Beyond Your Command

Author : Chris Amies

Mewi Lupa suli sat and inspected the heel of one boot, which had come adrift revealing an odd honeycomb pattern in the structure. With her tongue she dislodged a small piece of carrot between two teeth – the relic of her morning’s teethcleaning. On Hydris the only use of carrots was to clean teeth. Mewi had never known it otherwise. She was shipborn, a daughter of the ‘Long March’ who had never set foot on a world until she was three years old.

Her work was to produce books for the community. The new language had taken root like a plant aboard the ‘Long March’ and all books previously aboard – in English or in Chinese – had been used for fuel as soon as their tongues’ last speakers were too feeble to protest. Instead the 120 root words of Toki Pona were used, spoken, written down in various combinations; you could say most things in them. Mewi had originally been called Mavis, and her surname ‘Lupa suli’ had been ‘Trench’: ‘Lupa suli’ was literally, ‘big hole’.

In the new language you had to weigh words very carefully. The elders remembered the old tongues and how dangerous, how imprecise they had been, and they told Mewi and her age-clade all about them.

Mewi’s hair was spiky and orange. She washed it in the null-grav washer in the ship – an affectation, but she had few others and she was still young. The null-grav sphere was fun and the power that drove it wasn’t about to run out any time soon. Those who were shipborn gravitated back to it time and again.

That evening as the orange and violet sky of Hydris was darkening, Mewi and her friends Luka and Ewani regretfully left the null-grav sphere and stepped out into the echoing grey space of the ship. Ship was home for the elders; Mewi and her age-clade, a foot in each camp, slept in bunkhouses down below on the planet’s surface. But the ship drew them back, especially now they were becoming adult and their games had changed.

The oval door of the ’Long March’ led to a ramp, and the three walked down, hand in hand.

The scents of the night-blooming trees filled the air and some strange creature – a scaly thing that in ten million years might evolve into a bird – shrieked.

There was a small knot of children at the bottom of the ramp, nine-year-olds or less, planet-born. As the three said ‘hello’ to them, they chattered curiously. Mewi thought their eyes glittered yellow but it must have been the light of the setting sun.

The children followed Mewi and her friends, talking between themselves, but although Mewi tuned in –

“Listen to them,” she said, “can you understand what they’re saying?”

“Not a word,” Luka agreed.

“Me neither,” said Ewani.

The children streamed past them, strange words hovering in the air and fading away.

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The Walker

Author : William P Sanders

The man trod the dusty, broken path, poorly-shod feet disturbing the detritus of a hundred years of decay and rot, sending up small plumes of filth as his heels impacted with the grime and rose again, each step propelling him onward into a future full of uncertainty and doubt and the weight of the knowledge that whatever lay beyond the next rise, it was as cold and uncaring as the earth he traveled.

Night came with a sense that nothing was different, that no changes, good or bad, were in the making, and that the dawn would come, grey and pitiless as always, a bright and yet dull point on the eastern horizon, if only he’d wait for it.

He did.

That morning, he pushed himself into a crouch and then stood, loose dirt falling from the sleeves of his coat and back to the shape he’d left in the scummy earth, that of a man curled up as though a child, a shape that would likely lay undisturbed until changed by the wind and the rain, the rain that never seemed to come, and the earth would once more forget his passing.

He trod onwards, down the same broken road, over gently rolling hills topped with brittle vegetation and the scarce whispers of a time long gone, pieces of metal or other materials shaped specifically for tasks that none were able to perform anymore.

Minutes went to hours and they in turn were lost to the vast infinity of time. He’d no notion of whether he’d covered inches or feet or yard or miles and when he thought maybe he would turn to look over his shoulder, to see if the hills were still visible, his neck ached and he stopped thinking about it.

The dull bright point hung low in the silvery western sky when a time came that he’d reached a great divide in the earth where once a bridge had spanned from one side to the other, and it came to him that this had been a river but he didn’t know how deep or wide, and anyway it didn’t matter because he couldn’t see the other side or the bottom and every muscle and fiber in his being hurt and the idea of trying to cross this, now or ever, made him physically ill.

The man sat down on the road, slender, aching back against the metal ribbon of a guard rail long gone into rust and all full of holes, and closed his eyes.

The night passed in silence with nary the chirp or chatter of even the smallest creature, and when the dull bright point rose slowly and lazily in the east after the passage of the hours, the earth found its population reduced by one.

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The Lonely Worms

Author : Daan Kogelmans

Harry has wrapped a tentacle around his inner lobe, which means he is thinking deeply. Two of his cigarettes have gone out, he squints in the orange smoke. Then he coughs.

