by submission | Oct 21, 2022 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood everywhere!
It’s okay, it’s not mine. Breathe. Just breathe.
Slow it all down. Don’t look at Jones, or the others. Don’t look.
The explosion, I’ll bet it was that problem with the gas supply that we reported. Those useless idiots in Maintenance, always too busy stuffing their faces to do anything helpful!
Never mind. Work the problem. The virus is in the air now. The laboratory is sealed, so I can’t get out. Help will be coming, but I don’t know when.
I count six dead bodies around me. Jones, the two lab techs, the intern whose name I can’t remember, Jo, Daisy. Oh, Daisy, I just had coffee in the cafeteria with you an hour ago. You were busy bitching about how selfish your boyfriend was, how he never showed you any affection. I just wanted to slap some sense into you and now…no, work the damn problem Jean, you can do this. Think! The virus only works on necrotic tissue. Thirty minutes from mortality till reanimation.
How long was I unconscious? It can’t have been long. I think it was just a minute or two, let’s say five minutes. So, twenty-five minutes until those six corpses get up again and start looking for protein to sustain the viral reaction going on inside their bodies. I won’t last a minute!
Did Jones’ hand just move? No, no, no, too soon. Relax. Work the problem.
So, the lab will have sealed automatically. The doors and windows are bio-level four secure, so it would take a rocket-launcher to even scratch them. There’s rubble over there where the blast came from, but there’s no way I could shift that without a JCB. So, I can’t get out of the lab myself. If someone from security finally deigns to show their face then they can open the doors, but otherwise I’m stuck. Bugger!
So, the virus. Developed to reanimate dead soldiers on the battlefield, so that they can continue to attack the enemy after death. There was going to be a method that would allow them to distinguish friend from foe, but that was stage three, which we haven’t got around to yet. So, at the moment they will just attack anybody and everybody. Brilliant!
But, the bodies. If I dismember them, they can’t move and won’t be able to get me. Yes! That’s it! All I’ve to do is chop off the arms and legs of my co-workers and everything will be fine! Ha! Wonder how that’ll look on my next performance review!
What can I use, what can I use? Six people, four limbs each, that’s twenty-four limbs. I have less than twenty-five minutes till reanimation, so that’s a limb per minute. I’ll need something heavy-duty to cut through bone. Come on, there must be something here!
“Attention!”
The tannoy! Are they trying to give me a heart attack?
“Due to a containment breach, Pompeii protocol will be enacted in sixty seconds.”
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Pompeii protocol! They can’t be serious. Napalm the whole level! Don’t they know I’m still down here? They can’t! They can’t!
Ah bugger. Daisy’s moving! I thought I was only unconscious for five minutes, but it must have been more. So, in the next sixty seconds I’m either going to be torn apart by ravenous zombies (Oh, they’re all moving now) or I’m going to be burned alive in a napalm firestorm.
Heh, my horoscope was right.
Work is going to be challenging this week!
by submission | Oct 20, 2022 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
We were fifty light years beyond Tau Ceti when the screaming started. The sound came up from the open hatch at the back of the flight deck, and if I hadn’t been strapped in my head would have hit the ceiling. It was inhuman, a wailing that rose to a shriek as if there was a banshee in this old bucket with us – which should have been impossible, but this far out, who knew?
In the sensies, another ship would appear in the nick of time, its gorgeous captain floating over in person to deal with our sudden emergency… but believing in fantasies like that is for fools and dead men. The glossy travel mags never mention it, and the recruiters who dig up the crews for gas haulers like ours brush it aside, but the most terrifying thing about space is its sheer scale. Even the great miles-long pleasure cruisers are infinitesimal in the vastness of the Void. How many ships drift alone out here, never to be found in the cold blackness? How many mutinies and desperate acts of heroism have gone unnoticed and unknown in the immense depths of space?
Whatever was happening here, we would have to deal with it alone.
I tried raising Madison, our other notional officer, but there was no reply. The captain and I looked at each other, and she jerked her head at the bulkhead. I nodded. She couldn’t leave the bridge – trouble loves company, and Murphy would make sure something else went horribly wrong if she did. Plus, someone had to be here to answer the hailer if a gallant hero did defy the odds to swing by.
I unbuckled, and took the pistol from the bracket on the wall. Yeah, I know, use only in case of piracy – but something weird was going on, and I wasn’t about to take chances. Out here, you make your own luck.
