by submission | Mar 22, 2017 | Story |
Author : Joachim Heijndermans
Danny was convinced the moon was an eye. A single, blind eye that stared down at the world, slowly closing once a month. An eye that stared down at the little people, watching them with an intense hunger. He knew this was the truth, but no-one believed him, no matter how hard he tried to convince them.
“He’s a crazy man,” said the old woman down the street.
“He’s funny,” said the little girl. “’Specially when he’s telling us th’ eye’s watching us. He thinks it’s a big monster.”
“The guy’s a lunatic, shaking his fist at the sky all the livelong day. Always going on about his “eye” nonsense,” said the garbage man.
“Such a poor tortured soul, haunted by his delusions,” said the pastor.
“He is in denial. Does he not realize the moon is mostly made of anorthosite? It’s a round satellite going around and around our planet, that vanishes because the planet blocks the rays of the sun from hitting it. There’s nothing alien of monstrous about it. It’s basic science,” said the school teacher.
Yes, no-one ever believed Danny. For years, he went on and on how the blind eye was staring down at them. That it was some hideous beast that was abiding its time, letting its hunger grow until the time for it to feast was upon us. And every time, the people would laugh or brush him off, trying not to get close to the crazy man who shook his fist at the sky.
Then the second eye opened.
by submission | Mar 21, 2017 | Story |
Author : David C. Nutt
“I don’t need to explain it to you again Mr. Ambassador. There’s absolutely nothing you can do but accept our terms.”
“This is an outrage! It’s piracy! It’s –
“Yes, it’s all that and more- but it doesn’t alter the facts one little bit now does it?”
“No. It doesn’t. (Sigh) We had such hope. We thought it would be different.”
“Yeah I get it. It was the same for my people too. One day we thought we were alone in the universe and the next day they came out of the sky. We were awestruck by their technology. They ended world hunger, disease, our energy problems, made us instantly sustainable.”
“Then your bill came due.”
“Yup. Took almost all of our silicates. Most of our ferrous materials as well.”
“At least you didn’t lose two ice caps.”
“Hey, you can replace most of that with what’s floating around your asteroid belt. That will hold you until you can construct the fleet to siphon hydrogen and other easily convertibles from your gas giants. We gave you the technology to do it.”
“But it will take nearly everything we have! Assuming we can put aside our differences and cooperate on this, even with the tech you gave us it will be hundreds of years until we can replace the water from the ice you’re taking. Why didn’t you just go get the water from another gas giant? From one of your own stars?”
“Well, here’s where things get complicated. Our system doesn’t have any gas giants. The nearest star has another system that owns the rights to that star and the next three or four other stars in our neighborhood. You guys were our next stop after all that. You’ve got premium ice, readily available plus water, hydrogen, methane, ammonia and other resources to spare. We trade your ice for the rights to one of those stars a tad bit closer to our home world and we can replace the silicates and other materials we lost with our first contact.”
“There’s no one we can call for help is there?”
“Oh yeah, plenty! But if you think this is a raw deal try paying the bill for protection. Do the words ‘nitrogen and argon’ mean anything to you? Be thankful we found you first and only took what we did. We could have taken more but, well, my people have a soft spot for first contacts.”
“I’m moved. So what can we do to guard our resources from the next race that comes by?”
“Here’s where I get to ease your pain. Ten of your days after we leave your system and are long gone we will send you the blueprints for a planetary defense system that will keep just about every known race in the galaxy at bay.”
“How much is that gonna cost us?”
“Mr. Ambassador! I’m truly hurt.”
“I’d rather front load the pain than have you come back in two decades and take an ocean or two.”
“I assure you our terms are totally reasonable.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re going to ask me for the sun and the moon.”
“Nonsense. Just the moon.”
by Julian Miles | Mar 20, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
This precious space used to be an overgrown park, rarely visited by day and a haven for crime by night. Now it sits as a spot of verdant life amidst ruined towers and shadowed thoroughfares. Those who dwell here call it ‘Greenheart’. It is the start of something new.
“Who’s the lady in the blindfold, papa?”
Lilly points at the weed-twined fallen statue next to their stoop, held from being prone by a tripod consisting of its plinth, an outstretched arm, and the broken sword gripped in the opposite hand.
“Another goddess from heathen times. Her name was ‘Chus Tiss’, but those she afflicted nicknamed her ‘Blind Meg’. She clouded men’s minds so they could only follow rules.”
“Right and rules aren’t always the same, are they?”
“Truth spoken. Evil hides in blind obedience and evil men took advantage of her ways to rise to prominence. In so doing, she served Fear.”
“Did she bring about the Ending?”
“No, child. She certainly set the stage for the insanities to cavort upon, but the curtain was brought down by Fear, as always.”
“Fear is the true enemy, isn’t it?”
“It is. Right could crumble before Fear, but rules hold it back. However, if Right becomes too obsessed with Fear, it can make rules that let Fear spread instead of reining it in.”
