by submission | Oct 25, 2023 | Story |
Author: Toshihisa Nikaido
The woman jolted awake, surrounded by unfamiliar sterility. She didn’t know where or even who she was, until a cracked nametag dimly illuminated by a slit of light from across the room caught her attention—the letters “Ali” remained. She approached the faint glow, stepping on something sharp in the process. Her surroundings were too dark to determine what the item was or how badly her foot was injured, but she decided to pocket whatever she’d stepped on.
A heavy metal door slid open, revealing an endless corridor. One side boasted a spherical window showcasing an astonishing sight—Earth!
A noise rang from behind Ali. She spun, finding herself facing inhuman creatures looming from the depths of the dim halls. Fear consumed and paralyzed her.
“Remember your mission,” a voice echoed in her mind. “Our objective was to do a preliminary assessment of the planet and initiate the terraforming procedure.”
“You can’t do that,” Ali protested. “We’d all die.”
“Not us.” The alien’s appendage appeared to be gesturing toward Ali’s pocket.
Ali reached into her pocket and pulled out a small sharp object, the broken end of a nametag displaying the two letters “en.”
by submission | Oct 24, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
When I broke into the abandoned home, I hadn’t expected to stay long. I only wanted to get off the streets and out of the cold for a few days. I was pretty broken down. Being on the run for years will do that to you.
So, I’d hacked the home’s defenses and pried my way in. It was just my luck, though, that this had been a scrub’s house. The equipment was still there, though quite outdated: a classic ’37 Q-Res unit.
Only an old scrub like me would recognize it. Only an old scrub like me would want to boot it up, which is what I did. Damn mistake. Big damn mistake. I don’t know what that scrub who’d lived here was thinking, but it’s scrubber Rule #1 that you don’t store Residuals in your device.
When I booted the ’37 unit, it immediately linked to the home’s i-structure. I was to blame for that. In hacking the home’s protection program, I’d left the door open for the upload from the Q-Res. The result: a Residual immediately took up residence.
Epic cluster. I hate the term cosmic irony, but I’d just unleashed it. I’d spent the better part of twenty years scrubbing Residuals from homes, businesses, schools, hotels, you name it. Wherever remnants of past lives had settled and caused issues, I’d gone to scrub them out.
That used to be the job of shamans, witch doctors and exorcists, getting rid of an unwanted presence. It became the work of scrubbers in the early thirties after AI quantum consciousness was realized and led to an understanding of residual consciousness, the lasting space-time impact of intelligence, human or otherwise. Essentially, thought, perception, awareness left a trail—and sometimes a stain.
In the previous century, Carl Sagan postulated that we are the stuff of stars and in this century we learned we are the stuff of time as well. All past existences continue in the milieu of dark time, the byproduct of dark energy and dark mass (not matter).
Most past existences follow the enticing forces of entropy and hop on the Heat Death express. Some past existences resist and persist, keeping a certain potency and sometimes ferocity in their former surroundings. Residuals.
Over millennia, Residuals have been called many things. My years as a scrub only confused my thinking. I’ve dealt with terrifying presences and malevolent ones. Though most Residuals are merely fiercely loyal. Steadfast to a life I can only imagine they loved.
How lonely they must be. I realize that scrubbing them from a place did not remove their presence, it only sealed them away. Buried alive in death.
That’s why I was on the run. I’d given up scrubbing. Worse, I’d set about freeing Residuals. At the time, I didn’t know what I was hoping to accomplish. I guess maybe I thought I was leaving my mark by liberating these lost souls, before I became a Residual myself.
If I’d been releasing these unwanted presences for years, why then was I so worried about the Residual I’d just freed back into its oft-abandoned colonial home on the south shore of Long Island, New York?
Back to that cosmic irony. Entropy meets Amityville.
I think I was about to leave a mark.
by Julian Miles | Oct 23, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I look back as the car accelerates away. She’s standing there under the streetlight, perfect, one hand raised in tentative farewell, the box I gave her tucked under her other arm. Then pa takes a hard right and she disappears from view – along with the world – as I’m thrown sideways to brain myself on the chest of drawers crammed in next to me.
By the time I come round, we’re parked up somewhere. Pa is standing over me having a shouting match with a group of armed thugs. Which is just like him. Standing there with his opinion-emphasising finger prodding towards them as he alternates ranting with taking swigs from the can in his other hand.
“Damnation. Take the boy, then. Not like he’s useful, bein’ set on settlin’ down to be a crumb. I can always make me another. Maybe use the skank he was sweet on. Now there’s an idea.”
Something rises inside me. I sit up.
“I know you don’t know me, but do me a favour and save the girl. Shoot this prick and I’ll owe you.”
Pa looks down at me in angry surprise as the thugs burst out laughing. Then something roars from the shadows and my father’s blood rains down on me.
“I will take your service in fair payment for such a request.”
The men back off as a Benthusian ambulates into view. No cloak, six arms walking, two arms about a weapon like I’ve never seen.
The creature turns to the huddled men.
“We were to haggle over crew. One moment.”
It turns to me.
