by submission | Jun 5, 2011 | Story
Author : Harris Tobias
I felt a shifting in my circuits like I got when I rebooted, a slippery, falling feeling that signaled stress— or was it joy? The whole idea of feelings and emotions was new to me. An upgrade, I didn’t think was much of an improvement. It was difficult to keep track of what one was supposed to be feeling. Regardless of exactly what emotion it was, I knew that I was supposed to be having them, lots of them, especially on my wedding day.
According to custom, I colored my body panels white and clutched a bouquet of artificial blossoms in my utility appendage. I would say I was nervous but of course you can’t be nervous without nerves, but I was definitely feeling a little 4-0-4 File not found-ish. I looked at myself in the mirror, tall, polished, beautiful in a classical way.
I noticed the odd feelings were strongest when I thought of BEN-4-7-45, my designated partner. After all, how well did I really know him? True, the BEN models were highly rated, but you never really knew how another being was wired until you’ve shared a lot of time together, and then it might be too late. A few brief encounters hardly qualified as knowing someone.
No doubt BEN-4-7-45 was having similar misgivings. And why shouldn’t he? After all, what made me so superior? A four year old model with more miles on my odometer than I cared to admit. I was lucky to have finally made a match at all. And BEN was so kind and sweet, tall and strong; sure it was his third pairing, but that didn’t mean it was all his fault.
My best friends were clustered around me now. All smile emoticons and what passed for laughter among my kind. I had to admit the girls looked terrific in their burgundy and pink body panels. BEN’s friends looked handsome too in their charcoal and light gray panels. Maybe there will be more pairings after tonight. It would be nice to have friends in common.
There was a stirring in the hall. Soon it would be time to walk down the aisle. One of my friends slipped a piece of gauzy fabric over my ocular sensors, another custom no one understood the reason for but, like the ceremony itself, it was faithfully carried out. These ancient rituals were all that remained of the time before.
Two ancient bots, patched and discolored with age, stood on each side of me. I understood that they symbolized the parents who, if I were human, would have given me away. They were the oldest bots I had ever seen. They had probably done this a thousand times. There wasn’t much else they could do, poor things. They walked my down the aisle to the stage, a raised platform decorated with flowers of all description—plastic, fabric, even glass—more flowers than I had ever seen.
A scratchy recording of something called the wedding march began to play through the speakers of assembled guests. All oculars were on me, the old-bots moved forward. Ben was waiting. This was it, there was no turning back. I hoped for the best.
by submission | Jun 4, 2011 | Story
Author : Julian Miles
“They’ve got reinforcements!”
I checked my chrono. Down to one thousand, eight hundred and forty-three instances. I warned Flank Axel Leader as Scout Axel Second cut into our channel.
“Looks like two full companies.”
Damn. That meant twelve hundred grunts. I instructed Scout Axel.
“I need to know when they’re ten seconds out.”
“TEN seconds? Ye gods, Commander. That’s cutting it fine.”
“I know, but this is where we hold them or this sector is history.”
“Tick tock, sir. We’re on it.”
I smiled. One thing about working with two thousand temporally shifted instances of yourself was that you never failed to get the in jokes. The battle was going as well as could be expected. We had the kill ratio down to one and a half me to one of theirs. A new record. Scout Axel Fourth came on.
“Lost Two and Three, sir. You are fifteen from enemy engagement on my mark… Mark!”
I counted down on open channel so all of me could synchronise.
“Five, four, three, two, one, Hawkin!”
With a purple flash, eighteen hundred instances of me appeared in six-hundred me combat deployments, at the flanks and rear of the enemy reinforcements. There were cheers on the open channel.
“Pick it up, Axels. We have five minutes to finish this.”
From then on, things got brutal. I was just about to singularise chronome when Scout Axel Seven ruined my day.
“Fifty gravtanks incoming sir! Low spec, but coming fast.”
Left with no choice, I phased in the last forty-three instances of me.
The world around me slowed down as causality and a few of its friends finally noticed that I was cheating. The rules were simple. I could take time from my past when I had been idle to get an instance of me to fight now. Of course, everyone has only so much free time. Behind my eight months, three weeks and four days in combat lay twenty years in training, which included at least two hours a day standing at full combat readiness but doing absolutely nothing. While the latest me was alive, causality took the path of least resistance and any of me that died just vanished, temporal ghosts that never existed. Of course, as they never existed, idle me’s were available for the next battle.
Assault Axel Nineteen came on the tactical line.
“We’re getting pasted, sir. They have advanced suits with reflective fields.”
Scout Axel Thirty-Two confirmed.
“They’ve got more gravtank support and I can see at least five different flavours.”
They were coming for me. It was the only explanation of such a costly manoeuvre. My chrono worked overtime as I ran temporal and flat strategy predictions. But they all agreed. I was dead. The only variable was how many of them died too. So be it. I overrode the chrono and set it to get a me from tomorrow. With a smile, I phased an impossible instance of me into existence. Causality put its foot down hard and deleted me and the planet I stood on.
