by Duncan Shields | Feb 16, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
It’s a reasoning process. There are seconds left. The cold leather of the chair is warming up beneath my manacled wrists. The restraints are tight on my arms. I’m wide awake and dreaming.
I can’t decide if it’s a syringe or a snake that they’re drawing back out of my arm. I can feel the pitter patter of little feet running through my veins, getting progressively softer as they hit the smaller tributaries. My body is a giant vibrating footstep tied to a chair.
Laboratory nine. People don’t come back from this lab. I have opinions. This is where they put people with opinions. You should hear the way the sergeants pronounce that word. It’s right up there with communism, hippie, and free will. Venom drips from their lips.
It’s dark in the tiled room except for the light over my chair. My muscles vibrate faster and faster until they hit a state of constant striation. Being cognizant, I realize that this must be what a seizure is. I’ve never had one before but I saw a friend have an epileptic fit when I was a child.
We were playing in a field. It was a hot day. This was before the occupation, of course, before the clicking mandibles hissing out a whisper that was the closest they could come to English. The messages from the sky. The examples. Prague, Toronto and for some reason Adelaide made into legend as a warning shot. I remember the hissing language from aliens. They looked like a cross between spiders and crucifixes.
I remember they lit up the atmosphere of the Earth to prove their power, to scare the primitives. The ozone layer had flashed like a dance club.
Me and my friend David in that summer field had looked up. The strobe light of the entire sky had set my friend to moaning. His joints froze and he fell back like a broken toy. An animal keening had squeezed out of him. It sounded like a kettle reaching a boil.
It wasn’t a good sound. I can hear it echoing around me now in the laboratory and I realize that it’s coming from me.
Soon, I know that if I don’t give in to the suggestions that are coursing through my veins, I’ll die. No one has come back from this room. No one has given in.
It’s almost comforting to know that there are still humans who will fight to the death on these tables, resisting the attempt to shape their allegiance until they’re switched off permanently. I feel honoured to join them.
I can feel the lights within my mind turning out one by one as the chemicals give up coercion and switch to destruction.
I am candles on a birthday cake being blown out.
by submission | Feb 6, 2010 | Story
Author : Richard “Zig” Zagorski
Amanda awoke from a deep slumber and saw that her alarm clock would be going off in ten minutes. Not pressing enough to climb out of bed to turn it off just yet, but unfortunately also too little time left to fall back asleep.
However it only took a moment or so for her to realize that today was the day. The day she’d be finally free of her mood ring. Suddenly the morning seemed full of promises she had rarely dared to dream of for fear her ring would betray her. Shout out that she was not on an even keel. Medications to bring her back into ordained normality would follow if the ring reported such emotions becoming commonplace.
She had already been using unlawful ware the past few months to occasionally fudge the logs her ring kept. Logs which would be dutifully uploaded by her ring for expert systems and her parents to review each time she entered the warm embrace of the home network. Uploaded each time she passed a contraband detector at PS 34 for analysis by the school’s psychological systems and even a therapist to review if the records justified flagging by the so-called expert systems.
Altering the logs was a crime warranting a grounding at home and one leading to detention and mandatory group therapy at school. It was worth it though. To hide the “dangerous” pulses of wonder, anger, lust and angst that not even a generation ago would have been considered normal for a girl her age and, more importantly, be something she’d be able to keep to herself and maybe a well hid journal. Finally she’d be secure in her own mind and emotions.
Those occasioned bouts of rebelliousness and the feelings they engendered would soon be more easily had. Watching illicit films like “The Breakfast Club”, reading passed around beat up copies of novels considered too stimulating for kids and teens or listening to the ancient (21 or older only, please!) crooning of Jim Morrison – “Oh tell me where your freedom lies…”
After third period Chemistry hers would lie in a new mood ring. One with altered circuitry and hacked software.
A week ago she had let Harold run a scanner over her ring. He said piece of cake and he’d have her new ring ready in seven days.
If it was so simple she wondered why it should cost her $400 in horded allowance and baby sitting money…but can one put a price on her own freedom?
The few people she dared to raise the subject with all said Harold had the know-how and, more importantly, the connections to get an illicit replacement for her. One encoded to give off the same secret handshakes as her real one and to camouflage all extremes of emotion with bland ordinariness.
Today her ring, which would scream out in vivid red, yellow and violet if she dared be herself and which dutifully tattled on her with seemingly greater enthusiasm than her little sister, would be replaced. The new ring would glow gentle hues, but stay mainly dead, dull, safe, complacent grey. The log files would show brief, low spikes of emotions. A nice, safe, boring, well adjusted teenage girl. Just what every parent wanted and every expert said was the standard to be strived for. Square pegs must be made round!
