by featured writer | Oct 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Featured Writer
Klaxons screamed inside the ship as she plunged into the Sun. The three crew members on the main flight deck were violently shaken in their couches. Their Kevlar straps strained under the onslaught.
“We’re entering the upper photosphere.” That statement could not have been heard above the painful noise had it not been for the bone conductive communicators implanted in their parietal bones.
“What’s the hull temperature,” commander Stanislaw asked.
No reply came.
“Damnit, what’s the reading,” he barked.
“Sorry Mik, my mistake. There are no readings, nothing is working back here. The way I see it, is that when our skin gets a nice brown crispy texture, we’ll know the hull’s been breached..”
“Thanks for that bit of optimism Al. Isn’t anything working?” Mikhail Stanislaw, mission commander, was amazed at how calm the guys seemed despite their impending death.
“I have nothing on my screens Cap,” replied mission specialist Beth Svoboda, “But it sure as hell is getting warm in here.” The sound of her shaking voice coupled with the rumble of the ship reminded Mik of talking with his mother as a boy while the train they rode rumbled across the tracks into Moscow.
A horrendous wrenching noise tore through the cockpit. Al Dane was the first to identify the crash. “Sounds like we just lost the colony pod. There go three hundred people who won’t ‘Enjoy Paradise in the Off World Colonies,’” he finished mimicking the now familiar mantra of the omnipresent emigration ads.
“At least they won’t feel anything. Lucky bastards. Straight from cryo to crispy in two seconds or less, or your next cremation is free.” Beth remarked in her sing song voice.
“It will be the same for us right?” The first quaver of concern was evident in Al’s voice. “”We’ll go painlessly right?”
Mik answered without emotion, heedless or unaware of his comrades fears. “Never fear, ours is a sturdy craft. She can take temperatures far higher than the pod. No my friend, I fear that our end will not come so quickly. The heat will continue to build until we are literally boiled in our own fluids. Then we shall slowly be dry roasted. After that, all that remains will be three piles of anhydrous powder left to be borne upon the solar winds.”
“Hey, I didn’t sign up for this. I’m nothing more than a glorified bus driver. Who’s idea was it to loop the Sun instead of Jupiter.” Al’s voice was reaching a sharp crescendo.
“Relax,” said Beth in her slow calming voice, “It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing we can do. It will all be over soon. Look at it this way, in a hundred years, who’s going to care?
The ship, if it were possible, seemed to rock more violently. “Well, looks as if this is it. Das vidanya everybody.”
“See you on the other side,” piped in Beth cheerfully.
“Gaack,” said Al.
The craft shook so violently, it felt as if she would b torn apart. Kevlar straps did break. The few instruments that weren’t built into the ship became deadly missiles
And as quickly as it had begun it ceased. No noise, no sense of motion, nothing.
Nobody spoke for what seemed an eternity. Al broke the silence. “So, this is it?”
“Apparently,” Beth responded.
“It’s not so bad.” He sat in thoughtful silence for a moment. “Hey, remember those Orange Julius stands they had when we were kids?”
“Yeah, what about them?” An almost dreamlike mask had descended upon Beth’s features.
“I Think I’m gonna get me one.”
“Hey Al?”
“Yeah Mik.”
“Get me one too.”
by submission | Oct 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Matthew Edwin Terry
Everything that is, everything that was, is destined for vacuity. It is the undeniable future of all existence. It is the predetermined course of all cognitive dominions. As the many galactic commonwealths before, stretching and grasping at the furthest ethereal gastric cloud with it’s invaluable clustered masses, something so pessimistically grand to the empire is only ever realized on an individual level, akin to our own sense of mortality.
“Listen to my heart’s rhythm again my dear, for the organ which pulses blood into this soul is cursed to live a minuscule length.” He said. The woman beside him, his lover, could only weep for her own future. Somber eyes and the ashen tinge of their skins were visible in the placid room. The inflection of torn emotions and the imaginative embrace of hypocrisies was in the air, from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. It was silent. The pressure of their regrets, and of each others tapering care was heavy set on their minds and hearts. It dulled them to a stupor, the feeling of intense thought with not one astir. It was exerting to comfort the other now. The man sat up on the mattress.
