by submission | Nov 24, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
Matron moved almost silently from ward to ward. The faint silken brush of her passing made the nurses look up, meeting her eyes as she passed, exchanging glanced messages that said as much as conversations. The few awake patients did not look. Most of them stared at the ceiling, or listened to music quietly, or slept, or cried.
This an early ward, where the patients were coaxed from catatonia into some basic level of function. The sisters here were soothing more than encouraging, only gently touching the sharp edges of broken minds. Once the patients began to recover, they were brought to day wards where they would recuperate, rehabilitate, take faltrering steps towards health. They spent their days in rooms where french windows opened onto the seaside, where the crash of waves and bracing sea air brought them relaxation and health.
Her rounds completed, Matron moved further into the hospital. She stopped outside an unregarded wooden door, checked that nobody was around, and unlocked it. As the door opened, soft sounds of pain could be heard. This was the relapse room, not spoken of beyond its wooden door.
“How is everyone today?” she said in a hushed voice to the sister who sat at the ward desk. Beyond her, men lay in beds, scratching at imaginary bugs, screaming at invisible enemies.
“Quiet so far” the sister said: she was blonde, with beautiful but absolutely unsexual features; as alluring as a marble statue, and as cold.
“I don’t see Mr Morningside. Did he have another episode?”
“I’m afraid so. Metal men this time.”
“I’ll go and talk to him.”
Halfway down the room, there was a side-ward, separated from the main room by a heavy door. Matron opened this, remembering to bolt it behind her. Alone in the room there was one man in one bed. He was clad in blue and white striped pajamas like the others, but where they looked like patients, he looked like someone in a costume, unused even to his skin.
“I know what you are,” he said as she entered
“Hello, Mr Morningside, and what do you imagine me to be today?”
“You’re a ghost. A ghost of electricity. You’re a piece of mathematics that lives in my head.”
“That’s nice. Did you take your pills?”
“They’re poison. You’re trying to poison me and make me forget. I’m not in my body any more. I’m not even in my mind. It burned away, it all burned.”
“Mr Morningside, if you don’t take your pills, we will have to restrain you again.”
He flinched, visibly. When she held the pills out to him, shied away, but then opened his mouth with a display of childish reluctance. He dry-swallowed the pills, not waiting for the proffered glass of water. He was crying as they began to take effect, dragging him into a muttering sleep.
Matron was subdued as she left the ward. It disturbed her when a relapsing patient stumbled towards the truth. He wasn’t in his body any more, wouldn’t be there until his mind was healed enough to accept the trauma of the war’s memories. The new bodies were regrown, but the minds just weren’t ready for them yet. Let them heal here, where they were safe, where they had matron and her beautiful, identical sisters to look after them.
From the day ward she heard a few patients gather together for a morning sing-song.
“Oh I do like to be beside the seaside…”
by submission | Nov 23, 2009 | Story
Author : James Marshall
Captain Will Kano of the Aries was sitting on an air-chair watching baseball with the sound muted. The latest round of memos from mission control, or the office as they called it, lay spread out on the floor beside him, along with a Rubik’s Cube and an empty Juice-Sack. He sighed.
“I’ve got to get my shit together, Alan.”
“Your shit is together, Captain”. Alan was the ship’s interface, and he appeared on a dedicated LCD above the television. He was represented as two dots for eyes and a line for a mouth on a yellow background. He looked like a Lego man, before they developed frowns and stubble. His voice was deep and breathless. Everyone liked Alan.
“I’ll talk to Sarah tonight. Put an end to it.”
“There’s no rush. Don’t do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I’m being stupid. I’m married.”
“You’ve never been stupid in your life, Captain. It’s a long, boring trip, you know that. Give yourself a break. Worry about Tanaka.”
This made Will laugh. Tanaka was nuts.
“I’ve got another list here if you’re interested,” said Alan. “This one’s from the Country Women’s Association of Australia.”
“Go on then, said Will. He shifted in his chair and put his hands up behind his head.
“’Another small step for man, another giant leap-‘“
“A man. ‘One small step for a man.’ That’s what he said. Next.”
“’Life goes on.’”
“Like it. But no.”
“’A new world, a new promise.’”
“Stock.”
Alan went through the list, which did not contain anything remotely inspiring or memorable.
“Shall I send them a thank you mail?” asked Alan.
“Please.”
“I’m sure we’ll come up with something when the time comes, captain.”
Will leaned across and picked up the Rubik’s Cube. He had all of the blue and almost all of the yellow, but he couldn’t proceed without losing what he already had. When he was a child he would give the cube to his mother before he went to bed, and there it would be in the morning, sitting on the kitchen bench like new. One night when he couldn’t sleep he walked into his mother’s room and saw the cube spread out in bits across her bed. She had fallen asleep, still holding the screwdriver she had used to pry it apart.
“How about something simple?” said Will, trying to move a corner piece around without screwing up the whole thing. “I’m going have so much on my plate when we land that I don’t think I’ll be able to remember a long, rambling speech. What about something like… ‘Here we are’?”
“Red Mars.”
“What?”
