by Duncan Shields | Sep 22, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Timecasting is a strange way to travel to the future. It ‘throws’ a person forward. In this case, me. I’ll be the world’s first temponaut soon. The scientists keep playfully calling me a ‘temp’ and they think it’s hilarious. If all goes well, I’ll be the first person to see the future.
By using a ‘time anchor’, they can nail a temponaut to one single here and now. It’s like putting your back against the elastic of a slingshot and walking backwards until it stretches tight. The further backward you walk, the further forward you’ll go when you relax.
The flow of time dams behind the person like putting a clamp on a hose and having the water build up behind it. After a few seconds, the time anchor turns off and the temponaut re-enters the timestream. The backed-up time behind them shoots the person forward. The longer the pause, the further into the future he or she goes.
You could also say it’s like dropping a huge weight on one side of a seesaw. Whoever’s on the other side of the seesaw will go flying upwards into the air but the seesaw itself stays where it is. The fulcrum of the seesaw is our present moment, and the temponaut is what gets catapulted.
Everything that goes up must come down, to use the seesaw metaphor further, and so the person will slow, pause and then reverse course back to our lab.
At that perihelion, that tip of the parabola in the future, the person can stay still long enough to take a picture and have a quick peek.
That person is me.
I settle in the timechair and give the thumbs up to the technician.
Time cannot stand anything going against its flow. The resistance increases exponentially. The most they’ll be able to hold me back for is five seconds. That’ll be enough power to shoot me one year into the future.
The scientist in the body condom hazmat suit off to my right throws the switch. My timechair immediately goes cold. The lab around me throws into reverse as I am held back. My vision develops a blue tint. I have the horrible sensation that my hair is reverse-growing back into my head and I hope it’s just psychosomatic. Every slows to a quivering standstill five seconds in the past and then…
SNAP I’m flying forward in time. The lab smears around me in streaks of light and pops of blinding, saturated colour like I’m watching every single frame of a year-long movie all at once. An orchestra of rattling and ambient noise builds to a rattling, banging crescendo. Just when I think I’m about to suffer from a full sensory overload…
It stops.
I’m hanging in a dark cavern. My nails, beard, and hair are a year longer. The lab has disappeared. There is a strong stench of ammonia. Stalactites dot the entrance to the cave and there is a low subterranean humming. Something glows in front of me.
It’s a tongue. The perspective flips and I can see that I’m inside a giant mouth. The glowing tongue darts out and touches my ankle. The whole interior of the mouth lights up like the ribs of a deep sea angler and I scream.
We’re not timecasting. We’re fly fishing and I’m bait. There must be giant creatures in the time stream that eat time travelers and I’m on the end of Earth’s first fishing line.
My last thought is that I hope the timechair acts as a hook and brings this beast back to the lab.
by submission | Sep 21, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“The Path Not Taken”
Author: Quintus Caecilius Cordus
Rigel Kentaurus Press, MMDCCLXVI AUC
Reviewed by Domitius Felix Andronicus
Mars Literary Review, Amazonis Planitia
Quintus Caecilius Cordus’ latest book may raise an eyebrow with readers expecting the grand old historian of Rigel Kent to gratify us with another “The Punic Wars Re-Examined” or “The Discovery of New Europa”. In “The Path Not Taken,” Cordus reimagines rather than relates the history of the Empire and thence extrapolates an odd and unfamiliar world both fascinating and frightening.
Cordus begins in the year when Vetus and Nerullinus were consuls (modern calendar: DCCCIII AUC) with the advent of the aeolipile steam engine by Hero of Alexandria. But in the historian’s alternate past, the Greek engineer and mathematician becomes not the father of the Industrial Revolution, but merely a comparatively obscure inventor, both the man and his machine relegated to historical footnotes. It is here that Cordus imagines history diverging into a bizarre parallel world where steam power would remain an undeveloped art for nearly MM years.
The chapters that follow this introduction reveal a strangely static world in which technology advances with agonizing slowness. The Germanic Wars, to take a single example, continue unabated for centuries, leading ultimately to the Empire’s collapse. With frequently poetic prose, Cordus describes a nightmarish world of war without end fought with weapons unchanged from the pre-industrial era. No steam tanks roll across Thrace during the Battle of Philippopolis to defeat the Goths. No airships drop bombs to end the Siege of Mainz. And, needless to say, there is no atom bombing of Germania resulting in the surrender of the Germani and their assimilation into the Empire.
