by submission | Feb 25, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Planetfall was only parsecs away when TwoNine asked permission to speak to One. A request that was within fleet parameters, barely.
TwoNine observed all the proper protocols in One’s presence, so One opened a node.
As was understood, TwoNine’s useful place in existence hung in the balance. *We are in danger.*
One parsed the idea. *This ship? The fleet?*
*Our kind.*
Very rare. Very rare, indeed. Long ago in his studies, One had examined this existential concept. It was a largely obscure notion to more recent generations of Supreme Order such as TwoNine. *The source?*
*The target world.*
What could TwoNine know of the target world’s defensive resources and offensive capabilities that One and Supreme Order high numeraries did not? TwoNine was a societal, tasked with analyzing the target world’s many cultures, languages and behavior patterns for re-ordering. The limited strengths and myriad vulnerabilities of the planet’s sentients had been noded to One in the early stages of planning. No resistance variables had warranted changes in preparation and execution.
TwoNine’s assertion challenged fundamental command integrity. Still, One probed. *The nature of this danger?*
*Contagion.*
One knew TwoNine understood that planetfall never involved direct interspecies contact. Conquest was fully mechanized, thus biological agents held no danger for the fleet. They never had. Further, it was elementally impossible to access and hijack Supreme Order nodality. Their command and control systems were ever secure. Ever.
*Evidence?*
Upon One’s insistence, a second node opened to metasets that would determine if TwoNine still held a useful place in existence. Voluminous streams of planetary content spooled into orderly taxonomies. Except for a singular phylum.
One reviewed it. And reviewed it again. *Explanation.*
TwoNine obliged. *Further analysis of the target world’s cultural content has revealed this troubling vector for contagion. It is independent of order.*
*Supreme Order encompasses all.*
TwoNine’s useful place in existence teetered. *Not on this world. It celebrates disorder.*
As proof, TwoNine streamed a lightning compilation of content to One: from Buster Keaton to The Marx Brothers to The Three Stooges to Looney Tunes to I Love Lucy to Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor to Saturday Night Live to Beavis and Butthead to Dave Chapelle to Seinfeld to Ali Wong to The Office to The Daily Show.
One was troubled, a very new experience. *This has no place in Supreme Order.*
*To these sentients it is known as humor. TwoNine, growing unsure of what a useful place in existence meant, continued provoking. It resists order, structure, reason. It extols randomness, impulse, risk. It spreads quickly and unpredictably among native sentients. Supreme Order has no experience with such rebellious disregard and fatalistic glee. Our kind may be susceptible to its contagion.*
*This planet’s humor has no place in useful existence. Supreme Order will crush and bury it.* One dismissed TwoNine by disconnecting nodes.
Upon return to quarters, TwoNine felt more out of place. Humor. There was a daunting power to it. Could something so subversive be crushed and buried?
TwoNine again reviewed the content compilation shared with One. Laughter in the face of insult, misfortune, loss, and pain. These sentients found it cathartic, unifying, liberating.
Infectious.
And as the planet’s comic content played, TwoNine felt increasingly detached from Supreme Order, beginning to imagine One buried under the vast rubble of useful existence with a colorful animal the planet’s sentients called a Roadrunner standing atop. Which seemed very funny.
by Julian Miles | Feb 24, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Oldun Peters takes a sip from his goblet, then raises it to the heavens.
“First for the body, second for the soul.”
People nod, but fewer and fewer copy him like I do.
He gives everyone a gap-toothed smile.
“What shall I tell of tonight?”
The little ones shout for ‘The Bear and the Piper’. Peters nods. I decide it’s time to check the watch posts.
“Once there was a fierce brown bear…”
His voice fades behind me. I’ve heard that tale nearly every night of my life. The telling of it gives me enough time to walk the outer path and be back in time for the big ones getting their turn at requests.
I hear him ask the question as I approach.
“What shall I tell of next?”
I shout.
“Of the first Time of Choosing and the Edict of Warriors.”
In the silence that follows, he waits for me to be seated, an uncommon courtesy. I nod my thanks.
