by submission | Dec 26, 2018 | Story |
Author: Philip Tudball
“You know what the worst part of it all is?” Harper reflected “It’s the codpiece. Definitely the codpiece. I mean the food is rubbish and my health plan is currently non-existent” Harper picked another louse from his hair, just to reinforce the point “but it’s still the codpiece, bloody itchy thing, and never sits straight”.
Marsden shifted uncomfortably, not yet used to Harper’s mutterings. New on the job and on the first assignment, this was not what he had expected. He kept his eyes on a house opposite, trying to keep himself to the shadows, pressing himself into the stone wall of the alleyway behind him.
“See, there are things you can get used to, give the rats a kick and they’ll leave your ankles alone and your nose will just shut down to the effluent eventually, but the codpiece, you see it-“
Harper stopped as a light appeared in the street, a door opened and a figure stepped out, throwing on a cape with an elaborate flourish and patted a bag of scrolls as he began to wander off.
“Hold on” Harper stated, he reached up to tap his earpiece “subject is moving” he whispered. Harper waited for a moment, “copy, following”. He adjusted his codpiece and turned to Marsden, “right, let’s go”.
Moving unseen, Harper and Marsden followed the retreating figure. The road meandered out towards the river. The figure would stop every few hundred paces and mutter, thinking. At one point he pulled out a small pot of ink and a quill, writing furiously on a small sheet of paper. Minutes later, with a grunt, he scrunched up the paper and threw it into a ditch, before moving on towards the river.
“Quick, grab it” Harper gestured towards the parchment “get it, bag it, call it in”. Marsden scrambled down into the ditch, he reached into his leather jerkin, pulling out a plastic bag. He carefully picked up the crumpled piece of paper, smoothing it out and sealing it into the bag before hiding it away again.
With the parchment secured Marsden scrabbled back up, boots sodden from the water. “I mean seriously, why do we do this, for every scrap he drops, it’s disgusting?” he grumbled
“You know the drill, it’s all valuable. Ever since the boys upstairs won the rights we collect it all” Harper sighed “you thought time travel would be a lark but you’re new, so you’re bottom of the barrel, so you’ll do the grunt work until we send you home. Until that time all original materials are to be accounted for and catalogued, so something gets dropped in a sewer you know where you’ll be heading. Get used to it”
This brief interchange had masked their quarry returning. He stopped as he saw them. “Fair evening to you gentlemen,” he said, with a small bow. Harper and Marsden said nothing, so the figure continued “you two fine people would not have seen some scribblings, a play, my thoughts? Cast off in error but only now revealing my true intentions. If one of you would be so kind as to help me down here, you would have my eternal gratitude.”
Harper nodded “Of course, my colleague would be obliged to help”. As the figure made his way to the ditch Harper grabbed Marsden by the arm and hissed “Do not show him that piece of paper”. Harper adjusted his codpiece “and, whatever you do, you are not to inform Mr. Shakespeare that all of his work is now the property of Gideon Pryce Conglomerate, in perpetuity, all rights reserved, forever”.
by Julian Miles | Dec 25, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The bright lights seem colder, shining from tall glass towers, set against a sky made starless by clouds. Nearer are the lights that adorn the forest of Christmas trees on the plaza above. Closer still are the control boards that flicker above the six-lane carriageway at our backs. Closest are the lights we string while setting up against the two-metre fence that separates pedestrians from traffic.
The wash of passing vehicles provides ventilation for this informal market. It’s surprisingly fresh air, what with most of them being electric. The occasional waft of exhaust fumes marks a classic storming by, while a smell like grass after rain indicates the passage of a cold fusion power unit: a limousine or Domestic Army truck.
Speeding traffic draws the eye but gives nothing back: people watching at the speed of modern society – too fast to get details or gain anything from the experience.
“Got something for me?”
I know that voice. Tobin Dray, a coarse throwback in an expensive suit. He’s got that loathsome combination of sleight and skill: a white-collar worker from a lower-class background and hard teenage years, proud of the dishonesty that got him where he is today.
“You want it on ceedee, deevee, beedee, stick, or load?”
There’s no point in trying any jovial banter. He regards me as a lower class of being, tolerable only because of the vintage material I obtain. Ever since the internet statutes of the last decade, England’s become a place where even your vices are subject to tariffs and access checks. So, for those who have to have what others cannot, they come down here, down where the bleedfeeds don’t reach.
