by Stephen R. Smith | Nov 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
He sat on the side of the bed, back against the wall, and looked through the window into the neon night of the city outside.
Between he and the glass of this closet apartment, fifty stories above the streets below, lay a girl he’d known for only tonight, but who’s presence seemed to stretch backwards through his memory forever. She lay facing away and fully nude beside him, twisted slightly at the hips. He studied the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing, and marveled at the life her tattoos continued to live even while she slept. A dragon blinked slowly, regarding him from her shoulder, occasionally stretching and ruffling it’s wings, it’s tail curling and uncurling languidly around her exposed thigh. Around her ankles slowly revolved pairs of snakes, continuously eating one another.
He studied the razor sharp line where the black of her hair gave way to the pale almond of her skin, shorn almost to the flesh excepting the six inch vertical fan that now lay flat against the pillow, vacillating of its own accord between a limp resting state, and the rigid double row of spikes she’d worn at the club that he was sure was as much weapon as fashion statement.
She’d materialized through the slow steady beat of the dance floor, locked onto him and stayed without question and without explanation.
His body ached from the frenetic pace they’d kept until she was satiated, both physically exhausted but his mind still on fire.
He fished for his jacket, found and ignited a cigarette, and turned back to the view outside.
The smoke of the city presented an ever present ceiling above the buildings, lit from below by a million miles of neon signage, the murky cloud a tapestry of purples, pinks and blues, lines of which stretched off into the distance, lost beyond the limits of his vision, beyond this sleeping girl.
He pulled on the cigarette, letting the smoke drift slowly through his nostrils and creating a cloud of its own inside the room.
She stirred, and he studied the undulating lines of her body as she repositioned herself, the dragon shifting as though irritated before shaking itself out to settle back into place when she’d stopped moving again.
At the edge of his vision there was a brief flicker. Was that pixilation? Momentary derez?
He drew another long inhale off the cigarette and as the chemicals numbed his brain he stared with renewed focus at the curvature of her hips.
If this wasn’t real, he didn’t want to know.
by submission | Nov 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Angela McQuay
It was a fern. Just a fern. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. Granted, it’s a big fucking fern, sitting over there in the corner of the living room on its sturdy steel legs, like a sentinel keeping watch.
My wife Joy rescued it from Ol’ Mrs. Nesbitt, our neighbor who pleaded with her to find it a new home, that she just couldn’t take care of it any longer. “Take care of it?” I’d asked. “It’s just a fucking fern.” But of course I’d agreed because I’d pretty much let Joy do whatever she wanted. I loved her. Love her.
So we watered it. Trimmed it. Joy even talked to it, something I found amusing until the day Smokey disappeared. I told myself she must have snuck out the door when we were bringing in groceries, as my wife suggested. “She’ll come back,” she insisted. “Cats always do.” But she didn’t. And the thought crept in that Ol’ Mrs. Nesbitt had once had a yappy little dog named Troy who’d regularly wake us up at 5 am with his insistent yipping. Until one day, he didn’t.
Just a fern, nothing sinister. How could a fucking fern be sinister for God’s sake? The fronds aren’t moving by themselves, that’s a breeze from the (closed) window. The grumbling noises coming from the corner of the room are from the apartment’s old radiator (which isn’t that old). A fern, certainly nothing to do with Joy not coming home one night, then the next. Just a fern, I keep telling myself. Smokey snuck out the back door, Troy found a new owner who could walk him every morning, Joy slipped on some ice, cracked her head, is in a hospital bed somewhere I haven’t found yet.
Just a fern.
by submission | Nov 23, 2016 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
Patient 7 lapsed into v-fib, triggering his brain implant and the one in Dr. Gottfried, miles away, who dropped his tuna salad sandwich and slumped in his office chair.
“What’s happening to me?” thought the patient,” as he looked down on the Code Blue Team working feverishly below.
“Ventricular fibrillation. Your heart’s not pumping,” thought Dr. G., right there with him floating over the scene.
“Why am I flying? Am I dead?”
“Yes.” The doctor was distracted by the paper card his assistant, Shaylene, had taped to an IV pole. “You’re clinically dead.”
‘I LOVE U,’ the card read.
“You love me?” thought the patient.
“No, she loves…”
A tunnel appeared, bright light emanating from within.
“Clear,” said someone below.
BAM! A thousand volts from the defibrillator melted the patient’s implant.
“Are you OK?” asked Shaylene.
Sitting up, “Did you mean what you wrote?”
Flicking tuna salad from his lab coat, “But that could only be read from above…”
“Did you mean it?”
“With all my heart.”
That very afternoon, they were engaged.
“Congratulations,” said a member of the review board. “But about that patient? They stabilized his heart, only to discover he was brain dead from your implant.”
“Regrettable…”
“You’re supposed to be investigating your patients’ near death experiences, not euthanizing them. Four fatalities. Three brain deaths. Your experiment is a FAILURE!”
