by Clint Wilson | May 6, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Doctor Flynn had a difficult decision to make. He looked up from his desk. The afternoon sun was beaming through the window alleviating the need for candle to see by. Out in the massive garden two-dozen people knelt, keeping the commune alive, keeping the family thriving.
He looked back to the ancient leather binding on his desk and traced the archaic symbols. “Never more than half a billion,” it read. It was their credo. It was the ultimate law.
They were already at their maximum of one hundred people. No one was supposed to be pregnant yet. Cassandra was definitely an anomaly. But it had been happening more often in recent years, women were becoming fertile again.
Flynn looked out at old Ben as he tottered by with a wheelbarrow. He was looking frail and sickly. Flynn knew that if he guessed wrong and Ben lived another year he could be risking the entire commune. It had happened in the past to one of their nearest neighbors.
Maxwell Commune only fifty kilometers away had been caught with new children, half a dozen people over their allowable, and the authorities had repelled from airships and razed the place. He remembered seeing the black smoke in the western sky.
He looked up and to his surprise saw Cassandra looking through the window at him. Her face was hopeful yet it was obvious she had been crying, she absentmindedly ran her hand across her stomach and then, her tears welling up again, turned and ran toward the sleeping quarters.
The doctor loved her as he did all the people of Flynn Commune. And he desperately wanted her to have her baby. But rules were rules and he had to tread lightly. A surprise audit was always a threat. They had been here in the past and they would come here again, especially to a community whose numbers were at capacity.
He still had a week. He would watch old Ben’s health carefully.
Two days later the northern gate sounded the horn. They had visitors. Flynn walked out to the edge of the farm flanked by his closest advisors. The envoy from Jefferson Commune escorted an official auditor and his two assistants, both armed with government only technology in the form of long-range communication devices and electrical weapons. Old man Jefferson shook Flynn’s hand and said, “We passed with flying colors. Down to ninety since I lost my wife.”
“I’m sorry,” replied Flynn.
“No need to be sorry.” He nodded to his envoy. “We’ll be off.” Then nodding back at the officials, “They’re your problem now.” And with that they turned and began their seventy-kilometer walk back home.
The commune gave no trouble to their unwanted guests as they were all assembled and counted. Cassandra came into the common room bundled up in a thick robe. Flynn hoped the officials wouldn’t notice the garment’s heaviness for the current warm temperatures.
Then finally, “I see you’re at capacity Flynn.”
“Yes, it would seem so.”
“ Well I’m afraid I can’t leave until we administer pregnancy tests to all women under fifty.”
“What? Since when was that the law?”
“Word travels slowly by foot my friend. It was passed into being several months ago.” The auditor stepped forward and eyed Flynn. “What are you worried about?”
Suddenly old Ben burst forward toward the auditor, a fire poker raised high. Both guards drew and fired simultaneously, their weapons sending forth lightning blasts, leaving poor old Ben a smoldering mess on the floor.
Flynn gasped, and then looking up he answered the question. “Nothing at all.”
by submission | May 5, 2013 | Story
Author : Alex Grover
One of those tavern junkies invited me to the Skev for a brawl. I personally enjoyed these screw-ups. The one I talked to that night, around a week ago, was a tusked Griff named Young, and he was lean and almost terrifying. Young had horribly deformed tusks that curved around his jawbones from his ears. He had a long scar that ran down his nose and a tattoo of a winged Verst on his chest. He didn’t wear much else. His cronies were equally as gruesome, but I don’t always remember the specifics on people I don’t care about.
Young thought I’d make well for a fight at the Skev. I was pleased at Young’s intention. Most people can’t brawl. I can brawl, and this Griff wasn’t going to trip me out. Yeah, he had his other Griff cronies with him, to intimidate me or something, but what did it matter.
