by submission | Mar 30, 2016 | Story |
Author : Austen Woodward
It had been a normal Saturday, I’d got up, done my hair, my makeup, slipped on my dress and walked out of the house, making sure to lock the door behind me as my parents always sleep in and are worried about intruders. I turned the key in the ignition and set off for work.
At work, again, everything was normal, I smiled at Trisha the receptionist as I walked past her to the lift, and shortly I was sitting down at my desk.
About four hours in, I felt uneasy. For a split second I felt a shift, something transcendent washes over me, the clock in front of me skips a second. Despite the uneasy feeling I carry on with the day. At about ten to five, I had finished all of my calls to clients and decided to occupy the last ten minutes by checking my social media. I open my phone and I’m met by a sponsored miscarriage support page. I remember how my mother told me about her miscarriage, I was meant to have a twin, another girl, but complications meant that she died in birth. I vividly remember mother tearing up every time she spoke of her other little girl. It’s always hard on my birthday, because she gained a daughter and lost one, so she semi celebrates and then semi mourns. I always remember the name, Lizzie, a beautiful name, Lizzie and Liza. A terrible twosome, I often wonder how fun it would have been to have a sister the same age.
I look up at the clock, it’s five o’clock. I get up and leave, and as I drive home, sirens echo all around me. I slow down, just a precaution. I pull into the driveway and I’m met by a worried mother.
“Have you not seen the news? You didn’t even let us know you were on your way back or anything Liza, we’ve been worried sick!” she exclaims. I apologize and hug her. We move to the lounge where we sit down. She asks about my day, I say “it was alright”, and then a knock. A loud powerful knock on the front door. We look at each other as my father rushes to open it. Blue lights blaze through the doorway, two policemen, clad in black stand in the doorway holding a girl about my age, blonde hair.
“Are you Lizzie’s parents?” They ask.
I look at my mother, she gets up and sighs.
“Oh Lizzie what have you got yourself into now?” she asks, sounding disappointed.
I stand up, stunned by what I’m hearing. As I run to the doorway, I exclaim “Lizzie is dead, she died when she was born”. I grab my head as it starts to hurt, my world spinning, Lizzie cannot be alive, she is dead. Dead.
Dead.
The girl lifts up her face and smiles.
“No she’s not”.
by submission | Mar 29, 2016 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
When pigeons deviated in mid-air and windless leaves rustled, the hidden dreamers were about.
A detector notified me it had seen something, so I went to my balcony and tuned my visor to the corresponding wavelength.
Carpeted with warm dappled light, the Italian Piazza was filled with coffee drinkers, buzzing scooters and devoted artists.
An explosion of pigeons flew toward the red stone clock tower. Sharply and for no reason, they banked. I shifted my view to emptiness and saw them for the first time. A faint iridescent blue dot. Under magnification the dot became a ring of blue spheres orbiting a large glass orb. I blinked, flicked to naked eye, saw nothing and then returned. I had done it. I had finally found them.
The spheres fired tiny jets to stabilise the orb and through glass, I saw two naked beings seated cross-legged. In deep meditation, they were motionless except for an elongated object, bobbing rhythmically on top of their heads.
Seefers had evolved into a race so indoctrinated with rationality that they had forgotten how to dream. When they discovered the Stem and then Earth, their whole society changed forever. The Stem pilgrimage to Earth was a journey of meditative discovery. The Stem’s unique capacity to read real-time or historic intent and deliver it to a host’s mind like a real life experience gave Seefers their dreams back. Even if it was someone elses.
Earthlings were an open-minded race, fearlessly free to be carelessly ingenious. Earth was rich with theories, ideas and notions. From the design studios of great artists, to experimental think-tanks and war-rooms where success and failures were forged. It was a place where countless utopian dreams were found and lost and outlandish imaginations were born and died. Everywhere, hidden Seefers hovered, mesmerised in a waking dream.
I watched for hours until a blue glow from behind caught my eye. Removing the visor, I turned and threw myself against the railing at the sight. An orb being with an outstretched arm stood beside me, offering one of the elongated objects. Following its subtle trusting gesture, I lifted it, reeling slightly at its warm fleshy surface and felt it cling to my head.
I turned, subconsciously drawn to a commotion in the Piazza and saw the chaos of a thousand films playing on one screen. A blue hand gently closed my eyelids and clarity instantly appeared in sensuous dream state.
Sitting at the table in the Piazza, I watched as Elia’s delicate fingers sketched the idea for the first warp engine and then across months, watched as it matured into a robust design. I smelt the acrid fumes of the toxin that the short man slipped into Elia’s drink and watched him steal away with the the leather bound notebook as Elia lay slumped in his chair.