“Load. They’ve started scanning us in and out at lunch break.”
Which means portable storage media, possibly containing terrorist-aiding malware, will be viewed. For Tobin, that would be embarrassing. I know of others who could be fired or even arrested.
“Come on, I’ve still got to get lunch.”
I smile at him and retrieve a datawafer from under the counter. He likes that. The hint of getting something not for the average punter. Today, that’s true.
He drops a wad of scrip on the table and snatches it from my hand, eager to sample it. Placing it against his receiver, he grins in anticipation. As it engages, I see his face slacken and eyes widen in shock.
For some, Christmas is like a magnifying glass: a time to expand the little good you do with public demonstrations of largesse. I often wonder if those who need to do that believe it’ll expand far enough to cover their selfishness.
Tears start to run down his face.
Seven years ago, he drove a young prostitute out of town. She insisted he was the father of her daughter. Doubt was sown. Evidence tampering was never proven. Jeopardising his promising career became a justification. Forsaken, she fled. A troubled orphan, Isla spent a long while struggling to raise her daughter alone before finally seeking help.
Tonight is Christmas Eve, and Tobin came for a shot of Eighties porn. What he’s getting is his daughter, Isabella, singing Silent Night at the school Nativity play a couple of nights ago. I know she looks just like his mother at that age: the one grandmother she’ll likely never meet.
He’s crying. Maybe he can change. Christmas can do that: sometimes you get what you need, not what you want.
Hands shaking, he drops the wafer onto the table and stumbles away.
Supporting the family I have left, my granddaughter and her daughter, is my ‘career’.
Merry Christmas, you bastard.
by Hari Navarro | Dec 24, 2018 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The Dentist turns onto Fremont Street. Pausing, he slips a hand beneath the lapel of his jacket and massages the laudanum that eases the needles that scratch in his chest.
The double-action Thunderer that hangs at his hip will feel light in his hand as he draws and he knows it’ll pull up and off to the left. He will aim at the hip. The right one, at that spot that always glimmers, catching his eye as clearly as a nugget in a crystal-clear placer stream.
Once muddied wheel ruts have bleached almost to dust and crunch like freshly fallen snow beneath his tightly booted feet. He knows this town well, though his liver knows it better and, with this in mind, he stops and affords himself a most saddened of sighs.
Before him, the charred ghost remains of C.S Fly’s Saloon and Dance Hall play out a faint tune. The bitter remnant taint of the fusel oils that had so coddled his pains and echoes of a lust that only its soiled doves knew how to tame. The scent of its soot reminds him of meat. Carved fresh from the beast and cooked over an open fire in the spit of a skillet and bottles of smoky whiskey that he’d swallowed down in lumps.
He looks up at the sun that creaks just now to its zenith and he knows that blood is near. Now is perfect. Time to pull in the next few moments and reshuffle them until they are just right and just so.
His foe will appear in the ruins and out of the ash he’ll stride. Cordial greetings will be exchanged and then the Dentist will offer to count. 5… 4… 3… and with that he will draw and kill this foul blaggard dead as a pair of two black aces and eights. For scum of his order, they can but pray for the honour afforded to men.
“It’s time!”, he calls and his hand clutches at the air at his waist.
I ease forward with the brass-handled joystick and my Colt single action .45 caliber drone falters and then steadies as I draw it level with the greased slick back of his head.
And I know that he feels the taunt as the blades of my machine they sift through this moment on pause.
“Hello Doc”, I say, my words piping from the engraved slots of the speaker that hovers and points at his back.
“Coward”.
I wait not one more instant and the bullet it slams through his skull and enters the mind of this man, so unworthy that he live as a legend. The remaining five rounds plaster his back and his nose snaps as he falls to his face in the dust, and I grin and rock back into my chair.
“You’ve shot him right through”, squeals Billy as he jumps up from the lunch my dear wife has only just laid down.
“I am become legend”, is all I can think to say.
I sense what’s to come but I walk across the parlour and stand upon a chair and rub with my cuff the dust that streaks the monitor that hangs just above the mantel.
Hear now the slick slide of barrel against leather.
“You are wrong, Jesse. I am legend”, William H. Bonney stutters with the shimmering tongue of a coward.
by submission | Dec 23, 2018 | Story |
Author: KevS
I watch them squabbling like vermin. Vicious, pathetic vermin. 3 months ago they arrived, answering the beacon. In 2 months they exhausted the food.