“You smoke too much,” I say.

“I know, I know,” he extinguishes the cigarettes in the hole and scratches his lips. “It’s just that… I can’t stop thinking about these poor things. He points at the glass dome.

I bend over and peek inside. The aliens crawl around in the mud. “You have two of them?”

“Yeah, a couple… They mate sometimes, but without success.”

“They are active though,” I say.

“I gave them some sokaputty to see how they would react.”

“Oh,” I say. One should never expect too much of sokaputty. “Two eyes,” I say looking at them, “let’s see… that’s only three dimensions, isn’t it? Which makes them…”

“Practically blind,” Harry says nodding and lighting a few more cigarettes, “that’s what I worry about so much. Because with two eyes… Man, I would die with loneliness.”

“No contact?”

“Not a flitch, not even a flicker.”

“Than how can they live?”

Harry shrugs, smoking. “It makes me so sad, you know. To be so lonely, all your life crawling around in darkness.”

“Maybe their species doesn’t need any contact?”

He spits on the raster. “No man, they crave for contact all their life. I’ve seen them mating man, they try to touch, they try to lick, they look each other in their two eyes, but they just can’t do it, man, they are lonely as hell. A rock has more contact than these wretches.”

I shake my head and look at them crawling in the mud. “Poor things.”

“Yeah man,” he puts his cigarettes in the hole, “I should quit smoking.”

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Sam

Author : Jake Lane

You’ve never been the most outgoing person, Sam. It’s not your fault, I’m sure, but that doesn’t stop it from being the truth. As wonderful as you are now (I love you, Sam, you know that), you could be so much more wonderful.

From the moment we met I could see that you were a slave to your own insecurities. When you spilled your coffee all over my briefcase you self-consciously apologized to me for hours. You apologized for hours and then we dated for months because, well, a flawed diamond is still a diamond. I married you.

Even now, I’m just barely able to see beyond the sheen of your sun-speckled surface into your concealed depths. But what depths! Oh, I have no doubt that you are as magnificent as you are repressed. Peel away your cocoon of complexes and you would become the perfect person, the person that I met, briefly, after you returned from your mission.

As you strode out of the starport terminal I could see a confidence in your swagger that betrayed the extent of your transformation (or should I say “emergence”?). As you strode out of the starport terminal I knew that everything would be different. I was standing face-to-face with the hidden person I always knew you were just dying to let out. When your friends come by to fry fish and crack beers and stargaze, they talk about being transformed out there in the void. The dusty amber dye-drop hurricanes of Jupiter are said to be unparalleled by our terrestrial standards. At first, I thought that was it: That you’d seen the silent, stormy beauty of the outer planets and it had changed you, Sam. You opened up, you calmed down. Sure, you’d occasionally drop plates or stumble on the stairs, but you maneuvered around these minor slips with wit and casual grace. The Sam I’d always loved, the Sam I married, no longer felt the need to hide behind awkward apologies. You had this inebriated joviality and this nonchalance and this debonair aura that just turned me on. You had fire and you had edge and you had sly humor and motivation and nosebleeds…

Those damn nosebleeds.

The doctor said they were superficial, not necessarily a sign of any permanent damage. But those nosebleeds gave us away, or gave you away. Gave it away, the goddamn stealthy little helper curled around your brain stem. When the doctor pulled the needle-thin, noodle-thin parasite from your skull, I knew I’d lost you. The moment you blushed and kneaded the back of your neck and awkwardly told me it must have, ‘Uh, climbed in there while I was down on the surface, I guess, I don’t know, weird huh?’, I knew I’d lost you.

I wonder if you miss that uninhibited, charismatic self? In fact, I’m almost sure you do. You’d have to. Because for all the nosebleeds and the twitching and the fumbling, that worm was the best thing to happen to you, Sam. Well, this fight isn’t over. As weak and insecure as you may be, you’ve always looked out for me, and nothing in this world or others is going to keep me from looking out for you. There’s a parcel in the mail, hermetically sealed, atmosphere regulated, temperature monitored, express-shipped from the frigid planes of Io. I’ll see you soon, Sam. I love you.

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Quater-life Crisis

Author : Alec Ow

“When are you going to get a new body?”

I ping my guildmates, “I’ve got girlfriend aggro, this might take a while,” and sheathe my sword. They only manage a cursory glance and a quick “later mate” before they and the dragons’ den dissolves away into a white room with Cerise standing in the middle.

“It’s been a month since the accident,” she continues, “you need counseling. There’s more to life than working a menial number-crunching job and wasting your day away in VR you know.”

