by Patricia Stewart | Aug 24, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The Herschel Scientific Outpost was located on the northernmost shore of the Lacus Ocean at Titan’s South Pole. The outpost housed six earth scientists whose primary mission was to study the life forms discovered on Saturn’s largest moon. There were more than a thousand different species cataloged in the first six months of the expedition. At least one species, the Manti, were found to be intelligent. The creatures were named Manti because they vaguely resembled a large praying mantis. They were about three feet tall, with a proportionately stockier body than their terrestrial namesakes. Their exoskeletons were composed of complex hydrocarbons (plastic, in other words). They had a feudal society, similar to the medieval societies that prevailed in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Within several months of first contact, the scientists were able to develop a common language with the Mandi. The relationship between the two species was excellent. In fact, because of their apparently magical technology, the Earthmen were generally idolized.
“Ms. Krinshaw,” said specialist Philippe Thame, “there is an urgent message coming in from Cooper. He says he has a serious problem, and is requesting assistance.” Because of his rapport with the Mandi, Cooper Jones was considered the expedition’s ambassador to Titan. He spent more time outside the ship than any other crew member.
“Put it on the speaker, Philippe,” instructed the commander. “What’s the problem, Cooper?”
“Hello, Sarah. I’m in a bit of a pickle out here. You know the large village to the east, the one run by the Manti we call Lord Charl? Well, it seems that one of his children was carried off by a giant creature called a Nograd. The Manti are afraid of them, and asked if I could attempt a rescue. Apparently, the Nograd are capable of combining the methane and nitrogen in Titan’s atmosphere to form solid cyanogen and hydrogen gas. It then blows the gas out of its mouth. It’s an exothermic reaction, so the hydrogen gas it secretes is relatively hot. My inferred spectrometer shows the gas to be 500 degrees hotter that Titan’s -290F surface temperature. That’s hot enough to melt the Manti’s exoskeleton.”
“Understood, Cooper. We’ll send out reinforcements.”
“That’s not necessary, Sarah. Since my suit can handle 375F, I decided I could take care of it on my own. After all, Titian’s creatures are pretty frail by Earth standards. Anyway, I tried to chase it away from its prisoner by jumping up and down and waving my arms around. It wasn’t afraid of me at all, so I decided to chuck an ice-rock at it. Since Titan’s gravity is less than one seventh of Earth’s, I was able to throw a pretty big bolder. I ended up crushing it.”
“I don’t understand, Cooper. If you killed the Nograd, what’s your problem?”
“Well, Sarah, uh, it appears that the offspring I rescued was Lord Charl’s oldest daughter. They say that because I saved her life, I have to marry her. And if I don’t, they’ll consider it an insult of the highest degree, and therefore, an act of war.”
“Interesting,” she replied with an unconcealed smile. “I’ll consult with Earth Command, Cooper, but considering the potential consequences, I don’t think we’ll have many options. My guess is that you’re about to become a Prince.”
by submission | Aug 23, 2009 | Story
Author : Yubin Kim
“I can see time, you know.” She said.
He looked up from a piece of paper full of scribbled equations, frowning at the interruption. “What?”
She plucked the pencil out of his loose grasp, quelling his half-formed protestations with a mysterious smile. Holding the thin object between her thumb and index finger, she closed her eyes. She could almost feel his frown deepening into a scowl, but she ignored his displeasure and instead, _looked_.
“I can see where this pencil was. In your hand, your pencil case, in the desk drawer, in the manufacture plant which it was made.” She narrated in a whisper, as she saw the pencil’s glistening shadow floating through time and various points in space.
“I don’t have time–”
She overrode his frustrated outburst, calmly continuing her narrative. “I can see where this pencil will be. Back in your hand and then–”
She opened her eyes with a startled gasp and glared at the pencil.
“What now?” He growled.
“It ends.” She explained in a slightly troubled tone, dropping the pencil back into his open hand. Rising from her chair, she lightly stepped away from the cluttered desk, and walked out of the room in wide, swinging steps.
He studied her sudden exit with bemusement, then shaking his head, he bent over his task. However, when he pressed the end of the pencil to the paper, the thin body broke in half with an audible snap. Blinking, the he stared at the remnants, and then raised his gaze towards the door where he saw her standing there with a smile. In her hand, she held up a new pencil. He suddenly found himself speechless.
by submission | Aug 22, 2009 | Story
Author : J. Keegan
In line at the all-you-can-eat, and I’m waiting my turn; fifty different alien species in the joint; it’s hard to get human food anymore; an earthling on earth and out of place.
