by submission | Jul 14, 2009 | Story
Author : Peter Lavelle
‘I think it looks just wonderful on the mantelpiece, don’t you?’ Mrs. Smithey asked cheerfully.
Mrs. Everett leisurely stirred the contents of her teacup. The tinkling of the spoon against the fine china was an eerie peal that unsettled the very furniture of the front room. She gave a final decisive tap against the brim of the cup, and placed the spoon noiselessly on the table.
‘Yes,’ she said sternly, ‘although you might have found something a little more befitting to keep it in than the goldfish tank.’
Mrs. Smithey bristled. She leant forward from the sofa and seized upon the plate of digestives. ‘Ohh,’ she said, her voice quavering, ‘that’s only temporary, it’s temporary. We’ve a crystal salad bowl in the loft we’ve been thinking of bringing down for it. Biscuit?’
‘No; thank you,’ Mrs. Everett determined. She brought the teacup to her lips and then paused, considering her question, before asking in a lilting tone, ‘Where was it you heard of this procedure, Mrs. Smithey?’
‘Thinking of having it done for your Earnest, are you?’ replied Mrs. Smithey with a knowing wink.
‘Perhaps.’
‘Oh, you ought to consider it, I really think so.’
Mrs. Everett said nothing, and for a moment only the ticking of the grandfather clock punctuated the silence between the two women. Mrs. Smithey brushed away a crumb from her floral print dress, before continuing:
‘We saw it on the television one afternoon. It’s all as professional as you could wish for. They just send two of their technicians in the middle of the night, strap him down, saw open the cranium, and scoop out the brain.’
She munched on a digestive, reflectively.
‘I tell you,’ she added, ‘Jack’s been ever so good since we had it done.’
Mrs. Everett nodded slowly, and stared down into the steaming body of sepia-coloured liquid she held between her palms. ‘It’s not very usual,’ she said, forming the syllables of the last words carefully.
‘Oh, well, I don’t know,’ her hostess replied. ‘It’s as things should be, if you ask me. Puts a husband in his place.’
‘And they just let you keep the leftovers?’
The two women turned together and looked to the small round portion of grey matter, situated above the fireplace. It sat centred beside an old photograph of a newly-wed couple, the wife’s arm entwined around her husband’s so that the pair were clasped together. Their features were barely discernible through the layers of dust that smothered the glass. The brain, meanwhile, was mostly flaccid and, though the goldfish tank in which it was housed was only small, was comfortably accommodated.
‘Perhaps you ought to fill the tank with water so that it doesn’t just… sit there,’ Mrs. Everett suggested.
‘Perhaps,’ replied Mrs. Smithey, tilting her head thoughtfully.
‘And your husband Jack…’ Mrs. Everett began, but faltered. She settled her teacup on the tiled surface of the coffee table with a clatter. ‘He… doesn’t mind seeing it every day?’
Mrs. Smithey chuckled and leaned close toward her guest from across the table, a conspiratorial smile upon her face.
‘My dear Mrs. Everett,’ she confided, ‘he doesn’t say a peep about it.’
Her guest nodded but kept silent, and so Mrs. Smithey once again took up her plate of biscuits.
‘He doesn’t say a peep,’ she repeated. ‘You’re sure I can’t tempt you?’
by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 13, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The orbiter had touched down at Vandenberg, and Lewis and a dozen others had flown cargo the thirty minutes to San Francisco airport. They trudged in from the tarmac in loose formation out of habit, unprepared for the crowds in the terminal.
The debriefing team had talked about friction, that the religious right had taken offense to their involvement in the colony war.
There was an awkward moment when the soldiers met the seething mass of people, unsure if there would be familiar faces, confused by the angry looks and rumbled undercurrent of discontent.
“Murderers,” a lone voice lit the fuse, causing the crowd to erupt into a cacophonic barrage of unfettered hatred.
The soldiers had faced more threatening forces, but here, at home, unarmed and unprepared, they could do nothing but close ranks and retreat to safety.
Police raised riot shields as picketers raised placards, the two groups squaring off as the tired soldiers slipped away through the terminal.
