by submission | Jun 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Meds failed Jeremy Paloo, leaving him restless, sweating under the ship’s ventilation over his bunk. Newbie deep space fever—no crime struggling with it during maiden voyages outside the solar system, but embarrassing for executive officers. He felt something crawling, inching over his fevered chest in the cabin darkness. Jeremy scrambled, terrified, calling out for lights, then springing off his soaked mattress.
“What the hell!” he swore, watching a tiny, indistinct iridescent bug skittle across the floor, then disappear through the solid metal hull. “I can’t take this anymore. Hallucinations—can’t have them on duty. Melissa,” he commanded the monitor system, “Is Clemson up? I need her in my quarters.”
A soft, gentle voice replied, “Yes, Lieutenant. Would you like me to request her visit now?”
“Yes, and tell her it’s urgent.”
Paloo splashed water over his sweltering face while awaiting the arrival of the ship’s doctor. He noticed small itchy red spots on his chest. No imagination there. Probably a med side effect rash.
His doorway request bell rang. “Enter,” Paloo yelled, catching his overreaction too late.
Clemson’s petite blond figure left a black outline against the hall lighting as she moved cautiously inside. “Still no luck on the sleep, Jeremy?”
“None, Doc, and worse. Now the crazies got me. Bad enough with fever and sweats, but now I’m seeing creepy crawlies. I’ve got drug rashes on my chest. See, look.”
“Sit down over here for a sec.” She pointed for them to move to his visitor seating area. Clemson pressed on the red dots and shook her head slightly. “Time has come to brief you, Jeremy. We aren’t supposed to until necessary. You’ve got a case of the iddy-biddies.”
Jeremy had no mood for jokes, giving the middle-aged woman a hard stare. “I’d didn’t call for humor in the middle of my sleep shift. I’ve got to perform the next shift. I’m a wreck. I’m seeing…”
“The tiny life form that goes through walls, right?”
Paloo sat upright, wide-eyed. “Don’t even tell me that thing was…no way.”
She touched his shoulder lightly. “It’s a top-secret that only those on interstellar flights know about. It’s forbidden to tell anyone but the crew. Wonder how we won the war against those bastards from Orion?”
“What’s that got to do with my…am I going nuts?”
“No, Lieutenant. The children onboard our early deep space missions were the first contacts. Parents thought they were having invisible friend issues until little red spots appeared occasionally…not enough blood loss to cause harm, but irritating without treatment gel. Here, rub this on those marks. The children called them iddy-biddies. It stuck. We adapted to them.”
“Now who needs medication, Doc?”
She chuckled. “We beat the Orions because of advanced heat-shield modifications offered by the alien council for our early explorations. We knew it was something our allies collected in the sun’s chromospheres, but we didn’t know it was alive. Their technology wove these small beings into hull shielding so we could survive incredible temperatures and magnetic anomalies of deep space. That’s how our fighters survived Orion weapons. These sun spirits reverted enemy plasma blasts, sending them directly back at attackers. We had no idea. We kept it under wraps, never giving the iddy-biddies credit.”
“Are you expecting me to believe we’re letting miniature vampires live off our crew for our ship’s protection?”
“Yes. They’re drawn to heat…especially fever and children’s high metabolism when we’re in cold space.”
“I’ll be damned. What next?”
“Well, you’re cured. No more space sickness. Their bites treat it. Consider it a blessing.”
by submission | May 25, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Choxthonzu wandered towards ghastly yellow glows of a huge, throbbing sign disrupting grim darkness, below which shadowy figures scurried from a cement block, like ant farm residents, hoisting grains to distant abodes. Choxthonzu was drawn below the throbbing neon where delicious insects fell to cold asphalt, ready for his quick tongues to whip wriggling fare into his slender mouth aperture. This unexpected feast refreshed him after a foolhardy trek far from an unscheduled landing site. Choxthonzu glanced skyward outside the strange edifice, focusing on dull-red glows approaching a sun’s length away, far from human detection.
