by Julian Miles | Apr 10, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Where are you?”
“Same continent.”
“That’s a relief. I was so worried when the news said you’d been cornered in Rio.”
So was I. It was only after fleeing I found it had only been media hype, not a snatch team.
“Doctor Flowers says we need another sample.”
A chill ran down my spine. She said ‘doctor’, not ‘professor’. That meant she was under observation, duress, or both.
“Tell him I’ll contact him tomorrow afternoon.”
“Will you have time to visit?”
Not good. That was a ‘do not come near this town’ warning.
“I’ll see what I can do. Love you, Tara.”
“Love you to. Bye.”
I called MI6 as soon as she hung up. I identified myself with the agreed code for day and date, then got them to send an armed MI5 rescue team to our home. The home I had never seen.
Four years ago I had been stood at the altar, Tara’s hand in mine, when something blew the vicar’s head apart. The slaughter at my wedding was the culmination of two years of international frenzy over my unique ‘condition’. I fled from the venue alone, over the bodies of the small army that had been allocated to defend me.
I worked at the New Calder Hall reactor. I was there the day that its ‘revolutionary innovation in reactor cooling’ failed, bequeathing Britain with Chernobyl-on-Cumbria.
Tara was my specialist during treatment. To everyone’s surprise, I showed no ill effects whatsoever. Tara received several awards for the work she did that led to the identification of ‘blue cells’. She says that her engagement ring is the only one she treasures.
My body had been exposed to quantities of radiation almost guaranteed to cause cancer. Whether my mutated white cells were a freak result or a pre-existing condition will never be known. But the results are clear: people who get a shot of my ‘blue cells’ have their cancerous cells destroyed. No-one has yet managed to replicate blue cell serum. I am the golden goose that bleeds the cure for cancer.
Tara and I decided to make blue cell serum available to the world on a critical need basis. An anonymous billionaire provided funding, as well as starting a research project to artificially produce blue cell serum. It was in its early stages when the first attack occurred. Someone had decided that the value of controlling the only source of the blue cells was worth murdering Tara’s colleagues wholesale.
A year later, the body count had risen to a point where I called a stop to the procession of body guards and safe houses. Our wedding was the last event to be heavily guarded, as the protocols for me becoming a fugitive had been agreed. The wedding showed just how far they would go.
As to who ‘they’ are, it seems that it is a consortium of powerful and greedy people. They want to market the serum made from my blood. It would become something available only to the wealthiest, with a black market for placebos worth even more.
Tara and I will not have that, and we are supported by people at all levels and seemingly everywhere. I cannot count the times that I have evaded a snatch team solely because a stranger intervened.
One day, I will exchange vows with Tara. One day, I will walk into our home. One day, when the researchers at the fortified and hidden laboratory work out how to refine blue cell serum.
Until then, I run.
by Clint Wilson | Apr 9, 2014 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
All six of my previous brothers had gotten past this point with little difficulty. The smoldering remains of my crashed lander blended in nicely with the gray hillside behind me. My atmospheric and biofunction readings continued to flash in my view screen as other red-lettered warnings popped in and out.
Here was the first one I was waiting for. “Motion detected nine-point-five quadrant.” I already knew that this was the troll that had decapitated clone one. I ducked and twisted just like my five other successful brothers had done before me, and felt the wind blast inside my helmet as the slicing plasma sword narrowly missed my head. Before it could turn around and regroup, it was neutralized into a pile of burnt carbon-encrusted ooze.
I pushed forward, up a rocky trail past fissures that spewed toxic gasses, glad for my breathing apparatus, and made ready for my second deadly challenge. Clone two had been sniped from behind a rock high above. Clone three had ducked but had still been pegged off in retreat. After that, my remaining three brothers and I had all successfully managed to dive into a nearby gully each in our own turn. And like my departed replicas, I too managed to cut around and creep up behind my assailant, slitting its throat with my plasma knife. I continued onward and upward.
The rockslide that had taken the life of clone four was an easy sidestep for those of us remaining. I moved up the safe, secondary ridge toward the tower. I knew there were a few one-eyed muck-mongers hiding behind black stumps above, but just like the other two of my remaining brothers; I dispatched them to their makers with little difficulty.
Approaching the gate of the stronghold I faced the killer of clone five knowing full well that there were no guarantees. Just because clone six had defeated this giant in a previous battle didn’t mean that I would. For all the maker cared, we could all start back at square one. But it was our religion. I prayed to it and believed it to my core.
The goliath stumbled toward me, its massive spiked club raised high. I sprung off to the right, mindful of the loose stepping-stone that had almost foiled six, and rolled away to safety as the club came crashing down into the dirt. By the time the hulking killdroid had spun around I managed to release the heavy launcher from my cloak and hoisted it upward, its butt-end nestled firmly against my shoulder. There was an explosion as I tapped the trigger, and when my eyes reopened I was on my back, looking up, as smoke billowed from the now headless collapsing form of the killdroid.
