by submission | Nov 30, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mark Thomas
If time travel has taught us anything it’s that inevitability is a slippery subject. My story became mathematically more likely each time I ingested a tablet, but it was never absolutely certain.
Every clock puncher understands that he or she will eventually encounter multiple versions of themselves. Ordinarily, glimpses of alternate life-possibilities are easy to ignore because those iterations are so similar in appearance and temperament to the “original” that the strongest emotion they can inspire is a weak form of self-love.
Unfortunately, the being I encountered on my last journey was significantly different in one important respect.
My time-shadow was happy.
The simulacra had utterly abandoned his temporal-vacation to embrace the retro-environment. He had violated protocol and common sense to go native.
I must have immediately suspected the dark transition, otherwise, why would I have insinuated myself into a crowd of people and followed him that day? I waited for him to emerge from a record store clutching a paper-wrapped package. I hid behind the trunk of an enormous elm as he sauntered through a corner of the park. I watched from an adjacent doorway as he stopped at a bakery to purchase a small bag of pastries and then at a newsstand to exchange a few coins for a morning paper. Ultimately, my time-shadow skipped up the steps of an old brownstone where a youngish woman was sitting, drinking tea from a mug. At the counterfeit’s approach, the young woman put down her mug, stood up and wriggled her fingers inviting physical contact.
The two clumsily embraced then entered the townhouse. Soon I heard music waft from an open window and the sound of unrestrained laughter.
You might be “envious” of people you don’t know. Someone wins the Copley medal for science, for example, and you wish you could experience that same sense of self-satisfaction, that same level of material success and public adulation. That’s an unfortunate character weakness, but it isn’t a debilitating passion. You are “jealous,” however, of people you know intimately. There is a profound sense of unfairness attached to the contemplation of another’s success when the person shared, to a great extent, your own opportunities and talents. That sense of aggrievement can easily become pernicious. Why, you ask yourself, did good fortune light on the person standing next to you? Why were you overlooked?
I know this must be difficult to understand, but I quickly developed an intense jealous hatred of myself and once I realized this was the case, I could neither bear it nor suppress it.
I waited outside the brownstone for twelve hours.
It was evening when my time shadow emerged, whistling, from the doorway. He skipped down the steps and crossed the street, passing right in front of a railed alcove where I was hiding. His movements were strobe-like as he walked through patches of darkness alternating with bright circles of illumination from the streetlights.
I pursued him quickly, and silently, but he glanced over his shoulder at the last instant, and horror filled his eyes as my weapon descended. I clubbed him with a heavy wine bottle I had pulled from one of the garbage cans in the alcove. The glass didn’t break, even when I let it drop from my fist to clunk on the sidewalk bricks.
I’m not sure which sound I heard first, a female voice screaming from a stoop behind me, or the wailing of a siren.
A policeman approached me tentatively, hand hovering over his holster, but we were soon face to face, eyebrows raised in a mirror image of recognition.
end
by submission | Nov 29, 2018 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Ouch! That hurts!”
Clint Aurelius pulled back his tattoo needle from his thirty-something assistant wincing under his application. Clint took some deep breaths while resting his hands from arthritic agony.
“No intent to harm…just tidying your history a bit at day’s end. Some script needed sharpening.”
“I appreciate it. I want readers to tell my story because someday old recorders like you will be gone.” The assistant adjusted his shoulders, cracking his neck vertebrae to increase relaxation.
“One last touch to finish. I’ll read you shortly. You did a terrific job today coordinating all the people’s tattoos and customer traffic. I couldn’t manage without you.” Aurelius scanned his workmanship, adding a single line of fine ink to letters fading near edges of his flesh canvas.
“How did this happen, Clint Aurelius? You know your name and your history without writing. You have a great name, but I cannot remember mine.” His assistant stepped down from the workbench to stretch and ready for his identity reading.
“I was one of the lucky ones when it struck,” Clint explained. “It was an emerging virus carried by every biting bug on the planet. It was everywhere in weeks with no way to stop it. Docs called it a biological traumatic brain injury.”
“What made you different, Aurelius? I mean, you know your interesting name.”
Aurelius paused, slightly amused. “It means, literally, a golden hill. Like others who had retired with early signs of Alzheimer’s, I feared to become a drain on society. I had retired as a graphic artist. My hobby was calligraphy. Strangely, that virus turned off my affliction while it destroyed other’s memories of their past, including their names. People could not record new memories. What skills they had morphed into general labor capacities.”
“So only a few of us could remember who we were?”
