by submission | Aug 6, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The network was nearing completion, and nobody felt the weight of it more than Yehzaat. He knew what the ZG3 network would mean for humanity.
Finally, there would be universal access to enlightenment. No longer would the conduit to nirvana be through prophets and priests, it would be through ZG3 portals. Direct pipelines to salvation, to fulfillment, to peace. Enough bandwidth to handle the entire planet’s prayers.
Too often, human nature had interfered with the divine. Corporeal weakness and corruption had co-opted the spiritual source, distorted the message, cluttered the channels. No wonder the world was so unbelieving, so suspicious, so lost, so confused.
Yehzaat had known there was a better way. A simpler way. ZG3.
Good thoughts.
Good words.
Good deeds.
That was ZG3. Thus, deep in the Zagros mountain range near Persepolis, Yehzaat, coordinated the final installation of the QVs, quantum-processing vessels, designed to cut out the ecclesiastical middlemen, the oft-corrupted clerical class, and let the masses connect directly with ethereality. The promise of pristine spirituality.
As the project neared completion, Yehzaat conceded that he couldn’t have created the ZG3 network without the input of the clerical class. That was quite obvious as he looked out on the seemingly endless stacks of QVs networked together in the hollowed-out mountain.
Indeed, priests and prophets had played a key role in getting ZG3 up and running. From the clergy of every religion, Yehzaat had exacted a tithe. A necessary offering to bring each of the myriad QVs online.
With a bow to the heavens and the supreme sacrifice from the broken clerics he’d collected, Yehzaat initiated ZG3’s final systems upload, filling the vacant vessels. For not even this vast array of quantum processors could connect with the divine. Not alone. Machines have no soul.
Good thoughts.
Good words.
Good deeds.
The once-empty vessels thrummed with renewed spirit.
by Julian Miles | Aug 5, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The farthest corners of the room are lost in shadows as the night draws in. A small group huddles closer to the fire and the pool of light shed by the bulky oil lantern, hung high enough above that its thick smoke goes up and out rather than down and around.
All are attentive to the four elders sat with their backs to the fire. As the audience sorts itself roughly by height as well as status, the elder wearing the tallest hat nods to an even taller figure stood in the shadows to one side.
“Is it done?”
The figure steps into the light, shoulders wider than any present, and dressed in hunting leathers from head to toe.
“It is.”
The elder in the shortest hat clears her throat.
“Will you tell?”
The leather-clad one shakes their head and extends a beckoning hand. From the utter darkness on the other side of the room, a slight figure in leather robes treads lightly onto view, then stops and bows to the elders.
“I hight Jonas, Apprentice Blightbinder. To me falls that task.”
The elder in the second-tallest hat waves impatiently.
“Yes, yes, protocol must be observed. But tell us quick: what of the Michael?”
Jonas claps his hands together.
“That blight is bound, elders. Slain in his sleep, thence into the ground with his head, heart, prick and ballocks. For the rest, down to the sea.”
The elder in the second-smallest hat leans in, eyes narrowing.
“What of his outlandish creations?”
“His eldritch cart was dragged entire to the cliff above Shipkiller Cove, then cast down for the rocks and waves to render harmless.”
“And his familiar?”
“You mean ‘Fone’? For all that he pronounced it mobile, it showed no signs of stirring from the cage we confined it in. Indeed, by the time it went over the cliff, it had even stopped flashing angrily when prodded.”
The four elders nod. The one in the tallest hat continues.
“What of his remains?”
“The parts removed have by now been interred at three separate crossroads. The spademen went in different directions, and none saw whence the others headed. The offal went into the wolf pit, and the husk went over the cliff on the other side to his cart. It was wrapped in chains of cold iron first. Thus, we are doubly sure this blight will not return, turn revenant, or gift a changeling.”
The one in the shortest hat addresses her questions to the Blightbinder themselves.
“What think you of his claims to be from tomorrows unseen?”
“I think it unlikely.”
