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?
by submission | May 30, 2011 | Story
Author : Travis Gregg
His vehicle crested the hill on his way into work that morning and it came into view like it always did. The billboard never failed to draw his attention, no matter that he’d seen it literally hundreds or even thousands of times, once every morning.
The bill board read “JACKPOT VALUE,” and displayed the current national lottery prize amount. Always the sum was extremely high, and inexorably his thoughts would turn to what he would do with that money, exactly as the company that placed the billboard intended.
For starters he’d build a brand new house with all the modern advances and without all the shortcomings of his current house. New houses were wired for holo over every square inch, had the bare minimum of furniture, and whatever kind of house you wanted could be projected with amazing detail and accuracy. “From the tops of mountains to the depths of the ocean,” was how the advertisements went. His house only had basic, and even if he had the money, it would be a waste to upgrade.
His personal flyer was a clunker too, the lateral stabilizers were beyond repair, he hadn’t been doing the quarterly maintenance and now they needed to be replaced entirely. “Why does everything I own need to be replaced?” he thought to himself as his craft hit some turbulence and shuddered with a concerning amount of force. The new models were supposed to eliminate turbulence entirely.
After that though, what would he do with all the money? Luckily he was fairly debt free, probably share some around with his friends, practically have to share some with his family. Put his mom up in a nice low gravity suite for her heart was an idea, send a couple nephews to college was another.
Still though, these paltry things wouldn’t begin to make a dent in that kind of money. And while he was thinking of what else he’d buy, the same thought crept into his mind like it did every morning. The reason why the lottery paid off so much money was that the odds were beyond astronomical. He’d have better luck robbing the local union outpost while simultaneously discovering the next energy breakthrough than trying to win the jackpot.
No, the only way he’d be wealthy was if he kept working hard and saved his money as best he could. He knew he’d never really be able to afford to build the grandiose mansion or see the outer rings like he planned, but he was happy and comfortable, and at least he wasn’t blowing a portion of his weekly allotment on an unrealistic dream.
The next day his wife called while he was at work. Apparently his neighbor across the street had won that astronomical jackpot. The total was more than he’d hope to earn in a thousand life times at his current job, and already (according to his wife) his neighbors had left for a months long vacation along the outer rim.
After that, he had to find an alternative drive into work, and instead of fantasizing about the lottery, he began to think wistfully of all those mornings he was so full of self satisfaction while his wife tried to ignore the recently developed twitch in her husband’s eye.
by submission | May 29, 2011 | Story
Author : Garrett Harriman
Mesdames Snell and Putnam clashed into the nurse’s office. Most weeks, their campy enmities proved indispensable in the rebuking of their children.
Not today. The diversity and girth of this congress fared worrisome. Present were Sloan, half the teaching roster, Nurse Doogal pacing a conspicuous circuit–a deputy? Plus some self-possessing stranger: dimpled and gallant, yet teetering guffaw.
With unspoken armistice, the mothers churned his hand.
“Thank you for your promptness, ladies. I’m afraid what’s transpiring here is no minor school infraction, but a grievous misappropriation of street dates and space time.”
Sloan (long dispensed with the formality of “Principal”) skittered forth. “Lilith, Miriam, this is Marvin Knot. Head of Public Relations at Temporal Bros. Toys. He’s here–”
“The company,” Knot preempted, “broadcasted its recall too late, but I’m now personally minding the entirety of the requisition. I was debriefing the precinct on Tide protocol when Sloan phoned to–”
Maternal floodgates ruptured: “Tide?” “Is Marcus Hurt?” “Recall?” “Where’s Toby?”
Marvin Knot simpered, dismounted it nimbly. “You two are unfamiliar with our latest…diversion, then?” Knot withdrew an overgrown lobster-blue die from his blazer pocket. It was bevel-edged, membranous, and bright.
“Our most anticipated summer product–the Iteration Cube–launches tomorrow. It exploits the same quantum isolation fields as our Slow-Mo Yo-Yo. Governing their fluctuations yields Time Skeins–our proprietary temporal snares–which enable the transitory persistence of exacting spatial envelopes.”
The mothers’ hips stockaded. You can skip the fineprint.
“Apologies.” Knot strummed his bow tie. “Fundamentally, it’s a space time manipulator for the mid-school demographic. Target children are committed to self-replicating loops, and anything’s a-go–burps to belly-flops, thirty seconds maximum.”
“That’s humiliating!” scorned Lilith Snell. “What kid’d memorialize his friend’s faux pas?”
“Denial’s a river in Egypt, hon.”
“Oh, don’t dramatize, Miriam.”
“Dramatize? Toby always gets the brunt of it!”
“Marcus’s a practical joker!”
“He’s a nihilist!”
“Ladies,” Sloan edgewised. “Please.”
Mrs. Putnam shied her fuse first. “Let me guess, Mr. Knot: Marcus used the Cube on my Toby?”
“Those were the abridged proceedings, yes. Unabridged, he eloped at recess, smuggled a unit, then pitted the Cube against Sloan’s cameras to reenter.” A momentary pensiveness grafted Knot’s expression. He stifled a titter. “Very adroit improv.”
“But these loops,” pressed Mrs. Snell, “they’re temporary, right?”
