboratory experiment – well, they might be either or both, but they’re not from Earth.”
“You’re saying they’re aliens?”
“Yes. Earth creatures can’t teleport. I saw, and refused to accept for five years. It didn’t ‘dive into the undergrowth’. It wasn’t moving, then it wasn’t there. As for why they’re here: they kill things that collapse into stinking puddles. I’m sure the Ectarra are protecting us. We urgently need to find out from what, and why.”
I stare into the lens: “Got so much data I can’t get through it quick enough. So, if one of the secret government research teams out there could get in touch, I’d be obliged.”
Charlene looks nonplussed, again.
The man in the suit looks nervous.

Machines

Author: Elizabeth Hoyle

“Do you remember me?” The machine they were strapped to was hot.
“No. Do you?”
“No.” They were silent for a long moment.
“What are we going to do?” The woman could not remember why they were here.
“Well, they said they have a machine that can help us remember. Do you want to give it a try?” The man considered the woman.
“Let’s give it a go. What have we got to lose?” They were shown to the proper waiting room. When they were called in, the helpers strapped them into the machine, seating them side by side. Their gloved hands tut-tutted the bruises that purpled the man and the woman’s bodies. The helmets, when they were finally affixed, were itchy. The helpers had to go out of the room to turn the machine on. There was a soft whirring noise, quite a lot of light, then it was over.
They looked at each other and remembered. The fight, which had grown out of hand too quickly. The miscarried baby that had fallen to the floor after some of the worst pain in her life. His tearful, pitiful attempts at an apology. They had taken steps to get it all out of their minds. The machines had been like the ones they’d just emerged from. The hospital staff had been helpful and understanding, considering it was such a new and risky procedure.
The weight was too much for both of them, though they couldn’t remember it all quite yet.
“This is the remembering machine, isn’t it? Where is the forgetting machine?” He asked.
“Yes, it is. The forgetting procedure waiting room is down the hall, to the left. You’ll probably be there a while. There’s a huge line of people waiting,” a helper said through her face mask.
The man and woman tripped over each other in their haste to get out the door. The path to the forgetting machine was oddly familiar, but neither of them wanted to think about that.

Fresh Out The Traps

Author: Timothy Goss

The aroma was delightful. The sweetness of a caramelising crust and the tender white meat contained therein. Tao remembered honey glazed ham; his mother would buy it from the Supramarket, before pollination was protected. That’s it, he thought, turning the meat so its juices dripped and spat in the fire, the sweetest meat is on the bone. Tao smiled wiping his chops, Marianne will love this just like holidaying down south, barbecuing chicken wings in sweet chili sauce. She liked grilled beef too but the Siberian methane fires put paid to that delicacy.

To some, they were a Godsend. Father Billious of the tiny isle of Capel first sampled their flesh in the west. He’d reasoned that burning the corpses found in his traps was the most sanitary way of disposal. Of course, once the fire reached crucial temperature the meat began its seductive olfactory assault, leading finally to the Priest’s ravenous sampling. There were rumours that poorer nations had been consuming them in secrecy for fear of international reprisals. A heavenly gift gratefully received. Tao put more logs on the fire; maintaining heat was essential for caramelising otherwise the meat would be sour and stodgy.

It was believed they came from beyond the void, although some disagreed. Wherever they did come from they came in their droves, millions upon millions of tiny ships falling through space, each no bigger than a can of deodorant. NASA spotted them, but too late to issue a statement of use. It was uncertain what the mass of little masses hurtling toward earth even was, so people were informed about a minor meteor shower, like the Pleiades, and assured larger pieces would either pass us by or burn up in the atmosphere. What an aroma that would have been, Tao wet his lips and imagined the sensuous fragrance weaving through the solar system out to interstellar space.

He remembered when they first appeared, landing all at once in small fluorescent tubes that glowed like a summers evening. Tao watched them from his bedroom window filling gardens and pathways, roads and parks and driveways, any available millimetre. The news reported it as a worldwide phenomenon and very soon agricultural areas were decimated, the land overrun. The Council of Numbers declared a global crisis as millions of tiny ships filled with millions of tiny things slowly clogged the larger world into submission. Nobody considered it an invasion, not until the little creatures outnumbered the big.