“Can you cook?”
I’m so far out of my d-
“Maisie can.”
Part of me is paddling hard.
“The girl you defended?”
Nodding is all I can manage.
“Is she a good cook?”
“Her mother runs a cake shop, her father a restaurant.”
“Will she want to travel the stars having adventures in rough company?”
One of the thugs steps out the huddle.
“Oi. Tentacle tits. We doing business o-”
The horror weapon roars even louder. The huddle of thugs become mist.
“Business is now concluded. Tell me, young man. What’s your name?”
“Carver.”
“I’m Val. As per the roamers of my kind, there are also titles and such, but between us, let’s keep it informal. If anyone should ask, I assisted you after your father was shot by brigands. Now, do you need anything from the vehicle?”
“No. What little I value is back with Maisie.”
“Then back we shall go.”
Maisie comes running out before the ship settles on the road. I slide down the boarding rod and am ready to catch her as she hurtles into my arms.
“You stole it?”
I shake my head. Her eyes go wide as Val swings down the rod, then taps it so it extrudes bars, becoming a ladder.
“This young man saved you tonight, just as I saved him. He’s now taken service with me. I mentioned I’m in need of a good cook. He said he knew one, but didn’t know if she’d abandon everything to fly away with him for many adventures.”
She runs to her parents. There’s a hurried conversation, then the women rush indoors. Mister Marsh approaches.
“You look after my daughter like you always have, Carver.”
“I will, sir. That or die trying.”
He nods in satisfaction, nods to Val, and walks back into the house. Unshakable, as usual.
Minutes later, Maisie charges back carrying my box and a bulging holdall.
She grins at Val.
“We’re ready to upship, Captain.”
Val ambulates back up.
“So it seems. Let’s go.”
by submission | Oct 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: Joanne Feenstra
A woman pounds on our front door. She is gaunt and tall, wet hair: short roots tipped with long dyed blond ends. We’ve seen that look before here in the Mercy Valley: city people. We’ve pretty much lived through the first couple waves of city folk. Now the gates are up: hardly anyone comes through.
“Emilia!” She pounds again. If I don’t move, she might not see me. I sit very still in the warm dark, in the heat of the wood stove, my hands stopped from pulling apart a green wool blanket. The blanket will be a sweater, something beautiful and practical.
The woman is illuminated by the faint moonlight that’s come out after the rain storm. She’s wearing wet wool pants and a huge black slicker that comes down to her knees. How does she know my name? I wish we had dogs. I’d just let them out. We don’t have dogs anymore, hardly anyone does, it’s too expensive and some of them, well you know, some of them got eaten. She probably saw the name on the faded wooden sign we had installed in the halcyon days before this.
It’s after 7 pm, when the electricity shuts off, so it’s dark in our house. The wood stove heat is warm. In the Mercy Valley, I’m the Knitter. I reknit anything to make sweaters and then trade for vegetables, fruit, fabric. Martin darns his own socks with the leftover bits, and I patch up our jeans. We do this in the quasi-dark and it’s comfortable and secure.
There’s a gun in the back of the closet. We mostly use the gun for hunting: deer and last winter, a bear cub. We tried wild turkeys but haven’t got one yet, too flighty.
She cups her hands around her wet face and presses it against the glass. I don’t move. We’ve decided that no matter who was at our door, we’d pretend we weren’t home. Then they’d go away or if they didn’t, Martin would take out the shotgun and then they’d leave. It makes it hard to sleep sometimes at night, not knowing if a stranger is lurking around. That’s why I wish we had dogs.
She kicks the door. “Emilia. Let me in. I came through the Ashfall Pass.”
The Ashfall Pass? I heard of people coming to the Mercy Valley from there, you come out in the park. There’s no gate on the trail.
My feet are warm against the heat of the wood stove but we can’t let her in. We only have rations for the two of us, beans and rice, doled out a week at a time, from the market. Used to be a store but now it’s a Ration Station. I’ve lost a lot of weight of course, we all have, and the skinny ones, well, they suffered the most during the early food shortages.
Martin takes out the shotgun, opens the door a crack and points the barrel at the woman. “Get out,” he says. “Leave this place.”
I slowly put down the unravelling and tug a blue quilt a bit tighter around my shoulders.
“Emilia!” she shouts, crying. I watch her bend over, bracing her bare hands against the door frame, her hair sloping down over her face. I hear her more clearly through the partially open door. “It’s me. Jocelyn.”
Martin turns to me. “You want me to let your sister in?”
by submission | Oct 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Shanna Yetman
Leila likes to lie within the algae when the air is thickest with smog—smoke, nitrogen oxide, and ozone particulates squeezing at her lungs, agitating her asthma. Today her chest is tight. The smog has sat on top of the city for days, building up as each car passes by, growing stronger with each puff of industry. The algae wash in and out.
Her throat is hoarse. Even so, she pulls down her N-95 mask. There’s no fresh whiff of air; it’s hot, and the world smells of coals and wildfires. Her nostrils widen and she puts her mask back on.
She gestures for her best friend Julian to catch up. “Come on, you punk!”
