by submission | Oct 3, 2018 | Story |
Author: Thomas Desrochers
“I give this gift to the people of tomorrow. On the precipice of this great twilight I take comfort in knowing that as our ports run dry and our rails rust the people of the world will always have access to the materials needed to shape the world around them and, by extension, themselves. We no longer march toward the grave; the future of the world is open to those who would be its stewards.”
Foreword to Apis ferrum
Edward Fuller, 2073
Jason’s hives were just below the top of Janacek’s dome, set in a shelf cut into the earth, exposed to the southern sun but protected from the biting evening winds. The hundred of them were lined up in a single dizzying row, fuzzy with activity as foragers returned before sunset. Fullers’ bees were different from the old world’s honey bees – half the size, with a kaleidoscopic metal carapace, and longer lived by a factor of twenty.
So The Book said. Jason had read The Book, of course – all Fuller beekeepers were required to – but he had no way to verify the claims. After seven hundred years, who was to say?
Below the edge of the shelf the dome sloped three hundred feet down to the plain below. It was late spring and the flowers were in full bloom. Fuller’s flowers, all of them, chest high perennials with extraordinarily deep roots.
In the three weeks that the iron flowers bloomed each hive would produce fifty kilograms of high-grade blud, the thick resin-like honey typical of fuller’s bees. The five thousand kilograms that Jason’s hives produced would bake down into two tonnes of ore that was nine parts iron, one part copper.
Jason looked out over the valley, at the growing evening shadows. It was a single rusty carpet punctuated by the stubborn green dots of lonely gardens and underlain by the deep black of Fuller’s foliage. Apiaries here and there. The Book said that an area rich in Fuller’s flowers could support ten hives per acre, and Janacek’s dome and the valleys around it were nearly seven hundred acres. Three hundred and fifty tonnes of superior iron blud a year: Janacek’s dome was the most productive apiary within a fortnight.
The Book said the flowers consumed the bones of old buildings and machines that had been left to rot, a point often debated around winter fires and festival tables. What sort of place could give up so much metal and never tire? And yet a year before a boy on the coast had unearthed the bones of a great ship a kilometer long, made of steel. The ship was poisonous, killing those that spent too long there, but it raised questions. What kind of men had come before? And what power they must have had to build ships of steel!
No matter. Even if he fed off the bones of his ancestors, Jason took pride in harvesting Janacek dome, in being the latest in a line of Fuller bee keepers that stretched back to before Crisis. From nails to pots to rifles, a hundred thousand fortunes had grown from this place. This place with the faint perfume of the blooms, quiet buzzing, the gentle susurrus of the wind over the fields like a heartbeat. This place, with fat black clouds looming in the distance, ready to feed a dozen forges. Home.
There was a call to come to supper, the laughter of hungry children. Jason smiled and stood, back popping. The world was changing, flowers spreading. The humming of the bees followed, their droning flight an evening hymn.
by Hari Navarro | Oct 2, 2018 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
My grandmother is five hundred and ninety-two years old. Left to her own devices and the pitiless march of time this wonderful woman, who is actually my many times great grandmother, would have slipped away and into the finality of whatever the fuck death is five hundred years ago to this very day.
Its difficult for me to comprehend, but there are those in the world who don’t love their families. How content and relieved they must be as time it swallows the burden of age. But then, I am complacent. Not everyone is as filthy rich as we.
The money it took to develop the devices to snap our Nana away from the natural and over to synthetic cognition was as grotesque and it was well spent. It’s an ongoing syphon, but we’re family, we love her and it’s incomprehensible that we live this life with her no longer in it.
We implanted the electrodes that hang from her mind and through the wig that mimics the once tight white twist of her hair and fall as probing tentacles out of the sides of her face. How perfectly we caught that moment when she lost who she was, caught it and polished it and then handed it right on back.
This last Christmas we fitted her with an external drive, to store all the now countless names and birthdays and faces of her children and their children and their children’s children and theirs and theirs and theirs to come.
She once wrote a letter, when she still had fingers that wrote. She scrawled her name to a form and clearly she said that when her time it did come that no doctors should be called and that rather she thought to die in her room – surrounded by those that she loved.
But clearly her thoughts they were wrong.
Now as I walk down the hallway and the scent of the antiseptic hand-gel that I wring through my hands struggles to cancel the smell of bowels that involuntarily open and uneaten food that lays mashed in the cloche, I wonder.
Why, just why she would have wanted to end her life in this place? With these endless open doors that have forgotten about privacy and where the hollow cries of the lost they call out when all that they want is to go.
I’ve told her and told her there is no fucking reason for her to be in this place. That she could so easily exist for us in a great mansion of honed Scottish granite. But this is the one wish we allow her and strangely it warms, this the stark contrast of just how the poor they do suffer as they end and I am content as I enter her room.
There she is alone and many thousands of framed faces they plaster her walls and children’s art it hangs with them too. The crossword puzzle, its pages now yellowed and brittle, lays open on the tray at her lap, an unused remnant of the things she once did. And the rugby it loops on the screen.
