by submission | Dec 23, 2011 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson
The intelligence level of the Xzeckqi people was growing at an exponential rate. Just a few centuries prior they had been cooking over open fires and using stones to sharpen animal bones into spears. Now they were hunting with exploding projectiles and using electric ovens to prepare meals. And in the populous Jagxso region, a wide flattish land running nearly half the circumference of the tiny green world’s equator, there were wheeled carts moving by means of autonomous engines. All in all the Xzeckqi were proving to be quite inquisitive and inventive.
Their curiosity and thirst for learning had recently caused them to take up great interest in their planet’s geology. Prehistoric Xzeckqi had taken for granted the random and varying intricate formations of their world’s topography. Geometrically perfect shapes and angles littered the globe, all covered by the vibrant green of the thick ever-nourishing moss that grew from pole to pole. But the people knew that when digging down through the life-giving organism one found many different colors and strange materials. The moss was thought to feed directly on some of this mysterious layer that occupied the space between the biocrust and the ‘dock’ or dirt-and-rock layer whose great depth had yet to be determined.
Their curiosity of the middle layer went all the way back to the early development of tool making which was based on the study of some of the strange giant ‘stones’ found there. Early Xzeckqi people had studied the threaded lines on house-sized spiral formations and by copying them had developed one of the earliest simple machines — the screw. Of course the wheel had already been long invented by now, as giant wheels seemed to occur naturally nearly everywhere in their world, along with other wheel-based phenomena such as cogs, gears and pulleys, plus axles, levers, hinges, and countless other devices, waiting to be studied and then duplicated down to a manageable scale. Almost all modern technology now owed its existence to the excavation and copying of various formations found in the layer.
But the people wondered — how could natural formations be so perfect, with parts that looked as though they could still move with the precision of any modern machine or device. On they poured, searching for answers.
***
Meanwhile aboard the star freighter Constantine.
“Sergeant, why haven’t we stopped to dump our garbage? I want to get into warp before lunch!” The Captain rubbed his weary eyes and sipped his coffee. He could view the navscreen from where he stood well enough to see that the bright green dump planet, Tilpot IV, was below but falling away, yet the yellow lights on the custodial array glowed bright, showing the ship’s waste containers still quite full.
“Sorry Cap,” the young sergeant replied. “Collective orders. No more dumping on Tilpot IV until ecological survey performed. Don’t worry though. Jack’s Port, the big moon of Tilpot VII has been designated temporary dumping site until the survey is completed.”
The captain didn’t look impressed. “All the way out to the seventh planet at fuel-speed? I’d rather we drop back and do a little illegal dumping that aint gonna hurt a soul.”
Knowing fully that he could exercise his legal right at any time and place his superior under arrest based on Environmental Absolute 1.9 he decided to let his captain finish his coffee. “Like I said, don’t worry sir. I can get us up to .002 by fusing some of ‘hotter’ waste we have in container three. We’ll be there in no time. And besides…” He said sternly. “There might be something intelligent down there.”
by Julian Miles | Dec 22, 2011 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
They always told me about the stately elegance of space warfare. The distances involved and the participants like battleships of old on the high seas, with all the computer aided aiming and evasion systems, and man seemingly only there to provide a human loss element to the casualty statistics.
“Nine o’clock high! Lamboda Fours! Break and run! Break and run!”
I sigh and tell my ship to run away. I have also read old stories where the battles were opposite to what I had been told, the great ships moving in dogfights on a titanic scale, the only common denominator being that man was yet again along for the ride.
“Casull Three, you’re lagging. Pick it up or you’re crispy.”
Asshole. Of course I’m lagging, you used me as a shield in the last run-in. I have holes in my holes. Should have changed my call sign to ‘Swiss Cheese’.
For all the fine rhetoric, the realities were that in a pitched battle, the computers spent too long working out the variables. When another ship entered the fray, all the participants took a moment to recalculate the optimums. There was actually a critical mass reached off Nardia where the whole battle stopped as just the right number of ships kept dropping in and out of range to keep everything doing the math instead of doing the fighting.
