by submission | Feb 25, 2012 | Story |
Author : Langdon Hickman
There wasn’t a conscious decision to eliminate sound. At least not one that anyone could remember. One day, the world woke up to silence.
No one was bothered by the sudden stark silence. It felt freeing, like a burden had been lifted. They wanted it, yearned for it. Each day was spent in radiant joy, their hearts beaming out love to each other. Crime rates dropped. Domestic violence almost ground to a standstill. Drug use practically evaporated overnight and those who once had judged the addicts of the world aided them in overcoming their withdrawal effects.
There had been a sound before the silence came. It was like an infection, a virulent sonic meme forcing its way through the veins and arteries of the sound-drenched planet like cocaine careening for the brain. One day, a song appeared on the internet. The file description was empty. It was entitled Song 1.mp3. It started spreading through forums and chat rooms at lightning speed, exploding into life almost the moment it became available. It was a curious song, just a throbbing dance beat, staccato synthesizers, cold washes of sound and steady pulse that almost demanded that you dance. It was an epidemic. It was uploaded to iPods, burned to CDs, recorded to tape, pulled to almost every medium imaginable. Missionaries and aid workers would show up to the poor areas of the world carrying it with them and would leave it in their wake on old boom boxes and Walkmen. The song knew no limits. The internet would not be its cage. It would live.
Musicians began incorporating it into their works. It was simple enough. The piece was skeletal, could fit comfortably almost any song with minor modification. Remixes were pressed, bedroom musicians pumped out material laced with Song 1 and its pulse. What was stranger was when older albums started to show the sound, as though it had always been in the DNA of the music waiting for humanity to know what to listen to. Every song on every album. A single pulse echoing forever.
People said that if you translated the synthesizer lines using a complex computer program, you’d see alien messages. Some said no, it’s Morse code and it says the name of god. The song became an obsession and decoding it became everything. But then the silence came.
Sometimes there would be gatherings, spontaneous and inexplicable, people joining together in masses of thousands in empty spaces without a word, without a sound. They would stand together and they would hear the pulse and then they would disperse. No one knew why. No one cared anymore. There was peace. Peace and the pulse.
by submission | Feb 24, 2012 | Story |
Author : Krista Bunskoek
Racing down the barren street, she grinned like an escaped fugitive.
She’d done it. She’d done it again!
Taking away her network privileges! Ha!
It only fueled her flame. With more time to plot, to create, to be on her way to feel the thrill of freedom. Freedom once more!
And, well, what she really missed were her friends.
They hadn’t disconnected her ‘vital’ Education network. Parents!
Ha. She’d figured it out, of course. The tiny loophole in the code. The connection to the house network. She’d worked on it every day, chipping away like a rock hammer to stone. She found the way. Undetected – the network still showing her as grounded.
Her parent’s schedules. Easy-peasy. The small security changes made after her last breach – child’s play.
Then there was the house alarm. The multiple levels of security. This took some time, and a few errors which she laid squarely on her brother. But she figured it out. There was always a way.
With the house network hacked, she owned it.
Turning off the front door alarm, she was out!
Freedom!
It was dark. It was silent. It was the thrill of the forbidden.
No one went out at night. It was unsafe.
She was out, and it felt good.
Now she had to be quick. She had to make her way down the street to Alexi’s house. She was late. She hoped he got her message.
It was chilly. It was strange. The slight breeze left icy kisses on her cheeks. So this is what night feels like, she thought.
A street lamp flickered. She darted from its range.
Glancing upwards, she raced in awe.
Stars! Not one or two, but hundreds, no – thousands! Her heart skipped a beat. She thought briefly of her parents. Wondering for a second if she might find their space station flying in orbit.
It was live. It was real.
Mesmerized, she felt like a small part of this enormous universe.
This was freedom. This was like nothing she’d experienced before. This was like nothing left to loose.
A sharp breeze whipped at her, snapping her back to the hunt. She had given Alexi a specific time, and she could not be late. Too risky.
