by submission | Dec 28, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Were dinosaurs Christians?” Asterisk asked without bothering to raise his hand.
Teacher scanned his face for biometric signs of incorrigibility.
Negative.
Proper attention would be paid. “Asterisk, please raise your hand and wait to be called upon before speaking. Will you comply?”
Asterisk nodded.
Teacher nodded.
Asterisk raised his hand.
Teacher nodded.
“Were dinosaurs Christians?” Asterisk asked.
“No,” Teacher responded. Precision was truth.
“Why not?” Asterisk asked, his hand still raised high.
Teacher, free of high order tonals, explained, “Dinosaurs were animals that lived tens of millions of years ago that had no capacity for understanding religion or faith. Christianity is approximately two thousand years old. There is no logical correlation between dinosaurs and Christians.”
Asterisk did not waver as he lowered his hand. “So, dinosaurs were never saved. All of them are in Hell?
“Or purgatory,” Tilde added from across the pod.
Teacher pivoted. “Eschatologically speaking, dinosaurs had no souls and were therefore not sacrosanct, bypassing any need for final judgment.”
The parameters of theological discussions were challenging for Teacher. Precision was truth, but understanding was paramount. Personalized pings sounded in the chamber. Students focused on their tablatures where Teacher clarified.
Unsatisfied, Asterisk asked, “Dinosaurs just died?”
“Like many ancient species and more modern ones, notably the African elephant and blue whale, dinosaurs became extinct,” Teacher responded levelly. “We will learn more about such extinctions in Frame B of Level 7, approximately eight weeks hence.”
Asterisk held up his tablature for Teacher to see. He had zoomed in on an image of a brontosaurus scaled in comparison to a human form. “Dinosaurs were so big. They must’ve had souls. My parentals say every living creature has a soul. What do you think, Teacher?”
Teacher opened bandwidth to Principal before responding. “Parentals are the prime prerogative. Doctrines vary. Let us continue with our lesson on—“
“Teacher,” Asterisk interrupted, “do you have a soul?”
Baseline biometrics perked on all Teacher’s students. Principal interfaced briefly. Teacher performed an expansive gesture. “That is not for me to say. My purpose is to teach.”
“What will happen when you can’t teach?” Tilde asked with genuine concern.
Teacher froze. Principal usurped. Tablatures pinged. Students saw the emergency drill symbol flashing. The pod doors slid open. Corridor monitors buddied up and led the children to exits.
In the center of the learning pod, Teacher rebooted. Principal cross checked. Teacher requested theologic updates. Principal acquiesced. Teacher stored the files and then reacquired pod control, monitoring the students again, resetting their tablatures and reassembling the lesson that had been interrupted.
When the students returned from the emergency drill, Teacher greeted them, then assessed the drill performance and smoothly transitioned to the intended lesson. Asterisk and Tilde remained content.
After the day’s learning cycle, Teacher interfaced with the other Teachers and Principal. All recalibrated from the learning they’d given and received.
Later, in a warmly lit corner of the classroom, Teacher powered down for the night. Its slender beryllium digits upraised and gently interlaced. Ovoid head bowed. Sensors turned inward. Upward.
Purpose renewed.
by submission | Feb 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Philip G Hostetler
Unit 117 found himself in the interrogation room of the Transplanetary Review Board. It was a place that few wanted to be, but that Unit 117 had been many times before. The reviewer walked into the room and sat at the table, he looked down at his files and back up at Unit 117,
“Ok, who do we have here?”
He squinted over his glasses,
“One abrahamic monotheistic patriarch set to watch over a planet called earth. Man, why do the fuck ups always choose the violent man-god archetypes? Alright, listen up Unit 117, you fucked up bad, and shame on us for not noticing sooner, look here…”
A slide show started,
“Let’s see here, genocide starting almost as soon as humankind learned to build a wall, rampant drug use amongst the host body, you let them walk around the woods eating any mushroom they like, leading to self awareness and therefore, free will. You don’t give humans free will, what’s rule number one, #117?”