Like vermin they have numbers, so I watch, I wait.
In the first month, they harvested rocks, heating them with their weapons, to survive the bitter night. They tried, they failed, to repair the catastrophic damage done to their ship by the rock fall. The second month they found the ship that hailed them, the beacon silent, its job done.
Now they fight, bicker about scraps.
So much meat on them when they arrived, my mouth watered at their scent. But alone, against many, I could never claim the spoils.
So I wait, let Mother Trised, show them the despair in her barren embrace.
They didn’t see me, they never do, so eager to salvage and escape. Then too hungry, too desperate to really look.
Yet I watch them every day, silently.
The first explosive anger is sweet, the rock lifted as the words get louder, fiercer, then the wet crunch, red nectar spilling across the scarred jagged ground.
The remorse, the hushed voices, the desperation, and then the inevitable feasting.
Some of the vermin vomit, retching on their knees. They’ll be next to feed their pack, no stomach for survival.
Patience is hard, my insides clench, envious of every morsel that passes their lips, but one by one they fall.
The fights stop as does the pretense. They look hungrily to the weak. When the first death in the night occurs, no anger, no violence, just quiet, desperate hunger, I know my time is soon.
From many, to a handful, of weakened pathetic shadows.
I walk tall into the shelter of their ship, and their eyes seem uncomprehending, confused, one tries to attack me, a rock in its fist, but I step aside, letting it fall, gripping its head, I twist, and the crack echoes. The next, sleeping and wretched are similarly dispatched.
The final, sits in a chair in what remains of their ship, it makes sounds, but I do not understand, I never understand. I drive my fist into its stomach, claws easily tearing the weak flesh and pull from it wet glistening food, cramming it to my mandibles.
It watches me, its entrails slipping through my hand as I force more and more into my hunger.
I am Mother Trised’s only child, cursed on her bountiless rock, scorched by deserting children, the last of my kind.
Knowing that she would cease sustaining them my people built huge ships, thousands upon thousands like me deserted her, and I watched from my cell, not one tear did I shed. Not one moment of sorrow, these cowards who forgot our lore, who forgot the tenets of our faith “Mother Trised will provide”.
I alone spoke out, I alone kept my faith, I alone tried to stop the ships being built, to destroy them, until they imprisoned me.
In final indignity my cell turned stasis chamber as the ships burnt and irradiated all that was left of worth from Mother Trised’s surface, obliterating our existence.
When I woke, broke free of my imprisonment, there was nothing.
I saw the first vermin arrive in their ship, wanting to scavenge from Mother Trised. I smashed their ship with her rocks. I hid, I waited, I feasted.
As this vermins eyes close, I walk to the remnants of the control desk, ripping free the cover and pushing the salvaged power cell to the beacon.
More will come.
I kept my faith, Mother Trised will provide.
by submission | Dec 22, 2018 | Story |
Author: Philip Tudball
We explore. As a species, it is both what we do and defines who we are. It is what we have always done, since the first of us gazed outwards and wondered. We took ships and travelled out into the unknown, planting our flags on distant shores. The world shrank around us as the unknown became known. Eventually, the world became too small for us and we took ships, out into space, back out into the unknown. Still, we planted our flags. As the technology advanced so did our horizons, we planted more flags, reaching ever further out, until here we are today.
We are far from Earth now, so far out. Lightyears out, generations out even, and we have been travelling a long time. Our ancestors would not recognise us, those who first pushed off from a rocky shore into turbulent waters, or who first left the safety of ground for the promise of open skies. But they would recognise our intentions.
A spaceship the size of a Terran continent is hard to wrap your head around and makes the term ‘ship’ almost insulting. ‘Self-sufficient’ also loses almost all meaning when dealing with such measure. But we are a ship, and we are alone. We left our species behind when we began our journey further than any before. Longer than any before, taking us to parts of the universe our forebearers could not even conceive of. We have been seeding areas of space, marking them out for future colonisation, those rare bits of the universe where verdant star systems will allow for empires to flourish, given enough time. For those who will follow us in decades, even centuries, time. Today we are planting a flag, so to speak. Our ancestors would know us and be proud.
