by submission | Oct 20, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
Ventilation fan rumblings echoed over huddled mourners chilled in multi-colored, insulated, puffy arctic suits. Their drifting breath mists bellowed over a gaunt figure, attired in a jumpsuit dyed red on the left—solid white on the right, draping over a black, plastic coffin revealing embalmed features of Jonathon Rigby, renowned author and humanitarian patron aboard space station Lin Toller 10.
“Dear soul of Jonathon Rigby, I give easement and rest to you, dear passenger. Drift not down shipboard hallways, lost and searching. Be at peace, one with this ship, now and forever, in accordance with your wishes. For everlasting serenity, I pawn my soul for your clearing. Amen.” With that, the sin-eater collapsed on the aft cargo bay’s cold steel, groaning and frothing in pantomimes of sexual paroxysms.
Gathered parishioners turned away while covering their noses from aromatic surrounding cargoes of odd spices, along with spew and spoor of countless caged species. Still prone, he spoke slowly to Rigby’s relatives. “This man shall not be ejected, but shall be resurrected and recycled as part of his once spinning home, pure and clean of all indiscretions.”
Attendees drifted to comforts of cleaner air on heated decks, leaving the sin-eater horizontal and shivering. A robust sky marine remained, in full uniform, without assisting the practitioner up to face him: Rigby’s brother.
“Jonathon was damn near a saint, without discretions or sin. If I could prove you were defrauding my family I would hunt you down.” Controlled rage rippled on his face.
The sin-eater gently stroked his assailant’s right cheek. “Sergeant, my calling assists all souls to absolution, even those, like your brother, living clean, glorious existences. Sin is not evil. It means missing the target…falling short from choices. Everyone makes such choices. Everyone.”
Rigby slapped the hand away. “My great-great-grandfather wrote about you squibs in his journals. They used to call you Sky Pilots, full of hidden agendas. Well out here, padre, heaven is freezing vacuum above hell’s heat of reentry. No sin here…only survival…the guy with the meanest weapon and greatest hunger wins. There is no soul.”
The thin, aged face of the sin-eater grew taut. “You can’t deny your soul. No atheists in a foxhole, remember?”
“If the Corps wanted me to have a soul, they would have issued one. Strange how people outside foxholes think they know. I served at Xanthia. That’s where I learned there is no God, no hope…no soul. Flying spiders ate my buddies. People like you sent us onto that forsaken rock where even dirt ate marines. Then, when we’d lost thousands, deal makers blew it up. You’ll choke cleaning those bastards. I wonder what my family idiots paid you for this charade.”
“I take no funds. They donated a year’s supply of food credits”
“You bastard! That’s a small fortune out here.” Rigby moved forward, fists clenched.
“I sense you don’t fear death, but the not knowing. The soul exists outside our time-space continuum. Everything for the departed is unity. That’s what the Majorana fermion particle discovery was about: eternal existence.” He backed away from the Marine’s reach.
“Who cares? I need to get out of here before I wipe this deck with your skin.”
“I prefer anodyne language, Sergeant…not this personality assassination during anguish. Everyone grieves uniquely. If yours is aggression, I’ll disengage. We will part now, Sergeant, as I await your return. Eventually, I will purge your darkness before the long journey. I’ve met your kind a hundred times. We will conjoin. Until our final meeting, I’ll simply remain, drifting in the stars, with hope and hunger.”
by submission | Aug 22, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“You, Mister…” The pause came as the micro servers moved quietly in the administrator, shiny and stoic, with a mere chest and head. Minute flashes drifted over hardened aluminum oxide in ever flitting artificial eyes. Arms were unnecessary. Improved perforated urethane from the ancient artists of Kao Corporation provided just enough false humanity on its face to reduce interface stress—still a common condition for those remaining on Earth.
“That’s Kelso, with a K, not a C.” His overbite impeded his diction, but there was no distinct accent. Speech patterns were awash with sand from world travels.
“Yes, well, you are what we call in this bureau an accidental.” Mouth elements moved the straight, strict lips under a static set of nostrils.
“A what?” Grizzled, worn and filthy from the abandoned streets, John Kelso leaned forward toward his caseworker. His right hand wore the scars of loose ropes let wild on the last tuna boat to sail from Tuvalu in the Pacific. The left hand was short a pinky finger from his act of attrition for sleeping with a Yakuza’s wife.
“An unregistered birth that was probably unplanned and therefore unreported.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you are privy to no rights for support from the Society.”
“That makes no sense. My parents were both full citizens. You have their registration in front of you, on screen.” He leaned back, fuming, against his long coat made from a water buffalo hide prepared after a hunt in Thailand.
“I have the records of a couple from Indiana who had three registered children who are now meaningful and productive full citizens. Their records show no familiarity or acknowledgement of your existence.”
“Why should they? I was the oldest when my parents died. None of them were older than three. At twelve I was abandoned by my blood relatives and left to wander and survive in Indianapolis on my own.”
“Unlikely. No child could survive that.” The worker remained motionless.
“False, again. I found many like myself. I’ve since traveled much of this planet and made, I believe, a better place of it, which is more than I can say for many of your registered patrons.”
