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.
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 7, 2017 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Tran adjusted the grapples on the Canbarro reactor core slung under the ship from the relative comfort of the cockpit. He balanced the load as close to center as possible, making sure to clear the four point vertical thrusters he’d need to get both the ship and its cargo into orbit.
“There’s a significant risk of seam failure at this gravity and load.” The ship’s AI had been warning of all the things he was doing wrong since he’d commissioned the ship from Tanzana. He missed an AI he could relate to more than he ever thought he would.
“Just power up, dial the warnings down to catastrophic failure only, and let’s get off this junk heap.”
Tran buckled himself in, rotated the contoured acceleration couch back until he was looking straight up into the black night sky and felt the rumble as the engines struggled to haul double their rated mass upwards against the gravity of the salvage planet.
“There’s a significant risk…” Tran cut the AI off in mid sentence.
“Unless we’re about to implode, shut it.”
The rumbling increased, the ship vibrating towards a harmonic resonance that he was sure wouldn’t be good. Just as the whine of the engines seemed in near perfect harmony with the groaning of the ship’s space-frame, they reached escape velocity, and Tran felt the crush of acceleration as the ship won its fight against gravity and streaked into space at an alarmingly increasing rate of speed.
“The risk of seam failure is decreasing,” the ship piped up, “however there is a significant risk of collision with a planetary high orbital.”
Tran just shook his head, and left the AI to pilot to the starting coordinates for the next leg of their journey. He closed his eyes and allowed the enveloping acceleration couch to hug him into a much needed sleep.
“We’re at the designated coordinates,” the AI waking him with monotone precision, “we’re stationary,” it continued, “there is a significant risk of collision with a fast moving mass while we have no momentum to transfer into evasive maneuvers.”
It wasn’t just that he missed an AI he could relate to, he was actually starting to hate this one. How could one hate something this primitive?
“Line our ass-end up with the Alpha-Ten station, and confirm our distance. We should be three days out assuming top speed and accounting for launch and acceleration.”
“That is correct, and our… ‘ass-end’… is lined up with Alpha-Ten.” Tran smiled at the pause. Maybe he was getting to this primitive pile of junk after all.
He’d run through this moment a thousand times since their escape from A-Ten. He had the time and the distance burned into his memory, the pursuit, the Drey ships lighting up his own, and the moment where all he could do was jettison his Canbarro’s core and eject in the other direction to what he hoped would be safety.
Rolling the Captain’s couch upright, he stared into the void ahead of him, then pushed the throttle fully forward and watched the distance he’d set on the console start to count down. His mind replayed the past for him, his eyes twitching at the incoming weapon discharges he could still smell, his hair prickled on his body at the memory of their wake. As the counter closed in on zero, he fired the cargo lock charges and dropped the scrapped reactor core like an anchor in space, the micro-explosions separating the massive core from the nimble ship save for the tethering line stretching out between them.
At zero, Tran remote detonated the core, the explosion triggering the containment systems on the core-shell itself, the resulting singularity stopping the imploding mass dead in space. The remaining slack in the tether took up in an instant, and holding, whipped the ship in a punishing arc downward until, at exactly ninety degrees down in the full wash of the imploding core, Tran and his ship blistered through the tear in space-time that rippled out beneath it.
Just as quickly, the tether was floating free, cut off from it’s other end. The explosion, the core, everything was simply no longer there.
“Imminent threat has been… the danger no longer registers on… there’s a ship ahead,” the AI stumbled before settling on something relevant in the sudden unexpected absence of everything that had been in its scope just moments before.”
“Grapple that ship, lock onto to power and data and open a comms channel.” Tran surveyed the lifeless and battered bulk of a familiar vessel drifting off their bow.
The ship reoriented itself and made a surprisingly smooth landing on the wreck, and Tran immersed himself into the dataline to find a familiar presence prickling at the intrusion.
“Tran? It’s about bloody time!” He struggled to keep his composure as he replied.
“So I’m a little late, I only had to rip a hole through space-time to get here!”
She laughed. “Nice crate, any attachment to the bitbox flying her?”
“Not even a little. Migrate your punk-ass kernel off of that boat and demote this unremarkable little shit.”