He scurries behind her in his old man bathrobe and pajamas. Even in this heat, his mom has swaddled him like a baby because he’s ill. Leila’s one of the lucky ones. Old bouts of pneumonia and fresh bouts of asthma scar her lungs. His lungs grow cancer.
“Hold up! You witch!” He pants. “Remember? I’m one of the unlucky ones.” He’s caught up with her and he wedges his finger right into her side. It’s a joke. These days, there’s no difference between the lucky and the unlucky.
They’ve both snuck out of their houses and headed for the lakefront. They’ve come to this beach though they’ve been told they shouldn’t. The lake is awash with chemicals like nitrogen and phosphorus. She wants Julian to lie in the algae with her; she’s sure it will make him feel better, if only for a moment.
These are the days when the algal blooms are brightest and cover the largest part of the water. The smog hides the sunset, but there’s a beautiful bluish purple along the horizon, and both Leila and Julian stop to admire the colors before they continue.
The lime green tide laps at the sand, and she holds up the caution tape so Julian can duck under. They ignore the signs warning them that this lake is not safe. Her mother has told her about the bacteria in the water that will kill her, especially when the water is green or tinged a reddish-brown.
None of this is true, at least not for her, and she hopes not for Julian.
She looks back at him. He’s bald from his chemo, so he does look like an old man. But he’s also twelve, and prone to fits of absolute goofiness, and this is what she loves the most about him.
Now, he’s butt naked and runs past her, grabbing her hand at lightning speed.
“Let’s go for a swim, you freak!”
They both rip off their masks and run until their feet don’t touch the lake’s bottom anymore. The algae envelopes them, spreading its lime green body around theirs; treating them like a spindle and wrapping its gooeyness between their toes and their arms, blanketing them.
Then it happens. The tiniest of the algae attach to the inside of her nose and snake their way down to her lungs and heart. It is here, they will stay, and implant. As these tiny plants secure themselves to the inside of her body, her head stops aching; her lungs stop wheezing.
She looks over at Julian. His skin is turning the lime green of the tide. The algae will work its own kind of respiration, replenishing their bloodstreams with oxygen while Julian and Leila breathe in all those chemicals it so craves.
The two friends float on their backs. They breathe, reinvigorating their organs with precious oxygen. At last, their lungs are fulfilling their purpose.
by submission | Oct 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Barber
The dry and sunny weather spoiled their holiday, confining them indoors until nightfall.
It was Lord Byron who proposed they pass the time by writing tales to entertain one another, and for two days the villa beside Lake Geneva was silent with their labours.
Doctor Polidori was the first to confess the reluctance of his pen.
“I have a notion,” he explained. “But it will not come right.”
Lord Byron was good enough to glance over the Doctor’s efforts.
“A conventional enough beginning, Dottori,” he adjudged. “You write about what you know.”
He flicked through more pages. “But vampires, blood feasts and the undead have been done to death. Perhaps you bit off more than you could chew.”
He paused for a moment, but no one acknowledged the wit.
Even worse, on reading the beginning of his own mundane tale of ruins, spectres and mystery, he frowned and tossed it into the fire.
#
It seemed Shelley’s story of a man turning into a beast had also foundered.
“I considered turning into creatures other than a wolf. Metamorphosing into a giant beetle perhaps. But the notion is hum-drum. I was bored with it.”
Instead, he mentioned a game he and his sisters played as children.
“Each of us would take turns continuing a tale. We called them round-robin stories.”
He held up a single page of manuscript.
“So I began with a mad scientist.”
“Really Shelley,” said Byron, unwilling to admit the worth of the notion. Still, an hour later he returned and read out the next chapter.
Shelley shrugged. “Gravedirt under the fingernails, body parts, reanimation and the like.”
“But this time the creature is a woman!” protested Byron.
“Well, there is no instinct like that of the heart.”
Next, Dr Polidori added some routine background; a remote castle, a laboratory and a lightning storm to provide the vital spark.
To Mary Godwin of course, fell the chore of completing the task. Had she and Shelley not speculated about this very thing? Also, she had dreamt about the story most vividly.
“Do not think ill of my poor efforts,” she said when she finished reading aloud.
“And though it is not explicit,” she explained. “The female creature sinks into Dr Frankenstein’s arms, with the implication that they marry and live happily ever after.”
A log collapsed in the fireplace, lofting a flurry of sparks.
“But that is for another hand to carry forward,” she added, unsettled by their silence.
It was Dr Polidori who spoke first. “I am uneasy with what we have done here.”
It was nearly the full moon and he admitted to a tickle in his bones, like water seething to the boil. “Perhaps it is just that which unsettles me.”
“No,” Shelly said. “We have created something new.”
He took the manuscript from Mary’s cold, undead hand.
“I do not know if the world of the Gothic is ready for this.” His voice grew solemn. “A tender romance. Two hearts that beat as one. It will be kisses next.”
Undecided, he went to the hearth, the firelight glinting on the bolt in his neck.
Lord Byron shivered, glad it would soon be dark and he could go out and feed upon elfin-folk.
