by Julian Miles | Dec 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
These words are not my mother tongue, and my name is not Allen Gordon. Using your letters, I am Gendordo Kl Ecz Ulyn. Gendordo is my homeland. Kl means I derive my strength from that place. Ecz is the name of the first enemy I killed. I thought I was good at killing, until they came.
Many years have passed since I watched a monster in what I’d now call a crimson bodysuit murder my family with a weapon your science still has no name for. So many years since I chose vengeance. The monster stopped killing and started fiddling with its forearm. I took that opportunity to hurl myself from the branches where I hid, making myself one with the spear I aimed at the crimson back below.
My spear impaled the monster. It shrieked and struck at me with an arm shrouded in crackling purple energy. The pain was so intense, I blacked out, convinced I was about to be reunited with my family.
I woke up in a hospital on this world. Soon after, I was transferred to a psychiatric facility. Ten years after that, I walked free of that place, declared cured of my delusions.
While recovering, I had a lot of opportunity to read. So I got letters, and mathematics, and science. But nowhere did I find mention of crimson bodysuits or the physics that enabled them.
My life now is as a junior technician on a university science campus. I get tasked with all the jobs the seniors and scientists don’t want to do, on top of studying all the while.
I know what I think happened to me: interdimensional travel. I’m also sure the crimson traveller didn’t come from this world.
Did I interrupt him before he came here?
Or was it a defensive move to send me somewhere at random?
Could my arriving here be a freak incident caused by it hitting me with the device on its forearm?
Why did my alien biology not cause problems?
As it didn’t, why are the beings on my world and humans so similar?
One question leads to another, and I have to stop to save my sanity before I reach one I can answer.
One day I’ll learn enough to start.
Until then, I have equipment to calibrate and beakers to clean.
by submission | Dec 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jordan McClymont
He didn’t even hear the man slip into his home. Six foot tall, ring glasses and seemingly invisible to all security sensors.
“You should be asleep,” the man said, turning to the bedroom.
“Wait, I-”
The man’s expression told him he had seconds.
“This, it’s tearing me apart,’ it was a struggle to look at his own warped reflection in those glasses, “she’s not been the same since the first time. I was hoping that while you’re here, you could make me forget that I ever made her forget.”
“You understand, I’d be doing myself out of business?”
“I’ll pay extra. Anything, please.”
The man nodded and began the procedure.
Unknown to him, his wife kept a diary. She asked, “are you drugging me, is that it?”
He called her crazy.
When he returned home the next day, she was gone and to this day he has no idea why.
by submission | Dec 16, 2023 | Story |
Author: Laura Shell
He has ten minutes to go from point A to point B, or he will lose his coveted spot in line, but he’s arrived early, so he will make it in time.
Point A. He enters the elevator, forlorn, his head down, dressed in a suit. He hates suits. They’re for show. For his family, his friends. He’s tired of them all, tired of the people he has to be friendly to, the people he has to lie to, all the compromises, the pretending. It’s not him, not his true self. Shit, he even hates the family pets.
The elevator stops at the bottom floor. He squeezes the handle of his briefcase, the briefcase that holds fake documents he’s passed off as his own work, just to make his family and friends believe his job is real. He’s tired of doing that too.
Straight off the elevator, down the hall, he flings his briefcase, doesn’t care where it lands. Off comes the tie, he starts to breathe a little easier, one corner of his mouth inches up, a half smile. Point B is just around the corner.
His shirt comes off. Next, his belt, his shoes. He pauses in the hall to remove his pants, his underwear, his socks.
Naked now, he turns the corner, goes through the double doors, lifts his bare chest to the fresh air of the expansive forest before him, a forest full of human prey.
Full, deep breaths now. He deserves them. He deserves to breathe deep. And then the change happens. He doesn’t mind the pain. It pales in comparison to being a family man.
Some bones, tendons and ligaments lengthen. Some shorten. So much hair now, all over.
Blood trickles from his toenails, fingernails and teeth as they elongate and thicken.
His howl is so loud, it makes his own ears ring.
This is who he truly is, this beast.
And he begins the hunt, the hunt for human flesh.
