by Julian Miles | Apr 11, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s a blue moon above and it’s nothing more than that. Here on Libby, the moons are blue. The rocks here are all shades of blue thanks to a chemical process that occurred during the creation of this planet.
The vegetation is blue because Alistair Peabody was a hopeless romantic as well as richer than several star empires. When his little blue companion of twenty years coughed her last, he swore he’d make a world in her memory. He bribed and cajoled and financed takeovers and had technology stolen.
He set out to make Libby the blue heaven he’d promised to make for his girl. A place where the lonely could come to be eased, the dying could come to find peace, and he could visit when the memories got a little overwhelming.
Over there is the mausoleum he built for her body, and it’s as surprising as the rest of this place; tasteful, delicate, a true work of art. The blue marble shines with an inner light that even the scientists were at a loss to explain. I’ve guessed that it’s a side effect of the white marble innards slowly being turned blue.
Libby started with a dozen work teams: over two hundred people. It now has a population of eight, and will never have more. The blue motif Alistair determined for his memorial needed to go deep, and he implemented some truly ground-breaking technological solutions.
Unfortunately, the pigmentation thingys proved to be very good at blue. After turning themselves blue, anything and everything else turned blue. Animals. Insects. Spaceships. Biscuits. People.
And that blue is contagious. Blue from Libby will attempt to turn everything it comes into contact with blue. It’s the first human-created, galactically recognised technopestilence.
So I’ll sit here and sip blue coffee laced with blue rum as the blue bats flit about my head and my blue hair remains without a trace of grey despite this being my ninetieth birthday. And no, I have not the slightest clue how I can still see. My eyes are orbs of blue, but they still work. It’s something the scientists stranded here researched until they died – still without the slightest glimmer of a solution.
Damn you, Alistair. I only signed on to design the formal gardens around the mausoleum – the ones that no-one will ever visit.
by submission | Apr 10, 2016 | Story |
Author : Joshua Doyle
We could have seen it coming for a couple of years. Identification of pathways that lead to cell aging, the discovery of a method of removing the “unwanted side effects” from THC, the discovery that tetrahydrocannabinol could be used to target and suppress specific gene expression pathways.
Each discovery was compartmentalized and the information remained on tech sites, rarely surfacing on general news sites and completely ignored by the television networks. Lab coats couldn’t compete with exhibitionists thrown together in an apartment. Most people had no idea it was even on the radar.
You have to hand it to Big Pharma – they’d really nailed the whole targeted marketing thing. If you didn’t have a net worth of 8 figures, you didn’t even hear about it for the first few years. There were rumors, but they usually came from potheads and were easily ignored.
Then Jean Fabre sent a stash of documents to WikiLeaks, and all hell broke loose. He disappeared before he could find a state that would provide asylum, but the information and evidence he provided turned out to be harder to eliminate. When news of the jade pill reached the general public, doctors’ offices and pharmacies were flooded. The global economy basically ground to a halt for a week as everyone skipped work to wait in line.
The riots started when they heard the price.
For a while, the principal goal of any person living on the planet was to make enough money to afford Vialogy. Forget the latest, highest definition television – paying their dose became the main goal of the “middle class”.
Then some enterprising biochemist named Alice discovered that the active ingredient in the jade pill could be generated with a simple (to her) modification to the genome of a particular sativa strain. Against all odds, she managed to get it out into the world before her minivan exploded on the highway with an abnormally high lead content.
The “War on Drugs” quickly went from a government-driven operation to a privately funded campaign as pharmaceutical companies tried to protect their golden goose. Private armies descended on grow-ops around the globe. The scope of the operations resembled the wet dream of a Bureau of Prohibition agent.
In the end, they were no match for, well, everyone. The world had found its unifying cause, and it wasn’t an asteroid or aliens. Finally, numbers truly outweighed wealth.
Within a year, marijuana was legal worldwide and Alice was being grown openly in backyards and apartment closets around the globe. The version of the drug without the psychogenic effects became readily available, but most people chose to use the “natural” version.
