by J.R. Blackwell | Jul 14, 2008 | Story
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer
Joseph’s Grandfather knocked down the cabin door, and stood silhouetted in the blue morning light of Io. Inside, Joseph and Thomas and Betti and Lil lay sprawled over the king sized bed, naked. The room smelled like sex and sweet wine.
Joseph sat up in bed and Thomas squealed, pulling the covers off of Bettie and Lil to cover his naked body. Lil rolled out of bed and Betti rolled over, unaffected by the sudden noise.
“Granddad!” cried Joseph.
“Joseph Hieronymus Gabriel Nightingale Dashhound!” cried his Grandfather. “This is just as I suspected.” Josephs Grandfather, Bartholomew Rubin Sora Flashrim Dashhound, was tall and imposing, a man with a beard to his shoulders and a wide brimmed hat.
Around the corner of the door came Lil’s mother, wielding a laser rifle. “Lil!” she said, “I’m so ashamed of you. I didn’t want to believe that you and your husband were sleeping around, but here it is.” She shook her head, her brown curls bouncing. “Just wait till your father hears about this. You have shamed our family. ”
“Keep your head on Gretel,” said Bartholomew.
“What are you doing here, mom?” said Lil, standing, full naked and defiant in front of the two elders.
“Bartholomew told me that he saw you and Thomas coming up to the cabin night after night, and I didn’t believe him . . .I told him it was innocent.” She sobbed, her rifle shaking. “But now I feel so blind! So foolish!”
“We can do as we like,” said Lil, standing tall, her hands on her wide hips.
“Young woman, this is not Earth. This is the Dark Side of Io. I moved away from the cesspit Earth so that my family could live in a community with moral standards,” said Bartholomew. “You cannot just go fooling’ around here. Not after how hard we worked to make Io a moral place.”
Joseph finally found his voice. “What are you saying, Grandpa?”
“I’m saying that you aught to make an honest woman and man and woman out of these people!”
“But Grandpa!”
“I mean it!” said Bartholomew “I’ve already sent for the Pastor. She’s on her way up here to make it official.”
“But Mom!” said Lil “It didn’t mean anything. It was just for fun.”
“This was the first, time, I swear!” squealed Thomas, clutching the sheets. Betti had finally woken up and was clinging to Thomas’s waist, eyes on Gretel’s laser pistol.
“Don’t listen to them, Gretel,” said Bartholomew. “We’ve got to be strong. I know they’ve been at this for a while. I’ve seen them coming up here, night after night, with wine.”
“Wine doesn’t prove anything,” said Thomas.
“You think I need proof after seeing this?” said Gretel.
“I’m not ready to have a husband and second wife,” said Joseph. “I’m too young!”
“If you’re going to fool around like this then you aren’t too young,” said Bartholomew.
“You can’t force us to marry,” said Lil, crossing her arms over her considerable chest.
“Oh can’t I?” said Gretel, flicking a switch to power up the laser pistol “I think you’ll be getting married today, you all like it or not.”
“You’re going to need a bigger cabin Joseph,” said Thomas.
by submission | Jul 13, 2008 | Story
Author : William Tracy
A stranger walked through the door of the diner. The man sported sunglasses and a comb over. He was sweaty from driving through the desert in his suit. His collar was disheveled; his tie was loose. He must have been lost—people like him were not common in this corner of New Mexico.
Another man stepped up behind the counter, wiping his hands on a ragged towel. “Hi, I’m Larry. What can I get you?” Sweat and grease struggled to dominate his odor, and stubble adorned his round chin.
The stranger asked for the special; Larry shouted the order back into the kitchen, then went back to scrubbing the counter. Larry quizzed the stranger about his business, got no response, and proceeded to alternate between extolling the virtues of small town life and singing along with the radio.
The food was ready. Larry laid the plate and a tall glass of cola in front the stranger. The stranger proceeded to eat.
“We get all sorts of people out here,” Larry announced. “You wouldn’t believe what sorts we get.”
The stranger ate for several minutes, while Larry cleaned and rambled. The stranger had worked his way through most of the meal when Larry leaned forward, elbows on the counter, and added conspiratorially, “They say over in Roswell that space aliens crashed in the desert a while back.”
The stranger studied his food with renewed interest.
Larry continued. “Some say that the aliens have been visiting us for many years now. They think the aliens disguise themselves as people, to study us, and that anyone you meet could be an alien.”
The stranger failed to acknowledge the information.
Larry looked over the other customers in the diner. They all had heard Larry’s stories before.
Larry leaned closer still—his halitosis was palpable—and whispered, “There’s an alien right here, right now. You wanna know how I can tell?” he looked around the room again, and added, “I’ve been inside one of the flying saucers.”
The stranger stood up abruptly, and cleared his throat loudly. “I would like to pay my bill, please.”
“Certainly, sir.” Larry rang up the sale.
As the stranger walked out the door, Larry yelled, “Come again soon!” The stranger did not speak, or look back. Larry whistled as he worked his way to the end of the counter with his ragged towel.
“I’m going on break!” he shouted back into the kitchen, and ducked into the men’s room.