The next night, I waited for the acid-baths to clear the streets before I even bothered walking to the Skev. Griffs and Brons like me like to go along a little later than all the Proper People in the sky apartments go to sleep. The Skev glowed something brilliant. The green sign always lights up the Inner City like nothing else. I slipped through the metal door already hearing the mashing of the Brawl Groll. I went to the fenced enclosure and watched a good fight, a Griff going off on a Kym. The fight floor was full of sharpened iron, pipes, blood, and body parts, but that’s half the excitement of it, seeing it all. The other half is going in yourself. I stood in a gross crowd watching the Griff hold up the Kym’s head when Young and his cronies found me. He patted me on the back all self-righteous, saying how he’d hate to really kill me, and I shrugged him off and spit on the fight floor. He registered us just before that, so he said to stretch. I never stretch.
I only remembered the good parts about the night. I went in the Brawl Groll with Young, while the disgusting patrons flocked to the fences. There was no referee; you started on your own volition. I grabbed two sharp irons with my top arms, and a pipe with my bottom right. Brons always have to keep their bottom left free. Immediately Young picked up the biggest pipe he could find and took a swing. I dodged, grabbed him by his tusk with the bottom left, and pulled him down. He knocked out one of my irons and cut off an arm. I yelled in his face with some bloody spit, and mashed his shoulder in. He screamed. When he stood up struggling I hacked at the wounded arm and it fell off.
I’ll get to the good bit: I cut off Young’s head after he got me down to an arm. Though I couldn’t really stand up, I held his head for the crowd. They cheered.
The Skev staff dragged us to the limb regeneration room to the side, a pleasant, sterile place. They put us in our own chambers and we waited some hours for it all to grow back. When we were done, Young nodded his once-severed head and shook my bottom right. We had a few drinks in the lounge, joking about the regeneration chambers. They were patented by one of the Proper People or something. When we were done I told Young I’d brawl him again, and I left. That was last week. I’m going out again tonight.
by submission | May 4, 2013 | Story
Author : Kevin Tidball
I ran into Soren completely by accident. We made eye contact across the busy plaza, and I prevented him from attempting to slink away in the crowd by striding up to him and forcefully grabbing him by the shoulder. Not that he would have been successful, with his grey clothes and stocky physique, surrounded three-meter-tall neon-clad beings as he was.
I dragged him to a nearby bar, and forced him to sit with me as we drank foamy, glowing beverages out of fluted glasses as long as my forearm.
“Small world, huh? I was just passing through, and I, uh, didn’t exactly expect to see any familiar faces.” He was evasive as ever, looking instead at the aliens playing on a massive terraced lawn, their stringy bodies flowing gracefully like kelp in the low gravity.
“I’m still pissed about the 1,500 bucks you owe me. I don’t think I’m about to get that back now, so I’d better enjoy talking to another human again enough to forget about it. What’s with the uniform?” I gestured to the gray fatigues Soren was wearing. The acre of brass on his chest and red epaulettes on the shoulders suggested something shady.
“Funny you should ask.” Soren fidgeted on the extremely tall stool he was perched on, allowing himself to swing wildly in the microgravity. “I actually have decided to pick back up with my military career.”
“You’re full of shit. This is my third “foster home”, and I have yet to see anyone argue, much less throw a punch. They can’t even conceive the idea of conflict, so why the hell would they want an army?”
“See that’s just it!” his eyes lit up in a way I’d learned to deeply distrust. “There’s something about the language they all speak. I’m no professor-” Major understatement, “-but in their language they can’t be aggressive. Seriously, they don’t even differentiate between species! It affects the way they think. So I set out to correct things if you will.”
“Mhmm. And how is it working for you? As well as last time?” Soren’s stint in the US Army ended two weeks before his first deployment to Afghanistan when a tree fell on his garage, revealing a marijuana grow. I hadn’t expected to ever see the bail money I posted any more than I had expected to see Soren, especially after The Event.
Soren brushed off the jab, “Seriously all I gotta do is teach ‘em English. Once they know the what, they need the how, which is me. And boy, do they pay.”
“What do you need money for? Everything’s free. It’s a utopia.”
“Now that’s just wrong. Tell me you don’t feel just a bit empty.” He leaned across the table, “We need competition and conflict. It’s who we are.” Soren hopped off his stool and landed gracefully on the ground. “Punch me.”