While some have associated the drop in crime and the reduction in war around the planet to the fact that the majority of the global population is permanently stoned, others say that the change in perspective offered by the reality of the modification is the driving factor. But in the end, does the why really matter?
The world hasn’t seen a war in 70 years. While the modern state of the world has created new problems, the new perception of timelines seems to be concentrating efforts on resolution of these problems instead of simply pushing them off for future generations.
There is a new fringe group. The Mortalists claim that our current society is unnatural and inherently evil, but they are easily marginalized. They have even been added to the DSM as a mental disorder, obviously.
After all, who wouldn’t want to live forever?
by submission | Apr 9, 2016 | Story |
Author : Stephen Ahlgrim
May 16, 1787
I cannot pretend to hide my excitement. My ship sets sail today, to the Misty Islands I had only read in folklore. Origin of the Species sits apprehensively on top of my sack. I am certain that Darwin’s spirit is as anxious to see the fabled Homo Triumphus as much as I am. My dreams in the past weeks have danced with sharpened sticks and loin cloths and campfires where these peoples tell myths of their ancestors. A history all their own unspoiled by civilization. I wonder greatly if they have invented a language of their own.
June 6, 1787
Last night’s storm has left us with fewer rations than I am comfortable with. We are miles off course, but the Captain whose name escapes me assures me that we will reach the land God forgot about. I cannot believe such a mystery still exists in the Atlantic, a tamed ocean. It is strange to think that I have not seen a bird in 9 days.
June 12, 1787
Smoke! Oh God has surely not forgotten me, even if my destination is beyond His great sight! The Captain, whose name I have since learned is Abel, saw the pillar that would be our saving billowing into the air briefly before sunset. I am filled with glee to know that tomorrow, with the wind at our backs, we will reach the Misty Islands. I am famished, yet the only thing I hunger for more is discovery. To shake the hands of these simple nomads and fishermen, to see the color of their skin, and to be the first civilized person to record their existence beyond the inebriated tales of pirates and traders is a yearning in my belly far greater than that of forgone sustenance.
June 15, 1787
We were attacked! The assailants were unseen, however I believe them to be my Homo Triumphus. Seafaring craft. Who would have thought! Our ship’s mast has suffered greatly, though not as much as Captain Abel. An arrow-head pierced his empty belly. The tip was made of a metal I am unfamiliar with. A cleverly crafted serrated hook on it made removal difficult. Besides his wound, he has taken immediately ill. The tip glows slightly in the darkness. Was it poisoned? Without a mast we are helpless to sail further. I await our next visit with the arrow safely in my pocket. I still clearly see the tower of black smoke, so they will surely come again tonight.
June 16, 1787
I fear these may be my last words to the world. Discovery is not what it seems. The beauty in Darwin’s theory of evolution is a perverted romanticized lens of the truth. God did not forget these lands. He banished them. Tiny demons, covered in black soot forge these seas without sails, in metal ships without smoke stacks. Our black powder is meaningless to their armor that gleams like knights of old. They launched their tiny glowing hooks without shafts and bows. Amidst the cries and screams of a seemingly complex language, I have only picked up one word, though not its meaning: croatoan. In this endeavor I suppose I have been successful. If anyone by God’s grace comes to read this final chapter of my life, please take heed, and stay far away from the Misty Islands. Homo Triumphus is a predatory and vile species. They are not our brethren.
by submission | Apr 8, 2016 | Story |
Author : Katie Krantz
The woman and the school were equally sleek. Her hair and the metal exterior both shined: their luster was unnatural in the most pristine sense. Her heels clicked against the dark wood floors, and she gestured with her long, black nails to the various facets of the building, to classrooms, pods and such.
“With the integration of intravenous knowledge in our schools came with the alarming insight that youth these days just aren’t hungry for knowledge.” As she spoke, her matte lipstick began to crack, just hairline fractures that repaired themselves when she clacked her tombstone teeth back together for a moment, a second of silence.
