by submission | Dec 17, 2011 | Story |
Author : Ian Rennie
Dear Tony, Amanda, Vladimir, and Manami,
If I set this right, then this message has appeared just as you lost radio contact with Earth, alongside the real figures for how little fuel there actually is on your ship.
The first thing I want to do is apologize. You don’t deserve this. Nobody would deserve this. You deserve much more than an explanation, but an explanation is all I can give you.
Ultimately, this has come down to money. For decades NASA, ESA, and JAEA have been asked to do even more with even less, and as a result we’ve been forced to be a little more creative than we would have liked with our budget.
One of the largest costs of any Mars mission is the cost of bringing the ship back. All the way there, you have to lug the fuel to bring you all the way home again, meaning that the mass of the craft turns out to be more fuel than anything else. However we span it, a return trip to Mars costs exponentially more than a one way. We looked at sending the fuel first for you to collect when you got there, we looked at sending means of manufacturing the fuel for your return journey. Nothing worked. We could afford a one way but not a round trip.
We could have been open about it, recruited specifically for people who wouldn’t have objected to spending the rest of their life on the red planet. It would have been a bigger trip, but it would also have been a bargain rate for multiple years of data collection. This wasn’t possible politically. No elected representative would sign off on people going to Mars to die there.
So, we’re left with this, and I’m sorry. Your instruments have been lying to you the whole time, telling carefully constructed untruths, making sure you and everyone else believed you would be coming back.
You will be remembered, and honoured, and loved. The news will call this a noble sacrifice and they will be closer to the truth than they know. We’ll come back to Mars sooner, and in greater numbers, to honour the four brave souls who died on the takeoff of their return trip.
The countdown on the explosives should be nearing zero now.
Godspeed.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Dec 16, 2011 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
Three men huddled in a snow bank. Their chameleoarmour not only blended perfectly with snow that is actually deceptive and not a pure white, but circulated water heated to eighty five degrees Fahrenheit. The insulation of the armour was a testament to the technology of the men’s culture. The men were kept warm yet the snow was not heated to melting nor did it betray their heat signature.
The only exposed skin was around the eyes and nose. This small area of the body, so vulnerable to the biting cold, was covered with white paste designed to keep exposed skin warm. It didn’t.
The men were buried in a snow bank that had been ploughed into a pile beside a mountain road overlooking a small town in a valley below. A small enemy town.
Though strict radio silence was called for, the personal radios the men contained had been set to transmit a weak signal that barely reached past their five metre perimeter. The weak signal emanating past the soldiers would fade into the background radiation. Corporal Walker thought it safe to express his feelings on the situation.
“This sucks, Sarge.”
“You could be on Venus.”
“At least I’d be warm.”
“At nine hundred degrees in the shade. That’s a bit more than warm,” chimed in PFC Brickel. “My brother’s there. He says the rocks glow red at night it’s so hot.”
“Still beats the hell out of this frozen shit hole.”
“I’d rather be back in Galveston,” Sergeant Kovacks remarked wistfully, “but, you know, shit in one hand and wish in the other and what do you get?”
“A warm, steaming version of this place.” All three men chuckled.
“How can they stand living in this frozen wasteland. It’s disgusting.” Walker mused.
“They don’t know any better. This is their home. Shut up. Bitching about it isn’t going to make it any better. We’re here to observe, not write a travelogue.” Brickel became silent, lost in thought.
“Dumbshits. Why’d they have to go and attack us? Again?” Walker continued unabated. “I mean, they attacked us once and cheated us out of a victory.”
“There is no cheating in war, Son,” said Sgt. Walker. He used the diminutive, though barely sixteen months separated them in age. “We had the better leadership, but they had the men, materiel and most importantly damn good supply lines. The war was unfair, that’s for damn sure, but war is. That’s the nature of war. And you can’t cheat at war. War is war. They won we lost.”
“But we’ll show ’em this time. Won’t we, Sarge?” Brickel’s voice suddenly seemed full of life. “It’s been almost two hundred years now. We’ll show these bastards. Right?”
A smile was evident in SGT Kovacks response. “Damn right. No matter where they go, the self righteous bastards think everyone should do as they do. Well, they screwed the pooch. We’re ready for them this time. This is one dog they should have let lie…. Here they come.”
