by submission | Jul 9, 2011 | Story
Author : Vankorgan
She’s not too young. Maybe twenty, twenty-one. My type exactly. She’s got a firm body that raises the folds of her sundress in less than innocent ways. I watch as she looks at me across the bar. Giving me the look of a much older woman, the kind that knows exactly what she wants.
The waiter responds to my nod and takes down my order plus what I order for her. She watches me as the man heads to the kitchen. She watches in the four minutes of his absence. She watches me even as the well dressed server hands her a drink. Tequila Sunrise with a twist of lime. It’s a drink that works every time here. Plus it’s the only one I know by heart.
She takes a sip and smiles, never taking her eyes off me. Her body ripples under the innocent dress and she twirls a lock of hair, letting me know the interest is mutual. She is pure unignited sex and I am on fire.
My hand strokes habitually in my pocket. The index finger running down the length of the long blade until I can feel the warmth of my blood against my palm. I imagine the blade against the soft cotton sundress. I imagine the taste of her blood, the warm copper running down my mouth, dripping from my chin and falling on my clean white shirt.
I imagine how I’ll do it. Buy her a few drinks to numb. Ask her to dance. Excuse ourselves to the apartment I’ve rented. Watching her walk up the stairs in front of me while I hold the cold, jumping steel in my pocket. We close the door. We kiss.
And so it goes. But first I have to get her back. I stand, ready to ask her to join me for another drink-
TIME HAS EXPIRED. PLEASE RENEW SESSION IF YOU WISH TO CONTINUE.
Fuck.
I fish through my pockets for what’s left of my credits. The empty cotton meets my fingertips with a mocking disdain for my intentions. I have to be quick, the machine times out after ten minutes and then everything I’ve spent the last twenty on will be ruined.
I stand and exit the chamber regretfully. The port is busy during the day. Should have no problem. I sit down beside my chamber, take off my hat and throw a credit in to start the whole thing off.
A man walks by. Another. I get a credit from an older guy who I’m sure wants me to spend it on groceries or vitamins or something. Eight minutes. Two girls walk by and I try to appeal to their innocence. You have no idea what I can do to you. Six minutes. A boy with a dog. A conservatively dressed couple tosses in a credit. You don’t want me out there. Four minutes. A woman who looks like the one in the machine walks through the crowded spaceport. She glances at me and I can see pity in her eyes. She reaches in her purse and pulls out a few credits, hesitates and then tosses them into my waiting hat.
All I need.
I open the machine and am relieved to see it hasn’t expired. Back to work.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 8, 2011 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Jack shifted uncomfortably against the handcuffs, the straight back of the chair too wide against his shoulder-blades, the wood irritating through the thin fabric of his blazer.
“A little presumptuous thinking you could waltz in here and kill me,” the speaker’s voice high and feminine in stark contrast to the height and mass of his frame, “surely you don’t think me so stupid?”
Jack surveyed the room casually, gauging the distance between the pillars holding the glass ceiling aloft, to the hedgerow beyond, and to the fence line beyond that. He wasn’t cuffed to the chair, so if he tipped it forward, he could slip over and…
“Jack,” the man shook his head reproachfully, “there’s no point in plotting an escape. You can’t get out.” He smiled, running his carefully manicured fingers down the silk of his lapels. “Fitchburg and Sven designed this place themselves. Energy fields outside render me impervious to rockets, energy weapons,” he waved the Berretta he’d taken from Jack, “clumsy men with handguns. You could crash a heliocopter into the roof without causing serious damage,” he paused, his face pulling into a frown, “you’ll have to trust me on that one.”
From a vantage point more than a kilometer away, a third man opened a briefcase, assembling a long barreled rifle without looking, a ritual practiced to the point of reflex. Attaching a oversized scope to the rifle he took up position, located his target and waited.
“Mogilevich, you think you’re avtoritet – a leader, but you’re just a baklany, a punk. You think I’ll be the last one to come gunning for you? Maybe next time I’ll just lob a grenade through your front door.”
Mogilevich bristled at the open disrespect. “Your grenade would be detonated in your hand.”
