by submission | Jul 28, 2010 | Story
Author : Andrew Brereton
Now he understood what his master had meant when he said that some people come here only to never leave. The place was truly magical. Even as he watched, a man and his assistant walked by carrying two strange skulls with long ridged horns curling out the back. His imagination was captured by thoughts of strange beasts and the distant past. He wandered in body and mind.
His thoughts were interrupted as he just barely missed colliding with a man holding a rope attached to a strange hairy animal, rushing ahead with its nose to the ground. He put his head down and tried not to attract undue attention. He still remembered his master’s endless rambling about caution.
He thought to himself, “How am I supposed to find the curator of this place, if I am to forever keep myself from looking around?” It was thoughts like these that made him slowly veer off the path. It was thoughts like these that reduced his feelings of guilt. Slowly at first, he submitted to the wonders that drew his curiosity.
***
When he found the machine, he could barely contain his excitement. He had thought that the dragon bones had been the best, or the picture screen from the ancient times, but as he listened to the ceaseless patter of the operator, he knew he had to try the machine. He was reminded of the vendors in the market-town where he lived.
“Yes that’s right, just sit down and gaze into the “TRU-LENS” goggles, wear the “HI-Q” ear covers and grasp the controllers. You will be taken, lifted into another world! You want to go see the Dinosaurs? Easy! My machine can do it. You! Yes, you there, the small boy. Yes, that’s alright now, just step up and sit down here, hands here… yes! Good! and look into the goggles now…”
As the strange headpiece wrapped around his skull, the sounds blocked out the voice of the salesman. He wondered when he was going to see the dinosaurs, when strange lights and colors began to swirl in his vision. They mixed with the ticking and screeching sounds and made him feel slightly uncomfortable. He was sweating now. He tried to sit up, to stop the machine, but he couldn’t move. His head began to ache, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t block out the disturbing lights and sounds. He began to panic, and his vision began to fade. As he blacked out he got a strange feeling of déjà vu, then, nothing.
***
He was stacking strange objects into boxes, and a tall loud man was yelling at other children doing similar tasks. He couldn’t remember how he got here. Hesitantly, he called out to the tall man for help, and as he turned, recognition dawned. It was the operator-salesman. Quickly it all came back to him, and just as quickly was replaced by an odd feeling of déjà vu. He panicked. This time, the last thing he remebered was the disturbing grin on the tall man’s face. Seeing that, he understood what his master had meant when he said that some people come here only to never leave.
by submission | Jul 27, 2010 | Story
Author : Rob O’Shea
Too little time. Too many meetings. I turn on the Transmit and zimmed out of office and back to home. In the wardrobe there is a skin I put on. Have to look fresh. The girl — blonde, cancer free, young — cries. I detach her body from the hanger; unhook her skin from the base and peel. Slowly. Artfully. I do this without breaking skin. I put it on. It fits. I get perfume, my purple shimmer suit. My iFiles are attached to my cornea. I am ready. I Transmit back to the office.
The door opens. Graceful enters and hands me papers.
‘All you need to do Miss Kane is sign. Then it’s legal.’
‘Take me through it.’
‘The long or the short version?’
‘I’m busy Graceful. Give me the short and I sign the dots. You lie or breach contract you know the consequences.’
‘Sure do.’
Graceful takes a sphere out of his pocket. The sphere glows, expands, floats; it becomes the image of a planet.
‘Terra Dorma. Population at 3.2 billion. Environmental–’
‘– cut the history lesson. Your company wanted the planet. You spoke to our lawyers, you made your bid. The transaction occurred?’
‘Yep. At twelve Z hours we had Vapo-Robots fill their air and water with sedatives. Magnotoch used alpha signals to wipe out their minds. The brains of the Terra people are blank. Bodies are functional; they will be conditioned, sold. Most will go to meat farms; some will be used to spread the sex virus to Canto. The rest will be recycled.’
‘Their language?”
‘I copyrighted. Two big companies are currently bidding for it.
‘History?’
‘Wiped out. Didn’t want the historical society sniffing. There’s a lot of anti-genocide riots in the homelands at the moment.’
‘Damn liberals.’
‘Yep.’
I looked over the contracts. They looked in working order. Nothing breached policy. I signed them and gave him the money shot. Nobody sees me smile often. I don’t like to wrinkle the skin I wear.
‘Well then,’ I toss the documents back, ‘looks like it’s in order. You got yourself a planet to play with. Now get the fuck out of my office.’
by Duncan Shields | Jul 26, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Headfirst into the mainstream with my lawsuit buzzing, that’s the only way to do it. The cold data can stop your heart. Bright red crosses dance around me, warding off viruses that can infect my setup and make it drain others.
The pile of reflexes and soft meat back in my room smiles as the brain inside its head sees the entire world in an agreed-upon colour code.
