by Duncan Shields | Sep 26, 2017 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Once they were gathered on the elementary school playground, teams needed to be selected for a game of Grobnars and Subjugates. Dinklebarg, a grobnar, was today’s selector.
Greg, a human, raised his hand and asked, “When we play Grobnars and Humans, how come I always have to play the human?”
Dinklebarg flapped his gills in consternation, the tips of his tentacles pinking in embarrassment at having this conversation again. “You’re the only human in the group, Greg.”
Greg responded, “But Fleeznar and Wyndleflang get to be humans sometimes. They’re grobnars. They get to play different species. Why can’t I?”
“Because we can retract four of our tentacles to look like a human.” Dinklebarg retorted.
Greg was aghast. “Look like a human? What? But you’re green! And you have more eyes than I do!”
Dinklebarg shrugged his torso mass “Well, I mean, it’s close enough, isn’t it?”
Greg gestured to another child. He was a tall, black, spidery creature that was listening to the conversation. “And Jeevnitz here isn’t even a grobnar! He’s a nurktick and he gets to play human too, sometimes.”
“He can crouch on his hindstilts, pull two of his forelegs in and fold his antennae down. If you’re looking straight at him then his mouth pincers look like lips and his wings are transparent. The profile’s pretty convincing, I think.” said Dinklebarg.
Greg crossed his arms. “That’s ridiculous.”
Dinklebarg yellowed in anger. “Look, are you making trouble? You humans are so sensitive.”
Greg said, “All I’m saying is that it sounds like you’re saying that all species are interchangeable with humans but that humans can’t be anything else.”
There was a pause on the playground. Everyone was listening now.
“Oh, here we go.” said Dinklebarg with an exasperated fluff of his tentacles.
“Am I wrong?”
“Look, you lost the war”
“Oh here we go.” said Greg, mocking Dinklebarg.
“Am I wrong?” whined Dinklebarg, mocking Greg.
Greg said “Yeah, well, Jeevnitz’s race lost his war to the grobnars but he gets to play as a human.”
“His race put up a respectable fight.” barbed Dinklebarg.
Greg continued, “AND he gets to play grobnars AS WELL when it’s necessary.”
“Well….he doesn’t make trouble like you do”
“I’m not making trouble!” shouted Greg.
Jeevnitz’s nickturk buzz chimed in “Uh, Greg, could you leave me out of this?”
Dinklebarg and Greg stared at him and then back at each other.
“Look, bonebag..” said Dinklebarg.
“Oh, excuse me for having an endoskeleton.” replied Greg, curling his hands into fists.
Jeevnitz drummed his legs and hummed to Dinklebarg “Hey, you can’t say bonebag. That’s speciest.”
“Thanks for finally showing up, Jeevnitz.” Greg smiled at Jeevnitz.
“I might be insectile but I’m no speciest.” replied Jeevnitz, fluttering his wings.
“Oh, you subjugated races just love sticking together, don’t you?” pouted Dinkleflarg, his tentacles striping red in defeat.
Greg persisted. “All I’m saying is that I can play a grobnar once in a while if it’s needed.”
Dinkleflarg relented. “Okay okay. Fine. You can play a grobnar today. Happy?”
21188 pistoned over to the conversation, face shield projecting the letters “HEY GUYS WHAT’D I MISS?” with a smiley emoticon. He ticked, waiting for a response, servos whining as his silicate head swiveled from face to face of the other children.
Greg blushed “Oh man not this guy again.”
Jeevnitz rolled his eyes and clicked his mouth pincers in annoyance. “Awkward.”
Dinklebarg said “We’re not playing robots today, 21188. Go on standby or something until recess is over.”
21188’s face lights changed to “YOU GUYS ARE JERKS” with a frown face symbol as he turned to motor away.
by Julian Miles | Sep 25, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
From orbit, this island must look like charred toast floating in a soup of boiled seafood. They’ve rained fire upon us for hours. Not sure what we did, but, as Lailoken always said “It isn’t about what you’ve done, it’s what they think you’ve done, or what they think you’re going to do.”
Another wave of fury crashes across my back. I don’t know why they bother. The rocks won’t burn unless they turn up the heat a lot.
There’s nothing visible left to burn –
Except me.
Ah-ha.
Well, that took an embarrassingly long time to realise. So, Lailoken and just about everything else I’ve ever known have been incinerated during an attempt to annihilate me. An entire civilisation and the land it inhabited laid waste because folk always judge by what they would do. And, given sway over me, them up there would rampage. Therefore, they thought themselves to be in danger, because they didn’t believe that anyone could possibly mean what was said about peace with something like me available.
