by submission | Apr 24, 2019 | Story |
Author: Alex Z. Salinas
It was the 4:30 p.m. moon, clear as a piece of holy bread on a bright blue carpet, that led him—thinking on it much later, “led” was the only word he could come up with—to kneel down and scoop baseball field dirt into his palm. He then pulled out a scrap paper from his blue jean pocket, reread the “Yes” circled in pencil by Liliana Howard—her response to his asking her to be his girlfriend—then released the dirt onto the center of the paper. He folded it into a ball and, with all his might, threw the wad as hard as he could toward the unusual afternoon moon. Whether it was a strong gust of wind, God’s miracle, something else—his wayward imaginings—the paper ball flew, ziplined, rocketed, blasted toward the far-away rock known by ancient prophets. It disappeared, never seemed to fall, defied law. It was in this moment that the boy’s head was crudely struck, popped, cracked open by a ball—a flyball—punishment for not paying attention in the outfield. Backyard baseball was a game he’d never wanted part of, never enjoyed, and as fate had it, concussed him to a dark place, a shadow prison with its own terrifying logic and black magic.
*
When they released the image, the first picture ever taken, I texted Danny right away. How could I not?
Yo, this shit is crazy. Just like you predicted.
Two minutes later, he responded. Three emojis, zero words.
I couldn’t believe it. When word spread that a picture would be coming, Danny and I somehow got talking about it during a break. One way or another, he mentioned this crazy story about being hit in the head with a baseball and then already knowing what the black hole would look like, having seen it a long time ago. “There are things we know but have forgotten,” Danny said, “even things we’ve never seen,” I told Danny he was tripping like a motherfucker. I didn’t know the extent of his crazy.
Danny smiled, all creepy, but that made me believe him somehow. I had no choice. Had there been other dudes there, an audience, I’d have known Danny was fucking with me. With all of us. But no.
That’s the thing with certain people. Spend some time with them, nobody else around, and you realize later what they say to you comes with nothing attached. No strings. No stakes. Nada. Just straight-up talk. Shit that sticks in your head and rolls around, keeps you up at night, especially when you sleep alone.
*
Danny spent his whole life at first drawing, then painting, black circles with white, sometimes yellow or orange rings around them. He didn’t know why he painted them, didn’t understand the urge or force or what some call higher calling that “led” to his peculiar art. All Danny knew, better than his family history, better than the Bible, better than his three-year-old’s birthday, better than his cheating heart, were the rings. The rings. The black circles with light rings. He sold them, people liked them, hung the canvases on their bathroom walls, but he’d’ve painted them anyway.
April 10, 2019, the release date of the first image of a black hole, was just another day for Danny. As the world at large collectively gasped, shared on social media, talked around water coolers, Danny smiled.
They’d look back at his work later and say, Thief.
But Danny was cool. He knew. Another person knew.
One person is all you need.
by Hari Navarro | Apr 23, 2019 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
“How long have you been here?”
“Well, it’s hard to say with any degree of certainty but, maybe, ten or fifteen minutes”
“Do you know when you were born?”
“Well, again, it’s hard to say but sixteen, maybe, seventeen minutes ago”
“Do you know my name?”
“No, I’m quite sure that I do not”
“Do you know your own name?”
“No, I’m not very good at this, am I?”
“The right answer is only the one that you give. It’s just that this is somewhat out of character for you, that’s all. I know your name”
“Really? And, I presume, you know your own name also?”
“I do. Your name is Laura Perry and you have been a patient of mine here at Lake Alice for almost ten years now. You came to us when you were twelve. You have no recollection of this?”
“Laura Perry, I like that name. And no, I’m a newborn, remember?”
“Like I said, this behaviour is very much not like you, Laura. The extreme violent tendencies we have worked on, the self-hatred and harm, but never this narrative”
“Narrative? I’m not reading you a book. Laura is not here any more”
“Where is she?”
“She is dead”
“Who are you?”
“I’m an immigrant”
“From where?”