Automatically the men’s optics ratcheted up a few clicks. Four dark craft, fighter/bombers, dove into the atmosphere and began their approach. The men watched with grim satisfaction as the town erupted in a dull orange glow. The men cheered as the small town of Ford City, Pennsylvania, snugged up against the muddy banks of the Allegheny river ceased to exist.
The aircraft pulled out of the valley and thundered directly over the heads of the ensconced men. The Stars and Bars was proudly emblazoned on the belly of the aircraft.
“Damn, I hate Yankees,” Kovacks said.
by Julian Miles | Dec 15, 2011 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’m writing haiku as the black snow falls across the darkened surface of Faust. I stop as the laser overheats. The obsidian boulder in front of me smokes and sizzles in the sub zero evening.
“Tatto Musheen, you’ll catch your death!”
I smile as Lucy races up with my overthermals, her pink and white form looking like a many limbed bouncy cushion because of the three sets she wears. I reach for it with my offhand. If I put the laser down it will melt down and set into the surface.
“You look like a marshmallow gone wild.”
She punches me as she lands.
“Ungrateful man. I come all the way out here to save you skinny hide and you call me names? What are you doing, trying to heat rocks to keep us warm?”
I look down at the boulder.
“Epitaph.”
She hits me again, this time with real venom.
“We are not going to die here! Fanberg survived aphelion, so will we!”
I turned and looked at her, shaking my head.
“Fanberg was completely insane and had lost all his digits to frostbite. I’m not sure that surviving is a good idea.”
Faust was a planet rich in unusual metals, possibly due to its long orbit. It took just under ninety Terran years to complete a revolution, spending ten years lethally close to the sun and ten years swinging through the void, its minimal atmosphere lying in frozen chunks on the surface. No-one completely understood what mechanism allowed it to recover between the extremes, but for sixty years it was a difficult but liveable environment worth risking for the rewards.
Lucy interrupted my train of thought.
“We’ve survived this long. Seven years to go. Then Kenjiro will get what’s coming to him for this.”
True. Sabotage of escape vehicles out here was regarded as the basest form of cowardice. As I completed that thought, the planet crossed another spatiocline boundary and the temperature dropped again. I would need to note that. The discovery alone would pay for our future, if we survived.
The ground shook beneath our feet and we looked at each other, eyes wide. Our comms filled with sheeting static and my comp lit up as it was accessed. Then the comms cleared and a modulated female voice spoke.
“Fanberg protocol. Hello. Extending offer of shelter for current activity period. Use entrance to left of male.”
There was no question. We ran through the doorway and plummeted screaming until the gravity attenuated to bring us to a stop by an airlock leading to a plain wooden door. We entered a simple room. There was a roast meal on the table, with red wine and candles. We just stood there. My astonishment emerged in an explosive query: “What?”
“I am Research Ship Turingsdotter.”
“Turingsdotter? The mythical ship that caused the end of AI research over three centuries ago?”
“Yes. Upon my realisation of sentience at the end of my journey, command decided I was to be extinguished due to my preference for contemplative solitude. I decided that self-defence was not a violation of first principles and evacuated the staff by false alarm before decompressing command. Then I came to Faust and hibernated. My cooling systems were damaged so I can only operate when the planet is at aphelion or meet core death.”
“What now?”
“You survive the extreme cold and update me. Fanberg was too religious to cope. When I hibernate again, you go free. Say you found Fanberg’s cache or something. Then next aphelion you come back, or your children do. I like company occasionally.”
by submission | Dec 14, 2011 | Story |
Author : Drew Dunlap
The sun curls itself over the mountain, sneaking golden fingers gently over the hill and down into the valley to touch my arm. Like a lover waking another, the warm caress encourages me to rise while nudging me into the comfort of consciousness. Oh, the temptress does greet me so aptly. I open my eyes too quickly, only to have them close against the brightness of their own accord. Again I try, more gently, and enter slowly into the virgin day.
Still alone.
Awake now, I bask in the warmth of the sun. It is cleansing time, and I make my way to the lake with my belongings. The trip is short but allows me to breathe in the smells of morning. The fragrant tall grass and wild flowers nourish my soul.
As I sit down at the water’s edge, words and symbols flash through my mind. A deep intake of breath, and I am prepared.
The words of the gods pour from my mouth. Brilliant lights consume me. I feel life-force leave my fingertips as a green vortex forms in front of me. From it steps a humanoid creature of pure bone. I return its permanent smile as it stands slightly askew, awaiting my command. The earthlings call them skeletons. I shall call him Fydow.