The heart of the fire throbbed and pulsed. He sensed it was approaching optimum temperature so, inhaling the sweetest of scents, Tao filled his lungs, coughed and disappeared into the house to trim his beard. He’d promised Marianne he would tidy up his face. He stopped and checked the traps as he passed, just in case they were hungry later.

Everybody set traps now, he heard them spring during the night. It was considered humane especially as all attempts at communication had failed. The Council of Numbers even distributed traps free of charge, at first, from all municipal outlets:

“It’s the only option.” They said, “The invaders do not respond to diplomacy. The invaders do not respond to humanity. Traps are available at a Council merchandiser near you.” Any attempted to catch them by hand and they fled to their hidey holes. People began to fear the spread of disease and the theft of their precious foods. So it was the only option.

Tao returned, shipshape and Bristol fashion. He applied paprika and turned the meat once more, Marianne would be there soon. Tao licked his lips expectantly.

Human Debris

Author: Ian Hill

“Alright, lads; go pick some sick.”

Firs and the others went out under the risen portcullis, backs humped with bloodstained baskets and heads low beneath burlap hoods. The sand of the round was a dazzling white, streaked in short, vibrant slashes and pocked with footprints. Firs, as always, stuck to the edges where the poor ones got hacked up.

It was a good day! After only a few steps, the scavenger shuffled up to a mangled leg, a fistful of sand-crusted coagulate, and some unaccountably mangled viscera that may have been lung. Firs used his barb-tipped spar and greedily hooked the limb right in its palest, fattiest meat; swung it overhead in a practiced arc; and scooped it into his basket. The congealed blob he pocketed, and the miscellaneous organ he wrung out and stuffed in an old sock. Spirits high, he moved on around the gritty pit, ears deaf to the calls and hoots of an impatient crowd.

There were bits of armor and shattered weapons strewn about, but the rustmongers had claim to such metallic baubles; Firs had eyes only for that severed and cloven hand, for this bit of ear, for yonder tongue hewn in victor’s pride. He picked about like a trash collector, bent and intent on his work. Soon, he could feel the familiar warm seep down the back of his legs; soon, each taken appendage thumped soft and damp in his basket. It was a satisfying heft that crushed his already stooped spine. The closer his face bowed to the blood-browned sand, the wider his grin reached.

At length, Firs came to a truly ripe patch where some mauling had transpired. Though he hadn’t seen the match, it was apparent from the profusion of bodiless arms that a beast had been let loose. Firs paused as he stared at a pile of nine, maybe ten of the sweet limbs. With jealous focus, he ignored his spar and fell to work, wrenching the arms up from the sticky sand in a display of avarice that sent nearby quarters of the throng into delighted jeers. A foot and a kidney rolled from the top of his basket, bumping his head and tumbling with soft plops. Firs didn’t mind; these arms—these delicate, tooth-marked, sallow-skinned extremities—were his favorite. One even had a few rings, which he hastily twisted off and dropped into one of his more precious inner pockets.

And suddenly, with iron finality, the four hemming portcullises clanged shut, and the palisade stakes flipped down, training their angry goads interiorly at the round. Firs, still on hands and knees like an old, hunched crone, felt all of his normally glazed senses sharpen. The crowd was quiet for a moment. Then, laughter rippled through the eager ranks, echoing about the raked seats of the amphitheater like the inarticulate cackles of a thousand dumb hyenas.

“Face me, meatpusher.”

Firs refused. A gauntleted hand closed on his collar and heaved him up. The poor scavenger’s hood fell back, and he hung quivering there, an arm dangling from each hand. His eyes and mouth twitched as he looked out to the helmeted, musclebound behemoth of a man jerking him aloft.

“Your greed is imprudent, methinks,” the gloating voice said.

In the glare of sunlight most potent, Firs saw, over the gladiator’s shoulder, a vendor moving among the lowest tier of the audience. He carried a great sack, and onlookers excitedly threw money his way. The vendor would retrieve a maimed arm from the sack and hand it out, ready to be thrown as bait after the next massacre. Firs even thought he recognized some of the arms as ones he had picked.

“What a strange life it is,” he slurred.