by submission | Mar 23, 2013 | Story |
Author : Javen J.
1:10. Three fingers of vodka were left; two in the bottle and one in a tumbler. He had never drunk so much before; and never would again. At least there would be no record breaking hangover. He chased the tumbler with a sharp inhale. He looked down at his mangled knee. It was bloody and useless; but he had nowhere to go.
1:02. He had a hyper-rifle, two fingers of vodka and one minute to live. The countdown continued as feverish crashing reverberated through the makeshift barricade. He erected it to isolate himself in the orbital laboratory’s control center.
:55. He poured himself the rest of the vodka and sat the glass between his legs on the ground. He hoisted up the hyper-rifle and checked its charge. The rifle grew exponentially heavier as he lost more blood. Charge at four percent; about fourteen bursts of fire left.
:42. More than enough. He fingered the sight. It took him roughly fifty bursts to put down seven of the freaks and erect the barricade. However, there was no need to kill them all; only to preserve the countdown.
:38. He took a long deep breath and held up the vodka. He would not let it go to waste, like his research. He chased the vodka with a few tears and warm thoughts of his young lass.
:30. He heard metal twisting as the barricade began to give way. He figured the hatch must be cracking open because he could hear the creatures’ audible throat growls.
:24. Once friends and colleagues; now mindless victims of a botched experiment.
:20. The barricaded hatch crashed open and the howling abominations rushed into the control room.
:16. He delayed the stampede by hitting the first intruders in the knees with several rifle bursts.
:11. Suddenly the room was filled with creatures.
:08. Half of the freaks charged for the control panel behind him and the others began clawing at his already mangled body.
:05. He ignored the immense pain and fired his remaining bursts in defense of the panel.
:02. When his charge was depleted he used the butt of the rifle to shove one creature away from interface.
:00. The countdown terminated. He writhed in agony hoping the infliction was contained. Without warning the station’s grav-drive reached critical mass and vaporized the station and every piece of dust and particulate matter within a mile.
by submission | Mar 22, 2013 | Story |
Author : Michael F. da Silva
“I didn’t know you were such a fight fan!” he said with a huge, dumb grin on his face. He couldn’t believe his luck.
“Oh, totally!” she beamed. “I got really into it because of my Dad. We’ve watched the Pan-Orion Championships every year together since I was little.”
“That’s awesome!”
Andre could hardly pry his eyes away from Julia’s perfect oval face. He led the way to their seats nearly tripping twice over groups of short, stocky Dokiads. She giggled each time making the lanky young man begin to shrink out of self-consciousness. As if to reassure him she moved close enough to wrap a hand around his bicep and helped him find their seats.
“Here we are!” he said, leading her around the torso-head of a ten-legged Thronumite.
Andre had spent two weeks’ wages on these seats in hopes of impressing her. They were close enough to smell the musk coming off a confident-looking horned gastropod waiting for its opponent across the tower cage.
“So, how long have you been a fan?” she asked as she put on a cute pair of pink-rimmed safety glasses.
“Pretty much since they divided up the fighters into divisions.” He said as he put on his own eye protection. “There wasn’t much point in watching Humans getting pounded by three-hundred-plus-kilo fighters. They might have a better chance now that the POC are letting fighters keep their military augs, I think.”
They talked excitedly about their favourite fights in between matches and cheered when a massive Stranoterste knocked the fangs out of a Sknenian’s outer jaws.
Summing up all of his courage, he slipped his hand into hers. She looked up and gave him a warm smile while she squeezed his hand in return before looking back at the action in the cage.
By the beginning of the main event, the much anticipated Carreira versus Fl’rk’k, they had fallen into each other’s eyes again. The thunderous roar of the crowd seemed to push them slowly into each other’s arms. The green blood spray across their faces was a distant sensation as they shared their first kiss.
by Julian Miles | Mar 21, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The shades of green here are like nowhere else in the world.
“Pre-zent arms!”
With a metallic crash, fourteen biobots swing their gantry guns skyward as their right arms raise in salute. The bier passes with a soft hum, the incongruously gentle sound of suppressor fields warring with the emissions from the remains within. Captain Martina Durren is coming home.
Somewhere under the depths of the Mindanao Deep, they found an Atlantean ‘submarine’. That being the only word applicable, although the vessel relates to nuclear submarines in the way that they relate to a toy submarine in a kid’s bath.
Unfortunately this incredible discovery was not made public. Taylor Nesmith, founder of the massive Interseas Group, decided to use the secrets in his attempt to become King of the World.
The bier comes to rest over the eighteen metre deep lead-lined pit.
“Fro’ rank, fire!”
Seven beams of coherent light stab skywards. The smell of scorched leaves and burnt rain is fitting as the bier sinks from view.
The wreck had contained weapons of the kind that sank Atlantis. Nesmith released recovered evidence proving that the sinking of that fabled place occurred during a war. Then he threatened by taking out a couple of uninhabited Pacific islands. When governments responded by increasing their efforts to stop him and his international corporation turned military combine, he sank Hawaii.
Historians were arguing about ‘what type of war’ and ‘who with’ when descendants of Atlantis’ opponents made representation to the United Nations via Peruvian envoys.