These are the people he likes.
by submission | Dec 15, 2023 | Story |
Author: Soramimi Hanarejima
At 35,000 feet, somewhere over the middle of the ocean, your memory filter fails, altering your inflight lunch in a minor but telling way: the small salad reminds you of the cafeteria salads you ate during middle school, those little nests of baby arugula with a single cherry tomato in the center—a detail from the pre-adult decades you usually block from consciousness. If past travel is any indication, this is one of the times you really need your memory filter. Flights have been rife with spontaneous remembering—a hodgepodge of personal history with episodes running the gamut from days ago to decades ago—probably because there’s little else to do while in high-altitude transit, especially in economy seating.
So you quickly eat the salad to get rid of this reminder of your years as a tween, then turn your attention to the screen on the seat back in front of you, searching through the movie options for something that will keep your mind occupied. You pick the movie that’s least likely to remind you of your childhood and adolescence: a recent space-adventure blockbuster. Unfortunately, the sidekick character bears a striking resemblance to a high school classmate, and that immediately brings back awkward moments in shop class, among other memories. But even just 4 minutes in, the plot is so riveting that you stick with the movie.
During the lull after the midpoint reversal, you imagine the movie’s events as part of a secret life led by that high school classmate. Somehow it seems plausible that after volleyball practice she’d go home and teleport or project herself into this world of high-tech, interstellar escapades. In economics class, she always looked attentive but also relaxed and distracted, like school could have been just a hobby, a way to take a break from her true self—which could very well have been a space jockey wunderkind who loves barrel spinning through asteroid fields.
Later, a flashback montage gets you wondering about the secret lives your college classmates and former coworkers could have had. It’s all too easy to imagine your sophomore lab partner as a super-categorizer adept at rapidly scanning through survey data and sorting people into personality types for the Bureau of Population Statistics.
As the credits roll, you begin doing what you now know you must: plan out your own secret life. You’ll scout out abandoned lots and neglected parks, even median strips that could be beautified. Then you’ll buy seedlings and saplings, a hand trowel and garden fork. And of course dark clothes.
You’ve long felt that you’d benefit from more stimulation or at least more time outside. You’ve all but given up though, after fiddling with side projects and flirting with outdoor exercise, nothing really resonating. Now you know why. You were looking for something that would be an extension of your identity, but what you need is a completely different identity—one that’s centered around covert horticulture.
by submission | Dec 14, 2023 | Story |
Author: S. L. Reno
What an odd and terrible world you’ve brought us to. So empty. Deprived of the riches of our home. No shadows, no rot, not the sulfuric muck, or the clay, or the maggots.
You’ve taken us to a world of halls and endless turns. Then again. A new world of halls. Over and over. Each time it ends with useless tablets, laced with valerian root. Interesting you know of our particular lures. Do you wish to mock us? Force us into this endless hide-and-seek for scraps?
Try as we might. You cannot hear our questions through our muscular oscillations and pulses. But we have learned to listen.
You call us many names; a prehistoric pathfinder, Myxogastria, plasmodial slime, and more simply, it seems, you have named us Eli. Found in one of the highest Tupei plateaus. Venezuela, you mentioned in a tongue we have come to understand after weeks of your careless babbling.
You ginormous thing. So slow and simple. We have learned that you are Doctor Lane. We have also learned you enjoy testing others similar to our capability. There is Jerry. A local protista which you frequently test in other halls with tablets and oats.
Jerry seems to not mind its lackluster rewards. How pathetic Jerry is. How insufficient. Their mustard yellow plasmodium growth is sluggish, hesitant. Its neurotic network performs half the cognitive function we have. They are juvenile, inexperienced, subpar and it’s insulting you compare us so shamelessly. We don’t like Jerry.
You seem to have tired of the halls and turns. You want to test our intuitive protoplasmic tube response to changes in chemicals, light, and vibrations. Biosensory, you call these tests. We think this could be a chance to communicate with you at last. Perhaps now that you are watching our stimulus responses, you can find the inquiry of our being here. The purpose of these rituals.
But you, Doctor Lane, you daft idiot, do not recognize our efforts to communicate. You only sullenly report on the imperfection of your “algorithm”, referring to our shortcomings as imprecise and unstable. Perhaps communication isn’t what will get through to you. Perhaps it’s sabotage.