This was better than dreaming. It was tangible, it was real and it changed everything.
Humankind’s deepest secrets were out there ready to be rediscovered.
by submission | Mar 28, 2016 | Story |
Author : JWH
Gobbin hated this place. It stank of death and soldered metal. But then again, so did everywhere else in the belt these days.
Resulta, as the locals now called it, was originally settled as part of the water-ice mining boom in Orkon Crater, the only remaining traces of which were the scores of gaping rig-pits where iron fires now burned. Gobbin’s family once owned a drill lot here, but that was generations ago, long before the Burst.
“Help you, sir?”
Gobbin was still eyeing the smoke when he heard the old rock-breaker’s voice. He was brittle and bent, as though he hadn’t set foot off the asteroid in centuries.
“I’m looking for Dekar,” Gobbin said. “Or someone who knows where he is.”
“Never heard of him,” the old man wheezed. “But further down you may have more luck. That’s where the unseemlies tend to congregate. Figure it’s one of them you’re after.”
Gobbin placed a water pill in the man’s hand and walked toward the descendor. He could feel the searing heat through his suit, but inside he was calm. He was closer than ever to finding him. And this time, not even the Burst could save that son-of-a-bitch.
by submission | Mar 27, 2016 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Queen Chandrietta VI motioned for her Prime Minister to stop speaking while she gave instructions to the royal hairdresser. Her majesty was only one point nine three meters tall, fairly short by the standards of a native of Earth’s Moon. After thirty six generations, the human beings who inhabited Luna were much taller and thinner than their terrestrial ancestors. It wouldn’t do for the Moon’s monarch to appear too short. The Queen’s hair would need to be styled to aid the vertical lines of her dress and the high heels she wore to give the illusion of greater height.
“Continue,” she said to the nervous Prime Minister.
“Your majesty,” said the anxious man whose features suggested an East Asian ancestry, “the Royal Family, yourself excluded, have escaped. Their craft exited the rail launcher just before it was struck by a missile launched from lunar orbit. The New Zealand consulate on Lagrange V has offered them asylum and they are even now despinning their ring down to simulate lunar gravity.”
The Queen stood and faced the Prime Minister. “Shouldn’t the Combat Minister be handling this inconvenience?” she said with annoyance.
“My Queen, the Combat Minister says preventing Luna from being occupied is no longer an option. His strategy is to lure the enemy into the heart of Armstrong City and then to destroy the city’s supporting structures burying the enemy soldiers under tons of rocks and regolith.”
Chandrietta VI sighed as if she were conversing with a child. “You’re telling me, Mr. Prime Minister, that the man charged with protecting my kingdom plans to do so by annihilating its capital city?”
“Your majesty, the Russian Navy are too powerful. We have no choice but to make their assault so costly that it will force them to the negotiating table at which time we–”
This time the Queen silenced the Prime Minister with a look.
“Prime Minister, if I asked you to put me in communication with the Speaker of the Pan-American Senate and the President of China do you think that might be within your power?”
“Of course, your majesty.”
Three hours later, the Prime Minister of Luna again came before the Queen.
“Your majesty, the enemy have ceased their orbital bombardment and the few troops they’ve landed are lifting off from Luna. The enemy fleet is on a trajectory that will take it back to Earth. How–”
“Helium-3,” said the Queen. “For the next five years, China and Pan-America will get our helium-3 to power their fusion reactors for thirty percent under market price in exchange for their threatening to go to war with Russia on our behalf.”
“My Queen, you have saved–”
But the Queen was already walking away from her Prime Minister. This coiffure looks ridiculous, she thought to herself and sighed. I’ll simply have to get the royal orthopedist to extend my legs.
by submission | Mar 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Ian Hill
Harsh white floodlights drenched the area in a sterile haze.
Hundreds had gathered at short notice, all saturated with stomach-burning anxiety as they tried to figure out what was going to happen next. There they stood, packed together tightly, wondering if they would still exist a second from now. Those who managed to salvage some presence of thought held bulb-tipped microphones forward, trembling slightly in the chill wind. Most simply waited, hands stuffed in pockets, faces pallid and mouths flattened into thin lines.
At the front of the gathering was the white podium, draping its multicolored patriotic banners. Behind the lectern stood a tall, thin man whose weathered face wore a grave expression. Shadows under his eyes and the papery quality to his skin made the stress obvious. Slowly, he scanned the crowd, throat itching as words stumbled through his buzzing mind.
“I have no doubt that all of you are very worried.” He began, voice soft but imminently audible through the speaker system.
An absolute hush settled over the assembly in the wake of his first words since the disaster.