I scrambled to one side and avoided the tons of crashing steel. Then as I stood and faced the tower, the dust cleared. All I needed to do was follow six’s path up and over the wall. It was almost as if I were merely floating along in a dream now. I needed only to follow his footsteps. And this held true until I got to the spot along the top of the wall where the polymer arrow had pierced his heart. I dove off the wall a second before the shot arrived, and crashed down into the brush below.
I stood up and stepped out of the shrubbery. I heard a thump, and looked down just in time to see the grenade roll up to my boot. Damn it! Eight would have to learn from my mistake.
by submission | Apr 8, 2014 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
I scared myself again. But only briefly.
Bored with routine, my mind zoned out. Wandering like a hungry dog. Dragging extraordinary notions to hell and back with me at the centre of it all. The snap-to was always a break in that routine and this morning it was when the door forgot who I was.
My working day started at the office. Not the morning shower or bus ride but that sand etched security glass door that led into the open plan tenancy. Everything before that moment was mine to ponder.
Thirty seconds before arriving at that door I zoned, my body mindlessly zombied past the carved monolith guarding our street-front, itself a party popper palimpsest of social commentary. Up the groaning federation stairs and across the worn half landing, landmarked by the fading odour of dead wall rat.
On autopilot, my body went through this daily routine, while within, my mind, as free as a three year old, dallied a thought stream that frightened me to the core. The fear that I never actually worked here.
Upstairs, face brick walls held the sand etched glass door hostage. Like every other day, I transmitted the door’s passcode early, to time it’s opening with my approach, only to slam face-first into the glass. Through gaps in the etching, my workmates turned towards me. Within a daydream of public humiliation, I snapped-to, humiliated. The transition was seamless.
The door remained closed. No salient tone. No sliding swish. I retransmitted the code, ran a diagnostic on my implant and then shouldered the door. Nothing.
Staring at my paper covered desk through the glass, I scratched the hairy bulge of my scalp implant dumbfounded. Fearful faces glared through the glass. Someone was yelling on the phone. No one recognised me. No one dared approach the door. I signalled for Jane the office manager to let me in. Seeing her confused face, I checked my sanity only to birth the notion that my imagination had in fact become reality.
A crash downstairs preceded heavy footfalls.Turning, I saw Jim, the security guard, lurch, puffing, into the lobby.
“Hey Jim! How’s it going? Can you help me, the door isn’t….”
Before I could finish, Jim had slammed me against the security door.
“You are not authorised to be here Sir”
Hot sprays of breath pulsed the back of my neck.
“Jim it’s me Dave! I work here. I lent you my music library yester……”
“Remain calm Sir. The police are enroute”
To Dave, I was a stranger and to the police who frog marched me out of the building, I was another lost soul.
At police headquarters mayhem reigned. The unstaffed charge desk meant that no one was interested in our identity. Not a good sign. Each cell held a dozen dazed citizens, each one sharing similar stories.
By midday, the sweating cell walls bulged from overcrowding and wheezed air thick with emotion. Like a football crowd, cellmates mentally journeyed from confusion through anger, finally settling on acceptance.
Late afternoon, a two tone warning sounded. A crowd of despair shushed, starving for the truth. A pre-recorded announcement rattled from a tinny cell speaker.
“Last night at 3:45am, a caching error within Central MEMbank deleted your identity from all implants and hardware infrastructure. Once backup have reinstated transient life data, you will be remembered by your family and friends. On behalf of the MEMbank, I apologise for the confusion”
For a moment I pondered the possibilities of being no one and scared myself again.
by Desmond Hussey | Apr 7, 2014 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
The air is rent with screams, alien klaxons and a violent thundering that threatens to crush Kaam with raw acoustic power. All is dizzying confusion, a chaotic kaleidoscope of hauntingly familiar images, intertwined with deep inscrutable wells of emotion, all imbued with significance now lost to her. Searing light and smoke sting her eyes… Noxious smells burn her nostrils and lungs… Flashes of faces filled with concern, love, fear… A baby screams. Voices call out to her.
***
Kaam has the same dream once a year. Each summer, just before the nine shimmering Dawn-Runners race across the blanket of night like a Wulv pack on the hunt, she wakes from the dream, sweating and shivering, her heart filled with an ache, an emptiness. Tonight is no different.
Kaam’s night terror disturbs Maa-Kel’s slumber, but only briefly. Her adopted mother drapes a thickly-furred forepaw over her shoulder, nuzzles a whiskered muzzle into her neck and licks her cheek gently with a moist purple tongue before drifting back to sleep. Briefly, Kaam basks drowsily in the warm security of her downey nest listening to the comforting rumble of the sleeping pack, bedded down in a huddle within their shared cave. Maa-Kel’s fur is redolent of sweet, gallu-grass and Kaam can easily single out Haaman, Graan-Ka and Goom nearby by their distinctive male odours.
The voices call.