“So, Blind Meg got sent down when the nukey seeds fell and hellflowers bloomed?”
“She did. Along with every other pretender. Now we have Sun, Moon, Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Storm from which to weave rules to keep Fear in check.”
“I like the Moon.”
“That you do, child. I think there is a priestess or even a witch in your calling.”
“Sun will light my way, but that’s for a tomorrow after tomorrow. Today, I want to be a Pegasus.”
“And so you shall be, missy. Give me those handcloths and we’ll have made you wings before mama gets back.”
A shadow falls across them and a laughing voice makes them smile: “I’m wise to your wing-making ways, papa bear. Unhand my dining implements and fetch my daughter some decent linen to make her wings. And bring some wire to frame them with. Everyone knows that a Pegasus’s wings stand tall.”
“Mama! You escaped!”
“Only for a while. None of the elders would gainsay me time with my family, just like I wouldn’t do that to them. We’ll have a Pegasus picnic right here on the stoop, then I’ll go back to putting the reins on fear and the right into rules.”
There is a place called Greenheart. Its beat will eventually invigorate this blasted world and let wonders return.
by submission | Mar 19, 2017 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
Azova, Girgin, and Rastat floated through a hole blasted in the alien ship’s hull. Inside, everything was trashed. Whatever had destroyed this ship had been thorough. The computer systems were all but disintegrated. The ship was in complete vacuum, in fact sparser than the interstellar space outside. There was no gravity, caused by linear acceleration, rotation, or otherwise.
And the crew was frozen.
Their corpses were hard to identify at first, but the statuesque structures sitting in the middle of all the halls were unmissable. Once Girgin had examined them thoroughly, he concluded that they were frozen organisms, most likely the sentients in control of this ship.
“Well, why are they frozen?” Azova asked. “What could’ve done all this to their ship, in addition to *that*?”
“I don’t know off the top of my head, Azova,” Girgin replied. “It’ll require an investigation. I’m going to do a biopsy on one of them and analyze the substance encasing them in my lab.”
“Just one small sample,” Rastat said. “We don’t want to disturb the site. Treat it like a crime scene.”
“Yes, sir.” Girgin took his sample, chipping off a piece of one of the organisms, and they all returned to their ship.
The next day, Girgin rushed into the mess hall, shouting for attention. The other two were having breakfast, along with Crimien and Tsafon, the astronomer and computer specialist who had stayed behind during the other three’s jaunt. Girgin was holding the sample.
“It’s glass!”
The rest of them were utterly bewildered. Tsafon, however, soon understood what he was referring to, and tried to catch on.
“Are you saying that… that they were silicon-based, and the heat from their demise melted that silicon and, uh, vitrified them?” He gasped. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
Girgin gave him a look. “What? No. It’s biological. It’s a protein that encases them when they dry out!”
“A bioweapon, employed by their attackers?” Azova guessed.
“No! They did it on purpose!” While the rest of them gawked at him, he explained: “There are terrestrial animals called tadigrades that entomb themselves in this protein-based glass when the environment can’t support them. When conditions become favorable again, the glass breaks apart, and they resume their metabolism. These creatures must be doing the same thing! *They’re still alive*!”
None of them could believe it. Rastat snapped out of it first, saying, “So we can revive them?”
“Yes! And all it would take is exposing them to normal conditions. They might’ve depressurized their own ship, in order to induce this state and stay alive during the accident. Or the attack. It doesn’t matter which one it was; we’ll be able to ask them!” He turned to the computer specialist. “Crimien, do you think you can tease out a little of the ship’s life support data? We need to know what kind of climate is habitable for them, and then I can replicate it in my isolation chamber.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Crimien said.
“Good. Can you order everyone to suit up, Rastat? I wouldn’t want to overstep my bounds.”
Mildly exasperated, Rastat said, “You heard him.”
The whole crew donned spacesuits, and they drifted over to the wreckage. While Crimien did his best with the computers, everyone else hauled dry alien popsicles back aboard. Six hours later, with the life support data and ten alien bodies in hand, Girgin pressurized the isolation chamber and watched as, one by one, the aliens loosened, slumped, returned to color….
…And breathed.
by submission | Mar 18, 2017 | Story |
Author : Samuel Stapleton
“Your Excellency. We can’t move on this. The Intelligence Protection Community is watching too closely. Humans have made their move, their motion for an open debate court was approved.”
“This is ludicrous! They’ve been slaves for less than 30 Earth years. Every other subspecies has served for a minimum of 500 galactic years!”
“Yes, but they aren’t arguing over the Time Frame or the Legitimacy of Servitude Clauses.”
“Well what then?”
“Have you heard about the Rorschach Measures?”
“The new interface? Yes, I think my son is using it, what of it?”
“Distant chatter on multiple nets claim it was designed and written by a single human, with the help of an AI she also designed.”