“Rumor, innuendo and slander—all useless attempts at your concept of validation. They have no effect on me.” Its face turned away from the applicant, fulfilling an algorithm to reduce conflict.
“I tell you I have a right to basic life support until I can get financially stable. My parents left a large estate behind. I’ve checked.” Kelso rubbed his arm where splintered bone ached during the changing weather. A fall in the Andes left a reminder of soroche and failed climbing ropes.
“Only for registered citizens. The Society only sets aside support for those registered. It has been that way since 2130. You are an accidental. There is no further action to take, but you have an alternative.”
“Such as?”
“Off world transport from Earth to one of the newer colonies on the created moons in the Kuiper Belt. There you would be assigned appropriate labor, food and housing.”
“You mean a prison sentence for simply existing. No thanks to that. I like sunlight and air that doesn’t come out of a recycle cartridge. I’d starve first.”
“There are hospice beds available down the street.”
“Does this mean nothing to you? Do you even care?”
“I am not programmed to care. I simply state facts based on evidence.”
“Oh, and how did you get your cushy assignment, sitting here all day, throwing those with real skin out the door?”
“Well, Mr. Kelso, it was not by accident.”
by submission | Jul 28, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“Get down!” Carol yanked private Pennington to the ground below low walls of disintegrating bricks. Enemy snipers pinned them.
“Sorry Captain. Just wanted a look.”
Pennington stared at his commander. The ship’s cook was learning the game. An alien shootout in a California town was new.
Carol did a team perimeter search. Six still huddled below withering attacks.
“Just stay low. I’ll call air support…” She halted. Pennington disappeared below her. He faded, peacefully, without distress. The game screen froze. Her remaining team stopped playing. There was no cry of sorrow. It was the price of losing a member in cryosleep.
The Company psychiatrists invented cryosleep mind sharing to prevent deep-space ‘cold insanity’ that was devastating a third in long suspensions; however, they misreported the powerful side effects as crews realized chamber failures during sharing.
Carol shook it off, excising her demons, but her remaining team disintegrated, one by one. Horrified, she hurried back to the commander’s control center for hibernation. Her fingers pushed through the panel. She dissipated into dull shadows.
“What…where am I?” She was confused while acclimating to new views. She was slipping gently away from the shredded star ship Clemens, wrenching in meteorite hail. The titanium hull sparked as it turned and twisted. A kilometer away, Carol watched flashes of oxygen reach the fusion drives hydrogen recyclers. Explosive light and pressure waves raced through her with no effect. There remained six rotating orbs nearby, within a larger glow, all drifting like her toward the double star in an unfamiliar system. The spheres rotated and trembled, sometimes approaching each other; other times drifting apart, displaying bright colors, and then regrouping. Carol felt their pull but could not discern how to reach them. She had no sense of her own body or any means to move. She thought about Pennington and his final, peaceful stare. Suddenly, she was next to one of the shimmering bubbles.
“Didn’t have any beliefs beyond life, did you, Carol?” She heard Pennington’s question clearly. It was disturbing. “No, don’t be afraid. We are still us, or at least a core of us, whatever that is. Is this my soul? Maybe we are ghosts, but we exist, even if our bodies didn’t make it home.”
“So this is it? We just drift out here, in a vacuum, forever, with no purpose? I’d rather have pure darkness. Where is all this extra light originating?” Carol felt anger replacing her fear. “This is the hell idiots believe in. This is the ultimate punishment. We’ll never see Earth again.”
“No, Carol.” A deep voice, resonant, sweet and overpowering entered her. “We are here. Our joy is your return to the colony of souls, as we exist to assist all life traveling throughout this solar system. We collect the disembodied spirits of consciousness and then reunite them with the all knowing and all loving.”
“Pennington, did you hear that?” Carol saw the other globes about her glide behind her toward a fuzzy, lustrous patch of light. It was a comet hurtling past them to the twin stars.
“I hear it, Carol, and see the beautiful gathering on its surface?”
“Every system works the same,” continued the gentle voice. “Every star is connected in the web of creation. Listen to others sing of their returning.” Carol heard soothing choruses of a million life forms she now gathered with for her soul’s continuing evolution.
“You will enter the star incubator, returning to your system of origin through the multiverse threadways. We, the shining ones, are collectors— guides. We retrieve consciousness back to source creators of every system. Welcome home.”
by submission | Jul 20, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“O holy night, the stars are brightly shining…” She choked off her singing of the next phrase, unable to overcome phlegm from fearful regret as Marcus lay still next to her in the dark, cramped ejection pod. Oxygen recycler packs heated smooth surfaces of the stark plastic enclosure. Air supply would not threaten the long journey—their final voyage into a tarry abyss rising before them. Susan cleared her throat. A ferry craft’s bright window glints shrank as the pods escort sped away from the black hole’s gravitational tendrils. The couple had signed all documents for the eternal assignation: entwining two souls to each other’s minds, while meandering timelessly in an unforgiving universe. Their last kindred adventure waited just ahead.