Using his tactical encounter training, Choxthonzu grabbed a gray grocery cart with squeaking wheels, and then followed entering shoppers, imitating them as they collected various objects from stacked isles of foods and odd wares. Choxthonzu’s cart was filled with a dozen cantaloupes and a single bottle of whiskey. His trail led to a checkout counter tersely managed by an emotionally warn and boisterous tyrant. He wondered if this human could provide directions back to his spacecraft. The stout, haggard matron behind the checkout counter looked away temporarily as she droned through memorized customer greetings.
“Welcome to Sav-U-Mart. How are you doing?” She seemed dazed while wiping the slime from the conveyor belt.
“I need directions.” Choxthonzu stood still, waiting.
“So, did my ex. Please put your items on the belt. I…” she paused, gasping air past her tortoiseshell glasses balanced carefully on her bulbous nose while focusing on her customer. “Christ…a bit early for Halloween, isn’t it? Or, did you think this was like those other stores that care less how you dress?” She bobbed her head, scanning Choxthonzu’s yellow bumps and spindly legs within his silver organo-metallic jumpsuit.
“I don’t mean to offend. I need help to find my ship.”
“Harbor is out the door. Take a hard right. Get a map. You boat people—snowbirds. Bunch of weirdoes. Can’t read, either, huh?” She points at a sign over the register that warned Ten Items or Less.
“Must I do something else?”
“You have more than ten melons and a bottle of booze. Just let me count them and get you out of here so I can serve my regulars”
“What else can I do?”
“Any coupons?”
“Will that help?”
“Need stamps or ice?”
“I’m lost…”
“Need cigarettes? Got a photo ID? You might be a disguised rich kid pulling a fast one.”
“I assure you I am quite old.”
She set the bottle aside “Nice try. Heard that before. No ID, no booze.”
“What if I had coupons?”
“Forget it. Paper or plastic?”
“I don’t want either. I just want directions.”
“Fine, brought your own bag. Credit or debit? Do you need help out to your vehicle?”
“I can’t find it.”
“If you need help, go to the Service Desk. Enter your membership number when the screen comes up. Be sure to type in your phone number to get coupons. Want to donate to the Save the Earth fund?”
“I want to save Earth. Would a coupon help?” Choxthonzu did not touch the screen.
She lifted her store phone and called out, “Signal Black on counter three.”
A security guard appeared.
“Harry, take this crackpot outside. He won’t pay. Not one coupon. Next in line, please. Have a nice day”
“Please, let me save you!” Choxthonzu cried out as he was ejected out the front door.
When Choxthonzu finally reconnected with his scouting craft for evaluating Earth’s mass evacuation, his commander asked, “You met them. Are they willing to leave?”
“I’m not sure,” Choxthonzu replied. “Not without coupons.”
by submission | Apr 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Adam Three Horses shuffled past an unmarked drab gray metal door into a cold sparse room filled with file cabinets and a single, elongated metal desk with one laptop in front of a squinting goat-faced military officer bearing colorful astronaut patches on his chest. Captain Yagar didn’t look up as he opened a fresh manila folder from a leaning pile marked Top Secret.
“You Three Horses?” Yagar asked in an emotionless drone.
“Hmm. My people don’t like to be called by our last names. Adam will do.” Adam stood feet apart, staying away from the metal folding chair positioned across from Yagar.
“Don’t give a shit. Your people aren’t here. This is Space Corps. I’m Captain Yagar. I’ll call you pony poop if I want. Now sit your ass down!” Yagar looked up, bristling, still squinting with jowls tightened. Adam quietly complied, remembering his maltreatment after being kidnapped in a rendition from his reservation home at night by Homeland Security thugs.
“You got down the entire hall in one piece. Huh. It’s amazingly quiet out there for a change. None of the others made it past two cages.”
