by submission | Aug 3, 2008 | Story
Author : S. C. Wells
“Over there. See it?” Tellis’ gaze followed Mark’s pointing finger toward the last planet in the system they were passing through. The surface was invisible, covered entirely by a glowing cloud, deep blue streaked with iridescent greens and yellows and rich, dark purples. The planet had been filled with prosperous mining colonies, before an accident created the cloud, making the world uninhabitable.
“We’ll be a few minutes passing through,” Mark said. “The energy from those clouds totally distorts sub-space here; that’s why we can’t use the hyper-drive.” Mark leaned casually, playfully on the observation deck railing, eyes sparkling. “We’ll be a on our way again soon. Unless…”
“Unless,” Tellis smiled, “the main engines don’t start once we get past.”
“No one knows what’s wrong,” Mark continued, “but then you pick up odd, transmission-like energy signals coming from under the planet’s clouds.”
“They sound like nonsense, of course.”
“Of course. But we go out secretly to investigate anyway, because you are convinced that whatever’s stopping the engines is down there.”
“How do we–?”
Mark cut her off, not wanting to get lost in a technical discussion. “I’ve figured out a way to rig the jump shuttle to get through the clouds. We land on the planet, and find the ruins of an ancient colony. But…”
“…The planet isn’t uninhabited!” Tellis exclaimed. “The descendants of some of the colonists have been living underground, and they have their own society and culture, and their own form of communication transmissions.”
“Which is what you picked up.”
“Right. They want to be left alone, but the colony’s old guidance and landing systems malfunctioned and stopped our ship by accident, and now that we’ve found their underground city, the colonists’ descendants won’t let us leave so that they can keep their existence secret!”
Mark grinned slyly. “And they’ve heard of you and me by picking up Rendothirii transmissions, so they know how capable we are, and they put us under heavy guard. Their leader doesn’t want to kill us, but her advisors tell her that we’re bound to escape, just like we did the last time the Rendothirii captured us.”
“The leader gives the order to kill us, reluctantly, but just before the public execution, a cloud storm of deadly energy strikes without warning, and the city is in jeopardy! It turns out that the advisors knew it was coming, but were keeping it a secret in order to kill the leader and take control of the city during the confusion.”
“But I save the leader just in time, and you—”
“–Stop the city from collapsing by reinforcing it’s molecular structure with my powers.”
“OK… So then the advisors are arrested, and the leader gives us her thanks…”
“…And the people hold a feast in our honor…
“…And after we swear not to tell anyone about them…”
“We turn off the system that’s been holding our engines, and come back to the ship. No one even realizes that we were gone, because your programs kept the computer misdirecting people about our location on board to cover our tracks, so we wouldn’t get in trouble for leaving without permission.”
“And then,” grinned Mark, “the release of the engines allows the ship to continue as if nothing happened.”
Tellis returned his smile, and they stood in silence for a moment, gazing out on the shifting colors of the cloud.
“You know,” announced Tellis, “I don’t miss TV and the internet nearly as much with you around.”
“Same here,” Mark answered, as the main engines revved up for the next leg of the journey.
by submission | Aug 2, 2008 | Story
Author : Trip Venturella
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
-Mohandas Ghandi
Asher was heavy. Not fat, as it was impossible, borderline illegal, to be fat any more (for health safety, of course), but heavy.
He had spent the last two hours at one of the terminals at the Lifestyle Regulation Office. Half of that time was waiting for a terminal to open up. They were at full capacity, as usual.
The screen flickered, “The next field will require PERSONAL INFORMATION, are you sure you wish to proceed? YES/NO”
Asher pressed YES.
“If you wish to make a requisition, please enter your FIRST NAME and MONETARY IDENTIFICATION NUMBER.”
Asher typed ASHER and *******.
“Are you sure you wish to make a requisition involving a monetary transaction? YES/NO”
YES again.
“Thank you for your time. To complete the requisition, please proceed to room fifteen, floor six.”
