by Hari Navarro | Jan 8, 2019 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The senator peels from her lover and she thinks of her impending speech and she thinks of her wife and her husband. Her bid to prevent the ISTC’s proposal to travel back in time and kill an infant Hitler will fail. She laments that she is weak, a paragon of righteousness who has foregone her loving partners and, instead, bedded this sublime young man at her side.
“You look sad”, he says.
“It’s nothing. Tomorrow, it’s weighing on me. It’s not just the Martian colonies I’m representing, it’s all of us”, she says and she again feels the tidal weight of her own importance.
Reaching from beneath the sheets, she pours herself another scotch. Her offer of the bottle neck to the young man is declined, and he smiles.
“Tell me again what you’re going to say”, he asks propping his head upon his hand, nestling into his pillow.
“All these centuries after his death and the mere mention of the man’s name turns tongues to black. Our science fact continues to be rifled from the hackneyed science fictions of old. This mission would save millions but it’ll offer, in their place, a conundrum. Of those he killed just how many potentially would have inspired and produced even greater evils? We cannot see past this little man and, for this, his name has outgrown even the grotesque nature of his actions. Killing him will kill his ghost, though many ghouls will step into its place. It is not the past we should be concerned with. You can’t correct it. It can be but altered. I haven’t even opened the financial resource file for this project, I image it too will be a grotesque read. I come from a place where cancers still eat at those who mine ore that is shipped to earth and used to fire the reactors that will power this folly into the past. I have lost before I have started”
“Tomorrow your speech will be powerful and impassioned. They will fold. The time travel program will be dismantled and its technologies refocused. You will win”
“I appreciate your faith”
“It is not faith. It is fact. I’m not from this time. I represent an Earth that just couldn’t go on with this man’s stain forever upon it. His echo gets louder with the years and it has been decided that you must be stopped”
She grabs for the tumbler beside the bed and it slips, shattering to the floor.
“I’d never be so uncouth as to taint such a mesmerizing malt. No, a far more direct infusion of the toxin this time was required”
She slumps from the bed, her limbs already shutting down as they contract into a fevered ball.
“Moments now, and he and you will be gone. Oh, and if you’re wondering why, we simply didn’t go back to Salzburger Vorstadt 15 and kill the monster child ourselves. Blame your grandson. He… well, he does a very bad thing. Two for the price of one, Senator. These journeys are far from cheap”
A man sits on a throne of granite and looks down across the heads that ripple the Appian amphitheatre, right arms raised and stabbing into fists of iron. He rubs at his beard and he rubs at the fat of his breast and he inhales a gust of the purest colourless air. Banners ripple and he smiles as he knows that only the purest of the pure are now left to gulp down the words that he makes.
“… and adulterated blood alone will sooth the churn of history”.
by Julian Miles | Jan 7, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Is all I hear.
On a world where everything uses parts of the visual spectrum humans don’t, we’d have been better off staying away. Far from its star, the eternally-twilit forests of Modbiaent XIV are protected by interstellar law and, more effectively, by orbiting weapons platforms. Naturally, this isn’t entirely about conserving the environment. Modbiaent XIV has stocks of a rare element, dubbed Biaeum, that has many possible uses. It’s been found on a couple of asteroids, but the quantities here are far greater.
Light in a spectrum that allows humans to see actually causes some indigenous life forms to break down. Labelled ‘photonecrosis’ by the media, it means that humans visiting this world should adjust themselves, rather than seeking to adjust the environment. Drysuits mated to space helmets using visual technology borrowed from the military is the current vogue.
“Tassy! What was that?” James sounds scared.
I made contact with him a while ago – not that we know where we are in relation to each other. From the delay, he must be further from the site than me.
“A Wubdern collapsing the habitat by landing on it.”
“How do you know?”
“Best guess.”
It’s also the best likely cause on this eerily quiet world. For months, we thought the silence was due to the nature of the environment. A silly assumption. There’s a more obvious answer: something dangerous is always listening.
Chas Wubdern was collecting samples using a hammer and chisel. The percussive noise attracted the thing that killed him. In his memory, we named them Wudberns. They look like a Pteranodon crossed with a Komodo Dragon with claws on wing joints, wing tips, and feet. We measured their bite strength at over 75kN.