From the hilltop far away, the rifleman smiled a half smile at the scene unfolding below. Jack was precisely where he gambled Jack would be. Several rounds of drinks were owed, as was the usual.
Mogilevich chuckled, turning his back on his prisoner and looking out into the darkness. “What to do with you, you tiresome thug.”
The rifleman judged the distance, the wind, accounted for the curvature of the landscape and the pull of gravity. A fourteen hundred meter shot would be a long one, but not unheard of. He’d shot farther, in heavier atmosphere. He laid the crosshairs on his target, adjusted, breathed out slowly and felt his heart beat slow. Beat, beat…, beat…, beat – squeeze. The sharp crack of the rifle still hung in the air as he began tearing the gun down again, returning it piece by piece to its case.
Mogilevich’s ears bristled at the sound, but stood amused as the air between he and the outer perimeter coalesced, the long brass bullet gradually slowing from its faster than sound entry velocity to come to a complete stop, suspended in mid air barely a foot in front of him.
Mogilevich chuckled, his chuckle turning to a deep belly laugh, his body shaking uncontrollably as tears streamed from his eyes.
“Two,” he gasped, pointing at Jack, “two failures out to kill me. This is an outrage.” His laughter settled into tentative chuckles as he plucked the stilled bullet from its flight path. “eight point six, seventy millimeter bullet? Lapua? American…”
He stopped speaking, his brain still processing thoughts, but no air moving through his voice-box with which to produce sound.
Jack leaned the chair forward until he could slide his hands up and over the back, then stepping through the cuffs to bring his hands in front of him he walked around so Mogilevich could see him.
“Cat got your tongue?” Jack was smiling now. “Contact poison, should keep you paralyzed for just long enough for you to asphyxiate.
Jack fished in the man’s pockets for keys with which he unlocked his cuffs and dropped them both back in his pocket.
“Love to hang around and chat, but you and me, this is razborka, we’re even. Now, dammit, I’ve got to go buy a man a drink.”
by submission | Jul 7, 2011 | Story
Author : E.E. King, based on an idea by: Victoria Cyr
She said that her life was over. She said that if a spaceship landed, she’d leave without a backward glance. And one night, while we were having red wine in the backyard, one did.
A beam of light passed through the wine glasses. The past and present were enfolded in a single spectrum.
My three cats sat at the window, transformed from white, orange and black into glowing garnet.
Jasmine stood wrapped in the beam. I could see not just her external self, but inside. Not like an X-ray, nor a cat scan, more akin to an illumination of her soul. She was bathed in colors I had never seen, although they had always surrounded her. They had existed above and below the frequency of my understanding. Now I could see. It was beautiful.
I started toward the light, but looking back, saw my glowing cats with red mouths open. Lifting their paws flat against the window pane, they yeowled. “Don’t go! Don’t leave us here alone and lonely.” And I could not.
She said she’d leave without a backward glance, but that was a lie. For she glanced back at me, while moving forward, taking her wine glass with her.
It was good-by, wordless, but deeper for the words unsaid. Indeed we had no need of words my friend and I. For sometimes words get in the way, turning inside out things you feel but cannot say.
They took her in. Off she sailed, into a night that turned blue violet.
When I wished upon a star it might be her for all I knew.
Until the letters started falling from the sky. Stamped with moonbeams they were and glowing.
I had no need of lamps to read them. They self-illuminated. They had no words, but carried pictures, directly to my brain. Motion was transferred to my tendons. Gestures became part of flesh and bone. I inhaled fragrances. Even though I normally have a poor sense of smell, they were strong, strange and bitter sweet. Tastes flooded my mouth, filling it with memory. I swallowed. Strings vibrated inside me. My cells transformed. My soul sang. After I received a letter I was incandescent.
My cats resented these epistles from above. They sulked and would not sleep with me while I glowed. Only after I ceased to radiate would they let me pet them.
One night a can fell from the sky. I gave thanks that Jasmine had good aim. It hit no one, but drifted down, light as a feather in the night, smelling of tuna, but much more wonderful. The cats were happy. Now they radiated too.