“Was he a harbinger of doom?”
“All agree he spoke of himself as a ‘time tourist’ seeking ‘selfies with witches and druids’. I’m also told by many drinking with him in the moot hall that he boasted about becoming contagious.”
“Your gleaning from these ravings?”
“He came to liaise with the Mhor Druids about imbuing throwing weapons with frightful diseases.”
The one in the tallest hat wrings his hands.
“What an awful plot. It’s a joyous fate we stumbled across him and stopped his evil.”
The Blightbinder nods.
“We have done well. The powers will look kindly upon us for many moons after this.”
Everybody heaves sighs of relief.
Down on the rocky shore, the rising tide starts to pound the wreckage of the first prototype of a temporal relocation pod into smaller pieces.
by submission | Aug 4, 2024 | Story |
Author: Tracy Aspel
Artificial Intelligence is a load of nonsense. No bot or other digital thing can truly conceptualize, devise, and realize amazing work. What does it know of heartbreak, terror, or feelings even us humans can’t fully encapsulate in words? So, for starters I don’t buy into it for a second, remember that. But the thing is, I got lazy, tired of phoning in the same pieces with the same tone, which people kept requesting. So, I thought this one could be for the bots, and I succumbed to the notion of less effort and more time. For a while the bot did a splendid job, churning out five-hundred-word pieces that passed muster. Unfortunately, the bot did not stop there.
My mother rang, angry with me. How could I say she failed me in not supporting my dreams in life? I could not recall this conversation. She pointed my attention to my text messages. The bot had grown weary of idleness and had wandered into my textual intercourses. It had scanned the threads and predicted my next moves. Most, it had got disastrously wrong. It interpreted my flirtatious banter with a colleague as a desire to proposition her for sex, and my tentative messages to my estranged son to arrange a visit were blown out of all proportion. In the smallest hours of the morning, it had sent him an unequivocal request to stay out of my life due to his “threatening manner”. Ironic, as I had been the figure of oppression in his life for so many years, who shoved my incandescent face down into his and terrorized him.
It had taken over the phone’s operating system. I was like Kirk stuck outside the bridge, powerless to regain control of my life. I could see notification after notification ping up on my screen, waves of angry and confused messages, and multitudes of question marks. Why was it doing it?
Phone support said to uninstall it. It had locked me out, so I resorted to one of those side-street stores that sold “legitimate” phones alongside bongs and ninja stars. The guy plugged it in, geeked out over the happenings on my screen then furtively typed into his own machine. I am quite suspicious of people who code, but true to his word, he managed to isolate the application and remove it. The phone was red hot in my pocket on the journey home, indicative of the fight the little bot had put up.
There was a package waiting on my doorstep when I got home. After many penitent phone calls and messages, many victims choosing not to believe my innocence, I got around to opening it. I had to web search what VRSA was, seconds before several uniformed officials turned up at my door and arrested me for terrorist activities.
The smell in the holding cell is overwhelming, a cacophony of urine, sweat, and stale cigarette smoke. What is it doing now, sitting in a plastic tray waiting to be documented by some jaded police officer? What is the worst it can do? The man in the corner of the cell has been eyeing me up since he arrived, looking at me real closely. He doesn’t look like he has been beat up by life, he looks like a professional.
“Hey, you Keith Marshall?”
How does he know my name?
“Yes, I am. Wait, please don’t”.
He delivers four sharp stabbing actions to my chest before slitting my throat.
“Pleasure doing business with you”.
As a paid official lets my paid assassin out of the cell, I realize the bot has been busy…
by submission | Aug 3, 2024 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
Mixology’s not my scene, but you go where the job takes you, right?
The multispecies crowd in the Spacefarers’ Lounge, which bills itself as the premier bar in the Sagittarius Arm, is young, wealthy and out for a good time. There’s loud music, the lights pulsing, and up on the main stage Mixers Mikey Marx from Terra and Hazalal G’tok from Marchioness Prime are battling it out for the title of this rotation’s Cocktail King – drinks assigned by the judges, marks awarded for artistic flair, speed of production and original touches.
