by Patricia Stewart | Feb 16, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Tell me again, Welin, why you have to lie to the Captain?” asked the temporal assistant. “It doesn’t seem right,” she added with disgust.
“You’re not seeing the big picture, Molly. It’s not about a single ship; it’s about what happens afterwards. Malum’s great, great grandfather was working in the engine room of that ship. By killing Alexander Pravus five years before he fathered Malum’s great grandmother, we’ll ultimately prevent Malum’s birth, and save the lives of millions of innocent people that have been butchered since he’s seized control of the planet. I would prefer to have killed Malum as a child, but his scientists have set up temporal blockades that go back more than a century.”
“What if Pravus survives the sinking,” countered his assistant. “Have you thought of that? There is no guarantee everyone will die.”
“It’s a chance we’ll have to take. Please, Molly, it’s now or never. His henchmen could discover our laboratory at any time.”
With tears beginning to form in her eyes, she acquiesced. “I hate you for making me do this,” she cried. “Do you even know what you’re going to tell him?”
“Yes, Molly. I have it all worked out. Now please, time is running out.”
“Okay, damn you. Clip on your wings before I change my mind.”
Minutes later, a ghostly image appeared over the Captain’s bunk. “Captain Smith, wake up” it sang softly.
The groggy captain rubbed his eyes as he struggled to comprehend what he heard. “Who is it?”
The semitransparent apparition floated in mid-air, its wings beating rhythmically in slow motion. “Why have you shut down the engines?”
Suddenly terrified as he realized it wasn’t a dream, Smith’s trembling fingers clutched the covers to his chest. “It…it..it’s too dangerous,” he answered.
“No, Edward, it’s not. Would God ask me to come to you if it were dangerous? You must believe me. It’s your destiny to complete this voyage as quickly as possible. Now, go to the bridge, and resume your original heading and speed.”
“But, Gabriel, please. It isn’t safe,” Smith pleaded.
Welin raised his voice and pointed an accusatory finger at the frightened captain. “Do not question the Holy Father. Do as he commands, or suffer his wrath. Now, GO, or spend eternity in damnation.”
Reluctantly, but obediently, Captain Smith scurried form the bed, put on a robe, and headed toward the bridge.
At 11:40 PM, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg. From that instant forward, no one remembered the original voyage, where the Titanic had steamed into New York harbor 18 hours behind schedule. Instead, the new reality was that the Titanic took 1,517 souls to the bottom of the Atlantic, including Alexander Pravus.
Although Dmitry “The Slaughter” Malum was never born, there were unforeseen consequences in the new timeline. Adolph Hitler wasn’t killed in WWI and subsequently rose to power, America reached the moon before the Soviet Union, the European Union collapsed, and then, in a desperate maneuver to lash out at the entire world, North Korea unleashed The Doomsday Plague. By 2048, there were no humans alive to invent time travel to rewrite history a second time.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Feb 15, 2011 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
She sat in a corner of Starbucks, talking on her phone. In the window behind her, the Earth was just setting. Her short blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail which she twisted nervously.
“How long will you be gone,” she asked. There was a hint of desperation in her voice.
“But Europa is so far from Earth, what does it have to do with us? So a colony was attacked. We don’t know those people. What did the Asiatics ever do to us?” Her voice quavered.
“Look, we can go to Venus. There’s no war there. A nice leisurely life in one of the Sun Domes…”
She began to cry. Tears streamed slowly down her delicate face. “What… what happens if… if…”
“I don’t give a fuck about the insurance, Tom. What’s going to be left to bury anyway.” She pulled the phone out of her ear and held it away as she screamed into it.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I love you so much,” She sobbed into the phone.
“Just please come home safe. Why did you have to join? Why? Don’t you love me? Didn’t I love you enough.”
“I know, you’ve got to go. I love you with all my heart. Please come back to me. Please come back.” She pulled the phone bud from her ear. She curled her legs under her and wept silently. She drew in ragged breaths.
In a fit of pique, she threw the phone from her. It slammed into a corner, where the battery fell out. A battery that had been dead for eleven days.
by Duncan Shields | Feb 14, 2011 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The invaders had left automated sentries in charge of the human race. They’d really cleaned Earth up. All animals, vegetables, and water were being managed expertly for maximum freshness and yield. They left the precious metals in the Earth alone. They weren’t nearly as valuable to the universe as they had been to us before the invasion.
We’d been kept as a slave labour force. Every single living thing on the Earth was a commodity to be exported besides us. Because feeding us plants or animals would literally eat into the aliens’ profits, we were only allowed to eat each other. They’d really done a good job. Human meat had never known such diversity of preparation. Pudding, steaks, burgers, crispy-fried, protein bars, gelatin, even a type of ‘skin salad’. Those of us old enough to remember the old ways were horrified. What scared us most is that the children didn’t seem to mind. They accepted it as reality and ate their fill.
