by Patricia Stewart | May 15, 2008 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The ship’s computer revived me from stasis. It took hours for my body to fully awaken, and for my muscles to respond to my wishes. But what could you expect from a woman that was 345 years old? We had volunteered for this one-way ambassador mission in the year 2136, shortly after the space probe Tycho Brahe passed through the Alpha Centauri system. The probe had sent back images of an Earth-size planet orbiting in “The Goldilocks Zone,†approximately 1.1 AU from Alpha Centauri A. But the most amazing images came from the planet’s night side. It was lit up like a Christmas tree. The planet (called Telles, after the Roman goddess of the earth) was supporting an industrialized civilization, estimated to have a technology slightly behind Earth’s. This assessment was based on the observation that there were no artificial satellites orbiting the planet. Earth’s central command wanted to send a manned vehicle for first contact, and we were eager to volunteer. The Tycho Brahe made the original trip in 53 years; but it was a flyby mission. Our ship needed to accelerate, turn around, de-accelerate, and achieve orbit. It also had to carry life support and enough food to last six people for two years (in case we couldn’t digest Tellean food). We also took seeds to grow food, if necessary. Anyway, it took our ship 312 years to make the trip. Now, it was time to meet the neighbors.
One of the first things I did (after peeing for five minutes) was check the ship’s logs. I didn’t understand what it meant, but our ship hadn’t received a transmission from Earth in 167 years. Then Jack reported that he couldn’t see lights on the night side of Telles. Elizabeth had the only encouraging news, the telescope revealed metallic structures in orbit. At least Telles had made it to the “space age†during our long journey.
After the computer successfully put our ship into orbit, we were able to confirm what we’d been dreading. Telles was lifeless. Electromagnetic imaging revealed that there had been life, and a bustling civilization, but everything is dead now. The cities were destroyed, and the atmosphere was contaminated with lethal amounts of radiation. It appeared that Telles had had a thermonuclear world war. Stupid bastards.
We didn’t have a lot of options. We didn’t have enough fuel to get back to Earth, and we couldn’t land on Telles for at least ten thousand years. So we decided to crawl back into stasis. Our only real hope was to be rescued one day, because it was unlikely that we could survive an additional ten thousand years in stasis. Before entering my stasis chamber, I sent a full report to Earth. It would be eight and a half years before a message made the round trip. I instructed the computer to wake me in nine. Why rush?
As the Stasisosane gas filled my chamber, I began to think of Earth. Why did they stop transmitting 167 years ago? Did they forget about us, or did they destroy themselves too? Is self-destruction an inevitable consequence of intelligent life? I hoped not. We may well be the last six humans alive. If true, we’d have to land on Telles one day, and attempt to repopulate it, assuming we survived one hundred centuries in suspended animation. However, if by some miracle we did, I prayed that our descendants would not be as foolish as their ancestors, or the previous inhabitants of their new world. Only time will tell. I closed my eyes and drifted into oblivion.
by Duncan Shields | May 14, 2008 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
My nervous system registered a strong palm-print between my shoulder blades just before I was shoved hard towards the ground. I landed face-first amongst a scatter of hot shell casings and a reek of spent gunpowder.
I heard bullets whine and snap into the thin wall where I had been standing. The hall was littered with the bodies of fellow officers.
It wasn’t going well. This was a small apartment building in a slum. The most these kids should have had was bottles and bricks and maybe some home-made pop guns.
High caliber slugs stitched their way up the floor towards my wrist. I yanked my fist over to my chest but not quite in time. A few of my fingers flipped up into the air, suddenly free of my hand. One of them had my wedding ring on it.
I made a mewling sound like a kitten. Maybe two seconds had passed since I had been pushed down.
I looked up to see who had saved my life.
Straining the regulation uniform was the scarred, thick frame of a 40-year-old bodybuilder. Her face was warped with rage as she emptied a gun that would have looked more at home on the front of a tank.
She stood like a warrior from a completely different and much better movie.
I realized that her body had scars that matched the lines of her muscles at the same time as I saw her take six bullets in the chest and two in her face.
Her head barely snapped back as a shower of sparks from her forehead lit up the hallway. Her body actually slid back on her heels a couple of inches from the stuttering impact of the torso hits.
With an animal roar, she fired back. The gun whirred down to a series of clicks after a few deafening sweeps of the hallway.
Cries of the wounded echoed back to me from down the hall. Profanities of rioters who had taken decent cover came back as well. The clicks of weapons being reloaded. A preparation for more battle.
She tossed aside the weapon. It landed like an engine block beside her.
She threw her head back and yelled at the ceiling. I saw little blue lights warm up in the crevasses of the inset muscle plugs. With a body wide spasm, they strobed a blinding pulse out that sent the whole building into darkness.