I appeared in a maintenance locker on the regen ship Alexandrya at the exact time I’d entered the battle. I had no chrono and was speaking in tongues. My body is apparently twenty years younger. I suspect twenty years, eight months, three weeks and four days if it could be gauged accurately.
A month has passed and they’re still taking notes. Because the chrono-trooper project was stopped ten years ago, after all of the early subjects developed chronic multiple personality disorder, with all other personalities being me.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jun 3, 2011 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The O’Brian Star sat fixed in space between two possible orbits. On maneuvering thrust, we could roll into a pattern over Telavor, shuttle down for some much needed rest while the ship was refitted and resupplied and plot our next supra-light slip. Alternately, we could drop through the nearly non-existant atmosphere of Tel N’akvar, punch a hole into the local mining outpost and load up with enough rare ore to be building a new ship at the other end of the galaxy before the N’akvarans knew what hit them.
It all seemed pretty simple to me as I sat in the upper gunner’s turret, admiring the view, the two planets nearly perfectly aligned with their sun; Telavor casting its massive shadow over the smaller Tel N’akvar.
It was from this vantage point that I had been watching them argue through the window, the Captain and his first mate. They were alone on the bridge, the viewports unshielded and thus unusually transparent from this angle with the lack of outside light. The Captain seemed exasperated, his hands constantly clutching the sides of his head as he spoke, the first mate pacing opposite him, waving her hands wildly in the air, occasionally jabbing her finger at him or smashing both hands on a console.
I wished I could hear what was being said, but I had to assume he’d done something incredibly stupid to deserve her obviously harsh words.
There were many instances where I’d wished the Captain would be sucked out an airlock, leaving the first mate to assume command and open the door to my advances. He was an ass, and she was the normally calm headed, cool tempered beauty that I’d gladly spend the rest of my life under.
Honestly, I don’t know what she ever saw in him.
Snapping back from my reverie, I noticed she was staring out the window directly at me. I froze, trying hard to look like I hadn’t been watching the entire incident.
Then, she waved.
Without thinking, I waved back. We sat frozen there, facing each other across fifty metres of vacuum before she seemed to shake her head and turned away. Around her, the viewports of the bridge opaqued, and I was left staring at nothing but the cold blackness of space.
Minutes ticked away, and I irised open the entryway into the corridor below, straining in the hopes of hearing the sounds of her footsteps making her way from the bridge.
Instead, I felt the rumble of the ship’s engines firing, and the steadily increasing pitch of the sub-light drive as it whined to readiness.
I felt the ship shudder, and then I did hear the sounds of booted feet pounding down the corridor beneath me. The floor lurched beneath my feet, and if I hadn’t been tethered I might have fallen down the access tube.
“Shoot the bitch”, the voice wasn’t my one-day love, “Shoot that goddamned bitch!”
The floor lurched again, and looking out the turret port I realized the entire upper cargo deck, with me and my gun-turret attached, were floating away from the bridge. I stared, dumbfounded as the Captain hauled himself up the ladder into the crowded space.
“She’s taking my fecking ship, blow out the bridge”, I watched as he screamed, and the bridge ports became transparent again. The last sight before we rolled over backwards and my firing options expired was the first mate waving with one hand and extending her middle finger with the other.
I could no longer make out the Captain’s words, I could only think ‘never assume…’
by Duncan Shields | Jun 2, 2011 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
We were at Jason’s house partying when it happened. W6, The Rapture, Day One, whatever you call it where you are.
I remember everyone’s phones going off. They lit up in the darkness of the party, confusing everyone like surprise holiday lights or large blue fireflies. Everyone got the same message at the same time. Emergency Broadcast Signal, it said. It had links to instructions and details and those horrible words “safe distance”.
We turned on the television and rushed to our laptops and Jason’s computers. Trajectories were laid out, newscasters were openly crying, and the Moon Senate cam showed rows of empty seats.
Jason lived outside the colony limits. We’d all brought our transports and were going to stay over. No drinking and driving. We were responsible people. We turned off the music and went to the main viewport. In the distance, we could see the city underneath its glittering dome. Smoke from the first few fires started to smudge up into the air underneath it.
What sounded like an earthquake started about a mile to the right of Jason’s house and with a clank and hiss, sixteen circles irised open in the ground. We all turned our heads towards the vibration in unison.
The missiles came up out of the ground like angels in the darkness. Magnesium flares attached to huge pencils going up and up and up. He had no idea that there were missiles silos that close to him, Jason said a few minutes later. He’d heard rumours of an army base there but that had closed years ago, before he emigrated from Earth. It must have been automated and left on standby.
We all stood on the porch and saw the missiles arc into the sky and away into the night, joining other stars making their way to different destinations, pulling faint spiderweb contrails across the dark night.
The fact that there were missiles close to Jason’s house probably meant that area was a target, Ryan said. His dad was in the army over on Titan. That made us all realize that we wouldn’t live on after this in some sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy.
A few people suited up, airlocked to their cars and drove away to the city dome to find their families or away towards the far-off crater bowls where they thought they could outrun the radiation.
Most of us stayed at Jason’s. We all tried calling our parents and loved ones. Some of us got through. I didn’t. Then weak EMP waves from other impacts must have started washing through because the phones and the lights went out.
