by submission | Feb 16, 2021 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Linoleum floor tiles under Lieutenant Benson percolated. He watched his black and white control room warp in a rolling wave as a cacophony of grinding groans rose from below. He grasped slick white walls behind him for support, fearing his collapse. A nearby communication’s tech clenched his stainless steel table supporting radio equipment, preventing his rolling chair from careening out of control. Jerrod’s face, beneath his headset, reflected his boss’s growing terror.
“Is this how it takes everyone?” Benson screamed, with shock waves tugging his legs to near failure.
“No. It’s another quake,” Jerrod yelled back over the din. “We’re too far north for infiltration. This facility has ten-foot thick concrete footings with rebar. It’s a hundred miles beyond the tree line… not a green thing on this rock…but they’ve started tremors down south…could be Anchorage. I’ve lost contact with HQ. No one planned responses fast enough for this threat.”
“Never expected this last working Distant Early Warning site would be a safe haven from a bio-attack…like this hell.” Benson was still yelling after the station stabilized. Vertigo pulled at him, sending him rushing to a nearby chair, preventing vomit from spinning out of his overwhelmed stomach.
“Wouldn’t call us lucky,” Benson continued. “Compared to CONUS, maybe. Damn, even a full-out nuclear exchange couldn’t kill eighty percent of us in three days. Cities are all empty. No bodies to bury.”
Jerrod returned to his receiver, turning frequency dials, seeking any broadcasts since it went silent.
Jerrod interrupted. “Lieutenant, it’s weird. I didn’t even know these dinosaur sites from the Cold War existed till I got reassigned last week. They discovered I was finishing my bachelor’s in biology, planning to go civi on them. That’s a red flag. Brass claimed this was a critical operation and I fit the three No’s…”
They repeated the qualification line in unison: “No wife. No kids. Nobody.”
“I got the same line, sergeant. This rushed assignment was supposed to move me up the ladder after the increased Chinese threats. I thought we’d be protecting against missiles from Asia, not our own FUBAR…what did you call these things?” Benson rubbed his temples, squeezing back his dizziness.
“Mycelium, sir,” Jerrod responded, still listening to radio static.
“Explain again, why did DARPA idiots connect a supercomputer with AI to a fungus colony in Oregon? It’s beyond me. What the hell were they thinking?” Benson sat down hard, still queasy.
“My brother works…uh, worked… for Naval Intelligence in San Diego,” Jerrod answered. “He told me two years ago that our nuke subs needed a hack-proof com system. They considered using ocean fungus strands–after Cousteau established deep-sea floors were interconnected fungus jungles.”
“No shit? Really? That’s why they made contact with smart mushrooms? That’s nuts.”
“Maybe not. That Oregon site is the oldest living organism on Earth. Somebody must have thought it had advanced consciousness we didn’t recognize…and it might work with us once we found a way to reach out and connect.”
“So we pissed off toadstools who then told its cousins to eat us? And I thought my toe fungus was bad. Do you remember the LA news shots from yesterday of those threads quietly spreading, uncontrolled, dissolving every creature, dead or alive? Not a human bone left. They even got the roaches. It’s over, sergeant. We’re the mammoths this time, except we won’t leave frozen carcasses. Maybe we’ll be the last survivors, isolated here, but there’ll be no one to care–no one left to tell our story…or hear it.”
“Nobody. There’s a thought.” Jerrod continued monitoring the droning, continuous, monotonous static.
by submission | Dec 26, 2020 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Who brought that thing on deck when we’re closing in on the ORC?” Captain Telsey snapped at his first officer, Eloy Thompson. They were a generation apart with Thompson’s massive athletic structure a contrast to the wizened, gray-haired Captain.
“Orders from Fleet just came in. We have no choice. She has been given authority for access, sir.”
Thompson accompanied the teenage girl with almond eyes and frizzy black hair. She pulled away from his grasp.
“You won’t want to touch me again, Lieutenant. I know more about you now than your real mother…the bad one you don’t talk about.”
“Didn’t they warn you about them, Thompson? Never contact…and we have secrets. Fool!”
Thompson looked away, blushing at his reprimand as his guest pointed to the viewscreen.
“So that’s an Odd Radio Signal? It seems so…well, nebulous. We must be close to the black hole in this sector now. I can feel the disruption in the Dark Matter. It’s just another form of water, you know, like us.” Elise Montrose trembled as she held her empathic hands outward.
“Your opinion, mutant. I’ve heard your speech against this trip before…how you don’t trust us, our duties, or our black hole-drive engines. You’re a troublemaker…pure insolence.”
Telsey turned his back to her as he pointed to Thompson to take his assigned chair. “Bring it around, Mr. Thompson. We’ll stay out of range until we can study it a bit more. This is as close as anyone’s come since the new engines came online. Mastering a Hadron drive is still an art form.”
“Yes, sir, holding position. Ready the probe.” Thompson pressed the activation panel to send in a long-range detection drone.
“It’s moving, look there.” Elise blurted out her observation as she slipped past the Captain’s security agent to touch the screen.