I lift the lid to, ‘Turkey,’ but it is Alevi style, raw turkey, appendix red. Afraid of faux pas, I say, “Mmm, looks good, piquant.”
A Tarand to my left says, “Indeed,” he sarcastic.
The soup of the day is Campbell’s Alphabet soup, but not the Latin alphabet, and I get sick of eating a Sanskrit like language, the letter A in the shape of a character, a logogram, the character for lucky. Other entrees include, a bowl of ice chips, margarine, or rinds, not watermelon, just the rinds of watermelon.
The Tarand says, “W. C. Fields said, ‘Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” I laugh. Tarands, always classy.
I have to wait for a Beliada to spoon insoluble fiber onto his plate, no opposable thumbs.
In line behind us is a CalCalaKer, and although there is a little sign on the sneeze guard, ‘Please No Antennas,’ the hat stand alien with thirty antennas, you know will touch something.
More food, dozens of skull and crossbones, red cabbage being poisonous to Delteras; peanuts being poisonous to Elevens.
How things get translated, interpreted. The phrase all-you-can-eat, and Feltas taking the wording literally and trying to eat the silverware and plates, the seat cushions too. As well, all-you-can-eat, understood by carnivores, the Gelter’s Incident, two years ago, as all-the-patrons-you-can-eat.
A Heleton opens the 400 gallon ant farm and digs out a tunnel.
I’ve heard of beef tripe, the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach. And, Kopi Luwak coffee, undigested coffee beans picked out of monkey stool, the Asian palm civet. And, I’ve heard of the Italian cheese, Casu Marzu, a cheese infested with maggots on purpose until the cheese becomes buttery, eaten maggots and all, and when disturbed the larva jump six inches off the cheese. But the alien selections disgust me, the cannibalism mostly, an Inieateri eating an Inieateri – part of their religion.
Vegetarians too, Janusi, with a face in front and one in the back so it walks forward when it walks backward. Common backyard weeds, elephant ear, dandelion, creeping charlie, sold for hundreds of Euros per kilo. One alien species, the Keael, digesting sorghum, for the Letins, regurgitating and spitting in the other’s mouth like a mother bird.
Political correctness, and aliens complained of, ‘Bovine-mammary-gland-cow-utter-nipples,’ so ice cream had to be removed from the menu.
The staff, the workers paid less than minimum wage, they in stupid uniforms with chef hats, the floors greasy, used napkins everywhere, and probably nothing’s changed in a century.
I’ve my tray, rice balls and raisins. Nowhere to sit.
What did I expect for only $176.88 a plate?
The Tarand, being kind, “There’s room here at my table. Please, sit here by me.”
I’m a little afraid because of the Tarands’ high intelligence, their high class. “Thank you,” I say. I try a joke. “They’re no longer serving milk,” I say. “Like W. C. Fields used to say about being told no more alcohol, ‘My illness is due to my doctor’s insistence that I drink milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies.’”
“Yes,” he laughs. “Like W. C. Fields used to say, ‘Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.”
by submission | Aug 21, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
I was out for a walk last night when I heard a cry for help. There was a girl in the river. I don’t know how she got there, she didn’t say at the time, and I haven’t asked her yet. All she said then was “help!”, in a voice that got sharper and higher as time went on.
I moved quickly, but deliberately. Doctor Mahnke used to tell me “less haste, more speed”, better to get things done right first time than have to try again after you get it wrong. I got out my equipment, which I carry with me at all times. “Be Prepared” is another thing that Dr Mankhe used to say, but he didn’t know about the equipment. Not then, anyway.
In a moment, the computer had interfaced with the girl’s cortical drive, and by a forced handshake the download process started. It took about thirty seconds. While it was going on, I watched her, paying quite close attention to the expressions on her face and the sounds she made as she tried to stay afloat. It was two minutes and fourteen seconds from the start of the transfer to the last time she went under. I timed it and made a note.
The transfer process took place without error. When I got home, I moved her file to the menagerie.
I saved her.
Now I’ll always have a copy.
by submission | Aug 20, 2009 | Story
Author : Liz Lafferty
Jonathan Wolf had grown old in space. His craft chugged across the Milky Way on its return journey to Earth. As the first solo explorer and the first man who’d left the galaxy, he was anxious to return home.
Potential candidates had been selected based on hereditary aging DNA. His family members had routinely lived into their hundreds and prior to his departure, one of his uncles had reached the age of one hundred and thirty. He would be long dead by now.
The other trait happened to be one of his strong suits. He enjoyed being alone. The mission involved mind-numbing, insanity-inducing loneliness, unless one had prepared both his mind and his body against such predispositions. He’d rejected the idea of a mate. Why inflict further torture when one outlived the other, as would eventually happen. In the depths of space, he didn’t believe he could endure the absence of a cherished partner. He’d work alone. He’d study. He’d read. He’d explore.