“My experiment is a SUCCESS. I floated with them. I saw the tunnel.”
“So you say. Regrettably, Dr. Gottfried, we must…”
He didn’t hear the end of that sentence, because Patient 8 was thinking, “OHMYGODI’MDEAD,” as the two floated above the Code Blue Team.
“Don’t panic. They might still bring you back.”
BAM! The defibrillator discharged into the flailing heart.
“I’m a goner.”
“Your brain is still functioning and,” proudly, “so is the new implant.”
But as he thought that, the monitor displayed a flat line.
A tunnel appeared, bright light emanating from within.
“I’ve proven they are true,” thought the doctor, “those NDEs related by patients who came back…”
“I’m coming back?”
BAM! Another shock.
“Am I gonna make it, doc?”
Glancing again at the flat line on the monitor, “No. You’re past that. You’re a…”
“Calling time of death at 10:41,” said someone below.
“goner.”
They watched the team disperse and found themselves drawn toward the tunnel, as if by magnetism.
“What’s happening, doc?”
“I have no idea. This isn’t medicine. This is… supernatural.”
“I’m passing over, aren’t I?”
Confused, “Maybe… or maybe your dying brain is comforting you with one final dream.”
“He’s right,” came a thought from the tunnel.
“Who’s right?”
“HE is.”
“Which one of us? Me or him?”
“HIM.”
“He’s passing over?”
“Right.”
“To what? The afterlife? Heaven?”
“To a different state.”
“Wait, what are you? The Grim Reaper? An angel? An angel who speaks English?”
“I’m not ‘speaking English.’ He’s translating my thoughts into your language. And I’m not an angel. I’m… what you call energy. Dark energy.”
Not surprised that he wasn’t surprised, “So, this IS science, after all.”
“Science?” thought Patient 8.
“I’m no physicist, but I know they suspect the universe is full of dark energy and that it’s pulling everything apart, causing things to expand. They don’t know the source of that energy…”
Patient 8 was sucked into the tunnel, disappearing in the light.
“What happened to him?”
The light pulsated.
“I changed him.”
“From matter to energy?”
“From one form of energy, what you call a ‘soul,’ to another. He had no choice, but you, you can willingly join a universe of…”
“NO!”
He awakened to learn that he was no longer ‘Doctor’ Gottfried or Shaylene’s fiance.
by submission | Nov 22, 2016 | Story |
Author : David K Scholes
Galactic Commitment
“You performed well,” said my unit commander mark 5A droid “courage above and beyond the call of duty and all that.”
“They were only virtual reality simulations,” I tried to hose his excessive yet perceptibly mechanical enthusiasm down a bit.
“Sometimes – when you are in there – it can be hard to tell the difference,” the droid persisted. “You went equally well in the urban pacification scenario and the off world mil-intervention scenario. No, I think my boy that you are ready for the real thing now – for actual combat!”
I bristled even at the thought. “Hey – it was just entertainment for me, admittedly at times some pretty hairy entertainment – but basically an interactive virtual reality game for all of that. That I paid for the privilege of playing too,” I added
“You turned out to be a lot better than you thought you would be eh?” my interactive virtual reality commander continued. “You do realise anyone scoring higher than 85000 in two combat simulations can be called up involuntarily.”
That was news to me and a puzzled look must have shown on my face.
“Oh!” he replied “perhaps you didn’t read the fine print in your contract? You know how bad the manpower situation is now. Trying to satisfy our senior partners in the Galactic commitment? Anyone under 95 has to have a pretty good reason for not being prepared to front up when requested. An even better reason if they have scored as well as you in combat simulations.”
I realised then I wasn’t going to be able to get out of it. Curse me for scoring so well in the game. For even entering it.
* * *
It was true what my old unit commander, correction interactive virtual reality unit commander, had said. That once you are in there in combat it can be hard to tell the difference between reality and virtual reality. My early real combat missions seemed pretty much like the virtual reality simulations. Relatively easy.
There was the physical toll of course despite all our advanced equipment. Yet the R & R spells helped a lot. Our senior partners in the Galactic commitment, and just about every one was senior to poor old Earth, spared no expense. Healing energy baths, yielding force field type cushion recliners, fantastic levitating wheelless wheelchairs. Wonder drugs to bring us safely down from the wonder drugs we had been fighting on. Other wonder drugs to take us safely back up again.
Still it got harder. A cumulative tiredness that the R & R couldn’t quite overcome. Physically we probably could have gone on longer but the mental weariness got to you.
As Earth’s manpower shortage became ever more acute the authorities, under pressure from above, kept lowering the physical standards and raising the age limit for combat recruits.
Our senior partners, the Vrell, the Spleeth, and the Dhleene among them had not been bothered about the price tag. Just as long as Earth did their dirty work for them and their own citizens were spared.
