by Stephen R. Smith | Oct 18, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The police bulletins all called him ‘Pretty Boy’, but those that preferred their atoms in the form they were currently coalesced called him ‘Mr. Floyd’, or simply ‘Sir’.
His reputation had followed him from planet to planet, system to system, but out here, out on the rim, the frontier, only the greedy interested themselves with his capture. Perhaps he couldn’t report a crime, but he could order breakfast, have a suit tailored and share a drink without fear.
On this evening he was hidden in the shadows across the street from the gated mansion of Marco Fitzsimmons, the owner of the only bank on this backwater rock. Floyd was looking to make a withdrawal.
At ten thirty, right on schedule, a police cruiser glided past on a skirted cushion of air. Floyd waited until the whine receded into the distance before crossing the street and striding up to the gatehouse.
Two men stood on the far side of the gate, weapons holstered, and one more perched on a high chair in the guardhouse itself, scattergun laid across his lap. None of them spoke, and none spared Floyd a second glance as the gate opened and he walked past them towards the main house.
This scenario repeated several times as guards at the house entrance, in the foyer and again in the hall outside the bank manager’s study stared ahead with disinterest as the criminal passed by them all on his way into the heart of the banker’s inner sanctum.
Fitzsimmons on the other hand had quite a different reaction.
“Pretty Boy, how did you…?” He started, spilling a drink as he stood up quickly behind the deep polished expanse of his desk. “Guards!” He bellowed, regaining some composure.
Floyd pulled an ugly looking blaster from inside his jacket, the barrel short and fat. “Stow it fella, nobody’s coming.” He pushed the study door closed behind him with a heavy clunk.
“What the hell do you want you thug? When the police get here you’ll…”
Floyd cut him off. “The police aren’t coming. They don’t know because nobody called, and if they do happen by your security team will tell them everything’s just fine.”
Fitzsimmons’ mouth opened and closed several times.
“You call me a thug, you who’ve corrupted the lawmakers, the peacekeepers. You who hold the purse strings and use them to bully people from their homes. Do you know how I got in here?” He lowered the gun only slightly, keeping a bead on the banker from his hip.
The banker swallowed hard. “You must have promised them more money than you could possibly have. When you don’t deliver they’ll cut you up and feed you to the livestock.”
Floyd laughed. “No, actually I walked in here without offering anyone a single credit. Last week you foreclosed a number of mortgages to make way for new construction. Those homes belonged to the aunts and uncles of the men you underpay to keep you safe.”
The banker paled. “I’ll move them, give them new homes.”
“It’s a little late for that. They’ve got no use for you. I on the other hand,” he paused, “I think you may be partially useful.”
Fitzsimmons straightened, sensing an opportunity to save himself. “What can I do?”
Floyd sang a quiet verse, “Through all the worlds you travel, through all the worlds you roam, you’ll never see an outlaw drive a family from their home.”
With that he raised his weapon. The banker managed to get one hand in front of his face before the beam tore through his midsection, atomizing him from the neck to the waist and sending his head and raised arm flying to the wall behind him, before they came to rest in a smoking pile of cauterized flesh on the floor.
Floyd recovered them both, laying the hand on the palm scanner and holding the head, eyes wide and staring up to the retinal scanner.
“These are the parts I’ll find useful,” he chuckled as the system unlocked the accounts management console and he began to make amends.
by submission | Oct 17, 2011 | Story |
Author : Isaac Archer
Dad brought me to his lab again today. I was really excited when he told me I could come help him with his work because I want to be a scientist too. He told me not to tell Mom, because it’s a secret, our secret.
“Some things are for sharing,” he said, “but some things are for keeping. Secrets are for keeping.”
He even called my teacher to tell her I was going to be out sick today from the car, so Mom wouldn’t hear. I like helping Dad and I like missing school even more. I haven’t been enjoying school since I got in trouble last week. Ms. Roberts said I skipped her class, but I told her I didn’t skip it, I’ve never skipped! She told me not to lie and said I was developing bad habits. Dad believed me though and he said we didn’t have to tell Mom either. He said we don’t need to worry her.
