by submission | Jan 5, 2017 | Story |
Author : Eric Spery
27 December, 2033
A thin sunbeam streamed through a crack in the blinds. It lit John Kohl’s pregnant wife Angie as she snored quietly in bed.
He sat at his desk drinking coffee. Watching her.
His pack leaned against the door. Yet another business trip.
Steam rose in crazy ribbons from his cup as he sipped it and sighed. This was no kind of life for a married man. Soon enough a father.
He could see the green Temporal Manipulation Agency patch glinting on his jacket on the bedpost.
“More like Assassination Squad,” he muttered. “Almost always an assassination.”
“I’m tired,” he whispered.
Tired of killing. Tired of traveling into the past to change the future.
A copy of his resignation sat beside his final mission dossier.
They hadn’t been happy about it. Not happy at all. He’d been with the Agency since 2020. The same year he met Angie.
They tried to keep him, but he insisted. Finally, they gave him a transfer to the Department of Labor after this last mission.
He picked up the dossier, tore the seal and opened it.
Adjustment Target: Angelina Kohl – 2019
His eyes widened in horror and he looked up at the bed.
But, of course, it was empty.
Why was that strange? He couldn’t recall.
He looked down at the folder again and wondered who Angelina Johnson was.
by submission | Jan 4, 2017 | Story |
Author : Russell Bert Waters
It’s not easy being a psychopath.
I don’t care about others, but I also don’t care about myself.
I’ve never felt a connection, and I’ve always been curious about what would happen if I did certain things to people or animals.
So, I did all of those things, and so many more.
Normal people trample one another during Black Friday sales.
I behead the homeless.
I feel I’m doing society a favor.
I’m not sure what the Black Friday people think they’re doing.
I joined the military fresh out of high school, I felt that I would be an effective killing machine.
I was.
Did I save a few of my fellow soldiers? Yep.
Did I do it because I cared about them? Nope.
I was captured once, and I enjoyed it very much; inasmuch as I’m able to enjoy anything.
The enemy soldiers would often play Russian Roulette.
I was incredibly curious, and I couldn’t care less about the men who died.
I was the only captive grinning from ear to ear.
One enemy soldier, with soulless eyes, recognized something in me that he knew, deep down, about himself.
We sort of clicked.
They never allowed me to participate, but this guy got it.
He got me.
He always made sure I had a good view.
When we finally escaped, I locked eyes with him while slowly gutting him with his own knife.
He didn’t wince or cry out.
We had an understanding.
He didn’t care about himself, and he enjoyed spending his last few moments with a kindred spirit.
That is, if he were capable of truly enjoying anything.
Fast forward to today, I’m in a medium-sized village in Ireland, to which I have traced a solid portion of my ancestry.
The year is 1673, and one of the men in this village will eventually marry one of the women in this village. They will have six or seven children together.
I know, I said “fast forward to today” and yet I’m a good three hundred and some years before today.
But, it’s still today, good people.
Wrap your minds around that for a second.
This morning, I awoke in 2017, and, later this same day, here I am in 1673, a long distance from my home.
Tonight?
Well, I’ll be home again, in 2017, and it will still be today.
Kinda hurts your head, doesn’t it?
Good.
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Also, as I said before, I don’t care about your head, your comfort, or you.
Last year I murdered this babbling homeless man, and, before he gurgled on his own frothy blood, he mentioned that his backpack was vitally important.
Turns out he was right.
After tossing his head into a culvert, I found a device, and a journal, in his bag.
The device is what I have in my satchel, today, even as we speak.
It’s why I’m able to be here, in my ancestral home.
Once a week I come here, pick a random stranger, and end his existence.
Then I hit the [return] button on the device.
One day I’ll hit that button, and I’ll just disappear as though I’d never existed.
It’s the ultimate game of Russian Roulette.
I can almost feel the thrill.
by submission | Jan 3, 2017 | Story |
Author : Rollin T. Gentry
“Argh! You…you hammerhead-shark-looking son of a bitch!”
I yelled aloud for the first time since I’d started playing this alien’s stupid game.
“You took the cows. You took all the cows?!” Steaks … gone. Butter … gone. And nothing to dunk my cookies in — forever. Over the telepathic link, he laughed for the first time.
Until then, I’d been playing it cool. He took my wife; I took his hoard of concubines. He took my two kids; I took all four hundred fifty of his spawn. He took football — the American kind — I just laughed. “I’m a geek, wide-eyes. Take football. You just wasted a turn.” But actually, it was a pretty good idea: robbing an entire planet of a major pastime.
So I probed his mind, scouring his home world for anything that looked like a sport, but Take-Take seemed to be the only game his species ever played.