Cordus envisions a millennium-long dark age in Europa after the Empire’s fall with the center of civilization shifting to the south and east. He speculates about a great monotheistic empire originating in the Arabian Peninsula holding sway over much of Asia and extending in Europa as well. But at last, the author postulates Europa waking from her thousand year intellectual slumber as various polities rediscover the heritage of Classical Antiquity. It is this hodgepodge of nation-states, not a unified Roman Empire, that discover and then conquer New Europa.
Somewhat amusingly, Cordus pictures Britannia ultimately rising to Great Power status and even has the island creating a globe-girdling empire of its own as Hero’s steam engine is finally reinvented after MDCC years. This is one of a number of flights of fancy in the book that will undoubtedly prove controversial. This hypothetical Britannic Empire itself is eventually superseded by a New Europan successor state.
Perhaps the oddest speculation in which Cordus indulges is the rise of an obscure messianic sect of Judaism eclipsing the gods of the traditional pantheon with a distinct monotheistic faith. He takes this conjecture to rather ridiculous lengths, going so far as to develop an alternative calendrical system based on the birth of the Jewish Savior. More curious still, he renders these alternative dates parenthetically next to the conventional years using Arabic numerals. Thus, Christophorus Columbus lands in New Europa (rather than, as he actually did, on the surface of Mars) in MMCCXLV AUC (1492). The current year is written equally incomprehensibly as “2013”.
This book will doubtless divide Cordus’ readership with some applauding the historian’s fertile imagination while others long for an examination of the Caesars or a treatise on the Empire’s early interstellar expansion. “The Path Not Taken” is available for quantum entanglement download throughout the Empire via the Imperial Hypernet.
Mars Literary Review. Copyright MMDCCLXVI AUC.
by Julian Miles | Sep 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It’s really disappointing. All the science fiction stuff about energy weapons and faster than light travel turned out to be impractical or impossible. Even nanotechnology proved to be only useful rather than miraculous.
“He’s coming round.”
“Batteries four and six, come to bear. Batteries three and five, cover his escape vectors.”
“Aye aye captain.”
The great exploration of space has come to a grinding halt. The Solar System is it for us. A few colony ships have gone out, filled with fanatics or undesirables, but their chance of becoming anything but footnotes of unrealised horror is slim.
In-system, it’s been lively for a couple of decades now. Earth considers itself the ruler of the system and the various established colonies object strongly. Independence wars have been flaring up so often it’s pretty much sequential.
I grab a stanchion as Brutus fires all eight guns in the four turret-mounted batteries and the ship rings like a gong. It’s wasteful but metal is plentiful now we’ve got the asteroid belt to strip mine. Two batteries aimed at where our opponent is going to be, two batteries aimed at where he could be if he dodges. There’s no point firing after he dodges.
“He’s fired everything!”
The Raumhorst is Federal Europe’s most powerful space battleship and deservedly so. His targeting gear is famous and his crew veterans. Brutus is the one thing they fear.
The United Kingdom colonised Pluto back when we still had royalty. Nobody contested our claim and we just got on with subzero mining and other stuff. I wonder if the spies and the analysts who didn’t work out why we were shipping lumber out there have been fired yet.
Geoffrey Pyke had the idea a couple of centuries ago but it was deemed impractical. Around Pluto, however, extreme cold and water are in plentiful supply. Just add fourteen percent wood pulp and you have space armour to defy most projectiles. The Brutus is basically a pair of Vanguard class super-dreadnoughts mounted keel to keel, or where the keels would be. Everything is a lot smoother than their naval equivalents because after the ninety-six thousand tons of ‘double-barrelled battleship’ as my uncle called it is constructed, all the exterior gets a ten-foot layer of pykrete. Frozen water is great for turrets because the friction allows them to turn without having to taper the armour layer – we just have to mount the turrets on risers to allow ten feet of pykrete between them and the deck. The double-up configuration allows eight turrets, four top and four bottom. Two main guns per turret, sixteen inch smoothbores that throw two-thousand pound ‘bullets’.
I hug the stanchion as the Raumhorst’s broadside slams into us. The sound of things falling is all that occurs, the dreaded whine of escaping air non-existent.
“Three hits! Took the two we sent to port in her superstructure and portmost one of the main barrage in her stern. She’s yawing! It’s a kill!”