Today freedom of thought and freedom of experience would be hers. All wrapped up in illusionary grey.
by Patricia Stewart | Jan 5, 2010 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The three scientists stood over a fully clothed skeleton. “I told Jill not to wander off by herself,” said Anthony Caroni, the mission commander. “Damn. What could have done this?”
“I don’t see any animal footprints, and there’s practically no blood,” noted Christopher Saunders, the exogeologist. “Maybe birds carried her here?”
“There aren’t any birds on Orinoco II, just plants, animals, and insects,” stated Sarah Lyman, the mission xenobiologist.
“Up until now,” retorted Saunders, “you didn’t think that there were any carnivores either.”
“Stop arguing,” snapped Caroni. “The colonists will arrive in less than three months. We need to find out what happened. Let’s gather her remains and take them back to the ship.”
***
The geology lab was turned into a makeshift morgue. Caroni and Lyman began to study the remains, but Saunders was heading out the hatch carrying a frozen ham and a phaser pistol. “Look,” he said, “I’m not a pathologist, but I’ve killed a few mountain lions in my time. You guys do what you can here; I’m going to set a trap.”
The Commander started to stop Saunders, but Lyman held up a hand and whispered, “Let him go. He’s too upset to help us here.”
After an hour of studying Jill’s remains, they were no closer to solving the mystery of her death than they were when they first found her body. “I can’t find any damage to her bones,” complained Lyman. “No teeth marks, claw marks, fractures, nothing. It was like Jill fell into a vat of acid. But it can’t be chemical; we found a dozen dead flies in her clothes that weren’t dissolved. Maybe Chris is having better luck. Give him a call.”
“I’m not having any luck either,” reported Saunders. “A couple of animals came by to smell the ham, but they walked off. I’ll be heading back soon. There’s a nasty storm cloud coming in from the east, and I need to get rain gear if I’m going to stay out here much longer.”
“Roger that,” replied Caroni. “You know Sarah,” he added as a thought struck him, “I never saw flies that didn’t lay eggs in a corpse. Maybe her flesh was consumed by maggots?”
“I didn’t see any maggots,” she stated, “but I’m about to examine the flies now.” Holding one of the flies with tweezers, she examined it under a binocular microscope. She was shocked to discover that the mouth contained two rows of tightly packed, serrated, interlocking teeth. The individual teeth appeared markedly triangular, similar to the teeth of a Piranha. “Oh my God,” she screamed. “The flies are carnivorous. Get Chris back, quickly.”
“Crap,” realized Caroni. “Our weather comes from the west, not the east.” Still holding the walkie-talkie, he ran to the hatch. “Chris, return to the ship, now. That dark cloud isn’t a storm; it’s a swarm of killer flies.”
“Repeat,” asked Saunders who couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “Ouch,” he exclaimed a second later as he felt a sting on his forearm. He swatted at an insect, only to discover a rivulet of blood streaming down his arm. He was bitten twice more before he began to run back to the ship.
Caroni watched helplessly as Saunders came into view, only to be engulfed by a black cloud of death. Saunders fell, screaming and writhing. He fired his phaser in vain. Seconds later, he was motionless. Caroni slammed the hatch shut. “Quick, Sarah” he yelled, “shut all the portholes.”
As he turned from the hatch, he heard Sarah’s voice from the lab, “Ouch. Oh, damn.”
by Patricia Stewart | Oct 21, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Okay, Mister, er…,” Phillip Richfield glanced at his monitor, “Rousseau, what’s the crisis? Is something wrong with the orbital elevator pump?”
Soren Rousseau, one of the many “facilitators” hired by The Greenhouse Gas Project, had only been on Titan for six months, and this was his first encounter with the Director of Operations. “No, Mr. Richfield.” He took a deep breath to calm himself down. “It’s more important than that. We need to shut the entire methane transfer operation down. Titan’s oceans contain an indigenous life form that the original survey team missed. We need to preserve their habitat.”
“Life form?” questioned Richfield. “You mean there are fish swimming in these oceans?”
“Uh, no sir. It’s more like proto-bacteria. Still, it’s the first case of extraterrestrial life ever detected. Their existence will revolutionize the field of exobiology.”
“Did it ever dawn on you that the bacteria are something that we introduced into Titan’s oceans?”
“Yes, sir. I had the chemistry department check some samples for polymerase chain reactions. There weren’t any, so their biochemistry doesn’t contain DNA. It can’t be Earth-based contamination.”
