by Desmond Hussey | Nov 8, 2013 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
I needed to disappear. Fast.
I never wanted a criminal life. It’s not like I killed anybody, or stole the nation’s pension plans, unlike some governments which shall go unmentioned.
No. It was much more banal than that. I reneged on my student loans. Now I’m a wanted man.
Like many students hoping to get ahead in the world, I jumped into a full Master’s Program at a decent, but far from ivy league university, with visions of future grandeur making the stress inducing course load marginally bearable. Like every student, I was promised a well paid job upon graduation.
I did my time, studied hard. After graduating with honors and flinging my square, black cap into the air along with thousands of other students, all determined to make their dreams realities, I learned some hard truths we weren’t taught in school. There simply weren’t any jobs for us. Never had been. Maybe ten of every hundred graduates found employment in their chosen field, most through their parent’s corporate enterprise; the Golden Boys and Girls, whose futures were paved in gold the day they were born.
As for me, well…
I was unemployed and the proud owner of a 250,000 credit Criminology Degree.
Six months later the phone calls and e-mails started. It was the Bank. They wanted their money back.
I used up my two deferrals, buying myself some time, but time, like my meager savings, inevitably ran out. The phone calls resumed. The e-mails spawned. It was time to pay up.
After five years of searching within my field, the best work I could dredge up was as a Baker’s assistant; waking at 5 am, making thick dough for minimum wage. The Bank garnished 30% of every credit I earned.
At this rate, with added interest, it would take two lifetimes to pay off my loan.
Arthur Hanover needed to disappear.
I decided to put my Criminology Degree to work. Disappearing people wasn’t easy in the 2030’s, but I’d learned how. Everyone was numbered, coded and tagged at birth. If you weren’t in the system, you couldn’t do squat. Couldn’t even purchase a toothbrush without an I-phone, except on the black market. Mark if the Beast if ever I saw one.
My phone was the first to go. Not that I had any credit anyway, plus phones were traceable.
I pitched my ID, changed my name, dyed my hair and managed to barter some ancient LP’s – classics, mint condition – for a pair of retinal coded contacts.
A doctor friend from University was in the same boat I was; ran an underground clinic for the disenfranchised. I called in some favors and had him remove the IRF chip implanted in my thigh.
Debt between friends is so much easier to pay back than a bank loan. “Honor amongst thieves”, I s’pose.
I’d hoped to find a quiet place to live out the rest of my days as Devon Walsh. A nobody. A non-entity. Maybe meet a girl and eke out some humble existence. If being a Baker’s assistant was all there was for me, I conceded to settle for it. It could be worse.
It is.
They caught up with me in a hover station outside Whitehorse. Cyborg sniffer-dogs tracked my DNA all the way from Toronto. Betrayed by my own DNA. You really can’t change who you are.
My crime?
Criminal Loan Default.
My sentence?
I’ve been drafted. My loan was bought and I’m bound for the front lines. NorAmer is at war with the Asian Federation for property interests on Mars and I’m cheap cannon fodder.
by submission | Nov 7, 2013 | Story |
Author : Thomas Keene
Every metal surface inside the cabin sang, and the readouts flickered. A steady, pure note that Charles called “the Banshee”. Evan clenched the crew telemetry readout so hard that waves of color flowed across the display. He was the only crew member with a heartbeat.
“‘Brown dwarf’ my ass.” Evan looked over the magnetic readings one more time, and scribbled them on a notepad. Three times stronger than an hour ago, before Yuri and Charles had gone on EVA to fix the external sensors.
The metallic ringing increased in pitch, and two more monitors in the cabin flashed error messages before shorting out. Evan shook himself. “I’m already dead. No propulsion, no computers, flying blind, gonna crash into a star at one-third cee in a week…”
Evan pulled himself along the rungs to the canteen. He drunk a liter of sugar-water as he stared out the port at the slow-moving bluish starfield. After a few minutes his breathing slowed, and he wiped the sweat from his face with a towel.
The ringing sound dropped half a note and Evan flinched. “Maybe… Maybe the magnetic anomaly is blocking their telemetry signals. They could be alive. I’ll just duck out for a quick look.”
Evan pulled himself to the back of the crew compartment. He stared wide-eyed at the airlock as he stroked the fabric of one of the pressure suits. “Wish I could use a hardsuit, but nobody’s here to close it. Hell… Dead, dead…” He suited up and started the cycle.
The ringing became quieter and quieter. Evan could feel a small buzzing in the joints of his suit, but if he breathed deeply he could barely hear it. He sat in the open airlock for fifteen minutes, staring at the slowly-shifting starfield that trailed behind the ship with his arms pressed against the walls of the chamber.
Then the ringing became a sharp whine inside his helmet. Evan curled up and gasped, then flailed and grabbed a rung at the edge of the airlock. He took a deep breath and pulled himself through the door.
