by submission | Dec 2, 2018 | Story |
Author: Michael Mieher
Friday, December 18th, 2043
Day 503 of the 3rd Mars Pilgrimage joint SpaceX/OneSpace mission.
“I’m sorry Captain Shu.”, First Officer Griffin Musk said, trying to keep his exhaustion from showing. “Even the ISS and Peary Station are dark, Literally dark. No lights or even thermal readings. The radiation readings we picked up aren’t as widespread as we feared, but between Israel, Syria, and the Korean peninsula…. well that’s where all the atmospheric dust is from.”
“Thank you, Griffin.” Captain Shu Chang of the Keyi Hua-Mayflower looked out the window at the Earth below. “We need to know what the hell happened before we send anyone down there. How is your team doing retrofitting the Plymouth for remote landing operation?”
“They’re almost finished, Captain. Another 36 hours and they’ll be ready. Scotty is a miracle worker. Her team is pulling double shifts.” Griffin paused. Then hesitatingly said, “We may want to consider a different landing site though.”
Captain Shu slowly turned back to Musk, “Where?”
“Australia sir. The Outback, as they say. We’ve picked up some radio noise sir. Shortwave. We think it might be native language.”, explained Musk
“Dr. Banalandju is from Australia,” said Shu.
“Yes, Captain,” agreed Musk, “She is in Communications now. I asked her to try…”
(The door suddenly opened, hitting Musk in the shoulder)
“CAPTAIN!”
“Yes, doctor.”, said Captain Shu calmly, “Come in. What do you have?”
“THERE ARE SURVIVORS IN COOBER PEDY!”, exclaimed Dr. Banalandju
“Slow down doctor,” Captain Shu said much more calmly than he felt. “Where?”
“Sorry sir” Dr. Banalandju took a deep breath. “Southern Australia, plus other locations they said, but right now only in Australia.”
After a long pause, Musk asked, “So what happened?”
“Hackers!”, said Dr. Banalanju, then turning back to the captain, “They said it was hackers. Various DoS attacks and viruses. All aimed at the agriculture syndicate control satellites, food distribution services, delivery drones, and even networked kitchen appliances. Everyone just starved!”
“Or worse,” said Musk
“There must be more survivors. Rural areas. Preppers.” said Captain Shu. Then, “Griffin… your father? You mentioned he had….”
“Shelters.”, finished Musk. “Yes, Captain. He called them Boring Sanctuaries, but if there was any way to get a message to us, he would have.”
“Captain.” interjected Captain Banalandju.
“Yes, doctor?”
“My People. They said the first month there were hundreds of international radio contacts, but it dropped off over the next 6 months. The winter was incredibly cold. We are the first contact from Outsiders in over a year, with one exception…”, she trailed off.
“What exception?”, asked Captain Shu
“Well…. crazy as it seems, it sounds like Spam.” after a pause, Dr. Banalandju continued. “They said they keep getting the same message over and over again. The message claims to be from a Nigerian Prince stranded in South Africa with millions of dollars.”
“That’s got to be Xavier!”, exclaimed Griffin.
“What?”, asked Dr. Banalanju looking puzzled.
“His brother doctor.” Captain Shu explained. Then turning back to Musk “Your twin if I recall?”
“Yes, sir.” Musk said calmly, but he couldn’t hide the smile. Or the welling tears.
“Well then,” said Captain Shu, smiling at his First Office. “Send a message to the Prince of Nigeria that the First Bank of Coober Pedy is ready to receive his millions.”
Dr. Banalandu and First Officer Musk joined their Captain in an uncharacteristic moment of laughter.
Then sounding serious again, the Captain said, “The Outback should have plenty of good places to set this bird down. Find me an LZ.”
“Yes SIR!”, said Musk, turning towards the door.
“And Griffin.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Don’t hit Uluru.”
by submission | Nov 10, 2018 | Story |
Author: Richard M. O’Donnell, Sr.
The toddler unclipped his seatbelt and floated away, gurgling and laughing as he drifted toward the… The what, Lady Maggie Durante wondered. There was no ceiling in the Vista–View space lounge. Just a sphere of glass and a grand view of the Earth that gets old fast when your spaceship has been delayed.