The biologically generated EMP caused the militants down at the other end to shout and then whisper amongst themselves.
There was a change in the air pressure next to me and then the sound of bare feet on dusty ground padding softly down the hall. It sounded like the feet of a ballerina or a young child. So fast and so quiet.
That’s when the screaming began down the hall. It sounded like a slaughterhouse. In amongst the gunfire, I could hear the sounds of metal on bone and see occasional flashes of blue taser fire.
This riot was over.
by Stephen R. Smith | May 13, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Queen Louise XVI’s afternoon reading was interrupted by the message ‘Governess LaPointe requests audience’ scrolling across the page of text which hung in space before her.
“Granted,” she spoke aloud, waving the texts into the ether.
The comfortable silence was shattered by the staccato barrage of heel on stone as a woman swept through the doors of the Great Hall, past the Imperial Guard, and past the Royal Family; sixteen pairs of twins in dresses and curls sitting at chess boards, or on couches reading or talking quietly.
She covered the length of the room in quick, steady strides, stopping barely a meter from her Queen and dropping to one knee, her eyes downcast. “Your Majesty,” her voice dripped of something foul; condescension? contempt?
“Rise,” the Queen commanded. “Speak.”
The Governess stood, eying the Queen. “Your Majesty, there has been unauthorized access of the library data, of the forbidden tomes.” She paused, glancing sideways as Clara and Cloë straightened as one, suddenly interested.
The Queen folded her hands. “And that concerns you how?” Accusation, that was the tone.
“The data in question details the time before the Whyjean Complex, the Time of Men.” The Governess straightened. “I believe that you know of these intrusions, that they are made on your command.”
The Queen smiled cooly. “And what interest have I in the Time of Men?”
LaPointe smiled, thin lipped and cruel. “You desire a male of your own, not a eunuch but a breeding male. I have proof of your deceit, and when I present my proof to the Council of Creation, they will surely have your throne.”
“Fascinating.” The Queen gazed about the room; Alice and Alexandra lost in a game, Trinity and Tari napping, Salena and Sami reading together. “Why accuse me here, why not go straight to council?”
The Governess folded her arms. “I’m giving you a chance to confess, to banish yourself quietly.”
“And leave you to succeed me? You’re very sure of yourself.” The Queen drew her finger along an elaborate carved cross set into the arm of her throne. “Would you swear to the Holy Mother on the existence of this proof?”  The Queen released the cross from it’s mooring and held it out to the Governess, who grasped it white knuckled as she spoke, eyes locked on the Queen’s. “I swear, on the Holy Mother…”
The Queen pulled back on the cross, leaving the Governess holding the thin tapered dagger that had been concealed inside.
“Guards, she’s come to kill me!” The Queen yelled, stirring the Imperial Guard to action.
“What? No, no, I didn’t…” the Governess stepped back, raising her hands, the shining dagger catching the light as the Guard flanked the Queen, weapons discharging in unison, the woman thrown backwards to the floor.
The Queen raised her hand, and the Guard held fast as she moved to the fallen Governess, kneeled at her side and cupping the dying woman’s face in her hands, turned her towards her startled children.
“I don’t intend to breed a man,” she hissed in her ear. “Look at them, Cloë and Clara, Clarence. Alice and Alexandra, Alexander. Sixteen perfect princesses, sixteen perfect princes. Plumped and primped, curled hair and dresses, hidden in plain sight to one day redefine this matriarchy and restore the monarchy.”
She placed a finger on quivering lips, watched the horror in her eyes as life left her.
Rising, she addressed the Guard. “She was stricken with a plague of madness. Cremate her, incinerate her quarters. Let there be no trace of her disease.”
Disease, she thought, they were desperate for genetic disorder.
by submission | May 12, 2008 | Story
Author : Dee Harding
Samsara has worn his locks for 15 years, shining and strong. He has adapted to them by sleeping sideways and letting them learn to clean themselves. Each tangled cluster of keratine farms its own rot, the rain, and the detritus of everyday life. Stray protein quietly becoming fuel for a million miniscule workers, all sculpting their environment in long sheathes and spirals. When the city smog is bad all that can be seen of Samsara beyond his mask are the crawling oil-slick dreadlocks, unbound. Throughout his culture’s history, hair has been alive with the symbolism of wind, water and fire. It has not taken so very long for those abstracts to become material, but his mane remains ritual before anything else.
Anything but the divide. Those that take the twisting path serve the economy’s invisible hand. Although the knotted braids are an efficient manifold for Samsara’s microbial hive they weigh him down with meaning. They bind him to his place within the kingdom and decades of financial debt still to be paid. His scalp harbours his craft, his industry and his caste, all impossible to hide. Those of the Breed spend half their lives physically unconstrained but in monetary bondage before they cultivate the 9 foot long archipelago that marks a master of the art. A sage so skilled as to be rooted to the spot and cared for by concubines, physically encumbered but spiritually free.