We planted the seeds, tilled the fields, harvested the crops, and loaded them into the produce ships. We raised the animals, fed them, cared for them, and herded them into the meat ships. We diverted the rivers into small dams that led gushing into the water ships.
The horrible thing was that they aliens weren’t raping our planet. They weren’t squeezing it until it dried up and broke. They were carefully managing the output so that Earth could produce enough to feed entire planets but would always replenish. The irony was not lost on us.
We were here eternally, eating ourselves and keeping the process going under the threat of punishment from the machines left to keep us in line.
The machines that were now coming over the hill and questing for us. To our left, a gout of flame found an empty silo where the seniors were hiding. With a chill, I realized that the machines were probably programmed to start with the elderly but they’d leave the children. I hoped the tale of our tiny rebellion would be spread as myth amongst the survivors.
The juice of nectarines ran down my chin, mixing with the blueberries I had eaten earlier. All of us huddled in the darkness, reeking of fruit and vegetables. Today would be the day we died but we all had a belly full of what was worth dying for.
by submission | Feb 13, 2011 | Story
Author : Michael Bagen
Hobbes lowered the Polaroid, blinded Carla giving him the finger.
“I just woke up and I’m hung over. Please die and leave me that picture to dispose of.
He ignored her, turned, and dealt the image like a playing card onto the scanner.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Carla, not his lady or even his friend, slid on tight jeans and buckled her belt. Hobbes ignored her, tantalizing though it was. She leaned over him, loose tank top billowing over her cleavage as she looked down.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He was scanning in her photo, point of fact. Blue dots appeared on the image. He was doing something else too. The computer made a buzzing noise, sifting through massive amounts of data. The fan vainly fought to dispel the heat.
“What’s it working on,” she asked.
“Sifting data and repelling viruses, mainly.” He looked up at her. He kissed her on the cheek, an act that had made her recoil in horror.
“I didn’t fuck you last night and I’m sure as fuck not going to now that I’m sober.”
“I know,” he said, turning his attention to the screen, “Have you ever heard of Rule 34?”
Rule 34—If it exists, there is porn of it.
“No.”
“Good.” He took a deep breath, lighting a bracing cigarette. “Little known fact. Did you know that there are a limited number of facial casts recognizably unique to the human eye.”
“So?”
“As of the year 2025 with its omnipresent cameras, be they in cars, banks, toilets or phones, we have been able to record an estimated 10 percent of the human population engaging in sexual acts that are now publicly available for download. One in every 10 people on earth. So mathematically, after we reached the point where 10% of the population is equal to or less than the number of facial casts, we get what?
“I don’t know,” she growled, sensing that she would not like it, whatever it was.
Hobbes’s computer struck gold and sang. Hardcore pornography erupted vile, raw and creative on screen, the face of Carla ecstatic at the efforts of some well-hung professional.
“Son of a bitch, you stole my face and–”
“Guess again,” he sang, “Rule 34. If it exists, there is porn of it.”
Carla braced herself against the sides of his chair, hissing spit and tobacco juice in his eyes.
“Explain!”
“If there are more pornographic actors actual or incidental in the world than there are facial casts, then it becomes a mathematical certainty that…”
She stumbled backward.
“Yep. If you exist, there is porn of you. For every face, there is at least ten other identical faces in the world. And at least one of them, like this girl here my dear Carla, got fucked six ways to Sunday on…what do they call those things, anyway?”
“It’s a sedan chair you unbelievable fuck!”
Hobbes, pimpled, fat, having spent $100 on vodka just to get a woman into his basement abode, smiled serenely as she rose, dead but for the hate and jabbed a lacquered black nail in his direction.
“I–”
“Every 5th man on Earth has seen that video. He has seen an image of himself fucking an image of a woman he is statistically ensured to be in eyeshot of.” Hobbes gently laid a kiss upon angry Carla’s knuckles. “Peace be with you.”
by submission | Feb 12, 2011 | Story
Author : Matthew Velez
I miss the rain. It’s been years – I’ve long since lost track of how many – since I saw it last. Since anyone saw it last. It’s been so long that no one really remembers it anymore, except for what you’d find in dictionaries. I remember rain as being so much more than those bland descriptions. I remember falling asleep to it, listening to the soft, even sound of running water, distinct from yet blending into all else. I remember sitting by windows, letting my mind wander while tiny droplets formed patterns on the glass, ambient light casting tiny shadows. I think I’m the only one who remembers, but all I have are faint flickers of memory.
I live in a city of mist. An endless fog blankets the entire city, providing moisture without the need for rain. A fog that is unobtrusive, casting what it hides not in opaqueness but in shades of gray. No one remembers the onset of the mist; it simply was and now is. All that we remember was that before the mist, there was rain, and now there is none. With the mist came a loss of knowledge; we lost contact with the world, with our own history, where we came from. No one, save for maybe the City government, knows where the City is, what country it is a part of, how old it is, or even what its real name is. All we call it now is ”The City.” We know of nothing else.