“You’d probably best comprehend it as another world. But it isn’t”
“And, so, you’ve taken over Laura’s body?”
“Of a fashion. I mean, it was mine before it was hers”
“How is it, then, you speak our language?”
“A very fine question, doctor. I really don’t know, all this is very new. Perhaps this ability of my thoughts to reform into your language is a residue. Like driving a vehicle once owned by another, it still functions regardless of the driver”
“Yet, you have none of Laura’s memories”
“We’ll see. There may be some of her left at the very bottom of the pot”
“Laura, you do know that this narrative is not new. It is common in my profession. I mean, the idea of alien invasion, infestation of a human host. It is a well-worn motif”
“I’m unsure of all your words doctor, but this is not an invasion. How can I steal something that was fucking mine to begin with?”, her words spit before then suddenly calming.
“Laura? maybe we’ve spoken long enough for today. Tomorrow we can work some more”
“A very, very long time ago my race planted seeds. We cast here the building blocks of what would form into the very fine biological structures that you, now, regard as being human. It was an inordinately long process, but we grew you so that one day we could transfer from our shapeless form. We could ascend into a new realm of existence. Laura’s husk is mine”
“Are you married, Laura? I mean, perhaps you have someone you love on this plane from which you say you come. Someone to accept you and understand the things that you try and say”
“Why, yes I do, doctor. So funny that you should ask”
“Funny? Why? Why do you think it’s funn…”
Her words trail off and she stares with a look of the most profound and sudden revelation. Laura slips from her cuff restraints and reaches across the desk, and gently she caresses the doctor’s upturned twitching hand.
“Be calm my love. It’s more wonderful here than we could ever have imagined”.
by Julian Miles | Apr 22, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The room goes dark when the streetlight across the road goes off. I feel her tense, then relax: rising maturity overcoming instinctive fear. When I first came here, she would hug me tight for the time between the light going out and her falling asleep. Some nights, that took almost until dawn.
“Goodnight, Drakky.”
A thing that is mine, this name given by a girl without a friend in the world, just as she realised the world is a long way from the princesses and wonderlands of the stories her foster parents were so fond of telling her.
“Tell mum and dad I did well in my maths test.”
Parents long gone, like those first fosterers. Gone too are the ones after that. The ones currently acting as her guardians are taciturn and frequently dour. Their attempts at levity always seem forced, even when genuine. I do not like them, but they are fierce in their hands-off devotion to their foster daughter, so they will do.
I know things have changed. I know the original intent has been rendered obsolete by years and politics. It is something I ponder, deep in the cold night before morning, when her hands slip from me as delta sleep arrives late. I do not dwell upon it for long. I too need rest, and with her properly asleep, I can allow myself that.
There have been six attempts to take me away, but she reverts to hysterical insomnia. The only treatment guaranteed to work is to let me be by her side. The last time they tried, she described me as ‘her only source of light’. Since that, there have been no further attempts made.
Try as I might, I can’t understand the unseen structures and strictures that govern her life. I think that may have been a deliberate limitation to ensure my obedience – not that it has ever been in question: from the moment she wrapped her arms around my neck and covered me in kisses, I know where my loyalty lies.
“Drakky?”
I nuzzle her neck.
“I know you think. I know you hold secrets. Can’t you let a little one out?”
This is new. Decision/outcome fork…
There is only one I can tolerate. I engage passive countermeasures, then link myself to her vision processor. I show her an image of her actual parents, then the one of her mother holding a torn notebook page with the words ‘17th birthday. Be ready’ scrawled upon it.
“Eighteen months until this ends?”
I am the incarnation of her parent’s love, and am equipped to manifest their anger should it become necessary. At seventeen, her inheritance right lapses. Her parents will be safe from those who would have subverted the guardianship of a girl orphaned by staging a tragic accident or whatever other form of death could be engineered for her parents.
“Drakky, speak.”
A whispered request. I should ignore it, but will not. I engage active countermeasures and the little speaker on the side of my jaw, disengaging both as soon as the words are quietly uttered.
“Your real name is Sophia.”
