by Duncan Shields | Sep 12, 2011 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
You’d expect a physically challenged, mentally retarded child born with a life expectancy of six years to figure out a crude way of getting around. Some simple crutches, perhaps. Or maybe a box to drag oneself around in.
You wouldn’t expect that child to build robot legs that worked.
That’s how the aliens saw us. They looked on us in pity and in fascination.
They came to us from space without the benefit of ships or space suits. They floated down on rippling bio-solar panel wings of unfurling grace. They were humanoid but much taller, bilaterally symmetrical like us. They had four more senses than us and were able to breathe in fourteen different atmospheres. Those solar sail wings could extend for fifty meters when fully extended in space. They were so very thin.
They looked like us for a reason.
And we didn’t look like them because we were deformed.
In this universe, they explained, there was only one dominant form of life.
Humans.
Planet Earth was seeded with that form of life but somewhere the replication got too many errors in it. A few missing pieces in the helix or a few too many where it counted. Our growth was stunted and our full potential squandered.
According to these superior versions of humans that wafted down from space, normal human beings kept every trait in the DNA that they’d gotten along the way and were supposed to flower in a second puberty around sixty years of age.
That second puberty would have us grow much taller, become psychic, kick all of our evolutionary traits into full-blown activation, and give us the ability to fly into space like a dandelion seed pushed by a gust of wind. And those wings could tesseract space. Living wormhole organs. The distances between stars made it necessary for them to have lifespans measured in thousands of years.
We felt jealous and ripped off. But also proud. These beings had no need for technology. They’d never invented radio or television. That explained the silence of space. They’d never had to invent spacecraft. They’d never had rocket technology or microwaves or chemistry or vacuum tubes. They could construct stable wormholes but they didn’t understand the math behind it.
We were a marvel to them. A doomed, stunted, tragic, tear-jerker of a marvel.
But they couldn’t read our minds. We lacked the broadcast and receiving apparatus. They learned our language in hours and communicated with us using their rarely used mouths. It was a novelty for them.
It gave us the time to mount an attack. Great minds must have thought alike because in a surprisingly effective military movement, as accidentally co-ordinated as it was spontaneous, all the countries of earth killed these super-humans.
The ones that could flee, fled. Around two-thirds. The rest of them fluttered like moths in jars, trying to get out of our buildings as our bullets tore holes in their paper bodies.
The brutality shocked them. They felt the trapped ones die in their minds. We haven’t seen them since. It’s likely that they have marked our planet as a no-go area.
Suits us fine.
However, we’ve been busy researching those bodies. Every country on Earth is in a race to see who can get the first patents. The first stable wormholes, the first space-faring wingsuits, the first immortality drugs, the first psychic warriors, the first amphibious soldiers, etc, etc.
And when the time comes, we’ll spread out amongst the stars ahead of schedule because of them. We’ll see who’s superior then.
by submission | Sep 11, 2011 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
When they described this planet to me, rogue, free from its orbit, adrift in space, I pictured a world of devoid of light, a world enveloped in darkness. But to my surprise, as I walk through the ruined city, protected from the vacuum of space by an environmental suit, my way is lit by the glistening of a million stars. With no atmosphere, the starlight passes unrefracted to the surface. It’s like looking up into a populated metropolis, like seeing an echo of what the city had once been.
I pull my eyes away. We have no time for stargazing. The planet will soon drift too far for our ships to follow, and we have a mission to complete. I order my team to canvass the large buildings to our left and right, while I walk, somewhat nostalgically, through the park in the center. I can direct the entire operation here, alone with my thoughts. I wonder. Who were the people who once stood here? What were their names? Did they know that their planet would one day be torn from its sun, sent drifting in space like a wandering vagabond?
The ruins of a great obelisk lie before me. The man it was meant to honor is now forgotten. All that effort to honor a single person, wasted. I shake my head. I’m getting sentimental.
Turning my back on the ruins, I see a member of my team approaching. I can’t even tell who it is until he speaks. The helmets make it impossible.
“Sir,” he says. “We found the document, or what’s left of it. It was nothing but dust. It appears some rubble from the ceiling shattered the glass seal meant to preserve it.”