Today a star is going supernova, and will soon become a pulsar, throwing its detritus all the way across the universe. This star has been laced with markers and been forced into an early metamorphosis. This star will mark us out. The power required, the time and knowledge to make this happen. Decades of work by the greatest amongst our ranks. A flag our ancestors could not even comprehend.
We are grouped on the bridge, thousands of us but all quiet. Anyone who can be spared their tasks, anyone with sufficient rank. These moments come once a generation. All of us, expectant and waiting and silent. We are so far off as to make the event look insignificant. The explosion, one of the most violent acts the universe can throw at us, will be so small it cannot be seen with the eye from our vantage. There is no need to be here all together, yet here we are, we gather together anyway for we know this is a momentous occasion.
Silence. Then a computer chimes. It chimes again, then continues in short bursts. That small sound is all we need. Such a small sound for something that means so much. Some cheer, some clap. I allow myself a smile, with the knowledge of this momentous thing we have done. Our flag, to be flown across the universe. Others will follow us, our beacon or flame, a mark on the map.
Our horizons become smaller but we move on, we explore. It is both what we do and defines who we are.
Follow us.
by submission | Dec 21, 2018 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Charlene, a bubbly, buxom blonde graduate student from Rutgers, acting as a freshly appointed aide-de-camp to a hatchling President, turned sour overnight. Her daily briefing notes were disheveled, poking from her leather daily briefing binder, held close to her wrinkled blouse, as she stood behind her fuming employer. She leaned backwards for comfort against an American flag stanchion behind his chair in the embattled Oval Office. She avoided glancing through bay windows toward snow-covered lawn supporting a bevy of clustered alien ships occupying White House landing space. Their impenetrable force fields, glowing iridescent yellow and gold, confounded circling soldiers and tanks.
“What’s next, Char?” asked President Braxton. He sat tick tight against his leather chair, hoping the Great Seal would shore up his quivering spine.
“Admiral Goins, from the Joint Chiefs, will join us with a representative from…” she faltered, pulling at her notes. “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t pronounce it. Yrtlto…itsrxy…” She stopped in frustration.
“Not to worry, Char. I can’t say it, either. Worse than when I was stationed with NATO in Yugoslavia and then Wales. We’ll get through this. DARPA reps reported that all these invaders are telepaths. Damned inconvenient, but we’ll muddle through. Can’t be any worse than Patterson, New Jersey…or New Orleans. I managed through those language barriers to get elected.”
Secret Service agents opened a floor-to-ceiling security door, allowing entry of a half-man half-wall. Goins’ chest pushed at his array of service pins, medals and awards covering a military pressed suit with five gold sleeve insignias circling his jacket sleeves. He escorted an eight-foot-tall being covered in emerald leaf-like scales over twisting brown bark covering its three walking limbs and four outgrowths that moved like arms. There were no facial features to address. The President stood and began to extend his hand. Goins waved off the gesture with a half-hidden motion. Charlene backed up further into the flag’s cloth.
“Admiral, explain my role to…” Goins held his right hand up to his chest, with palm facing Braxton.
“The Representative knows everything about us—you, and this office. Similar meetings are being held worldwide. Just look towards the center of it, think, and it will communicate. There will be no need for an interpreter.”
“Ridiculous, but, okay.” Braxton gave the alien his full attention. In five seconds, he backed away and sat back down hard in his chair. “Are they kidding? Stop all forestry within a year. Drop all paper products and force all our people to use bidets? I think this character has more bark than…”
“Stop! Mr. President, for our survival, no humor. They consider it a threat.” The Admiral’s face turned pale as the bricks in his posture slumped.
“Admiral, I can’t take this demand seriously. What proof do we have that they can make such demands?” Braxton put his hands on his desktop and peered into the shaken Admiral’s face.
“Mt. Rainier is gone, sir, right down to the base rock. Northwest is panicking. Couldn’t hide that. Our subs are gone, too.”
“Why? We’ve done nothing to assault them.”
“Retribution for St. Helens’ forests.”
“Ridiculous. That was natural.” Braxton pulled his lips tight.
“Not exactly, sir. It was a failed experiment. Later, please.” Groins clenched his fists.
Charlene read from her crumpled notes. “This is just the first alien race, sir. All four have a separate armada. The next wants clean water…no more human waste in it. Then there’s air and fire delegations. I’m confused, sir.”
Braxton turned to Charlene. “Clear my calendar. This is going to be a tough day of negotiations.”