“There were enough with Alzheimer’s who recovered, creating stability for a while,” Aurelius continued. “But, in months transportation and electricity disappeared. Survival became difficult. Of course, there were no more great wars or regional squabbles, but instead a dizzying descent into widespread madness. That’s why compounds like ours became bastions for preservation against marauders and insanity. Now writers, like me, and those who can still read, keep daily memories fresh for the afflicted by repeating life stories from their backs. Most survivors live in a continual now, with little context of their past or any long-term future. Only their daily storytelling gives them a history for their moment.”
“Is our future that dark?” the assistant asked.
“There are other ramifications. People can’t form relationships. Each day readers meet to introduce couples by telling their skin stories together, but after a day, there is no memory capable of constructing bonding. There is no family building…no ability to understand birth or raise offspring. I have met and mourned with many writers that we will not see our grandchildren…that this may end our species. We who sustain provide love and care by serving to read the same stories repeatedly, while experiencing diminishing optimism that a few, still undiscovered, will survive this plague and reproduce. For now…there is only a fading hope.”
“That is chilling, Aurelius. Can you read me now, and the prayer written for all our clients today?”
“Yes. Let me tell your story.” Aurelius began his oration from his assistant’s tattoo: “Bless me, for I have forgotten. I was once an air traffic controller. My name is Hank Aurelius.”
by submission | Nov 28, 2018 | Story |
Author: Abigail Hughes
I know you made it clear we were not supposed to talk during our “break”, but I have something I need to get off of my chest and now that it is impossible for you to automatically know what I’m feeling, I have been reduced to contacting you through one of your appendages’ social media accounts.
This morning I woke up to silence.
There was no dull, internal buzzing of a million discontinuous voices competing for dominance. There were just my thoughts. Alone. Bouncing off the walls of a pathetic, singular brain. I hope you understand how traumatic this was. I had something on my mind and was completely incapable of silently sharing that something with you. Then it all came thundering down, the reality of it all, that no longer would I have access to your thoughts. Your memories. Your desires.
I kept waiting for you to return. I spent hours concentrating on that feeling of togetherness I had grown accustomed to. When I realized you were not coming back, that it was completely over – I cried.
Hard.
You did not see me at my best yesterday when I went into the cafe Yolanda works at. I was drunk, you probably smelled it on me when you sent the manager over. I know you infected him, I could tell by his watering eyes and concealed desperation.
I envied him.
He was trying to scream, fighting over the control of his vocal cords when you told me, in his wavering voice “It’s over. Go home or I’m calling the police”.
I noticed that you were occupying Mike’s brain now. I cannot phane happiness. It was a mistake introducing you two. The escapade is brutal in an entirely different way because this is not the first relationship I lost to the guy and I am positive it won’t be the last. I get it. He works an office job, brings home six figures and drives a Maserati. But let me ask you this, how many of you can fit into his car?
Three?
My bus can lug seven of you around, easy. Ten, even, if two of you lay vertically and one doesn’t mind the trunk.
I gave everything I had to benefit your mission. My cat, my brother, my landlord, my neighbors – you have assimilated everyone I know! Which, you can imagine, makes it obscenely difficult to get over you. And even though we are currently apart I swear if I find someone worthy of your consideration then I will send them your way without skipping a beat. I can’t help it, I love you I care about your goals.
I find myself living in the past, trying to pinpoint exactly where I went wrong. The one event I keep circling back to is the concert. I am sorry, Hive, I am so sorry. I had no idea that my love of Ska music was strong enough to encumber your ability of replication and assimilation. I know how much you have always wanted to mesh with a bass player. If I knew that an entire crowd of concert-goers angrily screaming lyrics and crumping in perfect unison would alert the band of our presence then I would have suppressed the urge to do so.
It is possible that I am overthinking things, but it is all I can do at this point. I am utterly alone with nothing but my thoughts.
I remember when I first met you, in the eyes of a beggar. You looked so out of place. Disoriented. Manic. Inhabiting an old body that you clearly did not know how to navigate. I was having a smoke outside of the restaurant, lamenting going in and closing. Then you came up to me, grabbed me by the shoulders, leaned in for a vinegary kiss and heaved countless writhing lifeforms into my mouth.
I was one with an organism larger than life itself.
I knew that I would never be the same.
And today, I am certain of the same fact.
Baby, I love you. I miss you. I will never forget you – especially because I see you on every street corner, grocery store and fast food chain in town. Plus, I am fairly confident that you have inhabited a news anchor on channel twelve. Which, I mean, congratulations – but I cannot help but wonder what she has that I do not.
I cannot stand the thought of living in this world without a collective consciousness splitting rent inside my head. I am willing to change.