A filter of money, information, governments and public works light up the pinball machine on the floor of the e-net worldview. Flyers like me cluster moth-like around the bright, shapely nodes. We are superheroes but there are billions of us. We are gnats in clouds buying from the neon pyramids.
How little things change. Commerce uses creativity to drive innovation. They say that necessity is the mother of invention and what greater necessity is there above surviving? Therefore, one invents. One invents stories. One invents tales.
One lies.
I’m here to check up on how my lies are doing. People worry about powerful viruses without realizing that the most dangerous virus of all is the most prolific; the spoken word.
A simple paragraph of text gets past all of the defenses. It’s innocuous. I sprinkle them behind my glowing sylph of an avatar as I float down to the e-street floor. They follow in my wake like phosphorescent algae behind a boat in the hardworld. They are my dandelion seeds.
My body is dying back in the meatspace. I need a new one and I need backups. I need volunteers moved by pity and motivated by greed. I need the gullible and the feeling. I need bleeding hearts in healthy bodies. I want non-smoking liberals to travel hundreds of miles, knock on my door, and walk in to the trap.
I need fresh organs. I have no more in the basement.
I’ve spent months honing my snare. My perfect paragraph moves, promises, affects and drowns. It twists reason with emotion to give birth to plausible reasons. It manipulates logic by employing religion. In places, it tells outright untruths.
With luck, it will make you give your body to me.
Cross your fingers. Wish me luck.
by submission | Jul 25, 2010 | Story
Author : Waldo van der Waal
“Don’t worry,” she had said, “I’ll be there to take the straps off once we come out of stasis.” She had smiled at me. A pretty smile. She was pretty all over: Dark hair, pixie-like features and perky breasts. I could see her nipples through the thin fabric of her jumpsuit. I just smiled and nodded. That’s what men tend to do when they’re confronted by perky breasts in a tight jumpsuit.
She’d carried on explaining how the Pursuit of Pure Knowledge had no real passenger seats on board. So our stasis chambers had to double as acceleration couches. Made sense at the time, but I did get a bit worried when she started cuffing me to the ‘couch’ inside my chamber.
“It’s just to make sure that you don’t flail about once you go under. You don’t want a limb out of place once the acceleration starts. Quit worrying.” Again, the smile. She was one of a hundred stasis techs on board. Each of them had twenty chambers to look after. And her own chamber was right next to mine.
All of that happened nearly seventy years ago. I was twenty then, and figured I had a shot at her once the Pursuit reached Sirius. But now I know she won’t be interested in me. Mainly because I’ll be dead more than a hundred years before she even wakes up.
I would’ve been dead long ago, if this sodding machine hadn’t kept me alive so well. And anyway, how do you kill yourself when your hands and feet are tied to a slab inside a sterile chamber? I’m pumped full of nutrients each day. Ha! I still think of days, when all I have is endless night. But I can’t seem to fall asleep at all anymore. Hopefully my body fails me soon.
I wish I could lose my mind. Somehow make myself go crazy. Reminds me of the joke about the kid who asked his gramma if she’d seen his “pills” with the letters LSD printed on them. “Screw your pills, sonny,” she had screamed, “I’m more worried about the dragons in the kitchen.” The things you think of when you have decades alone in the dark…
Oh, don’t think I’m coping well with this. God, no. I’ve gone through the entire gamut of emotions: Hate, rage, desperation, sadness… I’ve cried and screamed and tried to get my hands loose. But in the end, I always end up the same: Alone in the dark.
Anyhow, if there’s one bit of wisdom I’d like to pass on to you, it would be this: When they ask you, during the pre-stasis check if you are allergic to anything, try and tell the truth, never mind how pretty the tech might be. Ain’t no use to try to be a man when you end up like this. ‘cos God knows, this is no way to die.
by submission | Jul 24, 2010 | Story
Author : Leland Stillman
Dustin is dusting off the cutting-torch. I am pulling on my space boots. It is odd to think that we are farmers, the true first profession, now done only on space platforms.
“We’ll be cuttin’ a while,” he says to me.
Space hooligans have mangled our dairy equipment. They come up from the surface, wielding crow bars from fumbling space-suit hands, and laughing lonely in the silence of space. But their friends in the waiting orbit cars laugh with them when they return, so I can understand why they do it.
It doesn’t mean I’m not pissed as hell that hundreds of gallons of milk aren’t floating out into oblivion, to burn up in atmo or hit some hapless spaceman who will wonder who is masturbating out the airlock.
“I’ll prime the second tank,” I say, and I reach over to open the valve on our reserve oxygen tank. I pull on my helmet, and tap Dustin’s face plate to signal I am ready. He hits the red button, and the airlock hisses shut behind us, the air sucking through to leave us in our vacuum. And then the front door starts to open. We hung a wreath on it, for a joke, and it now flies wildly as the door judders open.
