by submission | Sep 26, 2010 | Story
Author : T. King
His eyes fluttered open. The hatch hissed as he pushed against it and steam began to swirl around the cold metal floor. Other than a huge kink in his neck and some joint stiffness, he was feeling fine. Evans had been sleeping for a long time. Now he got to see if the experts back home had done their calculations right.
“Computer, what is our current position?”
“Hello, Mr. Evans, I hope you slept well. We will be beyond the Oort Cloud in approximately 15 minutes.”
So, they had really done it. Evans was about to be the first person to see beyond the Solar System. This mission had taken years of planning, but it all was going to pay off.
“Computer, contact base.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mr. Evans.”
“And why not?”
The computer was silent. Evans slammed his palm on the control panel.
“Why the hell not? What’s going on?”
“Perhaps I should play for you the last incoming signal from base.”
The voice of his boss filled the room. There was plenty of static (not surprising, considering how far away Evans was at this point), but Evans could just make out what his boss said.
“Evans, look. I’m really sorry to tell you this–I mean, if I’d have known, we wouldn’t have sent you obviously–but I’ve got some bad news. Right after you settled down to hibernate or whatever, things back here at home got pretty screwed up. I mean, I don’t have a lot of time to go over the details–I suppose it doesn’t really matter why, in the end–but there was a huge nuclear arms standoff. Everybody had their trigger fingers twitching at the ready and some idiot fired off their missiles, which meant we all had to, you know? Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to tell you in what little time I have left is that this will be your last message from any of us, unless by some miracle Earth isn’t a barren hellhole when this is all over. Complete your mission, Evans. That’s all you can do.”
Evans’ mouth hung open in shock. As he looked out past the edges of the Solar System to the billions of stars that lay beyond, he didn’t feel a sense of awe or wonder.
He felt alone.
by submission | Sep 25, 2010 | Story
Author : Ken McGrath
I should have left it alone. But you know what it’s like you just can’t help picking at these things.
Remember when you were a kid and your mum’d tell you not to pick at a scab or stop scratching your chicken pox or whatever, well that’s exactly what it was like, but worse. I just couldn’t leave it alone.
Unconsciously even, without thinking, I’d find myself scraping rapidly at my arm, trying to dig it out. I’d get the itch without realising and all I’d do is scratch it despite knowing it was wrong. That’s what you do with an itch right?
The more I did it though the worse it got. That’s what spreads the infection or so the doctor’s told me when they took me in, did their tests and quickly isolated me. It’s spread out across my body now, like the branches of a tree decorating my skin. It’s like some crazy, fantastic tattoo, or it would be if it wasn’t killing me slowly.
They reckoned that the meteor show must have brought with it spores when it passed low across the skies because it was after that the flowers started to grow. Small little yellow things, similar enough to what we already had, began to pop up around the countryside. What other explanation was there. The scientists carried out experiments on them of course, but found them harmless, a nice gift from the stars and our first contact with an alien life-form.
That was four years ago. Since then the novelty had pretty much worn off, apart from people such as my wife, who was an avid gardener. She’d a plot out the back of our house where she cultivated them, tried to get me to take an interest but I wasn’t bothered to be honest.
I was out in the backyard with our son, Al, when it must have happened. He was kicking a ball around as toddlers do and it rolled into the flowers. I went to pick it out and I remember seeing some of the stems had these little thorns, something I’d never noticed on them before. When I asked the wife about it later she said that was new and it turned out she was right, the damn things were mutating.
That’s when I must’ve pricked myself, on one of those darn thorns. I didn’t notice though. Al went tearing down the yard you see, towards his paddling pool and I had to peg it after him.
It was only much later when the mark on my arm started to turn deep blue and I went to the doctor that I really put two and two together. I’d been scratching away at it for days by that stage, spreading the infection on my fingers. Passing it to everyone I touched or brushed against.
The doctor’s initially had no idea what was going on. That’s why I ended up in isolation, but they’ve figured it out now. It secreted some enzyme into me and that’s what’s causing my skin to change, to effectively rot. It’s turning me into plant food.
It’s apt in a way. I was always a big believer of recycling so I have to respect it I suppose. Even if it’s not of this Earth that little plant is her defence. Mother Nature finds a way you see. We often thought that humans were a cancer on this planet, strangling it slowly, but it’s found a use for us.
It’s turning us into food and no-one can stop the spread. You just can’t help but scratch that itch.
by submission | Sep 24, 2010 | Story
Author : Joseph Hoye
A choice: the camp or the city. Carl would be dead within an hour if he approached the city without an offering for the Fathers – mercy and I.O.U.s have long since dried up on this world. An offering is not merely a representation of life. It is life. No-offering is death. Carl has no offering … yet. The camp beckons.
The sun is four hours away from its apex and already Carl feels moisture roll down his back, pooling just above his belt line. He reaches up to swipe the moisture from his forehead but his hand halts almost of its own volition before making contact. He lets his perspiration wash down his face and drip from chin and jaw line onto the catcher around his neck. It’s not enough for the offering but it’s a start.
