by submission | Aug 14, 2011 | Story |
Author : Isaac Archer
Be careful. Those were the last words Gully had spoken to him. And as he drifted beyond the point where the shallows ended and the real ocean began, Sam’s greatest regret was that the old man would know he hadn’t listened. Again.
Greed is the pathway to the Depths, Gully often admonished him. Looks like he was right. In the seven years since Gully found him, naked and nameless in the sand, the old man had rarely been wrong. But Sam was a metal diver now. He knew he could find his fortune on the ocean floor, and he knew he could go deeper, and search better, than any man on the island. So when Gully told him that the Eastern divers had abandoned their territory, scared off by a fishplague, Sam got on his raft.
Now he slumped against its mast, too far from home to make it back. He could barely see the wound through which the tiny creature had conveyed its paralytic response to his hubris. He guessed that most victims drowned in minutes. Not him. He made it back to the surface in time to watch eternity coming.
The tide carried him toward the horizon as fear gradually overwhelmed his frustration. In time he heard the maelstrom. He recognized its mythic roar instantly, even as he wondered if any other man had made it here alive.
***
Sam’s next thought was: I am dead. Pure chemical terror had taken his mind through the insane rush of the whirlpool and the inexorable, helpless drowning that followed. When at last the water invaded his lungs, he passed out, and on awakening he found that not breathing came as naturally as breathing had. Relief engulfed him then, but not for long. Judgement was waiting.
The light receded into nothing as he descended. He could move a little now – not enough to stop falling, but enough to face the Depths. As the sky vanished, his surroundings began to glow. Wherever he was, it had stone walls, smooth and curved and somehow lighted. Finally, he came to a spherical chamber with two rectangular gaps in the walls. The larger of the two held jagged rocks and a bloated, decomposing arm, and it spilled orange-red light into the chamber. The other was shimmering, black, and opaque.
Too quickly, there was a blinding flash, and Sam was thrust through the black gate. He collapsed onto – a floor? – and vomited water. His vision returned by the time he summoned the courage to look up.
“Welcome back, Commander.” The speaker was roughly Sam’s size and form, but thinner, with strange, translucent plates for eyes. Stranger still, its body was made of metal, the richest, brightest metal Sam had ever seen, more than he had imagined the world held. Greed and power personified. This must be a demon.
Sam stared at it, slackjawed, and it noticed.
“Memory loss? Curious, as your skinsuit appears undamaged. Hold, I have your chemical backup somewhere…” The demon opened a large locker and began searching through its contents.
“That was a hell of a storm you went into – I mean, got caught in. Of course, we activated the virus because we thought your communicator was down. We are lucky it found you so soon, you could have been out there decades instead of years. It has to evolve if you do not know to dive.”
The demon seized a long, shining tube with a thin spike at one end – a bringer of pain if Sam had ever seen one. It turned toward him.
“Now, hold still.”
by submission | Jul 23, 2011 | Story
Author : Alia Gee
While the care and feeding of your child in ideal non-planet-dependent conditions has already been covered in Dr. Krugheimer’s “Happiest Baby on the Space Station” holoseries, I feel it is important not to neglect those new parents who are in more extreme states of habitation.
To whit, here are a few hints I picked up while raising my little family without the blessings of gravity. I only hope they may assist others in their domestic efforts.
My initial concern when faced with my first infant in space was, “Oh, no, the diapers!” Yet here Mother Nature aids us, even when far from our natal gravitational fields. Newborn waste sticks to diaper or bum with great tenacity. Merely make sure the child is securely fastened to the changing table or wall, and the vacuum on your trash receptacle is functional, and sanitation is a breeze.
Moving up the alimentary canal, your next worry will likely be feeding your wiggling spawn. Nursing, bless those mammary glands, is not dependant on gravity.
If you, like me, discovered this knowledge was insufficient to your needs, the standard advice is to use a squeeze bottle and hover. I found that this allowed too much air into the poor infant’s stomach unless always vigilant. And, gentle reader, what parent can exert constant, even pressure over a long period of time when wakened mid-sleep cycle?
Vexed and sleep-deprived, I created a container much like a balloon: small and flaccid when empty, but able to expand to hold up to a liter of nourishing liquid. As the infant sucks, the vessel constricts of its own accord with textbook gentle, even pressure.
As the child gets older and tries to squeeze the bottle, life can get more colorful. In these cases, and also when the infant gaily burps up more than air, my best advice is to remind your parenting partner(s) that (t)he(y) got you into this mess and now (t)he(y) can jolly well help clean it up.