And computers just couldn’t do the random stuff that won wars and made legends. Like now. I told the ship it was punch-up time and I wanted to exceed all safety limits by eight percent on top of ignoring the fact I was an engine down. Then I stepped on the go button and carved an erratic loop back into our pursuers. The ship manoeuvred like a drunken duck as the missing engine made a mockery of programmed flight paths.
Which is where I took up the slack, using my love of spinning like a loon while snapping shots at moving targets and flying as the gods intended: Laughing and screaming in sheer joy. My touch on the stick overrode the computer pilot; my hand off the stick put it back in control, frantically correcting my carefully induced appearance of lack of control. Which made my manoeuvring utterly beyond any attempt by my opponents to gauge where the hell I was, let alone where I was going to be.
“What do you think you’re doing, Casull Three? Get back in formation.”
“That’s what I’m doing, asshole. By taking pre-emptive action to prevent ‘limping Bessie’ here becoming my coffin, I am removing the scary things so that you can slow your yellow ass down long enough for me to catch up. Sir.”
The laughter from the rest of the flight drowned out his threats. If he made it through another patrol without going west in a blue on blue, my middle name wasn’t ‘vindictive’. With that cheering thought, I kicked myself into a classic Immelmann, apart from the lateral twitches and the inversion I tacked on the end, to finish up looking down on my final opponent’s cockpit. The look on his face was priceless as I vectored my thrusters to place myself nose down and shot him in the head point blank. Actually I shot him in the cockpit as the quad blasters up front don’t do narrower than a metre. With a happy whoop I handed my ship back to itself, told it to return to limp mode and rejoin the flight.
‘Stately elegance’ my ass. If you’re not grinning, you’re not flying.
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 21, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Eliot hunched his shoulders against the wind, the relentless sand picking at the seals of his gloves and headgear trying to find a way inside. He watched the glow of the sun disappear beyond the horizon, his waking period now fully begun.
It had been weeks since he’d seen another soul, perhaps years. Who kept count of such things anymore anyways?
The last city he’d abandoned to the ravages of this dust bowl planet had been a graveyard, he’d taken what he could carry, what little food and fresh water remained before the decay and vermin forced him back into the desert, back to his search for living humans.
There had to be more, they were so prolific on this rock before the coming, had spread so far, achieved so much. He’d visited countless monuments to the species’ achievement here, each sprawling steel and glass expanse a testament to human drive and ambition, each barren, vacant ghost-town a reminder that the planet doesn’t welcome strangers, doesn’t tolerate intrusion.
Midway through this day’s dark period, upon cresting a dune, Eliot found himself bathed in the glow of a distant settlement, one surrounded on three sides by mountainous ranges and shielded from the wind on the fourth side by the ragged standing wave of sand from which he now surveyed.
A few kilometers to either side and he would have walked right by, never knowing it was here. “How fortuitous,” his muffled voice strange inside the protective shell of his headgear.
It would take hours still to reach the city walls, and Eliot was tired and hungry. He slipped his backpack off his shoulders, careful not to catch a seam on the rigging and tear the fabric. The tiniest of holes in one’s armour out here could spell almost certain death. He dropped the pack to the ground, then sat cross legged with it before him and, unlatching the top, rummaged through the contents. He extracted a can of protein slurry, and another of complex carbs. These he attached to the receptors under the jawline of his helmet, one on either side. There was a rushing sound as the suit flushed the sand from within the joints, then made the connection and opened the seal. He closed his eyes and tolerated the thick fluid as the pressurized canisters forced it down his throat. It was best if one held their breath while eating.
Emptied, he ejected the spent cans and tossed them aside. By morning they would be just so much dust blowing in the wind.
He similarly attached and emptied a canister of fresh water into his suit, mixing it with the distilled sweat and urine of the past few weeks. He’d be resupplied soon, he could afford the luxury of fresh water.
Through a battered range finder he surveyed the walls of the city in the distance. Flood lights cast long shadows of the battlements and gun turrets that dotted the perimeter walls. They hurt his eyes if he looked directly at them. The city must be well stocked with battery stores if they could waste such energy through the night. Solar equipment perhaps, a rarity on a world where the very air worked tirelessly to reduce every exposed surface to grains of sand. Maybe nuclear. That would be a find indeed.
Fed and watered, Eliot shouldered his pack and began the long walk to this remains of civilization.