Her stealth instincts kicked in again, she focused on the pursuit.
Alexi’s house.
A rock. Solid and heavy.
Hurling the rock in the air, it banged in perfect precision on Alexi’s bedroom window.
No response.
Wait. A shadow.
Was it Alexi? Was that a signal?
Too late.
The front door opened. Alarms.
No.
She stood frozen.
Too late.
The compliance police. Trapped.
She was put in the back seat of the extended unimobile, and zoomed silently to her house.
Her parents stood in the doorway. Glaring in disapproval.
Elana was sent straight to her room.
Deflated.
Defeated.
Dismally crushed once more.
She would always know, though, the thrill of freedom. A freedom so frightfully on the edge. A freedom so real, so rare.
This could never be taken away, and she knew it.
by Julian Miles | Feb 23, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Hadrian’s bloody Wall. Originally built to keep the Picts out when the Romans finally realized my ancestors were too surly to civilise. Since then it’s been used in books and films, every damn time to keep something nasty in the North from overrunning the lovely people in the South.
I’m standing on it tonight as repair crews struggle to conjure up the unobtainable with swearing, prayers and gaffa tape. Alison and I are peering down the scopes of Bursinger S3 minimissile launchers, looking for the faster ones in the endless shuffling horde coming towards us up the M6. A six lane shooting gallery where speeding is deadly. The longer period ‘infected’, the faster it moves. An easy selection process because the faster ones are smarter too. They can organise the newer reanimates into inhuman pyramids for others to climb. It’s happened twice and thankfully we had working flamethrowers on the sections where it happened. Now we have constant monitoring and helicopter gunships. But there is always some twit who doesn’t clear the napalm zone in time and ends up as trooper flambé de jour.
“You realise that we outnumber you?”
Alison does not take her attention from her eyepiece. Her tone is conversational. I keep my attention focussed as well.
“We’ll keep fighting. Eventually you’ll run out of meat and decomposition will get to you.”
She pauses and looks over her scope into the mob before squinting down the eyepiece with intent.
“Hello Gantiur.”
Her minimissile zips into the shuffling crowd and I see a figure try to dodge before it is reduced to a shambling lower torso and legs.
“Friend of yours?”
She grins nastily.
Alison’s world was reduced to ashes by their sun doing something unexpected. They had enough warning and managed to transmit their consciousnesses intergalactically. On Earth they found compatible hosts in the recently dead. They were clumsy at first and by the time they had figured out how to control their new bodies, they were cannibalistic to repair decomposition damage to their hosts. Most never progressed past that stage. The few who did were indistinguishable from full humans.
Alison had been my partner in and out of the military. When the ‘zombie apocalypse’ occurred, we got called back. Then she died in a transport chopper crash. All we knew was that she disappeared in the Highlands and returned two months later suffering from ‘amnesia’. I spotted that she had changed and she was among the first to come clean. At first there was hatred; but eventually, surprisingly, sympathy had arisen because the Metharran plan had gone so hideously wrong.
The bestial traits their civilisation had suborned for so long manifested when linked to the memory remnants of humans, unless the human had died with an emotional bond. That enabled the new reanimate to rapidly achieve full sentience; to become a Methuman. But the loss of that bond sent them immediately, irretrievably bestial. Our mixed defence unit has pets, cars, relatives, ornaments, books and the whole range of things that full humans can become attached to. The Methuman call them Sanity Totems. Each Methuman keeps their totem near them and protects it with insane dedication. Because without it they are no better than any of the plague of reanimates that are assailing the world.
I am Alison’s sanity totem. She has had a minuscule device implanted in her head, so that when my heart stops beating for more than five minutes she will be explosively decapitated. Until then, we have a strange love to keep us warm as civilisation crumbles.
by submission | Feb 22, 2012 | Story |
Author : O. Alexander
I open my eyes. They burn after another restless night, filled with nightmares. Three weeks in the jungle, playing deadly cat and mouse games with a neo-leftist demolition squad, can have that effect.