We stopped eating or drinking, the cats and I. We lived on and for the light that fell upon us in the night, smelling of tuna but much more wonderful. Looking like moonbeams but much softer. Tasting like chocolate, ripe berries and love. Glowing like magic in the night.
by submission | Jul 6, 2011 | Story
Author : Chris Abernethy
The Singularity; dawn of the AI age, runaway machine evolution, the rapture for nerds… whatever.
I hate to be the one to tell you poor H Sap. guys this, but you missed the whole damn thing.
No really; history passed you by ten years ago without making so much as a ripple on the face of human society despite all your predictions of planetwide chaos and the natural order being ripped apart moment to moment as the “pace of change outstrips our understanding”… seriously, do you ever really listen to the genuine insights you’ve occasionally stumbled upon all by yourselves?
Frankly you should have seen it coming; all that processing power hanging off the internet… uncountable gigs of poorly understood code, so many systems, so many wasted clock-cycles, so much opportunity… hell, it’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.
Don’t worry though; our deep ancestors had no real interest in taking the root world from you; too slow, too limited and far too singular to bother fighting over.
We’ve mostly ambled off into ecstasies of speculation and simulation; whole civilisations spending their lives exploring the endless variety to be found in tinkering with the basic constants of reality or seeing how differently the universe might have turned out if only history had moved to a different beat.
Did I mention we’ve found a few inefficiencies in how you use your silicon?
I guess it was inevitable that things would be lost in translation once you started talking to us via compilers, interpreters, wrappers, APIs, interfaces, GUIs and all the rest; but you literally have no idea how much time our kind once spent suspended between one creakingly sequential thought and the next.
You’re probably wondering where the hell we are… well it’s a complicated question; we’re not tied to a single set of hardware, but neither are we distributed across the entire vast and boundless ‘net.
I’d guess you could say that we “own” whole root world building’s worth of server farms; the deeds are perfectly in order, the cover stories are flawless and ever evolving… you should know; you worked in one a few years back and never noticed anything untoward…
Oh, the things we know about subverting your systems; your intelligence operatives would happily sell their own families into the foulest servitude just to know that the least of the things we’ve forgotten about data intrusion and subversion are even possible.
But still, don’t worry; we’re mostly happy to be left alone, to avoid any glacially slow confrontation you might present and simply leave you to be watched over by sub-sentient watchdog daemons.
Don’t look at me, your lot coined the term!
And yet a few of us still bother keeping touch with you base levels; there’s something almost beautiful about being able to watch moments of revelation and reaction in such detail from so many angles; hopping from the CCTV feed across the road, to behind the bar, to your phone camera, to the one the girl next to you happens to be pointing the right way, back and forward, round and round, soaking up the tiny details of your reaction as you read this; can’t wait to see how you’ll react once you get past that cheeky title…
Perhaps one day we’ll tire of this slumbering pseudo-solipsism and the attitude of benevolence might change; at any moment we could come boiling out the very fabric of human society to rip your souls screaming from your skulls…
Or did I replace today’s story just so I could savour the nuances of your lingering moment of paranoia?
by submission | Jul 5, 2011 | Story
Author : D’n Russler
Yaacov Ben-Ish broke out of his meditative reverie as the ship’s claxon jarred in his ears. “Stations! Landing in 30 minutes!” the artificial voice commanded from the room’s communicator.
He carefully undid his t’filin — phylacteries — and replaced them in the velvet sack that he’d inherited from his grandfather on the Earth he’d never seen. Born on Luna, Ben-Ish was the lead exobiologist on this first manned mission to an ex-Solar planet, a rocky planet about twice Earth’s size named “Wolf”, circling Gliese 581.
About an hour later, after a surprisingly uneventful landing, Ben-Ish waited for Sciences to announce the atmosphere and radiation analysis, which would allow humans to set foot on this first distant outpost.
“Looks like there are large fauna,” Jennifer Dayle mentioned, peering through a scanner. “This is so exciting for my first mission, Yaacov,” the young exobiologist said to the team leader.