In some ways, even now, it is difficult to determine where each compound filament of Samsara’s hair ends. They thread through their own strands of infection into the pheremonal plumage of kingdom socialites and prostitutes, the telluric ephemera of engineers and navigators, the chemical sequencing of medics and pushers alike. Even bald, Samsara is telepresent. Which is good, considering, but no real consolation. Stone burns into his knees in the mid-day heat, ankles bound, and the crowd is silent. No-one will approach but the perfect men with swarming skin. Samsara can send nothing past their gracious smiles and he weeps. No fear has been greater than this moment, every nerve is wracked with grief. They walk closer now, and closer. People like Samsara creep up against every boundary, breaking laws that have yet to evolve, but every loop-hole curls in on itself in time. He is caught dead centre in the web of New Delhi, broken, while around him bronzed razors flash in the sun.
by submission | May 11, 2008 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
They turned Valerie off this morning.
Nothing flashy, nothing officially announced. Two grey-suited daemons came in, picked up her sprite and walked out with it. When I went to the dorms to investigate, her room was blank, no sign that she had ever been here.
I know the drill. They’ll say there was some irregularity in her payments and she was being moved from virtual to storage until it was sorted out. Which is crap. What they mean is that the company directors owed someone a favor or were made a better offer on her runtime. In a few weeks they’ll say how much they regret the misconception and that Valerie will be back with us as soon as a space opens. Which they never do.
Valerie, myself, and most of the other residents are lifers, legacies. We paid on insurance policies for decades so that when the inevitable happened our digital consciousnesses would continue in post-life communities. This was back before they understood how expensive the runtime would be. Legally, they have to maintain us here because our policies have been grandfathered in. In practice they want nothing more than for us to vanish and leave the lucrative virtual environment to paying minds with runtime trusts.
So every now and then, they do this, just to get rid of one of us, just to keep the others scared.
They used to call it murder, back when we were alive.
by submission | May 10, 2008 | Story
Author : Jacinta A. Meyers
Lieutenant General Macy McMurphey Delane dreamt of meeting his nemesis.
It was a bit of an obsession. He imagined that, across the star-clustered chasm of drifting space dust, on the far edge of the galaxy, there was another command center probably very much like his own.
Yes, there must be super computers with flickering lights and perpetual output of military strategies, logistics, altered tactics. Readouts of enemy locations and dispositions. A busy body of staff revolving around one central station hub.
Perhaps that man would be a bit hefty too, a bit round in the middle. Maybe he liked his authentic steaks cooked medium-rare and tried not to think of the lost ships and their crews drifting in tangled debris as he injected himself with rest serum at the conclusion of each day. His hobbies might include collecting ancient relics or constructing model spaceships. Or when he wasn’t dispatching orders to the front, perhaps he was compiling a catalogue of specimens of rare rock from explored planets.
Surely, this man had a family, too — a wife, two sons who had followed their father into the military tradition. Yes, yes. He probably prided himself on his impeccable uniform but wore his collars slightly loose. His hair might be thinning a little on the top. Perhaps he sported a mustache or perfectly trimmed beard. Yes, yes. And the more he thought about it, the more Delane saw an inferior mirror of himself in the coldly calculated moves of the enemy’s forces.
Delane decided he should like to meet that other general. After the war was through, of course, when the terms ensured peace. A holiday would be in order then. Delane would parade his laurels as he went, would make appearances at certain destinations popular among the politically elite. Perhaps take a short little trip behind the former lines, let the local populace look upon the man who had defeated their very best. Yes, it seemed like a very good plan indeed.
But the blue dots denoting corresponding allied ships became fewer and fewer on the screens. The digital readouts offered less maneuverable options. Losses mounted while Delane scrutinized his foe’s movements and imagined personal insult there. Public outcry hit a deafening crescendo. The people and the politicians resigned themselves to defeat.
Conditions of surrender were sent through the silent vacuum of space: a single white probe (smaller than a child’s hand) carrying files in every language of man.
An answer came twenty-four standard earth hours later. The victor would maintain a distant control only, with little forced change of life on the part of the losers. Merely some intensive trading agreements were to be made in the winning side’s favor. Everyone understood without question that the war would resume in a matter of decades. It always did.
There would be a different general, then. Delane’s dint at command had failed. Setting aside his mild disappointment and arrangements for a golfing trip to the engineered fields of Venus, he thought of his wartime dreams. As his final act in the central command hub, he sent out a friendly inquiry to the enemy’s capital.
The response was surprisingly abrupt. “Oh,” it said simply, the sentence repeated blaringly, line after line, in every language of man, “we computerized central military command. It was converted to artificial intelligence years ago.”
