by submission | Jul 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Jamison B. Medcalf
Technical officer Jones had had his first job at 12 during the 2127 crash following the Antarctic War. Those were simpler times when perma-jacks that fed the Internet into your brain were less common.
Nowadays only those aboard colony ships got sleep. Deep frozen sleep for years in the void of space while people on Earth had their brains awake 24-7 thanks to the new drug, Ap. Ten years off your life for only having to sleep once a week.
Colony ships like the Rosetta were needed to set up the seeds of a new city on some far off world so that great Transport vessels could come next with its thousands of comatose passengers. Earth couldn’t hold any more people and was low on breathable oxygen. The crew of a colony ship will sleep for years and awaken a few months away form the eventual destination to begin preparations for arrival. Timing was everything. Time meant money and lives with every second being worth more than the last.
Jones was currently going mad from boredom and loneliness and knowledge of his fate. His sleeping bath had malfunctioned and now he was going to die. He was mostly through his own food rations already and if he ate the other crewmembers then they would all starve in the last few months off the journey once everyone awoke. So instead he worked. He plotted courses and wrote notes and calibrated terraforming machines. He tried to fix the sleeping bath but it was no use, the thing was shot and no spare parts existed save those on his crewmates baths.
Two months into his awake period he gave up trying to ration food. He wasn’t working anymore. Instead he wrote. He wrote all of his goodbyes and an explanation of what had happened and what command could do in the future to make sure it never happened again.
He wrote out his memories and hopes and things he wished he had done. He felt like he had all the time in the world. In fact, he hadn’t been this bored for a long time, which was why he was going crazy.
Jones mapped the ship in his mind and walked it with his eyes closed just to pass the time. He made delicate zero-gee sculptures by lifting small objects into space and then he took digital images of them for his crewmates to see when they awoke.
When they awoke, he realized, he would be long dead. It was the third month and he was almost out of his food when he simply stopped. He sat and stared into the blackness of space out a window and wondered what they would say, what they would do, when they found his body. He hadn’t been so still for so long before in his life to his knowledge. Eventually he got out his personal computer and wrote one more thing before swallowing a handful of pills and strapping himself into the command chair to stair out the window into space.
Dear Earth and Whom It May Concern-
I think if we all took some time away from the Net and the Vehicles and the Noise we could all learn a thing or two about what it means to be alive.
Looking out the window he decided the stars, the same stars he saw every day and every night for hours on end, weren’t so boring as he had thought. In fact, they didn’t seem very far away either. All it took was time, and he had all the time in the world.
by submission | Jul 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Q. B. Fox
At night, when everything’s finally fallen quiet, the terraces sing; or maybe moan, I’m not sure which. The water where it laps over the first floor windowsills seems calm, except when a boat stirs it up. But deep underwater, by the front steps and in the old basement flats, Gary says there are currents that tug at the foundations. The old brickwork complains at the weight above; a choir of fallen, drowning angels.
I try not to listen. I just try to sleep.
It’s still dark when the Big Girl in the Red Dress comes up the stairs from the floor below, heading off across the rooftops. She seems fearless over the loose slates, crossing the most precarious wires between the buildings. But she won’t take a boat.
Gary says that she’s seen what’s in the water. I don’t know.
When the water’s low you can almost make out the front door or the shadows of long abandoned cars, but I’ve never seen the big, moving shapes people say they can see.
I think the Big Girl in the Red Dress is ill; she’s always red-faced these days, feverish maybe; and she never speaks to us anymore either. Gary says she drinks too much. He says he’d drink too much if he’d seen what she’s seen.
It’s still early, barely light, when we take the boat up the Earl’s Court Road. The Hustler’s are already there, trading out of skiffs and rafts. These days they are all big, burly men; sour faced and sombre, eyes darting nervously downward, or to the high ground in the north. I hear one say that when the water’s low you can almost walk on dry land at Nottinghill or Speakers Corner. I smile; even I know there’s nothing that way until you reach Camden.
We look, but there’s no food for sale; everything’s for sale except food and that’s all anyone wants to buy. There are millions of people left in the city and the flat-roof gardens aren’t enough. “Never mind,” says Gary, “maybe tomorrow.”
We head back down towards Redcliffe Gardens, keeping the spire of St. Luke’s on our right. There are currents that pull you out over Brompton Cemetery if you go too far. Boats go missing there; just below the surface are statues and mausoleums; and the colonnades. Some people say there are other things too.
