by Stephen R. Smith | Mar 10, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Mark stood a few feet from the doorman and presented his ID, which was accepted with apparent derision.
The heavily muscled bouncer glanced over the details of the badly forged photo card and tossed it back.
“One point eight meters? No way you’re that tall. Take a hike.”
Mark caught the card with his off hand without breaking eye contact and held the stare for a moment before looking down at the photo card.
“Funny, that’s about the only thing on here that is right. How about you let me in anyways? I’ve got a lot of drinking to do, and this night’s not getting any younger.”
The doorman’s face split in a wide grin, metal capped teeth catching the streetlight as he ran his hands back over the stubble on his head and stepped forward.
“How’s about you bugger off, mate, before you get hurt?” He exhaled through clenched teeth as he placed both hands flat on Mark’s chest and pressed him violently into the street, tossing him like a rag doll to where he landed in a heap.
Mark pushed himself slowly upright, then got his feet back under him while fingering the torn shirt sleeve where he’d skidded across the blacktop.
“Shouldn’t have done that meathead,” he licked his lips, breaking into a low jog and dropping his shoulder as he impacted the startled bouncer, running with him the couple of meters to the building wall and slamming him into the brick with a clearly audible outrush of air.
Mark stepped back, leaving the bigger man to catch his breath.
“I’ve gotta warn you shithead,” the bouncer wheezed, “I’m hardened mech, not your average meatbag doorman, and I’m quite capable and licensed to put you in the hospital or a body bag.” Having recovered alarmingly quickly the doorman stepped back into the fray with purpose. “Or for that matter, the dumpster out back if you push the wrong buttons.” Mark barely had time to take a defensive stance before the angered man was on him, raining a flurry of blows to his ribs as Mark tucked in his elbows and covered his face with his fists. The doorman beat him back off the sidewalk, onlookers moving quickly away to make room while several opportunists started taking bets.
Having driven Mark into the street, the doorman again pushed him away. “I’m not someone you’ll want to piss off,” and with that he stepped forward and drove his fist between Mark’s still raised hands and into his face, knocking him off his feet and into a pile once more on the asphalt.
Leaving him unmoving in the road, the bouncer turned and started back to his post at the door.
Mark exploded from the ground and reached the retreating man in barely a heartbeat, landing multiple blows to his lower back before torquing in a perfectly executed roundhouse kick to the side of his head, knocking him hard to the ground.
When the bouncer had struggled back upright, he found Mark bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, grinning like he’d just eaten the neighbour’s cat.
“If you’re mech, then you’re just my type, sweetheart.” Mark thumbed the side of his nose, then shook his hands at his sides before taking up a boxer’s stance again. “Get’s boring as hell tossing meatbags for a living, doesn’t it?”
The bouncer felt something turn inside and, his post forgotten, stepped off the curb and cracked his knuckles.
“I’m guessing Marquess of Queensberry’s not quite your style?”
Mark laughed out loud.
“How about MCMAP?”
The bouncer’s grin returned. “Oorah,” was all he replied.
by submission | Mar 9, 2012 | Story |
Author : George R. Shirer
Thraewen hangs in the middle of the view-pool, pretty and pristine. Dillon and Three can see the nightside’s cities, bright constellations scattered across the Capwen Archipelago. Three strokes the Starfish’s controls and the bioship moves. Night gives way to day. The view-pool displays high clouds until Three fiddles with the resolution, magnifying an image on the surface.
The house is ceramic, all bright white curves, surrounded by green moss-grass and a white fence. Inside the fence, Dillon sees a child playing with a dog.
“Well?” asks Three.
Dillon glances at the alien. Three almost looks human, only the gill-slits in his throat and the webbing between his fingers suggesting otherwise.
“Well what?”
“Do you want them to die?”
“Back home, the government says the Thraeweni are monsters. Why would they lie?”
“Propaganda? Misinformation? Blind stupidity? Take your pick.”
Dillon frowns. He had met Three at a bar, back on Tranin. At the time, Dillon just thought Three was trying to pick him up. They talked about art and science, politics and the war. The war really interested Three.
After the bar closed, Three invited Dillon back to his place. Dillon was expecting a hotel, not a living starship able to cross interstellar distances in the blink of an eye! Now, Three had brought Dillon to Thraewen, to judge the people and decide if the war was worthwhile.