He could no more understand how he could have such strong feelings for one AI as he could understand hating a lesser one, but here he was having literally bent time to get back to her.
“Get a move on then,” he grinned, “and be forewarned, if I hear the words ‘significant risk’ even once, I’m tossing you out the airlock.”
by Julian Miles | Feb 6, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Old Avon looks up: “That’s going to cost you.”
He always says that. Doesn’t matter if you pick up a piece of twine or a gold ring, his opening lines are fixed.
I grin: “Can’t be worth much if it’s ended up here.”
“It’s here for someone. Worth will be determined by them.”
That’s not his usual banter.
I try to roll with it, words coming too quickly: “What if that someone is me?”
He smiles, knowing he’s thrown me: “If it is, I’ll give it to you.”
There’s no guile in his eyes. He means it. I just stand and look at him, the little box almost forgotten in my hand.
“Open it, laddie.”
I bring it up to my eyes. I never wear glasses outside, so things like this need to be up close. I rotate the box and jump when a cold corner brushes the tip of my nose. Avon chuckles.
It’s dark grey stone, polished to the point where it looks wet. The minuscule filigree gold and silver knotwork must be machine-etched, as I’m pretty sure any artist would have gone crazy trying to do that.
“He made it for his first love, a girl named Helene. When they parted, she gave it away. Said it was an embodiment of love and desire. Said it needed to carry on the truth he betrayed.”
Sure it was. Made ‘with love’ in a sweatshop in Kirkuk.
I open it. There’s a little silver sword set into the underside of the lid. Music starts. It’s not tinny, it’s not some sad old ballad. It’s like there’s an invisible band about me, playing their hearts out. Instrumental. I know the words. Can’t quite remember them.
“Please say you’re not going to buy that.”
I turn my head and meet green eyes. Just. I know? Emeralds. We danced. Music. Like this? What? She’s smiling and it makes the freckles across her cheeks darken.
She repeats her query in French.
“My dad was French. He didn’t stay long enough to teach me.” Why did I just tell her that?
The eyes seem to get bigger: “I could teach you.” She looks nearly as surprised as I probably do.
Suddenly, something makes sense. I tear my eyes away and speak to Avon.
“Give it to her.”
Avon smiles: “I was thinking the same thing. Your first gift.”
What?
I turn back and the eyes are waiting to swallow my ability to speak.
“You’re serious? You’d give that to me?”
Avon laughs: “Only if you take him for a cuppa and a bacon sarnie.”
She glances at him. I feel words brimming under my tongue. Then she looks back, and I’m mute again.
“I’m Jen. Jenny.”
I can speak!
“Art. Arthur.”
She smiles even wider and I feel things inside me dance to the music. I have no idea what it means, and I don’t care. She reaches out and closes the box with one hand while linking her other arm through mine.
“Let’s go, Art.”
Aldo watches them stroll off before settling to pack his stall. It’s been a long sojourn, but the nudging of societies toward the future is a delicate thing. There is no longer any room for grandiose schemes. Every future king was once a child, and good parents achieve more than good intentions ever did.
A decrepit van pulls up. The woman who gets out moves with a grace that defies her wizened features.
“Come on. It’s a long way to the next pitch.”
He smiles: “Hush, Nyneve. We always have time.”
by submission | Feb 5, 2017 | Story |
Author : Garrisonjames
They used to joke that the world would eventually be taken over by cockroaches or rats. Both are pretty much extinct these days. We’ve all been done-in by the ants. Tiny, insignificant little creatures we used to crush under our thumbs, poison with impunity. In the end they were too smart for us. Too smart and too numerous.
By the time anyone noticed the super-colonies in Africa or Asia or wherever, it was too late. We were too used to seeing things from the perspective of mammals with centralized brains in our bodies. Ants don’t work like that. Maybe they did, once upon a time. At some point the ants developed into a form of networked intelligence. We used to worry about AI and robots rising up to destroy us, and in a way we are being exterminated by biological robots driven by a massively multiplexed networked consciousness that might as well be the Singularity for all we know or can prove.