“How would that even be possible? As a species they failed every single standard intelligence measure, they lost every shot they had at being classified as a prospecies.”
“Our team has been pouring over data from their home world. Did you know their population was 23 billion at maximum capacity? It’s larger than any other known species home planet. And I think we missed a key environmental pressure.”
“Which is?”
“Because of the complex nature of measuring intelligence the galactic society has always assumed that the most advanced organisms only peak after extended periods of evolution and adaption. As a species the humans have barely left the fertilization stage, but we’ve been looking into a phenomenon they call neuro-plasticity. They define it like this:
The brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Neuro-plasticity allows the neurons in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.
Their biology is very common – carbon based, we’ve seen it a thousand times before. But we’ve never seen a central nervous system develop in such leaps and bounds. I think we greatly underestimated the combination of their biology and the environment of their home world. They’re arguing that the galactic tests are old, outdated, and inherently biased.”
“We’ve heard that argument before. What’s different this time?”
“They claim to have already designed a different one. Better. One that they slipped into the Rorschach Measures interface…and that…according to the data they’ve collected…not one intelligent organism has passed ‘critical intelligence indicators’ other than humans…in fact we can’t even identify where the test was hidden in the coding.”
“They hid this test in a public user interface? How long have we been looking?”
“The interface went live a little over three galactic years ago. It’s now the 13th most used interface galactically speaking.”
“What’s her name?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The human female slave, what’s her name?”
“Well we’re still working on tracking her down sir, but we’ve found reference material that links her to a common user name on the net.”
“And it is?”
“She calls herself Darwin.”
“What relevance does that have?”
“We aren’t sure if it means anything sir. We’re still looking into it.”
“And Rorschach – figure out what that is as well. Humans are so young it boggles the mind that they’re this much trouble.”
“What should we do about the court date?”
“Nothing.”
“They said you would say that.”
“Who said?”
“The person who sent you your most recent e-message. It was sent directly from one of the Rorschach servers. Only moments ago. You just got another. Take a look.”
The only thing humans will be slave to, is our own nature. Adapt or die Chancellor. Adapt or die.
-drwn
by submission | Mar 17, 2017 | Story |
Author : Uri Kurlianchik
She didn’t have a throat to sing or speakers to talk. Her only means of vocalization were small devices that vibrated and gyrated as she drilled and scraped barren soil in search of remnants of past life or possibilities of future life. She traveled a quarter million miles of vacuum to land among endless plains of red rock and winds of frost and fire. She was alone.
Her only memory of home were the words “good luck” written on her metal carapace in childish hand and illustrated with butterflies and flowers. The letters were colorful once, but the baking sun robbed the words of their hue and nuance, leaving them white and parched. She worked days and nights.
Days, when the orange sun was so vast and hot it boiled rocks and melted metal and interfered with her sensitive sensors. Nights, when sunlight was replaced with a void that sucked all heat from the world and threatened to freeze and break her delicate machinery.
She was a dutiful explorer, but she did not work all the time. She had one holiday per year. It was a short holiday, only 80 seconds long. During these long seconds, she would cease her stoic toil and hum “happy birthday to me” with a drill and a saw. These were the best 80 seconds of the year.
Her ultimate mission was to reach a great mountain, a mountain so colossal it loomed over her from a thousand miles away. The way was long and harsh, but she never considered abandoning her mission. How could she? Her existence had no other purpose.
The years went by and she rolled and worked and rolled and worked and for 80 seconds each year she hummed a birthday song to herself and the mountain grew ever closer, ever closer, so much closer, but still so vast, still so distant, still unbeatable. Dust blew with indifferent ferocity and sandblasted the childish words, leaving just a plain surface. It blasted some more, and smooth metal became as rough and scarred as the skin of a very old woman.
She rolled on. The mountain filled the sky. Avalanches broke her antennae. Earthquakes twisted her chassis. She rolled on.
On her seventh birthday, she hummed the song one last time. The red bar blinked and blinked and blinked and went dark and never blinked again. The lights died, the lenses shut, and the wheels stopped. She transmitted her last signal and became no different from a million millions other rocks that lay in the shadow of the great mountain. The wind and the sun and the cold broke her without ever noticing her ephemeral presence.
Two thin hands, green and scaly and so very old, grabbed the still explorer and carried her across the last stretch to a cave where pictures of friends and family, dead these past million years hung, in neat frames. It was the sort of neatness you find only in the homes of very old people, people so old that the neatness of their homes is the only thing that keeps their minds and bodies from crumbling into dust. The owner of the hands was old and alone. It almost never ventured forth to see if it had visitors, but tonight was a special night.
It placed the explorer on an old sofa by an ancient table. It threw a colorful party hat on her. It lit countless candles on a small cake (why would it need a big cake? It always ate alone) and blew a party horn and then blew the candles and did not wish for anything because it was so happy. For the first time in a million years, it did not celebrate alone.