To his left was the fore of the ship, with the back of the ablative shield sitting as a large, dark pentagon with reddish stars slowing spreading from its edges. He carefully inspected it for holes, some sign of damage, but it was perfectly intact. Then he looked to his right and threw up in his helmet.
It was Yuri, his hardsuit’s steel-faced helmet ripped clean off. His face was pale and still. One side of his body was charred black, and white vapors leaked from it. His intact arm was held stiff, close to his face. Evan choked and coughed as he jerked his head around, and the vomit eventually moved to the side.
Evan turned back to the airlock. He pulled himself forward on the rung, but met resistance. He pushed on the rung to look behind him, and a bright white glow filled his vision.
Her upper body was chalk-white and slender. She had human clear-blue eyes, Evan stared into them with his mouth agape. Her tail was a thousand-meter long strand of twisting rarefied plasma curled around half the length of the ship.
She floated closer and took him by the shoulders, then kissed his visor. It bubbled apart under the heat and his suit depressurized in an instant. He screamed soundlessly as she caressed his face, his cheeks baking in the solar wind as he drowned beneath the starry waves of the void.
by submission | Nov 6, 2013 | Story |
Author : Scott Shipp
Ian was cornered. He had run straight into a dead end alley. Right on his heels were two cyborg cops, and he had the money credits hacked from the bank all over his data stores. There was no escape. Lucky for him, he was augmented with an eye implant that drew his computer screen directly onto his retina. His brain had both a processor and an organic hard drive jacked directly into the basal ganglia. He checked his computer readout. No. He wasn’t going anywhere. The only way out was to climb up the walls. And they were smooth as silk.
Cursing, he opened the shutdown script. The shutdown script would encrypt and backup the data to a cloud drive, including his entire mind, then it would wipe everything, even his brain, and this would cause him to die.
He ran it.
“Stop right there!”
“Freeze!”
Both cyborg cops bore down on him, ready to scan his mind and prove his guilt. Then, death.
#
He awoke. Friends had told him rumors of what it was like, but he wasn’t prepared for this. Although there was no more body to care for, his mind, now digitized, still felt the existence of an entire phantom body, itching and burning and twitching. He screamed in agony, though there was no sound.
He closed his phantom eyes and tried to focus.
“Must get the credits to Amy, must get the credits to Amy.”
Through the burning, he tried to interface with the system around him. None of it made sense. Everything was unusual. He requested memory, and he saw purple. He tried to ask what data stores were available, and he tasted pineapple and smelled burning rubber.
“I need to learn this new language.”
But he was already exhausted. He slept.
Weeks and months went by. He learned the meaning of purple, and pineapple, and each sensation only by experimenting with each request. He feared accidentally closing his program, or, worse, deleting himself. Once, after he had felt something like vibrations in teeth, a sea of digits swam up before him. He learned it was a man page, a help file in the system that described one of the commands available. It took awhile to learn how to read the man files, but once he did, it was a huge leap forward.
Months more flew by. He learned that he was inside a web server. It was part of a web hosting company. He started to gain more confidence, learning more about each interface. He learned new protocols. He pinged the network. He spoke the language of routers and switches.
And one day he reached the outside world.
#
Amy sighed, pouring her tea and holding back her tears. The grief was still too much to bear.
“Oh, Ian,” she said to his picture on the wall. “It wasn’t worth it.”
She felt the familiar ache behind her eyes and in her heart and clamped down on it. No use crying any more, was there? Nothing could bring him back.
Her phone beeped. She took it out and looked at the text message.
“Deposit notification: 80,000,000 credits.”
Her eyes grew wide. She checked her bank account. Indeed, it was there. Was it Ian? She smiled a little. He must have somehow scheduled the money to be deposited before he died.
Her phone beeped again. She looked at it. The mug went tumbling across the floor, the phone followed. Tea splattered out.
On the phone, it said simply: “I’m alive.”
“I’m coming.”
by Clint Wilson | Nov 5, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
I’d always wanted my own planet, and now my dreams were about to come true. Sure it was my entire life savings plus everything of value I had. But what a deal! It was remote, but my very own world? With lush jungles, sandy beaches, plentiful resources, and friendly locals who would treat me like a king, who could refuse?
I put my palm to the screen, transferring the necessary funds and sealing the contract. Xanthomane smiled a smug green smile with his slobbery lips and slapped my open palm with an extremely slimy tentacle. “Congratulations Mr. Nussbaum, you are the proud owner of ‘Zephoria’ of the Signus II system,” he said in his wet bubbly broken common.
I looked over his shoulder and saw my old reliable star freighter being towed away by a lumbering industrial hauler. “You’re still going to keep up your end of the bargain and get me there right? After all, I just gave you my only transportation.”
Xanthomane gave me a slimy smile and his three left eyes winked knowingly. “Right this way Mr. Nussbaum, a transport is waiting to take you to your new planetary paradise.”
