by submission | Feb 14, 2018 | Story |
Author: Ken Carlson
Ron had some time before the cartoon was over. He saw Dan the cameraman who glanced at his Timex and silently signaled, “three minutes.”
Ron remained in the wings, enjoying the animation and the rich taste of his Chesterfield. Say Hey, if they were good enough for Willie Mays they were good enough for him. He’d have given his right arm to be half as good as Mays, but hey, things turned out pretty well for him. He had picked himself up after a bum knee ruined a chance in the big leagues and turned that around into a TV role covering sports here in Chicago, then news, and now his own show. Not that the irony of this show was ever lost on him. He could never have imagined this life growing up; like another world, so to speak.
Betty from makeup gave him some touchup for his nose and forehead. Boy, these studios were hot. Ron was given the high sign from Bill the stage manager. Ron left his smoke going in the ashtray and marched to the x marking center stage. As the credits rolled and the music faded, the lights came up on Ron in his red, polyester, one-piece suit with yellow epaulets and plastic gun by his side. He smiled at the audience, mere shadows from the glare.
“Hi, Rocketeers!” he hollered.
“Hi, Captain Blast!” they hollered back.
“Wow, we’ve had a lot of fun today! And now it’s Captain Blast’s favorite part of the show! When Captain Blast takes a moment to take questions from you! What do we say, boys and girls?”
“Zoom forever!”
“That’s right,” said Captain Blast, “Let’s see what some of our friends here in the studio have to say.” Kids desperately flailed their arms to be chosen. The Captain selected a thin boy near the front in overalls and a faded White Sox cap.
“Captain Blast,” the boy asked nervously, “My friends and I, we love the Captain Blast comic books. We want to know who the toughest villain is you’ve ever faced?”
“Hmm,” thought the beloved space hero, “there were two tough fights recently where I thought I was through. You all remember I had my hands full fighting the Venusians,” the kids concurred. “7-foot tall and covered in green fur, they’re a tough bunch. Then, General Zag from Star Quadrant 9; one minute you’re fighting him toe-to-toe, mano-a-mano; the next he disappears and reappears behind you as someone else.”
The boy nodded in agreement.
“But they’re nothing like the battle coming up,” continued Captain Blast. “Next week, the Earth will be in trouble and I’ll need your help, Rocketeers! So,” Captain Blast leveled his arm and forefinger at the camera, “tune in next Saturday morning for the…”
The kids screamed with him, “Captain Blast Super TV Show!! Zoom forever!!”
************************
A half-hour later, Ron was in his dressing room hanging his Captain Blast uniform up. A knock at the door brought a pale, slender man.
“Mister Brundage,” said the man in a suit.
“Mister Brundage was my dad, Darren. It’s Ron to my friends” said the host, “or Captain Blast to my fans.”
“Mister Brundage,” continued the man, removing a file from his briefcase. “The President and the Head of the Bureau of Skyward Affairs have indicated we are need of your people’s services again.”
“What people, Darren?” Ron asked coyly. “People who are tall? People who like baseball? People named Ron.”
“No, Mister Brundage,” the man paused, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes tiredly. “People from your planet.”
by submission | Feb 13, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mina
CROSS PATCH
Merike caught him out the usual way. Why were cheating spouses so unoriginal? She’d wondered who he was messaging non-stop on his wrist com, so she’d hacked it. She was angry, of course, that he was screwing the doc’s assistant, but that wasn’t what caused her anger to grow into a fury that froze the very depths of her soul. No, it was that a lot of their com messages were about ridiculing her.
Hannes regularly made fun of what he called her autistic traits. Her shy awkwardness that she had believed he found endearing, her near photographic memory, her attention to detail – all a source of cruel parody and scathing dismissal. He was so sure his cerebral coms wife had no idea he was playing around with Yuta. His wife who could read at barely three and had memorised her book of 500 Rhymes from Around the Universe. She still recited them in the shower. She might have several doctorates and be able to hack or repair any coms system known to man, but she had no imagination, no finesse.
DRAW THE LATCH
Merike had soon discovered that their favourite bonking ground was Escape Pod 2D-497. She’d set the stage by claiming she needed to work overnight on a coms project. She had sealed the pod – literally – the carbon dioxide was no longer evacuated but re-circulated.
