by submission | May 21, 2011 | Story
Author : Martinus Guzman
My confused senses grasped at the world about me. Skin pulsed along with a faint rhythmic metal tick of a clockwork engine. Ozone, cinder and iron burst over my tongue, tasting a room filled with energy and power. Dank corners and oiled machinery echoed in deep tones. I inhaled cold metal and pain. Eyes drank of hazy images in dry brown, blood red and steel blue. I screamed, agony reverberating on my skin, synesthesia swirled my senses into a horrendous nightmare. The angelic voice of my love whispered a word of peace and I drifted to darkness, thankfully.
Madrid was the site of our meeting, a city under the spell of science and art at the eve of the new century. I lived a lavish life of a professional student paid from my inheritance. By day, my intellect drank in the lectures from the most progressive thinkers of our age. By night, my body consumed beauty from the women of blessed city. But alas, under legal advisement, I was forced to seek employment as a tutor to defray the cost of my delicious excesses.
My ward, the darling Adeline, was a slender girl of fair complexion with eighteen years of sunlight captured in her raven hair. On our first meeting, she sat bemused through my flirtatious preamble but shone brightly when I commenced my instruction. As the day progressed, she entered a state of rapture, body thrown back upon her chaise with climax upon her lips not unlike the Saint Theresa receiving the holy ghost.
Those intelligent amber eyes were never quenched and soon I was forced to bring my maestros along to feed her desire. With Qevando, she built delicate automatons. With Caja, she sowed various animals into small magical beasts. And yet this was not enough, for as i would part for my nightly roguery, she would hold vigil with spiritualists and alchemist, gorging on all knowledge with equal excess. Yet I remained her confidant, when nightly as I swayed on the edge of the chaise from drink, she press her head against my chest to discuss the progress of her studies.
Upon notification by my jackal lawyers of my diminishing inheritance, I asked for my siren’s hand. She accepted without hesitation with but one condition. My nightly excursions would be ignored but my presence would be required to feed her intellectual needs each night. So I would return, still smelling of wine and woman, to find her within the laboratory. She would lounge seductively upon my chest, now a woman of staggering beauty, to spend hours in shared scholarly passion.
One night, as I stumbled through the streets, recent from the arms of a deflowered maiden, I was confronted by no other than my prey’s father. I remember little of what followed save for the snap of my back upon the stoop and the smell of my skin as the lamp oil caught fire.
Three days later, the whisper of my angel awoke me, “don’t worry m’love.” My head shifted downward with the whorl of gyros to spy my patchwork body of flesh and metal. Agony burst from my lips powered by the bellows in my hollow chest. A simple word of silence uttered by my love, caused my mouth to snap shut. Upon her direction, whispered in tender tones of seduction, I moved to my customary spot upon the chaise to receive her buxom body pressed against my new frame. She recounted her advances which had finally turned me into her dutiful husband.
by submission | May 20, 2011 | Story
Author : Steve Hall
The spectators watched raptly as the assault team crept through the artificial cityscape. Their experience was obvious – steady, even steps, eyes and weapons constantly scanning a full hemisphere of potential threats.
The point man held up a closed fist, and the entire squad froze in place, momentarily focused on his lithe form. After a second, he turned slightly, tapped his nose, and pointed to the center of the road. Fist still in the air, he tapped an ear, held up two fingers, and pointed to one of the small concrete buildings.
One of the spectators turned and whispered to their neighbor.
“He caught the mine in the road and the ambushers in the blind. Not bad, George”
The soldiers split around the mine, three taking the left side, three taking the right, while the last fire team went in the rear of the indicated building. They emerged noiselessly from the front a moment later, as the spectators’ displays changed to indicate the quietly eliminated threat.
The neighbor turned to his companion.
“General, they could do this all day, so we’re going to give them a little surprise, see them a little more dynamically.”
Gunfire erupted from the target building ahead, sweeping across the team and knocking one man down with a simulated leg wound. The team medic grabbed him and pulled him into a sheltered corner, returning fire and dressing the wound at the same time. A mass of fire erupted from the team, efficiently recording kill after kill on the displays until finally the scene fell silent and still.
The team reassembled next to the target, the injured man supporting himself on a packable crutch while his weapon continued to protect the rear of the group. Most of the team burst into the building to finish the operation, leaving a fire team outside for security.
“General, look up on the hill.”
Two kilometers away from the artificial town, well out of small arms range, a helicopter shell rose on a hydraulic lift. Simulated rotor noise swept across the field of engagement, followed by the bark of heavy weapons fire. Seconds later, another such emplacement blossomed from another hill behind the team, capturing them in a crossfire.
“George, it’s not a great demonstration if your guys get killed.”
“General, just watch.”
One of the soldiers on the security detail stepped partially out of his sheltered position, an impossibly massive weapon in his arms. A solid stream of heavy tracers briefly connected the soldier to the helicopter before it erupted in flames. Seconds later the other helicopter fell silent as well, torn apart by the same withering hail of fire.
“All right George, I’ve seen enough. Let’s look at the close-ups.”
The General picked up a helmet from the display table, modified to accommodate the point man’s bat-like ears.
