by submission | Jun 21, 2017 | Story |
Author : Jules Jensen
I stopped and sighed, and then crossed my arms. This wasn’t a normal game animation, but there was no one out this far, so I didn’t have to pretend. A field of short grass met up with a lake. It was peaceful.
And it was hot. I hated the heat, but so did other players. The game helmet would stimulate their brains and tell them this area was hot, and most people didn’t want to be uncomfortable.
Maybe if I stuck around I’d die from heat. I thought I remembered something about extreme weather exposure. But that might just be their way to tell people not to stand in the fire.
I sat on the bank of the river and watched my shadow on the surface. I smirked. That was my name: Shadow-Over-Water. What was I thinking when I made that name? I don’t remember. I do remember being a twenty-something man that was dissatisfied with the doldrums of daily life, so when the game came out I jumped right in.
And it was great. Until I died. I don’t know how, but I felt it. I was still wearing the game helmet when it happened, which somehow made me stay alive in the game. My body is somewhere out there in the real world, being eaten by worms.
Ever since then, I never died in-game. That made me worth a lot of points.
The sky let out a loud ding.
The patch was complete. Players would now have their points value floating above their heads.
I was terrified that dying in-game would mean my mind would be just as dead as my worm-eaten body. As much as I came to hate my existence in a world with no sleep, food, or reality, it was all I had.
A sensation on the back of my neck alerted me that someone was nearby.
Having no defensive bonuses and not being battle-ready meant that I died in a single hit. I didn’t even get to see the other player.
Pain raced through my body. Blinding white light surrounded me.
And then I was flat on my back. The air was suddenly cooler. I stared up at large blue-barked trees.
“New re-spawn location looks good, right?” A voice beside me made me startle. There was a girl right there, a warrior.
Her eyes focused mechanically on the air above my head, where my information would theoretically be displayed. I couldn’t see that kind of stuff, so I had no idea what it showed her. “At least you went and got it over with.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your kill value resets every time you die. So if you don’t want to fight people, just don’t kill anyone, because a zero is worth nothing. That’s what I did.”
I wasn’t sure if I was happy that I wasn’t dead, or if I was disappointed that I was alive again. It occurred to me that I’d be doomed to wander the game forever.
But that also meant that since I didn’t need to fear death, I could actually do things. There were fun quests out there, apparently. I might even make friends.
The warrior got up. I scrambled to my feet.
“Can you help me get better gear?” I asked and forced myself to stand in the default pose, pretending that there was nothing special about me.
She didn’t reply for a moment. Then her character smiled again.
“Sure.”
I knew suddenly that I didn’t have to be alone anymore, and that made it feel like this life was worth living.
by submission | Jun 20, 2017 | Story |
Author : Charles Paul Wallace
Ashura contorted her body, thrust her arm through the jagged rip in the ship’s inner hull and aimed the flash-driver at the stuck bolt.
Which, as ever, refused to turn.
She slumped back down to the shrapnel-strewn floor and considered her possibilities.
One: give up; wait for the remaining air to seep into space; die.
Two: Leave the escape pod compartment without, somehow, suffocating in the vacuum of the rest of the ship, and locate any surviving tools that might help solve her predicament.
Three: keep trying.
One was not an option. The Pan-African Space Agency was on shaky enough footing already without adding cowardice to the catalogue of errors. If corners hadn’t been cut on the ship’s construction, if Commander Musonda hadn’t panicked when the alarm flashed into life…She was determined the last remaining survivor of the mission would show no weakness.
Option two seemed an impossibility. The asteroid-net had scythed through the outer hull, obliterating the rest of the crew in one fell swoop. Musonda’s death had followed swiftly once he made the mistake of severing the command capsule from the power module. The resultant blast of nuclear material had billowed through the vessel’s interior in seconds. Ashura had heard it all from where she had taken shelter by the escape pods. She had only survived the blowback by pure luck. Now, her one chance of survival lay with…
Option three: keep on trying and hope for the best.
Small hope though it was.
She stretched her arm through the tear in the bulkhead once more. Centimetres away, the bolt sat beside the pod’s release mechanism, unconcerned and indifferent to her attempts to turn it. She switched on the screwdriver for the briefest second. How absurd, that her survival should rest on the waning charge of this tool. How narrow the divide between success and failure. She grimaced; the same could be said for the entire mission.
The bolt, naturally, didn’t move.
She withdrew her arm and tried to think. The dwindling oxygen supply was making such an exercise near-impossible; she tried pinching herself, slapping herself, anything to clear her thoughts. The fuzz inside her head ballooned, a clouding, impenetrable miasma…
A memory came to her: her mother, on her hands and knees in their barn. The farm where Ashura had spent her childhood seemed to manifest itself around her, out here in the void. Her mother, arm extended inside the only cow they could afford, was desperately trying to pull its calf out before the beast expired from the effort. Sweat drenched her forehead. Ashura could do nothing other than shout words of encouragement.