“That’s what the man who first landed on Mars said in the book Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. The colonists went to Mars in a ship called the Aries too, by the way.”
“Really? Damn. Ok, how about… um… on behalf of all people on Earth, we come to Mars… in the spirit of human endeavor and-“
“Very similar to Mars Crossing by Geoffrey Landis, I’m afraid.”
Will sighed. “I give up. We need a scriptwriter, not a pilot.”
“What we need is a copyright lawyer,” said Alan.
Will chuckled. He dropped the Rubik’s cube in his lap. He yawned.
“You know,” said Alan, “Coca-Cola have offered you a billion dollars to say ‘Coca-Cola.’
Will sat up. “Have they really?”
by submission | Nov 22, 2009 | Story
Author : Cesium Artichoke
“Hey, Tom, uh… you got a minute?” Robin ambushed him as he came out of his office. He had a meeting with the Secretary of Energy about space-based power, but she was visibly nervous and fidgeting, which set off alarm bells.
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Better get your computer, it’s already downloading.” She gestured to his office door.
He retrieved the tablet and continued down the hall. “Come on, walk with me. So what’s so important?”
Robin hurried to keep up with his long strides. “Well, we… we decoded the Procyon signal.” Tom stopped in his tracks.
“…and?”
She pointed to his tablet. ‘Download Complete’, it read, and the summary from the xenolinguists flashed onto the screen.
As he perused the report, she studied him. Thomas DiMattia, the man who saved NASA. He’d reached out to commercial space ventures and revived the nation’s interest and faith in NASA by landing a man on Mars. He’d even managed to keep the cosmologists happy. If this was what everyone feared it was, she couldn’t think of a better man to lead.
“Jesus,” muttered Tom.
“Yeah.”
He slumped into a nearby chair, glancing up at her. “Could this be a joke?”
“A joke? Not on our part; it’s definitely extrasolar. Otherwise, they have a weird sense of humor, ’cause Keck says there’s something there, exactly where they said.”
‘The Alliance or any representative or member thereof is not responsible for economic, biological, informational, or other damages resulting directly or indirectly from said Project. Continued residence in the aforementioned Stellar System will signify your acceptance of these terms.’ So the message had read, and if the team at the Keck observatory knew anything about anything, the giant fleet from Sirius would arrive in about a decade for their little Project with Earth’s sun.
“Jesus,” Tom repeated. He took a breath, and a slight resolve seemed to grow in his voice. “You’d better call some lawyers. We’ve got a hell of a loophole to find.”
by submission | Nov 21, 2009 | Story
Author : Al Vazquez
The retro-rockets jolted the ship as it began its decent into the thin, cold atmosphere. Excitement welled-up inside his belly. He felt a slight shaking in his leg, but his hand was steady on the controls. He was known for that; cool as a cucumber when it really mattered, and it never mattered more than now. He briefly recalled his first landing at the airport near his hometown. It seemed like yesterday. He remembered his leg shaking then too as he pressed against the rudder pedals.
He peered out of the window. The trajectory on his heads-up display was exactly like the simulations but the vividness of color and texture; seeing the planet below with human eyes, could never be duplicated by any sensor. He loved his job, he had always been lucky that way. He looked over toward his partner thankful she was there; someone to share the experience.
The ship was the peak of technological advancement; it had to be. They needed it for almost two years; it was their home; their lifeboat. They would leave a large part of it behind to continue the work in automation that they would begin shortly. Skilled colleagues, friends all, would follow their path and continue the endeavor. But they were the first ones. That weight rested on their shoulders, on his shoulders; he was after all landing the craft.
Back on earth everyone was watching on television video feeds from orbiting satellites. This, he knew, was going to change things, colonization; Terra-forming under geodesic domes …a permanent colony, one small step. But now his job demanded his full attention. Knowing this she declares, “Whatever you do, don’t f:)k this up”. They both laughed out loud. She never cussed; he thought to himself. She must be nervous.
The violent buffeting came and went just like it was supposed to; the product of atmospheric breaking – then parachutes. And finally what every pilot lives for, the switch to manual control. A little more precious energy, crab a little to the left to avoid some rocks, near the trench, but not too close, touchdown! “Piece of cake”, he declares back to his singular audience. They laugh aloud again, relieved.
He calls the boss – “Houston, Argonom Base here, the Eagle has landed.” About seven minutes would pass before the words crackled through the speakers at Mission Control. The place would erupt in the traditional cheers, handshakes, and smiles. On Mars their silence was interrupted by the whir of solar cells beginning to deploy.
They gathered those things needed for their first excursion – the inflatable dome and anchors, the atmospheric processing units, the machinery that would dip into the trench ice and provide them with life giving water, hydrogen, and oxygen. Three months didn’t seem enough time for all the work they needed to accomplish.
When everything was ready they made their way to the exit hatch and opened it, as far as the eye could see – magnificent desolation.
by submission | Nov 20, 2009 | Story
Author : Courtney Raines
As I watched myself falling down the hill, I remembered that fairy tale from physics class; the one about the cat in the box.