Inside, he could feel his contagion begin to boil. It knew as well as he that fresh meat awaited.
By the time the sun rose again, he’d have razed this city to the ground as he’d done so many times before.
His planet didn’t welcome strangers, didn’t tolerate intrusion.
by submission | Dec 20, 2011 | Story |
Author : Martin Berka
‘Ebra drifted down the hallway, the candle hanging by a string from her wrist. It gave no warmth, a blessing: even in the far-ship’s state of efficiency, ambient heat was plentiful. It barely gave light either, which was fine by the bearer, but since this was fading to nothing, she would have to get more, or be blind. By its weakening glow, she checked the last stasis pod in the corridor, and via the hub, moved to the sun-room. In ‘Ebra’s shaded mind, dull revulsion sparred with a rare excitement.
She pulled herself along through a sharply-angled, ever-narrowing maze of bulkheads and emergency shutoffs. The candle had served well, but it died now, leaving the watchkeeper in darkness. Fortunately, she now saw the light of the sun-room. Creeping along the wall, she turned on every filter in her goggles and made sure her block was holding up. Half-gripping, half-sliding along the wall, careful not to damage the ubiquitous solar collectors, she approached the single heavily filtered window to the outside world.
Tenebra peeked out at the world below, visible as the barest curve of the here-sun’s light, fleshed out by occasional flickers on the surface. Up close, those flickers would hold one’s attention for the rest of a short life: the here-planet was fierce, wild, as far as such living adjectives could apply to a body of nearly-molten rock, and made Venus seem tame, as far as such a domestic word could apply to the home-sun’s renowned probe-killer.
Yet from orbit, the here-planet’s dull, red inner glow was overshadowed by its horizon, so bright that ‘Ebra had already turned away, covering her eyes with one arm and using the other to propel herself backward, out of the sun-room. Despite her precautions, the after-image of the here-sun’s rays, searing light along a dark arc, filled her vision for a few dozen rapid heartbeats.
No one had told Tenebra exactly what went wrong with the far-flight; her darkness was the solitary sort that never sought attention, that never bothered brighter sparks. The far-ship was suddenly in need of fuel and repairs, using a twilight orbit around a death-planet to draw maximum energy from a bright-star, while avoiding radiation. The batteries were charging, the robots were on the here-planet, somehow staying ahead of attrition, and the far-seekers could be on their way in a few years, if enough energy could be harnessed. Almost boring, until they ran out of spare stasis pods.
Tenebra returned to deeper parts, the candle at its brightest in weeks. A few seconds of the here-sun’s light, even so greatly reduced, were always enough.
She thought back: she could have done the job without looking, without the sheer brightness. Even the home-star’s light had burned her too-bright skin, driving her to the dark of space. But she had risked the pain, now and every time before. Ideas were defined by their opposites, and darkness needed light to know itself. Now, back to the solitude of minimum power and light, sufficiency, watching over a ghost-ship. As others rested unconscious, to pass time, Tenebra also rested, having the time of her life, in darkness.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 19, 2011 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The Grandfather paradox states that a time loop will be created if you go back in time to kill your grandfather. If you kill your grandfather, you will end up not existing. But if you can’t do it, then he will not be killed by you. So he’ll exist, and you’ll exist, and he’ll be killed, and you’ll be erased, and he’ll exist again, and you’ll exist again, and he’ll be killed again, and you’ll be erased again, ad infinitum.
She came back to 2036 shaking and crying. She was wet and her hair was tangled. It must have been raining in 1978. I immediately got a towel around her and took her off of the temporal reception platform. She was steaming from the transition. She collapsed into me and we both lay down in the middle of the lab with the technicians staring.
“Oh god, what does it mean? What does it mean?” she kept saying.
Dr. Lauren Kim. The scientist responsible for the time machine, was here in my arms, soaking wet and obviously shaken to her core after her fourth trip back in time. The first three had gone quite well and she’d returned as her usual curt self. This trip had caused something to go wrong.
“Dr. Kim.” I said. “Doctor KIM!” I shouted. She focused on me.
“John? Oh John.” She said to me. She’d never called me John in my life. I didn’t even know she knew my first name. “I wasn’t thinking, John. He was there. He was going to die. But I saved him. The bus was coming so fast. It didn’t occur to me… I mean, I knew what would happen if he died but…”
“Dr. Kim?” I said, ice forming in my stomach.