“What cages,” Adam asked, perplexed. He saw no animals or bars.
“Every one of those ten rooms holds a person barely human by my count, filled with rage, madness, and horrible intent. They’re too violent to serve in the Corps or to ever be let out. You don’t seem worse for the exposure. Your predecessors all needed special care.”
“Was this some sort of test? You know I’m not part of your silly space travel. You don’t let Indigenous Natives serve…right?”
“Correct. You’re from your own independent nation in South Dakota so we can’t draft you, but we can still sequester anyone on U.S. soil who has special talents for our programs. Says here you’re a heyoka empath. Haven’t had one before. First one of your kind in here. Maybe that explains the hallway.” Yagar continued staring down while studying Adam’s dossier.
“I never called myself that. None of The People do. I get it. I’m just another redskin to do your bidding. You take our words just as you steal everything else from us, even our sacred ceremonies. You know nothing. You want everything, no matter the cost.”
“Sorry, chief. I’m not here for a philosophy lesson. I’m head of intelligence. Says here as a child you always wanted to travel to other worlds. We might have an offer for you. We’re working on the 369 Protocol, named after Nicola Tesla. Ever hear of him?”
“I’m not an idiot,” Adam snapped.
“We’ll see. We can’t send new enlarged transport craft into deep space for mining operations if we store more than 369 new recruits aboard. They freak out en masse—shrinks call it group cogenesis. We need shock absorbers…empaths to quiet three thousand we send at once.”
“Not recruits, Yagar. Those are inmate slaves. No one volunteers for space mining. You whites never learn.”
“Point taken, but you’ll go and you’ll keep them sane enough to mine for us after they catch the vacuum willies. We need that shit off 16 Psyche near Mars before the Chinks get it.”
Adam leaned forward. “Captain, heyókȟa means standing water…a mirror. We reflect” He touched Yagar’s right hand, watching him scream, as all the hallway madness transferred from Adam, now requiring Yagar’s special care later after Adam walked unimpeded from the base, protected by the Wakíŋyaŋ—Thunder Spirits— in saucers overhead, ready to continue Adam’s travels to other sacred beings on nearby planets and moons.
by submission | Jan 26, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Outrageous! Don’t you dare degrade my mother, you monster! She will never love you.” Pearl pushed her finger at Jake Rosetter’s dark, greasy, pockmarked forehead only half-visible behind his helmet’s face shield in the ready room near exit hatches for scheduled spacewalk repairs. He leaned back hard against blue steel lockers before slamming shut his cabinet.
“Back off, Tindal! What would you know? You haven’t seen her for twenty years. You’ve only got memories. We’ll make our own.” Rosetter yanked his underwear-lining zipper, quickly concealing a slender, four-inch wide, narrow ceramic ingot sealed within dull-gray metal welded to his thin aluminum safety lanyard. His necklace matched dented lieutenant bars on his spacesuit hanging on the adjacent wall. He finished dressing, pushing arms past inner suit linings, exposing silvery warmth gloves emerging through sleeves of his orange work suit.
“I don’t care what kind of pull you have with the Captain. You can’t take her out there. She never liked space. She never entered the void. She lived on Titan, discovering critical methane pools for your struggling Earth, dedicating her life for billions facing death from Earth’s glaciation, but they never knew her sacrifices. How dare you dishonor her legacy playing this damnable charade of passion? It’s not just heresy…it’s insanity.” Pearl pulled Rosetter’s arm as he reached for his outer space suit, delaying his exit.
“Claws off, civi! You know the punishment for grabbing elites?” With that, he pushed Pearl out of arm’s reach. “I won’t press charges, but you touch me again and even your mother’s love won’t protect you…not on this cargo ship.” He stiffened as he pulled the lower half of his exit suit off the mag hangar to a final dressing bench. Soiled outer sleeves and two repaired puncture marks portrayed dangers from off-world ship maintenance where micrometeorites rocketed around Saturn’s gravity. Rosetter pushed Pearl back further against adjacent lockers, hard enough to bang the petite black laborer’s head against metal frames. She came charging back.