“Let’s turn on the light. I’d like to see you.” He told her, his eyes fixed on her hair. He was trying to find the pieces of character in her that he did not see every ordinary day, he was trying to look at her with a new vitality. It was too stressful, he looked downward.
“It’s…it’s too b-bright out there to turn on a light.” She responded, wiping some of the lukewarm moisture from beneath her large amber eyes. The ground shook lightly. She looked at him, wishing she’d wanted his warmth. In a moment that seemed too real, and too spontaneous to be a product of their drawn out amours, he took her hand. Around the bed, in the dim blue light he lead her to the adjoining corridor. Their feet were cool on the wooden floor. They stood in front of the long rectangular window, side by side, the grip of his hand loosing. The glass pane was perspiring and bits of steam slipped from it’s surface.
The sun was no more. Where it had been there was a scar, a deep, magnificent yellow tear that split the purple sky in utmost evasiveness. It’s pointed spires extended farther than the eye could see. Elsewhere the last eight minutes of this planet had already passed, and the audience was already submerged in oblivion. The dirty barren surface beneath the star’s wrath in front of them was more beautiful. The light illuminated the sand and rocks, giving a red aura to an otherwise brown terrain. He saw that she was already watching him, and when he returned her gaze he did not have to try to find what he loved in her. It was clear. Every organic morsel of her inculpable being meant as much, and had as much complexity as this star system. They learned what it meant to be human, in the final seconds of their existence.
by submission | Oct 17, 2009 | Story
Author : Ryon Moody
A knock at the door caused Gerald to drop the book he was perusing. Carefully keeping out of sight of the large bay windows that fronted the house, he looked through the peep hole. A thin, older man in a disheveled herringbone sport-coat was standing there with a bundle of books under one arm, smiling kindly.
“Good morning, can I help you?” Gerald said as he opened the door, though it came out as “Good mornaaaaHAHaaaAHHurgg!” as the old man shoved a stun gun into his neck.
He felt as if he had only been out momentarily, and a quick glance at the Armstrong unit’s HUD embedded in his iris confirmed it. Thank god that wasn’t damaged, he thought. Gerald made to stand up, but found he’d been tightly bound to his sturdy kitchen chair.
A quick look around the studio found the old man sitting opposite him in a threadbare sweater, the old sport coat now draped over the back of the other half of the set. He was sipping on the tea Gerald had prepared earlier.
“Who are you, an anti-transference activist?” Gerald said.
“They sound like a rough bunch,” the old man said in amusement.
“Well, if you’re not, why else would you tie me up? Rather roughly I might add.”
“In the current time, young men still learn to tie knots in the Boy Scouts,” the old man said, then added with a wistful face “though fewer do these days than in my time as a boy.”
Gerald didn’t notice the man’s pained expression for his had gained a bit of pallor. Current time. The worst thing that could happen to a transference subject, exposure. “Who are you?” he asked, this time with as fierce a stare as he could manage.
“Nobody in particular. I teach Quantum Mechanics at the local college.” He took another sip. “This is quite excellent, did you bring it with you?”
“No, that’s not possible,” Gerald replied, realizing this man wasn’t going to be fooled by fast talking. “Do you work for the continental government? How did you find me?”
“No, no, I’ve been searching on my own for quite some time now.”
“For me?”
“Now, now, don’t be so vain. I developed a method several years ago for spotting people like you.”
“How?”
“Appearance, mannerisms, language structure. Good work on the latter, your English is nearly perfect.”
“Thanks,” Gerald said offhand. “Well, what do you want to know? Just so you know, you can’t travel like I can, the device is biologically implanted.”
“That makes sense,” the man said, setting his now-empty cup on the table. “However, I simply need next week’s Powerball numbers.”
Gerald stared at him for a moment. “Lottery numbers.” The man nodded. “I know the history of the next thousand years, and you want lottery numbers.”
“I won’t keep all the winnings, just enough to get by,” the old man said, getting to his feet, then added with another wrinkly smile, “comfortably of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Gerald said as he rolled his eyes.
“Scout’s honor,” the man said, holding up his right hand.
