by submission | Dec 8, 2017 | Story |
Author: Kate Runnels
Ara studied the Avatar for a moment, liking what she saw. It wasn’t enough like her to raise suspicions if anyone she knew played the game, but she would be comfortable playing in this body she had tweaked from the stock body given by the game developers.
Especially when she hooked into the game in the fully immersive world with the new sensory impressions. Not death, obviously, but so many other aspects from taste to the feel of wind and water and other sensations.
A clone you control in a world vastly different from the megacities of Earth. An escape from the pollution, continual terror attacks, food shortages, water shortages, and rampant crime on the street in every megacity.
Ara and countless other gamers had been waiting for years for this MMO RPG; the launch of Avalon. This resonated with her coming from London and seeing Stonehenge through protective glass. And many other English historical sights. She could touch grass, feel stone, pet a horse. And then she caught a glimpse of her real body in the reflection of an opaqued window. This wasn’t her true body, this weak flabby body, but that of her Avatar.
At first, after the release date, it was easy to leave the world of Avalon, but she did leave it, to go to her crap job. But for many, it became an addition. Even Ara succumbed, losing weight. Not even leaving the game to eat or shower or change. The world of the megacity was so grey and blah. Ara soon lost her job.
But she couldn’t stop. Like any addict, she needed that great and greater bit to feel anything- needing more to experience that rush from her first high.
Erik, a first responder, shook his head at his partner. “Another one, huh?”
“Do you play Avalon,” asked Michelle.
“No. What about her?”
“The brain gives a response similar to dreaming. She just won’t wake up.”
Erik scowled. “So what?”
“The game has become her reality now. This-” Michelle pointed to the rundown cramped apartment – “is her nightmare. We’ll process her like the rest and see if we can revive her. It’s a shame she has to hide in a game.”
Erik smiled. “She your type?”
Michelle shrugged without answering.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 7, 2017 | Story |
Author: Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
“Look we rescued you, correct?”
“Yes, but-”
“You were floating in a derelict colony vessel. You were a corpsicle. A cryo refugee. We could have LEFT you there!”
“Yeah, I know. You revived me and the other two hundred surviving sleepers. I get it. I’m grateful! But-”
“THIS IS THE SIXTH TIME. And that’s just YOU! That doesn’t count the rest of your kind.”
“Hey, you have to understand. A food replicator is a miracle to us. We’re only human.”
“This is the first ship in the Union that will need to place restrictions. THE FIRST SHIP! It’s EMBARASSING!”
“We’re imaginative primitives new to your time. Like cavemen would have been to us. I’m sorry.”
“Look at this list. You wanted to eat each other?”
“Not literally. Just a taste of consequence-free human meat. And once we found out we could submit each other’s DNA, it just became a party game. Come on. Admit it. You’re curious.”
“NO, I AM NOT.”
“And from there, it was a small hop to tasting all the species onboard we’ve never seen before. Those Tulexians are delicious!”
“I’M a Tulexian, you monster.”
“Okay, I can see how cannibalism, no matter how victimless and consequence-free, might be…. frowned on.”
“Oh, can you?”
“Glad to see sarcasm is alive and well. But what else have we done that’s so bad?”
“The ship’s power went down to 15% this morning.”
“Ah, yes. That.”
“You wanted a….let’s see…I have it in my notes here…a ‘turducken but with every edible animal in the universe’.”
“Yes”
“The main viewscreen crashed in the bridge. The whole ship went down to emergency power.”
“So THAT’S what that was. I was pretty freaked out. My replicator got SUPER hot”
“It was trying to complete your meal! Do you KNOW how many edible animals are in the universe?”
“No?”
“Taking into account that there are 8.7 million species on your Earth alone and there are 237 planets in the Union…..”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Your replicator was literally trying to apply the animal-within-animal turducken principle to…double checking here…yes, 2,961,933,238 recorded animals. That’s nearly three billion layers of meat.”
“In the shape of a turkey”
“Yes. In the shape of a turkey.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t do that again.”
“You can’t. We’ve made it a protocol in the computer that you can no longer do that.”
“Okay. What about an eternal moebius pizza just coming slowly out of the replicator forever?”
“What? No.”
“Anatomically accurate cakes using medical records of fellow crew members?”
“Listen…”
“Bowls of rice with famous paintings on each grain?”
“OKAY THAT’S IT! You’re banned.”
“What?”
“We’ll bring you replicated nutrients and set up a kitchen in the quarters of you and your fellow wakened cryosleepers.”
“Let me have the replicator for ten more minutes. PLEASE? I want the replicator to fry me a copy of your delicious dorsal claws. Then we’ll be cool. We cool?”
“By Tursuk’s tears. No. No, we are not cool.”