I popped down the hatchway, and floated along the passageway beneath. We’re not like those fancy liners, we don’t have power to waste on maintaining gravity all the time – something else the sensies don’t tell you. The screeching was getting louder as I made my way aft, and I fancied there were words in it; or baby talk. But there were no kids aboard. I could see smears of what might have been blood on the walls. This didn’t look good at all.
I rounded the corner to the drive control room, and I could instantly see why Maddie hadn’t answered: she was huddled around our other crew member, Ali, the ship’s cat, as she struggled loudly to bring new kittens into the zero gee.
“Here,” I said, putting up the gun. “Let me help.” New lives in the enormous emptiness, and a whole new challenge.
by submission | Oct 19, 2022 | Story |
Author: Bryant Benson
Timothy sat in a brightly lit, featureless room. Across from him was a woman with thick glasses and a tight bun. She was as institutional as the room and had yet to look up from her clipboard. After an agonizing amount of time passed, she clicked her pen closed and spoke.
“Timothy, how long have you known Margaret?”
Timothy bolted awake and replied with a smile.
“Oh, we’ve been friends as far back as I can remember. Yes, we’re…well, we were quite close.”
His tone dropped as his smile dissipated.
“Friends? Close?” The woman glanced up at Timothy for the first time and raised an eyebrow.
“It’s okay. We expect you to care. That attention to detail is why we’re the best in the business.” She continued, without feeling, “So you do understand that Margaret is no longer with us?”
Timothy looked down at his fidgeting hands and breathed, “Yes.”
The woman clicked her pen open and scribbled on her clipboard before speaking again, “Now tell me Timothy, do you miss her?”
Timothy closed his eyes and thought back to Margaret’s fragile skin that would break often. He would tend to her tiny wounds while she told him of the concert halls her hands would fill when they were once capable of playing the piano. He remembered that she was afraid of thunder and would lay her graying head on his shoulder on rainy nights until she would fall asleep. He would stay there all night, wondering how it would feel to sleep like her.
He knew what he had to say. Timothy opened his eyes and replied, “No.”
She proceeded, “Excellent, we will have a new assignment for you tomorrow morning.”
She stood up and turned toward the door.
“Wait,” Timothy stammered, “So soon?”
She turned toward him with a perplexed look and spoke sternly, “Well yes, I didn’t think the time would be so relevant.”
Timothy hung his head and stared at his reflection in the cold metal table. The woman slid back into her chair and leaned forward.
Quietly, she asked, “Are you…sad?”
He nodded in agreement.
She glanced back at the large mirror behind her and raised one finger.
In the most sincere sounding voice she could muster, the woman asked, “Why are you sad Timothy?”
Timothy’s voice cracked as he spoke, “I loved her.”
The woman inhaled as she placed her hand on Timothy’s and whispered, “I know you did.”
The interviewer nodded toward the mirror. She let go of his hand, stood up, and walked out. Before the door closed behind her it was pushed open by three figures in bulky yellow hazmat suits. They grabbed Timothy as if they were simply moving furniture.
Timothy returned to his memories of Margaret. He saw her smile as she danced in her living quarters back when her legs still worked. She was all he ever wanted to care about.
He accepted his fate and was escorted out of the interview room. He was led into a much larger room with a massive exam table. Timothy was docile and silent as a long cylinder was driven through the base of his skull. His lifeless body was shoved into a chute where it landed atop a pile of other underperforming drones.
In the days that followed, his synthetic skin was melted down to be recycled as a cost saving measure. The device that pumped circulatory fluid through his veins was disassembled to be refurbished. His brain was incinerated along with whatever belongings Margaret left behind that went unclaimed by her surviving family.
by submission | Oct 18, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“You’re a what?”
“A panpsychist.”
“Whoa. Trippy. You psychoanalyze cookware or something?”
“In a way.”
“Really? Double trippy.”
“Panpsychists study consciousness with the belief that all matter is conscious. From a frying pan to an amoeba to a rock to a duck-billed platypus to that joint you’re smoking.”
“So, I can talk to my doobie? Triple trippy. It is truly a Doobie Brother!”
