by submission | Feb 5, 2009 | Story
Author : John Logan
Drill Sergeant Harvey K. Buicks watched the line of soldiers as they stood taut and strong. Their backs concave, chests out, muscles rippling. He turned to a small man in a white lab coat who twitched nervously next to him.
“Things were good until about a week ago. I hope you can sort this mess out,” said Buicks.
“Can you tell me exactly how the… uhm… anomaly manifested itself?” said white lab coat. His plastic pen paused over a tiny PDA, the fingers itching to write.
Buicks scowled. “What? Speak plainly man.”
“What happened to make you call us?”
“I’ll show you,” said Buicks and walked over to one of the soldiers. A black balaclava under a helmet of dark alloy covered the soldier’s head. His features were hidden except for two glittering green eyes that stared ahead.
“Soldier,” barked Buicks in his best drill voice. “Shoot this man.” His index finger swept upwards to point at white lab coat.
“Drill Sergeant Buicks!” gasped white lab coat and staggered backwards looking for an escape route.
Buicks face was grim and emotionless, like oven-baked granite. The soldier raised his rifle and fired. The white lab coat was pelted with circles of blue dye as he turned to flee. He staggered only a few paces then came to an abrupt halt.
“Paint,” said Buicks.
White lab coat sighed with relief and then his face turned red with embarrassment. “Was that really necessary?” he squeaked.
Without answering, Buicks handed the same soldier his own pistol. “Fully loaded with live ammo,” he said to the soldier. “Now, kill him.”
The soldier raised the pistol. White lab coat cringed, shielding his face with both arms. The soldier trembled for a second and then at lightning speed turned the gun on himself and fired. His head was driven back by the impact and he crumpled to the ground, a dark stain of blood pooling on the tarmac.
“They’re all like that,” said Buicks as he bent to retrieve the pistol. “The new ones that came in on this batch are all affected the same way.”
White lab coat frowned and stepped cautiously forward. “Curious,” he said and began to flip through his PDA.
“Can you fix it?” said Buicks as he shot a look of utter disgust at the line of helmeted men. “A soldier’s no good if he can’t kill on command. By god I’d rather have the real flesh than these synthetics.”
A few moments passed in which Buicks growled and paced like a caged lion. Then quite suddenly white lab coat spoke, “I have it,” he said. “Looks like a decimal calculation went wrong in the survival programming.”
“And you can fix it, right?” said Buicks.
“Easily,” said white lab coat and tapped the PDA with his pen. “There it’s done. The relay net is already updating the numerical data.” He lifted his gaze to the line of soldiers and spoke, “State version number.”
“Version 5.10,” they said in unison, their voices sounding like a hollow recording.
White lab coat grinned, pleased with how swiftly he had handled the problem. “Now, Drill Sergeant Buicks, is there anything else I can assist you with?”
“Yes,” said Buicks and handed his pistol to the nearest soldier. “Kill this man.”
A red mist sprayed the air as the bullet pierced white lab coat’s skull.
by submission | Feb 4, 2009 | Story
Author : Ryan Somma
“Watch this,” Alea smirked at Trin and turned to the four-legged creature dumbly munching on some flamegrass nearby.
“Oti,” Alea chirped to the thing, and a few dozen eyes opened to look at her. “Oti, what is pi?”
A half-dozen orifices sprinkled amidst the eyes opened to emit a flurry of hissing noises and chirping.
Trin’s jaw dropped as he looked at his wrist screen, “3.1415926535… The numbers just keep coming.”
Alea was practically beaming, “I know.”
“It’s speaking in binary,” Trin blinked at her expectantly.
“I know,” Alea nodded.
“Why?” Trin prompted.
Alea shrugged, “It just started doing it. When the digital connection on my computer broke, I had to jury rig a sound connection to signal you in the dropship. In the weeks while I was waiting at base camp for your arrival, I was Web surfing, and next thing I know, this critter starts talking to my computer system. It’s figured out all our protocols, and has been explaining geometry, trigonometry, and calculus to my computer. I’ve been saving it all to log files for the team to review.”
“How is this possible?” Trin blinked and shook his head.
“I have an hypothesis,” Alea looked at the creature, still happily hissing away pi to seemingly endless decimal places. “Ready?”
Trin nodded dumbly.
Alea pointed to a trio of two-legged powder-puffs bouncing around the space cows’ boneless legs. “Females,” she said. “The calculations attract females. They are a mating display.”
“Calculus is a mating display?” Trin frowned skeptically. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would these blobs evolve to understand advanced mathematics just to attract a mate? They obviously aren’t putting that knowledge to any other use. I thought evolution favored minimalism.”
“It’s like the peacock’s tail,” Alea was grinning at the creature. “Male peacocks evolved these long, extravagant tails because female peacocks preferred them. Why do they prefer them? They just do.
