by submission | May 8, 2009 | Story
Author : Jennifer C. Brown aka Laieanna
“I can’t believe we’re referencing pop culture to actually get a look at the universe,” said Megan. She flipped another page of her palm size book. “I mean anything we anticipate coming down is probably in this thing.” Her purple painted nail chipped when she smacked her fingers against the hard surface of the cover.
Ryan heard all the important words but ignored the frustration. He was people watching only the term had to be extended with the arrival of a new neighbor. An Excalbian was ambling around the yard, touching rocks that decorated the outer edges while a group of guys moved large boxes in the small home sitting a distance from the street. Ryan poked Megan in the side of her arm.
“Ow, you prick!” She called out looking at him. Her eyes shifted to where he was pointing. “At least you know what you’re getting,” she said watching the rock monster for awhile then looking back into her book. “Not like those Elaseans that pretty much look like us. Did you hear the females are put on some kind of house arrest by the government to make sure they don’t really have a mind controlling drug in their body? The guys are a bit dickish, but fine.”
“Not everything in that old show is true. The creator had visions but made some embellishments for entertainment purposes. Like them.” Ryan nodded back towards the Excalbian as they passed it’s house. “They don’t shape shift. I think everything could shape shift in that series, but that just seems impossible.”
“And you don’t think that thing itself is impossible?” She looked at him incredulously. “Minarans proved their powers and now they all have high paying jobs in hospitals. I think they’re more important than a doctor.”
“Yeah, but some base their whole lives here on what the tv show said about them. Look at the Orion women. They’re all dancing in strip clubs cause of one thing in the show.”
Megan snorted and closed her book. “They’re probably making more than the Minarans.”
Glancing back at the Excalbian, Roger said, “It’s still amazing that a man could see into the far off future and create a tv show about it, filling in the blanks as he pleased.”
“Now they’re all finding their way to our world instead of us finding theirs. I wonder what the appeal is about Earth. They all seem to settle here, at least for a little while.”
“I think we’ve been pretty gracious and things have gone very smoothly. Well, except for the Tribbles incident.”
“Iconic episode and we couldn’t learn from it,” huffed Megan.
Roger rubbed his hands together, grinning. “I’m excited to see who…err what else moved in around here. I heard it might be a Tellarite or even an Andorian.”
“Of all the aliens in this book, why aren’t the most known ones coming to our planet?” Subconsciously, Megan reopened her book.
“Ask and ye shall receive,” Roger whispered. He jabbed her again. “Look who’s coming out of the building over there.”
She looked, annoyed despite the prospect. Stepping outside the main entrance of a three story, brick apartment complex was a six foot three, half bald, brow ridged male with a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and a pair of black sandals. He tossed his car keys into the air while whistling and strolling to a shiny blue El Camino. Megan sighed. “That’s not a Klingon. John works at the surfboard shop on the beach. He’s all about surfing. Nice guy, but has a real bad birth defect going on there.”
by submission | May 7, 2009 | Story
Author : Rosa King
It’s the fifth day and she still hasn’t given up. She sits just outside the range of the station defenses and she watches.
I look out of the window and shiver despite the warm fug of the laboratory. “She knows.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tom says. “It has no way of knowing what’s in here. You’re imagining things.” He catches sight of my hand where it cradles my still flat belly and sneers, and I wonder what I ever saw in him. “You’re anthropomorphizing. It’s a low level life form and there’s no way it will miss one egg from fifteen.”
“She knows,” I insist. “Look at her. She knows we have it.”
Tom throws down his data module and stalks away, leaving me to stare out of the window and face her.
The creature gets up in a ripple of iridescent scale and walks away, graceful on her six delicate legs. She disappears into the cover of the yellow bushes, so similar to our own but subtly different.
My other hand steals to my abdomen unbidden, and I stare at the space where she was and wait.
The alarm buzzes and Tom runs to the main console and swears. “Something just hit the back wall. How did it get past the defenses?” He moves to the airlock and the suits and guns, preparing to check the damage.