SIT BY THE FIRE AND SPIN
She’d hacked into Yuta’s com system and spent weeks planting false log entries. Entries that would serve to demonstrate Yuta’s fixation on Hannes, who couldn’t leave his wife for her. After all, you don’t leave the daughter of the man running the conglomerate that owns the space station you are managing. Merike had fun with creating entries that would demonstrate an unraveling psyche and a deadly obsession to keep her lover forever. One that would lead to a murder-suicide. A muricide?
TAKE A CUP AND DRINK IT UP
As a last touch, Merike added a glitch to the ventilation system so that the build-up in carbon dioxide was tripled. The coup de grace was that all adjustments were recorded as having been made from Yuta’s com system. Then she made a large pot of Earl Grey which she sipped slowly in her favourite bone china mug. They would die well fucked – not a bad way to go really. Her observations through the escape pod systems showed that Hannes possessed a sexual creativity she would never have credited him with. She looked forward to experimenting with the technician in engineering level four who had indicated he would be “up for it” if she ever felt so inclined.
THEN LET YOUR NEIGHBOURS IN
In the morning, she would return to her quarters and be surprised that she couldn’t find Hannes. She would be worried that the system did not show his life signs and that his wrist com appeared, strangely, to be in an escape pod. A convincing picture of panic, Merike would sound the alarm.
But, till then, there was time for another pot of tea.
by Julian Miles | Feb 12, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Do you see the snow as it gently falls?
Can you feel the frost as it climbs the walls?
How do you feel now our world is gone?
Why did you leave us to carry on?
Well, ‘us’ may be a bit of a stretch, but ‘me’ is too cliché. After all, I have the critique of future readers to consider. Whatever they may be.
Excuse me. I’m Giles Rapson Drew, car salesman, stock trader, poet, husband, father, and – of late – childless widower. I’m also the sole inhabitant of Hove in East Sussex, formerly a town, currently an expanse of icy rubble on the southern coast of what used to be Great Britain.
In truth, the only things I was ever good at were writing and being a father. But the pressures of life and career made writing a secondary thing, for odd moments snatched from the month. After all, whoever made money at writing stuff if they didn’t get lucky?
A world heading for peace at last. That’s what we were told. The Moscow Accords, the Pyongyang Treaty, the Pacific Alliance; things were settling nicely.
I still don’t entirely understand what went wrong. Some lunatic I shared a bolthole with raved about ‘legacy automated systems’ left over from the Cold War: never updated and so hair-trigger they would activate even if the missiles they detected were part of a different war.
Whatever happened, it happened too fast for anyone to prepare for. On the Thursday before Christmas, Sandra took China and Grace to shop in London. When the newsflashes started, I couldn’t associate the pillars of white light and rings of fire with a place where my wife and twin daughters had been listening to carol singers and looking forward to meeting Santa. By the time I finished screaming, Europe was aflame. Whimpering, I ran through the house, pulling on coats and overboots, then hurled myself down the garden, levered the padlock off the abandoned power substation and threw myself into the gullies under the rusting machinery.
The blast obliterated Brighton and, but for our place being on the lee side of a hill, would have ended me too. As it is, I staggered out into a world I didn’t recognise and swiftly fell into a semi-feral existence that lasted for quite a while.
Since then, I’ve scavenged. I think it’s no more than three years since the world ended. I see no indication of any other outcome. To pass the time, I write. A stationer on Church Road had a storage room converted from a World War II bomb shelter. It’s got a steel door, air vents, passable drainage, and is filled with paper and pens. An army surplus store up the hill had similar but smaller facilities loaded with dried food and other survival sundries, all of which I’ve dragged here.
Outside, it’s an empty, quiet world. I see crows and foxes, but little else bar a rather aggressive variety of giant cockroach which seems to have done for the rat population and most other small creatures.
There’s a candle under an upturned flowerpot heating the room. I’m bundled in blankets and surrounded by paper: on my left, blank. To the right, written upon. I have become quite prolific.