“Unlikely. Remember, consciousness has nothing to do with intelligence or the ability to communicate. It’s all about resonance, oscillations between two states, and the ability for the right type of vibrations to sync. Shared resonances that expand to more and more constituents can achieve greater complexities—especially in the gamma, theta and beta waves of human neuro-electric activity. So, I don’t think your doobie will be talking to you anytime soon.”
“Oh, man, but it has lots to say. Smokin’ A.”
“I’m sure. But I really need you to focus on this next part.”
“Is this the test?”
“It’s all just a test that we’re really here. Consciousness is our quantum check on reality, and reality is simply all the observable possibilities combined into a single wave function.”
“Surf’s up, dude. Cowabunga. Quatro trippy. Quatro trippy.”
“Indeed. Are you ready?”
“First, take a hit with me, man. We gotta generate some good vibes.”
“Now you’re seeing it. That’s what it’s all about. Good vibrations. Shared and shared alike. So, give me that hit. And talk into the lava lamp.”
by Julian Miles | Oct 17, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’ve just got back from the pyre lighting when a grey and blue Mercy drone descends from the overcast and beeps cheerfully at me. I fish around in my pocket and pull out our fob. After I confirm my thumbprint, the provisions box drops to the ground.
The drone plays an audio clip before rising back into the clouds: “Hello, Mile Oak Foodbank. This message is to let you know this drone shipment will be your last. Due to resource contention amongst the orbital provisioning platforms, we are having to reduce Mercy coverage to areas with the most need. We wish you well, and have included a seed package containing a diversity of crops carefully selected to be compatible with your local area.”
There’s a grim synchronicity in this. The day we say goodbye to Gracie, the supplies stop. She’d always said they would, even though her partner, Minerva, disagreed. They started this place together soon after they arrived with refugees from Shoreham. They’d have gone to Bramber New Port, but couldn’t get a boat across – which was the saving of us up here.
“Tim, what do we do now?”
I turn to Sharon, Minerva’s daughter.
“All the ration bags get halved from tonight, and we give everybody warning. People need to start thinking about how they’re going to get over to Whitehawk, and Mayor Turner will need to negotiate safe passage with the Hangleton Century”.
“You think he can do it?”
“Not in this lifetime. But with him and his officers up there being self-important, we can sort out that alliance with the Portslade Irregulars the Mayor rejected.”
“Only because Drusilla ran off with their deputy. Rumour says she leads them now.”
“She does. But family disagreements are no reason to put us all in danger.”
I look into the provisions box.
“We’ve been given over full measure. Adding what we’ve got, that gives about twenty days for us to organise a merger, a mutiny, and a migration.”
“You going to lead us, Tim?”
Not likely.
“I’m going to let Drusilla take that honour. Gives some legitimacy for those of us who like the born-to-do-it thing. The mayor’s daughter leading us to safety. Cosy.” I grin at Sharon.
She giggles.
“True. The hardliners will like it, especially the ones who think Mayor Turner’s soft.”
“And where the hardliners go, the undecided will follow. End result, we migrate. Somewhere along the way, the hardliners will try to take over, and Drusilla will put them down. Which will neatly complete the merger.”
“The ringleaders are Fiskal and Drew. They’re cunning – Mayor Turner only ever catches their lackeys.”
“Which is why I’ll be pointing them out to Drusilla. With them known, intervention will be waiting when they try something. They’ll be dead before they can make further trouble.”
Sharon steps back and stares at me.
“You’ve been planning this with Drusilla for a while, haven’t you?”
“Gracie talked about the drones. It was Drusilla who explained it to her. I’m not planning anything. I’m just following the long-term vision of the one person I’m sure is up to the job of leading us through this.”
She thinks it over, then nods.
“Good enough for me. Let’s get busy. There’s a lot of packs to unpack, divide, then bag up again.”
Plus a lot of people to tell. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, but a little hope goes a long way. It’s always a saving grace – unless it turns delusional. But we’ve become skilled at spotting and stopping that.
“Tim. Unpack while you daydream.”
I grin.
by submission | Oct 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: Ken Poyner
The robot has seen his finger smashed by the iron press. His job is to slide uncoiled metal plates into place for the iron press to complete flattening them. But the press came down while the target was still being settled into its brackets. He has to report to the maintenance supervisor, suffer damage assessment, be queued for repair. The maintenance supervisor has seen this before. It is a regular fault. He could order a recalibration of production floor timing, ensure this stops happening. But he is an older model, and not all of his grievances have been zeroed out.