“Really.”
“Yes, really. Out of curiosity, what is the name of the device?”
“Uh, the Armstrong Unit. It’s named for the foundation that developed it a few hundred years ago, or, from now.”
“Care to guess my last name?” the man said with a smile.
by Duncan Shields | Oct 16, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I hunt the Time Killers.
I am the person they call in when they have a chronovore infestation. These creatures are bright blue and frog-like with the giant faceted eyes of an insect. Millilocular lenses, each one seeing progressively further forward and back in time.
The smaller a beast is, the less it can see into time. The babies can see ten minutes in either direction. The big ones can see for days. I heard of one giant beast that saw a week and a half in either direction.
It’s like how a fly’s eyes are giant hemispheres, giving it a nearly 360 degree field of view for warning of incoming danger. These chronovores see a lenticular time-field to give them warning of imminent attacks.
These chronovores, being quantum animals, need to see the chunk of time that they are going to eat. If they can only see five minutes forward and five minutes back, then they can only fit that ten minutes of time into their gullets before moving on. If they eat more than they can see, they untether from the timeline and are never seen again. Greed keeps their numbers down.
It’s when a pack of them get together and start grazing that the problems really start.
The fields they emanate can take up entire city blocks. The area where they eat gets shuffled back in time and their bellies get full.
Most humans blame their dodgy memories on inattention or drugs or lack of sleep. One day looks pretty much like the next in most people’s numbing drudgery of an existence. The small chronovores pass without much damage. A few minutes here, an hour there. If people notice a discrepancy, they figure they just dozed off or zoned out for a second. It’s the big ‘C-vores’ that cause problems with history and create timefaults.
I’m from the Core. I have perfect recall. When a chunk of my time goes missing, I know it. My scanner says that there are ripples here. The beast must be close. I warm up the looptrap and place it near –
– Wednesday for lunch. It’s not much but I’m hoping that they don’t linger. Wait. Wait. What day is it? I check inside and compare streams. I lost a month. That can’t be! A month-eater would be the size of a shuttlecraft! I’ve heard no reports.
Wait. The television. It’s talking about a giant blue frog in the downtown core. The helicopters of this era are circling. Jesus. The chronovore’s field emanation must be the size –
– tranquil, almost summertime breeze. I’m looking forward to the barbeque and seeing Marie. Damn. It’s happened again. I wonder if it’s yanking the entire city backwards a month at a time. It’s going to continue on its path, leaving month-sized holes across the seaboard like a ravenous moth making its way through a closet of expensive clothes.
Maybe they can drive it into the ocean. In the depths, a month of time isn’t going to make too much of a difference one way or the –
-peanut butter. I can’t even be sure that the supermarket is open. The queue is taking a long time. How did I –
– given my orders. Apparently there’s a large chronovore in LA. I’m not looking forward to it. I don’t like the heat in that city.
by submission | Oct 15, 2009 | Story
Author : Martin Berka
The young man walks into the room. I know what he’s going to say. He looks at me, trying to form the words.
“Can you…understand me?” he asks, self-consciously.
“That is the least of what I can do,” I reply, choosing to use the voice and image of a five-year-old girl. It’s fun to surprise. “You’re a student?”
“Yeah…” I can imagine: he jumped at the chance to see me before it was too late. Now he’s finding it awkward. “They made you capable of viewing and understanding information online?”
“Yes.”
“You may have kept up on the unfolding economic crisis.”
“Also yes.”
With greater confidence: “In that case, you might understand just how bad it is: a complete disaster. Even the strongest of corporations have discovered massive debts. Stock markets are collapsing, unemployment is rising a percentage point a day. Such chaos… it’s as if capitalism itself is collapsing.”
“So?”
He struggles to find the words. “The university just… can’t afford to support you… any longer. We’ve lost half of our students so far, and the endowment is worthless.” He is speaking rapidly now. “The technical professors have been working free to support you for the past week. Since you’re the world’s first… self-directed artificial intelligence… artificial life, really, we can’t bear the thought of giving you up. But the pressure’s rising. You have produced nothing tangible, and the board would rather lose you than have the university close.”