I know she’d smile if only the muscles hadn’t long ceased to contract in her face and my heart again surges as her wail voice it croaks and begs from the hole in her neck.
“Don’t be silly Nana”, I say as I kiss her cheek and I know that she feels though her skin it swims behind plastic and she cries and she cries and I know just how grateful she is.
For Nana 1926-2018.
by Julian Miles | Oct 1, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The tip of the cigarette glows red as I slowly inhale. The taste of the black tobacco momentarily overwhelms my receptors. I wind their sensitivity down and cancel the ‘inhaled toxin’ warnings.
The second drag goes down without alerts. I exhale and look about the swamp. A lone raptor, some serpentine vulture, is target marked, identified as ‘Pargorn, male, mature’, and then dropped from targeting as a non-threat. Apart from the lizard-bird, the sub-tropical wilderness about me is devoid of anything bigger than the occasional ‘Rogan’ – a bloodsucking mosquito/dragonfly hybrid that strikes like a high-velocity bullet.
I see one land on my forearm, slam its proboscis down, and watch the rebound crack the back of its tiny skull. It falls off, adding itself to the scattering of brain-impaled Rogans on the ground around me.
My third inhalation raises that question again: why do I smoke? I’m a cyborg. My only organic bits are inside a brain case that a nuclear blast couldn’t penetrate. The question baffled me for a while, until I realised I was missing the point behind the dichotomy of being a robot smoker. I’d carried on after my lungs got replaced because of a gas attack on Bantulan. Back then, a few bits of me still needed oxygen and I could get a bit of a nicotine rush. I just forgot to drop the habit when breathing became irrelevant.
But, I’ve realised the act of smoking helps me remember I’m human, despite the eternal architecture I inhabit. I’ll admit there are valid links to the post-coital cigarette at times, although I’m no longer sure it’s a worrying thing that I associate memories of sex with the achievement of killing. After all, I can only ‘let go’ by killing things. Sparring is not a hobby for beings with as much killsoft on board as I have.
I should be worried about that. My military service is classified and has been erased from my recollection. However, under the Terminus Road statutes, they may not remove anything that ‘compromises the fundamental nature of the artificial element’. Which means they weren’t allowed to uninstall anything. Guessing from my range of combat abilities, I think I’m better off not knowing the details of my career as a distributor of wholesale death.
Another Rogan hammers it’s brains out. My smoke is done. I flick it away, watching the glowing end spin as the butt describes a long arc. I remember the briefing note about low-lying flammable gas pockets in time to bring my arm up and shield my optics.
After the explosion, the Pargorn and Rogans are gone. Just me and the prone form of my target, Christine17. I could have killed her a couple of worlds ago, but the contract offers a big bonus for making sure she remains only inoperative, so her quantum trigger won’t wake up Christine18.
Lord above, I hope I never annoy anyone that much.
At least she’ll be able to watch aquatic life and passing flying things in the pool I’m about to sink her face-up in.
Before getting to that, I think I’ll have another cigarette. It’s not like these things can kill me.
by submission | Sep 30, 2018 | Story |
Author: David Hartley
Perhaps it would have been better, somehow, if this had been sample #142 or #96 or #305, something innocuous and meaningless but no, it was sample number one, the first, and he already wanted to taste it.
He’d tried blaming a few other things: it had reached some telepathic tendrils into his mind at the point of death and made him look at it hungrily because, hey, it wasn’t dead, it was just lying microscopically still, waiting to be ingested so its parasitic foetal cells could awaken and attach to his stomach lining and grow inside his blood.
Or: this was an important scientific experiment that needed to happen now before endless committees talked themselves into a tangle, and the whole thing got entrenched with the bioethics lot and tied up in the finickity parameters of some drawn-out lab test in which he would almost certainly not be involved.
Or: he needed to step up and be the pioneer because there were millions starving back home, billions soon, and here on Europa there was a nearly endless supply of these nutritionally rich organisms whose alarming rate of reproduction and ease of capture meant they were almost begging to be used to save an ailing species of twelve billion superior mouths.
But truth was, he just wanted to taste it. He just wanted, more than anything, the experience of pressing the monochrome dough between his teeth, feeling the spread of its fizzing oil across his tongue while that sharp, salty, oaky aroma filled his mouth and coated his throat and washed him through. He’d seen the salivation of the others. They’d all thought it. But none had the guile, or the access.
He slipped the scalpel from his sleeve, angled his body to block the cameras, and sliced out a decent chunk from the thirteenth petri dish of Sample #1. It was the part he’d identified, in his head, as the flank. The morsel and the scalpel went back into his sleeve as he lowered the thirteenth petri into permanent cold storage.
Later, as he cooked it, he thought he saw, just for half a second, the meat twitch into life. He grinned at himself. He chuckled, he whistled, he shook his head, for it must’ve been the spit of the oil, the kick of the flame, a trick of the eye.
by submission | Sep 29, 2018 | Story |
Author: Daniel Hampton
I rested my eyes upon the tessellated sphere. It was such a beautiful dream. It was such a spectacular failure.
If the world is a golf ball, then I’m the one who drove it straight into the bottom of the lake. My club? A thing so simple, so deadly, so tempting.
