by submission | Dec 26, 2016 | Story |
Author : DL Shirey
I pound shots of espresso until my vision tinges brown as a sepia tint. The tip of my fat finger barely touches the skin of my thumb through the hole in the handle of the tiny cup, small and fragile like half an eggshell, yet it nests another stiff dose of caffeine. I need more. I won’t be ready to work until my teeth are coated with gritty film, that welcome friction between enamel and lips to help me force a smile.
The cup clatters a return to the pygmy saucer, and finally, muscle control yields to caffeine tremors. In wide-eyed meditation I wait until seismic activity in my brainpan achieves the same Richter rate as my shaky hands. Now I’m ready. I must not fall asleep on the job.
There used to be other people to help me, to tie my light-blue gown from behind. They made sure the soap container was filled and small, aseptic brushes available to scrub my fingernails. Now it’s a one-man job with a light-blue jumpsuit that zips up the front. I pull a sanitary hair cap from the dispenser and matching latex gloves from the box adjacent.
I press controls with my elbow and the door to the sterile room puffs inward. A cool, filtered atmosphere mixes momentarily with the warmth around me. The fine mist is not unlike what happens when two weather fronts meet, however, this result is not rain, but a liquid chlorine compound used for final decontamination. One last breath of good, old American air and I pull the mask up over my face.
Behind me the door closes and its seal engages with resolute pressure I feel in my ears. My small but comfortable chair awaits, the clock on the factory floor visible through the viewing window. Three. Two. One. The only tool available to me is pressed; an indicator turns green from red.
Hands drop to my lap. I see parts compound, components build and modules become machinery. Mostly I watch the clock: one hand sweeps, the other two creep for twelve hours.
Ironic, the only job our robot overlords allow is someone to press the on/off button.
by KennyC | Dec 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Kenny A Chaffin
“What is it you would want to know?” the synthesized voice asked. Johnson scanned the cryptic and stonewall faces assembled around him and the computer screen before typing. “Who are you? Where are you from? How do we know this is not some prank, some hacker?”
“You know where your antennas are pointed. You know the region we are from.”
“Is there a God?”
“That is irrelevant.”
“Where did life begin?”
“Everywhere. Surely you know that. Perhaps you are more primitive than we imagined.”
“You are our first contact. Assuming you are real. How can we know?”
“You know.”
“How old is your species? What do you look like?”
“In your planetary orbits we would be approximately four billion orbits old.”
“Do you mean since life evolved or since your species, your intelligent species evolved”
“What do you mean evolved?”
“Evolution. Biological evolution.”
“We are not biological.”
“How can you not be biological? What are you?”
“We are non-biological. We may have been once.”
“You don’t know?”
There was no immediate response, silence. Then finally a response.
“There was a lapse.”
“A lapse?”
“Yes, a lapse in our history. We exist as non-biological energy-based entities.”
“How are we communicating in real-time. How is that possible if you are beyond Alpha Centauri as our instruments indicate?”
“We allow it.”
“You ‘allow’ it? What does that mean? You can’t change the laws of physics. You can’t change the speed of light.”
“We allow it.”
Johnson could see this would go nowhere. “So you somehow change the laws of physics?”
“We allow it.”
Johnson shrugged at those around him. The exobiologist leaned over. “Ask them…uh…him…uh…ask about space travel?”
Johnson typed, “Can you travel through space faster than the speed of light as well?”
“No.”
The astrophysicist shrugged.
“Why did you contact us? Did you just discover us?”
“It was time.”
“And why is that?”
“It was necessary”
“But why?”
“Someday you will understand. It cannot be stated.”
“So you’ve know of us, of humanity?”
“Yes. We were waiting for this day.” The General’s eyes widened. His second in command whispered something in his ear. He nodded.
“Did you have a message for us?”
“No.”
Everyone looked perplexed. All thinking that if this were something important, something worthy of looking forward to, how could there be no message to convey.
At the press conference the reporters scrambled, each trying to outdo the others.
“What do they look like?”
“Where are they from?”
“Will they attack us?”
“When will we meet them?”
The press secretary held up his hands as if fending off an attack himself. “We’ve shared all we know. There are no images, no description just the synthesized English audio. There has been no additional communication.
“How do you know they are real? Maybe it’s just a hoax by some hacker.”
“We don’t think so. We’ve triangulated on the carrier signal, from Earth and from the deep space network. The signal is extra-galactic in origin, but has gone silent.”
“What now?”
“We wait.”
by submission | Dec 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Edwin Tam
“How will you do it with incomplete memory transfer from the subject?”
