by submission | Aug 21, 2011 | Story |
Author : D’n Russler
It had been an eventful two weeks that the first exploration from Sol’s System had spent on the rocky planet about twice Earth’s size named “Wolf”, circling Gliese 581.
Yaacov Ben-Ish and his team of exobiologists had revealed a vast, rich ecology with flora and fauna that appeared to interact in the same ways that Terran life does. Having a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere somewhat richer in carbon dioxide than Earth’s, Wolf was covered almost totally in a full jungle seething with life in all its wondorous forms.
Ben-Ish removed his skullcap for a moment and rubbed a hand through his close-cropped dark hair. “Yes, Jenny,” he concurred with the young woman standing next to him, “I do smell smoke — and we are upwind from the Landing Site, so it’s not us.”
“Probably the result of composting,” remarked Jennifer Dayle to her commander and friend. “You don’t suppose –”
“I try not to. But you know my beliefs that the Creator will repeat Her patterns elsewhere other than Earth,” he responded.
“I’m still always surprised when you refer to G-d as Him or Her indiscriminately,” she noted, as they cautiously approached the source of the smoke.
“Shh… do you see that,” Ben-Ish whispered to her. “Unless we’re hallucinating, there appear to be rough structures down there.”
“This puts a whole other slant on this expedition!” she murmured with excitement. “I’m glad I qualified for First Contact before we left.”
“Yes, and as we both are certified, we should report in, and get permission to proceed,” he commanded quietly. After a brief radioed conversation, Jenny reported happily that Command had approved their First Contact.
They began to approach the camp, noting that the denizens were clothed in what appeared to be cloth made from the omnipresent violet grasses, while their skin had a decidedly orange tone. They observed the females placing cooking pots on banked fires, and the males gathering off to the side, facing the setting reddish ball of Gliese.
“What are they doing, Yaac?” she asked quietly.
“Looks like they are preparing to greet the Sabbath.”
by submission | Aug 20, 2011 | Story |
Author : Garrett Harriman
Marigolds blossomed in the Evermore courtyard, tiny manes preening in the light.
Alongside them, Halley proofed her math. She knew it took eight minutes–ninety-two million miles–for sunlight to blanket the void of space and peck their tender flames. She knew the distance to Gliese 581d was forty light-years roundtrip. She knew her kid’s fears, her husband’s favorite teacher. And she still recalled how Russell Wood’d smelled on the hot April night he’d been drafted.
All of it factored the same: zero. Over two hundred and thirty-four trillion miles preparing what to say…and nothing, nothing, had surfaced.
To the contrary, she scrutinized her hands. They’d grown blanched and baggy. Shadowed with inclinations of liver spots. She lamented how short a jaunt even one AU had proven to be. How light played tricks at seventeen.
Halley stroked her sun hat lower, watching the ember blooms gorge more time.
Massive sound gained precedence. Soon a USF transport hovered over the lawn, graciously coming aground. Its door unfurled, freeing pilots, wingmen, gunners–triumphant young veterans of the Glieseian Uprising.
Halley’s breast tripped down a stairwell. Her promise rushed back, rushing here, to Evermore, mere hours after his fleet breached the HZ. She’d pledged to him and sacrificed for an instantaneous future, one with minor age discrepancies, friends and family long deceased. Those misty cryonic snakes redoubled her cold feet. A trepidating toe braved the Bite before the realization pelted her sensible:
It’s a crush. An infatuation. I am not in love.
Now, second-to-last out the pod, Russell O. Wood returned to the deep freeze, his miles of sunshine culminated. He’d served his planet well–time dilation, him. The United Space Force’d suppressed the Glieseian factions in six Earthen years. Discounting travel, he clocked in at twenty-five sharp. Shaven, impermeable, his decorated flack bottled bountiful joys.
Behind him the shuttle spat pneumatics and wafted gaily over the street. Russell smiled. Followed his brothers. When he passed the old lady on the bench he tipped his starchy hat.
Recognition didn’t shoulder him. It fled the other way.
Halley sulked after him, remembering: He’s not here for Halley Cross, girl. He’s here for Halley Wood.
Sure as Sunday, Russell joined the defrost cue. Just like he’d always sworn.
Halley watched nakedly. A dozen war heroes flashed receipts–puppy love–or recited cryo-chamber numbers by heart–true love.
It went.
Wood’s turn. Halley bunched up, praying she wasn’t the only service fiancée to ever burn the Bridge of Time or deny being some spaceman’s icebox leftover. Maybe he’d forgotten that she was all he’d left behind.