Asher almost smiled, but two hours at the LRO sapped anyone’s will to smile. He went to the front door, entered his name at the terminal, and the glass door slid open, a tiny ingress into the immense stone bureaucracy of the LRO. A voice warned him to watch his step. His glasses fogged up in the hot, sterile, soap-scented air. Asher blindly stumbled his way to the elevator. When the elevator arrived, a voice warned him to watch his step.
The voice warned him again when he got off at floor six. He entered his name again at the screen outside room fifteen, and when the door opened the voice warned him. Asher mumbled a warning to the voice.
A lady in a blue LRO uniform was seated behind a computer. She smiled at Asher. Like most LRO employees, she had no name tag. As many times as Asher had been to the LRO, he had never seen the same attendant twice.
“Can I help you?” Her voice was gratingly cheery.
Asher re-adjusted his glasses, “I need to requisition three gallons of gasoline.”
The lady examined the computer screen for a moment, “You are Asher?”
“Yes.”
The lady in blue beamed, “Are you sure you want gasoline? It is both explosive and toxic.”
“I’m sure. I need it to drive a 1991 Chrysler New Yorker to Scottsdale.”
“Have you considered hiring a moving service? I can book them for you here.”
“I just need gasoline. A moving service costs four times as much.”
“But it’s much safer.”
Asher was finally frustrated, “I don’t need a moving service when I can drive myself!”
“Please don’t get angry. Anger results in poor decisions. And if you have any complaints, please register them at one of the terminals outside.”
“I won’t complain, but I need the gasoline, please.”
The lady printed out a piece of paper. She handed it to Asher, “Please read and sign this indemnification form.”
Asher signed it.
“Now take it to the Allocation Office on the second floor. They’ll safely fill your requisition. And Asher?”
“Yes?”
“Drive safely and watch what you eat. A free country like ours needs safe, happy, healthy citizens!”
by Duncan Shields | Aug 1, 2008 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The body on the mattress had been there for a while.
She was laying face-down. The pooling blood had left her back unnaturally pale. I knew that when we flipped her stiffly over, the front of her would be a dark maroon. One of her arms dangled off the edge of the bed, still as a tree branch. The blood had settled there, fattening the fingers and turning the hand almost black.
The graphics tattooed on her body showed up in high contrast against her white skin.
The team set up the lights. The boys in the plastic booties and paper dresses fired up their hand-held UVs to look for blood and semen. I had no doubt that in a cheap motel like this one they’d find plenty of both. The manager had told us to hurry. Like we were maids coming in to clean the place instead of police investigating a murder.
I looked at the dead girl on the bed. She couldn’t have been more that twenty-four but she looked much older. To make money, she’d been sponsoring herself out to companies to keep going once she started testing positive and could no longer give blood. I had a problem with the practice. As long as someone was semi-attractive, any of the Big Five corporations would let them pick a product tattoo and give them a ‘grant’ of a few thousand dollars.
Big money to a prostitute with a drug problem.
Her body was layered with dozens of nearly-touching logo tattoos from Pepsi, Nabisco, Colgate, Penzoil, Marlboro, and a bunch of others. I’d seen the same logos stenciled on plastic wrappers in gutters and parking lots. It made her look like garbage, which is exactly what she’d become here in this room.
Someone had crumpled her up and thrown her away like trash. I doubt we’d even learn her name unless a co-worker of hers came in to the morgue looking for her and that was pretty rare.
She had a Hershey’s tattoo on each ass cheek. I wonder if that had been the company’s attempt at wit or hers.
The hookers called it selling out. It started with something tasteful, one of the recognizable big sellers. Just one. Soon there were two. Eventually, the women caught in this inevitable spiral became a billboard, their looks fading from rampant drug use and the Big Five wouldn’t touch them anymore.
After that, the women started taking money to advertise local businesses.
Like this girl here. I saw a tattoo for Lou’s Steak House with a miniature road map underneath her shoulder blade for how to get there. I could imagine customers taking her from behind and looking at that map, possibly passing by the restaurant afterwards for dinner on the way home. It made me sick.