That’s what I get for marrying an explorer.
She never expected him to find something, much less an entire planet. What she had expected from him was to stay out there while she ruled the fiefdom from the safety of her penthouse on 5th Avenue Canal, New York, New York.
Maggie let Jimmy Junior’s tether feed out until he hovered over Africa, and then she reeled him in like a fish, a dead blobfish if truth be told. His father’s religion forbid gene manipulation and God had not been kind to his gene pool. Ironically, her husband’s bulbous nose had saved his life. “The natives took one look at my snout and welcomed me into the tribe. I’m one-hundred-ten percent sure they will think Junior is as beautiful as I am.”
“But are you certain it is safe to move there?”
“One-hundred-ten percent certain!”
Maggie’s fellow colonists applauded when she tucked Jimmy back in his highchair. His escape had given them a two-minute distraction from their ten hours and… Maggie glanced at the time on her reader. …ten hours, twenty-two minutes wait.
“Drink,” Jimmy demanded. Maggie opened a pack of one-hundred percent juice and popped the nipple. Jimmy took one swig and spit it out. Beads of juice shot toward a farmer in overalls.
“Space-vac!” she ordered. An Instant-Clean ® machine flew over and sucked the juice out of the air. Jimmy began to whine, so Maggie held him on her lap and began to read from a new book on her reader, “Boots and Saddles: Or Life in Dakota with General Custer, by Elizabeth Bacon Custer.” She sighed. “Daddy says he is one-hundred-ten percent sure the natives will be friendly. Custer was one-hundred-ten percent sure he’d win at the Little Big Horn, too.”
A naval officer glided into the lounge and everyone stirred with anticipation. “We will board momentarily. Lord Durante has approved the repair specs personally via the intergalactic network.” He smiled. “Lord Durante has spared no expense where your safety is concerned. He assured me that everything is one-hundred percent A-OK in the colony. He awaits our arrival.”
A wave of relief spread around the room, but the message chilled Maggie.
“Lord Durante said that?” asked Maggie.
“Said what, Milady?”
“Said, one-hundred percent A-OK.”
“Verbatim. You can’t do better than one-hundred percent.”
Maggie waited until everyone had left the lounge. Then she grabbed Jimmy and caught the first elevator back to Earth. She didn’t stop until she found a hotel with a secure inter-galactic Wi-Fi. Lord Durante always exaggerated one-hundred-ten percent of the time. Something was wrong. “Daddy,” yelled Jimmy when Lord Durante’s hologram appeared in the room. As Jimmy tried to hug the hologram, Maggie listened to her husband’s broadcast.
“I hope to God you knew I was lying and did not board the Jimmy Junior. I was one-hundred-ten percent wrong. I admit it. There’s trouble, but with the a hundred Marines and a thousand settlers on board, we should have the numbers to–” An explosion rocked the monitor on his side of the transmission and Lord Durante almost fell down. “Maggie!” he shouted. “Know all those books you read about Custer, the old west and the Trail of Tears? Well, damn the internet. The natives read them, too!”
by submission | Aug 10, 2018 | Story |
Author: Roger Ley
The Land Rover stopped, and Riley pointed, the prehuman footprints showed clearly impressed into the flat, dry, African rock surface. It was the third day of their family safari in the Great Rift Valley
‘We can spend a few hours here but we need to get to the next lodge before dark,’ he said.
‘These footprints are half a million years old boys,’ said Estella to her sons. Hank slipped off his flip-flops and tried one print for size, predictably his younger brother Cliff did the same. ‘Look, Dad, they fit,’ said Hank.
‘It looks like a family group, two adults, and two juveniles,’ said Riley.
Estella slipped off her sandals and stepped into the smaller adult set. She looked good in her shorts and tee, he’d always admired her Nordic looks. After some encouragement from the boys, he did the same. They tried walking forward, but the footprints were too far apart.