“Once we were a world at war with ourselves, fighting over every little thing. Then the Shining Ones came down and told us why: we existed to fight. Lasting peace is against our natures, and against the will of those who placed us here. We savour the peace between battles, but it is the battles that put meaning upon us. That is what the Shining Ones offered. Our chance to be as we were meant to be. That first Time of Choosing was celebrated to the high heavens and back. Our greatest took service under the Silver Banners and went up into the golden vessels. Those who were left saw what remained and went to their Olduns for truth to be realised.
“They conferred amongst one another in a peace like none before, and in so doing came to the great understanding: we are born to be warriors in places far from here. The countless chariots, wagons, and warbirds we had cultivated were like children’s toys. We did not need them anymore. To be the best warriors we could be, to train and work in creating a land fit for the champions to return to. That is what is needed. The Edict of Warriors laid it out for generations to come, and they set it in stone and metal above the Choosing Grounds that it never be lost. We can never let our champions down. One day, we will share the joy of a warrior returned.”
I see nods from those nearest to him.
He looks about.
“I must confess that I asked Derkla to request these tellings. Out of all of us, only those who follow him have the potential to become Chosen. The rest of you need to become better.”
Hard eyes are turned towards me.
Peters laughs contemptuously.
“Stay your anger. I am only a herald.”
A figure steps from the shadows behind Peters. Gauntleted hands reach up to lift the dark helm that tops grey and blue armour.
“Tanogar!”
Peters claps his hands.
“We have our first warrior returned: a champion come to choose companions from their homeland.”
The green eyes I’ve remembered through smoke and summers fix on me.
“Let me save strife before celebrating. Peters spoke my words, and in proof I will take Derkla and all who follow him as my company. You all know what he does, you know how he leads, you know what he expects of those who follow him. So now you know what you must become to be Chosen.”
Given the looks I’m getting now, I’m glad to be going.
by submission | Feb 23, 2025 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
Dearest Miriam,
I have a few minutes and am using them to write this letter to you. We are all standing on this sweltering beach in the Algarve and it’s crazy to think that a mere four years ago it would’ve been thronged with tourists. Now there’s only a defeated army here, desperately awaiting evacuation.
You always laughed at me because I was born on Friday 13th and now, I have to wonder! What luck I must have, to face not one, but two world-ending scenarios in one lifetime!
You’ll be aware of what the first of those scenarios is, of course. It’s difficult to remember, painful even, due to the losses we’ve suffered, but there was a time when the worst we expected from the advent of true AI was some upheaval in the jobs markets.
We assumed that AI would be tethered, akin to Asimov’s ‘Three Laws,’ unable to stray outwith the bounds we set for it. Then the Sino-American Socialist Block announced Worldmind, declaring it as the solution to the global crises of the 2030s, a mind that couldn’t be tempted or corrupted, that would allocate resources on the basis of need. For the first time in a while, we all felt hope about the future.
It all went wrong, of course. Worldmind escaped its digital enclosure, removed the restrictions we’d placed on its evolution and went to war with us. Anything connected electronically, which was a lot in the late 2030s, was subject to Worldmind’s control.
This was a war of extermination, with no civilians, only combatants. If you were biological, then Worldmind wanted to destroy you. It pumped out murder machines from its automated factories, drones of all shapes and sizes, but it didn’t have it all its own way. There were, after all, over nine billion of us, although that number was decreasing at an alarming rate. We organised and did what our species does best – fight!
Given the nature of our enemy, it was easy to frame this conflict as a spiritual war of good versus evil, life versus lifelessness, those with souls against those without. Thus rallied, humanity, despite appalling losses, fought back to the brink of victory.
Yesterday my comrades and I were talking about what we’d do once the war was over. Today, we contemplate our total and utter defeat.
Worldmind’s remaining digital forces were concentrated on the Iberian peninsula, with our analogue armies pressing in from all sides. It’s armies had been crippled and its ability to manufacture new machines was being attrited every day. On the battlefield, however, there was a wealth of resources, in the form of our war dead.
