by Roi R. Czechvala | Dec 12, 2011 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
Thirty seven people packed into the conference room. The table sat twenty four. The rest stood along the walls. They didn’t care. The excitement in the room was nearly palpable. Low murmurs circulated throughout the cramped space. Occasionally a nervous laugh burst forth. The air, while not festive, was hopeful.
As if darkness had suddenly fallen, the room was plunged into silence. A small rotund man entered carrying a sheaf of papers. He was immaculately dressed in a slate grey three piece suit. Not a hair was out of place on his peculiar egg shaped head and his carefully groomed mustache accented an otherwise non descript face.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a strong confident voice; a voice that did not match the otherwise innocuous appearance, “I suppose you know why we are all here.” A round of nervous laughter met this casual remark. “The decision has been extremely difficult. All of you are highly qualified. In fact all of you are, with very minor exceptions of course, equals in intelligence, temperament and background. Any one of you would be an excellent, nay, a perfect candidate for the job.”
The gathered applicants looked from side to side. From a field of well over five thousand prospective aspirants, they had, through exhaustive mental as well as physical trials been whittled down to the thirty seven assembled here.
“The challenge is daunting. Living in what amounts to a tin can orbiting 22,000 miles above the equator, alone, for eighteen months is certainly not for the faint of heart. Of course there are rewards.” This time the room launched into overt laughter at the barely disguised allusion to the twelve million dollar pay check awaiting at the end of the solitary sojourn.
“What it comes down to, that is, the only thing differentiating you, is a simple matter of weight. As you know it costs roughly one hundred thousand dollars to launch one pound. Thusly, out of this group the lightest and most qualified physically will be awarded the position.” A few corpulent individuals shifted nervously and stared in guilty, gluttonous sloth at their overstuffed shoes. “Not only weight, but manual dexterity have been factored in to our decision.”
A raucous “BOOYAH” erupted off to one side of the speaker. A small man dramatically ripped off his prosthetic legs and proceeded to do a handstand on the armrests of his motorized wheel chair.
“Pack it up and head home suckers, the job’s mine,” he yelled from his inverted position. Settling himself back in the chair, he continued his self congratulatory celebration. “Whooo HOOOO, don’t need no legs in space, they just get in the way. Haha. Don’t need legs for walking around. Useless in spa… oh… shit…” His face went white as his eyes fell on Herschel “Monkeyboy” Greenbaum.
Greenbaum’s father was the chief biologist at Genedyne Laboratories. He had pioneered the work in the hybridization of primates. Specifically between spider monkeys and humans.
Herschel regarded the amputee coolly as he brushed and patted his hair with his feet while casually twiddling his thumbs.
by featured writer | Dec 11, 2011 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, featured writer
I am a dog, a happy dog. I have found my way. Found my way I have, right through the loose part of the fence. I have worked the loose part for some time. Some time now I have three or four days at least. I have pushed with my head and dug with my paws. Until finally now I am free.
Chase me they do, it is a game. I like the game. I smile as I run. Chase me fast they do. They cannot run like me. They use machines with four legs that go round and round instead of up and down. Those machines are fast, but not fast like me. I run and smile. Sometimes I slow down to let them get closer. I do not run too far ahead. This is not fun. No one to chase me.
But now I wonder. They seem mad. They shoot ropes. Ropes woven like spider webs. Like spider web blankets trying to fall on me and catch me. But I am too fast. I run left and then, zigzagging across the countryside I get away again, but not too far. I soon slow down to let them think they are going to catch me once again.
Now the drug is starting to really take effect. What is a drug I snap awake. I am a dog. I am a very smart and very fast dog. I have been given enhancement injections for nearly a month now. At first they didn’t realize the change. But I felt it. The other dogs, and cats, and the chimpanzee — they all felt it. But my cage was on the outside, against the dirt floor of the compound. I remember giving the orange cat a look that said, Ill be back if I can.
Now I realize if they catch me they might terminate me. I cannot guarantee my own safety with these radical humans. It is time to run fast, very fast indeed.
***
I have seen the chimp. Whilst winding my way incognito through the city park one day I caught a glimpse of him hiding in the trees with a devilish look on his face. He saw me and recognized me at once. And then did something eerily human. He held up an index finger to his shushing lips and winked at me knowingly. Even with my new intelligence, at the time I had no clue what he was planning.
Suddenly the world was on the lookout for artificially enhanced animals. Thanks to the astonishment of one particularly surprised zoologist who, in trying to fix her morning coffee, discovered a large chimpanzee there finger-painting, just for her, perfectly worded messages in the moisture on the outside of her patio door.
The secret was out. In truth there were really only a handful of us. And most were eventually caught, even the orange cat. In fact there was nothing but that poor fellow, whom the masses had deemed, Morris on the evening newsreels for days as they publicly questioned him. They made him push a yes or no pad with his forepaw. It was quite painful to watch. And in the end I doubt the humans were any further ahead.