“Oh, I just KNEW you wouldn’t be cool about this. I should have eaten a copy of your FACE while I had the chance!”
“By the Hammer of Sherindal! Such depravity. The restrictions stand.”
“Well NOW what are we supposed to do? It’s a long journey back to Earth.”
“We have many means of entertainment available. Although, I’m curious, how come you all haven’t been giving us the same kinds of problems with our holodeck?”
“You guys have holodecks? Can we try that out? That sounds cool.”
“Oh……by Tharlat’s hairy claws. Computer, initiate holodeck lockout procedures alpha prime. Union personnel only.”
“Oh come ON! You guys are the WORST!”
by submission | Dec 6, 2017 | Story |
Author: Sam Matey
Nnenna Inkar Uzoma, first human consul to the Empire of Mhunghelvardh, walked out of her spaceplane onto the dais and into a fantastical wonderland. The palace gardens of Mhunghelvardh spread out below her, kilometers of alien vegetation in every color. A few meters from her face, purple tentacle-vines were gently waving in the breeze, flicking out every few seconds to snatch one of the circling swarm of songbird-sized, fluorescent pink five-winged insect-like creatures. On the other side of the slabs of jet that formed a path through the garden, about twenty pulsating yellow organisms squatted low to the ground. They looked a little like brain coral, with their wrinkly network of fluid-filled crisscrossing crevices, and a little like toads, as they were covered in pustulous-looking warts filled with gray pus under a transparent lining. They appeared roughly circular from the top, with a diameter of about a meter. Four tiny, flexible tentacle-feet emerged from under their bodies, plunging deep into the reddish earth. Nnenna inhaled deeply: she detected a faintly floral and saccharine scent from the purple creature and an acrid, tar-like tang that she could almost taste from the bed of yellow ones.
“This is…incredible.” she managed, pausing to collect her thoughts while she heard her translator locket repeat her words in the guttural Shqir Pakh language. She looked at her Shqir Pakh guide, a senior Palace Guard named An!k’yrek. “May I touch them?”
“Hrel’uhkt/aa!k nhrukht.”
“Yes,” her translator locket said in perfect Globish. “But be careful. The purple one would eat your hand and the yellow ones would leave spermslime on your fingers. Try this one.” An!k’yrek indicated a cantaloupe-sized gray bulb poised at the top of a long, thin red stalk.
Nnenna reached out and stroked the bulb, feeling its soft, velvety contours. To her shock, the bulb instantly turned itself inside out, revealing a shining turquoise interior, with a central dodecagonal structure that seemed to be woven from hundreds of tiny golden threads.
“What is it?” she murmured in awe. Her datalens could find no match for it in the Shqir’pakh’ik’la’druhn’no biome files, but humans still knew very little about the life-forms of this world. She’d only just set foot in Mhunghelvardh, and she was already on the verge of a new discovery!
“Hreg’oh!k.” “Listen.”
As Nnenna watched in wonder, the threads began to twitch and curl around each other, moving faster and faster until a humming began to emanate from the structure, an ethereal sound that was vaguely reminiscent of the tuning of a harp, the cry of a bird of prey, and the hiss of water on hot metal. It was utterly strange and harshly discordant, yet somehow the clashing sounds seemed to complement each other. It was the strangest and yet most beautiful sound Nnenna had ever heard. As she listened, a tear ran down her cheek.
“What is it?” she asked hoarsely.
“It is a Basin of Song,” An!k’yrek answered softly. “The rarest and most melodious of the Music-Globes family. Its singing season only comes twice in its 300-year lifespan. You are very fortunate to have been here to experience its melodies.”
Nnenna watched the Basin of Song curl back in on itself again and go silent.
by Julian Miles | Dec 4, 2017 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
We’d been down for a long while before Commander Bramson came up with the idea of linking to the orbiter, getting it to swing into low orbit and tractor beam us off this damn rock. I objected on the grounds that humans can’t extract oxygen from vacuum; the orbiter couldn’t enter atmosphere thick enough to breathe.
“Sure, the ship’s beat up, kid. But the crew section is solid.”
“How the hell can anyone verify that? Our diagnostics and scanners were mangled when the control module got flattened!”
“That’s not the attitude we need. You go ‘bout your duties and leave the serious stuff to us.”
As I leave, Kristin grabs my arm and drags me behind a cargo pod.
“Will you stop kicking off at him? He’s not going to listen, even if you’re right. Always has to be his idea. You know that.”
I know that. But, Bramson’s last ‘bright’ idea planted us in a cliff face that collapsed on us after the ship fell out of it. Which is why I don’t trust his latest piece of inspiration.