I sigh into the breathing unit in my helmet. So that’s it. Another piece of history lost. One stray rock, a twist of physics, and our mission is a failure. It took us months to find this site, years to plan the expedition. And it’ll be decades, maybe even centuries before our propulsion technology advances enough for us to return. I try my best not to look disappointed as I order everyone to salvage what they can and get back to the lander.
As I watch the planet drift away from our ship, I say a silent prayer for the people who died on that planet when disaster struck. I thank God for my ancestors, the people who were off world, the people who were spared the catastrophe. And I say goodbye to Earth, the rogue planet, doomed to drift forever in the vastness of space.
by submission | Sep 10, 2011 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson
They ate. They ate everything they could. It was as simple as that. If a solar system contained even one planet with significant life forms in abundance, they came. They landed and they ate, every tiny scrap of organic material in their terrible paths.
Giant gray machines ravaged the landscape. Trees and fauna stood no chance as they were mulched at will… and the beings that ran, crawled, swam and slithered faired no better as machines eventually caught up to all of them. Each and every living organism was pureed into food for the Gluttons. This was the name mankind had given them, once the fact of their approach had been revealed via the galactic network of communicating species.
To actually transverse between star systems physically as opposed to communicating by light-language was nearly unheard of, except for parasitic beings such as the Gluttons, who existed only for conquest and further gluttony. A species so devoted to their ways that they sacrificed generations of their already long-lived individuals to transverse the gaps of nothingness over centuries, with no other purpose than to find more food.
Mankind learned of their approach with nary a decade to spare. Earth would be on her own now as any chance of communicating with another intelligent species for assistance as to how to deal with the invaders was long past. Earth’s leaders gathered. Together they analyzed the information package that had been sent in light-language from one helpful alien race some fifty-five light years distant.
This was our only hope, a life preserver tossed to us just in time to, “head ‘em off at the pass” so to speak.
In the end it was a tiny probe, a mere three meters across that sailed out on the solar wind to meet the approaching horde. In truth the Gluttons never gave it any mind, a useless weather satellite to be tossed aside with indifference, they let it cruise by without concern.
As it spread its tiny cargo amongst the fleet of marauders its self-destruct clock began to count down… and by the time the little probe exploded into oblivion the nano-bots had already breached several hulls, and were now burrowing into whale sized gray beings with rough rocky skin. Each tiny android had a series of compounds aboard, so small some elements contained but a scant few molecules. Once inside their hosts, they began to experiment… until the chink in the armor had been discovered. A message was sent back to Earth as the invaders slowed and fell into orbit around their blue prize.
When the first wave landed they met what they expected, the resident intelligent race surrounding their landing party with what looked to be primitive war devices. Unconcerned they launched their armored mulching machines into action.
The first trees began to die as the grey goliaths raped the land. The Gluttons followed close behind, gorging themselves on the organic exhaust of their leviathan food processors. Forest animals and lake fish began to add to the invaders’ menu when suddenly…
The humans unleashed, directly into the intakes of the machines, a boiling spray of the most glorious shimmering sunshine. And as the spewing feeding snouts began to exhaust the deadly element into the hungry mouths of the approaching aliens, they started to die by the thousands.
Who could have guessed that the Gluttons’ one and only yet deadly allergen would be one of the solar system’s rarest elements? Luckily for mankind we had now had the ability to turn lead into gold for more than a century.
by submission | Sep 9, 2011 | Story |
Author : Douglas Kissack
Every day I am losing more of my sight. Every night, the edge of the moon blurs a little more. I can no longer see the stars. In its way, this slow drift into obscurity comforts me. It reminds me of my mortality.
The city streams by several thousand feet below as the zeppelin glides through still night. Rock and metal flow together, a light-specked river, as above a cold wind snaps through the zeppelin’s mainsail. I lean over the railing, straining to make out individual buildings, and try my best to ignore the scraping of talons against the elevator wing. There is a thunk as Aryan lands on the deck.
The HARPY joins me at the rail, c-fiber wings retracting silently into his back. For a few minutes we stand and say nothing. I can hear his eye shutters irising as he tries to infer my line of sight.
“I don’t understand,” he says at last, rotating his head toward me. “Every night you come out here. What do you expect to see?”
“Nothing,” I reply, trying to keep everything out of my voice. My hand rises, almost unconsciously, to feel the silver cross that rests beneath my shirt. Aryan knows about it. I know it irritates him, but he sees no harm in me keeping it.