I stay where I am and, sure enough, she comes back and sits right where she was before and stares at me.
My chest tightens as I face her golden slotted eyes and I try to force down the lump rising in my chest. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, and I know that she wouldn’t care if she knew. Not as long as we have her baby. Something flutters under my heart and it feels as though my own child knows my shame.
I turn and look at the yellow egg, nestled in its bed of native sand sealed within a protective atmosphere. It glows red-gold in the warmth of the heat lamps and I watch it shift under my gaze as the baby tests its tiny world, waiting to see its mother when it wakes. Except it won’t, because we stole it. I wrap my arms around my abdomen and hate myself a little bit more.
She’ll be back tomorrow, and I’ll have to face her again, the same way that I have to face her every day until Tom decides that we have enough samples and we return to Earth with our stolen treasure.
I don’t think I can do this job anymore.
by Patricia Stewart | May 6, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Good Day space travelers. This is James O’Brien bringing you the latest system weather update. Solar activity is very low in the ecliptic plane facing Earth. No solar flares occurred during the past 24 hours. The solar disk continues to be spotless in this hemisphere. Earth’s geomagnetic field is expected to be generally quiet for the next three days.
“Well, things don’t look so good on the other side of Sol. The space weather prediction center reports that solar activity in the ecliptic plane facing Venus is expected to be very intense over the next three days. Currently, the solar wind is blowing at 8,000 kilometers per second, with gust to 15,000. Numerous C-Class events are expected, with a slight chance for an isolated M-Class event possible. High speed coronal mass ejections will reach dangerous levels for anybody in non-shielded areas. A Solar Flare Advisory Warning is in effect until the end of the week.
“Moving on to the northern polar region. Electron flux levels of…”
“Computer, radio off,” ordered Steve Aligninc, “and bring up the schematics for the propulsion system.” The monitor came to life showing a semi-transparent 3D outline of the ship. Seconds later, the fuel tanks appeared, followed by the fuel lines, exhaust manifold, combustion chamber, and the primary thrust high velocity nozzle. Finally, between the gas generator and the turbine, a bright red silhouette of the turbopump injector began flashing. “Well, Candunn, there’s the problem. If we can’t repair the injector before the storm hits, we’re dead men.”
“Com’on Steve, aren’t you overreacting? Solar storms happen all the time. If it was that dangerous, space would be littered with skeleton filled ships.”
“This is a pleasure craft, you idiot, not a science vessel. Remember, we told the rental company that we were going to the asteroid belt, not to Venus. Besides, we have to go outside to repair the injector. I’m not sure the spacesuits they gave us were designed for solar flare activity. Computer, is it safe for an EVA?”
“Negative,” was the disembodied reply. “The flux density outside the ship is already lethal to humans.”
“Fine,” Candunn snapped. “We’ll just hunker down for the duration.”
“That may not be safe either,” Aligninc pointed out. “Not if there’s an M-Class flare. Computer, it sounded like the flares are confined to the sun’s equator. If we fire the control jets, can we climb above the ecliptic, and avoid the storm?”
“Negative. The control jets don’t have enough thrust. It would take 15 days to reach a safe latitude.”
“Okay, what if we wear our EVA suits inside the ship. Would the combined shielding protect us?”
“Negative. You will be protected from soft radiation, but the coronal mass ejections would easily penetrate the hull and your suits.”
“Okay, what if we use the ship’s batteries to polarize the hull? Wouldn’t that deflect the coronal ejections?”
The computer actually laughed. “You humans crack me up,” it said. “Your understanding of basic physics is dreadful. Where did you go to school, Tisch? ‘Polarize the hull using the ship’s batteries.’ That’s too funny.”
“Okay, wiseass. Do you have a better idea?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” replied the computer. “All rental ships have a panic room, with X-Class shielding. You’ll be safe in there.”
“Panic room? I don’t remember seeing a panic room?”