We step out onto the pontoon at Coleherne Court. The men keep their distance; teenagers really, some no older than me. Mostly they wear long leather dusters, despite the heat. It’s sweaty and steamy already and they’re shirtless under their open coats. They’re so skinny, they eat no better than us.
Finally one comes closer. He has monkey on his shoulder. No one smiles, except the monkey who bears its teeth. No one, not even the monkey, looks up; they all keep their eyes on the gaps in the pontoon.
When we get home again, the Post has left a letter for us. It’s from Mum. I don’t know how the post is still running, but it is. Our letter has been sent over the wire from Cumbria, but at one point it must have been typed out again by hand, because it’s full of mistakes. Mum doesn’t make mistakes.
“Christ,” spits Gary, “I’ve told her not bother. I’ve told her we’re alright in the city, that we high above the ground.” He still looks nervously at the water. “We’re not leaving.” We both know that there’s no way to leave anyway and nowhere to go.
“We’re just hanging around,” I grin.
by Collaboration | Jul 17, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer, and Steven Odhner
The crew took their positions in Earth’s first faster than light spaceship, The UESS Hermes, named for the Greek god of flight. Its maiden voyage was planned to be a short three light-minute jump from the Naval Construction Station orbiting the Earth to the Space-Dock on Phobos, Mars’ largest moon.
Systems check completed, the Hermes left the Station and aligned itself with Mars. With a mixture of apprehension and excitement, the captain gave the command to activate the Alcubierre Drive and the computer announced that a warp bubble had been formed, and was dragging the ship toward Mars at just over the speed of light. However, after three minutes, rather than return to normal space, the ship began to accelerate toward the outer solar system. “Bridge to engine room, the warp drive didn’t disengage. Can you shut it down manually?”
Chief Engineer Travis “Slim” Wheeler, who had helped design and install the propulsion system replied, “The drive itself is off, Captain. The warp bubble is somehow sustaining itself!”
“Chief, we’re entering the asteroid belt and accelerating. If you can’t collapse the bubble, can you at least turn us around?”
“Negative, sir. Once the warp bubble is created, the ship will move in that direction until the bubble collapses. It doesn’t matter which direction we’re pointed; we’re just going along for the ride. Unless…” he added as a crazy plan formulated in his head, “I’ve got an idea. If we turn the Hermes around and create a new warp bubble going in the opposite direction, the two warp fields should cancel each other out. That, or tear the ship apart. To be honest, sir, it could go either way.”
Just then, the emergency klaxon sounded, followed by an announcement by the computer. “Warning. Collision alert. At the present course and acceleration, the ship will collide with Jupiter in 60 seconds.”
“Well,” stated the captain, “I guess that makes my decision easy.” He nodded to the helmsman, who rotated the ship 180 degrees, and activated the Alcubierre Drive for a second time… but nothing happened… “Chief, we need that second bubble in 45 seconds, or we’re all dead.”
Chief Wheeler mumbled something about safeguards, grabbed a three-quarter inch box wrench, and straddled the Alcubierre Drive like it was a Brahma bull. He tore off the cover plate, said a quick prayer, and jammed the wrench between the power transfer coupling and the high voltage terminal. The ship seemed to stretch and twist as the cabin was filled with a terrible screeching noise – and then there was silence. Main power and artificial gravity had cut out. The emergency lights flickered on.
“Captain,” announced the helmsman, “we’ve returned to normal space, but there’s a fifty percent drop in air pressure in the engine room.”
The captain scrambled toward the engine room, but when he arrived, he was blocked by the sealed vacuum doors. Through the small window in the door he saw nothing but loose wires floating lazily in the center of the empty room. The walls were completely intact, but the Alcubierre Drive was gone, and the only person who could hope to understand what had happened had vanished along with it.
The captain watched the drifting wires sparkle in the bright sunlight that was entering the engine room through the starboard porthole. “Sunlight? There shouldn’t be…” Then he realized that the new warp bubble must have flung them back toward the inner solar system before collapsing. “Damn,” he said, as he watched a solar prominence arch past the porthole as the Hermes plummeted into the fiery furnace of hell.
by submission | Jul 16, 2009 | Story
Author : Thomas Desrochers
There was a warm glow as the Core began to wake up, followed by a spiraling light that worked its way around the room. After a moment a thousand pairs of eyes opened, and a thousand magnetic locks released. Like a routine play nine hundred and ninety eight spindly human figures stepped forth onto the walls and filed towards the black emptiness arranged around the Core in what a chemist or mathematician might call tetrahedral bipyramidal form.