“We attempted to rectify the issue by removing food from the lunchroom, and replacing it with a grey nutritional supplement. They didn’t seem to notice. In fact, we were getting higher ratings of satisfaction than before.” She laughed as though she were a genius. When her head shook, her hair stayed perfectly still atop it, perched like a bird. She clicked and clacked on towards the lunch room, where lines of grey-ish students shuffled towards grey lunches being distributed with the precision of a vaccine. As soon as we were close enough to notice the bags under their eyes, she whipped us away towards her state of the art library complex. It was the structure meant to hold up the cables that carried the school’s data.
“After the library had been completely covered in the fiber optic cables, we had to stop students from excavating books for fear they’d alter the structural integrity of the whole setup. We’re hoping the books will one day fossilize so that we can mine gilt-edged veins of ink-stone, perhaps to tile the bathrooms.” The cracks disappeared and reappeared. As she gestured to the slivers of pages coming out of the mass of cables, her silver bracelets became audible. Eventually, she herded the group of dazed parents towards the classrooms, and we shuffled along to halls where students studied.
She pushed open the door with a pale, bony hand, and the light from our side poured in, illuminating students slathered in dark brown. A puff of warm air breathed against our faces as we, the curious potential money-givers, peered in. As soon as everyone had their voyeuristic fill, she slammed the door shut and stood in front of it, facing us.
“We’ve had to preemptively erase all form of dress code to prevent conflict. Rather than uniform, the students slather themselves in mud. The heating bill has risen astronomically. It also seemed that the fluorescent lights were causing student depression, so we’ve swapped it for total darkness. Any questions?” The woman stared us down, daring us to challenge her with anything as obsolete as logic or concern. Next to me, my wife leaned in close to my ear.
“This seems perfect for Jeremy!”
by submission | Apr 7, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“This one, it’s too close. Something’s wrong!” Taylor Hines tapped the green screen, yelling at Corus, as her brilliant, red-scaled hands clawed the communications panel.
“Ogira 6. Ogira 6. Back away point three apars from the dwarf star. Ogira, respond.” Static and deep-space warbles returned on the speaker.
A snarling, high-pitched response followed. “We do not take orders from two legged.”
Taylor and Corus studied the round screen depicting four hundred gigantic freighters manipulating magnetars toward one side of the galaxy’s center. The stellar tugboats pushed and poked dead stars to manipulate pulsating neutron stars, but if herded too close the magnetar could awaken the deceased, creating a fusion burst, destroying the wrangler’s ship.
“Ogira 6,” Corus repeated. “You must comply. Repeat…” She stopped. The green dot depicting the Peronian’s ship disappeared. The brown circle, the dwarf, turned red on screen, vaporizing two more ships in a nearby quadrant, leaving their packages adrift.
Taylor stared at Corus as water flowed from bulbous double eyes drooping down from the square face of the command ship’s leader.
“Now you know,” Corus whimpered, “Why it was important to find you. We cannot lose another hundred. Without enough magnetars to divert the angle of the black hole, our client’s race will perish…perhaps only surviving another thousand years.”
She returned her attention to the screen. There was no voice traffic. No need to mourn. Every pilot knew the risk, but not everyone believed the capabilities of a new crewmember from an unknown planet.
“You were recently chosen for your unusual skills of knowing. None of our captains have this understanding. You also fit our profile. You are the last of your kind, are you not?”
“I’m not sure,” Taylor replied, collapsing back in his high-backed chair. “My parents were abducted by a snake race from Earth, like thousands each year. Many were eaten, but most were enslaved. My parents were saved at a space station auction raided by the Kersan Kahn. Kahns attack slave-making races and free their captives—then eat the slavers. The scaly bastards didn’t see that coming.”
“So, you hate those with scales instead of your pitiful pale covering?”
“No, no Corus. It’s not like that. Your race was not like theirs. It’s what my parents experienced. There was no way back for us. I’ll perish alone out here since my parents died. I’ll never mate…never love.”