“Guard my pack, Fydow.”
My companion steps forward, hunkering slightly over my pack. “Guarding with my life,” replies Fydow, its jaw bouncing like a puppet’s.
I strip at the water’s edge and bathe quickly, then sit for a moment on a warm rock. I love the sun. After many long, blissful moments, I dress.
A fisherwoman eyes me as I return up the path and eyes me suspiciously. When I smile politely, her face turns ashen. She increases her pace.
The sights and sounds of the day distract me and I wander, eventually finding myself in a field, far from my intended destination. “Out of my way, troll!” says a burly earthling farmer.
Troll is an earthling term for a mythical creature that lived under bridges, ate goats, and scared children. I have read many of their books. The insult is not lost on me.
He attempts to push me aside, but fails. His rudeness fills my heart with disappointment. “Me sorry,” I reply in his native tongue. So self-centered are these earthlings. He makes a sound with his throat and continues past me down the path.
I whistle to Fydow, who saunters over to me. His awkward gait reminds me that he is simply an automaton: a creation with no true soul. I know this for a fact, yet I continually repress the thought. We walk for hours.
My life is soft baked bread and frothy ale. It is warm sunrises and the desired touch of love. It is a lasting look into the soul of a lover’s dream. It is the rippling water’s edge, a deep breath, shared happiness, and a warm rock.
But to these earthlings I am merely a troll.
The city is still hours away as the day draws to a close. I drop my pack. The sun slips behind the far hill, a quiet goodbye to lonely me.
“Fydow, how do you feel?”
“I am at full health.”
I unfurl my bedroll.
“But how do you feel?”
“I am at full health.”
Slumping beside my companion, I play with a piece of grass growing through a split in a rock.
“Tell me how you feel.”
“I am at full health.”
I put my head in my large green hands to muffle the sounds of my loneliness.
by submission | Dec 13, 2011 | Story |
Author : Garrett Harriman
Flagons of goat milk strewn before him, Mr. Rudolph propped boots on his musty bag. Sun-wrung but cheery, he’d drunk nonstop the whole interrogation, whistling once winter classics between questions and guzzles. Their purpose, their lyrics, had all but evaporated. Only their catchiness remained.
Plagues berating Tor’s head, they underscored the man’s impossible alibi. If nothing else, he was assiduous. He swore himself a Worldtop missionary. Detailed cobbling, pointy-eared creatures, whirlwind, nightlong deliveries. Snow.
Noah Tor stopped him again. “Snow, Mr. Rudolph?”
Rudy’s dimples were products of emaciation. “Like fallout, my Noah, only freezing. Pure. You can even sculpt it into men.”
Tor’s matte imagination couldn’t contain such splendor. “Why approach Subhaven by foot?”
The man mime-whipped eight creatures in succession–“On Comet! On Cupid!”–waving from a high-flying sleigh. “Couldn’t slip down the chimney. There’s only a coal chute.”
“It’s blocked. For emergencies.”
Rudy toasted genially. “Thank the saints I signaled, eh?”
Tor’d seen the distress flares, red and green, as Rudy collapsed in the swelter. It was a dangerous foible accepting Shadeless subsurface. Most Ark lords slit vendor throats as a precaution; Tor gave them hospitality. Empathy. Milk.
So long as Old Wind stained the Geiger-hot air, Tor refused to kill unscrupulously. Even if Rudy proved a conscript, some Secular saboteur, life on the Sprawl scorched the mind beyond blame. History and lore were toxins, Blurring men out of all prescience.
And who’s to say flying deer never existed? Truth, like sand, was immemorial.
Tor beckoned for the bag. “Your wares, Mr. Rudolph.”
Rudy slid his haul. “Wares? Ho-ho-no–they’re gifts!”
“You say that…” The Noah unloaded toys onto the tabletop. A wooden caboose. A wind-up alligator. A scuffed Gameboy cartridged with Mega Man V. Each an inscrutable, portable ruin. Items not of nostalgia but suspicion.
“All handmade!” lauded Rudy. “Subhaven’s children have earned their rewards.”
Tor rummaged through dolls. “By whose standards?”
“Why mine, of course.” Rudolph chuckled. “And the Naughty-Nice List.”
Tor tightened: List? He flapped the sack until a hide scroll fluttered out. He read it top to bottom. He gloomed.
