by submission | Mar 30, 2013 | Story |
Author : John Arcadian
The lag has made us patient. Not humanity, just Marie and I, and maybe a few others. You see, I’m on the lunar launch station on the farthest part of the moon that is viably habitable. It’s a spider-webbed grid of interconnected, but autonomous, pods that contain living space, communal areas, bureaucratic offices, and all those other little fiddly bits that make launching deep space rockets feasible. I took a 1 year contract up here for the paycheck. While I walk through the tunnels to visit other workers and friends, my real contact comes when I talk to Marie by satellite relay. It’s cheap, reliable, and almost everyone up here uses the relays to video chat with their left-behinds on that big blue-green marble that we all want to get back to.
We’re just far enough for there to be a bit of continuous lag, maybe 20 or 30 seconds, even if you are just sending bytes of text. So we’re used to periods of silence and stillness while waiting for a response. You get very zen about it because there’s no other option.
When the explosion knocked me off my chair, the emergency lights flooded my pod with their yellow glare and the alarm klaxons started blaring. Marie was still telling me about the movers transferring her desk out of her office. I was busy locking down the airlocks and ensuring my seals were tight, so I didn’t get a good look at her reaction as my pod started to float away, but I could tell she was freaked out.
My living pod, including the relay dish, is powered by high-efficiency solar panels. The algae tanks are intact and will pump out enough oxygen and protein mass for me to “live” indefinitely. Command sent a message explaining about the exploding rocket and the pod eject procedures that saved most of us. Rescue ships are on their way. Most of the other pods are in stable, so the risk of death before rescue is minimal. It’s a very smartly designed system. Just have to sit back and wait for rescue. At least I’ve still got contact with Marie.
The first days were the worst. You could watch the lag getting worse the farther out you drifted. I’ve got a notepad with the calculated lag times for the first 4 days. After a few hours of drifting it took roughly 4 or 5 minutes between replies. By the second day it was at 13 minutes. The third day had it out to 49 minutes. We’re on week 3 now. It takes about 65 hours or so for a reply. Most of the pods are floating in a steady pattern, emergency beacons and maneuvering jets keeping us bunched together.
The rescue ships are still a week or so out. The trajectories from the earth launch pads take a lot longer to line up. I think we’re all talking to loved ones back home. I can see patient faces illuminated by the screens of monitors when I have my external camera zoomed out and pointed at one of those thick pressure restraining windows. Yeah, we’ll get rescued eventually. We’re not worried. The lag has made us patient. Marie has moved back in front of her screen and is telling me about her day, or a day she had a week or so ago. Apparently, the movers broke her desk when they switched her office again, but she’s not angry. The lag has made us patient.
by submission | Mar 29, 2013 | Story |
Author : David Burkhart
He had just sat down when he felt a soft touch on his shoulder and then heard a voice near his ear saying “D-d-dance with me Henry”. He looked around at two strange eyes and said, “Get away from me, you freak!”. He twisted his glass free from the dingy sticky table and took a big swig of what was advertised to be Rigelian rum. Although the drink was absolutely the worst thing he had ever tasted, he ordered another one. After all, what could one expect at the only bar within two light-months distance.
She walked around the table, sat down opposite him, leaned forward and put her elbows on the table, cradled the sides of her face in her hands, and stared into his eyes. “I lub you.” she said. “Go away. You got a screw loose or something. I mean it. Look, you’re dripping oil all over the table. Go get fixed or something.” he replied.
“Sohry. Jesus died for you.” she said.
“No he didn’t. He is still out at the mine working his butt off. Go away.” he replied.
“OK Charlie” she said reluctantly. As she walked away with an uneven lurch in her step, he began to have second thoughts. After all the next bar was far away and she didn’t look that bad. A few more rum drinks and she would probably be the best-looking babe on this side of the galaxy even if she was leaking oil.
“Hey, aren’t you that singer?” he called after her. She turned and answered with a big smile “G-g-guys usually call me Beautiful. Dance with me Henry.”
Sure, why not dance, he thought as he chugged another rum drink. So he put an arm around her oily waist and away they danced. Or at least tried to dance. He, with a few rum drinks under his belt, and she, with some kind of a loose gear problem causing her uneven lurches. Mostly they kept trying to free their feet from gunk on the floor. And where there wasn’t floor gunk, there were Beautiful’s oily spots on the floor to avoid.