Everyone else works like maniacs, morale improved by Bramson’s conviction. Meanwhile, Kristen, Tommy, and I hide what supplies we can as rationing has been abandoned. The pair of them trust me, which, in some ways, scares me more than the situation we’re in.
The moment comes and they all pile in, then peer out at the three of us.
Bramson steps back out: “Come on, Kristen. I know he’s a pretty boy but don’t you let your needs set you on a path to ruin. Tommy! Lars ain’t right. You come here, right now.”
Tommy shakes his head vigorously. Kristen calls Bramson so many names so fast he actually steps back.
“I see you’ve been learning manners from him. Okay, you’ve made your choice. Live with it.”
He steps inside and shuts the hatch. We backpedal quickly as the tractor beam fills the air with pinpricks of light.
I watch it rise through the monocular and well, damn, it looks like Bramson was right. There are no trails of leaking atmosphere. I’m just wondering how to apologise to Kristen and Tommy’s when the crew section pops. It was airtight, but with its reinforcing removed to lighten the load, it wasn’t strong enough to contain the atmosphere.
We stand under a beautiful clear sky, watching the awful result.
As the shock releases us, the monocular beeps: it’s uplink acknowledging the orbiter’s loss-of-life check. The crash and fall out of the cliff hadn’t killed anyone, so as far as the orbiter was concerned, all was well – which caused our problem. But, with a sudden loss of life and confirmed survivors, the orbiter’s rescue beacon will have assistance here within a week.
Kristen turns to me: “Did you know about this?”
“I hadn’t thought it that far through.”
She nods: “Good. Keep that in mind because, in an absence of heroes, the debrief panel are going to be looking for culprits.”
Tommy raises his hand: “Bramson did it. Left us behind.”
We look at Tommy.
“Not strictly true, Tommy.” Kristen smiles at him.
Tommy looks at the sky, then back at us: “Lars disagreed. That’s only insubordination.”
“Tommy, it’s -”
“Irrelevant, Lars. Wasn’t mutiny, so nothing justifies him abandoning Kristen and me. It’s clear dereliction of duty. Throw in crashing the ship in the first place and Bramson will be found incompetent.”
Kristen claps her hands: “Lars saved us!”
“By accident.”
Tommy stares at me: “Accident, luck, whatever. You’re good by us.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 3, 2017 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Baxter found the fortune teller at the very back of the carnival grounds, as far away from the entrance as one could get without leaving the sprawling complex. It was either an afterthought or the origin point, which exactly was unclear.
The ancient tent canvas was greasy grey, the surface the texture of stiff leather, pulled tight over the center pole. The guide ropes stiff as iron keeping the walls at right angles to the ground.
The sign, carefully lettered in a bold calligraphic script, read simply ‘Futures Told, Inquire Within’, and hung beside a black tear of an entranceway which beckoned through the mist.
Baxter stepped into the darkness and followed a soft glow left, partway around the inside of the tent, until he emerged into the interior proper.
A low ceiling of sorts was composed of hundreds of light bulbs suspended by lengths of string stretching up into the darkness. Some were familiar incandescents of various shapes and sizes, some long skinny chandelier styles, and some large clear bulbous affairs, all unlit, having no apparent wiring. Each was tied by their metal base such that their bottom faces were at the same level and spaced equally about a shoulder’s width away from the next nearest in a grid that filled the room.
In the middle was a simple table, and on either side, there was a single straight back chair.
“Come, sit.” The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, and Baxter jumped despite himself, so focused on the decor he’d forgotten there would be someone else here.
From the darkness on the opposite side of the tent, perhaps fifteen meters away, the bulbs started to glow above a figure emerging from another entranceway.
He moved slowly and deliberately across the room to stand behind one of the chairs, and as he did so, a meter wide circle of light followed him, the hanging bulbs brightest at the point directly above his head.
Baxter walked to the table, hesitated for a moment, then pulled out one chair and sat. The parlour trick impressed him. The table had appeared weathered and worn as he approached, but he could see the top now was, in fact, a vivid green dressed in immaculate felt. The man remained standing for a long moment before sitting down himself, the lights above him dimming slightly as he did so.
Baxter cleared his throat, and then started “I’d like you to tell me–”
“I will look into your future, and I will tell you what I see,” the man interrupted as though Baxter himself hadn’t spoken at all, “what you do with what you learn is not my concern.”
Baxter sat back and crossed his arms, the man, in contrast, leaned forward, placing well-manicured hands flat on the table, crisp shirt-cuffs pinned with shining gold links. The light cast strange shadows, hiding the features of the man’s face, and when Baxter looked down, he would have sworn for a moment the man’s trousers were frayed at the edges, his shoes nearly worn through, but then the light changed and reflected back off highly polished oxfords below sharply creased slacks.
