by submission | Aug 2, 2014 | Story |
Author : Robert King
My grandfather warned me. I never listened. I always thought he was stuck in the past. A remnant of the McCarthy era — illegal FBI surveillance and all that. I’d say to him, “I don’t really care if they listen in. I’m not doing anything wrong.” He’d give me that look of sad resignation, and walk away.
When it became public knowledge years later, that the government was indeed monitoring the communications of every, single, citizen in the country, as well as those of many nations around the globe, I was complicit. That’s right, complicit. I, and everyone else that did nothing about it, are somehow to blame. I remember the feeling at the time though. What could I do? What could anyone do? Who was doing the listening? Who was really in control? I don’t think anyone really knew. The masses just blamed this or that political party, never seeing the deeper truth. But I knew. There were others who knew: The politicians were merely puppets.
Power was nameless. Power was faceless. So how does one organize against an invisible force? We felt hopeless.
There weren’t enough of us at the time do anything, assuming there was anything to be done. The majority of the population had been conditioned from day one to mindlessly consume. They were taught that they needed this or that material thing to experience life; for life could not be experienced to the fullest — experienced directly, without these material objects. To enjoy nature, you needed to take pictures of it with the newest cell phone, and have your experience validated by sharing it on your social networks. The more likes the better. You couldn’t raise a family without choosing the right bank. Yes, you heard me right. Somehow your chosen bank would influence the satisfaction and success of raising a family. And that happy family would only be possible in the newest automobile.
Years passed, and still I did nothing. Still I said nothing.
Political campaigns at this point were entirely decided by private donors. The population had been disenfranchised from what was still believed by most to be a democratic process. The wealth disparity had become extreme. And somehow, the majority was oblivious, having been conditioned into loving their servitude. Not only loving it, but even arguing for its cause. Slaves arguing the case for slavery.
And all the while, the consumption conditioning continued. Increasingly though, the people could no longer afford those items which would bring them happiness and a good life. They blamed the political party of the day. Formed grass roots opposition movements, opposing what was only the illusion of their problems.
It was becoming clearer to some during this time who was pulling the strings. They were the conditioners; they were the lawmakers. Some of us began to organize. And in time, our numbers grew. We began to unplug from the grid, forming communities, and even small towns outside of their consumption. We had their attention. But they had our names.
I was raised by my grandfather. My mother and father died in a plane crash when I was four. That’s what I was told anyway. I wish I would have listened to my grandfather all those years ago. Perhaps I would not be sitting here in this cell, a prisoner in a dissident camp. Perhaps if we all would have listened to our elders, before this thing got out of hand, we’d still be living as free men and women. But we’ve been disappeared. Let the cycle continue.
by submission | Aug 1, 2014 | Story |
Author : Nathan Witkin
“So, pushing this button will cause the entire universe to collapse?” the politician asks, still struggling with the situation.
With a benevolent smile, the scientist nods.
Wiping sweat from his brow, despite the growing chill of entropy, the politician continues. “So, tell me again why I should push it.”
“Because the collapse should trigger an explosion that will reignite matter into existence. And because, if you do not push it,” the scientist breaks her unblinking gaze to examine the countdown, “in one hundred seconds, entropy will have expanded the universe past the gravitational reaches of the potential collapse, and the expansion will continue until all energy wanes into oblivion, ending the universe forever.”
“But we just got this whole Universal Governance established,” the politician whines, adding this to a tedious list of increasingly-pathetic complaints.
The scientist nods with pursed lips, her sympathy dulling with each excuse.
Universal Governance had been an eons-long triumph over leaders who wanted to vaporize existence with the push of a button. Considering the herculean nature of this effort, the politician concludes that—based on his regretfully-short experience in managing it—this biting irony is the unmistakable way of the universe.
“Think of you and I as parents of the reignited universe,” the scientist suggests, running a gentle caress over the doomsday machine. “Think about the sacrifices of parenthood—what you risk and give up to produce offspring. This is how life has persisted since its inception.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” the politician harrumphs, “I’ve been thinking constantly of what my parents suffered to elevate me to a position where I could make the decision to flush away trillions of lives.”
As her less-than-willing conversation partner looks off despondently, the scientist glances at the timer to the impassable anti-event horizon. Sixty seconds.
Clearly stalling, the politician sighs, “Why me?”
“Our team of philosophers concluded that the representative of sentient life should be the one to make the choice: either allowing a mortal universe to continue or ending it for the sake of regeneration.”
The politician scowls. Philosophers are just politicians who don’t have to make decisions or run for reelection. With a spark of determination, he presses on. “Are we absolutely certain it will work?”
“Despite our most thorough efforts, we cannot guarantee anything,” the scientist admits but then probes further, “If you are looking for proof, all indications are that our own universe was created by the very event that you would be triggering—that pushing this button gave birth to this universe we have dwelled in for billennia.”
“How can my future actions cause something that already happened?”
“Because, logically, time can only exist in a loop,” the scientist’s pace quickens. “Something cannot come from nothing, so linear time presupposes a creator. But, any creator or outside reality containing the physical universe must be, itself, bordered at the outer edge by infinite nothingness (which, by the way, will begin to irreversibly consume us in thirty seconds). In the same way, the temporal universe must also be creatorless, each point in time linked to the moments before and after.”