Dad works in his own private lab. It’s pretty messy – there’s not much space left because one big machine fills up most of the room. Dad can barely even get to his desk, let alone the shelves and piles of stuff, which is why I can help him. He spends all day doing experiments with the machine, except when somebody comes to talk to him. Those times are the worst because I have to be really quiet and go in the corner and it’s boring.
Today only one person comes to talk. He’s a bald man in a gray suit. The top of his head is so shiny I almost laugh, but I try my hardest to stay quiet. I’m not paying attention when the man and Dad start talking but then the man starts to yell.
“People are dead because of your shoddy work! This is the only project we have without any direct oversight and you’d quit over it? We’re fighting a war here. We can’t have our own weapons killing our soldiers.”
“There will always be risk involved, and you don’t have anybody capable of understanding, much less overseeing, my work.”
“Don’t give me that risk line! Genetic modification–”
“Is not what the implants do! Genes can’t subvert the laws of the universe, no matter how cleverly you configure aminos. The implants are produced by accessing properties that aren’t comprehensible to our physics, much less our biology. They translate those properties biologically, but the machine, the source… most of it is pure mathematics. And it’s probabilistic. I don’t know what a given implant will do. In fact it cannot be known with certainty. You just have to test them, see what each solution does.”
Dad turns away from the bald man. “You guys treat this like it’s magic, but expect it to operate with the consistency of science. Every council meeting, you chatter like little kids with comic books, arguing over whether you’d prefer flight or invisibility. Flight and invisibility! Listen to yourself. No, I won’t have someone in here looking over my shoulder.”
The bald man’s head is purple now, but he doesn’t say anything else, and after a while he leaves. He reminds me of Ms. Roberts.
I decide to ask Dad about it, so I hover over to him and flicker once to get his attention. “Dad,” I say, “Isn’t it wrong to lie? Why didn’t you tell him about my implant?”
He sighs and stares at the ceiling behind me.
“Some things are for sharing, son,” he says, “but some things are for keeping.”
by submission | Oct 16, 2011 | Story |
Author : Holly Day
The boy didn’t fly so much as claw his way up through the air, swinging first one arm, then the next, up over his head while he made his ascent. His arms and legs were twisted metal wrapped in plastic, and his face was completely covered with a clear plastic shield. The eyes that stared up at Valerie were bright and angry against a pallor of sagging, dying flesh.
Valerie eyed the boy coolly, automatically willing the projectiles in the palms of her hands to slide into place. It wouldn’t be any big deal to just circumvent the boy completely, but she hadn’t had a chance to try the tiny bombs out on anything yet. She sized up her opponent as he grew nearer, deciding that the large, clunky tube grenade launcher strapped to his forearms would be no threat to her.
Valerie slowed her decent until it was little more than a hover and waited for the deformed creature below her to draw close. It was funny, or ironic, how she felt right now—she wasn’t sure which. The short time she had spent in an adolescent, fully-human body, she had been riddled with insecurity about her body, her body language, what she was supposed to talk about with friends and what she was allowed to say to boys, and the whole experience had been just awful. But now, just weeks after officially joining the military as part of their Elite, she felt perfectly in control of everything around her. Everything. The boy below her posed no threat on any level. He could either attack her or try to kiss her, and she would have been able to deal with either situation perfectly.
“Wouldn’t it be strange if he did try to kiss me?” she marveled suddenly, almost laughing, then shuddered. The closer he drew, the more she could see how unlike her he, or at least his construction, was. He was a brutish pile of sharp metal parts and exposed tubes and wires, with bits of human flesh showing here and there as if left by accident. His mouth was an angry snarl of teeth, lips dry and split, gray. He probably would not try to kiss her.
As the boy drew nearer, Valerie coolly took survey of what she took to be vulnerable areas and aimed accordingly. She paused, not sure if she should just shoot the newcomer and get it over with, or if she should wait until he was within earshot and saw something menacing, or brave, or comic-book corny, like “Nice killing you!” or “Next time, make sure your arms match your feet before taking off, Lunkhead!”