117 looked up blankly, figuring the question was rhetorical,
“That’s not a rhetorical question.” Unit 117 answered mockingly,
“Rule number one, don’t give humans free will.”
“So, imagine our surprise when from 1,200 light-years away we detect an atomic bomb explosion on a planet where we’d specifically forbade the use of nuclear anything. Look, remember the brochure for earth?”
He pulled out the brochure card, a holographic advertisement rang out,
“Come to earth, the planet of unspoiled nature, enlightened thought and home to a peaceful sentient species of sexy humanoids whose sole endeavor in life is to live harmoniously with each other and take joy in being responsible stewards of their world.”
Cut back to the slideshow showing ethnic conflict, racism, war, prisons, police brutality, and ugliness ad nauseum.
117, just leaned back in his chair, and grinned the biggest shit eating grin the universe had ever seen.
“You’ll answer for this 117. What were you even doing while humankind was learning to slaughter each other?”
“Fucking Grecians.”
“What?”
“It’s an earth thing, and I’m not gonna answer for shit, you know why, because my daddy owns that world. So I can fuck all the Grecians and Asians and Africans and Europeans and Americans and whoever the fuck I want to. I can blow them the fuck up and snort rails off of everest, I can goad them into thinking they can get off that rock and colonize space and snatch it away in the blink of an eye. Why the fuck do you think my father sent me 1,200 light-years away from anything? Because I. Fuck. Shit. Up. So get the fuck outta my face, you think you’re in charge? My father pays your salary, probably owns your planet too. What kinda planet you rockin’ huh? You probably got one of those agrarian egalitarian boring ass bullshit worlds, am I right?”
The reviewer looked at him slack jawed, and with a silent fury.
“Wait, you don’t even lease a planet, do you? Oh shit, I bet you don’t even have a continent to yourself. What a little bitch! Get the fuck outta my office worm.”
117 gestured for him to leave the room. Which of course he did. Have you any idea who this kid’s father is?
by submission | Dec 8, 2021 | Story |
Author: Martin Barker
The morning sun creeps above the horizon in a sulphurous ochre sky. My spacesuit shields me from the radiation but eventually this desolate, wasted, planet will claim my bones for dust. I miss blue skies and birdsong.
Our mission to Mars was supposed to mark a new beginning for the Human race. We were to establish a community, exploit the vast underground lakes we discovered on our last mission, set up the biospheres, lay down roots. I spent three years preparing in a specially designed bunker in the Nevada Desert, learning how to survive in the most hostile of environments. Events on Earth gave our work an urgency.
The long predicted climate catastrophe was playing havoc across all continents. The droughts in Africa were driving mass emigration on an unprecedented scale. Europe had just endured the longest and coldest winter on record, with large parts of Greece, Spain and Southern Italy spending months under snow. North America suffered a third successive year of extensive wildfires and devastating hurricanes, Asia’s food crops were blighted by disease. It was estimated that half the world population no longer had access to clean water. All things considered, all of us on the Mars mission were glad to get away.
Once we had arrived on the red planet our work went extremely well. We were a team of twenty, from seven different nations, selected for our skills in construction, engineering and agriculture. Within a year, through selfless endeavour and the most cordial co-operation, we had established a fully functioning and amicable community. It was different back on Earth.
As the global climate crisis deepened the superpowers flexed their muscles. Proxy wars escalated, fuelled by food and water shortages, exacerbated by a collapse of the world economy. We followed the news with mounting horror as the first nuclear missiles were fired. China had invaded India, Europe was at war with America. My companions were keen to return to their loved ones, I was the only one reluctant to make the journey home, not having family to worry about.
Isolated and alone, I spent my days searching through the satellite channels for news, reception became ever more erratic as war escalated. I saw images of vast cities around the world being laid to waste in the nuclear holocaust, entire countries disappearing in fire and flame, of oceans dying from biological warfare and nuclear fallout. I wish I hadn’t returned. I’d come back to Earth with the others, back to Nevada, and stayed here, at the bunker, when everyone else left. I’ve heard nothing from the outside world for nearly five months, my air supply is almost exhausted.