An hour later I was aboard a very cramped and smelly interstellar transport, packed in alongside a myriad of alien beings and their accompanying pets and androids. We jumped in and out of hyper drive over and over, stopping at this planet and that. Finally the conductor-bot floated down the middle of the car, “Next stop Zephoria of the Signus II system! All disembarking at Zephoria follow me.”
I was the only one who followed. We passed through another car and then into a utility area. The conductor-bot scanned my ticket and said, “Please climb into the escape pod Mr. Nussbaum.”
My mouth hung agape. “What? We’re not landing?”
The robot answered matter-of-factly. “No sir. Zephoria is much too small and remote for an express transport to land. But fear not, this pod will keep you alive until you reach the surface.” I saw little other choice so, without argument, I cautiously climbed into the tiny coffin.
No sooner had the lid sealed than there was an explosion and my little pod went hurdling away from the beat up transport. I hung on for dear life as I careened downward, passing through wispy white clouds, first a vast blue ocean then a lush green continent rushing up toward me.
I landed roughly in dense jungle, my pod tumbling over and over through the foliage. It finally came to rest and the lid unsealed, letting in cool fresh air. I was shaken up but unhurt. Excitedly I scrambled out and stood up to study my surroundings.
I was at the edge of a splendid clearing and there before me stood a tribe of blue skinned savages, spears in hand, faces painted menacingly. I wasted no time. “Greetings,” I said with a warm smile. “I’m Ronald Nussbaum, the new owner of your planet!”
The beings stood for a moment stone faced, staring at me without expression. And then they all burst out laughing.
“Not another one!”
“Bought yourself a planet did you?”
“Lemme guess, a fat amphibian named Xanthomane?”
They continued to laugh for a minute but then, seeing my look of utter disbelief and disappointment, they took heart and stopped. One of them held out a blue hand. “Come friend, there is a refugee camp set up by others who have been ‘sold’ our world in the past. You can probably squat with them.”
Wiping away a tear I began to follow the friendly aliens across the clearing.
by Julian Miles | Nov 4, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The cigar from the dead guard’s pocket has a red and gold band that says it’s from Havana, the first pleasant surprise of tonight.
“Ricky. Help me.”
I look across to where Estevez lies in a pool of his own blood, his eyes over-bright with pain and anger. Nodding to him, I put the cigar down on the low wall, rise and cross to him. As he looks up, my carbon-steel spike drives through his right eye socket. He convulses once and settles with a rattling exhalation.
The cigar is twenty centimetres long and smells wonderful. I’ve just slipped the band off and put it in my pocket when a shadow rises where only the line of the wall should be.
“Puto. Mala puto.” The tone filled with trenchant disgust.
The shadow lurches before tapering and shrinking as its owner falls backwards. Determined, these people. But not very smart.
The guard who provided the cigar also provides the guillotine to clip the cap, matches to warm the beast and to my surprise, cedar spills too. This man was a purist. I salute his corpse in respect.
There is a red dot on the cigar. It slides across to join its companions on my chest.
“Do no move!”
Squinting against the glare of the spotlight. “You mean ‘do not move’, I presume?”
“Si.”
I clip the cap from the cigar as strobe lights commence beyond the wall. ‘Death fields’ are illegal for this very reason. As I roll the cigar briefly above the match flame, I hear the screams of the wounded cease one by one. It is a ‘death’ field. Things that attract its attention only lose it when they cease having a pulse or equivalent.
I ignite the spill from a fresh match, then light the cigar gently and evenly. Delicious. The unfortunate donor was a man of refinement and taste.
“Senor?” The tone is deferential and coming from some way off. A smart one at last.
“Yes?”
“Please explain why you here. Then if you take efecto diablo away, you may go.”
The societies in the southern hemisphere retain their superstitious fear of invisible things that kill. Which is why I obtained a Serenti, a lifeform from Suli Serenta that’s larval stage now shares my body, filling the ‘empty’ places in me with frogspawn-like milky nodules, and getting from me whatever a Serenti does. Until it is mature and leaves me, it dies when I die. Unique energy manipulation abilities allow it to take certain liberties with how things stick together at an atomic level. It can sense everything within twenty metres or so, and react fast enough to reduce bullets to dust and energy beams to lightshows. Tonight has convinced me that I should have got one sooner and I will never be without one again, unless the pain of a mature one leaving is agonising.
Time to give the man what he wants.
“Consigilia paid us to kill Dupare and his people. Our broker, Hester, sold us out to let Dupare take us and Consigilia. I would be grateful if you could find Hester for me. Then I will take my diablo domestico to visit him.”
There is muted activity beyond my sight before the voice replies: “Senor Hester flew to Los Angeles three hours ago.”
I stand up and smile around the cigar in my mouth. “Then I’ll be going to the airport. Call me a taxi?”
“With pleasure, senor. Please never come back to Federated South America.”
Coming, Hester. Ready or not.