It seemed as though her attacker was thinking the same thing. As she watched, the boy tried to shape his malformed mouth into words, finally settling on some sort of gesture which Valerie decided must be insulting. It had to be. She made a gesture of her own in return, then aimed carefully and fired.
by submission | Oct 15, 2011 | Story |
Author : Suzanne van Rooyen
The little girl, stained red by dust and blood, surveys the field beyond the fence. Perhaps a flutter of wings or chirp of crickets… Only dead-grass silence.
Her face twists into a rictus of pleasure as she skips hop-scotch over bleached skulls through the ruins of the farmstead — charred brick and splintered wood. The desiccated earth trembles beneath her feet.
Kicking aside rot-swollen limbs, she retrieves a teddy-bear from a child’s carcass; twin button-eyes like black holes. Holding the toy, she looks up at the sky with the eyes of a dead fish. Clouds shrivel and vanish in her gaze.
She waits, a cherub with blond-curl halo, for her starship companion.
The blue dome fractures in grotesque birth as the vessel breaches the firmament, slick with cosmic placenta.
The little girl turns and sets her sights on new quarry.
In the distant mirage, a city shimmers. She stalks towards the spires glinting sunset scarlet, soon to be eclipsed. Flowers wither in the wake of her desert touch, crows plummet on broken wings, and the coyote howl turns death-rattle.
The starship follows; a gargantuan balloon of mirror-surface metal, fastened by an invisible umbilical cord to her wrist, casting tridecagon shadows on the alien world.
Four million hearts beat a cacophony within the city. Her smile widens in hideous glee and she runs, arms outspread, heels flinging up hurricanes. The teddy-bear lies tossed and left abandoned as the little girl becomes a pinprick blemish on the horizon. The lethargic shadow of the ship extends like vulture wings.
Burgundy mist spewed from severed arteries, sets the skyline on fire as screams punctuate the darkening quietude, a sinister symphony. There’s laughter too; the volcanic eruptions of little girl giggles ricochet across the wasteland.
The teddy-bear lies forlorn in the dust, the only and silent witness to Earth’s demise.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Oct 14, 2011 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
“Curfew, curfew. Off the streets. Curfew, curfew…,” the recorded voice droned from a passing tank. The accent was oriental. Korean? Japanese? He didn’t care. As long as he could order a beer in Japanese, biro, he didn’t care. It was all the same.
He shrugged deeper into his duster. It offered scant protection from the sticky water blasted from below the tanks inflated skirt. A bum in a faded Army field jacket shuffled up. The jacket caught his attention. The camouflage no longer worked. The patterns buzzed randomly, intermittently.
“Sensei. Can you spare some for an old vet?”
“Don’t call me Sensei,” he snarled. The bum shrank visibly, abject fear in his eyes. The man felt a twinge of… something.
“Sorry.” He shoved a few plastic bills at the bum. The holographic chrysanthemums on the money danced. He walked on. Emotion rose within him. Sadness and frustration gave way to anger. Anger became rage.
With a grunt, he spun on his heel. The bum was well down the street, scampering for the nearest liquor machine. The man’s loping stride ate the distance between them. His black, leather duster flew in his wake.
He reached out and grabbed the bum’s shoulder. He threw him against a crumbling brick wall. “Where did you get this jacket?”
“It’s mine Sensei,” the bum squeaked, “I didn’t steal it.”
“I told you not to call me that. Where did you get it?” He straight armed the man against the building; the bum’s toes barely touched the broken slidewalk.
“Look mister, I don’t want no trouble. I just want to get a drink, you know? I didn’t mean nothing’ mister.”
With his free hand, the man grabbed the patch on the jacket’s shoulder and ripped it free. The patch was that of a white birds head. In measured words, the man asked; “Where, did, you, get, this?”
“Like I told ya mister, I’m a vet. I was in the war.”
He shoved the patch in the bum’s face. “This was your unit? Your division?” The words leapt out in a strangled hiss. He slammed the bum into the wall.
“Yeah man. Yeah,” tears left clean tracks down the bum’s grimy face, “look man, I didn’t do nothing’, why don’t you leave me alone. Please mister.”
All emotion drained from the man. Carelessly he threw the bum aside. With silent sobs he slid down the decaying façade. “Is this what we’ve become? Is this what we’ve been reduced to?”
“You,” he gestured at the bum slipping in the oily muck, “what happened to you? You let them do this to you. You let them. They broke you. All of us.”