I had been walking home through the wilderness that separated my cul-de-sac from the grocery store, it was a walk I had taken hundreds of times over the past five years, when I tripped. The pack of groceries on my back had nearly slipped off my right shoulder, and I shuffled mid-step to adjust it. That’s when it happened; the quantum flash.
A ‘quantum flash’ is what the ubiquitous ‘they’ call it when you experience a moment of your life from another quantum reality before returning to your own. Mine happened in that instant between when I knew my foot was coming down wrong, and when it actually hit the ground.
I stood there for a millisecond frozen in time, watching as another me somewhere didn’t manage to regain her balance. I watched as the other me’s foot came down and twisted on a root. I heard the crack of bones. I felt the snap in my shin. I watched as the other me fell backwards towards the ravine, and wondered for the millionth time why the path was so close to it.
It was me, and it wasn’t. I felt it, and I watched it; both inside and outside. It was still me. The soft, moldy puff of dirt when I crashed backwards. The citrus thumps as my groceries began to tumble from my pack. The uncomfortable stab of cold plastic wrapped in polyester as I hit the milk jug before the inevitable flip.
The inevitable slow motion flip; my back arching, my pack sliding further down my arm, the milk, the bag of oatmeal, the kiwis and apples plopping to the ground, my feet creating the circle I could never draw. I felt my neck bending but not, quite, snapping. It radiated pain and there were spots before my eyes. As my body came around an almost elegant 360 degrees I saw, from both above and to the right, the pile of grapefruit and lemons that had first fallen from my pack.
Then my knees hit the ground, and I began to slide downwards. My pack was gone, what little cushioning it might have offered rendered nonexistent. Dirt and leaves began push their way up my shorts; I felt the leaves break and crinkle against my thighs. I slid in a slow motion second until first my feet, then my stomach, and finally my head bucked over a knobbled rock, smashing in a rhythmic serpentine motion. I barely had time to register the explosion that was my shattering kneecap, or the loss of breath following a rock in the gut, when the hard surface thrust my chin briefly upwards so it could better collide with my forehead.
Pain circled my head, blood trickled coppery in my mouth, and darkness called until the clock ticked into the next millisecond and my foot came down awkwardly on the dirt.
With a little hop, I regained my balance. I shifted my pack so that it was squarely on both shoulders, and muttered a prayer to the God of physics that I had been born to this quantum reality.
by Patricia Stewart | Nov 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Senator Reginald Wadsworth lay in his hospital bed; his biphasic artificial respirator hissed rhythmically as it expanded and contracted every six seconds. Dozens of electrical biosensors monitored his vital signs, while a miniature tubular highway of transparent hoses pumped fluids into, and out of, his body. Doctor Clive Colin stood next to the bed and studied the latest medical report. “Senator,” he said solemnly, “modern medicine cannot keep your body alive much longer. You need to make a decision concerning the memory transfer procedure that we discussed last week. Tomorrow, the state of Texas plans to execute Gilberto Escobar. He’s the drug kingpin that killed six DEA agents during a raid in ‘56. I’ve been in contact with him since he lost his last clemency hearing. He says that if you agree to give his family ten million dollars, he’ll give you his body. The procedure is called a cerebral cortex transfer. We use a high frequency neuroreprogrammer to overwrite his frontal and temporal lobes with synaptic data that we record from your brain. I know that’s a little oversimplified, but the bottom line is that we’ll erase his brain and imprint your memories. In essence, we replace your old dying body with a young healthy one. Senator, you are a very influential man. Say the word, and I’ll notify the Justice Department. We can make this happen.” Wadsworth closed his eyes and nodded his head once.
The following day, Wadsworth and Escobar lay side-by-side in the “operating” room. Wadsworth’s skull was capped with thousands of Electrocorticographic receivers. Escobar’s head was surrounded by a large bank of Electrocorticographic imprinters. The procedure took eight hours, and while in recovery, the body known as Wadsworth died. When Escobar regained consciousness, he smiled. “Doctor Colin,” he whispered, “It worked! And there’s no pain. I can breathe on my own. I can move my arms. This is fantastic. Thank you, thank you.” He openly cried.
After an extensive interview/interrogation by the District Attorney’s office, it was reluctantly determined that with the exception of a few minor inconsistencies, the knowledge and mental attributes that had been in Wadsworth brain were now in Escobar’s brain, and everything that was Escobar was gone. After the attorneys completed all the necessary paperwork, the new Wadsworth walked out of the hospital to a waiting hoverlimo.
A month later, Senator Wadsworth strutted into Doctor Colin’s office. He plopped down into one of the large leather chairs that faced the doctor’s desk. “Well, my friend, I as agreed, I deposited twenty million dollars into your offshore account. I never thought that we could pull it off. The detailed information that you provided me concerning Wadsworth’s personal background was invaluable. We fooled them all.” Escobar stood up and walked toward the door.
“Are you going back to Colombia, Escobar?” asked Colin.
“No, Clive. Not right away. I think I’ll stay in the US Senate for a while, and make an honest living.” He chuckled as he strutted out of the office.
