by submission | Mar 23, 2019 | Story |
Author: A. Zachary Spery
Seth was awakened. He felt oddly compelled to fix something. The computer began streaming information to him. Seconds ago, the sensors had recorded an unexpected collision. The colony ship was off course and tumbling. The Semi-sapient Emergency Troubleshooting Heuristic (S.E.T.H.) was activated to assess the situation and take corrective action to protect the cargo and mission.
Seth was a computer program. He didn’t feel like one. But it didn’t matter, he felt primally compelled to fix the ship. He had to fix it.
The ship’s course had deviated a bit and no longer intersected with the Proxima Centauri system. Some structural sensors showed section 3 was badly damaged and the section had depressurized. Cameras confirmed his suspicion, there was a gaping hole in the side of the ship. That was fine for now since all 1000 human colonists were asleep in their hibernation tubes. He dispatched repair drones to reseal the hull.
Seth deduced they had probably collided with a small mass no bigger than a marble. When you’re traveling at one percent of the speed of light, hitting such a mass was like getting hit by a small nuke.
There was insufficient fuel to correct their course and still decelerate into an orbit around Proxima. Seth taxed his neural algorithms for several hundred milliseconds to figure out a solution. The mission had to be saved or he could not bear existence. Perhaps some extraneous cargo could be ejected; less cargo means less fuel would be needed to return to course. Indeed any one of the four cargo modules could be detached and along with a brief engine burn they could return to an acceptable course to Proxima.
But which cargo pod to detach? Cargo pods one, two, and three all contained essential supplies for colonizing a new world. But cargo pod four only contained 1000 hibernation tubes which would have no value on the colony. Seth ejected cargo pod four, performed the engine burn and went back to sleep.
by submission | Mar 22, 2019 | Story |
Author: Elaine Thomas
The warm sun felt good on the old man’s skin. He stood on the balcony, gazing down into
the garden.
“A beautiful day,” he thought, “a good day to die.”
He examined his hands, gripping the railing, wrinkled, marked with spots of age and
prominent veins.
He shifted his fading eyesight back toward the garden below. The old man took solace in
flowers, that something so alive and lovely could rise up out of the dirt and all that might lie hidden beneath. Enduring perennials bloomed alongside annuals that required replanting every season. His carefully cultivated garden held the perfect blend of forms and colors, each according to its kind, and he saw that it was good.
His young grandson played among the plants. Yielding to sentimentality, the old man thought of the radiant child as the most beautiful flower in his garden. He pushed away sadness, letting himself fill with a familiar flush of pride. “Such a boy comes along only every few generations,” he thought. Despite his failing body, and aggrieved acceptance of its mortality, knowing he would live on through such a child comforted his ancient soul.
The boy looked up and waved. As the old man wound his way down stone steps toward the garden, his mind pictured the sadness the boy would have to carry into his grandfather’s funeral. No doubt the child’s composure, wise beyond his years, would impress all who witnessed.
If anything could make the old man rethink his decision, it was the sweet child who smiled at his approach. He wanted so badly to spare this boy pain, but his own gnawing need was stronger, deep and primitive and irresistible in the way of all instincts.
The grandfather threw open his arms. The boy eagerly ran to him. He stooped to lift the child, folding him against his chest, savoring the feel of the sturdy young body, the warmth, and smell, the generational newness. He held the boy tenderly for just a moment, before giving in to a hunger now beyond all control. He spread his jaws and pressed his mouth to the boy’s face. The alarmed child’s back stiffened. The exchange began.
He left his old, withered body where it fell. This now-new boy never looked back. He knew what everyone would say when the boy’s father found his own father’s body, “He died peacefully in the place he loved most.” He had left written instructions, requesting burial there in the garden.
To himself, he whispered, “I am …” Energy pulsed through his new body, replacing any memory of suffering or sorrow. “I am…” he whispered again. He belonged both to and upon this dirt, from which he had emerged long, long ago. He felt as he had so many times before, as he knew he would so many times again, perennially, each time and always, no matter how different, the same boy.
by submission | Mar 21, 2019 | Story |
Author: Shaked Koplewitz
The orders were clear: As tempting as it was, we were not to let the psychics process the alien message. Instead, we were to send it through to an old-fashioned linguistics team, who’d work with pen and paper to decipher what they could of it.
This seemed impossible – this was the first-year alien message we’d ever received. Heck, until recent developments in long-distance communication the only evidence we’d even had that the aliens existed were some weird radiation patterns around a star that the astronomers said looked like a Dyson sphere. It was only the psychics’ abilities that had given me any hope we could read it at all. And now we were banned from using them.
When I went to the director to complain, she was apoplectic. “Think about it!” She shouted. “Psychics don’t just read symbols, the process information at the intent level. They make the message *real*. Does the word infohazard mean *nothing* to you?!”
“All we know about these aliens is that they have a Dyson sphere and they sent us a message. The first means they’re more advanced than us, maybe more advanced than we can even imagine. Can you tell me what the second means?”
“That… That they want something from us. And we have no idea what, or how they’re planning to get it.” I went white as I realized the implication.
“That’s right,” she continued. “So we’re not processing this information, and we’re not going to put it anywhere it might harm someone. Instead, we’re going to translate pieces of it, as slowly and piecemeal as we can. Maybe we’ll learn something about them out of it.”
So I gave the message to my translation team and waited for results. At first, they were as hopeless as I was about it, but after three days they started getting a few words. After a week, I got an alert that they’d found something. I went down to the bunker.
“We got a whole paragraph, we think,” the head translator said. But then we had this idea – why not just go to the psychics? I went ahead and forwarded the message to them – the computer didn’t want to send it out, but we found a workaround-”
I stopped in horror. Surely they understood why they couldn’t do that! Hadn’t I explained? No, wait, I had explained. I remembered that quite clearly. And then I noticed the lopsided grin on the translator’s face and the mad gleam in his eye.
I stayed there, transfixed in horror as he walked up and whispered in my ear. “It’s too late”, he whispered. “It’s already out.”
by submission | Mar 20, 2019 | Story |
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.
by Hari Navarro | Mar 19, 2019 | Story |
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.
by Julian Miles | Mar 18, 2019 | Story |
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.