“I don’t need counseling-”

“You THINK you don’t need counseling,” she interrupts me, “first deaths are a big deal, John, you don’t have to hide behind that tough exterior.”

“Times are tough right now Cerise, being an infomorph for a while can save us some money on living expenses. I can’t afford to buy a body right now and you know I don’t want to rent. What if I get a smoker’s body? Having to deal with the nicotine withdrawal-,” I stop myself. I know I can’t win this argument so I try to change the subject, “Where are you right now?”

“At work, on break. I just got off chat with my mom. They want to take us to the Bahamas this summer. Even if you rent a synth it’ll be better than bringing you along in a harddrive. I miss the feel of your touch.”

“But we-”

“VR’s not the same. Please, I know you don’t want to be hurt again, but think of all the things you’ll be missing out on.”

A lull in the conversation. I let out an audible sigh, “My promotion should be coming soon. I’ll go schedule an appointment for counseling and we can shop for hybrids when you get home. I just hope your parents don’t sneer too much for not going full-organic.”

“They won’t judge,” a smile slowly creeps across her face.

“Oh right, your dad in his ‘all-natural olympiad body, the blue-print cost a fortune you know and fabricated from the finest biomass money can buy’,” I attempt my best impression of her dad.

She lets out a giggle and plants a kiss on my lips, “I’ll see you when I get home, babe.”

Cerise and the white room dissolves away and I’m met by my guildmates standing over a dead dragon, arguing over who gets the spear.

“Anyone know any good hybrid models?” I ask and grimace as I’m met by their sneers.

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Look Before You Leap

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

The smell of sulphur permeated his suit. His body absorbed and metabolized it, leaving a permanent foul taste in his mouth. He exuded sulphur through every pore. In short, Martin Petrov stank. This, however, was the least of his worries. His most pressing problem was Io’s corrosive atmosphere and the deleterious affect it was having on the poorly maintained seals of his bounder, a six legged contraption that leapt, rather than rolled, over Io’s undulating, ever-changing landscape.

The thin caustic atmosphere had caused a serious leak in the crew cab. It would not hold air. He had barely fifteen minutes worth of oxygen in his suit and Hera was at least a half hours leaping.

Hera, the largest of the Ionian settlements, housed over four hundred colonists. Her great domed chamber was carved deep within the silicate crust of the moons surface. The only evidence of its presence was a docking hanger for shuttles and bounders, and a large oculus at the domes apex, giving the subterranean dwellers a soul enriching view of Jupiter’s roiling cloud cover. A welcome sight of seemingly boundless expanse to lighten the effects of the self-imposed prison of the crushing hive-like collection of cells that comprised the living and working spaces.

“Well, Marty. What are you gonna do now,” he asked himself. “Think quick, boy. You don’t want to die out here.” He set his bounder for Hera and reviewed his situation.

After rejecting several, at best, very risky options, he settled on a course of action. Pretty risky still, but better than the others. Considerably better than the alternative. He clicked his teeth and made the neural connect to the bounder’s comp system.

“Okay,” he thought, “allowing for the bounder’s mass… Io’s rotation… a 42 degree angle… trajectory of… full power single push… that should do it.” He checked to ensure that his calculations were correct and mentally hammered the “execute” button down.

The bounder adjusted all six legs until it was on a 42 degree inclination to the horizon, aimed at Hera, and with a mighty heave, kicked off the surface, describing a graceful parabolic arc for home.

“This is going to hurt, but I’ll survive. If I break anything, at least my impact will alert somebody and they’ll send a team to check it out,” he thought hopefully.

Martin’s elation soon turned to dread as he looked down upon the ground rushing up to meet him. He was about to land dead centre on the oculus. It was designed to keep air pressure in, not to keep things out. It was built so that its strength was pointed inward, not to withstand the three tonne mass that was quickly bearing down on it.

Martin and his bounder plummeted through the crystal aperture, and crashed into the central common area of the colony, which had been a pleasant park with Terran plants, birds and a central waterfall that not only made a pleasant soothing roar, but imbued the otherwise dry air of the underground chamber with moisture.

With great difficulty Martin pulled himself free of the wreckage of his broken bounder and surveyed the carnage. Dozens of Herans, who previously had been enjoying themselves outside the dull claustrophobic confines of their quarters, laboratories and offices, were dying, gasping for breath as the sulphurous compounds of the outer atmosphere mixed with the moisture in the air of the dome and the colonists’ lungs. They were drowning in the acidic mush that their lung tissue had become.

Martin released a mournful sigh.

“Somehow, this is going to end up being my fault.”

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