I still don’t understand why everyone else builds space battleships like sea battleships with the bridge sticking up like a target. But I’m not going to argue. We’ve just become the primary force in the system. Pluto Colony is on its way to independence and being able to honour the orders from Mars we have for pykrete, even if the commercial slabs will be a little weaker than our own.
by submission | Sep 19, 2013 | Story |
Author : Glen Luke Flanagan
Pain tugged at the edge of my consciousness like a forgotten memory, bringing with it a collage of broken images and angry words. Without warning, sterile walls hemmed me in, and voices washed over me like a sea of panic, none of them intelligible.
“John.” One voice forced its way through the clamor, pulling me back to reality. “John, snap out of it.” I was daydreaming again.
Kaylee was looking at me intently, worry plain in her big brown eyes. “That’s the third time today,” she said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I shook my head yes. “I’ve had these for a while. They come and go.” I couldn’t tell her I had only begun daydreaming since I met her, or that each time it happened I found it harder to focus and remember.
She hesitated, then smiled. “Okay, if you’re sure. Let’s get you home and out of the sun. I think I’ve had enough of the beach for one day.”
In the car, I watched as she carefully navigated the ins and outs of our little seaside town. I loved the way her brow furrowed slightly in concentration, the way her fingers lay languidly on the steering wheel. We had been dating for almost nine months now, but sometimes it seemed like I had just met her yesterday.
She caught my eye and blushed. “It ain’t polite to stare at a girl like that, Mr. Finnegan.”
I grinned and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Can’t help myself sometimes, little lady. I think it’s love at first sight every time I lay eyes on you.”
She laughed and punched my shoulder gently as we turned into the driveway. “Such a charmer. You say that to all the girls you take home?”
“Only you,” I promised, kissing her again. “Now, how about I throw our beach gear in the garage and we go to bed early?”
Cold metal bit into my side, and the panicked buzz of voices grew louder. A face hovered over mine, and gloved fingertips pried apart my eyelids, but there was no feeling. The face said words, and this time I understood a few.
“Hallucinogenic parasite.” The meaning evaded me, but I could make out the sounds. “Burrowed deep. Deadly if we can’t help him shake it off.” Then I was back in my own bathroom, sweating profusely and clutching the sink with a death grip for support. Kaylee’s voice came through the door, muffled but plainly worried.
“Baby, you alright in there?”
I sucked in a breath and looked in the mirror, wincing at my pallid, feverish reflection. “Yeah, I’m good,” I lied. “Be there in a sec.” Then the world went dark, and the walls closed around me once more.
“Not looking good,” the face murmured in a voice that sounded like angry bees. “Whatever it’s feeding him, he likes too much to let it go.” The words were starting to make sense now, and I fought against it. I didn’t like what I was hearing. Have to get back to Kaylee, I told myself. Focus on Kaylee.
The bathroom slowly came back into focus. I turned on the faucet, splashed my face. In the bedroom, she was waiting, reading. She glanced up and patted the spot beside her. I slipped under the sheet and pulled her close, looking into her eyes.
“Sometimes it feels like I just met you yesterday,” I whispered. “But I’m never going to leave you.”
by submission | Sep 18, 2013 | Story |
Author : Ian Muneshwar
Billy lost his grandmother to the portable DVD player five months after his grandfather died. It started when she discovered that, with Netflix, she had access to an almost infinite supply of B-rated romances. Before long, she started using the portable Sony so she could continue to watch them all over the house: she made it through “Gigli” while cooking a pot roast and finished “Breaking Dawn” in the bathtub.
About a week before it happened she had become obsessed with a hopelessly unoriginal vampire movie. There was one scene in particular—the final dialogue between the romantic leads—that she watched over and over, until both she and Billy had memorized every word, every caught breath, and every vapid declaration of undying love.
The night the movie took her Billy found the DVD player on the couch, looping the final scene. There was a shallow imprint on the cushion, so he knew she couldn’t have been gone for long.
“Grandma?” he called, sitting down. There was no response.
He set the Sony down in his lap and put the headphones in, one at a time.
*
“I don’t have much time,” the girl said when Billy reached the other side.
He recognized her immediately; she was Amanda, the white-blonde, quivering-lipped protagonist of the vampire movie. She was different on this side of the screen, though. There was a small but bright red pimple at the corner of her mouth that someone had unsuccessfully tried to cover with concealer and, standing this close to her, he could see the light brown roots in her hair.
“Bill, it’s your grandmother,” she said, blinking. “And I don’t think either of us has much time.”
