by submission | Feb 20, 2012 | Story |
Author : Jabez Crisp
Vagner: Your name please?
Niken: Niken, William, Flight Lieutenant, 10039880
Vagner: [pause] Date of birth?
Niken: 29th February 1912
Vagner: And you went missing how long ago?
Niken: To me, well… it has been two years. To you, sixty? Eighty? I’m given to understand we made peace in the end, such as we always do.
Doctor Vagner: So where have you been?
Niken: Amongst the stars, if such a thing seems plausible. Taken… You read what I said to the last doctor. Abducted, he said, by a race called the Herzan.
Doctor Vagner: So why you?
Niken: You’ll probably already know that I was shot down over Kent. A Herzan Hunter-Gatherer ship picked me up while collecting dead meat. I remember the twisted metal, the smell of the Merlin as it smoked me to death. Next thing I knew I was watching the war from an unknown vantage point, being tended to… God only knows why me, maybe I was originally meant to be food. I remember waking in a steel container surrounded by carrion… [Sighs, audible lighting of a cigarette] And of course no one noticed. Well, who would notice a missing dead man or another light in the sky? As it turned out they came down to where the lights were because they thought it was the most civilized. Technically it was. What a depressing farce. [pause] I guess you’d call me the ships cat.
Doctor Vagner: Go on.
Niken: The Herzan are… travelers. A long lost race in search of their home, traveling with the burden of the fact that the faster they travel the less likely they are to get back. I never quite understood the folklore, though they tried to explain. They were running, I could never quite make out if it was a civil war, or war with another race. But whatever fighting they did they were very adept at. I remember once we were ambushed, out by Alpha Proxima. From nowhere these two vast vessels appeared from the blackness. I remember Herzan ships being batted like flies. Fearing for my life, not knowing what death the uncaring vacuum had in mind for me. I was there when they retaliated. Space came alight with fire and the silent thump of destruction. It was [pause] quite terrifying.
Of course, they could travel quickly away from their tormentors, but as they approach light speed time slows down. With that in mind, they have the choice between destruction on their path or the knowledge that when future generations reach their homeworld it will be but an unlit lump of char. Just imagine [pause] growing up and living in a community that only knew the thump of war on the hull and the danger and necessity of repair. The Herzan would travel in vast ships, knowing only florescent light, and surgical steel. After a year with them I got very sick, they sent a smaller craft to drop me back. I was amazed they did that, and humbled as well. But that has left a tremendous problem, it’s been coming for many centuries for us but only a few years for them.
Doctor Vagner: And that is?
Niken: The wake of the journey the Herzan leave behind them can only bring their tormentors here.
by submission | Feb 19, 2012 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Edwin lay on his metal bed, his android body hooked into a myriad of short cables to feed his systems for the night. How long had it been since Father had touched his cold metallic arm and flooded it with warmth? How long had it been since he had seen Father?
Where was Father?
Each morning, his android companion unhooked his cables and made him ready for a day of endless waiting. He continued to obey his last order from Father and wrote endless letters to be erased each morning.
Where was Father?
At last one night, Father, accompanied by a short android, came into the room where Edwin lay.
Edwin shook his cables. “Father!”
Father ignored Edwin; instead he smiled down at the small android beside him, his arm around the flesh-colored shoulder. The android glanced at Edwin, and then smiled up at Father. He touched the hand on his shoulder. “Father.”
Father brought the android to Edwin’s double bed, where twin cables to Edwin’s were attached to the headboard. “This is where you’ll sleep, Fred. I’ll see you in the morning, my boy.” After he had hooked up Fred’s cables, Father bent over him to place a hand on Fred’s arm. “We’ve achieved our purpose.”
“Father!” Edwin wanted desperately for Father to touch his cold arm. He needed his flood of warmth. He needed Father. He had waited so long. He waved his tablet filled with letters for his Father’s notice. “Father, look!”
Father glanced toward Edwin and frowned. He turned his attention again to Fred and smiled. “Good night, Fred.” He smoothed Fred’s hair. Before leaving, Father spoke to someone outside the doorway. “Edwin is now superfluous.”
A feminine voice answered, “What if you still need to study him?”
“Just his presence bothers me. It reminds me of our struggle to produce Fred.” Father moved away. Before the door shut behind Father, Edwin heard, “Attend to it tomorrow.”