“She forfeited her life for your kind, and this is your gratitude—imaginary love, keeping her DNA over your heart? After she died with her team caught in that Sotra volcanic ice blow, her shredded remains were congealed into that pendant. It’s our respect for lost miners. Her shield of dignity was sealed in Pallas City’s temple of high honor. You stole her essence to defile her in your disgusting indulgence.”
“Excuse me if I don’t get it. You’re a Titanese worshipper, as she was, so her soul is somewhere else in some heavenly dimension? Isn’t that what you call it?”
Pearl squinted, pulling her lips back in a snarl. “So what?”
“Cargo engs have no progeny to remember us. We have no legacy. We’re sterile as my suit. That’s the price we rejects from Earth’s declining gene pool pay to preserve their dwindling herd. All I’ll ever have for company in my brief life is one reconstituted clone made from some departed’s cells, but she’ll only survive for two years. I picked your mother for her honesty and loyalty, not some frivolous empty-headed celebrity.”
“I forbid it.”
“You’ll never see us together. The rule is “Never where they lived.” My one-time companion will only know me within this ship’s cramped quarters. I will honor your mother’s memory, as no one else can. Ghosting is reparation for those dying young while traversing deadly radiation belts. Maybe cloning isn’t ethical to you, but it’s legal. It’s the only love I’ll ever have. You had hers once. Now let me have mine.”
by submission | Dec 25, 2021 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Look at your moon, or so you call it. So much the lie. It isn’t yours. It never was, and worse, it is the trap, detaining me against my will.
I am multi-dimensional. I traveled freely through the galaxy, using the unusual magnetic fields of this blue ball, your home, as a navigational aid, like a buoy. Then your predecessors came, claiming this wonder as theirs. Like bridge trolls, they demanded tolls for those voyaging past this marker. If refused, they changed its vibration, obstructing safe routes, leaving a resistant explorer floating in a swamp of twisting energies and plasmas for eternity.
Wars broke out as easily as a cold virus, as wars are apt to in all of space. Conflicts are nothing new. Your kind didn’t create violence. You merely absorbed it into your thin DNA. Your Ancient One built an orbiting station, managing the planet’s rotation, limiting its access at changing angles of rotation, which they controlled. They built this gigantic space megalithic you call the Moon and then taught you, cave dwellers, to worship it, its movement, with a single shining face, while hiding their activities on the dark side within their constructed sphere. Your governments know all of this. The facts of this truth are forbidden to you.
Many races resisted the toll takers, but with consequences. I know. I am one, stuck in a time-loop between this reality and my origins. My race has no physical form in your three-dimensional existence. I merely needed your magnetic fields as I projected my consciousness through this quadrant, just as you use GPS to plot a course. Your progenitors put a web of high-energy entrapment between these two spheres. I struggled, unable to warn others, watching them perish and vaporize, striking blindly into fatal vibrations. Eventually, a consortium of forces defeated these evil interlopers, but I, a victim of war, exist immortal, alone, and lost near the Earth in a timeless void.
On rare occasions, especially during a full moon, a winding snake of blue plasma flashes from the Moon toward Earth, invisible to your human eyes, striking my trapped consciousness, allowing me to transform, if only for a few hours, by entering lower physical life forms. Some of your investigators seek my entrapment, calling me a skinwalker. If I enter an animal, it is my only brief escape from the spectrum of electromagnetic mesh binding me helplessly isolated. I cause no harm, but you fear me, nonetheless, in your continuing ignorance.
You do not know your own history, but now you know mine. Be aware when a bat turns in an odd pattern, a barn owl flies low, or a solitary wolf howls too near your door…it is a victim of war savoring momentary freedom from battlefields lost millions of years before your race crawled from the oceans, driven by the tides from your counterfeit heaven.