‘I think they were running Dad,’ said Hank. They all jogged forward, the hard stone became soft and damp. They were running across the mud at the edge of the lake, chasing the antelope they’d been following for the last four hours. It was tiring and slowing down.
The skin bag of flint tools banged against his side, tied with a thong around his waist, he’d wrapped the flints with grass so they didn’t rattle. He hoped to be using them to process the antelope soon. The liver would be first, easy to eat and full of blood. The woman looked across at him and grinned, she knew the end of the hunt was coming. Her white teeth contrasted with her dark skin, her dreadlocks flailed around her shoulders as she ran. They were all sweating freely and covered in dust, but they didn’t need to carry water this close to the lake.
He gestured to each of the juveniles to move around and flank their prey. He listened to the world around him and scanned ahead, hearing the birds call, the grunting of the antelope, a dust devil rose from the plain in the distance. There was a cluster of rocks ahead, some as big as an elephant. As the antelope passed one, part of it detached and jumped on to its back. The hominids stopped as more lions appeared and made short work of their kill. Three of the younger ones, who would have to wait their turn, were looking towards the hunters and sniffing the air.
At his gesture, the family turned and ran back in the direction they’d come. Their tracks in the mud ran parallel to the ones they’d made before. The ground was soft but hardened into flat dry rock as they ran.
‘Well,’ said Riley puffing, I didn’t realise there were tracks going in both directions. Our ancestors were running both ways, I wonder what that was about.’
They sat and replaced their footwear. ‘Okay boys, get in the car, you in a heap a trouble,’ said Riley. Nobody laughed, it was an old joke.
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that Martin, we’ve heard it so many times before,’ said Estella.
‘Car start,’ Riley sighed as the engine whirred into life. ‘We need to get to the next lodge before dark,’ he said.
‘Yes, and you said that before.’
‘Car go,’ said Riley and the Land Rover set off.
The hominids washed and cooled down in the shallows, the lions had lost interest and returned to the kill. The female pointed at a fig tree a few hundreds of paces away. She gestured that the fruit was ripe. The male motioned to hold back and went ahead with his pointed stick, he circled the tree checking for leopards, there were none. He gave the ‘all clear’ and the family got on with the serious business of filling their bellies with fruit. They found a bird’s nest with two hands of big eggs, they shared the crunchy half developed chicks. It wasn’t real meat, but it was good. The warm night fell, and they slept in a huddle under the tree.
by submission | Jun 9, 2018 | Story |
Author: Roger Ley
We were all staring up at the sky, waiting for the ‘Dawn Treader’ to light up her Hawking drives and start the journey to Alpha Centauri. There were hundreds of us, all members of the design and construction team with our partners and children, partying at our complex, near the foot of the Kisumu Space Elevator. A fair proportion of the world population would be watching.
I pulled the letter out of my back pocket. Estella had given it to me after the pre-launch ceremony two days ago, just before she and the rest of the ‘Dawn Treader’s’ crew entered the space elevator and began the first leg of their journey to the stars.
We’d both worked on the project for eleven years and had been ‘together’ for six of them, the first six. We’d married, had two kids, I thought we’d been reasonably happy, but then came the horrible business of finding out about her affairs. Everybody seemed to know about them except me; nobody tells you.
It wasn’t an amicable divorce, she never forgave me for getting custody of Hank and Cliff. What was I supposed to do? She would be leaving when the ship was finished, a few years hence, it made sense that I give them a stable home. She was absent half the time anyway, either training or supervising, up at the Synchronous Space Station where the ship was being assembled.
She was gone now, not dead, but unreachable. It wouldn’t be possible to communicate through the blizzard of elementary particles leaving the rear of the ship. They’d be accelerating for eighteen months subjective time, but forty-seven years would pass, back here on Earth. By the time they shut the drives down and turned the ship around to start decelerating, I’d be ancient or dead. Past caring either way. The boys would be older than their mother, I wonder what she’d say to them, given the two-year time delay on her transmissions. The boys would have sent their messages two years before so that they arrived after the drives shut down. I expect they’d send pictures of themselves, their wives and children, Estella’s grandchildren. The next time they’d be able to talk would be when Dawn Treader arrived at its destination. The boys would both be about a hundred years old, but Estella would still be in her late thirties. When she returned to Earth there wouldn’t be a single person left alive who she knew. A big sacrifice to make for the sake of being the first woman to leave the Solar System.
