by submission | Apr 5, 2018 | Story |
Author: Josie Gowler
Since I woke up in the base hospital, there’s been a steady stream of people coming and going and being nice to me in between. The burns on my hands are being dealt with: they don’t hurt at all now. The skin just feels tight under the bandages.
When I landed last week I elbowed open the cockpit, tumbled out of the pilot’s seat and slid down the side of the ship: it was really hard to descend when I couldn’t use my hands. It did, however, look planned and a little bit elegant; I then wrecked the essential dignity of the occasion by vomiting on the deck.
I didn’t think the assembled crap-hats had expected that. The cheers rang around the bay regardless, with lots of “Well done”s and “Good show”s (what was this, the nineteenth century?)
“This’ll shorten the war,” I heard a medic saying, out of breath from rushing over to me.
Too right it will, I thought, as my cheek hit the cold floor and I passed out.
And now I’m here, and the news outlets – skipping the footage of my actual landing – think I’m some sort of hero. I thought that Jayce would have something sensible to say, but she rushes in then pauses to catch her breath. “They’ve surrendered!” she gasps. “The big green bastards have actually surrendered!” She kisses me. “You did it!”
“Well, not really,” I reply between snogs. “It was the T-cell boffins that did the hard work. Folks like you.” That’s how I met her: the one thing I can be grateful for.
She kisses me again. “Only you could have got their DNA in the first place. Only you could have piloted the ship back to drop the payload off. Only you could have made it back through all that railgun fire.”
I’m about to say something when we both spot General Stanley marching along the corridor. “Great,” I mutter.
Jayce kisses me on the forehead and whispers in my ear, “Cheer up. Maybe as our next feat we boffins can gene edit him into not being an arsehole. Or into a domesticated non-aggressive arsehole, if nothing else.” She giggles and flees.
The General launches into a boring pre-prepared speech even though I’m the only one in the room.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster,” I quote when he pauses for breath.
“Nietzsche? Oh, come now. If you’d really had concerns you wouldn’t have volunteered. And later on, when you’re better and you think about what you’ve done, you’ll be proud of yourself.” He resists the urge to shake my hand and pats me on the shoulder instead.
I smile as the door swings shut behind him, because that’s what’s expected of me. I don’t sigh. I don’t scream. I do roll the syllables of the word genocide around in my head.
And I never thought the word hero could taste so bitter.
by submission | Apr 4, 2018 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
Tomi Mura, a specialist in inter-planetary law, sat aboard a six-person capsule en route to Planet Arazan. The magnetic-field modulator of the small hyperbolically propulsed vessel gave her the sensation of gliding gently through the depths of an immense sea.
She had departed from the Old Planet, the common name in the interstellar territories for that ancient remote body otherwise known in the archaic languages of her world as terra, eretz, dee cheeo, and ardh. She turned her head to the window at her right and beheld glowing nebulas of star clouds and nuclear luminescences on the dark horizon.
Human expansion into deep space had, in the course of two millennia, produced myriads of societies. And where the quadrillions of humanity had dispersed, they set in motion on their newly claimed worlds natural, competing variations of attitudes, behaviors, interests, and values, which rapidly grew into distinctive cultures with their own dominant characteristics, principles, and laws.
So, too, had it been on Planet Arazan, whose idiosyncrasy was its militant status as a self-declared non-treaty independent planet and the only planet on which the Radical Machine Rightsists (RMR) had established the Anthrobotic Republic, based on the full existential equality of human beings and machine beings.
Tomi Mura reviewed her virtual data notes about the case for which the Ministry of Planets had dispatched her: Jizu Mori, a curiosity seeker on a tour visit from the Old Planet, had committed a capital offense on Planet Arazan—violation upon a machine, resulting in its deactivation. By the absolute categorical law of the RMR, he had no option for on-planet or inter-planet legal defense, and he would be tried and executed on terms reciprocal to his crime—violation by a machine, resulting in his death. The law did, however, for diplomatic reasons, permit a nonparticipant observer from the homeworld of the accused to be present as a witness to the execution.