Even with their problems, they managed to perform a fairly respectable dance. There wasn’t any music except for Beautiful singing. Her singing was better than her dancing. Beautiful had been built as an elite class A singer and dancer for some very rich dude. Several years ago, she was seriously damaged during a rough landing on this asteroid. Instead of taking Beautiful all the way back to Earth for repairs, the rich guy sold her as is to the local barkeep. She has been singing and dancing with the barkeep’s customers ever since.
Henry put his arm around her, pulled her close, and started to kiss her. “H-h-hey! Take it easy cowboy! What kind of an android do you think I am? Have another drink.” she said as she pushed him away. Henry had several more drinks as he contemplated why females were always so difficult to understand.
by submission | Mar 28, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bronwyn Seward
“I-, I-, want….you to die my boy.”
“Famous last words, eh Grandpa?”
My father’s father fidgeted under the covers, twisting his toes with creaking bones. A shaky hand reached for mine, as I jutted away from it.
“Come here, don’t be afraid now.”
Pawing closer, the shriveled, weather-beaten hand with mangled nails grabbed a hold of my freshly polished mitt. An almost-pleasant warmth from his tenderness hit me first, and then chills tickled my spine as I noticed that his sweat smudged the luminosity from my extremity.
“This world’s made you eh….hard Jimmy.” Knocking on my chrome encased bicep, he cackled until it turned into a dry cough. “You ain’t the same as you used to be.”
“Ha ha, you bet I’m not. And thank God I’m not, otherwise I’d be where you are in fifty years. I’ll never understand why you didn’t do it Grandpa. You are probably the last man to die. You’ll go in the record books as a fool, I tell ya.”
“Of course you don’t understand….and won’t, my boy. You can’t think straight anymores. The little Jimmy that used to make me taste all his food before he bit into them, thinking they might be poisonous is gone. You ain’t him. You just have his thoughts, but he’s gone.”
He frustrated me when he brought up old stories of my weakness and inadequacy. Times had changed, sure I wasn’t that little kid anymore, heck I didn’t even look like him. I didn’t even have his body anymore, but what am I to do with a decaying and decrepit body, waste away? I still was me, there was nothing artificial about me, my soul was intact but my body was gone. Did that make me any less of a person?
“We can throw these old stories and jokes back n’ forth for centuries on end. There’s really nothing to lose, it’s not even painful. Just upload your mind onto the Genex software-”
“That’s a death in itself. Life ain’t the same when kept in a metal cage . Look at you, talking all smart, you’re the fool, ain’t yourself anymore. You’re all metal, cold to the touch, cold to others, plain cold, cold, cold. I don’t think you feel anything other than coldness anymore.”
“Gramps I only feel the good stuff, the pleasant sensations, and the best memories. I can picture grandma as if she were here right now.”
“You’re grandma’s dead, son, her and her body. Why would I just want the memory? You’re a computer, a programmed computer, that’s all you are.”
“No I’m not! Look I’ll show you your Jimmy–” I flashed open my chest cavity to reveal my inner core, a labyrinth of wires, cords, and a piercing light, my life force, never threatening to fade, pulsing through me, an evolved specimen. Inside the machine, my soul on display within a robotic frame.
He curled away from the electricity, with a gasping voice he wheezed “Eh, you creepy robot, keep your clothes on. There ain’t nothing normal or glorious about that. You’ve stripped yourself of anything that sets us apart from those old televisions and computer things. Only thing that makes you my grandson is your name.”
I raised my hand at him. Still out of breath he whispered “You’re half dead. I want you to die my boy….” His hand went limp and then fell off my polished fingers, now empty. Both thoughts and emotions evaded me, all I could feel was cold.
by submission | Mar 27, 2013 | Story |
Author : Townsend Wright
The young tech analyzed her monitor. Her blue uniform was worn loosely among her personal gothic choice of clothing which was oddly fitting of the dark, blue-lit, organic looking room they were in. “Download complete. Ready any time officers.”
Browner checked the watch on his eye-screen, 9:08 pm. “Ready, Owen?”
“Any time, Dom. Go ahead, flesher lady.”
