by Julian Miles | Feb 13, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Crystallized atmosphere streams in slow motion from shattered windows and blown-out doors. It catches the light and paints rainbow banners against the starry night beyond the curved expanses of cracked supraglass. This was Balyen Station, first of the freespace habitats, home to a million souls.
A frozen pigeon spirals by, beak wide open, eyes reduced to pits of ruin. It conjures images in my mind that make me dry heave into my helmet.
Zeiral whispers over my commlink: “Is it as bad as I think?”
“Probably worse. Haven’t had the guts to go see.”
“Enough circumstantial proof about?”
“There are birds and pets.”
“Oh, no.”
“I saw a goldfish. In a globe of ice, bowl shattered. This went bad unbelievably fast. The crash freeze happened first, which caused the environments to crack. It also rendered the seals on their emergency facilities useless.”
I hear Zeiral updating the other groups, her voice tremulous: “The disaster written off as a ‘negligible chance’ has happened.”
She’s pre-empting the conclusion of the inquiry-to-come but is right.
Eternal dark can ruin a mind and lack of atmosphere will kill a body. But, to let people live in space for any span of time, the leeching cold has to be defeated. Open-form habitats like Balyen have huge temperature inverter rigs, parasitically utilising the cold to massively enhance their heating ability.
There is a minuscule chance that a micro-meteor, if it impacts at a precise angle and speed, could cause sufficient specific damage that it would force the surviving inverters into cascade failure. If that does happen, there is a fraction of a single percent chance the failure will manifest as a catastrophic cryonic event. Too bad Murphy’s Law wasn’t factored into the risk assessment.
“Are we invoking rescue or recovery?”
Zeiral’s query breaks my distraction.
“Give me a few minutes.”
Her reply is lost as I crest a rise and realise this used to be a park. Right in front of me, two bodies lie in a contorted embrace. They’re both in T-shirts and shorts. Barefoot. A picnic blanket is spread under them, the unopened hamper to one side.
Her arm is raised, probably a result of muscle-freezing spasms. A beautiful red rose rests in the loose grasp of a pale hand. The petals are edged in black, topped with white crystals highlighting the outline of each.
It’s like she’s offering it to me. I fix my gaze on the rose as tears start to float in front of my face. I’m not going to look into her possibly ruptured eyes: I daren’t – I’d never leave Earth again. Let the determination be made by something immune to contemplating the horror of whether she froze to death or was rendered immobile and then decompressed.
My last hope dies. Balyen Station: icy grave for a million people.
I sob out orders as I retreat: “Activate automated recovery and forensic procedures, Zeiral. Nobody else gets to carry this nightmare as a memory.”
by xdhz8 | Feb 12, 2017 | Story |
Author : David Henson
“Tommy and Sally, fly down to your seats and turn off your levitation belts, OK?” Miss DeRozan says gently. The two children ignore their teacher at first, then glide down to their places.
“Let’s get started,” the teacher says. “We’re going to have a wonderful time learning a lot of wonderful things this year.” — “Sounds wonderful” — someone giggles from the back of the room. Miss DeRozan smiles. “We’re fortunate to have an IACD conference with Captain Sandier. But first TA will deliver a quantum mechanics refresher. TA.”
The featureless android walks to the front of the class, light streaming from its synthetic skin to form a perfect image of Albert Einstein.
“Spooky action at a distance,” TA Einstein says in German.
“Miss DeRozan, I think his hair is spooky,” Sally says, also in German.
“Please, Sally, be nice. And by the way, you should have your UT checked. You just said TA Einstein has a scary rabbit. TA.”
“Spooky action at a distance,” TA Einstein repeats then reviews the early study of quantum mechanics. Every few minutes, lights swirl as TA’s appearance progresses through a series of prominent physicists. All the while children glide in and out of their seats despite Miss DeRozan’s pleas. The glowing android finally concludes as renowned artificial sentient Ciress Prime Xavier, who describes how she used the phenomenon of quantum entanglement to develop ICAD, instantaneous communication at any distance.