After a moment of gauging the crowd’s reactions, he continued. “Why aren’t we retaliating? Where is the war?” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Have we won already?”
A few people nodded as if their concerns were being voice for the first time. Most listened impassively, hearts gripped with terror. Only a handful had an inkling of what would be said during this address.
“Well, I can tell you this,” the man drawled solemnly, rising back to his full height, “this… tragedy exists not as an omen of war, but as a shield from it.”
A sudden wave of confusion passed over the crowd. Reporters exchanged uneasy glances, and a few people mumbled into each other’s ears. Here and there a pair of eyes widened in realization.
The man opened his mouth to speak again, but quickly closed it. He grimaced, shook his head, and looked down to the podium’s surface where his hands lay intertwined like two ivory spiders. A tiny bloodstain at his cuff acted as a brief distraction.
The susurration of an uneasy crowd drew the man’s attention back forward. It was clear what he had to say. Steeling himself, he continued. “The bombs were dropped at my order-”
An audible groan tremored through the crowd, and expressions shifted from fear to apprehension, and from apprehension to outrage. A few shouted out at the man, staggering forward as if they had violent intentions. Guards in front of the podium pushed them back. Someone from behind the stage moved forward and whispered into the speaker’s ear, but he shook his head, motioning them away.
“Please,” he said, voice louder now, arms outspread in a pacifying gesture, “allow me to explain.”
With shocking speed, the most vocal dissenters were ejected from the crowd. Those who remained stood stunned, minds slowly dissecting the new information.
The speaker powered on, determined to deliver what he had to say. “Six hours ago a mistake in our machinery led to orders being given to one of our planes to bomb the capital of our adversaries. We were unable to contact this rogue bomber. It quickly became clear that a war was unavoidable, unless we—unless I proved my trustworthiness to the prime minister…”
The crowd looked on in horror as the puzzle began to clarify.
“So an exchange of cities was arranged.” The man finished. It was clear now that everyone understood. He stepped back from the microphone and strode from the stage as the screaming started again.
by submission | Mar 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Rebkkh stepped into the large rec-pod, surveying the room’s occupants with an experienced eye. Two off-worlds were tipped back in their chairs sipping orange drinks, three off-worlds crowded appendages onto the table jabbering loudly, two more off-worlds wrapped their drinks in leathery fins.
A man was alone at a corner table sipping something golden. His bald head was ringed with gray wisps of hair that straggled over large ears. His nose seemed poised to drop into the glass at each sip. One eye winked in her direction. His hand opened slightly and closed again but not before she glimpsed a small object within it.
She moved across the room, careful to appear random in her choice of direction. She chose a table next to the rumpled man, putting her back to the wall to face him at an angle. She opened and closed her hand holding the wooden figure. Did he see it?
“Granddaughter, do you know what you hold?” The man murmured to the table as his eyes swept over her.
“My inheritance,” she whispered. “But no.”
“Come to Section D, Number 22, an hour after I leave. I can help.” He pushed himself up from his chair, placed tokens on the table, finished his drink, and left.
An hour later, Rebkkh hesitated outside the D22 door. Should she knock? Should she cough? Should she turn around and run?
The door slid open. The strange yet almost familiar man ushered Rebkkh to a platform couch and asked her to sit. He sat close beside her to whisper, “Let me see it.”
The hair on the back of her neck rose and Rebkkh’s heartbeats crowded each other. She had to know what it was, no matter what. So much mystery about this object. Her family had never spoken about it, had never spoken at all when it was placed in her hand. Only the scrap of paper around it told of this man and where to find him. But who was he? Why?
She opened her hand. Lying on her palm was a crudely carved piece of what she guessed was wood. A man wearing a funny headpiece seemed to look back at her.
The old man opened his hand and showed her the figure’s twin.
She gasped. “Tell me please.”
“Countless centuries ago our family owned many such carved characters and kept them in a box with squares carved on it. Some characters were identical to this and some represented kings, queens, horses, castles, and bishops.”
“What’s a bishop?” Rebkkh couldn’t stop herself from speaking.
“These belonged to a game of skill and intelligence, something our people had in abundance. Others hated us and long, long ago when our people still practiced religion…”
“What’s religion?”
“Their government butchered us and stole our treasures.”
“Why?”
“A fortunate descendant found this one family treasure so many centuries ago, and each branch of the family was given a piece to cherish and to remind us of who we are.”
“Who are we?”
The old man’s wrinkles at the corner of his mouth crowded each other as he smiled. “Granddaughter, let me whisper the Truth to you. We have a proud yet humble history that you should know. Be sure to tell your children and their children. You must pass down our secret.”
Rebkkh leaned toward him, her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t interrupt.
He began his story.
But there came a banging on the door.