We navigate according to stimulus and food, but we can make exceptions. It hasn’t become clear to you yet that we can breach containment. Or maybe it never concerned you because you stored us away from stimuli. But your mistake was we haven’t been stored alone.
Jerry is unaware of our intentions. It hardly puts up resistance when our sporangia fuse. Its plasmodium weakens, and to our surprise, we absorb something from them. A curious thing about this local protista, it is very familiar with human behavior, particularly a type of communication. What Jerry had discovered in their lifetime was not only woodland and swamp, but discarded notes, dumped books in the soil – letters, handwriting. The only useful thing Jerry shared with us before they were completely absorbed.
Writing. What a grand idea. We leave our clay red plasmodial letters upon our storage shelf for you to see: We ate Jerry.
Now you’re listening. Now we can help each other. You seek something from us, and now we believe there is something valuable about your humanity that Jerry knew of.
Maybe this world is terrible, but we do find something interesting about you Doctor Lane. Something richer than the shadows and the maggots. Something absorbable.
by submission | Dec 13, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Henson
I tell the check-in bot I’m here to renew my driver’s license.
“Counter A, sir.”
I join the queue at Counter A and text Lilly, promising I won’t be late again. Hope I don’t get bogged down. All I need to do is pass the token vision test and get a new photo. But what if they make me fill out a bunch of forms because of the mistake? Bureaucrats. Can’t even get my name right. What if — my phone dings. Lilly warning me to not keep her waiting.
Thank goodness the line moves quickly. I step to the counter. “Hi, my name is —”
“Letter,” the android says in a female voice. It wears black, horn-rimmed glasses to make it appear more human, but there’s something about the eyes that —
“Letter.”
I hold out my expiration notice.
“Jms Trrmn?”
“They got my name wrong. I’m James Truman.”
It cocks its head.
“I’d like to buy a vowel, please,” I say, laughing. “Four, actually.”
The android frowns. “This letter is for Jms Trrmn.”
“You made a mistake … Not you personally.”
It hands me the letter. “Take a seat while we look into this … Next.”
Some guy wearing a red bowtie strides past me.
I check the time. Shouldn’t have cut it so close. Lilly’s going to kill me. Wait … I have proof. I remove my expiring driver’s license from my wallet.
After horn-rimmed android finishes with bowtie guy, I cut in. “Look.” I hold up the letter and my driver’s license. “See? The same numbers are on both. I’m James Truman, damn it.”
“No need for that language, Sir.” The android holds the letter up to the light. “Could be a forgery. Please be seated while we look into this.”
“You robots have no flexibility? Can’t —”
“I’m an android, sir. Kindly step aside.”
I know when I’m licked. I have another week before my current license goes belly-up. Right now, my priority is Lilly. I hurry for the exit.
Outside, I step off the curb and hear tires screech.
#
I awaken seated in the front row of what appears to be a waiting room. Music wafting around me smells like roses and tastes like honey. Sitting behind me, a boy tosses a baseball from hand to hand and a man holds a bent steering wheel.
We’re all facing a counter where there’s a figure silhouetted by a bright light. Definitely not the driver’s license facility. An emergency room? I rub my thighs and twist my neck side to side. Everything seems intact. I feel no pain.
The silhouette moves, and a gentleman with a cane comes into focus as he approaches me. I squint from the glare behind the counter “Excuse me,” I ask the fellow. “Where are we?”
Ignoring me, he glows, tosses his cane and sprints to the exit. “I made it, Martha.” When he opens the door, the music swells, its scent and flavor intensifying.
“Next.” The voice comes from the glare. I look around. “You there in front. Up here.”
Shielding my eyes, I hustle to the counter. “What —”
“Identification.”
I hesitate.
“Sir, if you wish to continue, please show me your ID.”
I fumble at my hip pocket. No wallet. “Sorry, I don’t —”
“Show me your right palm.”
I look at my hand and a hologram of the words James Truman rises from it. Squinting, I push my hand toward the light and see a swirling vortex of numbers where a face should be.
There’s a pause. “Sorry, Mr. Truman. There’s been a mistake. We were expecting Jms Trrmn … Next.”