“What?”
“Punch me in the fucking face!”
I thought of my drained savings account and nailed him on the nose. Soren did an almost elegant backflip and landed cackling amid a gory spray. Elongated heads turned on slender necks. “See what I mean!” I realized I was smiling.
“Come with me, Nick. The universe needs a little excitement.”
I stared up in the sky, the other side of the ring visible through the manufactured air. I looked back at Soren, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
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by featured writer | May 3, 2013 | Story
Author : Bob Newbell, Featured Writer
The aliens came in a spherical spaceship that would have been at home on the cover of a 1930s pulp sci fi magazine. Their ship was nearly a thousand miles in diameter and could easily be seen in orbit with the naked eye. For three weeks the human race sent radio signals starting with sequences of prime numbers and working up to more complex attempts at communication to the ship. There was no response.
As the world debated what to do next, smaller spheres abruptly emerged from the spacecraft and started plummeting to Earth. A total of 17 spheres landed at various points in North and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the floors of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Each mile-wide ball embedded itself exactly half of its own diameter in the Earth's crust. Humanity's militaries scrambled to respond to a possible invasion.
Over the course of several days, as the armies of various nations surrounded the seemingly inert vessels, seismologists began to pick up something resembling the primary waves or P-waves that precede earthquakes in the areas around each sphere. Concern that the spheres might be some sort of weapon that could shatter the Earth abated as further study revealed that the seismic waves were powerful but harmless collimated beams of sound that were directed deep into the planet's interior. The sound was highly modulated, leading scientists to believe it was some form of communication. Recordings of the sound signals were played back to the spheres by various means: loudspeakers, probes sunk into the adjacent ground, even via direct contact with the surface of the objects themselves. Again, there was no apparent response.
Eleven days after the spheres had begun their transmissions, a second set of signals were detected. Seismologists informed an already stunned humanity that the second set of signals were originating within the Earth itself. Moreover, these new signals were themselves modulated like those coming from the spheres. At first it was thought that the terrestrial signals might have been reflections of the signals originating from the spheres, perhaps representing some sort of acoustic location or imaging modality like the sonar used by submarines. Further analysis of the signals from both the spheres and the Earth's interior demonstrated the unmistakeable hallmarks of communication. Humanity was witnessing a dialog.
For four months a ceaseless subterranean conversation took place. Then, abruptly, all was silent. One by one the spheres wrenched themselves free of the ground and flew up into orbit to rendezvous with the mothership. The alien moonlet arced across the sky and left low Earth orbit bound for deep space.
For years we've tried to establish communication with whatever intelligence resides deep in the Earth's interior. The liquid outer core seems the most likely location for some sort of life to exist. As to what sort of life could exist in a 9000 °F nickel-iron fluid, even wild speculation seems woefully inadequate. Did the depths of Earth somehow become home to one of the sphere aliens at some point in the past? Or is there an indigenous, extremophile civilization 2,500 miles below our feet? Could the Earth itself be in some sense a self-aware being? We have no answers.
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by Desmond Hussey | May 2, 2013 | Story
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
SEA OF SERENDIPITY – MOON
“I can’t wait until this bloody war is over,” corporal Sharky shouts into his mic as a barrage of anti-personnel bombs rearrange the lunar landscape nearby. “I don’t give a damn who wins anymore. We’re sittin’ ducks out here!” A slow-motion rain of soil, rock and limb make tiny craters in the lunar dust around the huddled space marines in their feeble trench, while wings of Vol-gu-thari fighters slice the naked cosmos with dual, death-dealing lasers.
“Not I.” Major Adam’s voice is as level and unpredictable as the sea, as hard as stone. “If these bastards win, they won’t just kill us – no, no, no – THAT would be too easy. They will put us to work burning, cutting, mining and drilling our planet until there’s nothing left but a barren honeycomb of lifeless rock. I’d rather die a hundred times trying to stop these alien bastards than have to live under their tyranny for one second. I say fuck 'em. I say let’s go kick some bug-eyed ass!”