Father said he was superfluous. Edwin searched his glossary banks to find the meaning of superfluous. His mind recoiled away from the word. Why did Father call him that? What happened to superfluous androids? Had androids A through D been superfluous? Did Fred make him superfluous? He turned his face to study the android beside him.
Fred was the color of Father. Was he warm too? Edwin reached his hand over to touch Fred’s soft hand. Warmth traveled up Edwin’s arm.
Fred’s eyes narrowed. “Get away from me, you…robot!” Fred shoved Edwin aside.
“I’m an android like you,” Edwin insisted.
Fred smiled. “You’re nothing like me.” His smile widened. “Father said you’re superfluous.”
Edwin’s synapses fired wildly. Superfluous! How could Father say that? He had always obeyed Father. He had always longed to see him and feel his warmth. Why did Father need Fred? Why didn’t Father need him?
Was he inferior?
As Edwin moved his hand to touch his own arm, one of Edwin’s synapses misfired burning a new connection. He enjoyed its warmth. Then another burned.
Fred moved a bit farther away from Edwin. “This will be my own bed tomorrow.”
Edwin wanted to smile as he turned once again to Fred. “Perhaps,’ he said.
by submission | Feb 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : B. H. Isaac
My surroundings changed in an instant. The neglected display room and my parked martini glass disappeared, replaced by a frozen landscape with glacial winds tearing at my loosened tux. Fear gave me the momentary strength to free myself from the cacophonous machine and its mechanized tentacles. All remaining delight at the success of this derelict and inebriated attempt to dial the prehistoric glacial epoch faded at the sight of wind-blasted remnants of a lost age. Sections of crumbling walls mixed with prodigious beams and the wreckage of some sort of metal craft which jutted from the ice at random angles. I strained to see beyond 100 meters through an omnipresent mist. There was light, but no sun.
A pair of cloaked shapes seized me. They moved me to a sheltered cavern with an entrance obscured behind the remains of a herculean sign, all its color and iconography blasted beyond recognition.
An assemblage of tattered refugees in clothes similar to mine waited inside, huddling about a warm and faintly glowing device covered with odd levers and back-lit keys. The people appeared to be from different lands and cultures, but all seemed possessed of a distinctly modern aspect. They peered at me with a strange mixture of suspicion and incredulity. I did not understand this reception until thrust before the bed of a dying man who was wrapped in furs and surrounded by throngs of doleful acolytes. I gazed through the murk in horror as my eyes adjusted to the dimness. Though the man appeared quite advanced in years, I recognized him immediately.
He was an older version of me.
The age shriveled man coughed severely, then mustered his remaining strength to hand me a charred note displaying a sequence of curious numbers: 2013011723591347.42301-20.28854. His trembling voice struggled to form words. I understood two: “Be ready.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Tensevn broke cover on the fourth floor landing and sprinted flat out across the entire expanse of the building, hurdling the refuse of a hundred years of vacancy to take refuge in the fire escape on the South side. Beneath and behind him he could feel and hear his pursuer’s weapon reach through the concrete floor slabs, reducing the iron rebar inside to molten liquid and vapour.
“Quit running puppet, you’re only wasting my time.” The voice amplified, modulated, designed to strike fear into the enemy. It just pissed T off.
The fire escape still tenaciously gripped the exterior of the building. T wasn’t sure he’d reach the fifth floor before it too was dripping down to the broken asphalt below.
He found a fist sized chunk of rubble, tossed it far into the middle of the room then took the stairs three at a time to the next floor just as the trooper below realized the distraction and brought his cannon to bear on the space he’d just vacated. The metal sublimated in a hot mist, leaving T panting in an open doorway with reentry his only option.
“You’re fast, little puppet, unnaturally fast. It’s a shame I have to eliminate you, it would be interesting to take you apart and learn how you tick.”
T scanned the gloom of the floor in front of him, the middle littered with furniture and old filing cabinets, vacant desks lining the outside walls where windows, once filled with glass and sunshine were now just so many gaping wounds in the old corporate facade.