True love. Russell Wood rattled off her lost chamber number.
The name’s wrong, sir. Confusion. Dismissal. Well check again. Miss Wood isn’t enrolled with us. Bullshit–she’s waiting. God bless you, sir. Now listen here! I’m so sorry, Captain.
Silence.
Russell Wood withered to a bench. The last of the pilots embraced him. He promised different words, then jogged through the booth to reclaim his Bitten sweetheart.
Wood sat alone. Unaged beyond hope, he cried into his hat.
Halley didn’t interject for eleven point five million miles. She thought back sixty-three years. On her family. Marrying Albert Cross. New friends and a life lived outside of frost and waiting.
Reawakening today, dated seventeen, would it have been fair pretending to love Russell back?
Answers didn’t come. Just rays, memories.
Standing to leave, Halley stooped and plucked a gilded flower. She approached and pressed it to his lapel.
Russell jerked at her gesture, then softened. “Ma’am?”
“Wear it, soldier,” Halley soothed, straightening florets. “With a sun like this she’ll find you.”
by submission | Aug 19, 2011 | Story |
Author : Jason Frank
He was losing the crowd. Maybe they were already gone.
“Look, this is a new approach. We can’t keep attacking them directly; we always lose. We need to try unconventional approaches. We can win if we make them fight the battles they don’t want to fight.” The bright lights were a mistake; a man could melt.
“So wait…” this guy didn’t raise his hand and hadn’t been recognized, “… how come we have to steal their socks and what… mix them up with other socks? I don’t get it.” Why does freedom from thought so often accompany freedom of speech?
“We talked about this. They don’t wear socks. The lower appendage components of their regulation suits, however, are finely calibrated and so are prone to disruption. Mismatched components weaken the suits and weaken their wearers.” One idiot was no cause for alarm in an open forum.
“I dunno, I really don’t like feet.” Wasn’t there a sporting event on somewhere?
“They don’t have feet. Do I have to remind everyone that we’re talking about aliens? They don’t even stand on their lower appendages on their homeworld. I don’t see how this is relevant to_”
“I heard their feet were their sex parts and I ain’t touching anything that touches anything if you know what I mean.” This guy won gold at last year’s Olympics of disapproval.
“Moving on… we can ignore this blatant weakness and still come out on top. I’m sure everyone here is familiar with the zrunchez, the main staple of our oppressors’ diet. We’ve found substances that, when poured into their tanks, gradually remove all the nutritive value of these creatures. This process would seriously weaken our alien overlords until the point where_”
“We can’t hurt those little ones; they’re innocents. My son found one and nursed it back to health. They’re kinda slimy but they’re so smart. We trained ours to play checkers. When it’s not eating the pieces it’s pretty good.” It’s always nice to see women equally represented in a popular movement.
“Right… so… there are plenty of other targets of opportunity we can take advantage of. Addressing all of these in tandem would be more effective but that isn’t important right now. Right now we need to focus on what we ca_”
“Are we only considering death and destruction scenarios? What about an equality thing, you know, with buses and marches and stuff?” Seriously, what is the half life of a hippie?
“Yeah, so… let’s just forget about it. Why bother? They cured herpes, right?. What more could we want? We should be grateful they took over. I’m sorry I wasted your time. On the plus side, the new episode of “Dancing with Our Masters” hasn’t started yet.
The crowd filed out gradually, disrespectfully. He got off the soap box when they were gone.
Quququial stood up and stretched.
“You see resistance like this liberating your people?” he asked. “I’ve never seen anything like that. How did you manage before the invasion?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anyway, you’re cool. Come with us. We’re freeing as much of the galaxy as we can. It’s hard work but the rewards include space model girlfriends and unlimited space-tinis. I can’t see what you’d be missing out on here…”
The Earth loomed large out his window until it didn’t. When it was gone, he cried a little. Then he had four elaborate space cocktails and made out with a super hot Yllumean. It wasn’t too long before he forgot all about the backwater planet of his birth.
by Duncan Shields | Aug 18, 2011 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
It was a shock to learn how short their life spans were but not surprising considering how much naked energy they threw off. We do not know how long we live because none of us have ever died, only changed form.
They called themselves Humans. They are beings of fire. They burn so hot. They seemed to be made of pure radiant heat. They seemed impossible. They had special suits to survive in our environment. Those suits protected us, encasing their boiling energy. They called our environment a ‘vacuum’ and spoke of an ‘atmosphere’ where they lived.