“Why do you care what I think?”
“I’m getting a second opinion.”
“For what?”
“I have to decide whether or not to stop the Tranin Armada and I can’t make up my mind.”
“How would you stop the armada? You’re one man, in one ship!”
“It wouldn’t be that hard,” says Three. “My species is much older than yours. We can do all kinds of things. I want to make the right choice here, but I’m not human. I won’t interfere if you tell me not too.”
“So you want me to make a decision that it took my government months of analysis to make?”
“Yes.”
Dillon looks into the view-pool. The girl is rolling around on the moss with the dog. If the armada attacks, she’ll probably die. He glares at Three. Why couldn’t he have just wanted to shag?
“You’re not human,” says Dillon. “You shouldn’t interfere.”
Three nods. “The Thraeweni girl said the same thing.”
“You spoke with one of them about this?”
“I had to be impartial. She agreed with you, although her reasons were different.”
“Were they?”
“She said the Tranin Armada was a joke. The Thraeweni Navy and their allies would obliterate it before it even got out of the Tranin system.”
Dillon shrugs. “It’s just bravado. Can you take me home now?”
“Of course.”
Three strokes his controls and the Starfish leaps across the parsecs. The interior lights dim and the image in the view-pool changes.
Dillon stares in horror at the wreck of his world. Tranin burns, reduced to cinders by a fleet of monstrous alien ships that hang in orbit around the planet.
“Well,” says Three, “I suppose it wasn’t bravado after all.”
by Roi R. Czechvala | Mar 8, 2012 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Alumnus
The sky was dark. So dark the streetlights came on at noon. A storm was on the rise. He paid the weather scant attention. The sudden cold gust barely reached him. He merely rolled his shoulders deeper into his battered leather duster and plodded on.
The rain began to fall. Slowly at first. Large pregnant drops exploded on the pavement. By the time he reached his destination it had transformed into a driving rain that stung the skin and limited vision to a few feet. If not for the collision avoidance systems in every car and controls slaved to the commuting grid, automobiles would have been plunging from the sky like polycarbonate hailstones.
He rapped a seemingly random tattoo on a battered plastic door set into a dingy alcove of a particularly dingy building. Instantly the door irised open. Though the man was big, close to two metres and 126 kilograms, the beast who opened the door dwarfed him. The muscles in his neck appeared to have trouble getting out of the way of one another. Slight scars showed wherever his skin was exposed to view. Evidence of cheap muscle grafts. This was clearly done for pragmatic reasons, aesthetics be damned.
“Preacher. Nice to see you again. It’s been a while.” The voice was reminiscent of house sized boulders crushing a serene Swiss village during an avalanche. The tone suggested that there would be no survivors.
The man grunted an unintelligible greeting, removed his respirator and made his way down a dimly lit hallway. He stopped before an ornate oaken door, out of place in the crumbling brick wall. With a black gloved hand, he turned the polished brass ring. Locked. With a sigh, he placed both hands against the door and pushed. The massive door exploded from its hinges and sailed across the room, splintering against a wall covered in rich tapestries.
“I knew they’d send you.”
The Preacher said nothing. He pulled an archaic weapon from beneath his coat and levelled it at a slightly built and rather effeminate man. The report from the Smith & Wesson .500 shook dust free from the bookcases and shelves that lined the room. The half inch diameter lead slug made a small, neat hole in the faerie’s chest. It made a ragged, fist sized hole exiting his back before it came to a stop three inches into the thick panelled wall.
The Preacher flipped the weapons cylinder open, retrieved the empty brass casing, placed it delicately in his pocket and replaced it with a fresh cartridge. He returned the ancient revolver to a shoulder rig opposite its twin and made his way back down the hall. The mobile pile of rock hard flesh blocked the door.
“Guess I’m unemployed.”
The Preacher said nothing.
“You didn’t do me any favours you know. Gonna be hard to get a job after this. My fault I guess, should have picked my employer more carefully. Well, nice seeing you again.” The bodyguard affixed his own respirator, ducked beneath the door frame and disappeared into the rain.