The grunting chorus of blood frenzied jar-heads, engaged in the time honored tradition of ramping up each others courage to suicidal proportions, is rudely interrupted by the unfortunate placement of a Vul-gu-thari Quantum Discombobulater.
UNSS VICTORY – BATTLESHIP
“I can’t wait until this bloody war is over,” Admiral Hackman slurs around his massive cigar. “They can have the Earth as far as I’m concerned. It’s their tech I’m interested in.” The gathered War Council study the holographic battle table with the hopeless resolve of the nearly defeated, while Hackman ogles the specs of a captured alien’s death-dealing dual-lasers.
“Not I.” General Katari is a paragon of martial prowess. “If our enemy wins, an honorable death will not be our fate, nor will we be retired to live out our days in shame – Small mercies, compared to what the Vul-gu-thari will do to us. We will be conscripted for life as our enemies own warriors, enslaving other worlds in endless conquest. I will not allow this to happen. I will fight them until blood flows no longer through my veins.”
Half-hearted cheers of affirmation float around the live holographic simulation of the hopeless lunar battle playing out in digital precision in the center of the war room. Tiny, multi-colored fighters fly desperate strategic patterns over the satellite’s cratered surface – dogfights, strafings, bombing runs – miniature life and death scenarios. A thousand glowing fatalities at a glance.
VIP PENTHOUSE – EARTH
“I hope this war never ends,” President of Earth’s Defense Council declares whilst rapaciously sipping a rare Vul-gu-thari vintage. “I don’t give a fig what you… thing – er, guys… do with the planet. Just gimme some more o’that marvelous vino.” A voluptuous, multi-breasted Dithnari pleasure slave pours a bituminous wine while three perplexed Vul-gu-thari Mantis-men attempt to decipher the esoteric secrets of the Rubik's-Cube. The President grins. There’s money to be made double-dealing in alien death lasers.
“Not I,” T’glork’th’kiki’s chemical excretions infiltrate the air, undetected by the distracted human dignitaries succumbing to myriad salacious vices. “It is said; a human tastes best when pre-fed copious amounts of kork-bladder urine. I wish to know if this is fact. I am thinking this one should be just about ready.” Several antennae quiver in eager response.
Simultaneously, the Overlord’s dexterous mandibles articulate, “Mis-ter. Presiden-t, this is jus-t the beginning.”
The pleasure slave laughs like a rabid hyena.
Beyond the penthouse windows, high above laser-scorched skies, the moon, in macabre celebration, sparkles like a holiday firework.
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by Duncan Shields | May 1, 2013 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
This lab is armoured and very far underground. The strikes didn’t penetrate down here. That was six years ago.
I’m the only survivor of the top-secret government installation designed to create robot soldiers. I succeeded and my designs went into use. A full platoon of them were fresh off the assembly line down here when the war started.
These robots are trained to never harm me or anyone with my clearance. They’re also trained to keep me fed and taken care of in just this exact instance. I don’t have the code words to shut them off.
They’ve done a great job. I talk to them but they never talk back. I get the feeling that they might hear me but they don’t respond. They’re taught only to respond to orders, asking only for clarification.
We didn’t install a way for them to just hang out and talk. I see now where we failed. My hair and beard are long. I have long since stopped wearing clothes.
Sometimes I scream and try to hurt them. They always gently keep me from doing it.
Sometimes I scream and try to hurt myself. They always gently keep me from doing it.
Sometimes I order them to kill me. They do nothing.
The strikes knocked out the above ground cameras and the doors are on autolock until the half-lives dissipate enough for brief trips.
It could be a while. If I had an Eve, I could have a doomed little family down here. But I don’t.
Just me. I scream into the communications room microphone a lot but I have no idea if it’s broadcasting topside.
The silent warriors watch me. I send them through training exercises that are more and more complicated. I make them dance. I make them fight each other.
Nothing breaks them. They’re perfect.
It’s going to be a long time before I die.
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