An atmosphere that dimmed the stars on their planet (during a period called ‘night’) and made their transport vessels work tremendously hard when taking off and burn with friction when landing. They also had more gravity on their world. Such fragile, determined creatures. It was inspiring.
We have no ‘atmosphere’. Our planet has low gravity. We achieved space travel by jumping hard into the air and returned by waiting. After a time, we came back down.
The humans had names for our parts. They said we were crystalline. Our blood, when we decided to make it liquid, is thick and able to stay flowing in what the humans see as extreme cold. They called it ferrofluid. Our intelligence is encapsulated in each of our particles. They called that nanotechnology. Each tiny particle of us is a switch, able to align or crook tangent to the other, forming solids and liquids. They say that makes our entire race one living ‘computer’.
They said we were -420 degrees Celsius but that’s only because that was the lower limit of their temperature gauges. Down at our temperature, gases become stable liquids and deep inside us, even colder, some solids do, too. Like iron. “Sloshed around like silver paint in a test tube, like molten lead, all granular like a black and white picture of Jupiter with some sparkles thrown in.” one of the humans said.
We took their form at first so as not to alarm them. We were much taller than them and blue but it helped. Though we can take any shape, we haven’t tried many.
The humans have imagination. They showed us their engineering and architecture data. The math of load-bearing weights and geometry was something we knew instinctually, much like a human catching a ball wouldn’t consciously figure out the parabola and the necessary arc needed to intersect and catch it. We are angles, from our tiniest particle to our largest forms. They showed us flimsy carbon strings they called ‘diamond’.
We extrapolated. We improved.
We can make fusion reactors the size of what they call a fingernail. And then we make more. And then we attach many of them together. We do not have to use ‘tools’. We are the tools. We are the systems.
They have told us how to get farther. They didn’t know how to build those machines. They only had theories. They showed us.
We extrapolated. We improved.
We have the ability to create stable holes in space now that help us slide further when we ‘jump’. They have star maps that tell us where to go.
We let them travel inside us in special chambers to go far, to go where they wanted to go, to explore and record together, each experience filling up the cels of our cathedral spaceship bodies.
It’s only fair.
by submission | Aug 17, 2011 | Story |
Author : Patrick Condon
His memory was slowly returning. That’s what she told him, at least. The physician was a liar, though. He remembered nothing before Thursday, the day they woke him up.
They called him Keene. It wasn’t his name. He would correct them, only to fail at recalling a suitable replacement. The nurses thought this was cute, and would let him continue the practice. Perhaps it would spark a memory eventually.
He was placed into the White Room, sometimes numerous times a day, where he would perform tasks for the Doctor. The time spent was often incredibly boring.
“Why did the room have to be white?” He would think, “Why couldn’t it be something more… fun, like purple?”
The Doctor congratulated him on his usage of colors, and noted his awareness of the concept of fun.
“Soda pop.” The Doctor said, handing Keene a bottle.
He grasped the neck, holding it upwards like a club. He eyed the bulbous top, dimpled sides, and threaded cap on the bottom. He had seen caps before, and knew their purpose. Pinching the bottom between his finger and thumb, slowly, the cap untwisted. Before anyone could make a remark against his technique, Keene had spilt the entire contents of the bottle onto his lap. A few of the nurses giggled. The Doctor jotted down the results, and took the bottle.
“Up.” He turned the bottle over.
Keene nodded.
“This:” The Doctor handed another object. “Pen.”
This one had a cap as well. Keene held it, right-side-up this time, and twisted. Nothing happened. He continued to twist, trying to remove the cap. This made him frustrated. The pen was stupid, he decided, and threw it back to the Doctor.
The Doctor sighed and whispered to one of the nurses. She hurried off and promptly returned with a box of new objects. She looked unsure.
“Let’s try it.” One of them said.
One more item was presented to Keene, thought this time no indication was given to what it was called.
Keene palmed the curiosity. It resembled two disks placed together side by side, connected by an axle. It wasn’t like the plates, or buttons, though, he noticed. A string wrapped between the two disks, as well.
It didn’t have any caps, but he tried twisting it anyways. The disks grew farther apart until they threatened to disconnect. He caught onto this and hastily screwed them back together. He looked up, awaiting some sort of cue to guide him.
The Doctor gave him his fake little smile.
The end of the string reminded him of a ring; he had played with those before. Putting his finger in any sort of hole never yielded favorable results, but he tried it anyways. Much to his surprise, and amusement, the loop fit snug around his finger.
The Doctor wrote. Nurses whispered.