“When did it begin?”
“There is no beginning. The first moment must be preceded by the last. The fact that time marks an expansion of the physical universe from an initial point can only mean that the universe must collapse back into that point. But the movement of time allows for choice, so here we are…”
As the light sets over the anti-event horizon, the politician ponders, “We are, indeed, here.”
“See you next time,” the scientist exhales as the politician reaches for the flashing disk.
by submission | Jul 31, 2014 | Story |
Author : Sara Norja
Where there is no air, there can be no wind.
I miss a lot of things about Earth. Fresh bread baked by Mona’s strong hands. The smell of the sea, salt-tanged like longing. But what I think of most here in this foresaken escape pod is wind.
You can’t feel solar winds on your bare skin.
Life support is failing. The oxygen will run out soon. And no one has come for me yet. No one will. As I wait for death, I remember the wind chimes in my grandmother’s house. They hung on her porch, beside the door’s speaklink. The wind sang in them. At night when my grandmother showed me the stars, the chimes would mingle with her voice as she told me their names: Aldebaran, Vega, Sirius. Even then, I dreamt of one day flying out there.
Now here I am, dying among their cold light.
#
The steady beep of the oxygen meter is the only thing keeping me awake. Its light flashes red. Critical levels. Soon I’ll be out of air and I’ll drown in the dark.
My thoughts can’t stop circling around my grandmother’s wind chimes. I can almost hear them outside. But there’s no sound in space. It’s just my near-death mind bringing memories to life.
I raise my hands to my face, brush my fingertips across my lips. I kiss my own fingers, just to feel like I’m still alive. I touch the faded plaque on my uniform that spells my name. Juanita Ibarra. For just a few moments, I am still that woman. The woman who loves a good thunderstorm, fresh peas, Mona.
The signal my escape pod sent out after the shipwreck has been broadcasting into nothingness. The air is heavy to breathe. Soon I’ll suffocate. Soon I’ll die like the rest of the Indefatigable’s crew.
I drift into a doze I won’t wake from. I no longer care.
A green light starts flashing on my screen. The comdevice crackles with static. A voice speaks, but I can no longer distinguish words.
#
The gentle beep of a life support machine brings me back to consciousness. I open my eyes. White, everywhere white. And a hand holding mine.
“You’re alive.” Mona’s crying, and smiling, and kissing my parched lips. I think for a moment that I’m in heaven, but it’s Earth after all, and my body is gaining strength.
“Take me outside.” My voice is a dry rasp.
“You’ve only just awoken! You’re not going anywhere yet, dearest.”
“Then open the window.” From where I lie in the hospital bed, I can see a square of sky. The sun is shining, the clouds moving fast.
Mona pulls the window open.
The wind sings to me, caresses my bare arms. Somewhere, I can hear the faint echo of chimes.
by submission | Jul 30, 2014 | Story |
Author : S. P. Mahoney
There is an utterly absurd amount of mineral wealth sitting in Sol’s asteroid belt. Was. Whatever. A nickel-iron asteroid of middling size contains enough mineral wealth to choke a multinational, if you were to bring it back to Earth. Not to mention so expensive that none of those aforementioned multinationals, much less the national governments, could look more than five years down the line and see the advantages in building a civilization out there.
It was almost a relief when the message came in from the Great Beyond: “Hello, we’re aliens, and we need half of your asteroid belt. You can’t do anything about this, however, we are going to pay you for it. The down payment is in FTL drives, of which we will be giving at least one to every regional power on Earth.” That’s paraphrased, but basically the jist of it.
They were pretty clever, those aliens (we never learned their name for themselves). They figured we’d be out of commission, squabbling, for long enough. They’d looked us over and decided that, yup, those Humans have a real talent for tribalizing against each other, they’re going to be arguing about who gets how many drives for years. They knew it would take us a while to find a trading outpost where we could find out how badly we were being ripped off. And if that failed, they thought they’d skate by on our good feelings towards the race that gave us a path to the stars.
They were almost right, but they underestimated Humanity’s ability to think big when it comes to who’s in and out of the tribe. And they were completely off-base on that last thing. Polls still suggest a 90% approval rate on nuking their mining colony. A significant fraction of the population even think we shouldn’t have waited for them to give us the money at the end of the term, although that seems a little wasteful to me.
It was maybe eighteen months before we were pulling into a dozen systems to run the same con. We did it better, of course; we didn’t let the victims know what was up until we were actually done. And then two of them, it turned out, were our old pals’ colony worlds. So much the better. Those poor guys became further reinforcement to a message for their folks back home:
Don’t kid a kidder. Don’t trick a trickster. Don’t scam the Humans.
by Julian Miles | Jul 29, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“That’s impossible!”
“Previously thought to be. Think what this does to current thinking!”
“We’re going to be famous!”
The two figures sat side by side on a ledge, far up on the side of the Rock of Gibraltar. At their backs was the entrance to the cave system they had scrambled from a few minutes before, desperate for air, sun and a chance to discuss their findings with less hysteria.