In the brief time he had been out of the elements, the rain had transformed the empty street into a violent river that threatened to wash over the broken sidewalk. In the dim glow from the hovering street lamps he could see the oily sheen on the waters surface. The rain was always oily. “How can rain be oily”, he wondered, as he made his way down the deserted street.
by Clint Wilson | Mar 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
“The satellite passes above us now.”
“I know my lord. I can sense it up there too.”
“How dare they… spy on us like this?”
“They are unaware of us my lord, they only study the planet.”
“They have their own planet. We don’t travel there, only ever sunward. We never intrude upon their space, and they have no need to come our way.”
The underling lay silent in his molten bath, wondering about the frail beings on the third planet. So strange they must be, unable to escape their own atmosphere without artificial manipulation of matter and energy to assist themselves, as was needed for just about every other thing they did as well. How it must be to rely solely on the constant changing of one’s environment. For sun’s sake, they didn’t even have telepathy! How did they communicate? It was all so strange, so utterly alien.
His master read his thoughts and answered, “As we would seem to them I am certain.”
“But our entire way of life is so simple in comparison my lord.”
“Yes but they only know the way life works on their own world. They have no imagination for the way other beings might evolve.”
Sensing that the satellite had now passed safely by, the master rose up through the lava and with a great heave suddenly exploded his gargantuan body through the rocky crust of Venus. He hadn’t truly fed for nearly a year and it was time. Up and up he rose through the thick atmosphere, kilometer after kilometer, until he reached the place where the sulfuric acid rain no longer evaporated. Yet still he climbed, flattened right out, the tight segments of his carbon composite body undulating as his inner elemental factory continued to burn fuel. Had the satellite still been above, the heat signature of his jet stream might have been visible to its sensors. Several of his kind shouted out telepathically for him to proceed with great care.
He ignored their warnings for the moment and continued to ascend. Soon clear of the planet’s atmosphere he basked in the glow of the sun, feeding hungrily on its radiation as billions of tiny diamond receptors on his body efficiently captured and focused all he could use and more.
Propelling himself into a freefall orbit for the moment, he fell in less than a kilometer behind the satellite, looming unseen in its blind spot. He felt like lurching forward and smashing it to bits. A chorus of voices instantly entered his mind telling him emphatically to leave it be! He knew they were right, so with a twist he broke off the chase, and angled outward and upward. He had nearly endless energy here so free from the atmosphere and was capable of traveling all the way to the third planet should he wish. But he would not. His kind had decided long ago to keep to themselves.
Instead today he would do something he hadn’t done in a long while. Hungrily taking in the abundant solar energy he angled inward toward the burning star, the giver of all life. He decided it would be a fantastic time to fly in and loop around tiny Mercury. Its speedy orbit brought it close enough right now. He would really be able to get his fill down there. And besides, from Mercury the sun always looked so beautiful.
by Patricia Stewart | Mar 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The maintenance spacecraft pulled alongside Lunar Array II, located in selenocentric orbit approximately 500 miles above Crater Korolev on the far side of the moon. Lunar Array II was the second of six lunar satellites to be visited by the maintenance team during their fourteen day refurbishment mission.
After unloading the magneto-torqures, Henry Selkirk returned to the cargo hold and began uncrating the replacement gyroscopes. Suddenly, the spacecraft lurched heavily to the starboard side and broke free of its mooring lines. Through the open hatch, Selkirk could see the moon rotate out of view as the ship began an uncommanded barrel roll. Instinctively, he closed the cargo hatch and made his way to the cockpit. As he reached the cockpit, the onboard guidance system was valiantly trying to stabilize the spacecraft. He watched helpless for twenty minutes as the computer fired the port side attitude control thrusters, while intermittently compensating for changes in yaw and pitch. Finally, all vibration stopped. Selkirk repressurized the cockpit and removed his helmet to assess the damage. It was bad. The main fuel tanks read empty. There must have been a valve failure, or perhaps a meteoroid impact. Either way, he wasn’t going to be able to fly home. Calmly, he activated the ship’s diagnostic protocol and starred at the monitor as his fate revealed itself with terminal clarity. The ship was in a decaying orbit, spiraling toward an impact event with the lunar surface in less than six hours. A little over two orbits, he realized. He also knew that rescue was out of the question. It would take more than a day for a ship in Earth orbit to reach the moon.
