by submission | Mar 12, 2011 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
It was the last day of the forty third reign of the Enduring Prophet, and all was right with the world.
The prophet was now bed-bound, and it was widely expected that soon his spirit would leave behind this mortal form, and appear incarnate in his successor: a boy groomed from childhood to take on the mantle and the spirit of the Enduring Prophet.
At least, that was how the monks told it. The worldly city-folk smiled at such stories when they heard them. Their ancestors had believed in continual reincarnation, but these days most people accepted that the actual procedure was that when the monks saw the Prophet was getting on in years, they selected a boy, tutored him to become their figurehead, and continued their own rule by proxy. It was a neat enough system, and the monks tended to rule wisely. Over the years, the concepts of reincarnation and divinity had become a pleasant story, truly believed only by peasants and children.
Shortly before noon, the Enduring Prophet sent for the boy. Today, the child’s name was Kai Lo, a name that would be taken from him if and when he took the mantle. The Prophet needed no name. The boy was solemn, old before his time with the burden of responsibility. He knew what was coming.
Before he entered the Prophet’s chambers, a monk stopped Kai Lo and spoke to him. Wen Chan had looked after the boy for the five years since he had been brought to the monastery, had become almost a father to him, and his tone was gentle and grave.
“Kai Lo,” he said, “Do you know what is asked of you today?”
“I do.”
“And you will do as you have been asked?”
The boy nodded. Wen Chan paused for a moment, and when he continued the words were less ceremonial.
“Should you not wish this, if you are not ready for the burden, it can be taken from you.”
For a moment, his eyes seemed to plead with the boy. Kai Lo shook his head.
“It is my destiny.”
Wen Chan said no more, simply led the boy into the room. The hum of machinery grew louder as the door opened.
An hour later, the monks lowered the flags around the monastery entrance. The crowd gathered before the gates knew what this meant. The funeral and coronation would take place this evening.
In his bedchamber, the boy no longer known as Kai Lo heard the sound of the crowd outside. It had been a long time since his hearing had been this acute. There was a fresh pleasure in these first few days after the transfer, where everything felt new. After a while, it became normal again, but for a few short days he felt capable of anything.
The boy hadn’t struggled, hadn’t resisted when the technicians placed him in the machine. His pious sense of duty had lasted until the transfer had taken place, when something akin to shock had passed across the face of a boy suddenly trapped in a dying old man.
Sometimes, the prophet felt remorse for the life that he ended, the body he stole, but it was just how things were. His people needed a leader, and there were some prices you had to pay.
He stepped towards his balcony, basking for the first time in the roar of the crowd.
It was the first day of the forty fourth reign of the Enduring Prophet, and all was right with the world.
by submission | Jan 27, 2011 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
Patrick held up the device and tried not to talk too fast.
“This,” he said, “Is a visua. It’s a way of making images.”
Mr Nolan stuck his hand up. Mr Nolan always stuck his hand up.
“Like a camera?” he said. Patrick shrugged.
“Sort of,” he said, “It’s like a camera that can take three dimensional images that can move, and that you can talk to. When you see an image you want to capture, you just point the visua and interface it with your wetware.”
Ten blank faces. Patrick realized his mistake as soon as he had made it. These people didn’t have wetware. They had the barest understanding of what wetware even was, as foggy as the concept of red in the mind of a blind man, not that there were blind people any more. The fact that he was having to give these classes verbally rather than by infodump was just the largest proof of how different these people were.
“I’m sure they make hand operated versions,” Patrick said, sure of no such thing, “I’ll explain how we use it in our practical next week. Now, this is a portable Maker…”
The portable maker was a mystery to the class, just like everything else. Each week the class listened politely, in general bewilderment, as Patrick showed them the trappings of a modern life that for most of them had only come about two centuries after they had died.
The problem with cryogenics wasn’t how you thawed the people out afterwards. Eventually, that was just a problem of mapping the structure of their brains and then vat-growing a new body. The problem was that by the time the technology existed to thaw them out, the world they had died in didn’t exist any more. Instead, they were waking into a world as far beyond their technological grasp as the steam engine had been beyond the peasants of the dark ages.