The bum cautiously approached. “Look, mister, if you want your money back…” He held out the wad of colourful bills. “See mister? I just wanted a drink is all. I just…,” The words were interrupted by the roar of a second tank.
Regaining his dignity, the man rose to his full height. “I’m going to do you a favour,” the man said. He smiled at the bum. He took the filthy, tear streaked face in his scarred, calloused hands.
“That’s okay. Really mister, that’s okay. I don’t want no favours. I don’t need no drink. I…” There was a sharp crack. The bum slumped to the oily pavement.
The man regarded the bum sadly. He stepped over the body and into the street. He faced the tank.
A heavily accented voice burst from the floating behemoth. “You are in violation of curfew.”
The darkened street was momentarily lit from the muzzle blast of twin heavy machine guns.
by Stephen R. Smith | Oct 13, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The Argon cruised through dense fog heading out to sea in weather most trawlers wouldn’t brave. She lined up between the marker buoys and throttled up, downwash from her propulsors kicking up spray from the water thirty meters below her hull.
“Full ahead, light the finder, kill the beacons.” Captain Creavy barked orders to the ready crew, “See that the nav gear is decoupled before we change course.”
The Argon took to sea weekly, bringing in a belly full of fresh fish none of the other locals could match. She was the largest of the fishing vessels by an order of magnitude and never came home empty.
“Captain,” the first mate finished wiping the ship off the Coastal Guardian network, “we’re clear for a new course.”
The Captain studied the maps he had before him, charts he’d bartered for along with this vessel. These maps were from a satellite’s vantage, the likes of which not even the Coastal Guardians could have seen. Creavy loved the advantage barter and off-worlders brought to his livelihood.
“Take us thirty minutes two seventy degrees then prepare to dive.” Creavy leaned on the console, staring with apparent lust at the thick concentrations of fish on the maps before him. They’d been systematically fishing these patches for most of the season while the smaller vessels pulled up empty on all their usual routes.
The vessel grumbled through the sky, lost in the low cloud until they reached their mark and the finders started sounding off the stragglers of the target school.
“Dive Mr. Finch, dive.” At the Captain’s orders the lumbering craft slowed and gave up altitude gradually until the waves beneath began to batter her hull, then she dropped heavily into the water and nosed down to plow beneath the waves. Once completely submerged the pilot adjusted depth until the massive craft was on level with the school advancing before them, then the nose of the Argon was peeled open and she drank deeply, accelerating through the water pulling everything in her path into her belly and filtering mercilessly to jettison nothing but water out the aft hatches. Within minutes the entire school was contained, the nose closed, ballast jettisoned and the Argon was airborne again.
“Mr. Finch, find us a masked trajectory to the upper atmosphere, we’ve a rendezvous to make.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Another thirty minutes passed before the freighter reached the point where the sky kissed space and where waited their buyer, the ship a dark stain against the otherwise star filled sky. Guardian law prohibited off-worlders from fishing the local oceans, but Creavy had had the good fortune of buying the Argon on advance credit with these traders along with his fishing charts in exchange for half his catch delivered to unregulated space. This was a deal far too good not to exploit.
While they docked and their cargo was transferred, Creavy waited, and as the last of the fish was offloaded the communicator crackled to life.
“Captain Creavy, we thank you for once again fulfilling your obligations, and hereby release you from our contract. The Argon is now yours, as are any future proceeds you may recover from your efforts.”
Creavy was first confused, then relieved. He’d gotten the long end of the stick on this for sure and wasn’t about to argue.
“I’d be happy to trade cargo in future for updated nautical charts…” He put the offer out tentatively.
The reply was terse. “That won’t be possible.”
With that the comm-link was broken and the dark craft began accelerating away from the planet.
“Mr. Finch, take us back down, follow a clean path out of sight back to the Loreanaz Trench and let’s load up and go home.
The Argon stayed at sea for three more weeks, trudging from one patch to the next following the old charts, but there were simply no fish to be found. Dangerously low on fuel the Argon lit it’s navigation beacons and reestablished itself on the Guardian’s grid.
Captain Creavy was starting to think perhaps he’d gotten the short end after all.