“Sec’n rank, fire!”
The Valusians are a reptilian race, distant relations of the dinosaurs. Decimated by the event that annihilated their kin, they lived in isolated communities until the Atlanteans hunted and waged war upon them to obtain technologies the Valusians refused to disclose. We know how well that went for Atlantis, but the victory was pyrrhic. The same technologies that caused the war now underpin our biomechanica. The Valusians worked with the UK military because their only salvageable technical city lay under the Norfolk Fens. The SAS work with them because our skills and temperament matches that of their combative caste, the Sheshna.
The assault on Nesmith’s ‘capital’ deep in the Gobi Desert caught him unprepared. A hundred biobots tore his nascent global empire to shreds.
His last act was to unleash a shoal of neo-Atlantean ‘geonukes’ from what we had thought was a minor outpost in the Okhotsk Abyss. The only one that detonated did so in the seabed midway between Norwich and Rotterdam. Scientists say the subsidence effect is pretty much the same as if the sea level had risen sixty metres over a radius of a thousand kilometres.
“Port arms!”
The reason we’re not all drowning is Martina. She led the raid on the Okhotsk installation. Quickly realising that taking the base from the overwhelming opposition or stopping the shoal was impossible, she ordered her team to stall the defenders while she tore the exotically radioactive cores from the ‘geonukes’ by hand. The shoal launched just as she reached the last one, the backlash mercifully killing her.
Her last words were: “Lay me down where I can see the loch through the trees.”
We marched from Magadan, escorting her home. Every city on the way stopped as people turned out to honour her passing.
On this chilly October morning I’m looking down on Loch Aslaich, knowing my bonny lass is home at last. I’ll no be joining her for a bit, but she said she didn’t mind.
by Duncan Shields | Mar 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
It was China that finally did it.
So little was known about the whys and hows of explosive decompression of the human body in space. There had been assumptions and guesses but nothing had happened yet in terms of accidents to give the scientists any bodies to study.
China’s space program was also curious.
It also happened to have ten criminals that it had condemned to death and were in good enough physical condition to qualify as astronauts.
They were strapped into their roller coaster chairs and kept in the back. Funny how the government didn’t balk at the idea of how much ten bodies would cost them in terms of fuel but they felt it was okay to skimp on anesthetic.
China’s government wasn’t doing it completely independently. They had been caught early on in the planning. After some top-secret political wrangling, the other two major governments of Earth had given China the silent go-ahead with the proviso that they share their data. They’d condemn the action if it ever came to light but other than that, they wouldn’t interfere. The information would be valuable and no one except China had the balls to do something like this.
And since there were no civilians up in space at the moment, eyewitnesses would be scarce.
The chairs were fitted with restraints bolted to the floor of the cargo bay. At no point would the prisoners be released. They’d simple be exposed to the vacuum of space for ten minutes and then the cargo bays would close and the shuttle would head back down to Earth.
Simple. Easy. Effective.
Like all horrible plans.
First of all, two of the criminals were adept at escaping locks. Second of all, space agencies weren’t as good at designing criminal restraints as prisons were. Third of all, the plan was to do the mission in radio silence. And fourth, the shuttles these days were mostly automated except for landing.
Weng Pen got out first when the G’s stopped. Pei Sheng followed suit. They freed the others.
One of the crew needed to do a final check on their bodies before the decompression. If only he’d checked the feeds coming from the inside.
That open door was all they needed.
The prisoners overwhelmed the crew, killing them or rendering them unconscious. They prisoners strapped the five crew members into the chairs.
The prisoners gathered into the cockpit and watched the red numbers count down.
The doors opened. Ten minutes passed. The doors closed. The ship turned slowly on its pre-programmed course back to China.
The dead bodies of the crew were the first images that ground control saw when the ship was back within accepted broadcast range parameters.
The other thing they saw was the laughing faces of the prisoners in the cockpit as manual control was restored to them for the landing.
One hard right later, the entire shuttle port and ninety government officials were ionized gas in the crater of the shuttle’s impact.
The rest of the governments of Earth have gone back to waiting for an accident to provide them with what happens upon an explosive decompression.
by Clint Wilson | Mar 19, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
His genius was detected at an early age. His penchant for numbers, particularly those relating to the intricate workings of world financial markets, was second to none.
To the delight of his parents he excelled beyond all expectations in his academic pursuits, receiving not one but two masters degrees by the age of sixteen.
By his twentieth birthday he was a world-renowned investment guru, appearing on media around the globe, giving new confidence to world leaders and common folk alike with his stalwart advice concerning all things financial.
At twenty-five he earned his first billion. The next year he doubled it. By age thirty he was easily the wealthiest man on the planet, being worth nearly double that of his closest challenger.
By age forty he was quite possibly the most famous person of all time, worth more than many small countries, and the face every single person, with a nickel to invest or a postage stamp to trade, looked up to for advice.
And his super computers both monitored and controlled the financial world. Each and every single transaction that took place, from a mining corporation in Brazil buying property in Siberia, to a child buying a stick of gum at the corner store, was all tracked and analyzed.