Patrick had got into his line of work because he wanted to make a difference, and was just hitting the part of his career where he realized that this was nearly impossible. Class after class sat through his demonstrations, smiled politely, and then went back into a bewildering world to live lives of near catatonia, their comfortable assumptions 250 years out of date. Some made it through, of course, the rare few learned enough skills to become functioning members of society, but they were definitely the exception rather than the rule.
After class, as everyone filed out, Mr Nolan stayed behind, and grabbed Patrick by the hand in what Patrick recognized as an old fashioned sign of companionship.
“I just wanted to say thanks for all you’re doing for us,” he said, “We really appreciate it.”
Patrick smiled, and hoped it didn’t look too fake.
“It’s nothing,” he said. It really was.
by submission | Jan 5, 2011 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
“I look ridiculous.”
“You look fine.”
“What is this garment made of, anyway?”
“A stretchy polymer filled with some kind of foam. It simulates the effect of muscles on your thorax.”
“Why would I want to have muscles on my thorax?”
“Because that’s where the mammals have them.”
Metr and Edlai walked, talking in voices too high for the collected mammals to hear. Around them walked alines, mechanoids and cybernetic creatures of every shade and stripe, none of them real.
Well, almost none.
“Why do we have to have this meeting here anyway?”
Metr hissed softly in exasperation and turned to face his friend,looking him directly in his slit-pupilled eyes.
“We’re having it here because this is neutral ground, as neutral as it gets. Between us and the Vaex, there’s about a hundred systems, only one of them has a breathable atmosphere, and that’s where we’re meeting. Neither of us has an advantage here.”
“I understand that, but why meet at this ludicrous carnival?”
Metr had wondered this himself, until he had seen video of the event. Hundreds of mammals in costumes, simulating a variety of weird races that they had dreamed up with no knowledge of the rest of the galaxy. With this range of shapes and faces, nothing humanoid would get a second glance.
“So,” said Edlai after the pause had started to stretch, “Do you think this will work?”
“The alternative to this working is the kind of war that rewrites the sky. Unless they’re insane and we’re insane, this will work.”
Metr said the words with a confidence that he didn’t feel. Nobody present, and very few still alive, could remember how the Vaek and the Na’taa had gained such antipathy towards each other. The source of the grudge was variously thought to be mineral rights in a variety of systems, trading deals gone bad, or just the overarching fact that insectoids and reptillians liked each other even less than they liked mammals. And now they were going to have to forge peace, or throw a third of the galactic disk into a slow and murderous war.
“Are you all right?”
Slowly, Metr became aware that he had stopped, and was staring into the distance.
“I’m fine,” he lied, “I just need a little air. You go on without me.”
Edlai moved away, leaving Metr looking out over the hall of mammals in their costumes. They were innovents, playing childish games of make believe. Their civilization had got little further than their own moon, and yet if things went badly, their planet could be snuffed out without them ever knowing why.
A drunken mammal bumped into him, nearly spilling a plastic cup of something.
“Whoa, sorry mate,” The mammal said, “Hey, nice costume. Star Wars?”
Metr shook his reptillian head.
“I hope not.”
by submission | Feb 3, 2010 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
When the doctor asked Lacey what he could do for her, she explained everything. She told him about growing up plain, being ignored by boys and teased by girls every day of her school life. She told him about Joey LeMartin’s hypnotic blue eyes that never swung in her direction. Then, she told him what she wanted.
The doctor nodded slowly, thinking about payment under the table, black market cash.
“It will be expensive”
Money, Lacey said, was no object.
Four months later, all the scars healed and the course of medication finished, she was back in her home town, standing outside a bar she knew he visited. Tomorrow night was the ten year reunion. She wouldn’t be attending, her reunion was tonight.
When he came out, he was exactly as Lacey remembered him. The hair was in a short business cut, and he had the beginnings of a spare tire, but he was still the same Joey LeMartin.
“Joey.”
He turned to look at her, and didn’t recognize her. She hadn’t expected him to.