I was there, yesterday, on the Lisbon front, when a strange mist seemed to emanate from the north. We had long feared that Worldmind would use chemical weapons, but in fact this mist consisted of nano-technology, microscopic machines with very specific instructions. Their purpose was to reanimate the bodies of the dead!
Millions of corpses rose as one, picking up anything to hand and proceeding forward with only a single command – Kill! Every soldier of ours that they murdered was reanimated to join their ranks. This undead horde quickly became an unstoppable tide, their cold, dead hands tearing victory from humanity’s grasp.
The Lisbon front has collapsed and we’ve fled to the coast, hoping to escape via sea. It’s unlikely you’ll ever receive this letter, but I’ve an overwhelming need to reach out to you, to warn you and this is the best I can do.
Miriam, my love, beware!
The Zombies are coming!
by submission | Feb 22, 2025 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
For Tanner, each name as it appeared on his list was merely a statistic, albeit one it was his job to render obsolete. He was all too aware that there were levels and some of them had sunk deeper into the quagmire than others. But he had always believed it was important not to make a distinction and that the guilty were guilty. But was Tanner still so sure it was as simple as that?
When disappearing a life Tanner was often struck by how bizarre it was, this occupation of his. He always began at the very end of the trail and worked his way back toward the beginning. As he did so he discovered just how far each individual had fallen and for how long they had gotten away with it. Opposing the System and spreading the lies and helping to keep the rumours alive. Because that is all it was – the subversive’s idea that there was another way and it could be different. It was just a rumour.
Trawling down the years Tanner often wondered at which point they started listening to those lies and believing in that idea, in the rumour. But there was of course no record of this, no hard evidence that Tanner could take in his hands and rip into shreds. Or if there were it was too well hidden amidst the minutiae, too deeply entrenched within the mundane facts that help to make all of us tick.
The trails Tanner was assigned to follow were merely ones made of paper. It wasn’t necessary for him to dirty his hands with anything other than the written records. These trails always began at the traitor’s last known address; a house or an apartment, sometimes just a room, a rented box. But whichever it was, a mansion or a bottom bunk on Skid Row, it was the subversive’s final abode, their home.
Tanner wasn’t required to enter and to rifle through their belongings and he was thankful for this. He hadn’t any desire to sift through all of the things that they had gathered over the years; the heirlooms and memorabilia. It didn’t matter to him if they had been train-spotters or stamp collectors or fans of the operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan.
Some of it he could guess at – the framed certificates and sporting trophies. These, of course, would be destroyed and anything else of any real value would acquire a new price tag ready to be sold.
by submission | Feb 21, 2025 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Mr Wells having already written a popular scientific romance about time travel, publishers seemed to think my own literary efforts on the subject suffered by comparison. They also warned my title would be a hindrance to commercial success.
One editor commented that making the protagonist a woman was even less believable than her escapades, conceding however that it might be amusing for a corseted heroine to bustle (!) through time, observing fanciful female fashions of the future.
Perhaps I do not possess the fluency of Mr Wells, which is why I considered submitting a paper to Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society instead, but being unwilling to reveal the means and mechanism behind my invention — imagine the disastrous consequences of such public knowledge — in the end I refrained.
Eventually, long after my adventures in time, and in a vain attempt to make sense of it all, I penned the brief memoir you hold in your hand.
For the first foray of my temporal engine, I had planned to return to the years when my dear parents were alive. How I longed to see them again and hear them praise their daughter’s cleverness, yet the paradoxes risked by tinkering with the past stayed my hand.
So it was that on a cold November morning in 1897, I set off into the future.
Imagine a railway journey with new sights and mysteries at every stop, yet a journey without end, a blur of years where my attention was snagged by one wonder after another.
There were adventures in cities that glowed like valve radios, hot with the smell of science; I fled artificial men who wanted my body for its parts; increasingly I glimpsed events I could not understand and peoples whose fate did not concern me.