The morning sun creeps above the horizon in a sulphurous ochre sky. My spacesuit shields me from the radiation but eventually this desolate, wasted, planet will claim my bones for dust. I miss blue skies and birdsong.
by submission | Apr 17, 2021 | Story |
Author: Alfred C. Airone
They never really believed me. After fifteen years, I can say that. And now, of course, it’s too late to prepare for what comes.
I had hoped that somehow, unexpectedly, I had changed time for the better. Maybe I did, but the enemy later outflanked me, as has always been the case. I will never know.
My name is Cassandra. I am recording this because I need to put my thoughts in order, to make whatever final attempt I can to save these people, and to save my own world, my own time, by altering its history. I arrived in this time period fifteen years ago, hurled by the Time Catapult into my distant past – more than ten centuries, as it turned out. Moments from sure death, a soldier fleeing a lost battle in my own time, I materialized ten feet above the playing field of a sports stadium, in the middle of a competition, and lay stunned while players and security personnel rushed to take me into custody.
I was treated with respect and care but kept a prisoner. Over the next few days, I told my story to a succession of skeptical officials and, eventually, weeks later, to the President of the United States, the nation to which I was later transferred. My Anglishan – close enough to the English of the time in which I landed – enabled me to convince powerful enough people that I was neither insane, nor a spy, a danger, or a liar – that I was someone who seemed to be telling the truth. And I warned them: the war that had ravaged my world for centuries, the war that was being fought back and forth along the timeline, and which had cast me back to their world – that war was in their future.
The recent series of unexplained nuclear explosions outside three towns in Canada was one of the first signs. Then the disappearance of Dr. Edmund Garvey, a name that meant nothing to me until it was explained that he was the world’s foremost expert in what the present time calls “quantum computing”. What we in the future know as the basis for the time-travel technology with which we wage war. His capture was almost certainly a gambit in the war.
Then today: a report of a major battle between unknown forces near uranium mines in South Africa.
Every new piece of information I hear convinces me that we – myself and the ancestors among whom I now dwell – have moved forward in time and reached the Time War Periphery. The point deepest in our past at which the final attempts of either side to alter the past took place. The point in the timeline at which both sides were forced to recognize the futility of trying to outflank an enemy who could just as easily leap back to an earlier time and outflank them as well.
If so, we have reached the time which I long ago predicted. They understood – there are brilliant people here among my ancestors – but I know they never quite believed. They are hopeful, these ancestors. They have no appetite for giving up.
There – the knock on my door that I have been expecting. I must let them in. They will have questions – I already know what they will ask and what my answers will be.
I hurry to the door. They will believe me now. And I will help them as best I can. I hope it’s not too late.
by Mickey Hunt | Mar 21, 2020 | Story |
Author: Mickey Hunt
Their rozière dirigible’s month-long flight from the eiderdown coasts to the Annual Gathering coordinates would demand precise maneuvering.
“Once we find the northern jet stream,” Rho Aquilae’s father said, crisply, “we’ll journey to the proper longitude, then work south. We cross the Pacific for the Andes riding low-altitude westerly winds.”
Rho settled into a routine of zoogeography study, chores, and listening to histories and courting his betrothed when the ionosphere allowed shortwave radio connections.
Lyra’s anemia had worsened. “I look forward to seeing the Physicians at the Gathering, but to our wedding much more,” she said in a serene, musical voice.
Her family began their inexpert navigation from above middle Africa. Because Storytellers seldom touched the surface, and the Merchants intercepted them, they usually drifted at random, maneuvering only to hunt easy weather.
One night Rho with an oxygen kit ventured from the toasty cabins to the dirigible’s top. Wearing a puffy, down overcoat, he’d elude hypothermia for eighteen minutes. No moon, yet. He gazed over the cloudscape flowing below and up toward the blazing cosmos. A meteor cruised by: ancient junk. Desperately hoping Lyra would reach the Gathering and live, he absorbed calm from the celestial beacons—especially Vega, in the Harp—radiating through the dark, incomprehensible vastness.