Larry locked the door, and smiled into the mirror. His flesh rippled, and his body flowed into its natural form. The creature that called itself Larry drained its distended fluid sacs into the toilet, then flushed.
Reverse psychology works very well on these humans.
by submission | Jul 12, 2008 | Story
Author : Jacinta A. Meyers
He had a reputation from the time he brought in his first kill from the lush planet. Walked through the warden’s office lugging the thing in a sack over his shoulder. Everyone involuntarily gasped when they felt the floor shudder, heard the thunder of his steps and looked up.
Before he was a hunter, he had been a builder. You could tell by the enormous honed muscles, his foul speech, his burly way of leaning. He dropped the sack to the floor and leaned over the counter, making it creak with his weight. “Got one,” he said.
“Right,” I said, pulling out a form. “What kind of an entry?”
“Sentient-intelligent.”
Ah. “Weighing some brains today?” My fingers twittered over the keyboard, entering the order. To my right a little door in the wall hissed open, allowing a tray to ease forth with a prepared canister full of preserving fluids. “Why don’t you bring it around.”
He hefted the sack up over the counter. Well, that was one way to do it. I undid the tie. And gasped.
It was the biggest cranium I had ever seen.
My tools were ready. I brought down the hose to suck up the noxious fumes of death while I worked. My hands were deft; sever the head from the body, incision here, incision here, and the skin pulled away clean. Insert the chisel here, between the two primary skull plates. Quick bump and open. Use the tubes to suck up excess fluids, pry away veins and capillaries…
At last, my gloved hands slipped the prize from its nest. I carried the gooey mass to the scales and set it down.
“Bastard. You don’t got the stem!”
“It’s the rules, mister. Stems don’t count toward the final measurement.” I focused hard on the numbers as they slowly stopped moving up.
1,672.12 grams. “A new record,” I breathed. Picking the brain back up, I carefully moved it to the canister and set it down into its new home. I shook my head. “That’ll make some trophy.”
The hunter was still leaning against the counter, picking at his pointy teeth with one large claw. He straightened a little when he saw me take my place again behind the keyboard. “Well?”
“I have confirmed the record. Congratulations,” I said. “Now we just have to finish the forms. Can I see your system license?”
He belched before passing a chip across the counter to me.
“Great.” I cringed and flicked it into the computer drive. “Sentient-intelligent. Specimen, brain. Species, homo sapien. Oh…” I looked up. “Where on Earth did you say you bagged this one, again?”
by Sam Clough | Jul 11, 2008 | Story
Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer
Jack sighed, and tabbed through the moment’s top links. They hadn’t changed much since earlier that morning: still the usual desultory mix of politics, tech articles, and irreverent ‘humour’. Lolcats had been ceased to be funny almost as soon as the merchandising hit.
He peeled the interface wafer from his neck. The flexible plastic bilayer pulled away from his skin cleanly. Almost as soon as he did so, it emitted a ‘message received’ chirp. With a due sense of foreboding, he smoothed it back across the accustomed spot under his collar.
His customised newsfeeds immediately began to scroll across his vision. With a blink, they were obscured by the new message. It was from Dog, a gamer he’d met months ago.
—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
Hash: SHA1
Traffic analysis is great fun. I wrote a tool to track effective votes on all political matters. Whilst it seems that around sixty percent of those eligible do actually participate in our fine democracy/anarchy/infocracy – (did anyone ever decide on what to call it? Surely the germans have a decent compound noun for this. Anyway..) – but those votes are controlled by maybe ten percent of the eligibles. People seem to have, by and large, unconsciously given proxy power to an elite few.
This is what I’ve been waiting for. Hard data that shows I’m right. This isn’t a free state. Nothing like it.
I think I’ve found a way to concentrate popular opinion against these ‘power-users’.
I’m going full broadcast with the attached files soon. Have a look.
—–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (ThinWafer)
iEYEARECAAYFAkhoxRAACgkQWGnj9RCW8PKOqQCgjzOuYxQ7qjL8+qYqIFy2OHEn
3FsAn1YdZ2njpkhwZqCyAvGB8yUqniMy
=i2sv
—–END PGP SIGNATURE—–
That was Dog. Paranoid to the core. But he had attached signed data from the politics section. After all, you were only paranoid if you couldn’t prove it: and Dog’s scanner had bought up some passably interesting facts. The names changed, and drifted over time, but there was a core of identities that voted on every political motion that was bought up. And it was always to bury any outside submitted, or to vote up motions of their own.
—–BEGIN UNSIGNED MESSAGE—–
Unlike you, I’m not paranoid. Although for once you’ve managed to assemble something somewhat convincing. I don’t see how we can use it. There’s nothing we can do, frankly. And who cares? I’m going to shoot you some lol* — have a laugh, lighten up. I’m going to go outside.
—–BEGIN UNSIGNED SIGNATURE—–
wakkawakkawakkawakkawakka!