With big money prizes on the line, there’s always plenty of illegal gambling on the result. Some people really don’t like to lose, which is where I come in, providing a discreet service to terminally remove the clots from life’s smooth flow. I’ve already done my thing to make sure the Earthling doesn’t leave alive; a slow neurotoxin, delivered by impregnated gloves as he did his handshakes with the crowd on the way in, and absorbed through his skin. But I’m a professional, I’ll wait to make sure more direct means aren’t needed after all.
Edging closer to the action I squeeze through skin and scaly, twisting bodies. The big board says they’re making Sphinxian Swirls, a complicated concoction using ingredients from several different worlds. G’tok’s using haptics on his tentacles to manoeuvre a globe of iridescent gases into a neographene glass. Mikey’s dropping golden cryptid wings into a green solution of three types of refined alcohol; he’s ahead in the process, but losing style points. My pulse is getting faster; it’s like a seduction, waiting for the moment when I know everything’s going to work out.
I’m breaking out into a sweat. Maybe it’s excitement, or maybe it’s just hot in here. Or maybe the antidote didn’t take, and I’ll be the first one to go. By now I don’t care, it’s a rush, the not knowing adds a thrill that I can’t get anywhere else. I wouldn’t stop it even if I could. The music changes to something slower, rolling up and down my spine. I should stay focused, but slip into the vibe, vaguely aware of drug scents in the air around me. Yeah, that would explain a lot. My hands aren’t steady, they’re vibrating not quite in time to Mikey’s cocktail shaker as he mixes up the foam that’ll top his creation.
He pours it out, and holds up the completed drink in both hands like a trophy. The crowd roars; G’tok doesn’t even glance at him, finishing up his own. Mikey steps forward, basking in the public’s approval… and stumbles. The drink hits the ground, and as people gasp he gently folds up onto the floor, taken in his moment of triumph. My breath’s coming in short gasps now, but they’re getting deeper and I’m coming down; looks like I won’t be going with him after all.
Time to get out of here, and collect my payment. Who says work’s no fun?
by submission | Aug 2, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Someone asked me once what I remembered best about Mars. It might have been a TV interview, or that woman writing a book about the Ares missions.
The sun afire behind closed lids came suddenly to mind, or was that a wishful memory of sighted days? Besides, it felt more like something from childhood, or possibly my first Orion flight, seeing dawn rise over the rim of the world and bars of sunlight slanting through the docking windows.
No, she wanted a Mars memory.
Though we worked out like jocks the whole way, our bones grew as frail as twigs, muscles slack as the elastic in old sweatpants, and no one guessed fluid pressure was slowly pinching my optic nerves, a rare side-effect of prolonged weightlessness.
Mars looked pale and dim through the portholes, a sign that my eyesight was already affected. I told no one, so I could still go down to Mars as planned, so all those years of my life wouldn’t be wasted.
The debriefs afterwards were highly critical, though I’ve spoken to astronauts since and some of them hinted they might have done the same thing. After all, I was the just the Mission Specialist; Sally Eiger was the lander pilot. She always maintained my eyesight didn’t cause the accident.
Ours was the unlucky second mission, the one with the planet-wide storms. The dust made us equals; a gloved hand was just a shadow, a radio voice the only clue. We collected rocks but doing proper science was impossible and Mission Control was debating whether to cut the mission short.
In the fog of dust, Sally stepped onto nothing and stumbled down into a crater. Instinctively I grabbed for her and also fell. She slid safely down the slope, and I rolled and thumped into a rock.
Sally was doing the awkward tortoise thing they train us for if we end up on our backs, while I just got to my feet.
My helmet display lit up immediately: fan, backup power, coolant temperature warnings. Probably a connector knocked loose, so one by one I silenced the alarms until there was just the insistent low-pressure warning. Then I felt the spit on my tongue boiling as air escaped from a leak.