“My great grandfather, John. I saw him. I looked him up. I found him and I went to observe him. I don’t know what I was thinking. I felt compelled. It went against everything I know as a temporal scientist. But I had to just see him, y’know? So there I was. On the street corner, and the bus ran a red light. And I…and I…oh god.”
“What did you do, Dr Kim?” I asked, already dreading the answer.
“I saved him. Oh god, I saved him from certain death. I ran and gave him a tackle into the gutter and the bus missed us both before crashing into a dumpster. My great grandfather would have been crushed. He was only nineteen. He hadn’t met my grandmother yet. He thanked me.”
“Dr. Kim” I whispered. Nervously, I looked around the lab at the other technicians, at my own hands, at Dr Kim. We all still seemed to be here. Nobody was going invisible or winking out of existence. Would I even know it if they did?
“If I hadn’t have been there to save him, he would have died. And none of this would exist.” She looked around wide-eyed as if seeing the lab for the first time.
“Dr Kim.” I said. “Take a deep breath. Calm down. The lab is here. We are here. If there is a paradox, it’s not affecting us. Or at least not yet. Or at least this universe. Listen to my voice. We’re here.”
Dr Lauren Kim looked at me. “Are we, John? Are we here?” She put a hand on my face and then she passed out.
She’s in sedation in the recovery room now. I’m not sure how to handle this. The universe seems stable. Nothing about the world seems different.
Does the paradox exist if you save your grandfather?
by submission | Dec 18, 2011 | Story |
Author : Max Cohen
A wind swept over the flat grey plain that night carrying with it a smell of nothingness. The wind continued whipping ever faster until as the sun rose it blew over a low stone wall and onto a field of deep green grass. It flowed over a man and a boy just waking from their nightly slumber before continuing on their way.
The boy shivered and pulled his threadbare blanket closer around himself trying to return to his sleep. But his father stood and brushed himself off before nudging the boy with his foot, “Come on Jonathan. We need to get this over with, then we go home.”
The boy, Jon to his friends, groaned but stood up next to his father.
“Now listen boy. You’re nearly a man grown now and you need to know about the outside world,” he gestured at the gray featureless plain, “That right there is because of us. We near destroyed ourselves and the world and nothing is going to bring it back. This right here,” he gestured to the deep green grass they stood on, “is the only safe place left. You step out there you die.”
Jon looked doubtfully out at the plain, “There’s nothing there dad. It doesn’t look dangerous at all,” he scoffed he was fifteen now and clearly his father and the rest of the adults were addled. Nothing can’t kill you.
“Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean the danger isn’t there,” he walked back to their bags and pulled out a small cage. Inside was a mouse. “Watch.”
The man walked over to the stone wall and stood staring out into the waste, seeing something that Jon couldn’t. With a shake of his head, he reached his arm out and gently set the cage as far from the wall as possible, pulling his hand quickly away as if afraid to be burnt.
Jon watched with an amused expression. This was pointless, nothing was going to happen to the mouse after all. For a few seconds the cage simply sat upon the ground but as Jon watched the cage started to come apart, to melt. The mouse leapt from the cage as is it broke apart turning grey even as it slid silently into the ground. The mouse began to run towards the wall but it quickly fell shaking to the ground, and Jon watched horrified as its skin began to run off. Its skin and then its muscles, blood, bones, and organs flowed together turning grey.
Perhaps a minute had passed but nothing remained except the vast plain.
“That’s why you can’t go out there son. Anything that touches that grey land just melts away,” he put a hand on Jon’s shoulder to reassure him.
“But… what happened?” Jon asked still staring at the spot where the mouse disappeared.
“A long time ago our ancestors tried to change the world. They made tiny people to help them. But the tiny people kept growing and multiplying. A grey wave washed over the world and changed it into this. But your great-great grandfather built this place for all the people, animals, and plants that survived. As long as this stone wall stands the grey goo can’t get us,” he pulled at Jonathan, “Now come on we’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”
As they walked away the wind blew on with nothing to stop it. Over the one tiny spec of green in an ocean of grey.