“Get her out of here, blast it! Use a prod or something without contacting it. I don’t have time for…”
“They’re coming…there are many coming!” Elise cried out, falling to the floor.
“What now?” questioned Telsey. “Having a seizure?”
“No…no! Too close. Mistake. They circle the black holes. They transform them into…into light torches!” Elise was screaming and rolling along the ship’s hull as security guards searched for anything to control her without contact.
“Thompson, you’ve been around her. What’s the idiot doing?” The Captain gave a sharp look at his second.
“No idea. Look…the screen. What the…” Thompson reduced magnification, revealing dozens of previously unknown ORCs arriving from outside sectors, beginning to surround the ship.
“You should not have come,” Telsey screamed, turning to the Captain. “The water is alive. It is conscious plasma. Black holes are cancers that must be treated to balance the order of the universe. The ORCs are like white blood cells. They absorb and transmute. Their healing is a quasar…and we are…” She stopped, mid-sentence, as the ORCs closed in to heal the ship’s engines.
by submission | Nov 29, 2020 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
My sister’s eyes would never be warm or human again, now showing only metallic, sparkling haze from a Tantalus Worm wriggling in her infected body. She could walk, again, after agonizing, bone-breaking seizures evaporated from the powers of her disgusting, infesting companion. There is no cure…no treatment for Plyon’s Syndrome, outside of becoming host to a parasitic alien worm found on forbidden Allo-23.
“Can you understand, Celia? Can you hear?” I whispered. She struggled forward under her physical therapist’s guidance while navigating padded hand posts over a trying recovery exercise.
“We know you, Bruce.” A warbled response made me shudder– a trilling commingling of high and low pitches—but not Celia. There was shared distress in the message.
“Is…is it painful?” I shadowed her staccato struggling. Her head swiveled to me, eyes glittering in phases from gold to silver.
“Be thankful,” it bellowed. “We ancient races abandoned warrior bodies and violence before your inner worlds had life. We devolved, never again to harm. Our purpose is to serve in healing. We give no pain– only hope.”
“I want to speak to Celia, not you,” I snapped back at the remnant. Her dragging bare heels left trails of blue liquid. Doctors warned how parasites released toxins as a permanent aftereffect.
“Bruce…don’t be upset, please.”
Her voice soothed. Listening to recordings for years, as disease ravished her capacities, failed to calm his anger over a paralyzed ballerina. Politicians promised Mars’ soils were safe. Children frolicked barefooted on resurrected sea beaches. Celia was the lone survivor of a generation now remembered only in night skies as dry Deimos catacombs circled a dying Mars colony.
“No, dear Celia…never…forgive my impatience. I despise this dark dwarf planet in the Kyper Belt becoming your dreary home, as our last hope. Do you understand you must stay? No going back?”
Celia nodded.
“You discovered us,” the deep voice returned. “We did not seek you. It is agonizing to enter your forms, but we do it, relieving her terrible curse. She will thrive here…even dance again. You will see, but she must remain. Your governments will never let us leave this planet. They fear us.”
I turned, wondering what punishments I would face returning to my red planet. The death penalty for visiting Allo-23 was still enforceable. Outposts on Saturn’s moons might accept me, but they were cold, hostile environments far from terraformed gentle summers on Mars.
“I can’t stay. I used all my influence to get this far. I’ll have to leave my rank and status behind. How will I keep in touch? How will I know you are safe and recovering?”
“Touch her hand, for just a moment,” the therapist whispered. I noticed the assistant’s gloved hands. I wondered. A trick?
“Go ahead, Bruce. It’s okay,” Celia said quietly.
I lightly pressed her dry, bruised skin on top of her hand gripping the bars. It was electric…startling. I blinked hard, pulling away, flashing lights pulsing in my eyes. Tinnitus deafened me and then receded.
“What!” I blurted out before my vision cleared. I saw myself, and the therapist, as if viewing outside my body. I was looking through Celia’s new eyes.
Words appeared in my head, in her voice, clear and sweet from childhood. “We can see each other and talk when you think of me, no matter how far away. It is the Old One’s gift. Now we will always share without interference from Mars’ oversight. This is our love that can never be quarantined.”
by submission | Oct 14, 2020 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
He wandered in idle thought. Not like practicing poking on oranges or pigskin, before both disappeared. Can’t get them shipped to Mars since the war. This guy’s skin is tougher than expected. A wrong needle plunge and free-range nanobots will rip him up. Got to keep it in the upper layers. Ink looks better there, too. It’s hell breaking ground for interactive tattoos.
“How much longer?” complained the stalwart mechanic, leaning on his other bulging arm toward Julias Campford, master tattoo artist.
“Can’t be rushed, buddy,” Julias replied, focusing on needle pressure and nanobots sliding through silvery tubes from a cryocabinet. “Bots are delicate. You push these buggers too fast and they shut down…then no automation. You want a tat that just sits there, like old times?” Julias squinted at the design his client requested—a mishmash of meaningless lines and symbols.