“It’s the bathroom, of course. It will be cramped, but you shouldn’t need to stay in there more than a day or two.”
“Uh oh,” whispered Candunn. “I guess I shouldn’t have eaten those three bean burritos for lunch. Sorry, Steve.”
by submission | May 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Rob Burton
I watch Kamille comb her beautiful dark hair, and I can’t help but wonder what horror now grows inside her. She’s from a fine family, well respected travelling merchants, with enough money to have selected the best from amongst many possible children, with some low-level inconspicuous enhancements thrown in for good measure. Her eyes are a shade of blue found deep within a glacier. But, honestly, it is her normality that charms me most.
The merchants sometimes encounter distrust, most often ill-deserved. Travellers survive only by maintaining a reputation for honest dealing; it is the business that necessitates constant travel, not any need for anonymity. Low-energy transportation, dirigible air ‘barges’ (a history lesson few realise), are slow – merchant families must travel together. This is less true of those of us who follow.
Perhaps, then, it’s the presence of freaks like me that fosters distrust. Freaks were rarities once; sometimes simple aberrations, sometimes the result of inbreeding. The situation could not now be more antithetical. Births are never accidental, but part of a carefully planned contract, contraception ubiquitous, sex a recreational activity utterly unrelated to child-rearing. Now it happens only because one of the parents has reached the borders of speciation.
Even the poorest usually carry some form of gene modification – perfect eyesight and an enhanced immune system, if nothing else. But the very rich are something else entirely – a people apart, decadent and wasteful of their potential. If they fall upon hard times, the very code that lives inside them becomes their last source of wealth. Those amongst the lower orders who aspire to greater things will give everything they own to forge a parental contract with these glorious beings, and, thereby, a child. Without the careful attentions of the best doctors, however, such children sometimes arrive in unexpected forms.
It’s often uncomfortable for those of us whom appear so obviously different. People cannot help but stare. Hair where it should not be. Fingers fused, diminished or multiplied. Unusual height or build. The variety is endless, the result always the same.
It’s not unusual for us to attach ourselves to these travelling groups. We fit in well with others who feel they don’t fit in. Nothing so distasteful as a freakshow, you understand. I do not sit whist gasping onlookers stare at my patterned fur or my fierce yellow eyes. They come to see the musicians and players, similarly attracted to the nomadic life. Perhaps we add a little intrigue – a glimpsed strangeness amongst the milling troop. I clean the solar collectors atop the canopy, a dangerous task, and tend to electronic systems and engines. Nobody asks how I acquired the skills.
Most of the other ‘eccentrics’ (the polite term, I’m told) don’t even have the education to understand exactly what they are. Not me, though. Because I am a fake, no freak at all. I hide my grace with false mistakes. I pretend to see less well than I do. I keep my silence though I hear everything. I was designed, many years ago, carefully crafted. My family own a quarter of the western continent. I am quite old. I have many children other than the uncertain thing growing in the belly of my love. Her father, recently informed of my status, thinks that the child will be wondrous. I fear he may be right.
I could survive a famine. I have written symphonies. I can run for three days without rest. I was once considered a great beauty.
I just went out of fashion.
by J.R. Blackwell | May 4, 2009 | Story
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer
Rae woke up strapped to a table, which was hardly out of the ordinary, but always came as a surprise. She had a headache, but that was to be expected, since she had a metal bar through her forehead. Her fingers were smoking.
“Bergh.” she said, although what she intended to say was “I could really go for a coffee.”
Winston leaned over her, jubilant. He was always jubilant, no matter how much she was smoking when her eyes opened.
“It worked!” he said, repeating his usual script. He was so pleased with himself.
“Graah.” Rae said, when what she wanted to say was “Get out of my face.” He was always pawing at her when she was strapped down.
Winston whirled away, laughing maniacally. “Brilliant!” he shouted. “I’m brilliant!”