Here I sit in this hellish survival,
Waiting for sign of humanity’s revival,
In a place that’s not big enough to hold my sorrow,
I still wish my girls would come home tomorrow.
by submission | Feb 11, 2018 | Story |
Author: Patrick Hueller
Peter cinches his only tie, pushes the bathroom door open, and there Laine is: standing in their bedroom, trembling with excitement.
He’s never gotten used to seeing her tremble. He’s never gotten tired of it, either.
For a moment they stand there, together, beaming at one another.
Then her trembles turn to shudders. To spasms. Her body convulses; her hair whips every which way. There’s a grinding sound, an acrid smell. Peter grabs her shoulders, reaches behind her neck. With his thumb, he flips open the flesh-colored power hatch and flicks the switch.
Laine’s body slumps against his shoulder.
He checks his watch. 7:18. If he doesn’t leave right now, he’s going to be late to the restaurant. Laine—the real, non-robotic Laine—will be less than pleased.
He grabs a pair of pliers and reaches for the robot.
#
“Where are you going?” Laine asks. “You just got here.”
“I’m not doing this anymore.” Peter flips the brochure back at her. It lands on the Caesar salad.
“What? Take classes? I just thought that digital media arts might be a good fit.”
“My current job is a good fit.”
“Fine. If you really want to spend the rest of your life fixing mechanical pirates and bears, go ahead.”
“I’m glad you’re fine with it.”
“Don’t make me sound like I’m being overbearing just for wanting more for you.”
“You mean more for you.”
“How about for us? Isn’t that why we’re here? To figure out if we can make us work again? The way you’re looking at me—sometimes I wonder if you even remember us.”
“I remember,” Peter says. “I’m not the one who forgot.”
#
He opens the door to his apartment, and there she is, just as he remembers her.
“Don’t go,” Laine says.
Her voice and movements are triggered by a motion detector. Every time the door opens, the same words come out of her mouth. Then she stands on her tiptoes and gives him a peck on the mouth. The movement makes a mechanical noise, akin to a copy machine when you put paper on the tray.
He looks at his watch. 8:42. Too early for bed. But maybe he’ll go to the bedroom anyway. All he has to do is open the door, and Laine will be there, quivering. Just like that, Peter won’t be in the bedroom anymore. Through the force of his own will he’ll be back in front of Laine’s old dormitory—only it will be her new dormitory, just as it was five years ago. That was the first time she trembled happily at the sight of him. It was inexplicable, really—absurd. There was no way he deserved that much affection. But it was also undeniably true. She really was that overjoyed to see him.
They’d only known each other a few months at the time. Happy Rails—that’s where they’d met: the amusement park. It’s where they’d had summer jobs. Anyway, it’s where she’d had a summer job; his turned out to be permanent. She went off to college and Peter visited her that first weekend. He found her standing in front of her dorm, hands and shoulders and head vibrating.
“Don’t go,” the Laine in front of him says again, after Peter releases the door and lets it close behind him. She raises up and presses her lips to his.
“I’m not,” Peter says. He scans his eyes across the apartment. In every room, in every corner, in every nook and cranny: Laine is literally there, waiting to be activated. “I’m not leaving any of you.”
by submission | Feb 10, 2018 | Story |
Author: Joachim Heijndermans
“And thus concludes this portion of our tour,” said Theo to his group. “If there aren’t any further questions, I suggest we all sit down for lunch and–,”
He stopped when he saw that one of the Lidilian tourists in the back had raised his hand, anxiously waving it to draw Theo’s attention.
“Yes, Mr. Ush. Do you have a question?”
“Where are the whales?” Mr. Ush asked, sounding somewhat disappointed.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The whales. I was hoping to see the whales of Wales. My family would love it if we could see some of these whales we’ve heard so much about.”
Theo chuckled. Mr. Ush was not the first off-planet tourist to ask that particular question. “There aren’t any, I’m afraid. Certainly not here in Brecon. That is sadly a misconception. But we have plenty of other examples of beautiful wildlife here in Wales. If you–,”
“Why aren’t there any whales?” asked Mr. Ush.
“Why?”
“Yes,” Mr. Ush said, rubbing his three fingers through his long strands of purple hair. “Why aren’t there whales in Wales?”
“Well, for one thing, whales are marine animals. They need vast amounts of seawater if they wanted to survive here.”
“How much?”