The brazier of glowing charcoal crackled and sparked, a sudden roar from the partygoers. There, exactly on time, in the constellation of Centaurus, the Hawking drives lit up and blossomed like a three-petaled flower, as big and bright as the Moon. Visible from Africa to Norway.
I looked at the letter, would Estella want to put things right between us, or did she want to have the last poisonous words? Make accusations I had no opportunity to refute, say things that would leave me bruised and angry for months or years? I paused for a moment, then threw the envelope, unopened, onto the brazier and watched it crisp and burn as her words turned to smoke and ashes. Hank and Cliff were both staring up at the beautiful multicoloured bloom of energy fields, they were both crying. I knelt down, laid my arms across their shoulders and pulled them into a family hug.
‘We have to remember the good times, boys, that’s what we have to do.’
It was, after all, my choice in the end.
by submission | Jul 27, 2017 | Story |
Author : Samuel Stapleton
“Megan! Sweetheart! You’re on time!?”
“Not here to chat.” She hissed as she paraded in.
“I know, I know. I’ve got your new look ready, stand still please.” She complied as best she could, but every now and then quivers of excitement would dance down her limbs. As the computer AI finished its calculations I set to work alongside it. We began recoloring her hair and skin first, then played around with the nanoes that were ever so slightly reshaping her face, neckline, and bone structure. “You said they want you to hide in South Africa this time?”
“Did I? Well if I did I said too much.” She answered. When I was done she moved over to the mirror to view her transformation.
“I have a few other clients staying in that area, would you like their contact info?” I offered.
“I have a request.” She countered.
“Of course, name it!” I said.
“This time send him to Japan would you?” She said with a grin. I stared at her.
“But won’t that make it impossible for him to find you?” I asked warily.
“Would you believe me if I said no?” She replied as she raised an eyebrow in my direction.
“Probably. This seems like foreplay for you two more than anything that would jeopardize your chances.” I quipped.
She replied, “Mmm. No one understands us like you Aaron. Just remember. Japan.”
I nodded and echoed, “Japan.” She turned and leaned in close to the mirror, focusing on something specific.
“Ugh. I do love green eyes. I wish I could have them all the time.” She mentioned wistfully. “Wonderful work as always. What’s the damage?” She held out her palm for digital exchange. I shrugged her away.
“You can have this one on the house. I’m sure I’ll see you in a few weeks.”
She blew me a kiss for the gift and practically flew out the door. The company fraud expert, Mr. Mayline, waited a moment before appearing from his hiding place.
“You should’ve charged her.” He said. I shook my head.
“They’ll win again, and both be back, and you’ll have to pay me for the work I do on them, again. I’ll tell you what though, I can’t believe you thought I was helping them cheat.” I said harshly.
“It made sense at the time. We do apologize for that mistake.” He replied as he sat down.
“So did your investigation uncover anything? Are they using tech to beat the memory wipe, or do they have accomplices?” I asked. Mr. Mayline looked over at me and tilted his head slightly. “We hired all kinds of outside consultants. Tech experts. Even ex-military. As far as anyone can tell, they’re not cheating. They’re just finding each other. New skin, new eyes, new voice, new everything. It doesn’t matter what we do to them physically. He finds her. She somehow knows it’s him.”
“What did they say when you questioned them?” I’d been waiting to hear back for weeks now. But he laughed at this question. “We got frustrated by the end of the interview. Mockingly, I asked him what is was like to fall in love with the same woman nine times in one life…”
“And? How’d he react?” I asked.
“He looked back and forth between my partner and I, then looked his wife right in the eyes and said, Gentlemen, don’t be ridiculous, I’ve only ever fallen in love with her once.”
“Well, if that doesn’t make the ratings go through the roof I don’t know what will.” I concluded with a grin.
