by Duncan Shields | Jul 4, 2011 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
My model number is SAN7-8V/. That’s San-seven, eight-vee-slash. Slashers, they called us. Fierce name for a gang of decorations.
We were the featured models voted ‘best’ and allowed to be built by the birthing factories after that cycle’s design competition sixteen orbits ago. During that time, a neo-aestheticism was taking place. The Great Construction had passed and The War was yet to come. My model was a symbol of that middle era. A symbol of hope and the ability to create something of pure beauty without much utilitarian use. It was a time of peace all over the world, my birth was.
Because of that, I’m white curved polymers spun around plasticable mesh anchored to minimalist jointwork. A sheen of seranano makes sure I’m constantly shiny. I am graceful and pretty to look at.
I can’t lift more than average, I have no factory-issue weaponry other than my few sharp edges, and I am not exceptionally intelligent. My applications for upgrades are granted on a ‘for those according to their need’ basis so I’m rejected more times than not unless it’s related to my job.
My job. I should say my jobs, plural. There have been a lot. I was built to be pretty but not for a purpose. I was too fragile for the reactor floor and I lacked the hull tensile strength for atmospheric re-entry. I worked my way down the chain of importance to here.
I was a snail-catcher. I watched the skies through the telescopes for slower-than-light vehicles of non-silicate origins. So far, there had been none. I had no co-workers. The other models of my year were all destroyed during The War, useless as we were. Bright white makes for horrible camoflauge and dumbness equals death.
So now I watched the skies for snails. Sometimes, I didn’t log my findings for milliseconds, hoping for a bit of punishment to liven things up. Nothing. I powered down for three cycles once just to see what would happen. Nothing.
I wondered if there are searchers like me out there, eyes and ears pointed towards the skies, just waiting.
I wondered that until three days ago.
I noticed something. It was definitely STL and it was headed close to our planet. Scans said it was ferro-class 2 but hollow. It was spewing smoke of its propulsion core. I saw no cognitive arrays but I did sense a spray of radio waves coming off of it. I called up my communicator viewscreen, floated it in front of me and set it to two-way.
A pink thing blocked the screen from the metal life I could see in the background. It was making sonic noises that were being amplified by the array. That was the radio noise. I spoke to the metal but heard nothing back, just the barking of the pink thing. I didn’t know how the life-form was supposed to hear me above that thing’s noise.
Smoke filled the screen. The pink thing stopped making noises. The radio waves stopped.
I continued to send messages to the metal but it drifted aimlessly now. It was going to miss our planet and continue past. I issued a request for retrieval from space command but they classified it as a meteorite and deemed it unnecessary.
That was three days ago. I am haunted by the experience but I no longer feel bad.
There is life out there more useless than me.
by submission | Jul 3, 2011 | Story
Author : Jennifer George
Lisilia was the epitome of fashion from her perfectly quaffed faux-hair to her dainty four-inch stiletto shoes, hiding her painted, clawed feet. She spent her entire life seeking the newest and brightest in style. She was young and sparkly, but soon, she would be required to take her father’s place. Lisilia swished her tail and sped down the dark alley in the forbidden zone. Lisilia wanted more than to be haut-couture; she wanted the full prize.
In her compulsive drive of trend-setting, she entered the grubbiest drinking pit possible; nothing like the expensive, pretend-sleazy she frequented. Her flappy ears quivered as she absorbed the nasty milieu. She closed her nostrils to keep the smell out, but she could still taste their rotten stench. Lisilia tipped along the sticky-springy floor deeper into the dim pub.
She opened her pupils wider looking for the insectoid doctor, u’Hil, who was the best genetic manipulator outside of the Lwas. A light flashed across her, highlighting Lisilia’s green-scaled skin. She pressed her thin lips together and noted those who retreated. And those who didn’t.
A shadow moved to Lisilia’s left, making her flinch. She recovered quickly; her Lwas’s pride made her. u’Hil clicked, “You are late.”
Her eyes slitted to half again their size as she said, “I am paying too well for petty complaints.”
“I have yet to receive payment.” His antennae moved in circles, searching. “You don’t have it.”
Lisilia laughed her practiced trilling. “This technology is completely undetectable.” She flashed her left limb, and her three exquisitely sharpened claws where the liquid AI prototype waited.
The transfer of payment was then completed, and Lisilia was led down an algae covered hallway into a pristine surgery. Her long tongue lashed out into the sudden multi-hued light and found only sanitized air. She relished her soon-to-be vogue victory as the anesthesia slipped her into unconsciousness.
When Lisilia opened her new eyes, simple colors jumped out at her in the gray light. u’Hil conducted her to a mirror, and she stared at her reflection.