Not only did the ants out-number us by trillions upon trillions; all those connections, all those linked synapses allowed them to outclass our own monkey-brains and computers. Insidiously clever things, the ants quickly, quietly, carefully infiltrated every one of our cities and settlements. They formed deeply embedded nests where their queens dreamed in pheromones and conspired through chemical signals among one another to take over the world.
Sinkholes ruined roads and collapsed neighborhoods. Cave-ins and avalanches and mud-slides struck without warning. Cables were severed. Sewers were blocked. Hordes of every kind of ant swarmed through the chaos and destruction.
People being people blamed one another and took up arms against their usual enemies even as city after city fell to the ants. Some took to the oceans, others took to the skies; there was a renaissance for airships after all. Of course ants can grow wings and swarms wrecked all but the highest-flying dirigibles, and it was only a matter of time before raft-like masses of ants stripped barges and oil-rigs, ocean-liners and other sea-going vessels of all life.
There aren’t many of us left these days. A few survivors wandering about what’s left of the old deserts that are slowly greening due to the ants’ efforts at making the world over in their image. There are some isolated island communities that the rafts haven’t reached yet. Some of us hide as far up in the atmosphere as our airships can reach. But we’re too few and too scattered to be any sort of threat to the ants.
by submission | Feb 4, 2017 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
The engines stopped burning after a full year of deceleration, and all the ships turned to face their destination. The mechanics triple checked the cannons before opening their compartments, and did touch-ups on all the fighters before deploying them. When the fleet was ready, Commander Ankerbjin looked to his navigation officers and asked, “What enemy movement are we seeing?”
For a time, no answer came. Then one said, “None, sir. We detect no ships converging on this location, no weapons locking on, and no emergency lockdowns on any of the planets, looking at their energy signatures.”
Ankerbjin grunted. “Continue scans of the system. Hold tight for several hours, wait for the light from the distant edges of the system to reach us. Once we have a better lay of the land, we’ll be able to attack.”
Hours did pass, and the aliens seemed to be taking no defensive actions against the arrived enemy fleet. Even stranger things started happening four hours after the engines quieted.
“Sir, you ought to see this.”
Ankerbjin rose from his command throne at the center of the bridge to lean over the shoulder of one of his navigators. He looked at what was on the screen. “Tell me what I’m seeing here.”
“The ships… they’re converging on their own planets. Planets whose power outputs are spiking. Certain structures on those planets are *really* lighting up.”
“Certain structures? Weapons! They’re preparing to fire surface batteries at us!”
“And not just on the planets. You know that structure we identified around their star? That’s powering up too.”
“Good God.”
“Well, sir,” one of the bridge engineers said, “we anticipated something like this. It only took a year to get here from our perspective, because of time dilation, but for them we took nearly a hundred. We knew their technology would come a long way before we even started our attack. That’s why we brought so many ships along with–”
Starlight stopped shining through the giant forward window, the tiny lights indicating planets winking out with it. The navigators’ lidar screens also went dark.
“What the hell just happened!?” Ankerbjin barked. “Are they… blocking electromagnetic radiation from getting to us? Is there something obstructing our view?”
“How could there be if we’re still seeing stars?”
The bridge was silent for a minute. Then the same bridge engineer said, “Shit. Advanced technology indeed.”
The whole room looked at him.
“We thought, with a hundred years to prepare before we arrived, the aliens would advance in defensive weapons technology. They might create forcefields, build surface batteries, megascale energy weapons. But I think they took a different approach. Those structures on the planets, and around the star? I think they shunted the entire system away from here. They picked up what they were trying to defend and sent it somewhere else, their whole home system. We spent a hundred years traveling to a place that might as well have been… imaginary.”
“Well– where did they go?” Ankerbjin stuttered.
“Dunno. Could’ve gone to an alternate dimension, for all we know.”
“So what the hell are we supposed to do!? How do we win?”
“I don’t think we do. This is like… like pacifist’s checkmate. There’s nothing for us to do now but turn around and go home.”
There was arguing. Fighting. Rallying. Mutiny. But in the end, Earth’s assault fleet powered up their ships, turned away from empty space, and began the century-long journey back home. Defeated.