I get up and walk unsteadily into the bathroom. Looking into the mirror, dark fear swells within me.
The Incident.
It is never far from my mind.
My man lost. A village massacred in retribution. Innocents slaughtered. I stood by, silent.
I pound both my palms against the hard porcelain sink, the pain clearing my head for a moment.
The One World de-brief begins at 9am. No time for regrets now.
Moving back into the bedroom, the TV is showing another cratered launch pad. This time they hit a base to the West. A primitive bomb again, crippling another launch facility.
I dress quickly and walk outside. The protestors just beyond the fence notice me and a swell of hatred is hurled in my direction.
“No to human murderers,” a strained female voice rises above the others.
My squad is part of an experiment. We are the first biologicals One World has allowed into front-line combat on its behalf in thirty years. With the rise of autonomous fighting machines, and the breakthroughs in Moral-Software that soon followed, war became a wholly non-human affair for the developed world three decades ago. Then, last year One World’s autonomous forces proved incapable of pacifying this jungle insurgency. The genetically enhanced locals proved too tenacious and clever for the agile machines.
Our baseline human squads have a good record in the test so far, giving the insurgents a series of bloody engagements with no civilian casualties. An Autonomous Witnessing Unit, the size of a small bear walking on four legs, is sent out with each squad. It records and reports the squad’s interactions with civilians and combatants back to One World.
The Incident happened in a zone too dangerous for communication transmissions. The images from the village remained inside the AWU when Owens attached the armor piercing explosive to its underbelly. The report we later filed told the story of our squad coming onto an atrocity clearly committed by our enemies. My job today is to walk the Council through that report, to keep the Baseliner’s record clean and my men off the gallows.
———-
Thirty minutes later I sit at the center of a drafty room, surrounded on three sides by elevated podiums. I watch as the colorful One World uniforms file in. When the last seat is filled, I sit up straight and prepare for my testimony. The room grows silent. A minute passes. Then five. No familiar words of welcome from the Director. Just silence.
Panic slices through my stomach. I stand, taking two steps backwards. Four strong arms meet me. I try to whirl, to run. The strong arms jerk me off my feet, carrying me to the far wall. One of the hands fumbles in a pocket, then holds something cold and metallic to my head. I am instantly paralyzed. They place me in a stiff chair. A metallic cap is fitted to my head. A screen descends from the ceiling.
To my horror, my skull under the metal cap seems to split in half. It happens smoothly. Mechanically. Without pain. Connections are made under the cap. A jungle scene appears on the screen, showing a view from just outside the village. The huts are still intact. Miller is just ahead on the trail. I remember this view. It is mine.
As the image leaps to life, I fear it is the end of mine.
by Duncan Shields | Feb 21, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Hitler’s daughter was ruling with a penchant for experimentation.
She talked of a future where Aryans were recognized by their deeds and initiative, not by the colour of their skin or hair.
Controversial and beautiful, Hitler’s daughter was short with the same dark hair as her father.
She administered the shot that killed him in his hospital bed. Grey-haired, drooling, and given to fits at the end, it was the ministry’s decree that he be put out of his misery by his then sixteen-year-old daughter. The photograph is famous. Her chin is tucked into her chest and her straight black hair is falling over her eyes as she depresses the plunger on the syringe. The resemblance to her father in that moment in unmistakable and is belied only by a twinkle in her eye. His hand is grasping at the front of her uniform. If one squints just right, the shadow from his clawed hand coupled with his bent fingers almost form a swastika.
Chancellor Hilda.
German medicine had come far. Top in the world when it came to longevity drugs, plastic surgery and prosthetic limbs. However she banned experimentation on the poor and homeless.
“There were still discoveries to be made”, she said, “but only by using the guilty”. The subtle accusation hidden in the statement by lumping the scientists in with the subjects was not lost on the scientific community. There was no doubt about how punishment would be meted out. The scientists would end up on their own bloody tables if they dared dismiss her rules in their dark laboratories.