We sat there in the darkness. A few couples went to have sex until the end came. The rest of us stayed there in the living room near the big window.
There it was. Carrie saw it first. A falling star. Coming straight for us.
by Patricia Stewart | Jun 1, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The holographic image of the Secretary of Space Command came into focus in the Fleet Admiral’s ready room. “Status Report, Admiral,” demanded the Secretary without ceremony.
“We own the space surrounding the planet, Madam Secretary,” reported Admiral F’bardus. “The enemy is confined to the surface.”
“Have they agreed to unconditionally abandon their planet?”
“Unfortunately, Madam Secretary, the planet does not have a central government. There are more than 100 independent nations down there. Some of them surrendered before our fleet even entered orbit. The rest would rather fight to the death. I am preparing to drop nucleic disruptors on the resistance strongholds, which will ensure a quick victory.”
The Secretary’s face distorted into barely controlled rage. “Admiral, need I remind you that we need the resources of that planet. It will become useless to us if you make it radioactive.”
“Madam Secretary, I only have a thousand ships at my command. I cannot fight the inhabitants of an entire planet in hand to hand combat. Besides, we?ll still have half a pie. I only intend to drop the disruptors on the nations that won’t surrender.”
The Secretary closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Admiral, did the Apocalypse arrive? Have you read the tactical directive?”
The Admiral glanced out the starboard porthole at the large black craft orbiting next to his Battlecruiser. “Er, the Apocalypse is here, Madam Secretary, but I haven’t had time…”
“Enough, Admiral. Since you’re so busy, I guess I’ll have to summarize it for you. The Apocalypse projects a gauge boson enhancer wave at the planet’s surface. It strengthens the electromagnetic force that attracts electrons to protons.”
“So?”
“So…, the electrons are pulled closer to the nucleus, and the atoms become smaller by approximately one percent. Then gravity causes the planet’s mantel to compress.”
“Excuse me, Madam Secretary, but how does making the planet smaller by one percent kill all the inhabitants?”
“You don’t shrink the entire planet, you idiot. You shrink the mantle under one of the continents. When it collapses toward the core, the oceans flood the land and everybody drowns.”
“But if the land is under water, how can we…”
“God’s above! Are you mocking me, Admiral, because nobody can be that stupid? You reverse the polarity of the gauge boson wave and the land enlarges and displaces the water. Now, can you handle that Admiral?”
“Of course, Madam Secretary. We’ll begin immediately. Admiral F’bardus out.” Angered by the humiliating dress down, F’bardus decided to take it out on the inhabitants below. He stormed onto the Bridge. “Hail the Apocalypse.”
“Captain De’Zatum here.”
“Captain De’Zatum, bring the new weapon on-line for immediate deployment,” ordered F’bardus. “But I don’t want this to be quick. I want them to see the water coming, slowly and methodically. I want to hear their cries of anguish, their pleas for mercy. So, I want you to shrink each of the continents at a rate of one meter per minute. When you finish one continent, move on to the next. Understood?”
“Aye, Admiral. But, at that rate, it will take 40 days to flood all seven continents.”
“And 40 nights,” replied F’bardus with an ominous smile.
by submission | May 31, 2011 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
The trader frowned. The translation device, never superbly reliable, had been acting up ever since he had arrived on Cygnus 1.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “What did you say?”
“I said, what are you selling?”
Veloth, the trader, relaxed. For just a moment, he thought the pink figure in front of him has said something inappropriate and biologically impossible about one of his mothers. To be frank, he wasn’t expecting much from a colony this small, but sometimes colonies from newly spacefaring races made for good markets.
“Medicines,” Veloth said, “the majority are for silicate life forms, but we have a few appropriate to your species.”
“What kind of medicines?”
“Mostly remedies. We have headache pills, cancer pills, asthma pills, immortality pills, athritis-”
“Hold on a second, did you say immortality pills?”
“Yes, and arthritis, senility, scale rot-”
“Are we meaning the same thing by immortality? Like, not being able to die, not getting older, that kind of thing?”
“Oh yes, immortality, living forever, I sell a pill for that.”
For some reason the colony leader started to get excited, and then did a dreadful pantomime of hiding it. The trader had dealt with carbonates before. None of them were particularly good at disguising emotions.
“We, uh,” the colony leader started, “We might have a use for that. How many do you have?”
“Not many, a few hundred. There’s not much demand for them, really.”
“Not much demand for-” the colony leader started in shock, then checked himself, “Well, if they’re just taking up space in your inventory, we’d be happy to take them off your hands.”
Veloth shrugged. it was a complex gesture on one with as many limbs as he had, but it got the point across.
They haggled for a while. The pink colonists were moderately skilled miners, and the trader soon arranged a vaguely extortionate price for the pills. The colony leader was almost salivating when they struck the deal, and stuck out a limb to shake. Veloth took it, making a mental note to sanitize that particular appendage.
The deal struck, Veloth prepared his ship for takeoff. If he could get a price like that for what he was selling, he’d definitely add this colony to his rounds, despite their odd tastes.
If they’d pay that much for a cure for immortality, who knew what else they’d buy?