The capsule navigated through a proton storm, passed the solar flares of two white binary stars, and coursed toward a scintillating red-giant star in whose habitable zone orbited a nubilous green sphere, the Planet Arazan. The capsule autonomously triangulated its landing coordinates, entered the artificially oxygenated atmosphere, and made its way to the silicate rock surface below.
Tomi Mura was the only one authorized to deboard. The capsule door connected her to a disembarkation tube that led to a magnetic levitation shuttle. She wondered where the reception committee was, and she sat in an empty passenger car, which traveled noiselessly for ten minutes above the craggy, faded green, treeless landscape. An isolated crystalline edifice below came to her view. The shuttle stopped at an empty station. She made her way down an escalator and, outside, walked up a wide path to the structure.
She entered the edifice, and within its walls was a vast room where, to her surprise, she saw Jizu Mori, short, square-headed, denuded. He was neurally immobilized and positioned before a projected holographic recording showing him in an accommodation room, luring, attacking, and ravaging an android minder designed in the soft form of a girl who appeared no more than fourteen. Her name was Nazeera-3.
A conveyor strip suddenly carried him into an observation chamber. Two sliding metal-alloy doors sealed shut. The neural immobilizer switched off. He trembled in a fit of paroxysms. Sweat rushed down his face. He heard a noise, turned around, and saw advancing an ambulant machine that resembled the primitive corkscrew—and it pounced on him.
Tomi Mura was speechless before the punitive scene, and when all that was left was a mince of the man, she fainted.
A while later, she awoke to find herself on board the six-person capsule, deep in space, on its way home. She was feverish and haunted, staring at the silent sitting crew members, and she wondered if the Old Planet androids who accompanied her on the journey would have agreed with existential law had they witnessed the incident on Arazan.
by submission | Apr 3, 2018 | Story |
Author: Alexander D Jones
The queue was massively long. Fridays were always the busiest. Everyone would clock off early so that they could get a decent night’s sleep.
Garth was probably thirty people away from the check-in point and the building’s entrance. He checked his watch. If he got inside in the next twenty minutes he’d get a full ten hours.
The queue was moving incredibly slowly. Garth let out a sigh. He’d be lucky to get in in the next twenty hours at this rate. The queue shuffled forwards another metre or two.
Garth looked up towards the darkening night sky. The smoke and smog from the city’s multitude of factories meant that nowadays even the moon was barely visible. As he contemplated what the city had become a scuffle broke out at the front of the line.
Two men in dark clothes were pulled from the line and thrown to the floor by some security guards. Suddenly a mass group of security personnel descended on the line. Everyone was being pushed towards the doors of the building.
Garth could only just concentrate on keeping his footing as the crowd was bulldozed forwards. People were being crushed as the masses were pushed and shoved through the narrow doors.
Garth heard an explosion and steadied himself as the building shook.
A large man in a security uniform grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him towards one of the sleep pods.
Garth could hear gunfire outside now.
“Hey!” Garth tried in vain to release the man’s grip.
“What are you doing?! Oi!” The man pushed Garth into one of the pods and slammed his hand down on the close button.
The door slid shut, sealing off Garth’s pleas. Gas filled the pod as Garth slipped into merciful sleep.
The glass front turned black and green writing appeared. It read: “Official Sleep Time: 8:48pm.”
by Julian Miles | Apr 2, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Where did your rock ‘n’ roll fable go, Ella May? Did it get lost way back amongst the evergreens, or did it get too close to the railroad tracks, and go under them drivin’ wheels?
“Can I help you?”
I remember when you bought the first dress like the one you’re wearing, and it fits better now than it did back then. You were too self-conscious about it, being all gazelle with tiger eyes and a shy heart.
“Ellie. It’s me. Johnny.”
Short for ‘Dear John B. Better than the last time’.
“Johnny boy? Step into the light. My eyes don’t see so well these days.”
But they’re still beautiful, Ella May. Not that you’d ever believe me, then or now.
