by Roi R. Czechvala | Apr 20, 2010 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
The young couple were blissfully unaware of the silent orange and black striped death silently stalking them. Hidden amongst potted palms and low tables, the tiger padded lightly towards the amorous pair. Honed on the savannahs of east Africa, centuries of civilization had dulled the once acute senses of the humans
With a guttural roar the big cat sprang. The beast caught the mans face between powerful jaws, crushing his thin skull as a baby’s head beneath a hobnailed boot. His wife and their bored waitress found themselves drenched in hot sticky blood.
Soundlessly the young bride screamed, inhaled, found her voice and screamed again. The waitress absently dabbed at her blood stained shirt with a linen napkin. All around them, the other diners chuckled and applauded politely.
The young woman, looking as if about to retch, launched herself from the table and dove through a group of women nodding approvingly and clapping lightly.
Mrs. J. W. Pewtersmythe, the leader of the small group spoke up. “Oh Henri,” she said to the Maître d’, “it’s wonderful what’s been done with the place.”
“Yes Madame. Each plant and beast has been expressly chosen for its beauty and lethality. And now that the retroactive ZPG laws have gone into effect we have been able to acquire such beautiful creatures as the Bengal.” He offhandedly gestured to the tiger noisily feasting on the young man’s entrails.
“Please seat us somewhere appropriate, overlooking the show, away from the kitties and the slithering slimies,” she indicated a python in the process of engulfing a pair of Armani clad feet. She slipped Henri a pair of hundred dollar bills for his efforts.
“Of course Madam,” he replied with an oily smile, “no purring death nor slithering strangulation. We shall keep you away from the hoi polloi.”
The women were seated at a small table away and above the main floor. “Isn’t this wonderful,” Mrs. Pewtersmythe gushed to her fawning companions, “I hear they even invite the homeless in on Wednesday mornings for a free breakfast.” She tittered in a most ladylike way.
“I think it’s wonderful that the lower classes should throw themselves upon the sword for the good of Britain,” remarked Mrs. Fontescue.
“Oh I don’t know,” Mrs. Nesbitt chimed in, “I’ll just be happy when this damned war is over and we can send the riff raff to the Martian Colonies, or at least to the Lunar penal enclave.”
“Hear hear,” the others said in unison, raising their drinks.
Henri himself waited on the august group of women.
“And what will be your pleasure today Mademoiselles.” He handed each woman a menu bound in blood red, crushed velvet.
The old women tittered delightedly and blushed on cue.
“What is this one here,” inquired Mrs. Pewtersmythe, stabbing her bony finger at a listing under, Aperitifs.
‘That would be araignées, Madam. Veuves noires. A rare and most delicate repast in some parts of the world. Very exclusive,” he bent closer and finished in a stage whisper, “and very expensive.” He leered knowingly.
“That’ll be us then.” She smiled winsomely.
“Pierre,” Henri said to the hovering waiter at his side, “araignées, sil vous plait.”
When the dish arrived, Henri removed the cover with a flourish, “Eh voila!” Thousands of small glistening black objects swarmed from beneath the lid and over the women.
As they covered Mrs. Pewtersmythe’s face, she saw the brilliant red hourglass on the abdomen.
“Henri,” she shrieked, “but I…,”
“Pardon, Madam did not want the fuzzy death, nor the slimy suffocation, but she said nothing about the creepy crawlies. Bon appétit.”
He smiled.
by Patricia Stewart | Dec 12, 2008 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The twelve scientists stationed at the Scobee Moon-Base listened intently as the Earth-based support team updated them on the recently discovered Levy-Takanotoshi asteroid. The asteroid was a previously unknown Centaurs Class object that had its orbit perturbed by one of the gas giants. Unfortunately, it wasn’t discovered until well after periapsis. Now that it had rounded the sun, it was streaking toward the Earth at almost 20 miles per second. Astronomers calculated that it would strike the Earth in fourteen days. They were currently uncertain about how much damage the impact would cause, but they knew there was nothing they could do to divert it. The support team also reported that there was not enough time to refit and launch the Crew Exchange Vehicle before the impact. In other words, the twelve scientists would be trapped on the moon for a long, long time, depending on the extent of the damage caused by the asteroid.
Two weeks later, the twelve scientists gathered at the observation ports. The dark landscape of the moon’s night-phase was partially illuminated by the light reflected by the nearly “full Earth,” which floated motionless approximately 60 degrees above the horizon. On schedule, the asteroid came into view as it skirted past the moon and headed toward its rendezvous with Earth. It took over three hours for the asteroid to cross the gap between the moon and the Earth. The scientists took turns at the telescope watching the eight mile long, potato shaped rock slowly tumble toward the Earth. When it impacted the western coast of Africa, there was a full minute of blinding light as the asteroid vaporized itself, along with billions of tons of the Earth’s crust. Like a stone tossed into a stagnant pond, an expanding ring of compressed atmosphere raced outward from the impact site at supersonic speed. An incredible plume of dust and debris was blasted into the upper atmosphere; some of it continuing into interplanetary space. As the Earth rotated above them, the scientists watched in stunned silence as the sunset terminator slowly traversed the impact site, plummeting Africa into the relative darkness of night. From the moon, a glowing red cauldron of boiling rock, more than a hundred miles in diameter, could still be seen through the column of dust spewing from the cataclysmic scar on the Mauritanian coast. A few hours later, the impact site rotated beyond the eastern horizon. The only visible evidence of the disaster was an eerie crescent shaped red glow reflecting off of the dust particles that were spreading across the exosphere.