I want you to know that I sincerely wish you the best of luck. I am certain that you will make the best overlord of the human race, and I cannot wait to see what the new world of like-minded individuals terraforming this planet to fit the needs of your survival will look like.
Call me.
Text me.
Assimilate me.
Please, just give me another chance.
by Hari Navarro | Nov 27, 2018 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
Europa Nov. 22, 2122 [GMT] 5400 mSv
The submersible hovers in the heavy sodium sea 99.8 km below the Europan crust. Steadying it snaps to grid-coordinate: K-V-6-2.
“Damn. You sunk my battleship”, quips 2nd Lt. Percy Newberry in a joke he has told many times over. One that is yet to receive so much as a resided chuckle.
Expertly he maneuvers the craft, landing it astride this perfect trench. The leading-line they have followed now to this the chisel-point of its end.
“Looking good Canary One. Sub-surface achieved”, chimes in the command ship. Nestled high above among chaotic jutting spires and tectonically contorted sheets it waits and weights upon the radiation chewed ice.
Carter breathes deep as his suit is tethered and the umbilical communication and life support indicators are checked and checked again.
“It’s like you planned this. What flavor of darkness did you invoke to have the trench too narrow for the ship but just wide enough for an under-skilled boy-man contractor such as yourself to be lowered into?”
“I know the bosses daughter”
“You’ll not be the same after this. You’re the new Armstrong. The first man to actually step foot on Europa”, whispers 1st Lieutenant Herbert as she checks the seal of his visor.
“I can do without the hassle, Evelyn. Think I’ll just come straight out with a statement that we faked the whole thing”, he grins and he feels the warm flood of anticipation ooze into the pores of his face.
Slapping the side of his helmet she gives the thumbs up and there is a gentle hiss as he is hoisted and readied to be lowered into the dive-bay that now opens beneath his feet. The Lieutenant squeezes the com-link at her lapel.
“Think of something iconic to say. Command has changed plans. We broadcast live. No pressure”
Carter descends into this place that he’d never been but where his imagination had lived and bred since as a child he’d rubbed his finger across a tiniest slither of rock. A fragment from the edge of another sea. Serenity. Now so perfect a word.
The darkness clings like thick memories and he looks up and sees the flicker of the submersibles navigation lights and he is home.
Lost in his youth high on the iron roof of his grandfather’s garage. The weather-vane, a smiling steel whale gently it squeaks and the undulating iron at his back is still warm from the now long spent sun and his eyes they fix to the stars.
He barely notices as his feet touch down and his suit automatically calculates and redistributes its weight and suddenly the murk throbs and it pulses.
“We have visual. Confirm receive. Glare detected. Light source. Confirm”
But Carter is silent and the light it plays, filling the HUD that streams the curve of his visor with a hue that envelopes and pulls at his cells, dragging him into the glow.
Such a strange light this is that clings within the strafes of the warm tidal flex that undulate the walls of the trench. Things that aren’t there appear. Great robed beings all in a line. Heads hung, they beckon and bow.
“… confirm receive”
His feet feel light as they drag silently through this gauntlet of ancient ice and toward the increasingly narrowing fissure at its end.
“Confirm receive. Confirm?”
Nothing.
“LRV Carnarvon. LRV Carnarvon. We’ve lost contact with Carter. Rad levels normal. HR spiking… ”
“Carter. Carter. This is LRV Carnarvon. Respond. Carter!”
“I’m OK”
“Can you see anything?”
“Yes, wonderful things!”
“Please repeat… [Redacted// Carnarvon Corp.]
by Julian Miles | Nov 26, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s a half-kilometre tourist cruiser flying between Adma and Therna. It looks tiny from this distance. Compared to them, it would be at any distance.
Douglas Thenix translated the Decoran Stone, an artefact found during the excavation of a site near Lothal in India. It described the origins of the Vimana, the magnificent flying palaces of the Sanskrit epics. At the time, his work was ridiculed.
A century later, we arrived here and proved him right. This planet is named in his honour, as his translation found no names for homeworld or inhabitants. Nor did it provide warning of the awe-inspiring structures left by a civilisation so obviously advanced it scares me. I’m not meant to be scared: I’m the Imperial Earth Administrator for this sector.
Named for beings from his translations, these towering pieces of architecture baffle us. Each is less than a kilometre in diameter, yet they soar at least sixteen kilometres into the sky, protected by a forcefield that defies everything we’ve tried. Even the ruins of a spire toppled by a massive tectonic event long ago remain as impregnable and undetectable as its counterparts.