“So you must understand why they picked all of us—orphans of our races. Our kinds were either destroyed by wars or bad choices. Our employer’s wisdom will turn this devourer of solar systems just slightly away from their civilization. That will give them another million years to evolve, yet they will not be blamed for they cannot be tied to our work, and we have no home worlds left to be punished.”
“And the other worlds? The ones now lost too early because we adjusted the black hole?”
“It swallows a thousand stars daily. Millions of cultures disappear. Their time is over. So it is in every galaxy, on every planet. Our client’s superiority designed this adjustment. That wisdom and influence gives them the right to continue.” Corus persisted in her surveillance of the armada.
“And we, the movers of these dead stars, will we be the forgotten…the forever unloved?”
“No, Taylor Hines. Billions will recall our heroic names in story and song for millennia, while on our worlds we would have been mere shadows in time the moment our eyes grew cold. Everyone else has a history to live, but we, on this voyage, have a destiny.”
by submission | Apr 6, 2016 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The low rumbling sound in my starship goes up in both pitch and volume. Even through the Koliada’s graviton fields and inertia attenuators, I can feel the vessel shuddering.
“Computer, report!”
“We have dropped out of FTL,” says my ship. “We are caught in a massive gravitational field.”
“Show me.”
A sphere appears in the holodisplay. The Koliada’s computer annotates the image. The object has as much mass as the Earth but is small enough that I could, in principle, hold it in one hand.
“What is that?” I ask the computer. “It doesn’t have an event horizon or a singularity so it doesn’t appear to be a black hole, but it’s too small and dense to be a neutron star.”
“The object appears to be a preon star.”
“A what?”
“A theoretical astronomical object composed of sub-quark matter.”
“Quarks are fundamental particles,” I protest. “There’s no such thing as sub-quark matter.”
“The evidence is conclusive,” my ship counters. “This discovery represents the first revision to the Standard Model of Particle Physics in over one thousand years assuming we survive to report our findings.”
The Koliada’s shuddering intensifies.
“Speaking of survival,” I reply, “how about getting us out of here?”
“I have been attempting to do so since we became caught in the preon star’s gravity well. I have made multiple attempts to move us away from the star, all unsuccessful.”
“That’s impossible. We can go faster than light. How can we not break free from any naturally-occurring gravitational field?”
“My FTL drive,” the ship responds, “has to be able to convert every particle of and within me into tachyons in less than Planck time or ten to the negative forty third power of one second. The surface gravity of the preon star is approximately three times ten to the sixteenth power g’s. I can’t perform a stable FTL transition fast enough inside this gravity well.”
I sigh. “Alright. Drive us toward the star and we’ll slingshot around it.”
“Impossible. The star’s gravity field is non-homogeneous like a black hole’s. If we attempt a gravity-assist maneuver as you propose, tidal forces will destroy us.”
“Okay,” I say with exasperation, “suggest something.”
“I advise you to go to the medical bay and let me perform a quantum tomogram of your brain. While I can’t convert us to tachyonic matter, I can send a tachyon wave transmission back to the Solar Assembly. I can upload my core memory and a scan of your brain to the Assembly conclave at Barnard’s Star. The conclave will have a copy of your DNA on file and will have no trouble fabricating a new body for you and then performing a neural rectification on it. My consciousness can be transferred to another ship.”
I think about how much all that will cost and wonder if being torn to shreds by tidal forces isn’t the worst thing that could happen. I finally get up and start walking to the medical bay.
I awaken twenty subjective minutes later in a hospital station in the Barnard system. In short order, three irate Assembly bureaucrats enter my room and tell me a certain A.I. is not only declining to disclose location and sensor data about an alleged preon star but is threatening to delete the corresponding files unless I tell it otherwise.
I smile at the three stern government functionaries. “Settle my medical bill and give me and my A.I. the fastest starship you have and I’ll see what I can do.”