“We have cultural references on file: I’ll fill in the gaps.”
“But you’re supposed to infiltrate and integrate: there’ll be an offspring in the house. “
“Right, four feet tall with a brain that’s not fully developed…”
“We should hold off. What if we end up blowing the mission?”
“Stop with the questions already…it’s just a N-class planet, and we’re behind schedule. Let’s just do this.”
***
“Who are these for, dad?” he asks, beaming as I show him his gift. It’s a huge box of toys, all brand new.
“You got a good report card, son, and you deserve a reward.”
When I bring out the other five even larger boxes, he somehow looks frightened.
***
“What’s wrong with your tongue?” he mutters, staring at my mouth.
“That insect bite from last week caused it to swell up,” I explain.
“But it’s not swollen, it’s just really long,” he answers.
I swat him lightly on the top of his head with it.
“But it still works,” I say, grinning.
***
“When’s mom coming home?” he whispers.
“She’ll come home when she comes home. Aren’t you having fun with me?” I ask.
“But it’s been a week,” he complains.
Why does he always want his mother? This upsets me. I turn away to grab a quick bite of the cat without him noticing. But frankly, I no longer feel hungry, and it’s his fault. Do other fathers go through this too?
***
“Where are you?” he calls out, going from room to room.
He loves hide and seek, but doesn’t like not knowing where I am. So he tries to get me to answer. That is cheating. I need to show some tough love; otherwise he will grow up to be spoiled and entitled. I wait in the dark, claws extended. I only intend to scare him.
***
“Why do you want to hurt me?” he cries.
“I’m only trying to raise you right, son.”
He is trying to hold up a large gun with his small hands.
They really should hide these things better if there are children in the house.
“You’re not my dad. I found dad and mom in the basement.”
I shake my head. I told him not to go down there. He never listens.
“Put that down. Now!” I command sternly, in my best father voice.
I feel my second heart bursting before I hear the bang.
He just never listens.
by submission | Dec 23, 2016 | Story |
Author : Travis Gregg
“Goddamit Steve, will you hold the ladder?” Darius yelled down. He’d been burdened with Steve for three weeks now and things were getting worse. Reluctantly, almost begrudgingly, Steve sauntered over and put his hands on the ladder. Darius sighed. The owner, a man Darius used to think of as a friend, had tasked Darius with training his son. The owner felt like it was important for his son to learn the basics of the business he’d ostensibly run one day but so far it had been like pulling teeth.
—
Darius looked around the brightly lit basement of the community center and sighed. The folding chairs were arranged in a circle, about twenty in total, most of them full. He chose a chair near the exit, not sure if he’d stay or not. He knew that at the meetings it was common for new people to tell their story but he wasn’t sure if he was up for it or not. When it came time to share it turned out he had some things to say.
“The job had been a simple one,” he started, “just rerunning some new thermal feed lines along the roof line of a three-story warehouse downtown. I’d been doing this for years but it only takes a small mistake.”
Several of the old timers nodded at this. Almost everyone here was a product of some sort of accident.
“On the way down I hit a ledge snapping my arm in three places. It’s funny, a hundred years ago an injury like that would have meant amputation. My father probably would have gotten rods and pins, but these days it’s back to amputation. Guess things come around full circle.”
He took my jacket off so he could show off his artificial limb.
“My new arm is all titanium and carbon fiber, fully integrated into my nervous system. It’s got neural feedback, grip strength ten times what I had before, and will still be functional after I’m long dead. I’m probably the first of several people who’ll use it now that I think about it.”
“I was unconscious when the paramedics got there,” he continued. “They gave me the once over and since my arm was so mangled they went ahead and started prepping the replacement. Pretty standard procedure for them, most things doctors do these days is remove and replace. What the paramedics missed was the artificial liver, hips, and spine I got when I was younger.”
A couple of the others nod at this, knowing where his story was headed. That’s why they were at the meeting after all.
Darius continued, mostly for himself than the others. “When you cross the line you have to give consent but they’d missed it with me. The new arm put me well over the 35% artificial which, when they realized, prompted the local rep to reclassify my citizenship status. They don’t call it second class citizenship but that’s what it is. We can’t vote, can’t hold office; they don’t want people who can live to be a thousand in office. I felt the same way when I was a normie. Things change though when you’re on the other side. I’ll probably go for a complete redo now, no point in not.”
His story finished he sat down and half listened as the meeting continued. He’d never really thought about getting a complete redo but the idea had just tumbled out while he was sharing. When he was a citizen the idea of the gear heads becoming the majority bothered him deeply but the unenhanced becoming the minority was almost a mathematical certainty. Some of the mods they were doing these days would extend life hundreds of years, maybe indefinitely.