Lewis took the shuttle to the BART platform. In an hour he’d be in Lafayette, at home with his wife and his little girl. He understood now why Tessa hadn’t been there to meet him.
The waiting rail car was almost full. Finding a vacant seat, he addressed the woman seated across from it.
“Do you mind if I sit here?”
The woman’s eyes flared up at his, and drawing up noisily she spat on his boots.
“Murderer.” Her eyes burned into him as he turned and walked to the other end of the car. “Did you forget God while you were fighting up there?” Ignoring her, he found and lowered himself into another vacant seat. His massive frame, used to two years of a gee and a half nearly crushed the structure as he landed. The people already sitting nearby quietly got up and moved away, taking up standing positions with their backs to him.
They were in Oakland City when four young men produced guns as the doors closed and the train began to move again.
“All of you, wallets, jewelry and phones in the bags,” the shorter of the men spoke loudly as they moved through the car, waving guns with one hand, bags open in the other.
“Are you going to fucking do something?” The same woman had Lewis fixed with a glare again, though this time her eyes were filled with fear.
The men hadn’t noticed Lewis, and as he raised himself from his seat, they backed away, raising then lowering their guns uncertainly. Lewis bristled with armor, the chitin alloy plating spliced into his skin would stop anything of the calibre these men could heft, and in sheer mass he could crush them without effort. They knew that as well as he did.
“Listen man, we got no problem with you, we’re just making a living…”, the stocky one’s voice trailed off as Lewis brushed past him.
Lewis stopped facing the woman, her eyes darting from him to the wavering guns behind him. He bent over, wiping up some of the still wet spittle from the toe of his boot. She jerked back and froze as he raised his hand. Putting a wet finger to her face, he smeared a cross on her forehead.
“I hope your God remembers you, when you meet him.” His face was inches from hers, his breath hot on her trembling face.
The entire car stared in shocked silence as he straightened and stepped off the train at MacArthur station, leaving them alone, passengers and thieves.
There’d be another train shortly, and at the moment Lewis needed, more than anything else, space.
by submission | Jul 12, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Odhner
Ah, Mr. Knight! Thank you for coming, sir. Doctor Dave Ewing is going to be calling you at some point to tender his resignation, and – oh, has he? Well, after this meeting you’ll want to call him and get him back, tell him the charges are dropped – hopefully before he commits suicide or something… the poor bastard is despondent.
Yes, sir. I know he used the fuel cell, and I know we only had four. I can understand your anger at hearing that an eighty billion dollar power source was used to fuel an unsuccessful experiment without permission, but you need to know that Doctor Ewing wasn’t crazy – just… near-sighted. He genuinely believes that his project was a failure, but – well, watch. Pay attention to the mouse, and that empty chamber on the other end of the device. There!
Yes, that’s what I thought at first too but it’s not a teleporter. The matter can’t appear any further away than that, and it has to weigh less than seventy pounds – actually it’s based on mass, but it’s easier to think of it as seventy pounds for our purposes. Yes sir, I agree that that sounds useless, but the point is that the good doctor wasn’t trying to invent a teleporter anyway. It’s a time machine.
I know, I know, but let me slow the video down – the lab cams can do some crazy slow-motion – and watch the part where the mouse moved. There it is! For just a fraction of a second there’s two of them. The bad news is that that’s as far as it’s possible to send anything back – not even as much time as the machine itself takes to warm up. That’s why Ewing thought it was worthless, the readouts from this test run confirmed he’ll never be able to go back in time far enough to do anything interesting.
Yes, sir, I’m getting to that. I played around with his device – I don’t understand the time travel stuff but I know the mechanical aspects and then I took the other three fuel cells and – sir, no, calm down! Look at the box next to you. See, it turns out you can put a real hair-trigger on the killswitch, link it to a sensor on the “receiving” end… and a fuel cell weighs less than seventy pounds.
Don’t worry Mr. Knight – it took me a while to stop giggling too.
by submission | Jul 11, 2009 | Story
Author : Brian Armitage
The field sputtered light, a cloud of particles flashing in waves and sparkles. Edward was surprised, and a little disturbed, at how bright and colorful it was. He looked over at Sandra, the company liaison, with her carefully neutral expression. “How, uh, long does it usually…” And his breath stopped when Joan’s face appeared in the glittering fog.