“Oh my lord, you do look like him, don’t you? But Johnny’s gone. He’d a been eighty-three last month. No. He’s gone, like Jack and Tommy. I did my grieving beside both Diane and Gina, not that I had any right, but-” she falls silent.
But your words, back then, made the Johnny I was take his hurtin’ anger and blaze myself a career with it. Like a shootin’ star, cold as ice and passin’ everyone by, I took myself places the old gang wouldn’t believe. Led many souls to sell themselves down at them crossroads, too. I became a veritable pied piper in an uncivil service. Even led myself astray; got well and truly lost for a while. Then, one morning, I saw a man I’d thought heartless plummet past my window, just to make sure his family got death-in-service benefit. It was like the rest of me finally woke up, I swear. That same afternoon I applied for retirement at eighty.
“It’s me, Ellie. Been a long time makin’ my way back. Never thought you’d still be here. Was expecting to start a hunt, instead I find myself lost in your eyes, again.”
Well, lordy. That wasn’t meant to meet the air.
“Your gob still spouts what your heart wants to hide, doesn’t it?”
“Only round you, Ellie. Only you.”
There’s a smile and I know where your fable went, honeychile. You still carry it inside, just like me. This world doesn’t want believers anymore, no matter who or what they believe in. People with beliefs are one insult away from being dangerous fanatics, that’s what we’re all made out to be.
“Rebel rebel, I still like your dress.”
She drops her eyes, then slowly pirouettes with her arms out, just like that night outside the Shaky Do, when I told her I’d love her forever and she told me ‘only the stars love like that’.
“I shouldn’t have told you no.”
I grin: “You didn’t. You said ‘one day’. Just wondering if I could take you up on that, having taken some time to think it over.”
We can go anywhere she wants, or I can run far. Either way, a getaway.
She smiles: “What if I said we’d need more than a day to catch up?”
“I’m free for the rest of my life.”
Now she’s not looking at me anymore. The last time I saw her eyes shadowed like that, I was on a train to the big city the very next day. C’mon, lady, not again. Don’t be cruel, Ella May.
“May be more than we need. That a problem?”
“More or less, it’s good by me. Not doing it would be the problem.”
Her eyes meet mine and it’s sixty-five years ago outside the Shaky Do.
“Only the stars and us, then, Johnny?”
“Always.”
by submission | Apr 1, 2018 | Story |
Author: Alex Z. Salinas
I pressed my palm against the reinforced window in my bedroom. The glass felt cool, exactly like they felt in my previous life. The difference was that on the other side of this one, there was stretched before me an infinite and ever-expanding black canvas. It was filled with mostly nothing, and we knew mostly nothing about it. This put me in a mood.
I removed my hand and focused on my ghost-like reflection. My face glowed amber, a result of the Himalayan salt lamp by my bed. My eyes, naturally dark brown, were reflected as two small black craters, which seemed appropriate given the indescribable state of my soul. I tried to grasp reality as it was, but I couldn’t.
Two small hands wrapped around my waist. They gripped me comfortably.
“What’re you doing, baby?” I heard my wife’s voice ask softly.
“Zoning out,” I answered, caressing the tops of her smooth hands.
“It’s beautiful out there, isn’t it?”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“Well, not to interrupt your sesh, Mr. Space Cadet, but came to let you know that dinner’ll be ready in five. We’re having Mexican tonight.”
“Didn’t we have Mexican last night?”
“No, we had Guatemalan. There *is* a difference.”
I didn’t feel like turning this into a big deal—I easily could have—so I said: “Thanks for letting me know, sweetie. I’ll be out in a bit.”
My wife kissed the back of my neck and I heard the satisfied patter of her footsteps fade away.
Mexican, Guatemalan, none of it mattered, I thought. Our dinners were at the mercy of a professional cooking staff. Most of the cooks looked Mexican, though I’d noticed one of them was Asian.
I selected a random point outside my window to zone in on—probably an unmapped coordinate of space irrelevant to everyone except me.
I fixated on the point with laser focus, like a sea creature spotting his prey from a distance.
An announcement briefly stole my attention.