“Susan,” he muttered, lowly, squeezing her wrinkled hands in the raised console between their scooped, padded recesses. She stopped the Christmas carols they had agreed would serenade their sojourn until bonding was complete.
“My love,” she whispered, grasping his tired fingers for a squeeze of remembrance—times before disease and fatigue overcame the ripeness of youth and middle age fortitude. His cancers grew without guilt for the host pummeled in agony. Electronic pain blocks maintained some of Marcus’s sanity as he was hoisted into the space station entwinement box. Many friends and honored guests celebrated their release from spoiled bodies that could no longer be rejuvenated by injections, replacements, transplants or new miracle cures. “There is always a marker in time for us all,” Susan said in her parting elegy played over the ship’s speaker system as the entwinement tug guided them out from the shuttle bay into the frigid vacuum.
Elderly couples were allowed internment into black holes now that the concepts of heaven, hell and an afterlife were universally discarded. The entwinement process was a lasting remembrance and bonding believed to continue for centuries for souls who had a life-long commitment to their pairing. Probes revealed the second part of the journey outward in its three phases as travelers entered the chasm. Participants were carefully trained for each stage, including appropriate technical and support elements for a successful blending.
Phase I: Entry
Silent Night filled the soundless void of the cabin as velocity increased. They passed the darkening rim with other particles of cosmic space debris fluttering into the vacuum cleaner maw. Susan increased musical volume and bass so their beds vibrated in harmony with choirs from past ages. The portal before them grew inky. She closed the view screens. There would be little need to view outward and they combined inwardly.
Phase II: Blending
Susan activated the hallucinogenic drug injections and brain implant stimulation of their nucleus reticularis pontis oralis, to ensure deep REM sleep. As the ejection pod started its violent swirling, the couple’s amalgamated memories bonded for eons to come.
Phase III: Drifting
The whirlpool of initial entanglement with matter in time-space continuum slowed to a near halt as Susan and Marcus shared singularity, already a thousand years past the time of their injection near the black hole’s horizon. Inside the sightless womb, they would circle, for millennia, bonded in love and memories of pure health, until their rebirth as piercing energy from the fiery mouth of a quasar on the other side of the maelstrom.
by submission | Jul 9, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
It’s insane to record anything, but what else is there to do, floating alone at twelve-thousand feet? Altitude sickness will kick in soon enough…maybe a blessing. I’m out of supplies and dehydrating. Frightened people grabbed Bibles; others cash…some each other. I snatched my school backpack with my video cam. This roost saved me as I watched thousands flying past into the waiting vacuum these last three days. I captured all the horror, watching family and friends pulled to their demise, desperately holding hands…too far from me to touch. Maybe nobody will find this video, but I am driven to capture this ending. Someone must.
Dad warned us. He was military liaison between NSA in San Antonio and NASA. Space Command listening posts picked up weird chatter months ago. Then JPL analyzed light emitted from alien crafts after they passed through the sun’s corona. Hubble photos confirmed these invaders had jumped from old space into our system. Their ships’ construction lacked any hint of iron. Dad said theorists speculated old parts of the universe, first formed after the Big Bang, were missing iron. JPL wasn’t sure why aliens wanted that metal, but after watching their armada siphon off Mercury’s tiny core, and everything inside Venus, their intent was clear. All attempts to communicate with these intruders failed; as we watched, some of their ships bypassed Earth going towards Mars.
We were elite civilians to be saved. Mom, typically stubborn, just lost it, refusing our transfer to underground sanctuary near Marfa. Once alien fleets moved the Moon out of its orbit like a beach ball, the Gulf rose overnight within ten miles of downtown. It was too late for our evacuation. Nothing moved as mother ships penetrated the poles. By then the chosen were already hunkering in deep safe havens, anticipating someday emerging, like Ant People in Hopi legends, replenishing Earth. Dad heard everyone underground was crushed on day one within the secret conclaves, once gravity was disrupted. No one was going to make it.
Hugging a huge building’s belly slowed my exit, as its mass inexplicably drifted somewhat slower. My precarious perch allowed observation of smaller objects zooming past, including the doomed living. The first day streams of the cursed rushed slower, but as aliens stole more iron, transition amplified. Mmm! Damn roaches. I hated seeing them pass by me, but at least they didn’t sting like scorpions, or worse. I saw a cop zoom past yesterday into a cloud of ascending fire ants. I shut off the camera, just as I did when a couple floated past doing the dirty deed in their panic. At least they weren’t screaming in agony.
I was going to enter the astronaut program, with Dad’s influence. Now, I’ll reach space, but I won’t be alive to enjoy the view. The weather is now turning insane. It’s raining upside down as lightning bounces through debris across the wide horizon of lift. Clouds of surface plants and water are now rushing past me like bullets. It’s only a matter of luck something hasn’t smashed me into building windows like a bug on a windshield.
The Earth will soon be a barren rock after the core is completely removed, so here is my final record as I watch the Hill Country below shred apart and the waters of the new Bay of Texas rise up in a twisting wave of froth, dead fishes, seaweed and muck. My water bottles are empty. That seems ironic as water flies past, escaping the dying planet, forever. Oh, there’s the camcorder battery light…