One day, I tried to leave. It wasn’t because I was dissatisfied with City life; it’s a laid-back place. It was due to wanderlust, an urge to see what was beyond. I wasn’t really doing anything else, anyway. So, I packed my things and walked on the main road for hours. The City was big, but it wasn’t infinite. Eventually, all that was left was the road itself, with no other ground I could see. The only sounds were my lonely footsteps upon the asphalt. Gray-white mist surrounded me, blanketing my clothes with a faint dampness I couldn’t feel. The road kept going. I looked back to find that the City was out of sight, hidden by the now-opaque mist. I knelt down by the side of the road and reached for the ground beside it. It was a hard, unnatural substance, the same color as the mist. It felt almost like the steel used in buildings, but somehow more organic. It was wet with condensed mist seeping down into cracks I could barely feel.
I continued. Nothing happened for ages, until I heard a sound. A steady, even sound splashing in the distance. A sound that I identified immediately, even though I hadn’t heard it for countless years. My pace quickened as I heard the rainfall from my childhood. Eventually, I saw it: a shimmering form breaking the opacity of the mist. The white fog gave way into more color, a sickeningly gray-brown earth extending beyond the horizon. It was entirely featureless. The rain fell unceasingly, causing faint wisps of smoke to emerge with each impact. I slowed my pace, until I felt a thick pane of glass in front of me, barring my progress. It bore no seams or faults. There was no way in or out. Its only peculiarity was a plaque etched in the glass. It said, in large, plain text,
“The City is all that is left. There is nothing else. Turn back now.”
The acid rain continued to fall on the remains of the world.
by Patricia Stewart | Feb 11, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Horatio Kiddleson stared open-mouthed at the turbulent accretion disk as it swirled into the ergosphere that surrounded the bottomless gravity well. “Dammit Schwarz, you didn’t tell me our destination was a black hole.”
“Quite right, young man. And believe me; it was not easy finding a licensed pilot that didn’t know V404 Cygni was a black hole. I wasted a year searching for someone as unenlightened as yourself.”
“I may not know every celestial object in the quadrant,” Kiddleson rebutted, “but I know how to jettison your sorry ass out the airlock. I’m getting us outa here. They don’t call them things ‘widow makers’ for nothin.”
“Hold on, son, that’s all about to change. I’ve invented a Quantum Gravity Shield, which will make this ship impervious to the effects of gravity and hard radiation. But you don’t need to take my word for it. How about a simple demonstration? I’ll activate the shield and you can take us in for a closer look. Just drop down to one AU. This old plasma burpper will still have plenty of power to escape if it doesn’t work. I’ll even sweeten the pot. I’ll double your payment if I’m wrong.”
“Double you say? Hmmmm. We can do one AU on half impulse. Okay, Schwarz, it’s a deal. But I’m pullin’ out at the first sign of trouble.”
Schwarz activated the Quantum Gravity Shield, and the ship descended to 93 million miles in a matter of minutes. “Wow,” said Kiddleson, “we don’t even need a radial velocity to maintain this distance. I think that thing may actually work.”
“There was never a doubt,” replied Schwarz with an arrogant smile. “How about dropping us down another 60 million?”
“Sure, why not. This excursion will make me famous, not to mention rich.”
Again, the ship plummeted like a geosynchronous space elevator on steroids. But at 40 million miles, something started to go wrong. “Hey, Professor, I don’t feel so good. I’m getting light headed.”
“It looks like the graviton compensator is out of alignment. You better take us out so I can fine tune it.”
“No can do, Professor. Whatever’s happening, it’s preventing me from activating the ion drive. If you can’t fix it on the fly, we’re crashing into the event horizon.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Kiddleson. The event horizon isn’t a material surface. You can’t crash into it. It’s just a dimension where light can no longer escape the gravity well of the singularity. We can pass right through it. Of course, if the generator’s imbalance gets any worse, we may get Spaghettified first.”
A few minutes later, the ship passed through the event horizon without incident. In preparation for escape, Kiddleson rotated the ship outward, into the overpowering brilliance of the incoming photons. He frantically began manipulating the controls. “How much longer?”
“Got it,” Schwarz replied. But Kiddleson didn’t need to be told, he knew it the instant his body wasn’t being pulled like taffy. He rammed the throttle to full, and initiated the warp drive a few seconds later.
Safely back in space, Schwarz looked up from the shield generator toward the cockpit. “Oh my God,” he exclaimed. “Where are the stars? Crap, it must be time dilation. While we were within the black hole, time stopped for us, but the rest of the universe aged a trillion years. All the stars have burnt out. The universe is dead!”
Kiddleson began laughing. “Now, who’s the idiot? I shut the iris when light started pourin in. Stop worrying.” Kiddleson opened the iris and stared open-mouthed out the viewport. “On Shit,” he said, “no stars.”