“Just speed it up. I gotta catch a shuttle back to Earth in two hours.” The customer twisted his neck side-to-side, cracking tight vertebrae.
“I know that sound,” Julias added, continuing his art. “My discs are still compressed from bad landings at Hellas Basin. No excuse. Those Tesla engines still have bugs.”
Campford focused on repeating the desired, odd pattern. Gurgling sounds rose from the cryopump pulsing out integrated robotics into fresh flesh. Julius was anxious about any new client willing to sign a waiver for his innovation; so focused that he didn’t hear room wall perforations as a projectile left most of his patient’s head splattered against a display catalog of tattoo design choices.
He froze. Sweat ran through his gray beard onto his wrinkled neck.
“Don’t move,” shouted an electronic voice, as Red Suits surged through his parlor, kicking aside waiting-area chairs and reading lamps.
Red Suits meant trouble or fame… a prison sentence on Ceres, or an award on the Net. Julias imagined the worse.
“You’re Julias Campford?” asked a soldier-shaped robot, with no face, but heavily armed.
Julias nodded slowly, remembering what Mars security forces did to resistors.
“You know this one?” The officer pointed at remains below Campford’s shaking hands.
“No. He just came in this morning. I was in the middle of…”
“Scanning.” A metallic voice came from within the officer as laser light passed over Campford’s new tattoo.
“What is this about, officer?” Campford asked, slowly straightening his stiff back.
“Earther, this one. Had our latest weapon technology they want. Office requests…can you make these move?” It pointed at arm markings.
“Yes,” Campford responded, as he pushed on the symbols. They twirled about, connecting into a complete diagram. The unexpected results stunned Campford. He felt his impending doom.
“You can repeat?” It questioned further.
“Yes, but, it’s experimental. I didn’t know it would do this.” Julius pointed to the corpse’s arm as it continued forming a weapon’s diagnostic using the nanobot ink.
“Julius Campford, your brilliance is identified.” A new, human voice rose out of his captor. “This is General Pothos. You have a skill of utmost importance for national security.”
“I what?” stammered Julius.
“Under the Mars Rendition Act, I am inducting you into our most secure operations base. We have no solution to our human pilots losing short-term memory while traversing to mining operations near Jupiter. Your art ensures they won’t forget their mission…ever. Can you add sound?”
“General…I’m honored, but this is all so new. I’m old. I could make mistakes.”
“Better than losing a ship.”
“So I’m…”
“Yes, drafted.”
by submission | Sep 29, 2020 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“You can always get someone to do your thinking for you.”
—Gordie Howe, famous hockey player
“I want him off the ice. I don’t care if you have to take him out!” Patterson adjusted his dress pants over his stuffed pin-stripe executive suit.
“Boss, you can’t mean that. It’s a game, for God’s sake! We have to adjust.” Coach Billings took a deep breath as he monitored the blood rising in the team owner’s neck and face.
“A game? Listen, Billings, we hired you to win the Stanley Cup, not be a cheerleader for the competition. We’re going into the finals. Every U.S. team is behind us…but that foreign monster goalie has got to go.”
“There’s no rule,” Billings responded.
“No rule? His shoulders are seven feet wide. He’s nine feet tall. For the sake of decency, he has three legs. What does that do to our children when they see that? I’ve got daughters…and a wife.”
“Please don’t ever pull that card when we’re in front of the press. They’ll crucify us. There go our merchandise profits.” Billings shook his head and let out a huge pressure-relief sigh.
“Really? They made that thing into a bobble head, showing his horns. That’s pure Satanism!” Patterson slammed his flabby hand on the mahogany office table.
“Okay, first, they don’t even understand that concept where he’s from. They respect everything like it was full of consciousness…even the puck.”
“What are you talking about, man? Have you been drinking?” Patterson stood over the slouching coach in a threatening posture. “I was a forward for fifteen seasons. Those kinds of beliefs belong inside some hippy commune, not on the ice. What about deporting it?”
“Speaking of ICE, they have no authority. The Canadians gave all of that species citizenship last week. They’ve all moved to Canada. What can I say? They love the frozen north where even the Inuit won’t go. Must be like their home world. We can’t deport Canadians.”
“If we only could,” Patterson snapped back, moving away from the bullied coach to push his face close against the tenth-story window. “Those Canucks would let an aardvark play if it gave them an advantage. Probably let them coach, too.” Patterson rolled his fingers back and forth over his arthritic thumbs.
“There’s another possibility, but it won’t help us until next year. We’re working with the former employees of SETI.”Billings straightened and leaned forward for some support.
“The who?”
“The astronomers that looked for life in the universe by listening for radio signals.”
“Oh, those losers. So what?”
“They’re working with the Department of Defense; they have a research group called DARPA. Right now they’re sending out messages to the same region of space where our foe came from.”
“And?”
“We figure every life form has enemies. Maybe we can get them to show up before next year, make a trade deal, and do some creative signing when they land. You put a threat like that on our team and I guarantee their goalie will lose it. What do you think?”
“Me? “Patterson groaned, turning. “I’m going to look for another sport.”