All are a rich bronze-gold in colour, a shade that turns blood red in the sunset and shines like pure gold in the light of dawn. We can see apertures and balconies, elevator tracks and landing pads. Each spire has a different number of sides. Nechninor has three. Maduku, ninety-four. Adma and Therna have five and seven respectively. Being sited barely two kilometres apart, they are the most popular tourist attractions.
“Madam.”
Nadine hands me my morning coffee. I spend an hour each day out here, thinking. My favourite contemplation is why the builders left. My least favourite is dealing with the problems caused by those who wish to seek a point where the underground structure of the tower is no longer protected. The subterranean sections seem to mirror ground level size and extend downwards for at least two kilometres. I’m not worried about affecting the spires, but the excavations are claiming lives and the mining camps are unsanitary eyesores.
I also oversee something so secret I will die before I am allowed to retire: the spires are growing by about a centimetre each Earth year. The smallest is over fifteen kilometres from peak to buried base. Have they grown at a steady rate? Are their makers still here, somewhere, hidden behind impervious forcefields?
My main duty is related to that secret: to decide if the spires are a goal or a side product, and, if they are not an intended result, what are they are a symptom of?
Alongside descriptions of Vimana, the Mahābhārata describes events that are shockingly akin to the effects and aftermath of an atomic blast. For all that I seek out and read alternative interpretations, I find myself unable to shift a core of belief.
Every day I wake hoping one of the exploration teams will find something to help me. By lunch time, I’m hoping one of the archaeological teams on Earth has found another fragment from the wall that the Decoran Stone was chipped out of.
As night draws in, I grow wary.
I served two decades in many grim places before I came here. This innate feeling is a warning that’s never been wrong. There is a secret bound to this planet, and I alone am convinced it is malevolent in some way.
I drink my coffee and turn to smile at my staff. We have a whole sector to run. Maybe today I can lose myself in it.
by submission | Nov 25, 2018 | Story |
Author: Richard M. O’Donnell, Sr.
Norman reached across the Golden Bowl of Mystery and tugged Saffron’s blindfold down over the corner of her eye. “No fair peeking, you can only touch the objects inside the bowl to guess what they are.”
Saffron pouted her lips.
“Sulking won’t work this time. I’m immune to your charms.”
“Oh, all right,” said Saffron. “No cheating.” She reached into the bowl until she felt something round and surrounded by icy rings. She lifted it up. “This is a planet.”
“Correct.”
Saffron ran her fingers along the edge of the rings. “Too easy, this is Saturn.”
“Right again.”
She held the planet out to Norman. Every time she thought of Norman’s fiery orange nebula with its jet-blue corona, her heart quivered. “Quick,” she said, “put it back before the humans miss it.”
Norman plucked Saturn from her hand. However, instead of returning it, he slipped it into his pocket. “Try again.”
Saffron reached into the bowl and pulled out a cluster of six astro-bodies mutually tidal-locked together with her other hand. She caressed each on in turn. “Let’s see… Two dwarf planets and four moons… Mmmmm.” She smiled, triumphantly. “Pluto and Charon, and their moons Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra.”
“Right again! I didn’t think you’d get that one.”
“Most earthlings still don’t.”
“They’re learning.”
Norman put the double-dwarf planet into his pocket.
“I’m sensing a theme here.” She dipped her hands into the bowel again. “Ice, Titan. These pebbles are the asteroid belt. This big one must be Jupiter.” Then she felt water and she squealed with delight. She tore off her blindfold with one hand and lifted the Earth from the bowl with the other. The planet sparkled like a blue gem with white swirls. “Norman, you’re too sweet.”
“I remembered earth was your point of origin.”
“I was just a tiny particle when I left.” Saffron leaned over and looked inside the golden bowl. “The whole solar system is here!”
“I bought it just for you.”
“You mean I can keep it?”
Norman nodded.
“But how could you afford a planet with sentients on it?”
“They’re on the brink of extinction, so they’ve been put in the bargain bin.”
Saffron cupped the Earth in her hands. “You poor thing. I’ll hang you in a remote part of my nebula, far away from black holes and exploding stars. Maybe you’ll heal.” She kissed the thermosphere. “Even if you don’t, I’ll always treasure you.”
“There’s more.”
“More!”
Norman pulled the Sun out of his pocket and dropped to one knee. He held up the bubbling yellow-orange orb to Saffron. “I selected this because it matches your nebula perfectly. Saffron, will you merge with me?”
Saffron sunset corona beamed like a lighthouse in space. “Yes, of course I’ll merge with you.” She held out her hand and Norman slipped the sun onto her ring finger.
They embraced and the Milky Way seemed to spin just for them.
“I love you so much,” Saffron whispered. “I would have merged with you even if you hadn’t given me the world.”