But then I came across what looked like a music festival, a la Woodstock. One of the band members was throwing swag into the mellow, swaying crowd, and the hippies were loving it. So I took the performers and audience members alike — planet-wide. But I should have zoomed in closer because the hippies weren’t even the same species as wide-eyes. They turned out to be a major food source on his world. And that’s when he took the cows.
OK, technically, he hadn’t taken anything, not yet. Everything was still safe and sound on Earth: the cows, the wife and kids, even the NFL. All of my losses simply hovered above my head as tiny holograms, a scoreboard of everything that would cease to exist if I failed to surrender ownership of the Earth before the clock ran down. Of course, wide-eyes was under the same pressure. Think intergalactic staring contest.
With only five minutes left, I knew I had to dig deep. Maybe wide-eyes had a monkey on his back? My mind flew over the surface of his world taking anything they were drinking, smoking, snorting, or injecting. I even grabbed some weird pharmacological goo they dunked themselves in every night.
True to his strategy, that smug bastard did the exact same thing on Earth. He even snagged all the coffee beans and the trees that grew them. One minute remained on the clock. I waited.
Fifty-nine seconds…
Beads of sweat dripped from the sides of his ugly shark face. And I waited, thinking about folks with kidney stones, crying out for a pill that no longer existed, and junkies doubled over puking their guts up. I even thought about baristas in the unemployment line. Then I waited to see if anything remotely close to empathy came bouncing back across that telepathic link.
Thirty-five seconds…
Nothing. Not a damn thing. Wide-eyes was focused on that “thing-I-took” that he told himself he could quit anytime he wanted. Just not today.
Fifteen seconds…
He probed my mind. He saw the rock bottom me, the recovering me, the relapsing me. Rinse and repeat. He did the math. “Yeah, that’s fifteen years sober, wide-eyes.”
Five seconds… He screamed “forfeit” in his native tongue. I felt myself being whisked away to Earth.
In my backyard, I looked down at the blue-green, pulsating crystal in my hand. The deed to wide-eye’s planet? Too bad nobody on Earth would know what it was. Oh well, maybe one of those tinfoil hat types would be willing to trade for it. A planet full of shark-people for a laptop; that sounds fair.
by submission | Jan 2, 2017 | Story |
Author : Neil Floyd
We don’t like to use that word. It sounds negative, don’t you think? The whole procedure is much safer now. Please, try the caviar. It’s real. No, I insist.
Our motto explains it all: “Freedom From Form.” Nobody uses their brain’s full processing power. There’s a way to harness the wasted energy for someone else to use. It’s true. I swear. I won’t bore you with the science. There’s a reason we keep the engineers in their cages when the clients come around. I’m joking. Joking!
Our most popular procedure plugs into the frontal lobe. That’s the decision-making part of the brain. Just yesterday I had a client come in who was working on the new Indo-Pacific webline. Stressful job. He was looking for an extra bump. The tiniest edge makes a huge difference.
Again, I’d prefer if you didn’t use that word. Everyone’s doing it now. How do you think the case-boys stay so sharp on the webline? How do you think the drone sailors read the curves so quickly? They’re clients. Can’t stay competitive unless they buy space. Your space. Their success isn’t desultory. And that’s where–what? Oh. It means random.
As I was saying, that’s where you come in. There are people in my portfolio who need your neurons. Not even your important ones. Just the spares. You’re living in a three bedroom when all you need is a studio.
But it’s not as intrusive as everyone says. Please, don’t use that word. We at the company have been working very hard to educate the public about our wide range of solutions. Our whole pipeline is automated, curated, delegated, and regulated. There’s simply no possibility for an error. Trust us.
I can give you a number before we look at any agreements. We offer plug periods ranging from 18 to 36 months. Shorter? No, I’m sorry. A plug period shorter than 18 months simply isn’t feasible from a business standpoint. Surely you understand. How’s that caviar treating you? Yes! Real as me standing here before you. We have ways.
I’m afraid it’s confidential who will be accessing your particular plug. Our clients value their privacy. Your particular situation makes you a perfect candidate for our 36-month plug period. I can offer you an attractive compensation package. Premium. Best-in-class. Just don’t tell my vice president. It’s all right if you’re having second thoughts. This is a big decision. No, I can’t leave this agreement for a week. We have plugs to fill and my vice president won’t be as patient as I am.
Don’t use that word, please. There are other visitors and they can hear you. If you don’t like the terms, take a spinner to the outer bloc and find a skinjack that might pay–damn it. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. We don’t have time for insincere plug inquiries.
Who’s next? Yes, sir. Nice to meet you. Please, try the caviar. It’s real.
END
by Julian Miles | Jan 1, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Just another day at the office, sitting on my ladybird, chatting with my blue owl friend. I named him Percy, and he’s smarter than your average owl. Which he should be, being that up until 09:16:32 this morning, he was the icon for my personal AI.
“Any luck finding the intrusion?”