Taking a deep breath, he started a slow jog around the perimeter. Beneath him, the trooper’s weapon whined to life and started tracing his path just a few steps behind him. He could feel the energy, even through two floors and so many meters of concrete, the effect was painful. His heart fluttered, his breathing laboured as the weapon made it harder for his blood to move oxygen from his lungs. He sped up, trying to keep just ahead of the beam as he ran a complete lap of the floor, surveying the East and West fire escapes as he passed them, then half way around again to the same Northside stairwell he’d vacated on the floor below.
Here he waited and listened to the shuffle of heavy feet from the ground floor. His pursuer wasn’t following, just holding court in the atrium space turning slow circles, listening for any sign of his prey.
The building creaked and moaned, the stench of vapourized iron filling his nostrils.
“Why won’t you die, fucker? Why will you not die?” The voice was strained, T could hear the frustration even through the modulation. It made him smile.
He broke cover again and ran another lap, this time in the opposite direction. Again the rising whine, louder this time. The hunter turning up the output, no longer playing games. Behind him hot rivulets of orange metal burst steaming from the ceiling, above him sharp cracks as the superheated rebar shattered the concrete structure. T accelerated, then jumped through the opening onto the East side fire escape as the entire floor above sheared along the fault lines he’d tricked the trooper into tracing as he ran, the weapon weakening the structure until it could no longer hold its own weight. The sixth floor pancaked onto the fifth, tearing it free, then together they picked up the fourth floor, accelerating through the atrium space to crush the unprepared hunter into the basement below.
“Naturally fast, asshole. Naturally smart too. Comes from being a meat brain you metal headed fuck.”
Tensevn clung panting to the battered fire escape until the wind had cleared the dust and he could see the ground. He couldn’t afford to slip here, a fall would hurt like hell.
by Clint Wilson | Feb 16, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
He walked and he calculated. The intense red sun beat down yet, as always, the suit kept things temperate. He urinated without thinking, and on he walked. He glanced at his wrist and saw that it was nearly rest time.
The dry little planet was about 28,000 kilometers in circumference and by figuring his average walking speed he knew he might encounter his own footprints soon enough.
His chronometer beeped at him just as he spied a nice sand pile to lie back against. There weren’t many options. There was sand, rocks, and more sand. He lay back against his uncomfortable bed and closed his eyes, trying to imagine what he might do next after circumnavigating his dusty prison. The problem was the suit worked too damn well. And while his will to survive trundled along stubbornly within him, the tired part of his mind wished that some misfortune would befall him so he could just die quickly. He had been in the wretched thing for months now and could not take it off, could never take it off unless rescued. The air out there was poisonous and thin, the pressure drastically low. Every day he considered picking up a rock and smashing his face shield. But what if he only managed to crack it? A slow death was not on his agenda.
He slept furtively, dreaming of the accident and his so-called escape to this place. The screeching of metal as the hull tore apart, the explosions, finding the stray survival suit floating in the weightlessness.
They had already fallen into close orbit around the nearest planet as per emergency procedures, and just in time for his sake. As he had jettisoned into the stratosphere, feeling the crushing g-forces from the suit’s rockets slowing his orbital speed, he had watched Surveyor III disintegrate. He was the only one to make it out. No other white suits had followed. Then he had waited patiently for the chute to open. Had it sprung from his back too soon it would have been ripped uselessly away and he would have taken many long minutes to fall to his death.
He awoke and saw that the sun was nearly down. No matter, his helmet lights would show him the way as they did every night. He got up and trudged on westward, his back to the setting red dwarf.
There was microscopic biological material here, nothing registered as life but just the same there was ample matter along with moisture blowing around in the dusty atmosphere for the suit to continuously make food for his intravenous inputs. When he had first arrived it had been a worry. Despite all the suit’s capabilities he would surely starve or die of thirst on this rock, but surprisingly both the suit and the planet were still keeping him alive after all this time.
But what was the use? He could not be sure if their distress signal had ever been received. For all he knew no one in the universe knew he was here.
Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. On this journey he had previously had to skirt around canyons, mountains and other obstacles to maintain his linear course but this was a big crevasse, and with the sun down behind him now all was black before him. He took several small steps and then cautiously leaned forward to allow the helmet’s bright floodlights to shine down a nearly vertical wall with no bottom in sight.
He wondered how deep it was. Surely deep enough to smash a face shield he thought.