The tech pushed the necessary buttons on her monitor and the gingerbread man-shaped vat of white goo in front of them began to bubble. “Genetic encoding: good. Cell differentiation: good. Cell formation, with cerebral encoding: good. And…wakey, wakey.”
The vat erupted in a jerky blob which after the runoff of goo reveal itself as a swarthy middle aged man frantically gasping for breath as he sat naked covered in ooze.
“Arthur Green?” asked Dom. The man nodded harshly in response, sending drops of goo flying out of his hair. “I’m detective Dominique Browner, this is my partner, Police Android unit O-N 17.”
“My friends call me Owen. Can you speak, buddy?”
“Where am I? What am I doing here?”
“That’s a yes,” Owen joked.
“Mr. Green, I’m sorry to inform you that you have been the victim of a homicide,” Dom said in accordance with protocol.
There was a pause, “Is this heaven?”
“No,” Dom continued, “this is a pod-cloning facility in Level 23 of Sub New York.”
“What am I doing here?”
“Legal maneuvering, mostly,” said Owen.
“What?”
Dom brought to mind the by-the-book explanation. “You are aware that your standard neural implants record all your memories for easier personal access?” Green nodded. “According to the Brenshaw Privacy Act of 2101, it is illegal for the police to directly access any of these recorded memories, even in the case of a murder victim.”
“Now, here’s where things get good,” Owen interjected.
Dom continued, “However, it is legal for any person’s memory to be temporarily downloaded into a ‘printed’ pod clone. Such a copy can be used for questioning.”
“You mean I—”
“Was a bathtub full of stem cells two minutes ago?” Owen interrupted, “Yep.”
“What is the last thing you remember?” Dom continued.
“I—I was arguing with my wife, and then she pulled out a kitchen knife and—and—”
“Ha!” Owen exclaimed, pointing mockingly at his partner, “I told you it was the wife!”
“Alright, you don’t have to brag,” Dom said. He turned to the tech, “That’s all we need.” The tech pushed another button and the clone of Arthur Green reverted back into a mass of programmable white slop. “Let’s go find some evidence against her.”
The officers walked back to the elevators. “Hey, Owen?”
“Yeah, Dom?”
“Does it ever feel weird to you? Melting them like that?”
“Nah, court’s already adjourned, all we do is burn a copy of the transcript.”
“I guess you’re right. Just promise me something, Owen.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t do that to me when I get murdered.”
“Heh heh. Don’t worry, Dom, I won’t,” the elevator doors opened and they stepped in. Owen added “Why would I kill ya’ just to make another one?”
by submission | Mar 26, 2013 | Story |
Author : Aaron Koelker
I had eaten a ham sandwich the morning we found God. It wasn’t exactly the foundation of great literature. Perhaps they would write in a great feast and how our crew was a likable bunch both humble and imperfect. You know, a “twelve apostles” sort of crew, all dedicated to our own view of a higher power. Which wasn’t too far from the truth. We were a pretty diverse crew, and whether it was planned that way or just poor luck I’ll never know.
The creature that floated before our bow was certainly god-like in scope, but little else. It looked like a planetoid gourd covered in warts and veins, gently pulsing in sync with the starry background.
“My God…” the co-pilot gasped, her eyes wide.
“Which one you talking to?” the engineer laughed.
“That thing is a monstrosity,” the co-pilot finished.
The engineer made way for the coffee machine, smiling to himself. “I don’t know”, he said. “I find it sort of humbling.”
The head science officer walked into the room.
“Well, the scanners confirm it,” he said. “That thing is expelling organic matter in every direction. A spore-like vessel; just like the ones we’ve been finding.” He stopped in front of the forward port and gazed upon the beast. “We’ll need more time to derive its age, composition, metabolism…and of course its origin.”
“The Panspermians are going to go nuts,” I said.
The science officer turned toward me.
“Granted we can prove it’s really the source.”
“Everything we’ve collected and studied; all the sleuth-work has brought us to this place. This backwater space on the edge of nowhere.” I paused as I watched the creature, not yet sure what to think of it, only that it existed. “It has to be.”
“We should leave it,” said the co-pilot. “We should get out of here. That thing,” spoken with the utmost disgust, “wasn’t meant to be found.”