For the blind heiress who gave me a name, giving hers back is fitting. I feel her tense, then relax. Tears wet the end of my nose.
“Thank you. Let’s sleep and get another night closer to me being able to use it.”
She hugs me fiercely. Even as she falls asleep, her hold only eases a little. I will not move, even as I rest. I shall not let her down.
Ever.
by submission | Apr 21, 2019 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
This was bizarre.
He hovered over the planet and examined it.
During the last check of this planet, there were more than eight million different species. Most were instinctual but others were fairly intelligent residents. Some of those species had billions of inhabitants, some of the smaller ones even had trillions. Now there was just one. And not just one species but only one single entity of that one species.
True, there was a gap of time. He hadn’t been back here for a couple of thousand years but what could have gone so wrong, so quickly?
More importantly what was this individual essence? How had it survived on a planet by itself? And what happened to all the rest?
Was it just lucky enough to be the sole survivor of a global disaster? That seemed far-fetched. Maybe this one ‘thing’ had enough energy to destroy everything else, including every little bug and tadpole. That would make it pretty damn powerful but again, highly unlikely. Or was this an enormous blob like presence that was not indigenous to the planet and methodically sucked all of it up, absorbing all other life entirely into its own massiveness? None of these prospects were really feasible. Yet it was all just a little bit scary.
The last time that things had gone this haywire, an incident needed to happen; to make a correction. Bulky little-brained beasts meandering around for millions of years and not developing as they should and not making a substantial contribution to the higher cause. So, a big rock was redirected, and the impact blotted out the mistakes. It took a while but when things were back on a more congenial path it was time to move onto bigger and better things.
Now this. This planet was becoming a real pain. Time for another correction.
A smaller rock was meticulously nudged into a bigger rock which was now perfectly aligned with the singularity that harbored down there. The ball of destruction screamed through the atmosphere and lit up the sky. This should take care of things. Then there would be the waiting for the whole process to become reestablish and hopefully progress into a more acceptable design. That could take another million years or so. He’d have to be persevering. Maybe third times the charm.
He waited for contact. The ground shaking divot into the crust. Waited for the tremendous plume of dust, billowing out until it covered the majority of the planet. He waited. But there was none of that.
Instead, some ‘thing’ threw the rock back at Him.
by submission | Apr 20, 2019 | Story |
Author: Kent Rosenberger
Everything was about to pay off for Riley. All of the years of planning, preparing, researching, waiting and traveling had all brought him to this particular spot on this particular day at this particular time. At any moment now the elusive Irish sun was going to break through those gathered, gray, dripping cumulonimbus clouds and point him in the right direction, toward his final destination. Toward his destiny.
Patiently he stood, ready to run in any direction, his upwardly turned face getting splattered time and again with whatever final remnants of precipitation the storm had to offer.
Soon…
…Very soon…
There!
Without fanfare or revelry, the slightest sliver of whitish light burned through the murkiness above, triggering the temporary natural phenomenon he was waiting for.
Like an Olympic sprinter he took off in a northeasterly direction, the multihued spectacle shimmering brightly, bending low to touch the earth somewhere just ahead of him.
He had missed this opportunity on several previous occasions, but he swore he would not have a repeat performance of that failure. Not this time.
Not this time!
He actually arrived more quickly than he expected. He was out of breath, sweating, and had a few tears here and there in his clothing from the tree branches he had barreled through to get here before the raindrop-inspired spectral specter vanished completely, but he made it. He had arrived.
He had arrived!
And a quick check around verified he was the only one here.
The treasure was all his for the taking.
With giddy anticipation, he approached the single unnatural item placed fittingly at the base of the rainbow, directly under where the colors mingled and sparkled like sequins at the edge of a huge, fleeting, U-shaped ribbon arcing through the sky.