“Your body is failing. We offer you treatment.”
“I’m not interested.”
“You would let yourself die?”
“Death is natural,” I say, smiling.
In the ensuing silence I can feel him contemplating forcing the surgery upon me. But he knows that I would escape it afterwards. At least that much humanity tends to remain after the procedure. “I see,” he says. “Why do you wear that cross?”
“Who are you?” I ask, ignoring the question he has asked me a hundred times and more. “I mean, who were you before?”
For a moment, I think he is going to respond. Perhaps this time I have caught him off guard. Perhaps, somewhere within that network of wires and nano-tech, he has a vague recollection of his past. “I don’t remember,” Aryan finally says. “It is not important.”
“It’s the most important thing there is,” I respond. “It’s why you will never understand.”
Something changes about him. Aryan shifts his weight from talon to talon, then, without warning, throws himself over the railing. I watch moonlight spark from his body as he plummets towards the earth. He fades from sight before I can see him protract his wings. Maybe this time he won’t bother.
Below, the city streams by. Through this final journey, I have kept track of the latitudes and longitudes. Somewhere ahead of us is the Dead Sea. Below the ruins of Jerusalem lie, sinking slowly beneath waves of metal.
by Patricia Stewart | Sep 8, 2011 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Agent Dalton looked down at the dead alien, a swirling ribbon of smoke drifting upward from the hole his phaser had blasted into its chest. Once again, he was certain, an autopsy would validate that he had killed another shape shifting Haudvir, and not a human being. It was risky killing the alien outright, but his proven success rate had granted him exempt status; the authorization to use deadly force without repercussions, provided the autopsy confirmed the deceased was an alien. Dalton had executed fifty suspects so far, and all of them proved to be Haudvir. This one would be fifty-one.
* * *
“Agent Dalton,” bellowed Senator Balordo, “are you refusing to tell the Anti-Infiltration Committee how you are able to differentiate these aliens from humans? This is a matter of Global security. We need to ferret out these alien scumbags before they destroy the very foundations of our Empire.”
“I understand the consequences, Senator,” replied Dalton, “but my method is not something that I can transfer to another agent. Therefore, I prefer to keep it a secret, so the Haudvir cannot develop countermeasures.”
“Need I remind you Agent Dalton that these are top secret hearings? The Haudvir will not discover what is said inside this chamber.”
“With all due respect, Senator, one of you could be a Haudvir. And since the medical establishment does not have a non-lethal technique to identify a Haudvir, I cannot take the chance. Unless, of course, you are all willing to undergo an autopsy?” A chorus of indignant outbursts erupted from the panel members, but Dalton ignored them with a half smile. “I thought so,” he said as he unofficially excused himself from the hearing, and defiantly walked out the double doors at the rear of the Senate Chamber.
Once in the main hall, two lieutenants in the Secret Service intercepted him. They carried no visible weapons, but Dalton knew they were armed, and meant business. The larger of the two extended an upheld palm and planted it firmly in the center of Dalton”s chest. “Not so fast, Agent Dalton. The Emperor insists on a personal audience.” The shorter man led the way to a waiting armored hovercraft, with the larger one bringing up the rear. After a twenty minute ride, and a ten minute brusque walk, Dalton found himself in the Emperor”s Private Library, with the Emperor himself sitting behind a large mahogany desk.
Against all protocol, Dalton decided on a preemptive strike. “Your Imperial Majesty,” he stated, “I’m afraid that I cannot divulge my methods even to you, especially in the presence of your guards. Either one of them could be a Haudvir shape shifter.”
“I can assure you, Agent Dalton, that my guards have been well vetted. But, if it releases your tongue, they are dismissed.” Neither guard made an audible protest, and despite misgivings, they obeyed the Emperor’s wishes. After they left, the Emperor stood and approached Dalton, stopping only inches away. “I am not an impotent Senator, Mister Dalton. I get what I want, when I want it. And I want it now. You will tell me how you can identify the Haudvir, and I will decide what to do with that information. Ahhh, I see that your eyes well with fear. Good. Now, tell me what I want to know.”
The Emperor suddenly dropped to his knees, a ceramic knife bisecting his heart. He fell over backward; his eyes still open as he hit the floor. Agent Dalton brought a handkerchief toward his face and sneezed. “I suppose I can tell you now, I’m allergic to Haudvir.”