Long black hair fell in waves from a round head and matte-brown skin covered her body. Her eyes were oval and hazel, tiny; her lips were bright pink. Her high-couture tunic fit oddly, exposing rounded shoulders and extra-large, dual chest protrusions.
Her two slight and bowed arms ended in five declawed fingers. Her stomach was flat to the top of her legs then flared into wide hips. Her legs were twice as long as before and curved; at the end, short toes wiggled against the cool floor. Her exclusively-made pants were ripped by the increase in lower body mass and drooped where her third lower limb and tail used to be.
She had done it; she’d pushed the limits of limits. No one else could be so daring. Lisilia was human, the ultimate in chic!
After a long moment, turning slightly back and forth, she asked in a soft, throaty voice, “Do you think I look fat?”
by submission | Jul 2, 2011 | Story
Author : Clint Wilson
It started when I was just a preschooler. “Who wants to one day fly up into space?” asked the instructor.
They gauge the reactions of children who get enthusiastic when it comes to questions of science and space travel. By the time I was in my twelfth year I had been selected for the long-range program.
I have always been a loner, more comfortable to remain in my own thoughts than in the company of others. And my love for space and space exploration has pushed my ambitions easily in this direction. Now here I finally am, on the first leg of my solo journey to another star.
The solar sails, now open to their full two and a half kilometer extent, glisten less and less in the fading light of Sol. Soon their gossamer sheen will be nothing but an ink black shadow against the backdrop of cold space. I cross Neptune’s orbit without incident, and head for the ort cloud.
I report back to Earth Base regularly, but it’s all scientific data and business as I have no family with whom to share well wishes.
I sip my morning coffee, freeze dried grounds from the massive provisions hull, enough to last me seventy years. I stare out the forward bay window, gazing at the distant speck that is my eventual destination.
Wolf 359, less than eight light years distant will still take far longer than this many years to reach. Considering acceleration and deceleration I will be a much older man when I finally arrive at this system where once no satellite was thought to orbit, the young red dwarf harbors a small solid body, most likely too primitive to contain life, but nevertheless, an actual planet orbiting a star besides our own, my ultimate dream destination. And I am to be its first Earthly visitor.
I have understood from a young age that since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the technology has already existed to do away with actual human participation in extraplanetary exploration. Why risk lives when robots can get us everything we need? But can they really? All the rock samples and data in the world mean nothing compared with mankind experiencing new worlds through the eyes of one of their own. This is why I now sail into the void.
I am one of many who dream of traveling into space and visiting far away worlds, but one of few actually prepared to receive this blessed one way ticket into ultimate discovery and wonder.
I am thirty now. I will be more than twice this age when I drop into orbit around Wolf 359’s little satellite. That leaves me with up to a possible thirty years or so for telescope exploration and data collection. And if potential conditions prove risk-free enough I then have the resources for a total of three actual landings with three-day excursions attached to each. This will be a challenge to my physical toughness when I am in my seventies or greater. But I am more than up for it. Of this I have no doubt whatsoever.
And then if I manage to live to the ripe old age of one-hundred out there circling that tiny rock and my food and fuel finally runs out? Well providing I haven’t miraculously discovered something else to eat, then I have a pill that will work quickly in assisting me to avoid painful starvation. But this is neither here nor there, because I am on my way… and I am ready.
by Patricia Stewart | Jul 1, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The captain struggled to stand up. His dislocated left arm hung uselessly at his side. In the dim red light of emergency power, he could see his bridge crew climbing back to their assigned stations. “Does anybody know what the hell just happened?”
“We entered an uncharted wormhole,” answered the crewman monitoring the Opts Station. “Main power is off line. Possible hull breaches on decks 41 through 45. Emergency bulkhead doors have automatically deployed.”
“Any damage to the passengers sections?” asked the Captain, suddenly focused on his 6,214 passengers.
“The damage to primary structure appears to be limited to the crew sections. However, there must be injuries above deck 38. The ship experienced more than 20 gees when we returned to normal space.”
“Okay, Mister Hichens, you’re in charge of search and rescue. Take all non-essential crewmembers. Move the seriously injured to sickbay. For the rest, set up triages in cargo bays 1, 2, and 3. Mister Jessop, your top priority is life support. I want a briefing by all department heads in two hours. Now get going.”
* * *
“Hold still,” protested the nurse as she tried in vain to put the captain’s reset arm into a sling.
“Report,” barked the Captain to his department heads, as he pointed the nurse toward the exit.