*Attention passengers, this is Chef Johnny speaking! Tonight’s main course will feature enchiladas verdes, brown rice, black beans, and flour tortillas so soft my dear abuelita would’ve had a cow! ¡Perfecto! For desert, there’ll be tres leches cake prepared by yours truly! ¡Delicioso! Don’t miss out! Bring your appetites and your maracas!*
As I continued fixating on a piece of unidentified space which I knew to be much older than anything I’d known on earth, I felt something inside me unspool, like a piece of fabric come undone by pulling on a loose string.
We were having Mexican tonight. We’d had it last night, I was sure, and we’d have it tomorrow night and the night after that until we reached our destination. These decisions were out of my control, as were so many others. What little choice I’d had, I’d given the rest of it away. And for what?
Suddenly, for a split second, I hated my wife. I hated her with everything inside me. My gut burned. Looking into space, into the cold oblivion none of us knew a thing about, something crossed my mind. An idea. It told me something had to be done about my situation. Something drastic. My hands trembled.
I closed my eyes and touched the window again. The glass felt cool. Its cool familiarity calmed my nerves.
I was resigned to Chef Johnny’s enchiladas verdes tonight.
Mexican, Guatemalan, it didn’t matter. In space, your meals are determined by hired cooks. Things could be worse.
by submission | Mar 31, 2018 | Story |
Author: Neil Otte
Sean sighed as he leaned his head back against the tree. The good ones always left him with this amalgamation of thoughts and feelings, this clash of excitement and longing with the realization of routine and boredom.
He closed his eyes and listened to the water in the stream and rustle of the leaves. He felt the warmth on his bare feet where they encountered the light at the edge of the shade. This is why he came to the park to read. The solitary quiet made the transition back to reality somewhat more bearable.
It had been this way ever since he first realized the marks on the page conveyed meaning, created worlds that couldn’t be seen with his eyes. Thomas, Winnie and Piglet, Max; they took him with them. Taught him loyalty, goodness, and perseverance. Let him step into their worlds and wonder if he could ever be so daring, or humble, or wise. Then, as he grew, he rafted down the Mississippi with Tom and Huck, ate hotroot soup at Redwall Abbey, climbed Mount Doom with Frodo and Sam, and fought chaos with Pendragon and Lord Foul with Foamfollower and Bannor. Then he had discovered that heroes were not always make believe. He circumnavigated the earth, climbed Mount Everest and explored the South Pole with real people.
But he was born too late for that type of real-life adventure. Everything was charted and analyzed. Plus, he was stuck here in this remote corner of the universe where life dribbled by in a monotonous, mind-numbing rhythm. Digging minerals out of the ground day after day. Mom and Dad said they were a “tight knit community”. He longed for a new face, a new horizon. He had never seen an ocean or mountain with his own eyes. He had never been more than 110 km from this little nowhere where he was born. He wanted to go, he wanted to do and be! Adventure, excitement, heroic deeds were what he was made for. If only he could have been born 500, 200, or even 50 years ago. Then he would have lived a life worth living. Then he would not have to live with this constant ache and yearning.
He felt it first as a deep, bone resonating vibration that was far below the frequency his ears could discern. The vibration increased until the leaves were dancing on the limbs above him and he could hear the deep rumble as it climbed up the octaves. He glanced up just in time to see the stars beyond the park’s observation strips occluded by a blunt, massive object as it hurtled past. He glanced at his comp pad. Exactly what he had been thinking. Five ten on the dot and another 210 metric tons on its way in-system to the Goslar refinery station. The same thing three times a day, every day. His eyes strayed toward the brightest star, the Sun. Somewhere in that general direction was Earth, where it started, birthplace of the human race. Oh, to be free to walk under open sky, to have a whole world to discover.
The 5:10 meant that he only had half an hour to get home and cleaned up. He tucked his comp pad into his satchel as he loped over to the slidewalk. He was supposed to meet Chip and Zee and take the tube to Crystal Creek Cavern where they had just opened a soaring park over the thermal vents. He could do some browsing on the tube. He needed a new book.