After a sleepless “night,” the scientists gathered again at the observation ports to watch Africa rotate over Earth’s western horizon. But there was nothing to see. The thick clouds blanketed the African continent, and much of the Atlantic Ocean. There was only a churning “cloud mountain” marking the site of the impact, as dust and debris continued billowing upward.
The scientists hadn’t received a transmission from Earth since the global atmospheric shock wave had coalesced in the South Pacific Ocean, near Australia. As the hours passed, the thickening dust clouds began to obscure the tsunami swept eastern coast of the United States. North America had a faint orange hue as fires raged across the continent. The twelve scientists solemnly accepted the unenviable fact that the possibility of rescue was non-existent. As they looked up at Earth, they each tried to memorize the familiar land formations of their decimated homeworld, because each of them knew that for the foreseeable future, there would be nothing else to look at but an impenetrable layer of gray clouds.
by submission | Sep 30, 2008 | Story
Author : Andy Bolt
WELCOME, Chip Winkler, TO STORYWEB 9.0! PLEASE INPUT LITBASE:
Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea
LITBASE FOUND! LAUNCHING . . .
Enrique was mindswiped by the storybot as he dangled from the 93rd floor window of the Kentaka building. He was a little preoccupied rewiring the entire structure for atmospheric transdigitization, but he always liked contributing to storyweb.
GREETINGS, Enrique Mendoza! YOU HAVE BEEN RANDOMLY SELECTED TO CONTRIBUTE TO TODAY’S STORYWEB TALE BEGINNING:
The old man had gone eighty-four days without taking a fish.
PLEASE INPUT LINE:
Fighting the tide in his fully submersible XLJ thermodynamic subship, the old man deployed a series of fish-seeking nanobaits with attractive carbon fiber lures.
LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Enrique Mendoza!
The storybot found Mindee Walsh as she was on her thirteenth shot of semi-intelligent Nuevo Tequila. Her boyfriend had just dumped her, and she was out doing her best to erase the memory of his face. It took her twenty minutes to notice the blinking prompt in her right eye.
And he was miserable because nobody loved him and he was probably going to die by himself all miserable and sad and miserable!
LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Mindee Walsh!
Billy Watson was playing Slaughterhouse 5000 on his quantum box. He was assaulting his way through the chainsaw laser level when the storybot caught up to him. Reading over the first paragraph distractedly, Billy found himself focusing more on the arterial spray of lupine aliens.
Then the dinosaurs in helicopters attacked with their acid guns! “Let’s get carnivorous,” said the old man.
LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Billy Watson!
Marion Day was in the middle of her forty thousand word dissertation on interracial relationships in postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa.
I would like to unsubscribe please.
LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Marion Day!
Milton Wilks, an anal-retentive librarian from Greenbrier County, was alphabetizing his coupons.
That’s right, thought the old man. I’d sure like to unsubscribe from this rain of hydrochloric thunder lizards, if only that were an option.
LINE REGISTERED! THANK YOU, Milton Wilks!
For the rest of the week, the storybot bounced from person to person. The old man fought off the dinosaurs, mused on the nature of human existence, fell in love with a woman who turned out to be a zombie, then a robot, and then his sister, had crab cakes and fine wine on the Parisian seashore, traveled back in time to kill Hitler, unsubscribed from six separate situations, violated seven copyrights, fell asleep in the sun, denounced the president, praised the president, committed suicide, came back to life, and finally, grew himself some gills and went to live with his true love, a mermaid person from Zeta Beta VII.
By Friday, the story had ended and bounced home. In his office, Chip Winkler smiled at his work.
“Perfect!” he cried.
Two months later . . .
GREETINGS, consumers! THIS SUMMER: A MAN. A SEA. THE MERMAID WHO LOVED HIM AND THE DINOSAURS WHO DIDN’T. WILL HE DEFEAT HIS ZOMBIE ROBOT SISTER IN TIME TO BE WITH HIS TRUE LOVE? WHICH WILL GET HIM FIRST, HITLER’S LEGION OF CYBER MONKEYS OR HIS OWN NAGGING FEELINGS OF SELF-DOUBT? THE HUMAN SPIRIT WILL BE EXPLODED OFF ITS HINGES. THE OCEAN JUST GOT EXISTENTIALLY DEADLIER.
THIS SUMMER: THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway
by submission | May 21, 2008 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala
My father fought in the Gulf War, the Iraqi War, and the Colonial Lunar Wars. His father fought in the blood bath of South East Asia, and his father fought in North Africa during the Great Patriotic War.