Note: For more on how to create your own blobule from common chemicals you will have in the lab, please see the link at the bottom of the article. Stockists also available on request.
I have occasionally seen the Ideal Space Infant caricatured as an adorable hydra: bottle, blanket and toys tethered neatly to the little darling by long strands of some anonymous fiber.
For shame! This, as any experienced parent can point out, is one big, pastel choking hazard.
Still, it raises a valid question: How does one keep all the essentials near at hand? Some (Jennings-Ho, Xiao Universe-al Baby Care 101) are wild proponents of industrial strength Velcro.
Velcro and its cousins do have their place, make no mistake, and I was grateful for them when trying to keep my young ones in their sleep sacks. However, no one product will solve all your parenting problems; it is best to think creatively when facing those hurdles our mothers never dreamt of.
In my own case I found that the simple application of some adhesive to humble hose-clips worked a treat. For preference, I glued the item to the handle, and attached the pinching end to my child’s clothes. One could go the other route, of course, gluing the hose-clips to the clothes; but if your aesthetic sensibilities are not offended by this, may I suggest that you stick with Velcro?
Whatever methods work for you, I leave all you star-hopping parents with one final happy thought (assuming your precious offspring is one of those individuals who can survive in vacuum): In space, no one can hear your baby scream.
by submission | Jul 16, 2011 | Story
Author : Michael F. da Silva
“And that is how we will neutralise the Entente’s forward operating positions, my colleagues.”
The Georgian style meeting room was located on a human-built Orbital Cylinder over Mycenae. The size of the cylinder was large enough that the curvature of the room’s floor could only be measured by precision tools or enhanced sensory organs.
Several dozen sets of eyes of various shapes and arrangements looked back at the Admiral representing the Consortium of Human Territories. Some exchanged expressions of doubt and hoped that someone else would pose the difficult questions of fleet strength and logistics.
One of the assembled military officers, a giant head on eight golden armoured legs, shifted his frame toward the human. “Admiral Caetano, I pose a question. If we assemble our forces here, as you propose, and transit directly to Gliese we will allow our fleet to be surrounded on all sides by enemy-held systems. Also, the fleet numbers your plan requires for this expedition would seriously undermine the defences of our own colonial systems. How are we to prevent the Entente from taking advantage as soon as they see our fleet movements?”
“If we attempt to defend everything, we will defend nothing. We have no choice but to take the fight to the enemy, but we can choose where to strike. And what better objective than the enemy’s most important colony system?” Admiral Caetano rested his bio-armoured fists on the conference table. He continued, “If you evacuate your surface colonies to your homeworlds and Orbitals and limit colonial activities entirely to industries essential to the war effort, those mining and construction operations will be all the easier to defend.”
Many bristled at the prospect of relocating millions of citizens who had never been out of their home system. For those who represented democracies, it was not as simple a notion as the human made it sound.
“Within forty-eight hours after our forces depart from the objective rally point, we can completely negate the enemy’s ability to use the Gliese system as a staging point for fleet actions against our allies.”
A canine-headed centaur dressed like a warhorse bared her teeth in appreciation of that. The Capaill Madraí home system had been taking the brunt of enemy incursions for the last four decades. They had been pushing for aggressive action for almost as long but no longer had the economic clout to browbeat the other members or the military capacity to lead the way themselves.
Just then, a heretofore silent cephalopod reared up on its serpentine coils. “Barbarian bottomfeeder! Your progeny will all become slaves under the Entente! Devil of the Deep swallow you!” he cursed.
Caetano saw it too late to react. Inside the enraged alien, chemical processes that he had put to normal metabolism reached a fever pitch of activity. Fluids polymerised. Chemicals merged with each other creating new complex compounds.
The centre of the Orbital Cylinder flashed to eye-searing whiteness and what had been one majestic construct was rent into two Roman candles of dissolving metal and organo-ceramics falling to the planet below.
by submission | Mar 24, 2011 | Story
Author : Jeremy Koch
Sasha lay on a rust-flecked chrome slab under the rewriter’s dim green light, wincing slightly every few seconds as the self-service amputator locked into place. It slid a sequential series of nine hollow spikes, each six centimeters long, easily into the flesh of her arm, just below the elbow; this was always the worst part, painwise, but it’d be over soon. It was worth it.
The final needle pierced her skin, and then muscle, finally bone. The flow actuator kicked to life with a shudder and a low chugging sound – disturbing, but she was well-used to it now. This was her fourth designer phenotype since her arrival.