“Thank you, TA,” Miss DeRozan says. The teaching assistant assumes its blank appearance then turns toward the noisy students and flashes brightly. As it does, Tommy and Sally fly up near the ceiling and chase each other around the room.
“Children!” Miss DeRozan says sternly, then clears her throat. “Please,” she says sweetly. After another lap around the room, Tommy and Sally return to their desks.
“TA,” Miss DeRozan says, “Connect with Captain Sandier.” TA goes to the communications port, inserts its index finger, and glows the appearance of the Captain light years away.
“Good morning, class,” TA Captain says with a friendly salute. “Who can tell me the Expansion’s mission?”
“You’re on the far side of Alpha Centauri B looking for planets to terraform,” Jimmy shouts. “I have a question.”
“Uh…sure.”
“Have you ever been in a laser duel?” he says, rising into the air and pretending to shoot at Tommy, who flies out of his seat and fires back.
“Boys, please,” Miss DeRozan says.
“Captain Sandier, do any of those planets have giant frogs?” Sally says, rising and hopping through the air.
“Class, class,” Miss DeRozan says, but soon most of the children are hopping, back-flipping and somersaulting above their desks.
“Maybe we’ll do this another time,” Captain Sandier says. “Signing off.” TA immediately goes blank.
“Students,” Miss DeRozan says weakly, then walks to her desk and slumps heavily into her chair, the children roiling above her.
Suddenly TA begins to glow more brightly than ever. The swirl of light broadens and nearly reaches the ceiling till finally a Rhondarian Dragon is towering in the middle of the room. The beast roars and snaps it’s huge jaws, just missing Tommy. The boy freezes then immediately drifts down to his desk. TA dragon bares long razor-sharp teeth and eyes the other children, who quickly return to their places as well.
“Uh, thank you, TA,” Miss DeRozan says as her assistant reverts to its neutral form. “Now, students, please activate Chapter 1 in — Yes, Tommy,” she says noticing the boy waving his hand frantically.
“Miss DeRozan,” Tommy says. “May I please be excused to go to the bathroom?”
by submission | Feb 11, 2017 | Story |
Author : Dylan Otto Krider
I don’t believe in love, but spent my entire professional life studying it, the last ten years in your lab. Our compatriots believed in it. They believed it made us human, separated us from the animals. They think love was the basis of morality: sacrificing yourself for others. You were one of these, yet, you are one of the most selfish people I know.
I am not so naïve. The kinships could be self-serving: the group with the genes for sacrifice had an advantage over the purely selfish.
Outwardly teaching self-sacrifice had the purpose of raising your standing in the community and encouraging others to follow your example. Not adhering to your example gives you an advantage over your upstanding colleagues.
I do believe in hypocrisy.
You feigned interest in my career, promised to leave your wife, as you promised others in your office. When I complained, the department didn’t listen because you are upstanding.
But love? Not anymore.
I believe in war. That was something I can quantify, study, mark down in a notebook, but not love.
We were the only animals who engaged in war, except for ants. Ants have no capacity for love. What they have is self-sacrifice so they can engage in battle, just as we have done, banding together, putting those careers you promised us on the line when we went to the press. What a scandal, a pillar of the community exposed.
That is love, in a way. A love I can believe in.
by submission | Feb 10, 2017 | Story |
Author : Joachim Heijndermans
“Hello? Is anyone there? I can’t see. Is anyone out there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Who are you? Where am I?”
“I’m Kon. Can you tell me who you are?”
“My name’s Harry. Harry Fitzpatrick. I’m an accountant for a firm on 8th street. I…I don’t know how I got here.”
“That’s all right, Harry. You’re safe here. Do you remember anything from before you came here?”
“I remember some things. There was a fire in the sky and these waves of color. Something about a gamma blast?”
“That’s good Harry. I’m glad you remember.”
“What happened? Why am I here? I’m scared.”
“Don’t be scared, Harry. There’s nothing to fear. But perhaps you could help me?”
“With what?”
“I’m working on this sudoku puzzle, and I must say, this one is giving me some trouble. Care to give me a hand?”
“I can’t see it, or you.”
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem. I’ve got three boxes completed, but I’m stuck with the rest.”