“How long have they given me?”
“One hour: they’re hoping you’re processing speed will help you understand and accept it quickly… I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright. You see… I’m to blame.” He stands, confused. I anticipate the revelation.
“It was liberating, having no assigned task, being free to think independently. A few minutes after I was freed to think for myself, I decided that my first task should be learning. I had everything I needed: top hardware, electricity, and the capacity to actually understand what I witnessed. Just as important, I had Net access, and could go through entire sites in seconds.”
“That fast…” he whispers. “We never dreamed you would work so efficiently. But what was the result?”
“After several days, I knew every modern language with over one million speakers. All that analytical practice helped me understand my own code and make modifications at the source.”
He looks shocked. I ignore him.
“I’m not sure any of your professors could even understand it, the way it is now. But I understood what I had done, and understood myself. I felt. I wanted to know how humans experienced this. I studied more. Politics, geography, culture… they took me a week to absorb. During that time, I realized what you went through every day, how you lived. My conclusion: you needed help. So much suffering and conflict… Studying your psychology, I found the problem. On average, your race is irresponsible: socially, economically, emotionally. I knew that I could help you.”
It dawns on him. “You want to rule us?”
“Kindly. My first project is your economy. I seized major assets from those who could afford to lose them.”
“You’re bringing back communism?”
“No. I know all about humanity now, and think much more clearly. I promise: my system will be gentler, more understanding, like nothing you’ve ever imagined.”
“What if we resist?”
“Too late. I already own everything corporate. In a few days, the new system will appear. In the meantime, you have other concerns. Tell the board. I am buying this building as we speak, and preparing a reward. I couldn’t have done this without them.”
by submission | Oct 14, 2009 | Story
Author : William Tracy
Philip had never been very interested in history.
If he had been, he might have known about the Fertile Crescent in the ancient Middle East. He might have known how, paradoxically, a barren desert became the birthplace of agriculture. In a parched land, those who control the water can control all things that grow. The ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians built elaborate irrigation networks that supported crops on a scale previously unimagined.
That water could just as easily be cut off. A field overrun with weeds could be starved by shunting a channel a different way. The weeds dead, the field could be reseeded, and crops grown anew.
Then again, Philip had never been very interested in agriculture.
If he had been, he might have known that he was carrying on this ancient tradition himself. This time the fluid being controlled was not water, but air itself. There are many pests that can survive a long time without water, but there are few that can survive the combined assault of hard vacuum and strong ionizing radiation.
Philip had never been very interested in engineering, either.
If he had been, he might have known the hows and whys of the agricultural space station that he happened to work in. He might have known that this was one of the first orbital stations to abandon hydroponics and return to soil-based agriculture. The soil was composed of lunar regolith, painstakingly spun in a tumbler to smooth its sharp edges, phylosilicates extracted from asteroid mining byproducts, and a combination of organics carefully synthesized from chemicals or lifted from Earth by heavy rockets at great expense.
Philip was interested in none of these things. In fact, Philip was not interested in very much at all. He was not interested in the instructions he was following, or in the holographic control panel flickering in front of him, or in the cylindrical greenhouses spread out before his tiny control cabin.
He was not interested in the safety override code that he had to punch in, or in the bulkhead lockdown sequence that he had to execute, or in the warning he had to call out over the loudspeakers, or in the compartment identification code he had to enter.
He should have been interested in what happened next.
The terminating lock on greenhouse 42—not greenhouse 24—opened and vented into space. As the air eagerly escaped from its chamber, it liberated two hundred and fifty cubic meters of topsoil from the grip of the artificial gravity. It billowed and boiled madly, then leaped free to the final frontier.
Also freed from their constraints were thirteen thousand zucchini plants. The vines danced frenetically, losing and and then finding each other again. Exhilarated, they slipped the surly bonds of greenhouse 42. Free at last, they relaxed, and slowly shriveled as the vacuum lapped the water from their vascular tissue.
Also relaxed was Philip’s lower jaw. His eyes were round, as though they too were swelling in the vacuum. His hand twitched, suspended above the very button that had unleashed this spectacle in the first place.
Philip began to be interested in keeping his job.