We crawl out, careful not to launch ourselves into oblivion, and edge toward the hemorrhaging milk tanks. I swear inside my helmet. My microphone is off, and I do it for my own satisfaction. Few spacemen abstain from talking to themselves. We are the best company around.
He flies past me, and before I can radio Dustin the space hooligan has knocked him off the platform roof and into space. I swear as Dustin’s oxygen cord snaps. Precious gasses spew out into space, until his fail safe kicks in and it stops. His air will last thirty minutes. His transponder is already flashing, and he has wisely stopped all motion, knowing it will conserve oxygen. But there’s no reason to worry. These are not the crazy days of early space farming, where a bad jump could send you to your grave on Mars or Pluto, your bones to be puzzled over later, after being scoured by wind into something unrecognizable and so, the scientists will say in ecstasy, possibly alien. The space patrol will home in on his transponder and rescue him.
The hooligan is climbing back into space using a belt mounted jet pack, towards the waiting orbit car, where I can see his friends pumping their fists and slapping each others’ shoulders, and laughing.
I feel my own cutting-torch in my hand. If I throw it, the planet-siders will just send a new one to their brave space farmers. I am a pretty good shot with these things. We spacemen have competitions, every so often, sending broken equipment slowly spinning into space and we send tools hurtling after it, to be picked up by the magnetic fields of scrap-metalers that we call beforehand.
I think of throwing my cutting-torch, a lonely riposte that I alone will enjoy. I wish Dustin were here. Then I’d throw, or we’d both throw, and laughing we would scamper back inside to grab more cutting-torches, because milk is still billowing at four dollars a gallon into space.
I crawl toward the milk cloud, cutting-torch still in hand, wondering where I will need to fuse the pipes shut.
by Patricia Stewart | Jul 23, 2010 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Well, Eleanor, have you figured out why the warp drive isn’t working?”
“Yes Seb. Believe it or not, this star system is in the center of a super large dark matter donut, and we’re in the hole. Apparently, it’s creating erratic gravity waves that are preventing us from initiating a new warp bubble. There’s no record of this phenomenon in the database. It looks like we’ll have to use impulse power until we can get beyond its effects. Damn, that could take years. This really sucks!”
“Now, now, Eleanor, that’s exactly why the dean put me in charge of this expedition instead of you. I happen to have a positive attitude. I believe in the old saying ‘When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade’. Look at the bright side dear; they’ll probably name this dark matter donut phenomenon after you.”
“Oh yes, I see your point,” replied his wife. “I’d be like Lou Gehrig. Oh, I forget, dear, how’d that work out for him?”
Ignoring his wife’s snide remark, Seb continued to argue the positive aspects of their predicament. “Look, sweetheart, we’re only a few million kilometers from a beautiful, unexplored Class-M planet. We might as well check it out while we’re here. That is why we took the sabbatical, isn’t it?”
It was a valid point, Eleanor conceded, so she instructed the computer to land the ship on a small island in the northern hemisphere.
After landing, as Seb was preparing to open the hatch, Eleanor stopped him. You can’t go out Seb. According to the sensors, the oxygen atmosphere is oscillating rapidly between ozone and diatomic molecular oxygen. At any instant, 50% of the oxygen is triatomic. It’s the Chapman cycle gone crazy.
“Fascinating,” Seb remarked.
“Fascinating? Are you mad? It’s attacking the hull.”
“Merely removing that filthy outer surface. It’s like an exfoliation treatment for the ship.”
“Well, I’m not waiting around for it to start attacking the o-ring seals.” Then anticipating Seb’s inevitable positive spin, “even if it’s time to replace them. Now, prepare to takeoff.”
The ship blasted off and started its long tedious voyage to escape the effects of the dark matter donut. Later the next morning, while preparing breakfast, Eleanor discovered that the replicator was malfunctioning. “Hey, Mr. Sunshine,” she sniped, “it looks like the dark matter phenomenon has also locked-up the replicator. It’s stuck on your midnight snack. It looks like we’ll be eating nothing but pepperoni pizza for the rest of eternity.”
“That’s not so bad dear,” he replied.
“How so?”
“Eleanor, hasn’t being married to me for 31 years taught you anything about looking for the positive side of things?”
“Oh, sorry, dear. Should I have said ‘Honey, for the rest of eternity, minus one lousy day, we’ll be eating nothing but pepperoni pizza.’ You mean like that?”
“No dear. Don’t you see, pepperoni pizza has all four food groups in it; grain, dairy, vegetables, and meat. We can survive on that. After all, it could have been stuck on something much less desirable.”
“You’re absolutely right, Seb,” she replied with a smirk. “I hadn’t thought of that. After all, the replicator could have been stuck on lemons.”