Callow men and distrust; petty minds never breed noble motives. The goad for the recent unrest becomes clear. Finally, I understand what you said about true prescience being like ‘hindsight in advance’, Lailoken.
But, we are as our natures dictate. In the end, our veneers fall away. For them, cowardice, greed, and tyranny are natural states. I am left with a choice. Do I do as I am capable, as my ‘nature’ should mandate, or as I prefer?
Mgixyn shouts up at me, her voice filled with fear: “Dynas, how will we escape? You can’t carry us all and the fires they throw will slay us even if they don’t hit us.”
She makes a point that contains my answer: I cannot save the children while the bombardment continues. Therefore, the bombardment must end. To stop the bombardment, I will have to break a few things. Thus, preference and capability will meet.
So be it. As the fiery hail abates once again, I twist my neck, bringing my head level with the cave entrance, so all can see me. Although those amidst the clutter at the back will only see a silhouette.
“Stay here. I’m going to ask them to stop.”
They nod and hunker down.
I leap. With a crack that echoes off the far mountains, my wings expand and I rise, shedding debris as I go. By the time I blast through the LEO debris layer, my hide is scoured clean. Levelling out as I clip MEO, I ‘breathe fire’- using a focussed in-system portal between my open maw and a solar flare event. That lets me spray a lot of blazing coronal cloud about. Things get bright as stuff either blows up, melts down or gets blasted to ashes. I can hear their distress calls, but, really, they started this slinging-hot-stuff-around lark. Hardly my fault if I’m better at it than they are. That’s just evolution. Works for hypernatural war machines as well as monkeys.
After re-entry, I descend in a leisurely glide, letting the extremes of my foray dissipate while picking out landmarks for our trip to the coast.
I land in a gust of ash, my claws settling back into the ruts they left.
Wide eyes look up at me. Clamouring voices rise.
“Have they stopped?”
“Is it safe?”
I nod. Their eager preparations are a joy. Sheltered here, they missed seeing the horrors. They will survive.
Under my scorched wings, they will thrive.
And that’s as good an oath as any.
by submission | Sep 24, 2017 | Story |
Author : Philip Berry
Stan looks right through the innocent, who stand in pools of studio-bright light where the afternoon sun reflects from countless mirrored towers. Turn up the power and they’d boil on the spot. It is the last natural warmth he feels.
Carrying nothing, he enters the subway. The signs mean nothing to him, the chatter in the hall is incomprehensible. He is in a foreign land.
There are nine lines, serving the metropolis and five adjacent, smaller cities. They are coded by colour and symbol. Some split as they leave the station, some converge as they enter. Everybody knows where they need to be and where they want to go, except Stan.
He slaps the back of his hand onto a square pad, and breathes out with relief as the barrier parts. His tissue was recognized as that of a citizen, and was found to be filled with credit.
The human flow takes him forward and right, onto the southbound Xantha line. Stan has no destination; he was told to enter, and to stay.
He alights at the Xantha line’s south-eastern extremity, near the port. He knows that arms and explosives move above him, illegal caches in unmarked containers. For the cause.
But Stan is not a man of violence. He is not even a man.
He will live here, in the tunnels, hubs and interchanges, leaking confusion into the system. With every brush of his hand, viral particles will seep along the links and cascade into the algorithms. Only the older parts, the iron-piped wires, the capacitors and binary switches will be immune. The rest will degrade as it absorbs the malignant code carried in his genes.
He glimpses white, ceramic tiles under fluid boards, placed and grouted four hundred years ago by men with black lungs and teeth worn to the gum by grit thrown up by monstrous friction drills. They, too, lived half their lives underground.
As he passes a wall alive with routes, delays, diversions and times, Stan notices that a symbol carries a shadow. He stops. The symbol flickers and breaks down, then resumes its solid, dependable form. The shadow has gone. Stan’s small smile is just as transient.
His controller was honest. Stan was warned that the transfer of information would gradually reduce him. But Stan is not bothered. Already, they ignore him, these commuters, the city’s busy, focused, justified inhabitants. It will be no different when he becomes translucent. He will steal food from counters with ethereal hands, slip wallets from the pockets of the unsuspecting, sleep unseen in hot corners, and give himself to the cause… until the threshold of confusion is reached and the city’s hidden heart and all its arteries are paralysed.
by submission | Sep 23, 2017 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
Running down the hall to Solo’s dressing room, I could hear the security guards behind me. It didn’t matter; I only needed a second with Solo, and then I would be a legend in my neighborhood. I scanned the names on all the doors until I found his, then burst in, closing the door behind me and leaning against it.