“Mother!” she screamed. “Pull! Pull!”
Her mother gave one last almighty wrench. With a sound of slurping mud the calf tumbled out onto the straw. The cow gave out a low that shook the air, turned its giant head and began to lick its child clean.
Suddenly Ashura was back on the ship. A sharp pain in her arm, and the stench of the farm became the stench of stale air. She found she had thrust her hand back through the hole without even realising it. The driver glowed. With a final, infinite effort she waved it above the bolt and jammed it forward.
It slipped from her grasp and tumbled to the floor with a clank.
Weeping, she lay her head on the cold metal of the hull.
And it was seconds before she heard the hiss of the turning bolt; and then the womb-like interior of the escape pod lay before her, ripe with the promise of rebirth in the stars.
by Julian Miles | Jun 19, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The rolling glens of Morglanwe sweep gracefully down, their bases hidden by the long grasses that gird them. From this side of the gently waving grass sweeps a scattering of low dunes that back the beach on which we stand. In the sunset, I can see the piled bodies that deface a scene so glorious in natural splendour it would otherwise be worthy of a classic painting.
My guide, Glimhre, is unmoved by my mutterings of offence.
“Wait, Envoy. Wait.”
Is all he says. It is his answer to my every question. Where are the burial details, the mourners, the funerary rites?
The only reply?
“Wait.”
High above, the clouds turn metallic purple in the last rays of the sun. I have never seen a shade so rich. The deep blue of the local equivalent of gulls perfectly complements the colour their wheeling flight sets them against. How can such beauty be allowed with the aftermath of bloody conflict strewn about below? It’s an offense to everything proper. Such ugliness should, if not erased, at least be solemnly removed piecemeal by grieving relatives and furtive scavengers. For it to lie ignored is a terrible thing to me.
A mist rises, mercifully shrouding the dead. I look about to see what beauty is brought by the ephemeral, faintly luminescent roils. There is no mist behind us. There is no mist amidst the dunes or in the vales of the glens. I look back. The mist is moving against the breeze. Moving. Like an animal!
I turn to Glimhre.
“What is that?”
He smiles a little smile: “That which was awaited.”
“I don’t understand.”
Glimhre rests a scaled hand on my shoulder: “You were insulted by our barbarous lack of care for our fallen. You were offended by our lack of funereal ritual. What you see is all of that. Look to the dunes.”
There are lights on the dunes. Each held by one or more beings gathered there. I hadn’t seen their arrival, so taken was I with the more-than-mist. The little groups – families? – stand together in silence. Everything about us has fallen quiet.
Answers. I must have answers. I point at the luminescent impossibility: “What is that?”
“It is a Sha’haan.”
“I repeat. What it that?”
“It is a hunger.”
“Again. What is that?”
“It is that which cleans the land of death. Where it touches, all organic death is lifted from the ground. Every iota is taken into its insatiable hunger.”
With incredulous eyes, I watch as the piles on the shore get smaller.
“Isn’t it dangerous?”
The inexorable diminishing process is hypnotic.
It is a while before Glimhre replies: “We could walk through it unharmed, except that our skin would be utterly cleansed and our clothes in tatters as every bit of deceased matter was consumed.”
A thought breaks my reverent watching.
“What if it started killing?”
“Thankfully, it has not learned that. I do not know if it could. But, thank you for a thought that will keep me awake at nights for a while to come.”
I turn my eyes down in shame.
As the Sha’haan finishes its grisly task and fades away, Glimhre slaps my back.
“You are imaginative and honest, Envoy. Never lose those traits, even when you become our Ambassador.”
Many serrated teeth flash in the dim light as he grins: “No, I have no idea where Sha’haan go when they disappear, and – based on recent example – I will be grateful if you do not share your thoughts on that topic.”
by submission | Jun 18, 2017 | Story |
Author : Liam Hogan
“What do you remember?”
It was what they asked. Teacher, Scientist, Mother. The same testing question, always.
Heads bowed, we stared at our desks. We didn’t understand why, but we knew the question was dangerous.
“I… I remember…” a voice crept out from my left and I screwed my eyes shut.
“Yes, Tommy?” the Teacher coaxed.
The classroom held its breath.
“I remember… there were more of us.”
There was a long silence. “No, Tommy. You are mistaken. That is enough school for today. Your Mothers are waiting.”
We filed out into the corridor, ashamed, silent, eyes fixed on the heels of the boy in front.
There were only eleven Mothers.
Tommy’s wasn’t there.
He was right though; Tommy. There had been more. The empty desks hadn’t always been empty, even if I couldn’t remember the older boys who had sat there.
There would be another empty desk, tomorrow. I promised myself I would remember his name.
And his lesson.
Tommy had remembered something you weren’t supposed to notice. And that had been enough.
Back home, Mother sat me down, lowered herself to my level.
“What do you remember, Alex?” she asked.