“Pardon?”
“How much water would be needed for the whales to be here?” asked Mr. Ush.
“Well, I suppose it would need to be completely submerged under the sea,” Theo laughed. “Can’t fit the poor blighters in the Usk river, now can we?” He was joined by the other tourists, apart from the Zuut family from Dothogan, who weren’t actually sure what a ‘whale’ was.
“So our first step would be to bring the sea here?” asked Mr. Ush.
“Well, like I said, they couldn’t live here on the land for long. I could sign you up with our bureau’s whale watching tour in Iceland, but as long as we remain above sea level, you won’t find any whales in Wales.”
“All right,” Mr. Ush. He raised his hands into the air, joined by his wife and three children. They closed their eyes and became immobile, practically taking on the appearance of statues. Theo scratched his head, not sure how to approach this. The agency’s guidelines were pretty adamant about not commenting or disrupting any of their customer’s traditions or ceremonies, no matter how strange they might be. But it seemed that even if Theo had tried, the Ush family wouldn’t have responded, having blocked all their senses off, immersed in their silent pose. The Lidilians stood there for nearly half a minute, not once breaking out of their trance, before finally letting out a collective sigh and tapping their hands together.
“Ehm, Mr. Ush. Did you have any other–?” Theo began when he felt something shooting up his leg.
A light murmur went through the ground. That murmur grew into a tremor, which in turn exploded into a quake. The tour group shrieked and panicked, scattering throughout the streets of Brecon. Theo looked to the horizon, saying nothing, for he no longer had the words to describe what he saw. He stood there, frozen in awe at the approaching wall of water. Screams came from the distance, quickly silenced by the oncoming wave. The grasslands and homes were submerged beneath the dark cold blue of both the Atlantic and the North Sea. Theo couldn’t believe it, but the ocean had come to swallow Wales.
“There, step one is finished,” said Mr. Ush. “Now that’s taken care of. What next?”
by submission | Feb 9, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock
I remember a day I hadn’t remembered. I stood in the field, at the edge of where the woods began. Childhood came through the trees with the morning sunlight, at just the right angle to trigger longing — an overwhelming desire for uncluttered afternoons of play.
Have you ever felt the past brush so close that it no longer seems irretrievable?
I stand among the tree trunks and embrace this certainty: that I can return, can find my way. Something in the quality of the moment tells me so.
My mood lends itself to sorrow, to joy. I search for a doorway, in the dappled shade, along the trails of youth. I recall being here before, long, long ago. The energy of the world aligned that day. Being a child, I was immortal. But so was the world.
I pause along the way, at certain trunks, early on grown divided at their base. What particular madness causes me to insert my hand, between the goalposts of every Y, searching for an opening, in thin air?
And, oh, each disappointment, when I do not find it.
Can days repeat themselves, with a degree of cosmic accuracy sufficient to render the concept of time irrelevant?
Someone else walks through my doorway.
He comes through, instead.
A two-way passage, to tomorrow, to yesterday.
His courage proves quicker than mine. He gazes with wonder — his ever-present filter, in viewing the world.
But am I still, at this decrepit age, a thing of wonder to behold?
Shame forces my hand. I hide behind the nearest trunk. He cannot be allowed to discover his tomorrows, if all his tomorrows look like me.
Realizations flood upon me.
I don’t remember… being so brave.
This isn’t me. This is another me, possessed of an adventurousness that begs the question: what might I have accomplished, with such daring?
I grow jealous of his footsteps, into this new world; of his easy victory scored, against time, space, whatever other immutables he conquers so readily, armed only with his curiosity to guide him.
While I ponder options, he makes friends with birds. Will my world destroy him? Or is he a savior come, to instruct us with kindness?
I live, for a moment, in that moment past. I followed the rays of the sun that day, too. I found the doorway. What occurred next… did not seem real. I have since dismissed it.
He has not.
I determine to kick him back, through the goalposts, to a field where the bark has not yet hardened, with the ugliness of age.
He robs even this action, stealing my intent. With nary a backward glance, he departs, all on his own, seeking the next world to visit.
I remember him, now. I remember his worlds.
The sunlight shifts. The passage closes.
I reach only one conclusion: I am myself, after all.