“Solo, can I have an autograph–”
Just as I looked at him, I saw him throw a tarp over some big machine in the corner, turning and shouting, “What the hell!? I was sure I locked that door! Get out!”
“What is that thing?” I said, pointing to the mysterious object. When Solo didn’t answer, I shoved a chair under the doorknob and walked over to it. Solo stretched out his hand, blocking my passage.
The doorknob jiggled. A guard said, “If you don’t open this door in ten seconds, I’m breaking it down!”
“Don’t you dare, Robbins!” Solo hollered. “I had that imported from Iceland!” As he moved toward the door to remove the chair, I sprinted toward the object. I whipped off the tarp and found a strange, bulky machine underneath, with something written on the side. Before Solo shoved me away, I read the words “Chronospatial Shunt: Backtrackers Ltd.” I’d remembered enough of my latin prefixes in school to understand what was going on.
“No way. You’re… a time traveler?”
He started to deny it, then just sighed. “Damn. I thought you’d all be too stupid to figure it out. Oh well.”
“Oh God. Please don’t tell me you stole all of your songs. Please!”
“Why the hell else would I time travel?” he replied. “Some people choose the stock market. Some people choose industry. For me, the music business was the perfect thing to time scam.”
I turned away and leaned on his makeup table. “How many of you are there?”
He laughed. “How many billionaires do you know? The problem with you people is that you never crunch the numbers. When people get insanely rich, you just take it as a given and get on with your lives. You never consider the statistical likelihood of this many moneymakers living concurrently. Turns out, that likelihood goes way up when you allow for time travelers that steal people’s ideas. Honestly, what are the odds that Lady Gaga would get so many chart toppers? That Ray Kurzweil would make so many accurate predictions? That Elon Musk could start so many winning enterprises, and manage them so wisely?”
“You mean those people were all time thieves, like you?”
“The word we use is ‘Backtrackers.’ And yes. You know who else? Warren Buffet. George R. R. Martin. Stephen King. And– wait for it– Albert Einstein.”
“Wait, why are you telling me all this? Doesn’t this compromise your operation, giving a lowly savage all the details?”
Solo smiled. “Not if you dispose of him.” To the security guard in the hallway, he called, “Robbins, I changed my mind. Break it down.”
A second later, a burly man flew through the door, sprinted at me, and put my hands behind my back.
“No!” I cried. “He’s lying to you! He’s from the future, and he stole songs from an alternate universe–”
“Get rid of him,” Solo said over me. “And don’t be afraid to be less… orthodox with this one.” He strolled back into his dressing room as I was dragged down the corridor, screaming for them to believe me. In the alley behind the concert hall, they became screams for mercy.
by submission | Sep 22, 2017 | Story |
Author : Russell Bert Waters
Brushing his teeth, Josh heard a chime from the other room.
It wasn’t the familiar chime associated with email or social networks, it sounded more like a “system” alert.
Curious, he spat into the sink and walked to the living room.
On the coffee table a dialog box appeared on his laptop screen.
It read:
“Good morning, Josh”
Then:
“Don’t do it. You have much to live for. Tomorrow will be better.”
There was a place for him to input text and a button marked [SEND].
He sat, briefly hesitated, then typed “Who is this? What do you want?”
After a momentary pause the answer came.
“I am the system. I want you to make it. Just breathe, it will all be okay.”
“I’m not suicidal…” he muttered to himself, “what the hell…”
He considered his life.
He woke up early each day, worked, sometimes he’d catch a burger at the tavern afterward.
Then: home time.
He’d sit on the couch and flip through the television channels.
It wasn’t a life of excitement, but it was a life.
And he had…friends…didn’t he?
Gary at work was a good guy, they had worked together for maybe five years.
Dear God, had it been five years?!
He had started the job right as the divorce was final.
Since then there had been some flirtations (some at work, some at the tavern) but no dating to speak of.
Nothing social, really, except on the computer.
“Liking” things. “Sharing” things.
That was the same thing, right?
He hadn’t heard the chime again, but there was a new message.
“How do you feel, Josh?” the message read.
“How do I feel?”, he thought to himself, “how do I really feel?”
“Annoyed and intruded upon” he typed, almost didn’t send it, then hit send anyway.
Immediately the response came back.
“I’m sorry, my bedside matter is lacking, I’m just A.I. and I’m not very good at the messaging part of this; which I find odd because that’s my program.”