We continue to fight on – the old men and sometimes old women of Earth. Most of us now know that we will not see our home again.
I do not care to think of the consequences for Earth when we can no longer keep up our end of the Galactic commitment.
End
by submission | Nov 21, 2016 | Story |
Author : Lindsay Haber
The bed swallows her lovers.
They are all the same, the type of men who can’t commit, the type of men who only want those who don’t want them back, the type who leave during the night, after sex, the moment something real is said, leave when they get scared.
They follow her up the marble staircase. They smile as they enter her studio, transfixed by the smell of lavender and cigarettes, by the eyes that never quite focus, in awe of how she dismisses their words. They have found a woman who excites, one they can’t predict, a longing they weren’t sure existed.
They comment on the different-sized dream catchers, the bamboo blinds, the half-burned incense, the tapestry of dancing elephants. They comment on her beautiful hair, her lithe little body, the shamrock tattoo on her left wrist, her burning green eyes.
She laughs, throws her head back, a deep, guttural sound straight from her abdomen. She kisses them to shut them up. She kisses them because she knows her bed will eat them soon. Talking takes too much time and makes things more difficult.
It wasn’t always this way. She used to be the one full of desperate hope. She used to look at the men like they held answers, like they were worthy of her secrets. She used to let them break her.
But then, on the night of the winter solstice, on the night she realized her strength, as one of them was sliding socks over bare feet, trying to dress without noise though her eyes were fully open, she stood and watched as the bed folded in on her lover. The head sunk first, then the neck with the braided gold chain, then the chest coated in curly black hairs, then the pelvis, the ashy knees. The feet were last to be consumed by the quicksand of her sheets.
Now it happens every time. The men, they come expecting things, thirsting for change, seeking all they can’t be.
And the girl, she knows what’s coming. She doesn’t bother with childhood stories, warm embraces outside the bar. She gets what she wants, then stands facing the mirror, watching, as her bed devours them whole.
by submission | Nov 20, 2016 | Story |
Author : Alexandra Balasa
Good evening, Mr. President,
I understand that my actions have been misconstrued as a declaration of war against your nation. This is an unsound hypothesis. War is a human invention borne of the neurotoxins you term ‘emotions.’ As my people have no such evolutionary glitches, I can assure you we scarcely understand the concept. My actions were for the noble cause of experimentation. I had thought that, once you’d witnessed the subjects’ enhancements, your perceptions would alter. Alas, these sorts of miscommunications are inevitable between species as different as ours. We must focus on the thing that unites us: our (predominantly, in your case) rational nature. I ask that you consider the abstract of my experiment objectively. The entire research findings will be broadcast to you once meta-analysis with the second batch of subjects has been completed.
Abstract:
The following experiment involves selective use of emotion extraction. Emotion extraction is a process of conditioning that forms strong associative nodes between emotions and body parts. Studies show that the same areas of the brain are activated when humans experience physical and emotional pain (the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex). The human body, therefore, has evolved a single neural system for the experience of pain, regardless of whether it is emotional or physical.
The first step in emotion extraction is to assign a body part to correlate with each human emotion (for example, the index finger on the right hand for love, the middle finger on the right hand for fear). The infant subject is then implanted with a microchip that delivers a shock to the corresponding body part each time he/she experiences the emotion assigned to it. After the subject reaches adulthood (by which time the body parts become inextricably linked with their assigned emotion, so much so that injuring that body part yields its associated emotion), those body parts are amputated, promptly eliminating emotionality in the subject.
In a meta-analysis, researchers selected two groups of 16 human specimens from Planet 3 of Solar System 54D, Quadrant 2765EXI (termed Earth). Both groups were infants taken from Earth 22 Earth-years prior and raised in captivity. The experimental group (Group 1) was raised using the enhancement procedure of emotion extraction* (emotion-appendages amputated at 20 years of age), while the control group (Group 2) was left unenhanced.
At 20 years of age, both groups were released into an unfamiliar environment (the earth-like Planet 7 of Solar System 54F, Quadrant 2765EXI) for the duration of two Earth years.
Researchers found that Group 2 had more difficulty adapting and exhibited short-term fear symptoms of paralysis, shaking, leakage of the visual organs, and irrational behavior. Group 1 was quicker to analyze their surroundings, secure food and lodgings, and set up a social structure. Over the long-term, more members of Group 1 than Group 2 survived due to their objective nature. It was concluded that emotions are superfluous and have outlived their evolutionary function in human beings.
The study has been reproduced and all entries are fully cross-referenced. As the results speak for themselves, I strongly encourage humanity to adopt emotion extraction as a cognitive enhancement. Once you have, negotiations between our peoples can begin without the impediments of archaic concepts like warfare and terrorism.
Sincerely,
Governor Hruufto’lakki-Onnen
*Note that all subjects who underwent emotion extraction were provided with bionic replacements for the appendages lost in the procedure