Soon they had all filed out, except for two. Two bright, flamboyant figures, every one of their lights on. Two figures, with red, white, green and yellow halos from which fell streams of red and white that culminated in belts of purple and ended in pale skirts of gray. Slowly, after several million machine cycles two pairs of eyes opened separately of each other. Patiently, four legs took tentative steps forwards. Carefully, fourteen foot long fingers at the end of two separate hands grasped each other.
Several cycles passed, merely a millionth of a second, and thousands of synthetic neurons fired off across space to those waiting – brilliant lights in the darkness.
Hello, they cried to one another.
Another thousand suns and Hello, how good to see you again. Hello hello hello.
Every sun spread out across the dark sphere, each one revealing a flaw. A slight scratch here, a growing patch of rust there, a long-forgotten digit and a patch of skin resting together in the middle of nothingness.
A hundred more brilliances just to ask ‘How about a walk?’ And to reply Of course, ‘the sun is so beautiful outside.’
With measured deliberation four spidery legs crept forwards, perfectly out of sequence, perfectly unordered. Over the edge they stepped, fingers still curled and intertwined together, and down the walked towards the door farthest away.
They strolled through the empty darkness together, and parted the sea of nothing with a song of light. One time a cycle, four times, three times, six times, and once again – perhaps a hundred thousands times in a second. It was simply noise.
A repeating eternity later they finally reached the hole into a bright nothing and stepped through, not as one, but as two.
For precisely one billion cycles they simply stood there, taking it all in. The pale glow of a red sun drew long shadows across a field of the dead.
‘It’s always the same,’ said one.
‘It’s never the same,’ replied the other. ‘See the many ways the sun paints the blood and the stars paint the blackness.’
At the end of the billionth cycle, precisely on the dot, the pair, alone in a field of a thousand, began to step forth, from one piece of debris to the next. Here the frozen hull of a once thriving colony ship, there the still burning heart of a capital ship. And there, a icy body, familiar and alien at the same time.
All the while the stars twinkled between the two – ‘Look over there’ or ‘see the way it has spilled open.’
Then came the tug. Even these two couldn’t ignore the desire to return and to sleep.
They made their way back, they returned. Everything was in place, and nine hundred and ninety eight eyes were shut around them.
‘I checked, we will be cleaned tonight as we sleep.’
‘Do you think we will remember?’
‘I do not know.’
For a moment two hard, skeletal heads touched, and a million transmitters exploded in a violent, silent cacophony of what is only known as joy.
And the lights went out for the last time.
by Duncan Shields | Jul 15, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The soundwaves are so short that they actually shatter meat.
Bones shudder but remain intact. Cloth turns to ash. Skin goes translucent and turns into a fragile carapace that break like ice on a puddle.
Then gravity takes over.
When people get hit by the invaders, it’s not pretty. That’s all I’m saying.
The invaders have no eyes. As far as we can tell, their entire bodies are one giant ear, a resonance cage that detects sound for miles around in the air. Their weapons are grown from the grey flesh-skirts that surround their pointed dunce-cap bodies. Weapons that baffle and focus every decibel into whatever they want.
They’re like church spires come to life. They have one giant foot like a slug at the base but they move so very fast. They’re from a volcanic planet where life evolved from a silicate form. They operate at a sizzling operating temperature.
They are living rock with lava for blood from a high-gravity planet and their entire technology is based on sound manipulation.
They have sounds that can drill holes through apartment support beams. They have sounds that can solidify air. They have sounds that separate anything made from metal or rock into separate molecular components.
They have sounds that turn people into what looks like a spilled strawberry dessert.
People like my children. And my wife.
Their groups sound like orchestras of death coming for us. There’s a heat haze in the air above their formations as the sounds distort the very air. Echolocation. We only move when it’s silent. They give off huge plumes of steam like underwater eruptions.
One good thing is that if enough water is spilled on them, they crack wide open and their blood cools into rock as soon as it hits the air. It looks like a horrific death from the way they thrash around. It’s addictive.
I imagine fighting naked in the middle of winter and I think I can get a feeling for how the invaders must feel fighting here on Earth. They must hate it here.
That thought keeps me comfortable at night when I try to sleep.
