by submission | Nov 29, 2016 | Story |
Author : Neil Herndon
Looking out. Or looking in. Do we stare into the expanse, or does it and its inhabitants look in on us? Which one of us is the exhibit in a zoo?
In space, windows are structural weaknesses. Down here, if we have windows at all, they need to be over five inches thick. And if we don’t want them to be cones, it needs to be twice that. All the way down here, there’s no light from the surface. It’s pure blackness, a sea of ink.
But I was born here, way down here at the bottom of the world. Where nothing grows. Where no light from the sun reaches. And yet, here we are. Living and growing. And I count myself lucky. Not because the hull of the habitat hasn’t been crushed by millions of pounds of ocean water ready to fill this tiny bubble of air, but because I’m here to worry about that at all.
Limited resources, limited space. Only so many births per year so we don’t exhaust what little we have. Everything’s based on math. Statistics. Crop yield. Air availability. Water. Living area. Required systems and facilities. But we’ve been down here so long, there’s now an entire generation of people who’ve known only the habitat. Born without knowing the surface, without feeling the sun’s rays. We’ve known only this depth, this pressure. Could we even exist above?
This little experiment someone thought was a good idea has become a permanent colony. A nation unto itself.
Some days, I like to pretend we’re actually out among the stars instead of below the ocean. One extreme to another. A space station drifting among the cosmic dust. We can turn on flood lights and look out to our kingdom beneath the sea, but it doesn’t help. Just more darkness. And tiny specks of white. Dad says they look like stars. When he shows me pictures, it’s uncanny. Such brilliance. Such vastness. It seems to go forever. Just like the inky void surrounding us. So I pretend that we chose out there instead of down here. Just for a change of scenery.
There’s something down here. With us. I see it moving late at night. These blue-green lights swim by, shimmering against the backdrop in patterns that shouldn’t exist in nature. Maybe they don’t. It feels so inorganic. Dad says I’m seeing things. Hallucinations from the oxygen mixture. Ocean madness he called it, everyone gets it from time to time. The result of an existence with no natural light, and no real sense of time. That’s why we have the day room, a suite that mimics life on the surface as close as possible.
But it’s not madness. Steve’s dad got Ocean Madness. Got the shakes, the cold sweats, the forgetfulness. I don’t forget. I don’t see strange shadows in the corridors. But I do see the beast. Out there, in the water. In the void. I swear, it comes around at the same time, every night. Maybe it’s drawn by the frequency change from the electrical equipment.
Or maybe it’s looking in on me.
It knows I’ll be there. So it waits. It swims passed, hoping to get a glimpse through my window, my tiny portal to the unknown. Maybe it knows I’m looking for it. So it looks right back. The whole point of this experiment, this colony was to see if life below the surface was possible. No less possible than a colony on the moon or Mars. Only down here, there might already be residents.
And we didn’t ask permission to come.
by submission | Nov 28, 2016 | Story |
Author : Matthew Harrison
The mood in the meeting room, dominated by the large screen, was subdued. Only the tall silver-haired figure of James sat unperturbed, yet like the others he was waiting. The younger executives fidgeted.
“How long’s it going to be today?” said Marty, unable to keep silent any longer. “It’s getting worse and worse.” Curly-haired and sharp-suited, he was the rising star of the company – and looked as though he didn’t want to be there at all.
Sandra, looping blonde hair over one ear, glanced at the screen for the umpteenth time. “Nope, still engaged.”
Marty snorted. “What happened to parallel processing?” he appealed to the group. “I thought that was what we were supposed to get.”
One of the other executives mumbled, “Can’t we meet remotely? Don’t see why we have to bloody well be in the same room.” He got up as if to leave.
“I would stay if I were you,” James said quietly. The executive stopped, checked his phone, and sat down again.
Time passed. Sandra got up and adjusted the blinds now that the sun had gone behind the adjacent building. Sitting down, she flipped again through the PowerPoint that she had printed out, murmuring, “China, China, China,” under her breath. Then without looking up, she said, “I’m learning Mandarin, you guys.”
There was a general groan.
Marty had a copy of the PowerPoint too. He leaned towards James, stabbing the document with his forefinger. “What is the basis for this? We are committing everything to China, but it doesn’t show the demand – or even why we’re doing it. This plan,” he flipped through the pages, “it’s a complete black box.”
“We go forward in faith,” James said, without looking at the document, “as we have always done.”
Something in his senior’s complacency riled Marty. “I thought algorithms were supposed to give us analysis,” he objected. “Deep learning, big data, and stuff. Yet look at this – it’s just ramming China down our throats!” He brandished the PowerPoint at his colleague.
“And who wrote the algo anyway?” he continued as James remained unmoved. “Shouldn’t we have him as Chief Executive?”
James cleared his throat. “It’s not the analysis that counts in the end. It’s the wisdom. How all the factors are weighted, run through their dynamics, and distilled into a single mission statement – a China mission statement, if you will. That’s what we’re paying for, or what the shareholders are paying for.”
“But if you can’t re-perform the analysis?” Marty put a finger into the air. “It’s just…”
“…Animal spirits.” James completed the sentence for him. “Randomness. The same as it always was.” He was still sitting with arms folded.
Marty threw up his hands. “God help us!”
The big screen flickered. James raised an eyebrow. The other executives composed themselves and sat up, ready to receive instructions.
An iconic image of a samurai warrior appeared on the screen. “I want you all to focus,” intoned the CE, its voice slightly mechanical. “It’s the next big thing. I want you to live and think and breathe Japan…”
by submission | Nov 27, 2016 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
“Of course I’ll miss you Serge. I love you” Ren said over-compensating.
“Don’t act rash. It’s a small glitch. The error log’s sent and the patch fix will be here soon” Her voice now a car crash, teetering on the edge of conviction.