Duncan smiled as he racked up the list on his fingers as he spoke: “Correct me if I am wrong: what we have found and verified by scanning is the fossilised remains of a mammoth. In the Rock. Not only is it thousands of miles from where it could conceivably be found; evidence of extreme freezing damage is traceable throughout its visible area. A Siberian flash freeze casualty on Gibraltar.”
Susan nodded: “That would cover it. Something that rewrites ice-age extent and possibly mammoth distribution theories.”
They regarded each other with the excitement of shared passion and allowed themselves the luxury of a lingering kiss. Which is why the blow that hurled them both off their perch to plunge, screaming, hundreds of feet to their deaths caught them unawares.
“Perfect.”
The figure in worn hiking gear settled into the cave entrance and activated the lozenge-shaped device loop-affixed to his left ear.
“This is Purson. Have located and erased traces of Specimen NF24953. This completes the retrieval activities for Thurutar’s Bay Eight.”
“Acknowledged, Nero. Query: we see a two sentient demise increase on the temporal telemetry?”
“Two clever types out to erroneously rewrite history. Simple climbing accident; I have erased the data on their equipment.”
“Acknowledged. Will you be paragliding to rendezvous with the Nastar?”
“Negative. Two bodies plunging from on-high followed by an unauthorised jump-glider? That would attract attention.”
“Accepted. Fixing you position now. Passing 5D to the Nastar. Standby.”
Nero Purson held his breath as the spinning grey void closed about him. With a soft exhalation, he appeared on the Nastar’s deck.
“Welcome aboard, Ser Purs’n.” The tailless Alsatian analogue was a Nikoro time chief.
“Dark the clock, Ch’if.”
The faux-canine with the IQ of 200 shook itself: “Less dark thanks to you and yours. Where are we taking you?”
“Louisiana, 1851. Seems one of the megacrocs survived.”
“Who could have predicted that the Thurutar would explode across four dimensions?”
Nero looked up into the blazing Mediterranean sunlight: “Someone should have. If a vessel can travel along an axis, it would follow, to me anyway, that wreckage of same can hurtle along it too.”
It shook its head sadly: “Oversight accusations are no doubt occurring uptime. Let us enjoy the luxury of only having to flit and kill across a few millennia to clear up the mess.”
Nero grinned: “And enjoy the weather. I’m due a couple of days. Can the Nastar remain on station with me, Ch’if?”
The Nikoro’s face split vertically into a stained, sawtooth smile before it slumped sideways to lie on a sunny part of the deck: “I was hoping you’d ask for that. Get me a drink on your way back from the shower, Purs’n.”
by Duncan Shields | Jul 28, 2014 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Yes. The aliens came down and harvested the human race. Yes. We asked them to.
That was the plan all along. We just didn’t know it.
Our basic nature was installed in us by them. We were set down on this planet to evolve until overpopulation and to invent the technology necessary to start screaming our position into space. The language wasn’t important. Giving off radio and television waves was the sign that we had reached fruition.
We did it brilliantly.
The aliens, all green teeth and dimensional tentacles, saw us show up on their routine scans. We were a delicious, ripe apple. This galaxy and others like it are merely orchards for these creatures. They are farmers and we are genetically modified planet boosters.
We pulled most of the resources out of the earth already. That’s why the aliens collected the cities. All that glass, steel, copper, iron, concrete and gyprock. All processed. All ready to go. They harvested the minerals and oil, too. We had even dug the holes for them already. The Earth has ice-scream scoop craters all over it now from the aliens’ machines reaching down and picking up every single town. Those holes have been sprayed with fertilizer. In five years, they will all be jungle. Future generations won’t even know they existed.
We were very efficient parasites. We overloaded the planet with our biomass and started crying to the heavens. Then we were culled and smashed down to the stone age again.
And of course, our meat is prized. The enormous flying thresher slaughterhouses that collected us were the final nightmare. That’s why there are so few of us left. Enough to start another breeding program here to be sure, but the population of earth has gone from billions to a few thousand.
In a way, we’re lucky. The dinosaurs were the first experiment but they were killed by a meteor. Probably for the best since they’d had millions of years to build a radio but never did.
We, on the other hand, must have exceeded our presets. Because of that, they’re setting us up for a round two, I think. We get to do it again.
How do we warn the future generations? How do we tell them not to breed, not to innovate, not to invent, not to think? We want to start a religion that will celebrate meekness, to idolize servitude, to live simply, and to shun technology. But I remember that a lot of religions before the harvest were already trying to do that and they failed.
Maybe if I made an image of death that looked like a farmer but then I remember that my image of Death had a scythe and that makes me think that maybe this isn’t the first time we’ve been culled.
Maybe the wave of humans before us already tried to do what I’m trying to do now.
This is why we never got any responses to our messages into space. Those messages are silenced as soon as they start talking. There are no conversations. Only yells that are cut off.
If I could go back in time, I’d tell the people of earth to shut up. To stay quiet. To quit beaming our entire lives at full volume into space.
All we were doing was ringing the dinner bell.