Percy sounds mournful. Think I should have named him Eeyore.
“No trace, no trail, not even the whisper of a flag reset. Whoever did this is a category above Wizard class.”
Not good. Wizard class hackers are supposed to be the best. But there is one, unofficial, higher category: Hazard class – because they’re a menace to anyone near them. Either by being crazy or attracting the attention of agencies with a preference for using area-effect weapons. Sometimes both.
Outside my window, the Mad Hatter lies amidst the debris of his tea party. The Queen of Hearts is curled, drunkenly snoring, in his lap.
“What do we have to track Hazard class?”
“Jill.”
A tingle runs up my spine. Should have guessed. My ex-wife is a ‘white-hat’ Hazard class. It’s why I divorced her: way too many bad people trying to kill her on behalf of worse people she’d upset. After my cat got converted into a three-metre scorch mark with barely a yowl of indignant surprise, I left. The divorce was finalised by Autolaw Processor within a week.
“What else?”
“Luck or prayer.”
I don’t remember adding sarcasm or humour modules.
“Your recommendation?”
“Jill Shaw.”
“Second recommendation?”
“Offline, military grade erasure, secure reinstall, monitored reboot with full logging.”
That’s a minimum of two weeks downtime, costing me a Eurodollar a minute, on top of non-delivery penalties for a pair of missed contract deadlines. I can’t afford that.
The White Rabbit hops into view, earrings catching the sunlight as she adjusts her bustier. She starts slipping the rings from the Queen’s fingers.
“What is Miz Shaw’s current rate?”
“She’s doing a free day consult and discounted long-term rates. It would be cheaper to engage her for a resident month than hire her for a week of onsite during business hours.”
Just a moment.
“Disguise origin via external routing and repeat query.”
“Two thousand a day with a non-refundable three thousand Eurodollar deposit.”
The White Rabbit winks at me.
“JILL!”
The White Rabbit leaps out of sight behind the table, leaving only a familiar pair of eyes floating in mid-air.
“I really meant it when I said sorry for Caffrey getting killed, Justin. But since you Autolawed the whole thing, I couldn’t contact you directly. After that, I moved to a townhouse in a properly secured community. There’s room for us to have several cats, if you like.”
“You hacked my office just to get my attention?”
“Actually, I’ve got your whole office block’s data and security infrastructures. Can’t have alarms going off while I’m trying to win my fella back.”
She’s a wee bit unhinged, very stubborn, and I still love her. Well, damn.
“If I agree to come and visit, will you drop this hack – and drop it tidily?”
“I even promise not to cook.”
She must be serious. Time to push my luck.
“You’ll order in from Esplendia?”
“Ouch. Then you’d better bring an overnight bag, you shameless man.”
Excellent; I’m doomed.
“Done.”
by submission | Dec 31, 2016 | Story |
Author : Russell Bert Waters
Road-weary we pulled in and parked outside the motel office.
This was our first time in the North East, and we weren’t even sure exactly where we were.
Somewhere outside Maine, I think.
I looked out at the horizon, and it lit up twice, briefly. Maybe the Aurora Borealis, maybe just some reflection off of something. Hell, maybe a plane.
My wife was asleep beside me, and the word I could come up with for the town, the sky, the clear night, was “charming”.
It was welcoming us with the cool crisp air.
It was inviting us with the starry skies.
It was charming us with the quaint surroundings.
We were to feel at home.
We were to feel safe.
For some reason I wasn’t buying it.
My hackles stood up, as my wife lay in the passenger seat, in a bit of a ball.
She was breathing gently, sound asleep, safe.
Yet, for some reason, I still felt like maybe we could just stand to go another few miles before we hung it up for the night.
My world was content, dreaming her dreams, but I was restless.
I felt like escaping.
In the direction of the flashes I had seen, I now heard something like a dull thud, followed shortly by another.
I climbed back into the car, something was amiss, I wasn’t sure what yet, but we weren’t going to sleep here tonight.
Well, at least I wasn’t going to.
The second thud took longer than the first, but something in me felt that it would come.
I heard a familiar crackle.
I had heard the same or similar when I fought fires a lifetime ago in California.
I knew it was moving too fast, and I instinctively knew there would be no clear exit.
I closed the door, placed my hand on the warm back of my everything as it raised and lowered with her breathing.
She settled into my hand, safe, assured.
If she only knew.
I could see the horizon begin to glow, now, and my eyes began to water with the incoming smoke.
Lights began to come up in the windows of the scattered bungalows.
Confused tourists, and the occasional year round resident, began to mill around, murmuring speculatively in their pajamas and robes.
We just sat, as you could now hear distant thuds.
The footfalls of some giant being.
Her sleep was still restful, her breathing calm.
We would ride this out together; in this charming little parking lot, of this charming little motel.
But we would not be charmed.