Slumped in the kitchen drawer, I rose, wrestled despair from my hairy eyelids, then caught a smirk fading on her face.
“Really?” I shrilled. Springing to my feet and looking up at her.
“I’m stuck in this and you’re laughing at me?” gesturing at my tiny furry body.
Her clenched jaw buttressing a flood of laughter.
“It’s the System that’s a joke, not you Serge. Having your hard-light projection crash like that can’t be easy, especially when it turns you into a cute squirrel, with a big cuddly tail”
She giggled, then reached out teasingly to stroke my tail.
I angrily whipped it away and leapt onto the kitchen bench.
“Another nut” She pointed.
I glanced at the peanut in my tiny squirrel hand and placed it carefully in a bowl on the bench.
“I keep finding them” I sighed through beady eyes. Then took a settling breath and bounced away.
“I’m grateful Ren” My high pitched voice echoed from behind the fridge.
“If System hadn’t scanned my brain after the accident, I wouldn’t be here with you. But I’m a grown man, not a rodent. I have needs!” I stabbed my tiny claws into the air.
“I know Darling” She smiled.
Fine whiskers surfaced from a bowl of grapes.
“Nut” She giggled, pointing again.
I added it to the bowl and the strain surrendered on my tiny squirrel face.
“I’ve had enough Ren. I want it to stop” I buried my face in my hands.
Silence grew like a freezing fog.
The sound of a new system notification scared the quietness away and Ren quickly responded.
“Play new message”
System’s gentrified voice rang out.
“Squirrelfix patch download now available”
Silence stretched an unknown moment.
“Just one more chance Serge” Ren begged.
“Fine. One more” I said stubbornly from inside the bread bin and leapt down to the floor.
“System. Install Squirrelfix” I ordered.
An Alice in Wonderland sense of perspective overcame me.
Ren gaped.
“What?” I queried.
“Well am I me?” I asked.
She pointed towards the mirror and I returned a smile at the reflection of my human form.
I turned and a huge squirrel tail flicked up like a hairy anaconda.
I gritted my teeth and angrily reached for it. Chasing air circles like Grandma’s stupid dog.
She bellowed with laughter, unable to hold back anymore as dizziness threw me head first into the fridge door.
I steadied myself and got to my feet, spiking a nut I had found into the bowl.
“That’s it!” I shouted and stormed into the Living Room.
“Request shutdown system access. Authorise Serge Braithwaite. Password….” I said loudly.
“No Serge. No!” Ren butted in, yelling.
I gave Ren a look of determination.
“R943YX”
System responded.
“System is currently experiencing shutdown request overload. Please try again later”
I collapsed on the couch staring into space and Ren slowly joined me.
After a long while, I looked down and opened my hand revealing another nut. Ren snickered, then reached over and grabbed it, her rose perfume washing over me.
“I like nuts you know” She whispered.
I watched in horror as she tossed it into her mouth.
She cheekily looked at me as she slowly began to chew.
“Yeah I know” I said.
“But not as much as me” And climbed on top of her.
by BeckD | Nov 26, 2016 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
Hureaat “walked” into the library, tiptoeing on his fingers, three on each hand, carrying a stack of books on his stable, triangular platform of a head/body. He made his way over to my table and used three of his six arms to lift up the books, revealing his six eyes in detail, and place them down on said table. Then he opened with a very alien statement. Not to say that was surprising.
“These books,” his translation device said, “say that your race operates on a base ten system. But that isn’t at all the case.”
Great. “What? Of course we do.”
“No. You have ten fingers, and you add a digit to your number system for every power of ten, but that’s not your base number. Two is.”
“No, it’s not! That’s what base system means: you add a digit every power of your base number! A base two system would be terrible, and it’s a blessing we don’t have one.”
“Nevertheless, two is far more important to your mathematics. I suspect it has something to do with your bilateral symmetry, which also mystifies me.”
“Bilateral symmetry is good for swimming. Which is what everyone was doing a few hundred million years ago. On Earth at least.”
“Jellyfish are good at swimming,” he retorted. “And we have some good trilateral swimming species on–” his translator cut off for a second so he could say the proper noun himself– “DUMAI’IN.”
“But two’s still good. I mean, half of all numbers are even. Divisible by two.”
“‘Half.’ To get half, you divide by *two*. One third of all numbers are–” cutoff– “SESHALSEMAYN.”
“Say… shall-see-main?”
“Divisible by three.”
“Oh. Well, dividing things in half is still extremely useful. It leaves two halves. Err, one midpoint.”
“Dividing things by three leaves one midsection. And dividing by three is just as useful.”
“What if you wanted to divide something up for two people?”
“What if you wanted to divide something between three?”
“Well, two is just above one. Two is the lowest number that you need to be able to divide anything at all! You don’t need to divide something ‘between one people.’”
“Yes. But two is not one. And, on that note, three is just above two, apparently an important number for you. The same logic applies then.”
I, a human, actually growled. “Well… two’s the only even prime number! Ha!”
“Yes,” Hureaat said stoically. “It is, because all even numbers after it are divisible by two.”
Got him, I thought.
“And all– SESHALSEMAYN– numbers after three aren’t prime, because they are all divisible by th–”
“Gah, come on!” I said, slamming my fists on the table. I could tell, even on that otherworldly face, that I had scared him. He hurriedly picked up his books and placed them back on his head.
“Hureaat, no. I’m sorry.”
“You have become defensive of the number two. I will go. Perhaps some other time.”
“Hureaat, I said I’m sorry! Does that translate to Dumai’ini? Hureaat?” He was already gone.
I really did get defensive, I thought. I gotta let go of “two.” Maybe it’s not all that important after all.
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.