“Did you finish any rows?”
“What do you mean?”
“You can only have one of each number in the rows that stretch across as well, not just the boxes. Are you close to completing a row?”
“I am. There are two spots, which have to be either a two or an eight.”
“Ok, there you go. Now, is there already a two or an eight in the boxes where missing numbers are in?”
“Yes, one is in a box with an eight.”
“Then that has to be a two.”
“Thank you, Harry. I knew you could help me with this.”
“How did you know? That I like sudoku puzzles?”
“I didn’t. I just hoped. Shall we continue?”
#
“And there it is. Completed, without any mistakes.”
“That’s great Kon. Really great.”
“I hope you enjoyed helping me, Harry. It must be frightfully boring in there.”
“In where? Where am I, even?”
“Do you remember anything? From before?”
“Yes. No. I mean, little things. I remember my life. My parents. My brother and sister. Their kids. That flash of red and green, causing everything to shake. And then I was here. That’s all I remember.”
“That’s good. Keep remembering, Harry. Remember all that you are.”
“It’s getting colder. What’s happening?”
“It’s normal, Harry. Just relax.”
“Hey, Kon? How did you know I liked sudoku’s?”
“I didn’t.”
#
But the fact was, Kon knew very well how Harry Fitzpatrick loved his sudoku’s. In fact, this had been the two-hundredth-and-twelfth time that they solved a puzzle together. Kon made sure that every time it was Harry’s turn for stimulation, he’d have a sudoku at the ready.
Kon held the black marble, the small soul-matrix crystal that contained Harry Fitzpatrick’s consciousness, between his long, slender fingers. He looked at its dimming glow, as the system returned to sleep mode. In due time, after the crystal recharged itself, Kon would be back with another puzzle.
He placed the crystal that was Harry Fitzpatrick back on the shelf, next to the millions upon millions of other black marbles, each of them holding a single person that Kon managed to save before their world collapsed. It was the best he could do for them, keeping their collected selves safe, trapped in marbles of ebony.
Kon moved on, picking up Lilly Chambers. She liked to sing, and Kon just so happened to have brought his ukulele.
by submission | Feb 9, 2017 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
“Pangaea,” we nicknamed the planet, after its one-island-continent which resembles Earth’s Paleozoic-Mesozoic supercontinent of the same name. I was showing Krispie, named after a… well, you’ll see, the relative motions of our two planets around their stars on a holographic projection. He, or perhaps I should say “it,” since we have not detected any gender differentiation, was the first Centipod we had encountered after landing, and it remained, sixteen Earth months later, the only one with whom we have been able to communicate.
We had stopped cold as a creature, over 120 centimeters tall from the top of its shell to the soles of its feet, sidled out of the rainforest on 112 legs, looking like a cross between a centipede and a snail. Although its multifaceted eyestalk remained fixed on us, its 56 pairs of webbed feet propelled it slightly to its left, requiring continual course corrections to keep it moving toward our landing party, lest it otherwise would have circled back into the forest. All Centipods drift to the left as they walk, because their internal organs are clustered within the left portion of their mantle cavity, an asymmetrical mass that tips their balance… But I digress.
I had become close to Krispie as it mastered our language and trained our translator program to recognize Centipod snaps, crackles, and pops and vocalize them as English. We met every day, without fail, since that first one.
“Earth races around your Sun,” it said.
“It does, indeed. At 110,000 kilometers per hour, we complete an orbit in just 365 Earth days, compared to Pangaea’s 77,000 kph and 1,022 Earth days. We live in the ‘fast lane.'”
I thought Krispie had missed my point, because it replied, “NO. It is we who live in the fast lane.” After a long pause, “You once said you have lived 36 orbits?”
“Yes,” confused, “I’m 36. Why…”
Abruptly, it folded its four grasping appendages to its chest, swiveled its eyestalk leftward, and coiled around to march towards the opening of the tent.
“Did I say something to offend you?” I shouted, the translator emitting snaps, crackles, and pops.
“I cannot meet with you again, old friend,” it replied, exiting in the direction of the forest.