He trudges north, hoping the camp hasn’t moved on.
Centuries ago, this land, this world was golden sand. It stretched further than the eye could see, further than imagination allowed. Now, the sand has become mere dust, clogging his shoe treads but doing nothing more. No wind disturbs it, nor rain turns it to mud. Just the sun, turning it into a mirror of sorts – a mirror for a vain god, unaware of lesser beings just trying to stay alive. Gold-dust, millimetres thick near the city, metres deep in the badlands and ever so slightly tacky to the touch; the glare could turn a man blind in less than ten minutes if he didn’t wear suntacts.
A scream broke Carl’s heat induced fug. Beyond the dunes, someone was in distress. Do for yourself before you do for others was the planet creed, so Carl waited, eyes scanning the horizon, feet glued to his patch of dust. Another sound rose from the dunes, a feeble cry instead of a shriek. Carl shuffled towards the sound. Opportunity called.
He skirted the dunes, preferring the security of the flats to the soft and probable death of banked dust. It took him twenty minutes to discover the cause of the commotion. A fellow traveller lay on the ground, one leg bent at an awkward angle at the knee. Carl wiped away the sweat from his eyes and licked the moisture from his fingers.
The stranger saw Carl and tried to raise himself … no … herself. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, Carl decided, and walked up to her.
She was young, maybe twenty Terran years and pretty, despite her pallid skin. Carl swore out loud before rushing to her. Her face relaxed, losing its look of fear.
She gestured down at her shattered leg, guiding Carl’s gaze to a slow bleed leaking on to the dust. Carl took out a dressing from his survival kit and pressed it none too gently on to the wound. She gasped but refused to flinch.
He grabbed a tourniquet from his belt kit and placed it around her thigh, tightening it to further slow the flow. She smiled. Then he took out the Needle and Filter. The screaming started again.
Half an hour later, Carl unhooked the Needle from her arm, scraped out the red dust from the Filter and stood up. He hefted the plastibag of clear liquid, judging it plenty to start up a small store and reap the rewards that a gold-dust planet could offer. The city fathers would welcome him with open arms just to get their hands on a fraction of this water. He began the trek to the city, the desiccated husk of a once beautiful woman already forgotten.
by submission | Sep 23, 2010 | Story
Author : Jacqueline Rochow
“Well? What’s it like?”
“Shut up, Dev, I’m trying to concentrate.” Nara squinted through the telescope, adjusting the focus slightly. “Well isn’t that something.”
“Let me see!” Dev strode over, only to be halted by Nara’s glare.
“I’ve just set this thing on two planets at a very good resolution over two hundred light-years away. If you so much as breathe near the focus I will kill you.”
“I’m not going to hurt your precious new telescope or knock it out of focus, Nara, just let me see.”
Nara shrugged and stepped out of the way. As expected, Dev’s confused questions began immediately. “They’re very different, but I don’t understand – ”
“That’s because you don’t pay attention, Dev. You might recall that when this project began, we seeded both planets with living cells?”
“Yes…”
“Right. Now, the one third from the sun, which was flooded with water and infused with iron to increase the density, is very busy, as you can see. I’ve managed to filter out the cloud cover because I am a genius. You see all that green? That’s life. The cells are green because they absorb certain wavelengths of light to make energy. There’s also life that can move around like us. Single-celled, multi-celled, with varying metabolisms – aerobic, anaerobic, some of them eat sulphur. Life that lives in ice and life that lives in thousand-degree hot water. They’ve changed the atmosphere dramatically. Now, using the preset focus and not touching a damn thing, if you look at the fourth planet from the sun in question, you will see an atmosphere that has also changed, but differently. Well, you won’t, because you are stupid and never bothered to learn how to read any of these instruments properly, but I assure you that this is the case. You would recall, I hope, that this was our control planet; similar to the third planet from the sun, with less iron and water. You might also notice that it is a lifeless hunk of rock.”
“But… there could still be single-celled life there, right?”
“It’s certainly possible that our instruments could miss something, which is why you’re going to go on a little surveying trip to the surface and get me some samples.”
“But that’ll take forever!”
“We’ve been waiting for billions of years to get results for this experiment and you’re complaining about a little joyride? Suit up, you baby, I have four sets of replicates to focus this telescope for.”
by submission | Sep 22, 2010 | Story
Author : Jeroen Amin
She lay on the bed in the darkness of her room, clinging to her teddy bear. She spoke in excited whispers so that Mommy sleeping next door would not wake. She told of all the adventures that had comprised her day. “Daddy, I wish you could have seen it!”
Somewhere in the bear’s head, something whirred to life. “I wish I could have too, honey.”
She hugged the bear tighter to her chest. The bear that was nine years worn with the stitching coming loose at many a seam and mismatched strings holding it together where cotton had fallen out bulged at the right leg as she squeezed. Somewhere on the side, another small stitch came loose ever so slightly. Inside the head, the microphone transmitted the girl’s voice thousands of lightyears away to the lone traveller in the cargo ship.