“Oh don’t get all prophetic on us,” said the engineer. “Why the fuck would you sign onto this expedition?”
“I don’t know. But it wasn’t to find that.”
I saw her discreetly twiddling with the bracelet she wore under her sleeve, the one bearing the sign of her faith. She had shown it to me the night before.
“Where are the other three?” I asked.
“In their cabins, I believe.”
I left and found the medical officer sitting on his bunk, the door to his cabin ajar. There was a thick book in his hands from which he read aloud, fast and mumbling.
“You alright in here?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. I waited a moment longer before leaving to find the other two science officers. They weren’t in the lab, so I figured they must’ve been down in the cargo hold, looking over the collected spore samples.
The hold was dark, and upon entering a sharp acrid smell filled my nose.
“Anybody in here?” I called.
No answer. I ventured toward the back where the samples were kept. There, half-wedged onto the bottom shelf, was a makeshift chemical bomb thrown together with spare parts and lab supplies. A puddle of leaked fluid slicked the metal floor.
Beside the bomb lay one of the science officers, a long stain of blood running down his collar. In one hand he held a scalpel and the other a metal charm strung on a silver chain. I recognized the symbol; an extremist cult. One that lead a world power and over two billion people through its strict law; one that couldn’t afford to have that law grow fallacious.
Perhaps we hadn’t found God after all.
by submission | Mar 25, 2013 | Story |
Author : Isla Kay
We still thought about it. Dreamt about it. The idea would never escape us. Even if we’d never lived it.
I had been folding Kyle’s socks when I started hearing newscasts from the telesurfaces in the kitchen. A man had been found. He’d been living in Tazmania. His mother had kept him a secret when she started to realize, for fear he’d be hounded. But he wanted to be known, so he’d left for Sydney to claim his immediate idol status. The only man.
Since contamination (all that estrogen to curb the population coming back to haunt us), fewer and fewer males had become able to reach adolescence, until there were none—not a single man left.
The man on the telesurfaces was tall and had a deep voice. If there was only to be one, he was a good one. I picked up the astracom to call Jada next door, but my shaking hands dropped it into the washtube where it was surely sucked into the spin cycle. A man. I couldn’t look away. If there was one, there could be others.
When Kyle came home from school, he didn’t say a word.
‘So you’ve heard?’ I asked him.
‘Duh,’ he replied, sitting at the counter for his snack.
Since the extinction, boy-husbands were appointed to all women. Usually the son of a neighbor, sometimes shipped from overseas. The boy-husbands would fulfill the former duties of men as best they could—yard work, repairs, lifting. It was the best arrangement, given the situation.
The boy-husbands weren’t happy about it either. They didn’t want mother-wives nagging them endlessly. They wanted to be out playing cyball. But it was their duty to at least try to fill the men’s shoes. They would even donate sperm, since sexual contact between mother-wives and boy-husbands was appropriately prohibited. They were children after all. Although sometimes, a woman did look for love in the wrong places. The boys were helpful in the face of hardship. Of course, often the women took on many of the men’s former duties. Boys could only do so much.
‘You probably think you have a shot with this clown,’ Kyle said, finishing his grapejuice.
‘And I suppose you think you have a chance of…’ I stopped mid-sentence. ‘It’s possible,’ I decided, excited for Kyle. ‘I just hope they don’t lock him up in a lab to find out how he got this way.’
‘He’s probably a jerk,’ Kyle said, hopping down from the counter. ‘And if he isn’t now, he will be.’
Sometimes the boy-husbands thought of themselves as men, acted like men so convincingly that it made the women think twice, but usually, they stuck to what they were good at—being boys.
‘Can I go play outside?’ Kyle asked.
I messed up his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Of course, sweetie. Don’t forget your coat.’
Poor Kyle. He’d always wanted to be a good boy-husband, but he knew he would never be enough. ‘I scored eighty points yesterday,’ he beamed, putting on his hood.
I kissed his soft cheek. Boys and men—as different as men and women. ‘That’s amazing, honey. Be home before dark.’
Watching him run into the street, I wondered if he were a man, if I’d worry about him less or more.
More images of the man appeared through the frosted glass on the counter, the walls, the mirrors. I sat and stared, but the celebration quickly became sad. The only thing worse than not having something, knowing that it exists, but you will still probably never have it.