“Time before what?” He tried to take a step forward, but instead his hand reached out and his long, unnaturally white fingers ran through the girl’s hair. “Wait, am I the vamp—”
“I tried to leave but I think we’re stuck,” she interrupted. “Stuck to acting out the last scene of this goddamn movie.”
She took his hand in her own. Billy looked down at her full lips and the poorly-concealed pimple.
“How did we get here?”
“Have you ever wanted something so badly, Billy, that you’d give everything you are just to have it?” She pulled him closer. “I couldn’t get this story out of my head. Eternal life seems so nice, you know?”
“You realize that Armando isn’t alive, right Grandma? He’s undead.”
“Dead, undead. He can spend the rest of time with Amanda. They could be happy together literally forever. That would have been nice to have.” She paused, brushing hair out of her eyes. “I’d give the world to have had that with Grandpa, undead or otherwise.”
“But that’s not how it works, Grandma. This isn’t real.”
“Who are you to say what’s real, Armando?”
“I’m not Armando—” Billy began to say, but the girl drew him in for a deep kiss.
“I loved you from the moment we met. I want to be with you, like this, forever.” She blinked coyly.
“Grandma?”
But Billy could feel it, too. His own words were being blown to the far corners of his mind. The script began to bleed into him; his language, like his actions, were no longer his own.
“We can be together, Amanda,” he said. He stared deeply into the girl’s eyes, where he saw his own terror reflected. “There’s a way.”
“Take me, Armando.” She uttered the movie’s closing line in an exaggeratedly breathy whisper.
Billy pulled his grandmother’s head back and, tenderly, plunged his teeth into her chest.
by Duncan Shields | Sep 17, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Ringmining attracted a certain kind of personality.
Not exactly hermits but beings okay with long terms of isolation. Pairs or groups of people rarely worked the rings.
Lena should have known better.
Each ringminer scoopship was like a baleen whale. They had wide mouths to collect all the crystals and sift through them for valuable minerals. It was tedious work but the rewards were there. It tended to turn the rings grey after a century of mining but didn’t damage them other than that. The ecolegal fights had been fought and ringminers were a profession for now.
The rings themselves played hell with transmissions when a ship was in them so when a ringminer was mining, they were on their own. The particles bounced radio waves around, sometimes for years. It wasn’t uncommon to hear garbled SOS beacons from years ago. The rings were creepy. It was best to keep the coms off entirely.
Lena piloted the ship Harling’s Spur, named for Lena’s grandfather. It had been her grandfather’s ship and was her inheritance when her own father passed. So many parts had been replaced on it that she doubted it could even be called the same ship. She was a third-generation ringminer.
She’d met Jordy on a supply run to K-78, the largest general store asteroid near these parts. It had been a stop to bury her father. She’d been blinded by grief, perhaps. Jordy was handsome, long-haired and strong jawed, but she’d forgotten that appearances can be deceiving. After three nights of passion, she’d signed him on with visions of bouts of lovemaking in between bouts of mining.
The dreams of a teenager.
Jordy was new to the business and Lena was starting to think he wasn’t cut out for it.
He started complaining about boredom almost as soon as they hit the rings. “Nothing to do, nothing to do, nothing to do” had become his mantra. His constant sighs and huffs were contributing to the rising tension. Lena had tried to teach meditation, exposed him to the ship’s library and games system, even tried to teach him tantra but it didn’t work.
He was a social animal. Perhaps he’d been blinded by lust as well.
Either way, this wasn’t going to work out and the hold wasn’t nearly full enough to justify a return trip. Lena knew that Jordy, soon enough, would demand to be returned home no matter what the expense. He wouldn’t wait six months and he was stronger than her. Things would get ugly.
She decided to nip it in the bud.
Another reason she’d picked Jordy was that he was a drifter of no importance. He didn’t have rich parents or a large family that would miss him. She thought that marked him out as the right kind of loner for the job. She was wrong about that but the upside was that making the problem go away wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows.
While he was sleeping, Lena brought the largest hammer they had down on Jordy’s head enough times to make sure he’d never wake up.
She jettisoned his body into the rings. The surplus of supplies with his absence meant that she’d be able to stay here for a year. Operating the ship by herself would be no problem. There’d be a big payday when she docked again and a year of peace and quiet to figure out a plausible story before that.
She sat smiling in the darkness, listening to the rasp of the ringdust against the hull.
Ringmining attracted a certain kind of personality.