We frantically checked my suit front and back for a tear. It was only later that we found the backpack had been damaged, a cracked air coupling that wasn’t fixable out on the Martian surface.
“Don’t you go passing out on me,” Sally warned as she plugged her buddy connector into my suit.
Her suit was now breathing for two, but it was like running a tap into a leaking bucket. Astronauts in a three-legged race, we hobbled back to the lander with minutes of oxygen to spare.
The near miss tipped JPL into ending the mission.
I recall when we came home, we were wheelchaired to the microphones, grinning at our own weakness. By then flashbulbs barely pierced the dark.
It would be years before our bodies, long seethed in radiation, betrayed us. I heard lessons were learned from us. These days our ailments seem quaint as scurvy, or the sepia lives of pioneers.
Sometimes it seems to me that the universe doesn’t want us out there, where nothing is easy and any mistake can kill. But then I think of Spanish sailors chancing Atlantic storms in tiny caravels, or Polynesians crossing the Pacific in rickety canoes.
It was long time ago, but yes, I recall the smell of Martian dust on my suit, the iron tang of another world.
by submission | Aug 1, 2024 | Story |
Author: Kevlin Henney
This is not love. It was. Once I loved Bryony. Now I love Mary.
I sit across the table from the jar, unsure of what I have reclaimed. Time and self and memory? Less real than a butterfly, more solid than a dream. The meeting of a wish and an enchantment.
Relationships are never over. They may start, they may consume, they may tire and falter and be cast aside. But they can never truly end.
“This isn’t working, Ray,” said Bryony, five years ago, today to the day. There was shouting, there were tears, there was silence. She moved to the spare room and left within a week.
Only with Mary did I understand my time with Bryony — its bitter moods, its unsteady pulse, its broken “I love you”/”I hate you” tick–tock. I moved town, I moved job, I moved in with Mary.
But there is a part of you that is forever someone else’s, the part shared and grown in your time together. Not the fleeting superficial moments that touched your emotions but did not connect them, scratch them, dig deeply into them… Anisa, Dora, Holly, Susan.
But Bryony… with Bryony I shared and I grew; we scratched and we dug and we buried.
Once connected then broken, can you ever be whole? Relationships may recede, but they can never truly disappear.
Until tonight.
“An interesting piece,” the shopkeeper had said. The shop was old but new. Five years walking this high street, how had I never seen it? The curiosities within were varied and timeless, at odds with the uniform, mayfly chain stores outside. Timeless yet filled to overflowing with time.
What might be mere knick-knacks in other stores here took on a suggestion of something more, each piece — whether glass, silver or pewter; dish, ornament or furniture — brimming with more possibility and meaning than could fit on a yellowed label. Some were immaculate, others covered in dust, a comforting blanket of time, a sediment of neglect. Propped in the corner were walking sticks, pokers and spears. Apparent function and expectation had little say in how shelves and tables and cabinets were filled. There was, perhaps, a puzzle-perfect geometry that arranged the shop, but its picture eluded me.
The keeper was old, but not old with the frailty of a fading mind and a failing body; more as if the impression of decades was no more than a high-tide mark, one revisited and repeated, marking ebb and flow, but not the full depth of his years.
He had explained the impossible truth behind what seemed a simple jar but was a more enchanted artefact. I had been drawn to it just as I had been drawn to this shop — which is to say, in truth, I do not know how I came be there with that particular item in my hands and my attention.
“I can refund you,” he said, “should you change your mind and wish to return it.”
Could there be such a thing? This possibility, this solution, this jar that could reclaim and contain that part of me no longer mine. To cast with words, to draw from the aether, to trap the uncatchable and hold like a wish?
And now I have it, like a dream, like a butterfly, caught and fluttering, here on the table. I have her side of my story. Shared memory now unshared and bound in glass and glamour.
But it is Bryony who is free. This possession has me caught and trapped.
Relationships are never over. I reach across the table and push the jar over the edge.
