by submission | May 21, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“Hey, Doc. How’s it going?” Mike Compton, freshly tanned, popped his head into the geneticist’s offices. His counselor remained seated, turned toward the window overlooking the campus quad featuring coeds being tempted to indecency on manicured lawns by the early spring heat. He remained in his high-backed chair, with only shoulders of a white lab coat visible to the student intruder.
“So much happened while you vacationed in Sydney.” Dr. Nellis remained behind his leather throne. Compton could smell pungent aftershave uncharacteristic of Nellis. “Yes, it’s part of your scholarship for rugby overseas. Just as well. You might have interfered. Now you’ll take over the Lambda S gene and lysis reconstruction research. I’m retiring. You and Dr. Cranston can continue the metabolite study for your masters.”
“You okay, Doc? Did you make breakthroughs on the cancer study? Is that why Thurgaurd pharma reps were here this morning? Everyone’s talking about it?” Compton looked around the atypically spotless office. “Oh, Dr. Kilborne at rehab asked about the portable bariatric chamber. She needs it for patients. Dr. Gillespie wants his meteor samples back, too. He’s miffed about you keeping them all winter.”
“Everyone’s talking, are they? Kilborne gets her contraption tomorrow. Gillespie can piss on a live wire. No, I didn’t find a cure for cancer. Who wants that? Salk got screwed on his polio patents. If I threatened billions in grants with a cure I’d be assassinated.” Nellis remained secluded from Compton’s view.
“So what’s the story? Why leave me with the lysis experiments when we’re close?”
“Do you read your Bible, Mike?”
“Weird. Okay. Yes. So?”
“There were giants before mankind, not just Goliath. Every culture has them. The megalithic structures are evidence. So, I investigated the possibility of behemoth bipeds in prehistory. A Smithsonian colleague sent me an ancient giant femur with productive DNA. My testing matched with new ancient climate data. Before the last ice age the oxygen levels weren’t higher, they were lower. Additionally, the air was rich in clouds of rare earth elements from billions of years of meteor barrages. Although we knew many of these elements were present in us, we didn’t know their purpose. I discovered that minute concentrations of niobium isotopes, inhaled in a lower oxygen environment, can stimulate the pituitary to safely increase human growth hormone in the hGH-N gene somatotrope. I had to be careful about lung scarring, but it had immediate effects on bone growth and calcium uptake.”
“That’s a huge leap, but if any of this was true, why isn’t everyone gigantic?”
“There are dysfunctional genes that cause acromegaly, but they are mutated remnants. After the great floods of legend, rare earths were washed from the air, becoming useless salts, with some becoming toxic to giants. Oxygen levels increased. Giant mammal days were numbered.”
“I wish you’d stay, but if you’ve made up your mind to retire, is there anything I can do before you take off?”
“Yes, Mike. I’d like your Carousel Club membership card. They restrict their clientele.”
“That’s a twist. You rarely go anywhere…and now a gentleman’s club? Sure, here’s the card.” Compton pulled the black plastic identification from his wallet.
“Thanks, Mike,” Ellis said, turning his chair, standing and towering over his student to accept the gift. Compton froze, aghast, staring into the face of his majestic seven-foot professor, sans thick glasses, sporting thick, long hair and a booming mustache. “I’ll remember you in my will.” Ellis threw his lab coat off, revealing his chiseled torso, as he grabbed a bulging duffel bag, heading for his first jaunt at the Carousel.
by submission | May 7, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“Everyone back from Charon?” Captain Swanson paced about the control center of Abraxas. His bullish voice rattled younger officers as Swanson towered above at seven feet, his glimmering blue eyes set against his callow Cajun skin.
“Sir,” replied Ensign Pallute, fresh from the Saturn Academy. “All present. Doctor Reynolds requests an immediate conference, sir.”
“Does she? Tell her to meet me in sickbay after she’s been decontaminated.”
“Aye,” replied the timid ensign. Her hair shimmered in twists of colored bands specific to her tribe. Her extra fingers slid over the control panel lights, sensing hundreds of ship conditions.
“Transfer control to my visor, Pallute. I’ll be with Reynolds.”
Swanson stepped into the transfer tube, proceeding to rendezvous while commanding remotely. He entered sickbay with disregard for isolation protocols.
“Thank God,” Reynolds said, sweeping her raven hair away from her face as the cleansing fans blew used decon virals off her suit. “We’ve got to turn back. I witnessed those holographic eyes while translating the carvings. The ruin’s messages penetrated me with a flush of electrical charge…and knowing.”
“Edith,” Swanson interrupted, “This is science, not religious fervor. I only want to know if mountains of processed rare earths are there, as our probes showed. Then we’re on our way, outside the system. I just heard the Charon Message Protesters on Mars are so insane that some jumped from the Face yesterday, claiming disaster if we proceed. Surely you aren’t supporting that hysteria?”
“Yes, the priceless minerals are all there, waiting like cheese for us, but that wasn’t a warning someone left on Charon—it was a threat. We must not go deeper into the Kuiper Belt.”