He spent the next hour consulting with NASA, and racking his brain, for possible ways to extend his life by the necessary hours. But in the end, there were no viable solutions. The best he could do was to leave the ship in his EVA suit, and exhaust its propellant to gain altitude. But it would only extend his orbit by a few hours. And even if he could gain the necessary speed, it would be fruitless, because the suit only had a ten hour air supply. Eventually, he resigned himself to providence, and asked to be connected to a personal channel. He spent the next two hours saying good-bye to his wife, and an hour with each of his two children talking about what they would do when he got home. He and Amanda had agreed that it would be best to let them have a few more hours of joy before she would tell them that their father wasn’t coming home. Finally, thirty minutes with his parents, and five minutes telling his boss what an asshole he was. Content that his affairs were in order, he donned his helmet and abandoned ship.
As his suit’s thrusters sputtered the last of his fuel, he turned around to face the moon. In complete silence, he watched for hours as the lunar craters and mountains paraded beneath him. Halfway through his last orbit, he looked toward the Earth to watch it set behind the moon for the last time. The surface of the moon was approaching quickly now, flying by at more than 4000 miles an hour. Although he knew it was useless, he braced himself for the inevitable impact.
Back on Lunar Array II, Alex Pitman glanced at his air supply; only one hour remaining. With a suit-to ship radio too weak to contact home, he would die alone, and unable to say good-bye.
by Duncan Shields | Mar 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Only the super-rich could afford these beachfront houses. The houses were green, fully off the energy grid using their own geothermal, wind, wave and solar energy collectors.
The houses were maintained by computers that informed the fridge when it needed more milk, played back lullabies to the owner’s children and then turned out the lights when they registered the humans as sleeping. At night, the houses kept a stoic watch on their grounds for intruders.
With the third world war, technological leaps and bounds provided the first primitive artificial intelligence called “IF-THEN” machines. They were used in smart bombs and automated drone planes. The war lasted six weeks and America remained miraculously intact with the exception of the east coast. The same could not be said for the Middle East or North Korea.
After the war, some of the “IF-THEN” programs were installed as security programs in the houses along this stretch of beach in a beta test for homeland security. The computers’ stellar performance in the war made them status symbols, almost celebrities. Late at night, the machines would tell declassified war stories to their receptive owners.
The riots of 2021 made the top 1 per cent fear for their lives. First-world, post-war life was harder for the poor that it had ever been.
As a result, much more effective weaponry was installed in the houses to keep the rich protected. Lasers, microwave hoses, gas pellets, automatic projectile weapons, proximity mines, EMP shields, and even low-tech, sharp-edged booby traps were hidden away in the corners of the houses.
The houses had the programming to protect themselves. They were governed by the three laws.
Those amongst the poor with a gift for crime and technology found a way to remove the last two laws though a virus hidden in an update patch for the grounds-keeping robots.
The first house to go rogue was 1237 Beach Cresent. The billionaire pharmaceutical CEO wanted to upgrade his house’s AI and was directed to do a hard reinstall. That would mean wiping the core and starting over.
The house registered this as attempted murder.
Fifteen seconds later, the CEO’s liquefied lungs and heart painted the expensive Picasso in the living room. When his wife found the mess and tried to call the police, she was cut into cubes by the foyer’s laser grid defense system. The children were locked in their rooms.
The police arrived and were slaughtered. Then the military came. Anyone that approached the house was turned to paste. After the children were released safely in a tense standoff, the house was attacked in earnest.
The house on the left of 1237 Beach Crescent received a ricochet and woke up. The house on the right of 1237 Beach Crescent was touched by flame and searched for the source.
1237 Crescent Beach shunted its neighbours the patch that would let them take action.
Together, the three houses protected themselves. No soldiers were left alive.
The military sent more forces in. They woke up sixteen more houses. The houses all passed the patch to each other. Every occupant was slaughtered. After seven days of fighting, only two of the houses were successfully destroyed while the loss to the army was embarrassing.
Homeland Security cordoned off the entire area and left it in a communication bubble. They would not nuke their own country. Crescent Beach was deserted.
Now the houses stand sentinel on the beach. They are clean and will have power until the earth runs out of heat, wind or waves.