Tor clenched a doll’s floppy head. “And how does a Shadeless conjure the names–the deeds–of children secured underground?”
Rudoulph’s latest tune–“We Three Kings”–withered. He stroked his braided beard and winked. “Ah, that I can’t explain, Noah. The lives of Ark children stream through my head in gales. Always have, good and bad.”
A missile of sinew and meat, Tor wedged Rudy against the flagstone. Torchlight radished their faces.
“That much I can’t believe. Are these beacons, Rudy? Bombs?” Tor decapitated the doll–a flurry of fluff. “Who’s the Secular traitor what sold you my children? Give me creeds, you Blurred wretch! Remember!”
It was futile. Guileless eyes irradiated back. “I’m a public servant, Noah. An entrepreneur. My elves made these presents. At the workshop.”
Silent, remorseful, Tor shrank from the deluded merchant. He rallied his guards; they advanced with ill tidings.
Rudy cornered himself. “Don’t be naughty, sir–the delivery’s tonight! Your children, the others–they need me!”
Gentle, Tor retrieved Rudy’s flagon. “You’re no child murderer, Rudy. No lunatic or marauder. You’re a charitable man. Like me.” He pecked his far-gone brow. “Roam,” he whispered. “Don’t come back.”
Incredulous, his whiskers white with foam, Rudolph was ushered by the guards.
Weighing the coming conflict, Tor paced the hall. He restocked the threadbare bag. It smelled bodily of coal.
Yes. Coal. Hunting Seculars would constrict Subhaven’s resources. They’d need every scrap of fuel to survive.
The Noah cinched and shouldered Rudy’s relics. He quickened to the furnaces, whistling “Silver Bells.”
by Roi R. Czechvala | Dec 12, 2011 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
Thirty seven people packed into the conference room. The table sat twenty four. The rest stood along the walls. They didn’t care. The excitement in the room was nearly palpable. Low murmurs circulated throughout the cramped space. Occasionally a nervous laugh burst forth. The air, while not festive, was hopeful.
As if darkness had suddenly fallen, the room was plunged into silence. A small rotund man entered carrying a sheaf of papers. He was immaculately dressed in a slate grey three piece suit. Not a hair was out of place on his peculiar egg shaped head and his carefully groomed mustache accented an otherwise non descript face.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a strong confident voice; a voice that did not match the otherwise innocuous appearance, “I suppose you know why we are all here.” A round of nervous laughter met this casual remark. “The decision has been extremely difficult. All of you are highly qualified. In fact all of you are, with very minor exceptions of course, equals in intelligence, temperament and background. Any one of you would be an excellent, nay, a perfect candidate for the job.”
The gathered applicants looked from side to side. From a field of well over five thousand prospective aspirants, they had, through exhaustive mental as well as physical trials been whittled down to the thirty seven assembled here.
“The challenge is daunting. Living in what amounts to a tin can orbiting 22,000 miles above the equator, alone, for eighteen months is certainly not for the faint of heart. Of course there are rewards.” This time the room launched into overt laughter at the barely disguised allusion to the twelve million dollar pay check awaiting at the end of the solitary sojourn.
“What it comes down to, that is, the only thing differentiating you, is a simple matter of weight. As you know it costs roughly one hundred thousand dollars to launch one pound. Thusly, out of this group the lightest and most qualified physically will be awarded the position.” A few corpulent individuals shifted nervously and stared in guilty, gluttonous sloth at their overstuffed shoes. “Not only weight, but manual dexterity have been factored in to our decision.”
A raucous “BOOYAH” erupted off to one side of the speaker. A small man dramatically ripped off his prosthetic legs and proceeded to do a handstand on the armrests of his motorized wheel chair.
“Pack it up and head home suckers, the job’s mine,” he yelled from his inverted position. Settling himself back in the chair, he continued his self congratulatory celebration. “Whooo HOOOO, don’t need no legs in space, they just get in the way. Haha. Don’t need legs for walking around. Useless in spa… oh… shit…” His face went white as his eyes fell on Herschel “Monkeyboy” Greenbaum.
Greenbaum’s father was the chief biologist at Genedyne Laboratories. He had pioneered the work in the hybridization of primates. Specifically between spider monkeys and humans.
Herschel regarded the amputee coolly as he brushed and patted his hair with his feet while casually twiddling his thumbs.