“Your hands,” the man said, turning his own palms up. Baxter paused, then leaned forward to place his hands on top of the man’s, and…
Jacob relaxed and sighed. The customer before him sat frozen in place, eyes fixed and pupils fully dilated. He took a deep breath, focused intently on the darkness inside the man’s barely visible irises, exhaled and then…
They were in a kitchen, seated at the table where Baxter was reading a letter in his shirtsleeves, a mug of coffee forgotten, a piece of toast in mid-flight between plate and mouth. Jacob stood and quickly scanned the letter over his shoulder, a ‘Dear John’ from a Vanessa expressing her frustration with his persistent indiscretions, informing him that she’d taken the kids, and he would hear from her lawyer.
Jacob filed the information away and looked cautiously out the kitchen window. They were here, too. Shadows of men staring back at him, unseeing at a distance, but here. Clearly, this wasn’t a viable exit either.
As he turned back to the kitchen table, he reached up and carefully unscrewed the light bulb from the hanging fixture, and then…
“You are going to lose Vanessa if you choose to womanize.” The man was sitting back now, and Baxter blinked twice before snatching his hands back from where they’d been suspended in the air over the empty table.
“Vanessa?” He said, his voice rising, uncertain. “From accounting?” Uncertainty turning to disbelief.
“There will be children, and happiness, a home, but you’ll throw it all away on frivolous affairs.”
The man stood, the lights overhead glowing with his ascent, and they followed as he walked back towards the edge of the tent, where he paused only for a moment to reach above and tie the new bulb to a dangling bit of string.
“See yourself out.”
And with that he was gone, leaving Baxter almost completely in the dark.
by submission | Dec 1, 2017 | Story |
Author: Kim Kneen
“It’s rare but sometimes Saplings simply fail to thrive.” Dr. Moran peels off her gloves and drops them into a bin labeled Hazardous Waste.
Moran hands me a leaflet entitled Recalls: your obligations and I stuff it into a pocket and bundle Saffy up in her coat. Desperate to get her away from Moran I do the buttons up wrong. Saffy is skewwhiff. Half-cocked. A scruffy scarecrow with blackberry eyes and fine flyaway hair. Spindly legs planted in yellow wellington boots she insists on wearing though it hasn’t rained for nineteen years.
I take Saffy’s hand and coax her to the exit. I can see Moran’s reflection in the glass pane of the door and I pause before trying the handle.
“She’s three years old,” I say.
“Unfortunate.” Moran replies, though she doesn’t even look up. “You have five minutes to say your goodbyes.”
#
I think back to the first time I saw my daughter.
The pick-up point was a grand, Georgian house seized by government six years into the dry spell.
Fertility was in rapid decline before the drought struck, so when it did, and the few babies born in the early years perished, women were advised not to conceive. Scientists had come up with a compromise. Substitute children for those who could afford it. Child-like creatures who could survive the arid conditions on earth. Hybrids: acceptably human but whose DNA was woven through with that of drought-resistant plants.
I’d chosen a reputable grower. Ethical. Expensive. I’d read all their literature, knew what to expect, but the first glimpse of my daughter still came as a shock.
My new baby lay in a transparent cot. Roots sprouted between her fingers and toes and grew down through layer after layer of enriched vermiculite.
A nurse was removing a series of wires from the cot. She opened a drawer and selected some scissors.
“The baby looks terribly thin,” I said.
The nurse replied, “I read on your notes you gave birth to a human child once.”
“Leah.” I whispered.
I’d cried out her name so many times over the years it had lost the power to move me. How could a flick of the tongue convey anything of who she once was and what she had meant to me?
The nurse held out the scissors, holding onto them far longer than necessary, causing me to look into her face.
“Try not to compare,” she said.
#
Moran’s security staff don’t let us leave and they usher us into a holding suite.
I sit Saffy down and ease off her welly boots, roll down her socks. The silvery veins that used to pulse beneath her skin have almost faded. Once I could trace them as high as her knees. Roots still sprout between her toes but crumble into dust when I touch them. My little girl is fading.
I don’t need to read Moran’s leaflet to know what the future holds for a Recall like Saffy. In this world of scarce resources every last scrap of her will be pulped and pressed for fuel, or shoe soles, or bedding for livestock.
I kneel at her feet: gather her into my arms. She twists my hair round her fingers. Once the sweet palm-flower scent of her skin had the power to perfume the sour stink of the air, but now she exudes wet earth and wood smoke, decay.
I’m reminded of a time when earth still had seasons. Of Autumn. Granite skies and raindrop bowed branches. The clutch of a long-lost child’s blackberry stained fingers.
Losing Saffy will break me.