Keene stood up, for what must have been the first time in hours. He stretched and wiggled his toes, still sticky from the soda accident. No one made any effort to restrain him. He figured he was doing something right.
In a bout of his usual clumsiness, Keene dropped the item. He winced and closed his eyes tight. He had been punished for this before.
It didn’t sound like an impact; instead, he heard a hum. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes to catch the object spin at the end of its string, peeter out, and hang dead.
More writing. A few nodded.
Keene waited for a second. He wasn’t in trouble? Knowing this, he decided he wanted to do it again. With an awkward, wide armed pedaling motion, he wound the string around the disks. He’d have to refine his technique; he wanted to see it spin. No closing his eyes this time!
He thrusted his hand downward, releasing the disks. A rewarding whiz and spin acknowledged his improvement.
Maybe he could make it jump? Keene tugged his hand. A strong crack met his knuckles.
Notes, whispers.
He’d have to practice. This was by far the most entertaining item yet, anyways.
A few minutes of trial and error, and Keene had the object jumping to his will. It dipped smoothly down and back, down and back. He hooted and hollered at his discovery. This was fun, and best of all, it was purple!
The door of the White Room opened, and the Doctor entered.
“He knows what it is.” He told the nurse. “Get the other unclassified artifacts.”
The Doctor went to reach for Keene’s new toy, hesitated, and instead rested his hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Keene, my boy, what is this?”
Keene giggled. “Fun!”
by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 16, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The soldier sat on the corner of his footlocker in the virtually empty barracks, the barrel of his sidearm pressed against his temple.
A respectful distance away, Major Ramses watched the younger man calmly, speaking in soothing tones with a Southern accent.
“Son, you don’t have to do this. There are people here that can help you, whatever it is you’re feeling…”
The soldier cut him off. “That’s the problem, sir. I don’t feel. There are soldiers in my unit that bleed, that scream, that cry sometimes when people die, but I don’t do any of that. And then there’s this.” He trailed off and raised his left arm into the light. Where the skin had been burned away, metal braided fabric showed through underneath. “I don’t know what the hell I am, but I’m sure as hell not one of you.”
Ramses raised his shoulders in a shrug. “Don’t be so sure,” he chuckled. “Look, son, we’ve been patching you boys up with all kinds of new medical tech. You got shot up pretty bad, and you were out for a while. The docs did the best they could do for you, and look at you. You’ve got a fully functioning arm, no missing pieces. The skin will grow back, or we’ll graft it fresh if it doesn’t. New parts don’t make you any less of a soldier, any less of a man.”
“What’s my name? My tags say Walton, Emmett J., but I don’t remember that. I don’t remember where I came from. If I dug through the skin on my chest, would I find metal there too? I expect I would. I’m not a messed up man, I’m messed up, but I’m no man. Why can’t I even pull the trigger on this thing?”
Emmett pushed the gun hard into the flesh of his scalp, straining with visible effort to pull the trigger, but his trigger finger wouldn’t budge. Gradually he slid the barrel up until it cleared his short cut hair and without hesitation his finger responded, firing off a round into the bunk beside him, the flash burning a path across the top of his skull. He quickly pushed the gun back to the side of his head and tried again to no avail.
“If I was human, I could end this. I don’t know what the hell I am, sir, but if I was human, I could end this right now.”
Again, his slid the barrel up the curve of his scalp until the barrel cleared the top of his skull and squeezed off a second round.
Neither man flinched as he jammed the still hot barrel into his cheek, the flesh singeing beneath the metal.
Major Ramses considered the soldier for a moment, and then spoke almost in a whisper.
“Sicherheit deaktivieren. Sicherheitsautorisierung echo november delta.”
Walton’s German was rusty, and as he traced a line up the side of his face with the barrel of his gun, he worked out ‘Safety’ and ‘Authorization’, and the acronym was easy…
The weapon fired again, the bullet tearing into the soft tissue and stopping cold against his armoured brainpan, the recoil and impact tearing the weapon from his hand.
“I’m sorry son, but even if I let you do it, won’t do you no damn good.” He shook his head in resignation. “We’ll get someone down here to patch up your software. Can’t have you breaking down in a platoon with meat-bags in it, you’ll upset morale something fierce.”
Walton sat startled, hand stinging and head ringing.
“At Ease soldier.” Ramses walked towards the barracks door, pausing only to add “Status-Herunterfahren”.
Behind him, Walton, Emmett J. slumped forward motionless, the haunted look in his eyes frozen in place.