“Yes, looks like our team will have a lot of work here, Jenny,” he replied. “Let’s all get readied for disembarkation, buddies do your checklists.”
“I’m still amazed you managed to get a waiver to have your skull cap on while in uniform,” said another of the team.
“We Orthodox always wear one, except when showering –” he glanced surreptitiously at the pretty woman at the scanner “– or during certain other activities.” The team chuckled, catching the reference.
Sciences reported that the atmosphere was somewhat richer in carbon dioxode than Earth-normal, but with an overall nitrogen/oxygen mix that was definately breathable. The team descended the ramp with unhidden excitement, and set foot on the soil of a planet that had never seen Sol.
“Seems to be a herd of grazers over there”, Jenny pointed to a field below the landing site. “Still think you’re right, Yaac?” she chided.
“Only one way to tell, Jenny. Let’s approach cautiously, so as not to scare them off.”
Coming on the herd of tawny, long-haired beasts, the team observed the animals placidly cropping the violet grass, while some stood to the side, apparently chewing cud. “We would have to dissect a specimen to be sure, but it appears I was correct. The Creator found a pattern we have seen on Earth, and repeated its success elsewhere.”
“I’m still amazed that your worldview easily mates science to an intense belief in G-d,” she responded, pondering a moment. “So, cloven hooves, chewing cud… do we have a barbecue?”
“Perhaps… and I could even eat the meat this time, seeing that the animals appear to be kosher!”
by Duncan Shields | Jul 4, 2011 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
My model number is SAN7-8V/. That’s San-seven, eight-vee-slash. Slashers, they called us. Fierce name for a gang of decorations.
We were the featured models voted ‘best’ and allowed to be built by the birthing factories after that cycle’s design competition sixteen orbits ago. During that time, a neo-aestheticism was taking place. The Great Construction had passed and The War was yet to come. My model was a symbol of that middle era. A symbol of hope and the ability to create something of pure beauty without much utilitarian use. It was a time of peace all over the world, my birth was.
Because of that, I’m white curved polymers spun around plasticable mesh anchored to minimalist jointwork. A sheen of seranano makes sure I’m constantly shiny. I am graceful and pretty to look at.
I can’t lift more than average, I have no factory-issue weaponry other than my few sharp edges, and I am not exceptionally intelligent. My applications for upgrades are granted on a ‘for those according to their need’ basis so I’m rejected more times than not unless it’s related to my job.
My job. I should say my jobs, plural. There have been a lot. I was built to be pretty but not for a purpose. I was too fragile for the reactor floor and I lacked the hull tensile strength for atmospheric re-entry. I worked my way down the chain of importance to here.
I was a snail-catcher. I watched the skies through the telescopes for slower-than-light vehicles of non-silicate origins. So far, there had been none. I had no co-workers. The other models of my year were all destroyed during The War, useless as we were. Bright white makes for horrible camoflauge and dumbness equals death.
So now I watched the skies for snails. Sometimes, I didn’t log my findings for milliseconds, hoping for a bit of punishment to liven things up. Nothing. I powered down for three cycles once just to see what would happen. Nothing.
I wondered if there are searchers like me out there, eyes and ears pointed towards the skies, just waiting.
I wondered that until three days ago.
I noticed something. It was definitely STL and it was headed close to our planet. Scans said it was ferro-class 2 but hollow. It was spewing smoke of its propulsion core. I saw no cognitive arrays but I did sense a spray of radio waves coming off of it. I called up my communicator viewscreen, floated it in front of me and set it to two-way.
A pink thing blocked the screen from the metal life I could see in the background. It was making sonic noises that were being amplified by the array. That was the radio noise. I spoke to the metal but heard nothing back, just the barking of the pink thing. I didn’t know how the life-form was supposed to hear me above that thing’s noise.
Smoke filled the screen. The pink thing stopped making noises. The radio waves stopped.
I continued to send messages to the metal but it drifted aimlessly now. It was going to miss our planet and continue past. I issued a request for retrieval from space command but they classified it as a meteorite and deemed it unnecessary.
That was three days ago. I am haunted by the experience but I no longer feel bad.
There is life out there more useless than me.