Worms writhed in my stomach. In the classroom, you could hide behind the other boys, wait for one of them to fill the void with a safe, recent, memory.
“What do you remember?” Mother insisted.
But when you were asked direct, there was no escape. You had to find an answer. One that kept Mother happy.
Only, I remembered so much more than I should. I remembered before.
I remembered a sister; a smiling, sleeping, crying baby sister.
I remembered a moon, as well as a sun.
I remembered trees, and grass, and birds.
And I remembered my mother. My real mother.
Delicate purple fronds emerged from the tip of Mother’s arm, wiping away the tears as I sobbed. Fleshy pads tilted my chin until I met her glittering eyes. And a hushed voice whispered in my ear:
“What do you remember?”
by submission | Jun 17, 2017 | Story |
Author : Philip Gustavus Hostetler
It wasn’t enough that we could destroy the world with ICBMs. Underground bunkers utilizing solar, wind and tidal power. Seed banks, stem cell grown proteins, aquaponics. It all makes life very liveable in the human, civilized sense.
Still amidst all of this, we still watch the skies.
I think, perhaps, that life is not truly what we desire. No, not in any diverse sense of the word anyway. One of our astronomers noted that comet was headed our way, not any ordinary comet; a virtual maelstrom of ice, terratons of glacial debris from an outlying Bastard Planet (That’s what we call Pluto now…) from another solar system in the milky way.
An astrophysicist was relieved to say that it would miss us and pass closely to the sun. General Flynt asked,
“How close?” he said,
“Too close for comfort, that’s what the astronomer told me, we’ll barely survive, the Ice Maelstrom passing so close will reduce the temperature and radiation of the sun, our solar power will not sustain us, we will depend on wind and tide for maybe 6 years before we need heat.”
The General went to the Applied Atomic Scientist and ordered, “You said you can knock us out of orbit using an ion pulse. Do it at this exact time.” What we didn’t expect is for the General to push the orbit of the solar system by method of Precession. He pushed the sun right into the path of the Maelstrom.
We’ve won. We’ve shown the Pastinians once and for all that the Futurists are right.
by submission | Jun 16, 2017 | Story |
Author : Matthieu C. R. Cartron
It was after several hours, and, several brief outbursts, that Henry came to a most significant conclusion: A frog simply cannot learn calculus.
Henry was a very smart nine-year-old. So smart, in fact, that he was already taking college courses. Henry was a well-rounded student, but of all his unusual abilities, his most remarkable aptitude was in the subject of mathematics. Numbers, as he had once told his mother, just simply made sense to him.
But math, as Henry soon found out, was not a favorite subject of most creatures. Including frogs.
There was a small creek near Henry’s house where they would congregate and cavort at the edge of the water, and, with some difficulty, Henry had managed to capture one with a plastic container.
Henry loved learning, and was always eager to impart his own knowledge onto others. His peers at the elementary school were bored by his interests and annoyed by his attempts to enlighten them. But, would frogs, which people might label as incognizant and stupid, be more willing to learn? Henry had decided to give it a shot.
He had dragged an easel out into the backyard and had placed the container with the frog only a few feet in front of it. With a pen and a stick broken off from a nearby tree, Henry had begun his introduction and instruction of derivatives—using the paper on the easel as a makeshift drawing board. But the frog, lethargic from his failed attempts to jump from the sealed plastic prison, looked the other way. Henry would notice and would reprimand the inattentive frog for his behavior, but it was to no avail. Even manually turning the container did little to spark the interest of the indifferent amphibian.
But Henry had an idea. Perhaps this particular frog would be inspired to learn if there were motivated peers around him. Henry needed role models, and to find them, he headed back to the creek where after an hour, he had managed to collect five more frogs.
When Henry’s mother saw the six containers and the easel in the backyard, she marched out the back door to the enigmatic scene.
“Henry, what is the meaning of all of this?” she exclaimed.
After Henry relayed his thought process to her, she explained to her son that frogs, and just about every other creature, do not have the mental capacity to understand most of what humans can. It made sense to Henry, and it was what his conscience had surreptitiously concluded after the disappointing results of the first frog.
But what Henry said next to his mother caught her off guard.
“If it is impossible for frogs to understand what we can, then is it possible that we might not understand some things that others can?”
“Well, I . . . I suppose Henry.”
Henry’s mother was unsure if this was in fact true, but Henry was right. From the fifth dimension, two undefinable beings, known as Aeruleels, had perceived Henry’s entire day, and were especially amused by what his mother had said.
“What was it she said? Oh yes, ‘what is the meaning of all of this?’”
The two Aeruleels crowed with laughter.
“It comes up again and again, the most important question to the human race,” one of the Aeruleels said.
“Well,” the other Aeruleel said. “We have tried many times to give them the answer, but as we have learned. . .”
The two Aeruleels smiled and then spoke simultaneously.
“Humans simply do not have the mental capacity to understand.”