She was like a biological vending machine that had been broken into and completely emptied.
Spatter patterns suggested a hammer. We found one in a dumpster two blocks away with her hair and blood on the end of it. No prints.
I’d been on the force long enough to know that this was going to go unsolved.
God only knows why I kept doing this job.
by submission | Jul 31, 2008 | Story
Author : Michael “Freeman” Herbaugh
It was time. The ship was on course for a slow burn into atmosphere, which it hadn’t done in over a millennium. Though Lars had every confidence that the ship would make it, his palms were slick holding the yoke which adjusted attitude should the navcomp vary slightly on approach.
He’d been set on this course by his father who had died three years ago and would not see the fruits of his planning. It was his father who had recognized that theirs was no longer a self perpetuating environment. While it had been many generations since the Great Travis had exterminated the last pilot liberating the colonists on board, no one at the time of the Revolution realized that the ship’s environmental systems were on a slow degrade.
His father saw it coming and knew they would have to find a planetary system to support them. He was the one who figured out how to access the ships logs and databanks. When he discovered the flight manual with everything one needed to know about controlling the ship, he also realized his own shortcomings. It would take a lifetime to master the ships controls.
This was when he set Lars on his path.
Lars had been thrilled at first, he was only 10 years old at the time, but 23 years later it felt as though he would never fulfill the destiny his father had set before him. Sure they had passed habitable systems several times, but after generations of living at near zero-g, it had made them a race with brittle bones and elongated bodies and extremities. He had to find a planet with a very low gravitational pull but enough to sustain an atmosphere and life as well. They would be weak at first, certainly, but they would survive and grow stronger.
Practicing with the ship was no problem – there was plenty of fuel on board as that was part of the equation their ancestors didn’t figure on. One of the waste bi-products from the engines was a part of the environmental cycle, without pilot’s to do periodic burns the cycle had been broken and now was beyond repair. So Lars was able to grow up making adjustments to the course by trial and error while studying his on-screen manual. It upset some of the elders to feel the ship shift as it adjusted course, but his father had managed to keep them calm and convince them of the necessity of a new pilot.
Overcoming obstacles to a near impossible mission had been all he’d ever known. Now he faced his last two. First, could the ship handle the descent; was the heat shielding still in place? Second, could he deal with the ships controls in atmosphere?
It didn’t matter though. If they didn’t land here they would be dead inside of three generations.
Lars flipped on the public address system, “Firing retros and beginning descent”. Grinning, he couldn’t help but be amused that the manual even told him what to say.
This was it; he could see the surface of the hull begin to glow.
by J.R. Blackwell | Jul 30, 2008 | Story
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer
My family made me a robot.
“Your sister needed your lungs!” my mother cried, when I ask about my body. “She needed so much.”
My sister and I were both in the crash, our hover cars smashed into a building three stories over street level. My sister and I plummeted down toward the spinning street, my breath got knocked out of me and my sisters screaming in my ears and then just a moment of intense, searing pain. Then I woke up a robot, all shiny, all new.
“Your sister was too young to become a robot,” my mother tells me. My father looks at the white floor. My sister is wrapped up beside me, only her lips showing through the white bandages.
“We had to sign the papers right away or they might have lost her.” My mother smiles, all teeth. “I think it’s in to be a robot, isn’t it dear?” She turned to my father, who looked away.
Maybe she was right. From what I saw on the feeds, only freaks wanted to be robots.
“We just thank God you are both alive.” My mother was still smiling.
My hands and legs looked human, but my head and trunk are just robotic shells, plastic space. I am smooth and I shine like a new appliance.
“They have a lot of experience making hands and feet, but your head and torso are just prototypes, military grade. You’re like a soldier, isn’t that exciting? Are you upset? Why aren’t you talking? Aren’t you glad your sister is alive?”
I look over at her bed, at her pink lips. Someone has placed a sticker of a butterfly on her bandages. It rises and falls with her breath.
“Yes,” I say, “I am glad.”