Swanson felt her terror but shook it off as simply her symptoms after visiting the flashing vistas first discovered in 2032, emanating from the Kubrick Mons. Charon hallucinations affected anyone studying the light show, even from video recordings. The phenomenon was studied for years before the decision to send Abraxas into deep space.
“What threat?”
“The exact translation? Do not go past this ring. You are impure. The punishment is relinquishment.”
“Hogwash, Reynolds. Those are myths for the mindless, not us. That feeds those mobs on Mars chanting their ring-pass-not pabulum. We’re better than that. I don’t scare easy. Maybe those carvings are ancient…but most likely, they are the work of the Moon cartels that want to control mineral rights out here through intimidation. You know the Moonies are famous for head games. I could care less. I appreciate your report, but we’ll make way. This is one captain that is not going to relinquish an inch.”
Swanson pressed pads on his control belt, alerting his command ensign. “Pallute, go to full power and chart a path through the Belt. Increase the magnetic shields in case we encounter one of those pockets the probes detected two years ago.”
“Aye,” Pallute replied—the last word she would ever speak. Threads of violet sparkles rose from Charon, penetrating the ship’s hull, touching each crew member. At each infiltration sizzling spittles of light shot back from the Abraxas, back to the origins of the crew’s DNA. The ship disappeared, then colonies throughout the planets, and then human life on Earth as the history of the human species was erased for all time.
A crew of reptilians was next to hover over Charon, waiting for their crew’s archaeologists and miners to return and report before their first attempt at penetrating the expanse of the Kuiper Belt, beyond the flashing lights coming from Pluto’s largest moon.
by submission | Apr 7, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“This one, it’s too close. Something’s wrong!” Taylor Hines tapped the green screen, yelling at Corus, as her brilliant, red-scaled hands clawed the communications panel.
“Ogira 6. Ogira 6. Back away point three apars from the dwarf star. Ogira, respond.” Static and deep-space warbles returned on the speaker.
A snarling, high-pitched response followed. “We do not take orders from two legged.”
Taylor and Corus studied the round screen depicting four hundred gigantic freighters manipulating magnetars toward one side of the galaxy’s center. The stellar tugboats pushed and poked dead stars to manipulate pulsating neutron stars, but if herded too close the magnetar could awaken the deceased, creating a fusion burst, destroying the wrangler’s ship.
“Ogira 6,” Corus repeated. “You must comply. Repeat…” She stopped. The green dot depicting the Peronian’s ship disappeared. The brown circle, the dwarf, turned red on screen, vaporizing two more ships in a nearby quadrant, leaving their packages adrift.
Taylor stared at Corus as water flowed from bulbous double eyes drooping down from the square face of the command ship’s leader.
“Now you know,” Corus whimpered, “Why it was important to find you. We cannot lose another hundred. Without enough magnetars to divert the angle of the black hole, our client’s race will perish…perhaps only surviving another thousand years.”
She returned her attention to the screen. There was no voice traffic. No need to mourn. Every pilot knew the risk, but not everyone believed the capabilities of a new crewmember from an unknown planet.
“You were recently chosen for your unusual skills of knowing. None of our captains have this understanding. You also fit our profile. You are the last of your kind, are you not?”
“I’m not sure,” Taylor replied, collapsing back in his high-backed chair. “My parents were abducted by a snake race from Earth, like thousands each year. Many were eaten, but most were enslaved. My parents were saved at a space station auction raided by the Kersan Kahn. Kahns attack slave-making races and free their captives—then eat the slavers. The scaly bastards didn’t see that coming.”
“So, you hate those with scales instead of your pitiful pale covering?”
“No, no Corus. It’s not like that. Your race was not like theirs. It’s what my parents experienced. There was no way back for us. I’ll perish alone out here since my parents died. I’ll never mate…never love.”
“So you must understand why they picked all of us—orphans of our races. Our kinds were either destroyed by wars or bad choices. Our employer’s wisdom will turn this devourer of solar systems just slightly away from their civilization. That will give them another million years to evolve, yet they will not be blamed for they cannot be tied to our work, and we have no home worlds left to be punished.”
“And the other worlds? The ones now lost too early because we adjusted the black hole?”
“It swallows a thousand stars daily. Millions of cultures disappear. Their time is over. So it is in every galaxy, on every planet. Our client’s superiority designed this adjustment. That wisdom and influence gives them the right to continue.” Corus persisted in her surveillance of the armada.
“And we, the movers of these dead stars, will we be the forgotten…the forever unloved?”
“No, Taylor Hines. Billions will recall our heroic names in story and song for millennia, while on our worlds we would have been mere shadows in time the moment our eyes grew cold. Everyone else has a history to live, but we, on this voyage, have a destiny.”
by submission | Jan 17, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“Good Lord, where am I?” Taylor Smith, astronaut extraordinaire, sat nude, baffled and embarrassed on the plush back seat of a vehicle flying through unknown star fields. He could see all about the craft through the wrap around windows.
His nakedness terrified him as he stared at the alien in the driver’s seat in front of him, handling a steering wheel above a dashboard of flashing lights and clustered dials. The alien’s purple flesh hung loosely over its two faces that rotated on a single pedestal. There was a single eye in each countenance. Only gibberish and squeaking emitted from folds of the driver’s facial tissue. The blabbering was followed by a yellow square flashing on the ceiling between the front and back seats. A pleasant female voice emanated a translation.