But I dont care any more. I am a dog. I am a dog trying to be happy. I have a new family who loves me. Here on the farm where the children pet me, and the mother gives me treats. I will protect this family for the rest of my life. My tail goes thump-thump-thump. I am a dog.
by submission | Dec 10, 2011 | Story |
Author : Timothy Marshal-Nichols
Black; void.
Agnieszka did not believe she had seen anywhere this empty. It was unexpected.
Thus far it had not been a particularly good life: the degenerative illness; stuck in the minuscule grey bunkers of the menials accommodation block; reliant on handouts from other menials. For the past forty years Agnieszka had wasted away to a slender stick; her dirty blue overalls hung limply from her frame; her thin face made her black eyes look enormous. And then the offer came: three key strokes to reset her life, another start, a reboot, all it would take was three little key presses. She’d jumped at the chance, she shouldn’t have.
Weeks later, after the tedious desperate wait, she’d been ushered into the gleaming expanse of the research institute; here to be the first to go back in time; the chosen one to be experimented on. There wasn’t much for her to do; no training was needed. She had been stripped, showered, dressed in white paper overalls newly ripped from their cellophane, and been given a superficial medical examination. From there she was marched through the laboratory; driven out to a half buried concrete bunker where she descended in a lift to a platform. From there she walked alone through a narrow passageway to the chamber where she was to initiate the experiment.
The door slammed shut, bolts hissed. All that remain of the world outside was memory, and an occasional faint metallic clang.
Inside the bright grey chamber the shiny metal walls were smooth and polished. There was almost nothing here; just a bright blinding light above; the faint outline of the door she had just entered; and a small hip height console jutting out from the far wall, on this those three precious keys. She waited, should she? She didn’t want to do this any more. She waited; they, those above ground, would be expecting some response; she waited. She strode to the console and looked at it. Slowly she pressed the Ctrl key with her left hand little finger, and quickly took it away. She waited; could she back out? There were no communications with the world above. Again she pressed the Ctrl key with her little finger and then, tentatively, held down the Alt key with her forefinger. Closing her eyes she lightly tapped the Delete key with her right hand thumb.
And where was she now? Void; black.
She was supposed to have been transformed into a younger version of herself; one long before her illness had taken hold; but this was not it, this was certainly not it.
The burning sensation was ripping her apart. Time was both standing still, compressed into an unimaginable fraction of a second, and stretching exponentially. Her previous frail body was crushed into an infinitesimal dot, so much smaller then an atom, and was expanding into a whole new universe; she could feel everything as the rate of acceleration diminished.
As the singularity had crushed her; she’d become one with space-time; she was a god, the god Agnieszka.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 9, 2011 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
There is a tremendous amount of other life in the universe.
The universe is encrusted, moldy, infested, slushy, teeming, and stuffed with life. The amount of life in the universe is staggering. Much as the earth is populated with a bewildering array of lifeforms developed to take up refuge and thrive in the most bizarre of niches, so too does life perform on other planets.
The segmented iceworms who would evaporate from the touch of a human hand on far-away iceballs. The gas-giant sparrow clusters and tectonic-plate-sized manta rays that lurk deeper. Algae that lives under constantly shifting volcanic plates. Spores that float dormant and content in vast reef schools through space. Entire asteroids of silicate life that steer themselves by committee like herds of sheep.
There are no sets of temperatures, gas composition, gravity, radiation or light that completely precludes life. Anywhere in the galaxy. We are engulfed and surrounded by it.
The one thing that all life besides us has in common is this. It speaks no language and has no conscious thought. It knows fear, the urge to reproduce, affection, and the thousand other instinctual gifts that any natural life is heir to but it does not think. It does not reason. It does not question. It has no sense of self or sense of God. It merely lives.
Our television programs that spew out into the universe have contacted over five hundred million species of aliens. But those ideas and tv scripts have hit other life forms the way that sunlight hits a fox.
Giant centipedes with massive, radio-receiving antlers get our shows and shake their heads at the noise and paw the ground. Old reruns of Three’s Company tumble through the photo-voltaic flake crystal storms of fibre-optic minnows on dark blue ammonia shores, lighting them up in waves of colour that play havoc with their mating rituals. Broadcasts of old black and white films cause entire herds of black spheres on tiny moons near a distant planet to stop rolling, all sense of direction disrupted. Saturday Night Live reruns from the early eighties are cutting tiger-stripe swathes through the flimsiest space-webs of solar sail creatures astronomical units wide drifting in space. Reality television is causing one planet’s dominant predators to enter hibernation early, triggering a continent-wide shift in the ecosystem.
We are contacting, inundating, and even harming millions of races daily. All to no effect other than the casual ebb and flow of natural selection. The universe is crowded.
But we are alone.
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 8, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
They met at Darlington’s; exchanged glances, bought each other drinks and before the lights came up and the bar spilled out they were in the back of a taxi heading back to his flat.
He’d never done anything like this; ultraconservative, careful, cautious, but there was something about her he could simply not deny.
They kissed in the back of the cab, his hands rough against the silken skin of her back, her nails no doubt leaving marks on his neck, tearing through his hairline as she pulled his face closer to hers.