“It’s me. Lacey Monroe, from high school.”
He frowned for a second until the name clicked. She wasn’t surprised. He was associating the name with a dowdy duckling, not the swan before him. Finally, he got it.
“Lacey! Yeah, we were in geography together, weren’t we? Wow, you look great.”
She did look great. She had paid to look great, but it was good to hear him say so.
“I’m in town for the reunion, and I thought I’d look up old friends. You want to go get a drink?”
He did. With how she looked, anyone would.
Hours later, they were in her hotel room. She poured bourbon into plastic glasses. He loosened his tie and made flirtatious small talk. The big moment was coming, they could both feel it.
“I wish I’d got to know you better in school,” he said, looking down her cleavage, “I really missed out.”
“Well, you can always get to know me now.” she said, putting the glass down.
He leaned in for the first kiss. As he did, she looked into his hypnotic blue eyes. The plasma disruptor behind her artificial right eye gave off a charging whine that only she could hear.
They would find him tomorrow in a hotel room under a fake name. The face would be too badly burned for iris or dental recognition, but the fingerprints would eventually identify him.
It would take him several hours to die, his blue eyes burned out, unable to cry.
Or to put it another way, he would remember her for the rest of his life.
by submission | Nov 24, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
Matron moved almost silently from ward to ward. The faint silken brush of her passing made the nurses look up, meeting her eyes as she passed, exchanging glanced messages that said as much as conversations. The few awake patients did not look. Most of them stared at the ceiling, or listened to music quietly, or slept, or cried.
This an early ward, where the patients were coaxed from catatonia into some basic level of function. The sisters here were soothing more than encouraging, only gently touching the sharp edges of broken minds. Once the patients began to recover, they were brought to day wards where they would recuperate, rehabilitate, take faltrering steps towards health. They spent their days in rooms where french windows opened onto the seaside, where the crash of waves and bracing sea air brought them relaxation and health.
Her rounds completed, Matron moved further into the hospital. She stopped outside an unregarded wooden door, checked that nobody was around, and unlocked it. As the door opened, soft sounds of pain could be heard. This was the relapse room, not spoken of beyond its wooden door.
“How is everyone today?” she said in a hushed voice to the sister who sat at the ward desk. Beyond her, men lay in beds, scratching at imaginary bugs, screaming at invisible enemies.
“Quiet so far” the sister said: she was blonde, with beautiful but absolutely unsexual features; as alluring as a marble statue, and as cold.
“I don’t see Mr Morningside. Did he have another episode?”
“I’m afraid so. Metal men this time.”
“I’ll go and talk to him.”
Halfway down the room, there was a side-ward, separated from the main room by a heavy door. Matron opened this, remembering to bolt it behind her. Alone in the room there was one man in one bed. He was clad in blue and white striped pajamas like the others, but where they looked like patients, he looked like someone in a costume, unused even to his skin.
“I know what you are,” he said as she entered
“Hello, Mr Morningside, and what do you imagine me to be today?”
“You’re a ghost. A ghost of electricity. You’re a piece of mathematics that lives in my head.”
“That’s nice. Did you take your pills?”
“They’re poison. You’re trying to poison me and make me forget. I’m not in my body any more. I’m not even in my mind. It burned away, it all burned.”
“Mr Morningside, if you don’t take your pills, we will have to restrain you again.”
He flinched, visibly. When she held the pills out to him, shied away, but then opened his mouth with a display of childish reluctance. He dry-swallowed the pills, not waiting for the proffered glass of water. He was crying as they began to take effect, dragging him into a muttering sleep.
Matron was subdued as she left the ward. It disturbed her when a relapsing patient stumbled towards the truth. He wasn’t in his body any more, wouldn’t be there until his mind was healed enough to accept the trauma of the war’s memories. The new bodies were regrown, but the minds just weren’t ready for them yet. Let them heal here, where they were safe, where they had matron and her beautiful, identical sisters to look after them.
From the day ward she heard a few patients gather together for a morning sing-song.
“Oh I do like to be beside the seaside…”