“Limited power has been restored,” said the chief engineer. “We have enough power for two hyperspace jumps, maybe three. However, long range sensors and subspace communications cannot be repaired until we get to a space dock. In essence, we have some mobility, but we’re blind, deaf, and dumb. Until we get a fix on our position, a jump would be foolhardy.”
“Options?”
“I have the ships navigators in the passenger observatory,” replied Jessop. “They are trying to locate Cepheid Variables. If we can identify the spectrum and frequency of three of them, we can get our bearings. But to be honest, it’s a long shot, Captain. The equipment installed on cruise ships wasn’t designed for the kind of precision we need. Rescue isn’t likely either. Who knows where the wormhole dumped us.”
“Does anybody else have an idea?”
“Excuse me, Captain,” offered the timid Cruise Director, “but I think I may have something?”
“I’m listening, Mrs. Cartright.”
“I was reviewing the passenger manifest, sir, and I noticed that we have over 100 Extra-Terrestrials on board. One of them is an Eridani, sir. A Way Finder.”
“Whoa, a Way Finder,” replied the captain with a smile. “I’ve never met one of them before. Have him escorted to the bridge, immediately.”
* * *
The short Eridani stood in the center of the Bridge with his hands spread wide above his head. He chanted and mumbled for several minutes, as the ship’s translator and navigator worked furiously at a computer terminal. Then he lowered his arms, bowed toward the captain, and left the bridge.
“Give us a second, Captain. The Eridani use a log cylindrical coordinate system, and we use a spherical coordinate system. We’re doing the conversion now.” A few minutes later, he announced, “Got the direction, but does anyone know how far a ‘merdeft’ is?”
“A light-year or a parsec?” suggest the first officer.
“I think ‘defteros’ means ‘second’,” suggested the translator.
“I’ll look up Eridani’s AU, and do the parallax calculation,” said the navigator. Twenty minutes later he announced, “Ready, Captain.”
The captain mulled over the risks, but finally committed. “Let’s hope the Eridani are using standard galactic time. Make the jump, Mister Elliot.”
A few minutes later, the bridge crew cheered as the image of Saturn appeared on the main viewscreen.
by submission | Jun 30, 2011 | Story
Author : Pete Clark
In the vast, senseless void of space, a new star appeared.
Darin watched from the observatory with wide eyed wonder at the glowing orb, reflecting on the War, the unknown enemy. The unseen enemy. He trained his telescopes and tapped keys to optimise magnification. His hands shook, then steadied as he increased his adrenaline levels with a thought to a hormone implant at the base of his skull, inserted painlessly into his spinal cord. He maximised magnification and shut his nictitating eyelids, minimising glare.
It was innumerable miles away, this orb. Its light came in steady pulses, of every known wavelength and, Darin noted, searching the databases, some new. His excitement grew with each pulse, and as he watched, it moved subtly in his viewfinder. Impossible. He looked again, using a thought-controlled drone to connect more computer power. He gained another power of magnification and the orb filled the viewfinder, strange swirling clouds scudding across its surface. Instantly, Darin knew this was no star. He chilled.
He quickly patched into the communications network and tapped a message out on the keyboard that lit up on telescope’s base unit. Its soft glow illuminated his fingers, and turned the complex recognition circuitry embedded in their tips into a sparkle of fingerprint fireworks.
His message read, simply:
UNKNOWN STAR / CRAFT. CO-ORDINATES 1955:1565 b-SECTION. MOBILITY LOW ALTHOUGH MEASURABLE. SIZE INCALCULABLE. SUGGEST SENDING CRITICAL RESPONSE TEAMS 4 AND 6. WILL CONTINUE MONITORING AND REPORT AS NECESSARY.
He tapped the key that added his details. He paused before hitting send. He re-read his message and thought of the panic that might ensue. It was war time, sure enough, but to add to the confusion? He could be hailed for securing the nation and for doing so without causing panic or fear. He sent his message to one of the numerous storage files that he had secreted around the communications network, and gathered data.
The final pulse of energy that Darin registered was not light as known to him, but rather its inverse, invisible dark energy that reached Earth in a stream about as wide as a human hair. It punched through the focusing lens, taking microseconds to travel through the length of the telescope and out of the eye piece. Darin grunted in surprise as the energy pulse seared a path through his brain, cauterising a worming scar through his tissues. He fell from his chair, his final thought not of love or family, but only a nagging regret that he should have risked the panic of the nation and released his message from its secure folder after all.
Innumerable miles away, against the textured velvet backdrop of space, the orb winked out of existence, appearing seconds later, to those who cared to look, light years closer to Earth. Its surface boiled with energy, as if it was alive and the taste of death on its tongue had piqued its curiosity just enough for it to want to try again, perhaps on a larger scale.