Making the best of the loss, we set out to document Wudberns. To do that properly, we reasoned, we needed more than one example. Taking a cue from shark fishing, we ‘chummed’ the area using loud music, a breathtakingly stupid decision. Suddenly, we had half a dozen territorial predators prowling about and fighting. The battle between the biggest one and its closest rival crushed our engine module. The noise that made caused them to pound it even flatter during a scavenging frenzy.
With engineering gone, it became a race. Could the supply ship reach us before the habitat failed?
We hadn’t allowed for the Wudbern being curious creatures with rudimentary tool use, just like the Ratel. We were the ‘sweeties in the puzzle box’, as Rosie put it. It didn’t take them long to figure out that tools were only needed to pick over the wreckage: the habitat modules are quite flimsy if you land a 500-kilo predator on them hard and often.
I’ve been out here for two days. Switched every possible thing toward keeping me alive, vision system included. James is worse off: one leg broken. Then again, crawling away probably saved him. The Wudberns didn’t hear. That’s certainly what saved me. Donald ran off. While they chased and tore him apart, I tip-toed out into the wilds.
I haven’t told James that the ship’s been kept from orbit by the weapons platforms. Someone forgot to arrange clearance. Obtaining permission will take two days longer than my life support can last.
Unless I can find James and…
Something large lands in front of me. Something heavier falls nearby. Vision on!
There’s a boulder at my feet and James is sprawled in an untidy heap by a rocky outcrop. Good effort, especially with that injury. I hope he’s dead. If not, I have a pipe wrench. James missed. I won’t.
by submission | Jan 6, 2019 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“Any chance I can talk you out of it?”
“Nope.” Dan glanced at a small three by five card he was holding in his palm. Michael raised an eyebrow and pointed to the card with a quizzical look on his face. Dan smiled. “It’s just a motivational phrase I wrote down. “ Dan slid the card across the table.
“Not my feelings.” Michael frowned. “Then who’s feelings are they, Dan?”
“Not sure exactly. I’d tell you they are the nanites’ feelings but that wouldn’t be accurate.”
“You know that makes you sound crazy.”
“I’m aware of that Mike, but as you can see by my med file, I’m as sane as you. So why after only three months of mourning the death of a woman I have spent more than seventy-seven years with, I feel perfectly fine. Not even a little sad or depressed. Just fine.”
“You’ve probably just dealt with it better than you thought you would.”
“I did consider that. In fact, before I knew it, I was beyond considering it and shifted into ‘count your blessings’ mode. You know, like some damn government nanite commercial…I’m one hundred and eight with my own body reconditioned and maintained so I have the look and health of a twenty-two-year-old. I’d like to point out that at age twenty-two in 1984, I was forty pounds overweight and even before I put on the weight, I never had the gymnast’s body I do now.”
“Nanites. What a blessing.”
“Now you sound like the commercial. It’s all too pat. When I think about it there is no pain or struggle in my life anymore. Damn nanites won’t let it happen.”
“Now you’re sounding paranoid.”
“Really Mike? You’ve known me all this time and have I ever sounded paranoid?” Dan looked at his card again and put it back in his pocket. “What got me on this track was when I was in midst of counting my blessings, I tried to remember the actual pain I had when my Dad died way back in the eighties. I couldn’t. Even now I’m trying my hardest to get angry and I just can’t.”
“Sounds like its nothing more than emotional maturity.”
“If I did the work to get there, it would be. Instead, the damn nanites just flood me with sunshine juice or whatever chemical they decide to use to ‘correct my imbalance’ and I’m better.”
“Is that so bad?”
“Where does it stop? If I get a bad feeling about the news, or I just don’t like what the government wants me to like? No. I don’t know who is programming the nanites to do what. So, out with them all so I can live my own life.” Dan stood up and slid the waiver across the desk. Michael looked at his friend and wanted to respect his wishes but a tiny little feeling in the back of his mind made him feel otherwise. Instead, he wrote “denied” and slid the form back to Dan.
Dan smiled sadly and shook his head. “I expected this to happen. You can’t help it either. Still, I can’t make heads or tells of why I feel good right now.” Dan laughed like he just remembered a private joke and walked away.