Rae felt that if Winston were really brilliant, he wouldn’t have to keep shocking her to keep her alive, but she wasn’t about to complain, mostly because talking took so much effort. Her tongue was not her own and wouldn’t always obey her. If she wanted to talk, she had to force it to shape the words, think about the pressing of the l against the roof of her mouth, the little whistle shape she had to make to say an S. It was too much hassle.
“I really am a genius.” said Winston. “Though no one understands me.”
How cliché, thought Rae. It’s because you’re crazy. And your personal hygiene is questionable. Rae sighed. Her sighs, at the very least, were hers, full of meaning. There were stories in her sighs, novels.
“They want you down at the office park,” said Winston, unbuckling the straps and throwing them across her giant body. “You remember your installation, don’t you?”
“Krrphh,” said Rae, when what she meant to say was “As if I would forget what I’ve been working on for the past three months, you imbecile.”
Winston drove. He drove a jeep. At one time, he drove a small Japanese car, but now he needed something with a roof that could be opened, so that Rae could fit inside.
“Doctor!” cried the middle manager when he saw Winston and Rae pull up into the parking lot. Rae’s giant sculpture bloomed in front of the building, giant silver tendrils, like a wicked tree. They reflected like in sharp, white lines, refracting light onto the grass, the building, back towards the sky.
Rae climbed up her enormous sculpture and let Winston talk to the manager. She bent errant pieces into crisp angles, the sculpture reaching in all directions upwards, towards the heavens. Winston explained that it was meant to be motivational to the employees, to inspire them to do their best every day. Rae knew that was bullshit, but explaining what it meant was impossible with her tongue.
Rae marveled at her hands, so compliant, twisting and turning, grasping. Like her tongue, they were not her own, but perhaps hands were more agreeable than tongues, or perhaps all tongues have rebellious spirits. She looked at her hands then, but they had no opinions.
“Murphl,” she said, because she felt like speaking. She ran her obedient hands along the sculpture, the metal edifice reaching towards the sky. She imagined rain clouds gathering, grey and that strange yellow color before a storm and then blue and white and purple electric light would strike her sculpture, and it would conduct lightning between the sky and earth, for a moment, dangerous and alive. The sculpture wasn’t some symbol of achievement; it was her, her own, a life between two places.
by submission | May 3, 2009 | Story
Author : Ken McGrath
Her name was Julia 13.
There had been twelve others before her, all exactly the same. The only thing that was meant to be unique about her, about them, was the number after the name.
But she started to act differently.
Unlike the others Julia 13 began to get curious. It had never happened before. The others had just accepted what they’d been told. Julia 13 had begun by asking questions. The sort of questions that made those around her uncomfortable and silent, the ones nobody wanted to answer or was even sure how to answer.
First there were the queries about her name, about the number which followed it. She then tried to find out about her forerunners, about the original Julia, if in fact there was one, or if she, Julia 13, was just a composite of many women. She was trying to find out about a past she’d never had, that those in charge believed didn’t belong to her.
Someone, one of the technicians on the lower rungs of the ladder that made up the Facility probably, let slip to her about the vat where the previous Julia’s, where she, had been bred. She learned where she’d been born, in a lab, in an artificial womb, deep below the Facility Building.
It had confirmed some of her fears, but she wanted to know more. She needed to find out about her ancestors, if indeed they could be called that, the other Julia’s and what had happened to them.
Her persistent questions had brought her the unwanted attention of the Facility Director though.
He’d let it run on for a while. He was curious too. He was always interested to see how his girls would develop and up until this one they’d all been a success. They’d all conformed. But Julia 13 was different to the others. She was much more inquisitive. In the end he decided that thirteen was probably just unlucky for some, especially since none of the others had shown this trait. In the end he had her removed.
Julia 13 did have a legacy though. After her they stopped giving the girls numbers, after her they were just Julia. Plain and simple, a name with no number, nothing to distinguish one from the one before or the one that came after.
There were certain elements of the past after all which the Facility didn’t want to keep on repeating.