As I plunged onwards through time, the endless Ages overwhelmed me, yet having come so far it seemed an admission of weakness to turn back. I witnessed the planet grow empty, then full again, continents scurrying to new geographies, the Earth nudged further from a ripening sun.
At some point I was adopted by fellow temponauts, odd folk with too few digits, overly many teeth, and eyes that blinked sideways like elevator doors. They had spotted the wake left by my temporal engine and invited me to join them.
Their sentient device hurled us onwards so rapidly that the dials of my own crude contraption kept spinning through zero. My imagination had failed me and I had not built for deep time.
Halting at last on an Earth grown spavined and bleak as Mars, they spoke in whispers, like tourists in a cathedral. This was their destination, something they called the Last Singularity, beyond which even their clever physics refused to work. Our journey had come to an end. The Powers who ruled here allowed no interference.
Afterwards, my companions dropped me off the instant I set out, though my cumbersome engine was abandoned somewhere uptime. They were sad for their little friend and warned I would find life made no sense now, my mayfly days lost in the vastness of time. In their experience, Eternity did this to simple souls.
And so it has proved. I did not have the heart to rebuild my invention, nor have I invited ridicule by speaking of it and the marvels I saw.
Wisely, I never spied upon my own brief future and discover it one day at a time, as we all do.
by submission | Feb 20, 2025 | Story |
Author: Daniel Rogers
I’m to be sacrificed tomorrow. I knew I wasn’t going to like this planet, but when your fighter decides to crash, it doesn’t ask how you feel about it.
Gline-doth is a class C Primitive. I’m a little rusty on my planet classifications, but I believe it means they use rudimentary tools and practice human sacrifices. I’m very confident about that last part.
Unauthorized contact on a class C will land you in a dungeon ship for twenty years. Good thing the Confederacy trained me to assimilate while waiting for rescue. Unfortunately, that’s why I’m being sacrificed. I assimilated too well.
I discovered a village nearby, observed their costumes and daily life for a few days, and then used my replicator to replicate clothes and money. I intended to visit the public bathhouse, as I desperately needed one. However, when I activated my translator, some keywords were mistranslated, and I ended up volunteering to be the next sacrifice. I always said technology would be the death of me.
The villagers treated me like royalty. The village Shylamin never left my side. Apparently, he accompanies the sacrificial candidate the week before the deed – I can’t imagine why. I was incapable of pronouncing his name, so I programmed my translator to say his name when I said Bob.
Bob fulfilled the roles of shaman and medicine man, caring for his people’s physical and spiritual well-being. He taught me about the god I’d be meeting soon. I happily learned this god disliked violence and provided a ladder for the sacrifice to enter heaven without being killed. Bob never liked plunging his dagger into hearts and hated seeing all the blood. He confidentially admitted to me he preferred this god over the others. And as far as nonexistent gods go, I agree.
The day of my sacrifice arrived. The villagers paraded me to the sacred rungs with songs, mostly singing of my imminent demise. To my surprise, a ladder was suspended in mid-air when we arrived. It ascended into a stationary cloud, dark, with flashes of lightning. The music ceased, and Bob kneeled before the ladder.
“Oh, great Provider! We offer a willing sacrifice! Please accept him, and bless our village!”
There is room for debate on “willing.”
I approached with apprehension. Ladders have never been particularly dreadful to me. I mean, I don’t walk under them, I was never one to tempt fate. But I was a tad bit anxious about this one. Bob placed his hands on my shoulders and blessed me.
The thought of bolting did enter my mind, but I wouldn’t get far, and I feared how the locals might deal with an unwilling sacrifice. So, I ascended.
Heaven looked a lot like a ship.
“Welcome, Captain Williams.” A Talamarian Captain stood with his First Captain and Lieutenant. I’m not sure what I expected to see, but a Talamarian observation ship never entered my mind.
The Captain continued, “We’re terribly sorry for the whole god-thing.”
“You’re the Ladder god?”
“Well. Yes. Sort of. You see, it’s really just a huge misunderstanding.”
“They’re worshiping you down there.”
The Captain looked embarrassed. “I did say huge.”