The craft library was stocked with media, all digitalized from Moses to Plato to Hawking. The bay area of the craft was largely empty. A few rocks from distant planets. He was especially fond of a glow-in-the-dark purple specimen he kept in his night room.
His mission had been a failure, or at least a failure by mission standards.
He had found no one. His only discovery: the universe was a vast, empty place. Space was aptly named.
Twelve years ago, he’d lost contact with Earth. There’d been no incoming messages, though he believed his messages still got out. Since most information about space was theoretical, he’d had to theorize about the disconnect. Messages could have gotten lost, scrambled, gravitazationlized.
Or maybe they simply vanished into the ether.
As he sailed into the solar system, the familiar planets came into view. Saturn and Jupiter, beloved twins, their trajectory nearly aligned. Efforts to hail Earth failed. If he hadn’t gotten used to twelve years of silence, he might have been alarmed. Instead, an excitement unlike anything he’d felt since the day of his launch hummed through his veins, making him feel light-years younger.
The gentle hum of his craft soothed him as he neared Earth’s planetal rotation.
John scanned the limited horizon of his viewing screen. Earth should be coming into view. But wasn’t. He ran the program for the star date to determine Earth’s location. A small cluster caught his eye. The white cheese pocked moon came into view. Without its planet. The computer scanned, confirming his suspicion. The moon wandered, ripped from its gravitational anchor by some unknown event.
John blinked, allowing the weight of his emotion to darken his hope. There was no one. The Earth was gone.
He couldn’t be the only one. Others must have been sent out. They would eventually come home, too. He would wait. John Wolf set his craft to orbit the sun in Earth’s orbit – every 365 days. If he lived the rest of his natural life, he might get to see another human again.
His only mission now was to make sure the next person who stumbled upon him was not left alone in the universe.
by submission | Aug 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Jeff Phillips
Grace took her hat off, wiping the beads of sweat from her forehead with the back of her aged hand. She hated the angle of the sun at this time of day, but this was the only place on the grounds where she felt alive. Butterflies lit on the hummingbird bushes that flowed musically from the wind. For just a moment, she saw the faint ghostly image of a cursor blinking to the right of her view. She froze, allowing the image to blink, blink, blink until it disappeared. Grace knew, just like any other institution resident would, that the cursor wasn’t real. It was only misfiring neurons, replaying sensory input from 52 years of computer use.
The institutions–thousands of them across the world–were created for patients like Grace Dawkins. Everyone born after the mandatory integration of the “Internet” into the human brain became a patient, almost without exception. The only individuals who escaped the symptoms of the integration residue were those who lived in all-natural communes in desolate areas, or those with brain damage who never fully integrated to begin with.
Grace grew up in Pittsburg, one of the first ten cities to be integrated with the wireless, government-funded “I-Net” hubs. After a resident received the minor outpatient surgery necessary to link up, the collective consciousness of the world was accessible with a thought. At that time, 33-year-old Dr. Grace Dawkins was the lead bioengineer for the project at the Department of Homeland Security, to which Congress gave the funding. Grace remembered the years of human testing, from low-level brain-machine connections to the first real mind-controlled computer. And she had been in the lab when Dr. Shah became the first human to interact with the original Internet using only his mind. She never would have proposed the project if she had known about the consequences. Elderly people who were connected more than half of their lives began to have intrusive leftover images from the half-brain, half-computer I-Net. Flashes, flutters, ghost images, and withdrawal symptoms started showing up as the integrated population aged. Scientists and doctors from the government’s own agencies began to question the safety of I-Net. Dr. Grace Dawkins and her life’s work eventually became a curse to humankind, sending millions of people to institutions late in their lives in order to disintegrate from I-Net.
A deep-red cardinal landed on the bird feeder and scared the other, smaller birds away in a flutter. Grace’s eyes picked up the action which released shocks of electricity in the vision center of her brain. That’s why she loved this place–so full of action and life. It was the only place at the institution that gave her sensory input that came anywhere close to I-Net. Although the amount of information was miniscule compared to being linked to every computer in the world, this garden reminded her of that feeling. Grace imagined for a moment that she could access data about the cardinal, the weather, the evergreen trees in the background—anything she wanted to know more about. Her mind instinctively tried to link up to I-Net, but then a flash of words entered her mind in a jumbled mess and she felt dizzy, reminding her how profoundly the net had corrupted her brain.
Grace took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and listened to the singing birds.