“We had a show and tell today, Daddy! I drew a picture of you and told my class that you were a cargo carrier and that you were on an important mission! Everyone was so proud!”
“That’s great! One day, I’ll come to class with you. How does that sound?”
“Oh yes, Daddy! Please!” A hundred times she had heard that promise and not once had she ever lost a shred of anxiousness for its fulfillment. Daddy would come home one day, she knew. Daddy will come and we’ll have lots of fun and all my friends will be jealous because my Daddy has gone through space to other colonies and their Daddies only stay here and make ships for people like my Daddy.
Mommy told her all about Daddy. He was a brave man who tried to help everyone. Sometimes good people and sometimes bad people but Daddy always helped people. Now he was helping people far, far away so that they can travel as fast as people here at home could and visit their own families too. It would take a long time but it would make everyone happy, including Officer Denton who came by once a month to check on Daddy’s progress.
She liked Officer Denton. He was a very nice man and always made sure that her Daddy could talk to her through the teddy bear.
“Now don’t you think it’s time for bed, missy? You have a project due tomorrow and you don’t want to be tired for it, now do you?”
She giggled at her Daddy’s pretend seriousness. “Ms. Francine is really nice though and I don’t think she’ll care.”
He found her thought process painfully endearing. “Your mother will mind, though. We don’t want her to be angry, do we?” he teased.
“Okay, Daddy, I’ll go. Good night. I love you.” She hugged the bear as hard as she could and adjusted herself into a comfortable position. Before she drifted off, she heard the words she was waiting for.
“I love you too, honey.”
Thousands of lightyears away, he switched off the microphone and adjusted the chair to a reclining position. Nine years of his sentence had been served for a stupid mistake. Six more to go. He would unload the parts the colony in the Hestate cluster to finish their HFTL construction and finally head back home, almost twice the speed he came. Six more years and he would finally see his daughter. Six more years and she would finally hug him instead of the damn bear.
by submission | Sep 21, 2010 | Story
Author : Mark Wallace
The literary agent wore a sharp suit and a slick smile when Charles walked in.
“Hey Charles, my man. This is really an honour.”
“Thank you,” said Charles, a man of late middle age, bearded, with a sad, sober expression of face. He was dressed neatly and, though of relatively short stature, stood very erect.
“Oh my God, I’m such a fan, Charles. “Oliver”, “Christmas Carol”. Anyway, Charles – you don’t mind if I call you Charles – you can consider yourself one of us now.” The agent laughed, he had worked that one out earlier; always good to show acquaintance with the client’s work – put them at ease and stroke their ego a little. Charles, though, bristled slightly at the reference.
“So, finally, I get a chance to meet you. We’ve invested a lot in you. You’re a big project for us. As you know, mind reactivation doesn’t come cheap. But you’re worth it. We really like your work.”
Charles bowed stiffly in acknowledgement.
“Hey, sit down. How do you like your body? Just like the old one, huh? The boys in the lab studied the pictures and we think they got it just right. Just like you’ve never been away, huh?”
“It is a marvellous likeness,” said Charles “Inconceivable.”
“So, what have you got for me?”
Charles eyes grew animated, and he leaned closer to speak:
“I have finished it.”
“Yeah? Finished what?”
“’The Mystery of Edwin Drood’ the great novel left unfinished at my… my…”
“Corporeal termination.”
“Yes. For one hundred and sixty years men have debated my intentions for the conclusion of the novel. Was Drood killed by his uncle, the opium addict Jasper? Or his rival in love, Neville Landless? Did he in fact die, or was it a ruse? Now I have been able to clarify it all, as I meant to so long ago.” Charles was growing emotional now, his eyes brimming.
“’The Mystery of Edwin Drood’ I’ve never heard of it. Show me the manuscript.”
Charles handed him the manuscript.
“Whoa! This is a monster. How many words in this thing?”
“Some 120,000, I believe.”
The agent breathed in sharply.
“Ok, here’s what I’m getting, Charles: you’ve been out of the loop a long time. You’re not with what’s required these days. Now, first things first…” with this, he threw the manuscript in the bin.
“Let’s get real here, Charlie. What century are you living in? If you can’t say it in six hundreds words, then I can’t hear you. It’s called flash fiction. That’s what people want today. You got any flash fiction for me?”
Charles was very pale: “I am not familiar with the term.”
“Ok, Charles, here’s what I want you to do for me. See that manuscript there?” He pointed to the bin.
“Yes.”
“I want you to go home and write that story in six hundred words. That’s flash fiction. It’s simple. Just leave out the padding and the digressions and the boring bits. You do that for me and we’re on our way. We didn’t reactivate your mind for nothing, Charlie. You’ve got to give a little too, ok?”
Charles gave a small nod.
“All right. Now we’re on the same page. You want that contract renewed, right? And we want to renew it, but we need results, and fast. Ok, that’s all. Bring that in tomorrow and we’ll see where we are.”
“Very well,” said Charles, rising to his feet.
“Oh, and Charles.”
“Yes.”
“Lose the attitude, will you. You’d swear you were the one had given us the gift of renewed life, for Christ’s sake.”