“How long does it take?”
“Six months for the mods, anywhere from six months to two years to become fully operational”
“And how long until they catch up?”
“We think five years for the Russians, perhaps four for the Chinese. They don’t have some of the considerations that we do, so it could be sooner.”
The General stared at the close-up videos, a medic administering first aid with two extra eyes and two extra hands while still maintaining fire on the enemy, a machinegunner toting a fifty-cal in two huge arms while a massive tail turns him into his own tripod. Inhuman, perhaps, but American. And effective.
“George. Start production.”
“Yes ma’am.”
by submission | May 19, 2011 | Story
Author : Nic Swaner
Scents from inside the suit intertwined their intentions with the sights of tangled and tessellated hair illumed by firefly LED’s, spiking my circulation with memories and murmurs of dopamine.
I took her by the gaze; she steered her sight away from mine. I led her through a glance that involved no scuffling of hands.
She was one of two wayward strangers passing in the cosmos; two separate glances met as objects in motion tending to motion. People aren’t the same however.
Drifter was the term we were known as, people cast off of vessels and ships, mostly by accident, condemned to trudge about the universe until starvation kicked in or their oxygen-starved filters were finally incapable of operating. My unplanned departure from the mysteriously flaming vessel, Surveyor, had left me careening towards the scorching of the sun.
The communications spoon-fed me the same spitting static and ever constant resonant hum of electromagnetism. Hers must be damaged. Which wasn’t all that uncommon. The micrometeoroids fed on us like gnats, their holes sealed up with a layer of gel immediately on impact. Just how the suit design was intended to operate.
We didn’t need communications; her expression was that of one knowing and who admitted and was committed to their fate. I was still terrified of the thought. I hate the sun.
The days on most civilizations were spent brewing a rivalry with the native sun, to see if the star had survived another night without my swelling and underwhelming opposition. It is like a race, the sun laps me while I lapse, as tiredly and resignedly I rest. Parting glares and glances at dusk are commonly shared and misinterpreted between us in streaks of blighted crimson, cyan, and maroon.
Ahead of her I know she only sees the citronella-stained pale mauve and navy of the hemming of unraveling nebulae, and she is acquiescent of this fact and resigned to be reigned by stars.
We are a momentary retrograde of celestial bodies, then she has passed by. I can no longer block out the sun with my thumb at arm’s length. I know that it would cover her figure from the nebulae.
The adrenaline rush begins to lessen and the cortisol continues to burgeon like embalming lighter fluid in my veins and vagus nerve. The ever-present resonant hum chanted cicada-like rites over the buzz of static. I stared down the sun as I marched toward self-evident immolation.
by Roi R. Czechvala | May 18, 2011 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
A low, thin fog rolled down the hillside. There was something almost menacing in its approach. When it encountered an object, a tree or a rock, it appeared to stop in surprise as if trying to make up its mind before dividing and going around.
“I must be getting tired. I’m starting to see things.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” replied PFC Nestel, rolling on her back and stretching her body as best she could in the confinement of her reactive armour. “It’s just… cliché.”
“What are you talking about,” LCpl Jeffries asked. He took his eye from the scope of his plazer and regarded his cute but often annoying battle buddy.
“I dunno. I know they’re out there watching us.”
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere, lying in wet grass, the trees dropping those leech things on us, enduring the constant rain of this hell hole planet watching an abandoned fuelling station. Who would be watching us? They’d have to be crazier than we are.”
“I know,” she said testily, “I said it was cliché.” Still, Nici couldn’t shake the feeling. She rolled back over and tapped her helmet, bringing her bioptic implants online and scanned the surrounding hillside for signs of activity. There was none.
“Look, try to get some sleep. It’s not like your missing anything. You’ll feel better.”
“I wish I could.” Something wasn’t right. She could feel it. Despite all evidence to the contrary, there was something going on. At least the fog, barely a foot above the ground, gave her a comforting hug. Still the hair on her arms did it’s best to rise beneath the sheath of her thin flexible armour. She popped her bioptics and closed her eyes.
No sooner had Nici dozed off than Jeffries was shaking her. “Nic… Nic,” he whispered, “I’ve got movement.”
“What is it,” she asked in a bleary voice.
“I can’t tell. The scope’s rez isn’t high enough. Scope it with your beautiful bug eyes.”
She slugged him on the shoulder and tapped her helmet again. Her multifaceted eyes linked to his scope so he could share her vision.
“I’ll be damned.” With her artefact eyes she observed five oriental soldiers beside the defunct fuelling depot waving to them.
“How long do you think they knew we were here?”
Before Pfc Nici Nestel could reply to Lcpl Ron Jeffries question, her head had been severed cleanly from her neck and lay staring to the sky, a scant three feet from her inert body. Her eyes were still recording a scene her dead brain failed to see.
Standing over her helmeted head, an Asiatic Alliance equivalent of a sergeant sheathed a plasteele vibrasword and removed a protective mask moulded in a gruesome rictus designed to instil fear in the hearts of his enemy. He held the head of the young Jeffries in plain view of her bioptics.