“The tail serves no purpose, in fact, it makes the males easier to catch and eat. Birds of Paradise have evolved similar extravagant displays, just because the females are attracted to them.”
“You’re saying this creature has evolved a giant, energy-hungry brain that can perform calculus and talk with our computers, just to get chicks?!?!” Trin was practically sputtering, flabbergasted. “What are the ramifications of that?”
“Profits, my esteemed colleague,” Alea snapped her fingers before Trin’s eyes. “Peacocks’ feathers were nice for Victorian-era fashions, but for our modern information-centric sensibilities, these critters will be all the rage. Are you following me?”
Trin blinked at her dumbly, sitting still. Slowly, a wide smile spread across his face, “Okay.”
by Sam Clough | Feb 3, 2009 | Story
Author : S. Clough, Staff Writer
“Tash, stop right there.” Kal barked, raising his rifle, and aiming it squarely at his team-mate. Tash froze, and lifted her hands. She’d known this was coming, but it always caught her off-guard. The rest of the team had gone back to the lander to fetch some more equipment.
During Cat’s exploration of the outpost’s computers, they’d turned up a list of names: each one linked with a location deep inside one of the territories of the nearby polities. The files were touched with sakshan encryption methods: it didn’t take much to figure out that the research facility that they’d broken into was a sakshan outpost — and the list of names and places was a directory of intelligence operatives.
Kal, was the sharpshooter of the team, and was a pure-blood sakshan, with an impressive battery of combat-related headmetal. They’d found him broken and bleeding when they’d arrived to pick over the ruins of a particularly bloody border skirmish. They patched him up, discovered his skills with projectile weapons, and offered him a job. Once he realised command wasn’t coming back for him, he reluctantly took them up on their offer. In the years since, he’d loosened up noticeably, shaking off most of the comprehensive indoctrination that he’d been exposed to since birth.
His subconscious, though, still gave them some problems.
“Kal, don’t do this…”
“This list. Those men and women. If we sell their names, they’ll all die. Picked up and tortured and killed. They have families. This is stupid and futile and I won’t allow it.”
Tash bit her tongue. She knew that she couldn’t talk him out of it. He was visibly shaking: his rifle was rock steady.
“I won’t let you commit mass murder, Tash. I couldn’t live with myself if I did.”
“But you’d kill me?”
“If I had to. To protect my countrymen.”
“Kal, please. After everything we’ve done together — ”
“Just shut up, Tash.”
The silence held for forty seconds. Behind Kal, Frank (the medic-engineer of the team) was just sneaking around the corner, attempting to move silently. He was clutching a portable field generator that he’d modified for just such an occasion.
Tash took a step forward. Kal stiffened.
Frank stepped out of cover, and coughed. There was a clatter of bullets, and an ultrasonic whine as the field clicked on. Kal dropped to the floor, unconscious. Tash was clutching her arm, bent over andmuttering a steady stream of curses: blood was oozing between her fingers.
Grimly, they dragged Kal’s body back to the lander. A more subtle version of the field generator was hidden in the medical bay: the portable generator just induced a current in Kal’s implants, which quickly shut him down before he could sustain brain damage. With the generator in the med bay, Frank could purposefully manipulate Kal’s unconscious mind via the implants: he claimed it was like a first-person shooter, all exploration and twitch reflex. The point of it all was to reset their team-mate to an earlier state. Just long enough ago that he’d forget all about the mission, the list, and the betrayal. They needed him on top form.
They were well away from the outpost by the time Frank finished. Tash met him in the medical bay.
“Think you’ll be able to forgive him?” Frank glanced up at her.
“We always do, don’t we?” She stroked Kal’s hair, and sighed. “Every time.”
by submission | Feb 2, 2009 | Story
Author : Hilary B. Bisenieks
The last time I saw the surface of the moon, it was pristine save for a few sets of footprints. I had been struck dumb at the majesty of the black—an eternity of stars from horizon to horizon—while the others filled my ears with the chatter of their radios.
We were the first on that little patch of dust and rock, far from the Sea of Tranquility which had been designated as protected, along with the handful of other pre-commercial landing sites, long before our voyage had even been viable. There was no flag there, just as there was no wind to make it flap. When we left, nobody took note of our names. We were just a load of rich passengers to everyone on Earth. We were only remembered by trivia buffs preparing to compete for billions of dollars on quiz shows.
There were people who cared: the scientists whose work had made our vacation possible, the pilots who hoped that ours would be the first of many such trips for them, the CEOs whose companies could turn a profit marketing increasingly down-market lunar trips. They cared about the advances, the experiences, the possibilities, but not the moon itself. While we leaped across the lunar surface, they planned to develop it.
When our time was up, we returned to our module to make the long trip back to Earth. I wept in the safety of my suit as we took off. While there was still gravity, my tears slid across my face before being reclaimed by my suit. My grief and my joy were purified and offered back to me as nothing more than water.
by Duncan Shields | Feb 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Caught.