* * *
Leaders from around the globe were amassed in the deeply classified meeting. They had all come to hear him speak. Everyone sat motionless as he spelled out his plan.
“True the world market has gotten stronger but there is still this massive underlying debt. Everybody owes somebody else, in fact if you add up all the countries together the planet is over one-hundred trillion dollars in debt.”
The faces around the room remained transfixed, no one interrupted him. “And to whom are we in debt, hmm? Mars? How can a planet be in debt to itself? Yet here we are. It’s the perfect solution, and the only way it can work is if we act simultaneously and without warning. Not one person in this room may send even a single text if we vote yes, not until the announcement is made, then it’s game-on for all.”
“Don’t you fear the mayhem that this will cause?” asked a concerned delegate from Iceland.
“Not if we do it right and follow the new law. Everybody must abide, no exceptions!”
In the end an eighty-nine percent majority passed the act easily. Now all the politicians once again looked to the man at the head of the room. And as the cameras turned on and his image was simultaneously broadcast to every known media screen around the globe he began to address the citizens of Earth.
“Good people please know that by a majority vote of the world congress we are proceeding directly with the forgiveness act to take place as of now.” A copy of the act was beamed to all desktops everywhere. “Please abide by these rules as any variance from this new law is punishable by death.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Good, from this moment all old debts are erased forever. Nobody in the world owes anybody else anything. Your house is yours. Your car is yours. What is not yet yours is not yet yours. All wages continue, all people will be paid fairly for the work they do, but everybody starts over right now with a clean slate. Go ahead, the computers have already done their job. Check your mortgage balance… you no longer have one. Happy forgiveness day everybody, now behave yourselves, and get back to work!”
by Desmond Hussey | Mar 18, 2013 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
“I’m thinking of breeding,” Theo declairs.
Teressa ponders Theo’s statement as she slices with butch determinism a bite-sized cube from her Viti-Gel (containing 33.3% of all her daily dietary requirements). She stabs the gelatinous orange chunk with a silver skewer before speaking. “You must be joking, darling. No one’s Bred in a hundred span!”
“I know,” Theo bubbles enthusiastically, “It’s so retro!” The two burst into hysterics. Theo’s shrill giggle duels riotously with Teressa’s atonal nasal quacking.
Finally catching her breath, Teresa barks, “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I want to have a baby!” Theo’s grin is wide and capricious. “With you.”
Teressa freezes, still as a basalisk. Half-way from plate to mouth an incredulous cube of acme-food jiggles at the end of her utensile.
“Don’t be absurd. The very idea makes me nauseous.” Her skewer clatters resentfully to the table. “There’s an excellent reason why we don’t have babies anymore, Theo. Life’s better off without the hassle. Trust me. As a woman, I know.”
“Oh, really? When’s the last time you even saw a child?”
“The Tenders manage everything marvelously and I’m perfectly content to let them. They raised you and I, right? We turned out civiilized.”
“Civilized.” Theo spits the word.
“Well, in my case, anyway,” Teressa smirks. “But I don’t think they were very thorough with your psyche profile.”
“Hardy-har-har.”
“Theo, babies only distract us from persuing what we want in life. Just look at what humanity has accomplished since the Tenders took over the whole messy ordeal of reproduction. Everyone’s free to pursue their passions, unburdened by a – well, a parasite basically.”
“You’re so melodramatic, Teressa.”
“And you’re a genetic throwback, Theo!”
“I prefer neo-bohemian.”
“Theo, I’ve got more important things to do than play with children.”
“That may be our very problem!” Theo stabs his finger righteously into the air. “We never play, let alone with children. We don’t see new citizens until they’ve graduated – at sixteen! I’ve no idea what kids are like, but they must be fun. We used to spend so much time making them.”
“Because if we didn’t, we’d’ve died out long ago. But it’s different now. We have the Tenders.”
“That’s a good thing?” Theo queries dubiously.
“Look, if you want to start wiping your ass with your hand – like we used to – go ahead, but don’t drag me into another one of you’re hair-brained experiments with antiquated human behaviours.
“But – “
“Is this about sex?” Teressa blurts.
“No.”
“Is your Companion functioning?”
“Yes, dear. It’s working fine.”
“Sure you don’t want an upgrade? A new model came out last week.”
“Positive.”
“I was thinking of getting one for myself anyway. I’m sure we can swing a deal for two.”
Theo flares, “I don’t want a new sex-bot, Teressa! I want a child! With you. Our very own child to –“
“To do what, Theo? You don’t know the first thing about raising a child.”
“That’s the whole point – to not know! We know everything now. Or think we do. Pretty much anything anybody would care to know about is simply an implant away. But kids! Kids are a whole new mystery. Each one unique. What do the Tenders know that we don’t?”
“I am not having your child, Theo. End of discussion.”
Theo, slumps into his chair defeated, deflated and dejected, hope oozing from his bleeding heart. A thoughtful silence hangs over the table long enough for the wall ambience to shift from morning to afternoon décor.
Theo takes a plaintive sip of his nutrient tetrapack – – before asking, “What if all you wanted to be was a parent?”