Tapping his breastplate, the “fog” of nano surveillance ‘bots, suspended above the ground in a negative charge withdrew into his armour. Casually he tossed the head aside and spat into her pretty dead face.
“Stupid Americans.”
by Duncan Shields | May 17, 2011 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
James was sick of his grandfather’s racism. He didn’t care if he was a war hero.
“They’re not people, Jimmy. They have no feelings.” His grandfather shouted from the other room. James loaded up the dishwasher, closed it, and took a deep breath, preparing for going back into the living room. Once a week, James came by to cook his grandfather dinner and keep him company. It was getting to be more and more of a test of patience.
“I mean, I have a brain, right? I know I’m smart. I was raised differently than them. Not in a lab. I had a mother and a father. I know how to be kind to other people. People, Jimmy. People. That dishwasher in there has more compassion than them. I’ve seen what they do to people like you and I on the ‘vision.”
His grandfather was referring to the war footage from the nightly news. Recently the automated soldiers had invaded parts of Eastern Europe to keep the peace. It was their first solo campaign and it was successful. Video of their angular heads and antennae bobbing through the ruined villages was run constantly with updates of our victorious battles.
“I don’t care about these intelligence tests and emotional accelerators they keep talking about. It’s all smoke and mirrors. They’re not flesh and blood. They’re just equations. They don’t eat, they don’t have trust issues, they don’t cry, they just follow orders. They’re just guns that can walk around.”
In recent years, the A.I. on the automated soldiers had gotten to a point that they’d been given basic rights. Some had been promoted. None of them had been granted civilian status yet but many of them had been given passes and allowed supervised visits outside of their compounds with other soldiers.
Soldiers like James. James was fourth generation Army.
“I have to go, Grandpa. I have friends to see. It was a nice dinner.”
“Well you just be careful. I worry about you. The army isn’t what it used to be. Don’t trust those tin cans.” His grandfather said with an angry jut of his chin.
Outside, James clambered into his patrol vehicle to return to base. A body with an angular head and antennae sat asleep at the driver’s wheel. When James closed the door, lights blinked on and the construct at the wheel woke up.
“Hey. Sorry. I was recharging. How’d it go? Do I get to meet him tonight? I mean, that’s General Daimus in there. Some of his strategy helped us win War IV. I’ve reviewed the records but I always get more from someone who was actually there, y’know?” said an articulate voice from the front faceplate of the construct.
“Not tonight, Darren.” Said James. “Maybe next week. But don’t hold your breath.”
“I have no breath to hold,” joked Darren898. James didn’t laugh. Darren898 felt bad immediately. Humour was a hard thing to understand and he knew he’d gotten it wrong this time. Again. Even though both of them had been through three battles together now and saved each other’s lives a few times, Darren898 still couldn’t make James laugh after a visit with his grandpa.
They drove back to the base in silence, both lost in thought and trying to shake the shame they felt for different reasons.
by Patricia Stewart | May 16, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Earthmen first encountered the Sprites in 2384. The Sprites were fist sized glowing spheres that emitted a pulsating white light. However, the light defied known physics. Normally, a prism would refract white light into a colorful spectrum, but not the white light from the Sprites. When passed through a spectrum, the light simply vanished, but would reappear as white light if passed through a second prism.
It was originally assumed that the Sprites were a natural phenomenon, like ball lightening. But as scientists attempted to collect them, it became crystal clear that the Sprites were both evasive and intelligent. All attempts to capture the Sprites were fruitless. Eventually, it was concluded that they were a harmless interstellar life form, so they were permitted to roam freely among the stars.
Initially, the apparently harmless Sprites began following small recreational spaceships, similar to the way pilot fish swim alongside sharks and stingrays. Among the élite, Sprites became a type of status symbol. The more Sprites you had attending you spaceship, the better. Over the years, the sprites also began attending interstellar passenger liners and large cargo ships. Since the Sprites didn’t interfere with ship operations, most captains tended to ignore them. Eventually, crews became accustomed to their presence, and even felt apprehensive when signing onto ships without Sprites. Sprites were considered good luck omens, and by the end of the century, they were attending all non-military space faring vessels.
However, when the war broke out with the Epsilon Reticuli Empire, Sprites became a strategic military asset when it was discovered that their normally white light turned crimson whenever a Reticulian warship approached within a light year. As the war ramped up, military vessels actively sought Sprites as early warning devices. The potential military value of the Sprites even prompted the Earth Alliance President to issue an executive order requiring citizens to surrender their Sprites to the Government. At the height of the war, the bulk of the Earth Alliance Fleet, including sixteen Battlecruisers, thirty-two Destroyers, were poised to engage the Reticulian fleet in a pivotal battlefront along the outskirts of the Denebola System. As the opposing forces aligned their starships in preparation for battle, the Sprites glowed bright red. As if fearing the Reticulian forces, the Sprites began to nestle closer to their Alliance ships in an apparent effort to seek protection. Then, in rapid fire succession, the Sprites blew themselves up, severely damaging the propulsion and weapons systems of their host ships. On cue, the Reticulian warships swooped in and finished off the helpless and bewildered ships of the once powerful Earth Alliance.