I’m stuck to this wall with thick maglets encasing my glowing hands. My eyes are weeping constantly and I can’t stop my long tongue from flopping down to my chest and tracing lazy circles in the sweat-matted hair there. It’s so hot here. The cluster of my eyes light up yellow and take in my surroundings. I open up my nostril slits and wetly snuffle the air for the faint stink of friends. Any friends at all within this complex.
My footclaws sheathe in and slide out over and over again as I think. I’m stuck up here, arms outstretched, legs splayed and tail pointing straight down. It’s not uncomfortable but they are not going to let me go.
There’s a low, deep growl that’s resonating in me. A low, thudding drumroll in my chest. I’m thinking and I’m humming. I’m trying to imagine back to where I screwed up.
All the energy I push out of my hands just gets absorbed by the maglets. They soften but they will not melt. Hell, they’re probably the way they power the prison that I’m in. A few kilojoules of energy from my angry fists and they can hold me for days thanks to my own poor impulse control and my race’s natural instinct for anger that we have still barely learned to control.
Posessors. Demons. Overtakers. Biters. Light-darkeners. The Tribe.
They’d have you believe that we can change shape and see in the dark. We are just as vulnerable as any meat machine, though, and that is what scares me now. I think that this is what they refer to as the first degree. If I remember correctly, the first degree is letting the prisoner wait. The second degree is showing them the tools that you are going to use on them to get the information you’re after. The third degree is asking them the questions over and over again. Or maybe it’s the actual torture. I’m not sure.
Either way, my mind is racing with animal fear and a deep need to get out of here. I’m not interested in finding out what the actual third degree is.
I wish I was back with my cubs and my breedbeds in the hive but this is the risk I took, joining the defense.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jan 31, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Revy leaned heavy against the bathroom sink, his reflection in the streaked mirror staring back battered and bruised. Stitches poked through pink flesh behind his jaw and beneath his hairline, bloodshot eyes sunken and dark. How long since he’d slept? He couldn’t remember.
In the corner of his vision lurked the promise of ability. He focused, and a window zoomed into focus. “Status: Online, Idle…” He wished he knew how to make it do something. He winced through the pounding in his head, swinging open the vanity mirror to expose bottles of pills. Mixing a fistful of pain meds and anti-biotics, he dry swallowed them, feeling the fizz as they partially dissolved in his mouth.
Cho said the pain would go away in a few weeks.
Cho. He remembered Cho. He’d bought illegal bio-tech from him a few times, but this was different. “Real serious shit,” Cho had said, “top secret shit. You pay big cash money.”
Revy’s head ached as memories forced themselves to the surface. The money he’d stolen, from whom he couldn’t recall. The operating theatre, Cho gowned and chatty, the nurse counting backwards with him from one hundred. He remembered a recovery room, the feel of his battered face through bandages.
Revy closed the cabinet door and studied himself in the mirror again. The stitches were dry, maybe a week old. They should come out soon.
Cho was dead.
Those memories clawed at the fog inside his head. Cho talking about training, promising to teach him to use his implant. He remembered the silent thunder of booted feet, men shouting. Cho screaming outside his room, words he could hear but not fully comprehend.
He remembered gunfire.
It had been days since he’d found himself curled up on the fire escape of his apartment building outside his kitchen window, bare feet screaming from the cold steel and the snow.
“Status: Online, Scanning…”
Sound overwhelmed him as he stumbled out of the bathroom; the fan in the kitchen, a music player from the floor below, the old recluse coughing from his apartment near the elevator. The noises were amped up, wrapped in soft static. He leaned his head against the thickly papered wall, watching his front door through the haze of his living room as it shimmered in and out of focus. He heard the elevator door open, and the door to the stairwell. He could hear boots, men. Revy closed his eyes, listening as they made their weapons ready while closing the distance to his door, to him. The pounding of his heart increased in frequency. Adrenaline flooded his system, clearing the fog and easing for the moment the throbbing in his head. Revy retreated into the bathroom; the window wasn’t too far from the fire escape, maybe he could jump.
He could hear them with high fidelity now, right outside the door. White light and pain shot through his head and he clutched at his ears in a vain attempt to block out the sensation. Had he been flash banged? Had he waited too long? His eyes squeezed shut, he waited for the heavy hands, for barked orders that didn’t come. Revy opened his eyes tentatively to find himself outside in the hallway, door pushed open to the stairwell, listening. The old man by the elevator was coughing into his phone, wheezing about gunfire and screaming. There was no screaming now. Revy found his hands comfortable on a large assault weapon. Scattered around his apartment doorway Revy counted eight bodies amidst spattered and pooling blood.
“Status: Disengaged, Idle…”
The only thing he knew now for sure was that he couldn’t stay.