Michael frowned. He was concerned for his friend and thought he was quite sane, rational even. Maybe, he should allow the nanite removal procedure to happen. But then the fresh flood of endorphins coursed through his brain and distracted him just enough not to give it a second thought.
by submission | Jan 4, 2019 | Story |
Author : Philip Berry
Jake, aged nine, was found with his hands deep in the inverted workings of a 3rd generation litter picker, behind a mineral refinery by outer orbital. He was a mile from home, and it was an hour before bed time. The ten-legged picker had been tipped onto its weathered, bronze carapace. Its long legs twitched with each application of the circuit tester. ‘Borrowed’ from an electrician’s toolbox, it emitted a small charge whenever Jake pressed a button on its yellow plastic handle.
The flickering, elongated shadows of the legs on the refinery’s concrete wall caught a security guard’s attention. The muted chirrup of the picker’s balance alarm confirmed that something was seriously wrong. So he called it in, and five minutes later a three-man police squad spilled from the ramp of a dust-roiling craft. Jake had no idea what was going on. The Tasers levelled at his narrow chest were not required.
His mother, Dorothy, stared through a two-way mirror. Jake sat on the other side, scared and very still. Detective Desolt, standing by Dorothy’s shoulder, whispered,
“He seems to have no understanding. Does he go to school?”
“Yes. He never misses a day.”
“Haven’t they taught him RAM principles?”
“I don’t know. We only arrived three months ago. There was no RAM law in Washington state.”
“Well, we are more progressive here. Hopefully his… ignorance… will sway the judge.”
“What could happen?”
“Maximum five months residential education.”
Dorothy sobbed. “He won’t cope with that. He won’t.”
“Follow me. Let’s see if we can’t teach him some awareness before the hearing.”
Jake smiled when Dorothy entered, but as he stood to hug her a female officer restrained him.
“Jake. I’m Detective Desolt. Tell me… do you know what torture is?”
“Causing pain… to make people say things, or do things.”
“And what were you trying to make the litter-picker do?”
“Nothing… I just wanted to know how it…”
“Jake, do you know what pain is?”
“Something that hurts?”
“That’s a tautology.”
Jake’s looked totally bewildered. “I… I don’t know.”
“Pain, Jake, is an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with material injury.”
“To flesh and bone, Detective!” interrupted Dorothy.
“To all autonomous materials.”
“But the picker felt no pain. This is stupid!”
“The description I received was clear. Its legs were flailing, an alarm was sounding… which your son had attempted to muffle, and three of its bulbs were flashing. Those are all manifestations of distress.”
“Detective. They are… malfunctions…”
“Indeed!”
“No… they are reflexes. It didn’t feel anything. It didn’t suffer.”
Desolt sat on a chair next to Jake and took his hand. He then pinched the skin on the back of the boy’s hand. Jake yelped and pulled his arm away. His legs flexed at the knees.
“We do this in the classroom… in 3rd grade actually, Jake will have missed it. The reaction is typical. The same reaction we see in our mechanicals.”
Dorothy was caught between panic and anger.
“This is absurd! The whole thing is absurd! He was just experimenting! He wants to be an engineer.”
“He has broken the law. You’re not helping him.”
Jake hung his head. Dorothy raised an arm and slapped Desolt across the cheek. His head rotated by ten degrees. His cheek did not flush. Dorothy looked into his eyes and caught a metallic glint at retinal depth. Desolt stood, smiled and made his way to the door. With his finger over the lock-pad he turned and said,
“I can assure you madam, that hurt. A lot.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Jan 3, 2019 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Jodi pushed open Jane’s door, knocking while it was already swinging inwards and waited until it had closed behind her before speaking.
“Next Tuesday at quarter past noon he’ll have stopped Bob McKibbon’s heart.” The announcement was followed by a left-handed flick of fingers down her right forearm towards Jane’s desktop, the bits of data that comprised the intel briefing making the leap across the office to the mid-air display where it hovered for review.
“Christ, that’s the third one of these this quarter,” Jane scanned the document top to bottom, making notes in an action plan as she went. “We’re going to have to go back a few years on this one too, increase junk food intake, sugar, closet alcohol consumption, we can’t bend the timeline in any way that will require affecting anyone else’s,” She pushed back from the desk, turning her attention to Jodi, “do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass this guy’s becoming?”
“As long as he’s in the pole position, we retroactively justify his futures. That’s the gig, nobody said it was going to be easy.” Jodi softened. “Look, I know it’s a shitshow, but you’re the best at this, if anyone can restring his timelines so he doesn’t destroy himself and the party, you can.”
Jane pulled up a list of pending events, spinning the display around so Jodi could see.