In the elevator she was relentless; animal fury and gymnastic fluidity, her body curved and curled around him, rubbing and clutching, grinding and immobilizing him as she explored his mouth with her tongue, his body with her own.
In his bedroom she was insatiable, tearing at his clothes, shedding her own like a second skin to grind against him, bury his body in hers, work him like a stud horse until he could barely breathe, then curl against him like a cat, sometimes for minutes, sometimes hours before exploding in a physical force again taking him to a limit of physicality he’d never experienced in his wildest dreams.
When he finally broke, practically begging her to stop, she relented, only to lie languid and brooding beside him, watching his chest heave as he struggled to regain some composure, unsure if he would be allowed to sleep.
When she mounted him next, he found himself unable to move.
She watched him, motionless at first, simply sitting astride him and studying his features as a cat might watch a bird. When she finally stirred, it was to cup his face in her hands and slowly lower her own until their noses touched, her eyes bright and wide, his glassy and unmoving. There was something unsettling about the way she stared into him, but as alert as his mind was, his body was simply too over-exerted to move.
He felt his lips part as her tongue pushed inside, then a sudden feeling of fear as he felt her touch the back of his throat and push on, flooding his sinus and lungs with an unimaginable pressure of flesh.
His eyes widened, and he could tell from the wrinkles around her own that she was smiling, and whatever it was she was doing he was powerless to comprehend or stop it.
The strange sensation continued, and he knew that she was filling his body far more completely than he had only recently filled hers.
There was a sudden flood of thoughts in his head, feelings that were foreign, a presence that was not his own, and as it overtook him he caught his last glimpse of her as she seemed to disappear inside him, following the path her tongue had started. He was no more.
She flexed, pushing outwards inside the new form she had appropriated. It had been a fascinating experience, him sharing the pleasure rituals she was becoming more enamoured with each passing companion. Alternating genders was indeed appearing to be a much more effective means of securing a partner, her first few encounters resisting her before she eventually found those receptive to her charms.
Padding to the bathroom, she regarded herself in the mirror.
“Himself,” his voice different now heard from within.
In the kitchen he found food and drink in the refrigerator and consumed slowly, savouring each bite, each sip, enjoying the new sensations offered by the familiar sampled through this new vessel.
Sated, he returned to the empty bed to sleep away the day and replenish the body’s energy reserves.
He’d need them for the coming night.
by Julian Miles | Dec 7, 2011 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Life has always been hard at the bottom. My grandparents survived the collapse of 2013 and my parents made it onto the first exodus in 2055. It was considered simpler to test the tech and logistics on fifty thousand poor people. If it succeeded then Rockefeller had a head start on cheap labour.
It worked. My folks slaved their guts out along with the fifty thousand people delivered on each of the next three. The fifth Exodus used one of the new Jonah class vessels, bringing a quarter of a million people. The next eight did the same.
Every Exodus caused a rebalancing of social dynamics. We all thought that the overseers and such were planned stages on our way to a new economy. By the time we found out that there were no social architects or any sort of plan beyond whatever the new arrivals could convince the hicks already here of, it was too late. We were at the bottom again when we could have lied our way to the top. Then my family exceeded the population limits when my sister had triplets. So we dug a hidden bunker for them and found more than we expected.
Today I am in court, being tried by a jury of my peers who all look related to the prosecution. I am defending myself. Reporters are here in force and a representative of the Commission has arrived to observe as my crime is unprecedented. They have even let six people in from my commune. They are sat with clear space between them and the first unfortunate who couldn’t get further away. I straighten my smock and stand, raising my hand. The judge smiles indulgently and nods for me to continue.
“I swear by Almighty Tethra that the evidence I give today shall be the downfall, the utter ruination and nothing less than the annihilation of those who condemn me.”
The uproar lasts for ten minutes. The judge has to shout at me.
“That is unacceptable. Under planetary law you must use the oath native to the planet you are tried upon.”
“I am abiding by planetary law. Under the laws of the planet Tethra upon which I stand, set by those who lived overground before greedy men entrapped them, the oath is mete and fair as were my actions as a recognised executioner for the Tethren. With my presence here to answer for that, I call upon all those present to witness as I charge all those involved in populating Tethra or those who profited therefrom to pay edra in the ratio of nine returned to one gained, or face just annihilation by agents of Tethra who at this moment are rising from silos on the garrison planets known to you as Rockefeller Three, Four and Five. Finally, as executioner for the Tethren I am permitted recompense. This is calculated as one ninth of the worth of those I annihilate, to be distributed amongst my clath.”
Into the stunned silence I bow as my shortest companion sheds its human suit and leaps nimbly to land on the chair next to me. In pure Oxford English it speaks from six of the primary mouths hidden within the bushy growth at its top that indicates it is a progenitor of nine nines. Its tentacles shuffle rapidly to find a comfortable rest on the chair as it speaks.
“I am Pethdorline. I am an adjudicator-assassin and am here to notarise edra and clath. Please be prompt as terms must be rendered in exactitude before nightfall or annihilation is the only legal recourse.”