The smell – a rank, antiseptic stench of sizzling chlorine – hit her nose just as the amputator’s work became visible. The veins of her forearm and hand pulsed a deep chemical green, and the skin began paring away from the muscle as before an invisible flenser. Blood pooled and then erupted into microscopic bubbles, turning instantly to coppery steam as it pumped from her disintegrating arteries. By this time, the pain was dissipated – indeed, impossible, as her nerve clusters had already gone up in an acrid mist seconds before.
The machine’s clunking sped up. She watched, as always, with glammered fascination as the last of the skin dissolved and muscle peeled back, fiber by fiber, exposing bone that took on a beetle-wing sheen before it too began to crackle and deteriorate. Within minutes the actuator wound down; Sasha was left gazing serenely at the vaporous stump of her left arm.
Deadened nerves in her upper arm registered vague cold as the flow actuator restarted, this time emitting a vigorous sloshing. A pinkish mix of engineered viral solution and bioaccelerant coursed through the hollow spikes; presently viscid, vein-roped masses protruded from the precisely shorn remnant of her arm. New bone, glistening with fresh leukocytes spontaneously generated by the stimulated marrow, sprung violently forth and rapidly sprouted a web of whitish sinew. She felt detached cracking as the ossified growth bent and twisted, forming a wrist joint, and then split, fanning out into five scrabbling fingers. Sasha regarded this consideringly, and, with her intact hand, adjusted a dial on the rewriter’s console. Two of the five fingers split again, and she nodded, satisfied, as the seven digits waved and flexed.
Threads of hard muscle the matte color of gunmetal, woven together with capillaries of contrasting, sanguinary red, enveloped the pulsing bone from humerus to metacarpals. Keratinous talons flared from the fingertips with a series of fleshy pops, casting tiny droplets of pink froth across the table. They’d be retractable when the procedure was done; for now they gleamed wetly beneath the ambient illumination.
It was almost finished now. She could perceive feeling creeping back into her limb, as a light itch she had come to relish, and strove to master her excitement till the machine had completed its work. The itching crescendoed and crossed into pain; with ground teeth, she studied her skin knitting itself neatly over reinforced bone and hyperoxygenated muscle. Then it was over – the nerves settled into sync with her brain, and she carefully curled her new hand into a loose fist. The needles retracted, leaving oozing holes, and Sasha reached for a packet of iodine and gauze. After applying them, she stood and spread her wings with a yawn, the emerald tint of their translucent membrane nearly invisible under this light. “I already can’t wait to do this again,” she thought as she sought the exit. “Next time I’m getting the brain job.”
by submission | Mar 16, 2011 | Story
Author : Jordan Whicker
We’d been asking the wrong question all along.
It was first posed by some fringe intellectuals: “Do they feel pain?” Initial research showed that yes, stimuli that might be regarded as ‘painful’ would invoke any number of reactions that could be described as self-preservatory. The breadth of these reactions even raised some eyebrows in the academic world and garnered one or two op-ed pieces in some of the more liberal media outlets. Aside from the canonically expected mechanisms like flinching and defensive posturing, a whole subset of pheromonic and what could only be described as supra-neural – neural firings that existed within the organism but at the same time beyond it – illustrated the very depths of our ignorance on this particular topic.
Research continued at a snail’s pace after that point, funded mainly by the type of eccentrics who were likely to have read past the headline of the spattering of articles that actually made it to print. Yellow donate buttons nestled into homepage corners and direct appeals from a plethora of sites that together didn’t garnish one-thousandth the traffic of a celebrity gossip blog represented humanity’s devotion to the fledgling field. Not that this matters, necessarily, as even if we reallocated the entire budget of the Department of Defense and conscripted every biologist, chemist and physicist in the country would we have begun to ask the right question in time. A question that after the fact seems as clear as day and even easier to answer: “Do they feel anger?”
Yes, they do. We know that now.
For many thousands of years we have fine tuned our dominance over the beasts of the earth. Cows bred too fat and too apathetic to move at more than a trot. Pigs confined to one room prisons, their madness and that of those around them the only available distraction. Chickens that reach slaughtering weight before they have time to grow bored of their confinements. Although numerous, none of them ever posed us a threat.
We slipped, though. Let them into our neighborhoods, cultivated them in our parks and around our schools. Along our highways and surrounding our airports. There is nowhere safe left – nor was there anywhere that ever really was.
We all remember the morning that the trees awoke. Those few of us that still live, at least.