My dream. It doesn’t seem like a dream anymore, but it doesn’t quite feel real either. I found my guilt overwhelming, all encompassing, ever-present, but toothless. I didn’t drown myself. I didn’t jump off the sheer cliff. There’s nobody left that would want me to.
I don’t think I’m alive. I’m not sure If I ever was. The world hasn’t ended. My world was the end. My existence, a last turn of the key, locking the coffin forever.
I can shout as loud as I please, and no one will hear me. I whisper, because I wish that I was mute.
It would be better if I had never spoke at all.
Why did they listen to me?
Why did they bet their lies on a false dream?
Why did they die before me?
Why did they live to die?
Why did my dream exist? Why did my dream kill them?
I don’t know. I don’t know that I never knew. Do I?
It was a beautiful dream.
I was Noah, I made the ark, and I took two of everything I cared to take. I threw them in a rock and set it sailing. The rock came back, with nothing but bones. I’m all out of twos. No point in throwing another rock, I suppose.
“It’s the last chance. Our last chance. The end is nigh, and I’ll take a one-thousandth chance over a one-millionth chance, wouldn’t you?”
I guess my argument was persuasive. Too bad it was wrong, and I happened to win the lottery. One in a million, I said. Well, I must feel like a million bucks now.
“Of course, I believe you. I’ll roll the dice. And if we get it right, we’ll all have a big party when we come back, ok?”
They came back, and what a big party we’re having. Me and a big pile of bones. I think I’m supposed to bury them, but I don’t know who’s who.
“Are you sure about staying? I know there’s not enough room, but this was your project, your dream!”
The worst part is the pity. I saw it on their faces. The last thing I saw on their faces. Pity. For me.
The sky is a blend of blues and greens, and the stars are hiding behind them, laughing at me. I sent my friends up to them, and they spat them back at me. I want to punch the stars in the face.
But they don’t deserve it.
I’m guessing they burned up on re-entry to the atmosphere. I still don’t know what went wrong. It was supposed to stay in orbit for years, until the clouds went away. The big rock landed on earth, and the clouds flew all around. The clouds came, and they rained water. Just water. I don’t know how. Then the sphere came around back to earth. I was embarrassed that I was so wrong, of course, but I was happy my friends were coming back.
Well, my friends came back.
And what a great party we’re having.
by submission | Sep 28, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mike Bailey
The box sat upon the table. It was inanimate, but strange waves of light moved across its surface and Roman felt a tingle in the back of his head like the beginning of a headache.
The box had been carefully placed there on that smooth glass table and there it sat, rather stoically, in that dimly lit room. Roman knew that it was inanimate, but still there was something about it that was more alive than he and that made him very uneasy. It was as if this box was effortlessly reaching inside of them, hearing them, silently judging them, selfishly holding all its answers from them. Roman had always heard tales of such a thing from the old wives. He even felt that there may be a chance he would see a glyphtograph in person one day in some museum or exhibition. But here they were now in their home and there it was. No glass enclosures lined with brainwave resistant material. No Praetorian Guards armed to the teeth, holding back the curious phalanx with only the knowledge of what savagery would happen should they come too close.
“I can’t believe it’s here in our house,” Gregory said. “I was just thinking the same thing,” said Roman. “I wish I knew how it worked.” “It wouldn’t matter if you did – you can’t read,” Gregory said as he walked from the kitchen over to the living room chewing a protein bar. Roman saw this, and with a furrowed brow exclaimed “Don’t eat all of those, man! We only have 15 left for the whole month.” Gregory sat down beside him, never looking at him – only the box – but talking to him all the same. “After we sell this we’re never going to have to worry about being hungry again.” Conflicted, Roman turned his gaze back to the glyphtograph. He liked the sound of that but had started to have doubts about how this deal was going to go down. The box lit up and then darkened.
How could two young boys from the Panormus District wind up in this situation? The odds must be astronomical. This was nothing like the simple emulator game food ration credit hustles that had afforded them this shabby apartment in the slum. The small trinkets and jewelry that Gregory would steal from the upper-class denizens of the wealthier districts did not shine as bright as this. The valuable, technically sophisticated machines of business import that they managed to relieve drunken Arbiters and careless Scribes did not hum and vibrate to the degree that this motionless machine did. This was an incredible windfall. Where did Gregory find this? How had he come to bring it here with no one knowing? He knew possession of this object was so beyond them that it had started to feel too good to be true. The glyphtograph cast a symbol against the wall but then disappeared. Roman was scared.
They heard heavy foot falls approaching their room. “This must be Tiberius, now. He will show us the way to the meeting place. Mark my words, Roman; the brotherhood will pay fortunes for this. So many credits that your head will spin.” Before Gregory could reach the door the glyphtograph lit up the walls with strange symbols.
“Hey!” Roman called to Gregory his voice shaking. “What is this?” As Gregory turned around to behold the symbols his eyes widened as he realized all too late that they were a warning. The door exploded as Praetorians stormed the room killing them both in seconds and reclaiming the property of the Emperor.