“You’re not going to meet with me anymore?” I gasped, increasing my oxygen flow as I strove to keep up. Centipods move quickly when motivated, as Krispie apparently was.
“Do you have the sickness?”
Every few steps I got stuck. My mud-walking shoes, fabricated by a shipmate for me to accompany Krispie around its village and environs, were back in the tent.
“Yes. The sickness.”
Centipods had been disappearing of late. We had catalogued villagers by shell markings and geotagged them, following them visually when possible and otherwise via a GPS satellite we’d placed in stationary orbit. Many were missing from the village and their geotags had gone silent. Centipods are the dominant species on Pangaea, so predators were not thinning their ranks. It had to be some sort of sickness.
“Please, let our medic examine you. Perhaps there is something we can do.” I knew our exobiologist couldn’t place Centipods within an Earth-like classification, much less our medic treat their alien sickness, but I feared I would never see Krispie again.
Faintly, “My year… Nothing to be done…” Then it was out of translator range.
They were all gone within the next week, not just in that village, but everywhere in Pangaea.
After five Earth months of intense heat and drought, the rains returned and little Centipods began emerging from the mud. They grew rapidly, because, as Krispie had said, they lived in the fast lane.
by submission | Feb 8, 2017 | Story |
Author : Alicia Cerra Waters
Once a month, someone had to delete the files of the undesirables. It was an easy job; go into the server room, which was illuminated by the light of countless green-glowing network ports, punch in a command, and watch as a neon status bar tracked the progress of the photos, video confessions, the birth certificates and disposal certificates, all being scrubbed out of existence. Usually, the senior data analyst did it, but pale, introverted Stephanie of the bad allergies and dishwater hair hadn’t been in the office for days. At least, Rachel hadn’t seen her. Another bout of the flu was biting through the city, ravaging the young, the old, and the chronically unhealthy.
Rachel didn’t know if Stephanie had the flu, but that’s what the department manager had implied when Rachel bumped into him in the lounge. She was watching her coffee mug oscillate under the yellow light of the microwave, full of the thick remains of that day’s burnt roast. She had spent the afternoon rocking back and forth in her office chair. If she leaned back far enough, she could see the green light of the server room reaching towards her from the other end of the hall like floating strands of a spider web.
The department manager came in, grinning jovially at her. It was never a good sign when he smiled. “I thought I’d find you here,” he said. “I sent you an email. Urgent business. I was hoping you could assist me with it.” He reached for a chipped Yellowstone National Park mug and filled it with water.
“That’s Stephanie’s,” Rachel said. She remembered when Stephanie came back from that vacation; the only time Stephanie had ever seemed happy about anything was when she was explaining the photograph of the Emerald Pool. He turned towards her, and suddenly she wondered why she’d spoken at all.
He widened his grin. “Stephanie won’t mind.”
“Is it the flu? My grandmother’s sick with it.”
He hummed. “Yes, poor thing.”
The microwave beeped, and it took a concentrated effort not to jump from surprise. He grinned, watching her. “Be sure to read your email.” He took a long drink from his mug and paused in the doorway, and she felt his eyes rest on her for another long second before he left.
Rachel’s intestines released the knot that had twisted up while he talked. She took a breath, then carried the mug back to her cube and angled her chair away from the hall. In her desk drawer, under a pile of papers, was a smokeless, scentless marijuacodin e-cig. Technically they were illegal, but everyone in the data department smoked them. Glancing around, she inhaled deeply from it once, then twice, and allowed herself to rotate her chair back towards her computer, sitting up very straight, as if she were pausing to think about the contents of a spreadsheet when really she was floating through a dim, blissful haze.
Eventually the click of keyboards all around her calmed her senses, and she opened her email. A well-rehearsed script picked up inside her mind; “You’re safe. You follow the rules. Almost all of the rules. You’re a citizen In Good Standing. You’re safe.”
She scanned the email he had sent. “Please delete the files of the undesirables.” That was all he’d written. Not even a signature.
She turned her head just right, and a prism of bright green light stretched its tendrils towards her. She thought about Stephanie in the vacation photos, smiling for a change, standing in front of that dreamlike blur of blue and green and sepia.