“You aren’t somewhere, Taylor Smith, you are sometime.” The creature’s globular head rotated freely as its chartreuse pads twisted the steering to and fro, directing the small capsule away from passing space debris and planetoids. “I haven’t had one like you before.”
Smith pounded at the walls, searching for an escape, then stopped, remembering he had no suit to protect him from space. “Am I dead? Who are you?”
“We don’t have names. Just do the work. No, you are worse than dead. You are in timelessness—another lost one who crossed a rift between parallels. I simply ferry you back, when I can, to your right timefullness. So stupid. So many species that don’t understand but venture out in space anyway.”
“This is a mistake. Where are my clothes…my suit? I was leading a mission to Mars from Earth. I want out of here!” Smith tried to strike out but couldn’t, so he focused his attention on covering his privates.
“This time is your mirror…so close…yet we do not see each other. The creators made so many mistakes. One wonders why they create with such errors, but then I would not have purpose. Never heard of Mars or Earth. I just depend on my panel with hopes you are a brief fare, and I don’t have to spend forever waiting for you to age and die back there, stinking up the cabin. Happens sometimes if a specific rift disappears.”
Smith’s nausea beckoned his last meal to join his throat. He held back. Dying in space was always a possibility, but not like this. The yellow light on the ceiling illuminated and the voice continued. “So lucky for you. Here we are. You’ll be in place soon.”
A swirling tornado of blue and purple lights twisted around them as the pilot skillfully pointed a pathway through the matrix of neutrino flux. “Out you go…”
“Commander, where were you? In a moment you flashed and disappeared. Are you okay?” Lieutenant Bailey shook the Commander’s shoulder to get his attention.
“Off me, idiot! Put a space buoy out behind us and put it on all-channel alerts to avoid that area.” Smith looked down; assuring himself he was no longer naked and not dead.
“But why, sir, when there was no debris and…”
“Just do it. Do it now…before we get too far away…no one else needs to trip through the looking glass.”
Commander Smith rushed from the bridge to the isolation of his quarters to make sure this was his world and his time. He stopped to gaze in a mirror in the hallway of his compartment. For a moment he saw the fading image of the spinning heads of his travel guide. Smith collapsed on his bed, in shock, pondering a career change.
by submission | Jan 14, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“I wonder about the strawberry jelly, Gran Papa.” Madeleine’s brother Corso kicked at her feet beneath the sterile stainless steel table but instead struck a metal leg. He groaned softly as to hide his actions from the family figurehead. His black shock of hair, growing on just his left side, poked about as he jerked his head, glaring at his inquisitive sister. He wondered if this would be another moment when her prodding about the luxury of their life would further endanger their status in the House of Sulus.
“My dear, red-haired wunderkind, what is it this time? The texture of the fruit or why it is sweet when the fruit we raise on this vast space station is so bitter, or even without flavor? What is it now? Are not the wonders of your surroundings enough?” Chancellor Kaleb, patriarch of the Sulus Dynasty, leaned toward his beloved grandchild. His bushy eyebrows and throws of white hair were a spectacle of grandeur in the Empire, though the centuries of aging revealed themselves in the crevasses meandering through his high checks and noble, square chin. Madeleine was the rare being aboard the gigantic vessel who dared look deep into his massive black eyes.
“No, Gran Papa. Every day I behold the glorious royal sea above us, circling the rim of our majestic castle, knowing it protects us from the dangers of space. I see our floating forests and grassy knolls in the midlands, all above the roasting fire of the hybrid fusion engine—our sun…not theirs, out there, as we circle safety behind the protection of Jupiter.” She pointed to the outer hull stretching tens of miles above. “It is the source of this delicacy in front of us I ponder about, that we spread upon our fresh pastries each morning. Is it true that only the old Earth can make such a thing? I hear the people left there are our slaves merely to make this delight.”
A frown rolled across the Chancellor’s forehead. Corso drew back. His parents had warned them both that this visit could mean their propulsion upward in society, or a sentence to one of the prison colonies. Kaleb leaned back in his regal, high-backed chair. “No question about the outside Empire is out of order, but you have heard only partial truths. You must have been sneaking near the worker’s quarters. You shouldn’t. They know how to serve, but little more. In truth, the remains of Earth are the only place in the system where we have been able to raise strawberries. All other attempts have failed in one way or another. You know how bitter our apples and cherries are, no matter our care. Those who survived the destruction remained on Earth to tend these most valuable commodities. They cannot be seen as slaves, for without our trade, and the desire for this fruit, they would starve on that devastated rock. This delight is their gift for the beloved in the Empire, and they survive by our grace, nothing more.”
“But didn’t we come from Earth, originally? Aren’t we part of them?” Corso gasped, as did the Chancellor.
“Never, my little fury, ever speak of that again, or even suggest it.” His harsh tones shocked Madeleine into a withdrawn silence, unlike her nature. She continued with their breakfast quietly, carefully choosing not to ask about the Martian meat pies.