“It was bad enough when he was firing intelligence staff,” she started, “re-engineering the history of spooks who are trained to recognize when their timelines have been distorted was an invitation for disaster, but that just needed to hold up to administrative review. Retroactively creating health conditions to cover deaths, that has to stand up to coroner scrutiny, and that’s an entirely different level of sophistication and detail.”
Jodi surveyed the office, noted the absence of anywhere to sit and so stood shifting her weight from foot to foot as she replied.
“This can’t go on forever, you know that. His term will expire, the mantle will be passed to someone else, hopefully, someone who isn’t just another petulant child, and we’ll get back to reworking foreign governments, and de-escalating conflicts in far-off countries, just like the good old days.” She smiled, not entirely confident he wouldn’t somehow secure another term before common sense and decency made an inevitable return to the administration.
An urgent action item popped to the top of the list on Jane’s display, and both women studied it in stunned silence.
“He can’t really think he can push this through,” Jane’s voice was clearly strained, “aren’t there safeguards on rewriting electorate laws? He can’t honestly think we can just eliminate the term limit without anyone noticing.”
Jodi stood silently for a long time before leaning close and whispering in Jane’s ear.
“You should go back a few years and increase his junk food intake, and sugar, he doesn’t drink publicly, so you’ll have to make him drink in private, excessively, maybe late at night. Nobody will notice if he’s drunk then, he doesn’t make much sense at the best of times.”
She straightened, fixed her suit jacket and read Jane’s face as the realization of what she was suggesting swept over her.
“If you prioritize this, you can save McKibbon’s life while you’re at it.” She smiled again, a genuine expression this time. “There’s already a death event on the timeline for next Tuesday at quarter past noon, maybe it’s time we reallocated that.”
Jane’s mouth tightened into a line. She held eye contact for a long minute, then nodded once and turned the display back and started working.
If she was successful, McKibbon might be just one of the millions of lives she’d save this week.
by submission | Jan 2, 2019 | Story |
Author: Sam Davis
The wind swept down the valley, once dotted with trees but now covered in soot and ash, and rolled through the trench causing Elijah to pull his coat tighter around him. It didn’t help much, it really never did when winter set into southern Kansas. It was barely dusk and already the freshly churned soil next to the trench already had a light crystallized dusting accumulating atop it. There was a crisp crunch as familiar footsteps approached behind Elijah.
“Smoke, comrade?” Alexa proffered an open pouch of rolling tobacco. The pouch was nearly empty and the papers had long since disappeared, though that didn’t matter much as most of the troop preferred the dried corn husks Alexa had scrounged up as an alternative.
“God yes!” Elijah’s teeth chattered together as he spoke, giving each word a staccato clatter that was eerily reminiscent of ‘them’. As if they weren’t cold enough already, everyone froze. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just so damn cold” Elijah laughed nervously “I’m obviously not one of ‘them’ guys, don’t be crazy.”
“Ah hell, who knows,” Sasha said stirring the pot of gruel over the small fire. “Maybe the robots are our friends” With the absurdity of that statement the tension amongst the group broke. Alexa shook her head, Grigory who was ever quiet even broke a grin, and Elijah’s shoulders sagged with obvious relief. There were rumors that ‘they’ had a new model, one that looked like people, flesh and blood. Of course, that was pretty common scuttlebutt. Every few months Intelligence would send out something official that would explain how that is perfectly impossible.
“Ahck! We will kill them all. Not one of their steely hearted chassis shall survive!” Anichka spat which somehow did not disturb the smooth femininity in her voice. There were general murmurs of agreement but everyone was too cold to do much more.
Sasha rummaged in her pack and paused for just a moment before pulling out a can of beans. “I had been saving this for a special occasion but what is more special than another night on this godforsaken tundra, eh?” With a practiced flip of her wrist, the can was open and its contents poured into the pot.
A slow hour passed as each of them eagerly waited for their dinner to finally be ready. Soon they were shoveling the best meal they had had in months down their throats. The only sound was the clink of metal on metal as spoons searched the bottoms of bowls for the last morsels.
Elijah sighed happily, closed his eyes, and died. Suddenly three sets of eyes fell upon Sasha, accompanied by three red dots that danced across her chest. Unperturbed she continued cleaning her bowl. “Huh, ya know, I guess Elijah was right, comrades. He really wasn’t one of ‘them’. I did expect there to be a few more though.”
Anichka was the first to speak. “You were right as well. Robots are our friends.”