With nimble care, Kaam scrambles stealthily over the sleeping mass and creeps outside into the jungle. Away from the pack’s warmth she begins to shiver in the cool pre-dawn air. She lacks the Wulv’s thick, blue fur and has only near invisible fuzz covering most of her body, except her head, from which cascades thick, golden hair, longer than any Wulv’s, hanging in intricate braids down to her knees. Kaam has only two legs and two arms, unlike a Wulv, who has four, leanly muscled legs for running and jumping and two, small dextrous arms and hands for manipulating tools. But, though Kaam is slower and can’t jump as high, she is strong and lithe. Her fingers are more clever and she can climb much better than any of them. Tonight, she clambers easily up and over the ivy-blanketed, hexagonal pillar stones, which rise like millions of flat-topped, rock-crystal columns, forming steep stairs to the ridge over-looking their jungle valley.
They call.
Squatting on a towering pillar, Kaam watches the bright Dawn-Runners tumble across the morning sky as image/feelings from her dream, likewise tumble through her mind. Maa-Kel once told her about their arrival. At first, there was only one large Runner, round like a Maku fruit, but after blooming into a fiery flower it became the nine. A day later, the pack had found her; an infant, unharmed and alone in a mysterious, broken sky-egg. They called her, Kaam – The Fallen Bird.
Kaam’s dream-people all look like her. Was she a Dawn-Runner, a fallen bird come from some other place? Or was she cast away? Would her people ever return for her?
She fills her lungs, tilts back her head and howls a mournful serenade as the receding constellation slips beyond the horizon. Her song is quickly joined by her pack and echoes throughout the valley. Soon, neighbouring packs add their voices to the woeful dirge.
Every year she hears them call and every year she sings back to them, but her song never seems to reach the deaf ears of the Dawn-Runners.
Maybe next year they will answer. Maybe next year.
by submission | Apr 6, 2014 | Story |
Author : Kurt Hunt
“Failed,” said the ship. Its transmission burst into jagged waves, a white noise elegy.
But the station didn’t understand. “Greetings, Generation-32! Welcome to Centauri Colony!” It beamed yottabytes of data, everything from advertisements to statistics suggesting a critical population shortage. “Please share these exciting details with your passengers, and–”
The chirping auto-welcome fizzled. A tired voice interrupted: “G-32, clarify failure report.”
“Decompressed,” said Generation-32. “Long ago.”
“Cargo status?”
Generation-32 scanned again; same result. Cradled within, it found only ghosts, the hundred million phantom limbs it had carried through the dark.
“Alone,” it said. “I am sorry. I am alone.”
by submission | Apr 5, 2014 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The Agent established contact with the High Command and prepared to deliver his latest report. Nothing about his outward appearance betrayed what he was doing. The entire procedure was telepathic. There were hidden machines in the vicinity that were able to transduce his thoughts and then send them rippling across the quantum superfluid at many times the speed of light, arriving all but instantaneously at the High Command’s base of operations on the fifth planet of the Nu Phoenicis star system 49 light-years from Earth.
“There are indications that the Enemy is preparing to establish one or more bases in this solar system,” the agent said in his head.
“They’ve made no move to reveal themselves to the human race?” asked a silent voice.
“They haven’t,” said the agent with equal silence. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if half a dozen of their ships jumped out of hyperspace and into Earth orbit any day now. Perhaps the time has come to reveal ourselves to the human race.”
“Your assignment is to observe and report, Agent.”
“I meant no disrespect, Command. But the Enemy’s mission is the same as ours: To win hearts and minds. And they’ve made quite a bit of progress.”
As the Agent was issuing his report, one of the Enemy entered the room and sat down a few feet away. The Agent and his Enemy pretended not to notice one another. Amazing, thought the Agent, that this subtle game of spy versus spy had been going on for thousands of Earth years. Over the millennia, relations between the two sides had taken many forms, ranging from open hostility to detente to peaceful and even amicable coexistence. And during all these centuries, two great and terrible empires battled each other among the stars. The tide of battle had once brought the conflict as close as the Alpha Centauri system. Now, Earth itself was probably going to be the next killing field.
“Is the Enemy’s position on Earth strong enough to recruit the human race to their side?” asked the voice of the High Command.
“I suspect mankind would be divided as to which side to support. A majority of the humans would doubtless side with us. But the enemy has made significant inroads.”
For long seconds the High Command said nothing. Finally, a voice in the Agent’s head said, “Perhaps you’re right after all. If what you say is true, the longer we delay the weaker our position. We have ten capital ships holding at their fail safe positions in the Oort Cloud at the periphery of the star system. We will order them to prepare to jump into Earth orbit. Review the open contact protocols. We will be sending the signal to all of our operatives on Earth to reveal themselves simultaneously within the hour. The Enemy will doubtless follow suit.”
“There will be global pandemonium,” thought the Agent.
“We know. It will be up to Agents like yourself to manage humanity’s initial shock.”
“Understood.”
The Agent looked over at the Enemy who was trying to act bored and nonchalant. Probably in contact with his own superiors right now. The Agent then looked at the human to whom he’d been assigned, picked up a ball in his mouth, and dropped it at the human’s feet. One last game of fetch before you find out the truth, the Agent thought with some nostalgia. The Enemy abruptly stopped licking his paw, glared at his rival, and purred with contempt.