“Heavens, they’re relatively instantaneous for targets! Only this shipment’s auto-revising cores were, ah…neglected.” A quizzical hush. “I needn’t impress how devastating radiation can be for little egos, but when unregulated Skeins mangle, they excrete singularities. Tides. Meaning the event, and any associated discomfort, is experienced perpetually.”
Stillborn seconds bridged a gulf of maternal agitation.
“Our boys,” breathed Miriam, “are lodged in time?”
“Were lodged in a recirculating instance of time. For approximately fifty minutes. I’ve counteracted what I can”–he gesticulated his Cube–“containment’s the acme of the hour, but I can’t dissever Skeins outside of headquartersppththphfff!”
Droll chuckles overcame him, teachers. He purged his verbose tract. “You’d better see for yourselves. Miss Doogal?”
At Sloan’s approbation, the nurse rallied her keys to the examining room door:
The vignette’s petrified, the Cube its glowworm heart. Toby’s face writes tireless, vengeful glee; Marcus’s contorts like a Renaissance clown. Two actualized fabrics co-mingle in his buttocks.
Miriam Putnam laid eggs in the threshold. “Heehee! Of all the t-times to stand up for himself!”
Shedding his courtliness, Knot hugged Lilith, in throe. “There’ll be no litigation, Mrs. Snell. I don’t champion thievery, of course, but this’ll make an infamous grassroots prank: ‘The Subatomic Wedgie!’
“And don’t discourage, ma’am. He’ll only be Suspended for two weeks, tops.”
Principal Sloan said the exact same thing.
by Roi R. Czechvala | May 28, 2011 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
“Fucking bastards.”
“What?”
“Fucking Nip bastards.”
“What are you talking about?”
“First of all, they violated the Earth Non-Aggression Treaty by bringing the war to the home planet,” Larry Talbot said through clenched teeth, “then they bomb Pearl Harbour… AGAIN, and now this.”
“And now what,” his long suffering friend Neil Bohr asked with a sigh.
“You can’t see it?”
“What?”
“THAT,” he screamed, jabbing a finger at the 45 foot high letters adorning the side of the Hollywood hills.
“It’s the same old “Hollywood” sign… Ohhhh…”
Shimmering in a shifting iridescent pattern, in holographic letters a mere ten feet high, just to the right and slightly below the iconic sign that symbolized the wealth and prosperity of Los Angeles, California, read the words; “A SUBDIVISION OF THE SONY CORPORATION”.
“Bastards,” whispered Neil.
by submission | May 27, 2011 | Story
Author : Evan McCoy
Crecy knew something was wrong with the optics app when he opened his eyes and the world exploded into colour.
At first the experience was violent and a little frightening. He blinked several times and probably had some vague notion that this would clear his vision. It did no such thing, though the psychedelic interplay of random hues and patterns settled a bit. Now the colours drifted in coalescing waves of banding reflected light.
Disoriented, he tried to remember the surface he was looking at. What was it and how was it supposed to look? Flat, for one thing, where now it looked like a smoothly pulsing ocean of rainbow ridiculousness. White, for another. This was, he remembered, because white was considered by marketing to be both elegant and futuristic. A fitting backpanel to the holographic display he was supposed to be seeing. Maybe it was there, drowned out by the malfunction.
So caught up in this unexpected vision was Crecy that his hearing had completely checked out of his sensorium. In fact, had he touched anything or tasted anything more unusual than his own saliva, he would not have been able to process those perceptions either. Whatever his eyes were doing completely overwhelmed anything else. The apps that were supposed to plug-and-play with the optical component were in revolt.
And then it all switched back on at once and the colours in his eyes flexed in what could only be a sympathetic response. The hum of the machines in the lab were visible as oscillations akin to sonar. He could see the smooth laminate surface of his chair under his arm. And now, perhaps most bizarrely, he could see what his own mouth tasted like and it was about as disconcerting as it sounds.
Easy to forget all that when spirals and cyclones of vivid blues, greens, and reds were competing for his attention with every subtle shift of sound.
Before he fully realized he was actually seeing his senses as weather patterns of luminescent colour, he had time to dimly notice several dozens of hybrid shades he had never known.
The apprehensive urgency that something had gone terribly wrong with the procedure drifted off into the background of his awareness. Then a voice crashed through the spectral clouds that floated across his vision. Louder than everything else he was feeling, the voice was all Crecy could perceive. It was the lab tech’s voice, the confusion in it threaded through its greater aura in electric yellows.
“Obviously we miscalculated something…” it said. Crecy understood the words dispassionately, the fact that the implant had done something unexpected was abundantly clear. Rather than voice his agreement, he marveled at the nebulae left over the background sounds of the room by the intrusion of that voice. When it came again, these nebulae were absorbed in another cascade of fiery colours, like spilled acrylics on a watercolour landscape.
“The holographic overlay isn’t synching properly, you’re just experiencing a bunch of defrag and artifacts on top of cross-over to your other senses. Which means the firmware is affecting the other apps.” said the lab tech. Then, “We should turn it off.”
“No thanks, I’m quite enjoying this.” Crecy replied.
And, watching his own words take shape over the other’s like a flower in a regress of polychromatic blooms, he rather was.