—–END UNSIGNED SIGNATURE—–
Jack felt a twinge of guilt at his slightly caustic reply. Some people never learnt, though, so he dismissed it. Dog would just feel more self-righteous. Jack connected to the CCTV spider he’d loosed into the net. He asked it to track down Dog. The mapped path showed a slow spiral inwards, avoiding high-density cam and mic coverage, headed straight for the forum: the base-in-reality for political debate. The forum was large enough to accommodate a few thousand; it was rarely packed to capacity. There was no real advantage to going there in the flesh, anyway. An alert flashed up: Dog was offline. Dog was never offline.
Jack was running hard, already halfway to the forum by the time he figured it out.
Every channel was suddenly full of Dog’s data, and locked from editing. Then a fireball blossomed from the top of the forum, both real and virtual. The political channels timed out, died, only to return as static error pages. A ripple of explosions toppled the building.
by submission | Jul 10, 2008 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
Here’s me, walking through the deserted streets of Chicago. I can see a few ravens pecking at some unidentifiable detritus in the gutter; somewhere, a car alarm is weeping to the night sky, and I can still smell the restaurant exhaust on the breeze.
Here’s me again, now searching an abandoned shop for something more nourishing than chocolate. Don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate, but the body craves salts and proteins… more’s the pity. Chips are good in a pinch.
I wonder what will happen to the water supply? Theoretically, the underground reservoirs will be shielded enough to avoid contamination, but most of Chicago’s city water comes from open-air cisterns. I should only drink bottled water, until it runs out. Then I’ll have to find a library and do some research; there must be a deep self-contained reservoir not too far from here.
Hey, I can scream in the library and no one will care.
I’m all alone, but there are plenty of other people around. Not moving, of course, but who needs to these days? Last time I saw independent movement that wasn’t animal was on TV, and that stopped after a couple of days anyway. End of times, worst of times… most serene of times? The ELF would be delighted, but I guess when there aren’t any human members to know or care the point is a little bit moot.
Yeah, the water thing bored me too. No point; plenty of bottled water. No electricity, but I can scrounge a generator from somewhere if I need it. Now I just need something to do for the rest of my life.
I could travel; plenty of fuel for that, but it seems somewhat futile to go anywhere. Gasoline will gel eventually, so I should use it while it’s still good. I could devote myself to recording our history in some invulnerable form, like carving it on a mountain face for future civilizations, but I doubt I could get farther than my own little life before I die of exhaustion.
Come to think of it, every possible form of media that tells our story will degrade beyond comprehension before anyone gets to read it. Whenever this kind of thing happens in fiction, there’s always a motivation, a need to tell the story of humanity and the mark we left on the planet. It’s just… I don’t think there actually is a mark. “When all is said and done,” they say, but now all really is said and done and that’s it. There’s nothing left. There’s no second coming, no messiah, and no future for anything that could conceivably call itself intelligent.
Just me. Nothing else. No magically surviving camp of refugees, no single person of the opposite sex conveniently named “Eve,” no gods descending from the skies.
And certainly nothing that could remotely be called a future.
Right. Here’s me, walking through the empty, desolate streets. The car alarm is silent; battery must have run out. The ravens are gone; better pickings elsewhere. The evening wind has blown away all recognizable human scents, and I think that the smell of all those other people will start to fill the air very soon.
Here’s me, walking along, my finger on the trigger.
by Duncan Shields | Jul 9, 2008 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Nothing could live in a volcano. That was the assumption of the landing party.
The twenty-meter slab of articulated rocktopus that turned a diamond eye to these squishy walking icicles of meat was puzzled at first, then alarmed. The meat icicles were walking the perimeter around its crater-nest.
A long arm accordioned out and snagged one for a closer look. Clumsy, clumsy, superheated rocktopus. The meat icicle squeaked and vibrated in the tentacle’s grasp before igniting. Ashes joined the hot orange soup of molten rock that the rocktopus lazed in.
Whoops.
The ashes brought a school of lavanhas to the surface. The rocktopus suckered up the crater’s edge while they swarmed to eat the ashes. That was the advantage of being amtemperous. The rocktopus could withstand brief exposure to temperature that would freeze most other forms of lavalife.
It dipped into the magma and snagged a lavanha, quickly exposing it to the air. The lavanha twitched before turning grey with a crackling shriek, atrophying immediately in the extremely low temperature of open air.
The meat icicles on the crater’s edge were watching with great interest as the rocktopus grabbed its snack.
It offered the snack to the meat icicles. They made no motion to accept.
Just then, a rockfish shooter poked its head of the pool. It sucked in molten rock through its slatted gills and shot it out in an arcing stream of hardening glass towards the meat icicles.
It got one. With a yank, the shooter managed to pull the squealing meat icicle into the pool. The meat icicle practically evaporated in a flash before a few ashes hit the bubbling surface.
The shooter dipped under the water, disappointed.
The meat icicles pulled sticks from their backs and pointed them towards the rocktopus.
This was odd. They shot food towards it. Basic irradiated metals in solid form in a steady stream straight at the rocktopus’s head. The rocktopus was happy about that. He bathed in their generosity for a while.
Then they left.
The rocktopus slid back down into the lava. Quite the day.