She stumbled forward as though shoved from behind, and looked around slowly, dazedly. Edward still wasn’t breathing when her eyes settled on his feet, and crawled up his body to meet his stunned gaze.
Joan glittered softly, the back wall of the particle chamber just visible through her transparent form. Her features, her entire body was hazy. But the eyes. When they settled into his, he knew. It was her.
He looked mutely to the woman in the suit, but she had already slipped out of the viewing chamber, supposedly to give him privacy. What he could not forget, however, was the company’s policy of monitoring all visitations, ostensibly for the purpose of security. They would hear all of it.
Edward looked back to Joan, and the words leapt out of him. “I married Rachel.”
She stared at him, her eyes clear. Her mouth moved. “You married Rachel.” Her voice projected from the speakers, a harsh digital transmission.
Edward could not suppress a shudder. He had too look away from those eyes, and turned his gaze to where her legs dissolved into mist, then immediately to the ridge where the two-inch pane of glass separated the two chambers. Still, he felt vulnerable. “I never meant to-”
“You brought me back,” Joan said, stalking toward the edge of the energy field, “to tell me you married my sister.”
“Joan, I-”
She waved her left hand in front of her, exactly as he had before. “No, just… no.” Her eyes scrunched shut in in frustration, and she covered her face.
“I’m sorry.”
Joan’s hands swept away from her face, sending waves of charged particles scattering through the chambers, and looked at him. He knew that cold, blank expression. When he had pushed her too far. “Go to hell, Ed.” She looked over her shoulder. “Turn it off.”
“Joan!” He cast about desperately, looking for a technician. “Please, no! Don’t!”
“We’re sorry, Mr. Eisenberg,” the liaison’s voice said, with a touch of sadness, “we must honor the deceased’s wishes.”
The particles flashed and began to dim, and Joan with them. Edward ran to the glass, pressing against it. She shook her head as she faded from view, and tossed up her hands. “You thought I didn’t know?” she shouted. It was barely loud enough to hear on the laboratory speakers. Her eyes disappeared last, and with them, the light was gone.
Sandra looked sideways at her intern, who stood next to her, watching the monitor as Edward Eisenberg collapsed. “You asked why we make them pay in advance.”
by submission | Jul 10, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Odhner
I’m staring at the clock. Just staring at it, waiting for it to tick off a minute at which point I will have exactly one hour left of this hell. My brother the crazy artist says I’m not living my life. He says that I’ve sold my soul. If he knew my automator was broken he’d be ecstatic, he’d probably try to get me to go out and party with him as if I didn’t have to go to work anymore.
Actually, though, calling out tomorrow might not be a terrible idea. My productivity is shot anyway – I keep finding myself staring at the screen in front of me, drifting off and daydreaming. It’s the sound of everyone else working; it’s hypnotic. They’re all typing at full speed, seated thirty to a row, all the way down this massive room. It sounds like a thunderstorm pouring around me. I wandered down the aisles this morning for ten wasted minutes, just listening to the endless shower of keystrokes and looking at all of their blank faces… the only good thing was that I saw someone I went to school with. We’ve probably been working together for ten years. I should call her later.
I know my brother isn’t alone, there’s a very vocal minority that will talk your ear off about how terrible automators are. I can only assume none of them have office jobs, because I’ve only been here for four hours and I’m ready to murder someone. Don’t even get me started on my exercise routine! Do I really do that every morning? Why in god’s name would I want to be aware for that? I finished less than half of the workout before going back to bed. If they can’t fix my automator soon I’m going to get all pudgy.
If I tried to explain this to my brother he’d just suggest that I work somewhere more interesting, as if everyone in the world can be an artist for a living. He’d say having less money would be worth not going through life as a zombie, but every second that ticks by feels like an hour and every time I look at the pathetic amount of work I’ve gotten done I know exactly why a “work day” used to be eight hours – more for some people! Missing my life? If this is what my life is when I’m not looking then I’m happy to miss it. Only fifty-nine minutes and thirty seconds to go. Please, let them fix me soon.