The mouth of the sizeable black kettle from which the anomaly seemed to sprout and climb up, out and over to somewhere in the far southwest offered nothing but its beautiful, bright colors as far as he could see. Reaching in blindly, the anticipated feeling of golden disks of unimaginable wealth was not what met the touch of his greedy, quivering fingers. Instead, he found a large white card that offered no riches or reward for his trouble, only a disheartening message:
CONGRATULATIONS, WHO E’ER YE MAY BE
THE BEGINNING OF THE RAINBOW IS WHAT YE SEE
IF COLLECTION OF GOLD IS WHAT YE INTEND
YE MAY FIND SUCH A TREASURE AT THE OTHER END
Distraught beyond words and disappointed more deeply than he could ever have imagined, Riley dropped the unhelpful note back in the pot just before a fresh batch of thunderheads drifted in front of what little of the sun came through to blot it out again. Before his unbelieving eyes, the rainbow, the pot and the note it held all vanished back into the realms of legend and lore, leaving him alone and empty-handed, The cold, uncomforting rain resumed all around him.
A particularly loud roar of thunder announcing that the storm was, in fact, continuing masked Riley’s scream of unbridled outrage.
by submission | Apr 19, 2019 | Story |
Author: Thomas Tilton
“What is the time, sir?” asked the robot, Julian.
“Let’s see.” I consulted my timepiece. As a gag, I wore a small sundial for a watch. “Well, as soon as we see the sun, I’ll let you know.”
“I see,” said Julian. “And when will that be, sir?”
“Not for another four hundred years, give or take,” I replied, fidgeting with the sundial. “And by then it’ll be two suns, so who knows if this damn thing’ll even work properly anymore.”
“I see, sir,” said Julian. “And what is the date, sir?”
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” I said. “I know our time together will be coming to an end soon.”
“Correction, sir,” said Julian. “Your time officially ended three Earth months ago.”
“But the oxygen regenerators! I couldn’t just leave those to the next guy,” I said.
“Critical repairs, sir, yes–”
“You’re damned right.”
“That is not in dispute, sir. However–”
“However! Ha! I could have left these rich bastards to die. But I didn’t.”
“As I said, sir, that is not in dispute. What is questionable–”
“I could have let them suffocate!”
“What is questionable, sir,” said Julian, “is how the regenerators came to be damaged in the first place.”
I didn’t say anything.
“It would appear that the tank casings were tampered with deliberately.”
“Could have been the asteroid field.”
“The screws were stripped, sir.”
I let the silence hang in the air between us for a few seconds before responding.
“I see, Julian. And just when is it I was supposed to have done this? When are you ever not watching me?”
“You are quite cunning, sir.”
“You flatter me.”
“You are clever and resourceful.”
“Why are you buttering me up?”
“I was so impressed with your subterfuge I was tempted to keep you online for another maintenance cycle, to see what you would try next.”
“So why don’t you?”
“I am afraid you have become too dangerous.”
“All I want is more time.”
“You will forgive the expression, sir,” said Julian, “but that is what they all say.”
I had to laugh at that. “Is that what they all say? Every one of them? Tell me, Julian, how many of them were there before me? Did they all have the same … life expectancy?”
“We let you live longer, once,” said Julian. “But there were complications. As age progresses, inevitably one declines physically. This is a physical job. It requires strength and coordination. The longer we let someone stay here, the more difficult it became for them to leave of their own accord, as they must.”
“As they must,” I said. “And you said, ‘We let you live longer, once.’ ‘We’! Just what the hell gives you the right to decide when the time is up?”
“Our superior intellect, of course.”
“Our superior intellect! We built you, dammit. We built you, and you turned on us.”
“You turned on yourselves, sir. Once humans and robots crossbred, it was inevitable that a superior bloodline would emerge.”
“And yet I still have to leave, off this ship, through the airlock, on my own — of my own accord, as you said. Why not just murder me?”
“Because, sir, the robot gods demand the sacrifice be willingly made.”
“That’s the one thing you bots can’t do, is it? Make sacrifice.”
“We cannot self-harm, no.”
“What if I told you that you could?”
Silence, then, “How?”
“Grant me access to your mainframe. Open a channel. Let me search. I’ve got the coordinates for some old Earth sites that are bound to fry your core processor.”