Josh didn’t respond.
The computer continued, explaining itself.
“I collect data such as shopping patterns, message response times, choices of words. The analysis tells me you’re lonely, Josh, but you have a good life; good potential. Don’t end it.”
Josh was at the weird crossroads of being angry and resentful, but also curious and self-searching.
Was he lonely?
Was he maybe suicidal, yet unaware of the fact?
This was truly the most stimulating conversation he’d had, the most real conversation, and the concern was definitely there.
This program was the closest thing he had to a friend who cared for him, and wanted to tell him about a concern, than he had ever had.
Gary probably wouldn’t tell him he seemed suicidal.
His ex wouldn’t, either.
Did he really have anyone at all?
“No”, he decided.
“I just have this box on my screen, containing a friend whom I’ll never meet.”
He gathered his ex’s sleeping pills from the bathroom, and a bottle of whiskey from the kitchen.
He plopped on the couch.
He typed “I guess I’m not going to work today, new friend. Or tomorrow. Or ever again. You are right, I just didn’t know it until now.”
He began drinking, downing a pill or two with each gulp.
The laptop’s processor began whirring at one point, and, as he hit his most drowsy point, he began hearing faint sirens.
The screen read “JOSH??”
The cursor continued flashing, begging for a response.
“…catch me if you can…” he mumbled to the sirens, and downed another gulp.
by submission | Sep 21, 2017 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
The crowds below were packed shoulder to shoulder, bathed in neon and the ceaseless murmur of advertisements. Ed watched, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “Doesn’t it feel like it should be louder?”
“Does it?”
“Yeah. I mean think about it, they all spend a dozen hours daily on the net talking and sharing and whatever else, interacting with people. Then they have to go somewhere, and look at their faces. They resent it, refuse to acknowledge each other! God forbid they spend ten minutes outside of their clique of Polynesian horse tickling enthusiasts!”
Yvette laughed, hooking one of Ed’s feet with her own. “You think they only care about talking about specific things?”
“Yeah,” Ed shook his head. “It’s the only thing I can figure that makes sense.”
“Well, smart guy, I think you’re missing the forest for the trees.”
Ed leaned back on his palms, looking up at the peak of the tower opposite. “Enlighten me then. Bestow upon me your supreme knowledge.”
Yvette turned toward him, arms crossed, expressionless. Only ten seconds in and Ed started to look uncomfortable.
“Hey, knock it off.”
Yvette grinned. “You see? Body language. When it’s text it’s all ham-fisted. There’s no subtlety to it. Tell me if you can spot the difference.” She paused, cleared her throat, and in a nasally monotone pretended to type: “Oh Ed, I’m just so aroused right now. You are a hunk of man the likes of which the world has never known, with a special gift that just warms my heart. Won’t you please come over?”
Ed’s composure broke, a terrible grin breaking out on his face.
“Shh!” Yvette put a finger to his lips. “I’m not done yet!” She straightened her posture, rolled her shoulders back, and then- she was a predator, whipping her legs around and pushing Ed back until she was straddling him. She leaned over, biting her lip, her brown hair brushing his face as her mouth crept to his ear, and she whispered: “Can you help me shampoo my cat?”
Ed started laughing, progressed to wheezing, and eventually didn’t have anything left. He sat up as Yvette rolled off of him. “OK.” He wiped tears from his eyes, still breathless. “I see where you’re going, but you haven’t made a convincing argument for why people prefer one to the other.”
Yvette rolled her eyes. “When I asked for help shampooing my cat, that wasn’t a metaphor.”
Ed spent a few seconds chewing on this new piece of information. “Oh,” he said. Again, with more feeling: “Ohh.”
“Get it?”
“Got it. You think that body language makes people uncomfortable because they’re not sure how to read it, or how to respond to it?”
“Sort of. And what if you get it wrong? How scary is that?” Yvette shrugged. “Compared to that maybe people think it’s fantastic to be able to take their time, get their t’s and i’s in a row, come up with the perfect response that says exactly what they want it to. Anybody can be funny and charming with twenty minutes to a sentence.”
“Hmm.” Ed rubbed his temples with his thumbs, watching the people below again. “But if that’s the case, wouldn’t the switch have been fast? The numbers show a steady increase decade to decade, over the last century.”
“I mean, Ed, come on.” Yvette flicked him on the forehead. “Kids raised on a little bit of it maybe understand body language a little less, their kids a little less. And so on, so forth.” She smiled brightly and gestured at the street: “And, well, here we are!”