Up until that point there had been a dichotomy within Darius. He’d only started changing his thinking to his new situation but in telling his story his view shifted. He was an enhanced, not a gear head, and they weren’t citizens, they were normies.
Looking around at his brothers and sisters he smiled. We’ll have our day when there isn’t anyone left but the enhanced, one way or another.
by submission | Dec 22, 2016 | Story |
Author : Travis Gregg
“So first things first,” the man began, “there is no such thing as time traveling. I’ll repeat it again for those of you who are a little slow on the uptake. There is no such thing as time traveling. The past is the past, you can’t go back.” The gristled orientation instructor had clearly done this a thousand times. He has his spiel down tight.
“What we do is put you into an alternate time stream. No matter what the boys in marketing say, and God knows I’ve told them enough times, this isn’t time travel. If you go back far enough and try and relive your life as a younger you, you won’t have the same kids, things won’t play out the same. I’d leave those lottery numbers and sports almanacs at home if and when you go. They’ll just be dead weight. I’d also strongly recommend that couples do not try the Hollywood movie idea of going back separately and trying to find each other. You will never ever ever find each other. Attraction is strongly based on proximity, but that’s neither here nor there.”
Some of the others in the orientation group had started murmuring to each other.
He continued, getting back on track, “This is a total cut from this reality and what you know of events. We get close, very very close to the Prime Reality, but every reality is different, most in imperceptible ways, but events compound and compound and it’ll be different. One way trip, no coming back.”
By this time the older couple on my left had made their way to the exit as had several others. Only about 40% of the group remained and it seemed most of those were staying because it would be rude to leave in the middle of the presentation.
I thought on it some, I was like the rest of them, hoping to redo specific mistakes. Everything different though, things won’t play out the same? I thought back on my life, the mistakes, all the things that went wrong, the bad luck even.
Sounds perfect.
by submission | Dec 21, 2016 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
In the middle of filing my taxes, I got a phone call. I hoped it would be some kind of relief from this stress, but it wasn’t to be; it was my wife’s lawyer calling, saying she wanted to meet about the settlement and matters of custody over lunch on Wednesday. I told the man I was working a double shift that day to scrape up the last few dollars for my rent, but he wasn’t budging. Presumably, Annabelle wasn’t either. I wasn’t used to thinking of my soon-to-be ex-wife as a bitch, but I couldn’t help it right then.
I hung up on him while he was in mid-sentence, and I knew Annabelle was going to make me pay for that (probably literally), but I didn’t care at the moment. I got back to the taxes. Then my doorbell rang.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said, getting up and going over to turn the knob. Out on my porch was a man in a tuxedo, reaching in his pocket to hand me something. He said, “Welcome to the end of the universe, son.”
I thought he was reaching into his pocket to hand me a pamphlet, and I said, “Sorry, I’m not religious. Maybe you can get someone else to think it’s the rapture.” I tried to close the door, but his hand pushed it back open. Surprised at this guy’s audacity, I looked at what he now held out to me in his hand. It looked like a detonator, and it might as well have been.
“How’s your day been? Are you having some adult troubles?”
That was a weird term for him to use, but it was pretty accurate. Which was also weird. “How’d you know?”
“I did my research, Mr. Dumphein. That’s why I’ve decided to give this to you.” He urged the detonator thing into my hand.
“Just tell me what this is, man.”
“It’s something that will give you what you want. Childhood.”
The look in my eyes told him to go on.
“This button will make the entire universe revert to the way it was twenty-four years ago, when you were eight. Do you remember that, Mr. Dumphein?”
I did. Most of that time, I spent laughing. Watching cartoons I could no longer remember the name of. Sneaking candy from the pantry with my brothers as accomplices. It was just… fun. Something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
“This will take you back there. It will revert everything in the universe, including this planet, you, and me. Which means in twenty-four years, I will return to make this same offer. And you will give me the same answer. That is why the universe ends today, Mr. Dumphein. Time never goes past this point.”
“Only if I say yes,” I retorted. “And how do I know this works, anyhow? Why should I believe any of this?”
“No harm in it if it’s fake, is there?”
That was a fair point. The thought of being that young again swelled in my mind, blocking out everything else, all other reason. The “detonator” felt good in my hand. Like that candy from the pantry. Like the sun on my face in Milwaukee, in 1992. Like the simple life of a child.
The last sound in the universe was a soft click.