“Well, I say that it is Earth-based contamination. Son, let me explain the big picture to you. A hundred years ago, the sun entered a long-term phase where solar irradiance started steadily decreasing. If we didn’t do something to maintain the surface temperature of the Earth, it was going to turn into a giant snowball. The Greenhouse Gas Project was created to collect and deliver the equivalent of one trillion cubic feet of methane gas to the Earth every week in order to produce enough greenhouse gasses to sustain the average surface temperature of 52 degrees Fahrenheit. We’re already behind schedule, and you want me to shut down the project to save proto-bacteria. It’s not going to happen. There are billions of human lives are at stake. Now, get back to work.”
“With all due respect, Mister Richfield, I can’t in good conscience sit quietly while you destroy the greatest scientific discovery in history. You’re going to force me to go public.”
Richfield smiled. “Is that so? Well, I guess you haven’t read the fine print on your contract. Because it cost billions of dollars to transport and support the people on Titan, the government has given us extensive leeway pertaining to your ‘civil rights.’ As a consequence, we own you for five years. You have no say in the matter. So, effective immediately, you’re being reassigned to a survey mission in the Oort Cloud. Now, go pack up your personal effects, your shuttle will leave within the hour. And don’t think about using the radio, your privileges are revoked.” He pressed an intercom button. “Yukos, please have security escort Mister Rousseau to his quarters, and then to the shuttle bay. He’s going on special assignment.”
Two burley security guards came into Richfield’s office and forcibly carried Rousseau away, amid his vehement curses and threats. Richfield then called the Director of Transportation. “Mikhail, I need a favor. I’m sending a disgruntled employee on an extended survey mission. I need his shuttle pre-programmed to take him to the Oort Cloud. Also, you’ll need to disable his radio.”
“Sure thing, Phillip. I’ll take care of it myself. What’s your preference this time: reactor malfunction, carbon dioxide poisoning, decompression?”
“He’s a decent guy, Mikhail, but misguided. Let’s make it quick.”
by submission | Oct 20, 2009 | Story
Author : Ken McGrath
I’m taking my time, figuring it’s best to be patient. By letting him feel secure and safe he’ll never suspect what’s happening. Never realise that I’ve been slowly bleeding him dry all this time, running him to bodily ruin.
I read something once about the Matador’s of old Earth, something they used to do when bullfighting. During the show, when the bull was running by them through that coloured cape, they’d slice their blade along its back. Scouring it deep. Each bleeding furrow on its own wouldn’t do too much damage, but over the course of the bout they all added up. The bull never realised how much blood it was losing, slowing it down, weakening it and eventually leading to its death.
So like a Matador I fight against him playing the long game. I smile at him in the streets when we walk by each other. I lean over our common fence and between lung splitting coughs he talks to me about the strange weather we have on this still unfamiliar world. Not once does he realise that I’m continuously cutting long, deep slices in him.
And all the time he’ll never really know who I am. He thinks I’m just some old guy who made my fortune using family money to fund the wars back home, the wars which finally tore our old Mother Earth apart, driving us off planet to this new Terra we now call home. But it will never really be home to me because I have nothing here.
It was those wars that took my family, wiping them out quickly and ultimately. Gone in one final, fatal moment. But of course he’s going to die a lot slower than that. I’m planning on taking my time with him.
His company manufactured the bombs that obliterated a whole team of Safe Earth Aid Workers. All they were trying to do was help victims and without warning they were reduced to almost nothing. Little more than radiation dust blowing in the wind. Not even a handful was left of them for me to bury.
I got off planet as soon as I could after that. Cashing in my bonds and life policies, looking for a new place to run and hide, to be alone with my grief. I assumed a new identity and buried that pain inside, lashing out at myself in anger but never brave enough to end it all. I wanted no-one to know what I carried in my heart, didn’t want them talking in hushed whispers anytime this widower walked near by, this one time great chemist now reduced to nothing. I told them I was from old money and they accepted my almost cloistered existence, putting it down to snobbery.
So imagine my surprise when I found out he’d purchased the plot next to mine. Imagine how difficult it was for me to not lash out immediately, instead calming myself and formulating a plan.
So now, with a steady supply of homegrown germs, I’m bringing him slowly into a world filled of pestilence, where his defences are slowing over time, causing his organs to fail one by one. It’s not a quick process by any means but I’m a patient man. He’ll rot slowly while still alive, his body becoming a mausoleum with what’s left of his blackened soul trapped screaming inside and none of their medical advances will be able to rescue him. I’ll see to that.
This is my revenge.