So, it was desert, jungle, desert… I hate the jungle. I wish things would have heated up on Mars so I could have stayed in my beautiful dry desert, but I had to follow the family line, I was sent to the jungle planet. Venus.
I hate Venus.
My dad told me, no matter what, “always take extra socks, change them whenever you can”, and the punchline; “always keep your feet dry”. What a joke. I’ve been here 18 months, and it hasn’t stopped raining once. Hell, dad had an airtight battlesuit on Luna.
My squad was out on patrol when we got a message that an enemy unit was in our area; company strength. Four to one. We had the firepower, but they had numbers.
We were walking in a staggered column, five meters apart, ten meters wide. Danvers, on point, suddenly stopped, raised his fist and lowered his hand slowly, palm down. Automatically we stopped and crouched. He stared into the brush. He motioned for us to “get flat”, and chucked a flash bang directly to our twelve o’clock. That little pop triggered a series of explosions that nearly shook my teeth loose. Danvers had spotted a cluster of claymores.
No sooner had the mud settled when we saw the points of light that was laser fire. The dense foliage and constant rain absorbed most of the power, and unless you took a hit in the eyes the most you might suffer is a nasty burn. That was just suppressive fire. All hell broke loose when they laid into us with .30 cal heavy guns and RPG’s.
I was in the rear when we got hit, so I scrambled into a group of rocks that formed a shallow bowl, allowing me to lay down covering fire for the rest of the guys. I was just rising up to fire, when something fell behind me with a moist plop. I spun and found myself face to face with an allied, his rifle on me. It was a classic Mexican standoff, the first to flinch dies.
We faced each other for what seemed like hours, our weapons trained on each others bellies, when a wave of heat and light bowled us over. It was an NG, a neutron grenade, one of theirs. We didn’t carry them in the jungle, because it was too close to escape the blast. They don’t value life like we do.
With our differences, momentarily forgotten, we peeked over the rocks. Nothing. We sat down facing each other, and laughed at the absurdity of it all, not understanding the others language, but understanding futility.
He sighed, put his weapon down, and pointed at my canteen. I handed it to him and he drank deeply. He handed it back to me, and as I took it he grabbed his rifle and leveled it at me. Then he laughed even harder, removed the magazine and showed it to me. It had been empty all along. We both laughed.
He opened his wallet and handed it to me. A picture of his family; cute kids, pretty wife. We laughed. He laughed even harder when I leveled my weapon at him.
The report of my rifle nearly deafened me in the closeness of those rocks.
I hate Venus, and these bastards are why I’m here.
by deviantArt Contest Runner Up | Apr 7, 2008 | Story
Author : hraesvelgr
“Solar Systems are easy to program. Way easier than I thought.”
“Told ya so,” I could hear the Director’s voice crisp and clear. “Did you enjoy the challenge?”
I smiled down at the still water of the lake before me, reflected in it a perfect image of Earth and its moon as viewed through the dome of my Surveyor Station. The sight was pristine, perfect; not just the beauty of reality as a canvas, but now that I knew every detail of the situation’s physics, now after I had run millions upon millions of equations, sorted through mathematics that had previously been beyond my imagining, I could appreciate the movement of the planets and satellites in a way no other human being would ever be able to.
“Yes,” I answered plainly, after a long pause, having almost forgotten the phone at my ear. “I mean. I love what I do.”
“Someone will be there in the morning to check on your productivity, but from the sound of things, I’m guessing all those recommendations were right about you.” The Director’s voice had a certain allure to it; one that told of a promotion, maybe even a bonus or an upgraded  Surveyor Station. “Once I get the report, kid, there’s a chance we can talk about getting you to work on Letser 920. It’s a sixteen-planet job.”
More work! I stifled a small laugh of sheer joy, still eyeing the reflection, watching as the moon drifted gracefully so near earth that it looked for a moment that the two might touch. “I’m up for anything you can throw at me, boss. Now that I have a handle on it, I could probably even build a solar system from scratch.” There was a flash of light in my little lake, reflected from above where the sun was peeking out from between the two celestial bodies. My distracted mind thrummed over the math of the event for a moment, and there was a little tick in my subconscious telling me that the sun was still three hours from that sort of dawn. The Perturbation Theory could account for that, maybe. But, really…
My thoughts paused to reprocess what was going on, taking their time, going over the calculations I’d run and trying to figure what had…
Happened. I snapped my head away from the reflection. Looking up, I saw with my own eyes, the flash of light hadn’t been from the sun; Earth had just suffered a head-on collision with its own moon. “Son of a bitch!” Goodbye, Africa.
For several seconds I just stared upward, speechless, only partly hearing the director’s inquisitions about my sudden explication. I could see it all now: the perturbations that had gone wrong, the prophetic calculations of what was to come, the Earth breaking apart, the orbits of the other planets all skewed into catastrophic spirals. It was to be a dead solar system. And what’s worse, it was going to be hell for me to score even a two-planet job after the Director heard about this one.