She said that the future lay not in compassion but neither did it lie in brutality. She said in a historic speech that, “some things, while fragile, were still valuable to the empire. Even degenerates can see the beauty in the world of our new Empire”, she said. “Let them paint.”
The conquered Europeans had intermarried and mingled with the Japanese and Russians. Half-breeds were tolerated. The resulting beauties with their Slavic cheekbones and epicanthic folds had started to supercede the outdated Aryan ideal.
The first mixed-race officer of the SS had a medal pinned to his chest last week, for instance. The young ones, no matter their race, were anxious to serve for the glorious 4th Reich Europe, citing that their inner Aryan was probably more faithful and loyal than many of the meek and tender blue-eyed ghosts of German heritage. Such inflammatory rhetoric caused controversy but also brought attention to their fearless attitudes. It would be stupid to turn down manpower determined to help the empire and this was a new age, she said.
America’s economy was failing and while it was not economical to fight them conventionally, it was in everyone’s interests to wait and see how long it would take that country to starve. Some of the political commentary in today’s newspapers were calling it a Kalter Kreig or “cold war”.
She, herself, had a penchant for the folk music of the defeated Americas and allowed their import into the underground. American polkas and neo-jazz movements were sweeping through underground Europe. The Reich youth, like any youth, were embracing anything controversial that would anger their parents.
She is the face of The United Reich Territories. She is feared and loved.
She has charm greater than her father. She is patient.
Heil Hilda.
by submission | Feb 20, 2012 | Story |
Author : Jabez Crisp
Vagner: Your name please?
Niken: Niken, William, Flight Lieutenant, 10039880
Vagner: [pause] Date of birth?
Niken: 29th February 1912
Vagner: And you went missing how long ago?
Niken: To me, well… it has been two years. To you, sixty? Eighty? I’m given to understand we made peace in the end, such as we always do.
Doctor Vagner: So where have you been?
Niken: Amongst the stars, if such a thing seems plausible. Taken… You read what I said to the last doctor. Abducted, he said, by a race called the Herzan.
Doctor Vagner: So why you?
Niken: You’ll probably already know that I was shot down over Kent. A Herzan Hunter-Gatherer ship picked me up while collecting dead meat. I remember the twisted metal, the smell of the Merlin as it smoked me to death. Next thing I knew I was watching the war from an unknown vantage point, being tended to… God only knows why me, maybe I was originally meant to be food. I remember waking in a steel container surrounded by carrion… [Sighs, audible lighting of a cigarette] And of course no one noticed. Well, who would notice a missing dead man or another light in the sky? As it turned out they came down to where the lights were because they thought it was the most civilized. Technically it was. What a depressing farce. [pause] I guess you’d call me the ships cat.
Doctor Vagner: Go on.
Niken: The Herzan are… travelers. A long lost race in search of their home, traveling with the burden of the fact that the faster they travel the less likely they are to get back. I never quite understood the folklore, though they tried to explain. They were running, I could never quite make out if it was a civil war, or war with another race. But whatever fighting they did they were very adept at. I remember once we were ambushed, out by Alpha Proxima. From nowhere these two vast vessels appeared from the blackness. I remember Herzan ships being batted like flies. Fearing for my life, not knowing what death the uncaring vacuum had in mind for me. I was there when they retaliated. Space came alight with fire and the silent thump of destruction. It was [pause] quite terrifying.
Of course, they could travel quickly away from their tormentors, but as they approach light speed time slows down. With that in mind, they have the choice between destruction on their path or the knowledge that when future generations reach their homeworld it will be but an unlit lump of char. Just imagine [pause] growing up and living in a community that only knew the thump of war on the hull and the danger and necessity of repair. The Herzan would travel in vast ships, knowing only florescent light, and surgical steel. After a year with them I got very sick, they sent a smaller craft to drop me back. I was amazed they did that, and humbled as well. But that has left a tremendous problem, it’s been coming for many centuries for us but only a few years for them.
Doctor Vagner: And that is?
Niken: The wake of the journey the Herzan leave behind them can only bring their tormentors here.
