by submission | Jun 13, 2014 | Story |
Author : Aaron Koelker
The old man looked over his shoulder at me. His clothes, hands, and face were just as greasy as any of the parts within the dinosaur engine compartment beneath him. His arms were black with it up to the rolled sleeves clinging at his elbows.
“What is it, kid?”
My iHUD told me the man had slightly elevated arterial tension, heart rate, testosterone levels and activity in the left brain hemisphere; along with a minimal decrease in cortisol levels. He was mildly irritated. He also took note of the pause as I read the data streaming down my peripherals.
“Cut out that damn Trekkie stuff,” he said. “You know what I told you.”
The testosterone feed fluttered a bit.
“With all respect, sir,” I answered, “why are you so against it?”
“I don’t need a machine stitched into my face to know whether or not you’re bored.” He ducked his head back under the hood of the old beater. “Finish checking the rest of those spark plugs I gave you yesterday.”
“They’re too old. Just buy some new ones.”
The old man turned round again. “I’m sorry, did they force you into this internship? Because I sure as hell don’t need you here back talking me. In fact, I don’t really need you for much of anything. You’re supposed to be here to learn.”
I was tired of the old man constantly belittling me from his high horse of nostalgia and old age. “You’re just afraid of change,” I said. “And things you don’t understand.”
The old man took a rag from his back pocket and unsuccessfully tried to clean his hands. “Don’t pretend you know how any of that stuff works, kid.”
“Of course I know.”
“Then please share,” he said, unconvinced. He dropped the rag over the grill of the car and leaned against the fender, arms crossed.
“Scanners in the eye take a reading of the various chemicals in the body. Heart rate, brain activity; basic bodily functions…”
“You’re telling me what it does, not how it does it. I can tell you my eyes see the sky and tell my head it’s blue, too.”
“That’s different.”
The feed said my heart rate had increased by twelve percent.
He barked a laugh. “How? The problem with the world today is that we have all this fancy technology yet no one knows how it actually works. They know what it does and how to use it, but they have to rely on others to actually innovate. To fix it, to build it. And those people have to rely on yet more people to handle all the other things, because even they have only mastered one trade. Everyone just consumes these days. No one learns. No one can take care of themselves.”
My cortisol plummeted.
“And I suppose you’re the exception.”
“No, but I’m sure as hell more self-reliant than your sorry generation. I actually know how a combustive engine works. I can hunt my own food and properly dress it. I know the difference between a blackbird’s song and a blue jay’s and I can make a dovetail joint. I can temper a piece of iron and knit myself a shirt if it ever need be. And I can tell when a kid is embarrassed without some chip built in Taiwan.”
The feed alerted me of an adrenaline increase, as well as an isolated dilation of the blood vessels across my face. My metabolic processes slowed by twenty-two percent and my pupil diameter had increased by thirty-seven.
I quit that lousy “History of Mechanics” internship the next day.
by submission | May 23, 2014 | Story |
Author : Antowan
Rajacel injected the cold neural serum deep into his spinal port. The chemical agent coursed through his nerves, sending a frigid surge throughout his body. “Assimilation complete, neural countdown commenced.” The mechanical voiced chimed flipping on a countdown sequencer on his wrist comm. “8 Minutes huh” Rajacel prepped his gravatonic suit for the run. The sensors all showed green for 100% functional capability. His plasma pistol was fully charged and his hydronic sensors were fully functioning. “Sir I am obligated to alert you to the high risk factor of your trip, the chances of your survival are at .004%” Rajacel Paused as he grasped the handle to the pressure locked door. “So it goes.”
Rajacel ran as fast as his might. His heart beating like a thousand mocking bird’s wings, coursing the neural injection further into his veins, beads of sand beat upon his gravatonic suit. Drumming rhythmically in harmonious tones against the cybernetic flesh, “warning, warning,” the emergency alarm went off in his helmet. A small image projected beside his head. Four hostile markers pinged at a methodical rate, drawing closer and closer upon him. “Their coming,” he thought. Rajacel increased his pace dashing through the small red capped cones that covered the landscape. He could already see the slivery flashes of gray. Dashing across the horizon, blazing trails of crimson dust, “2 kilometers” his helmet pinged, Etria vargallions orbital control base, stood in its metallic grandeur, as Rajacel began to close in. His danger warning began pinging faster as the grayish flashes began to draw near, and loud inhuman cries echoed around him.
Rajacel blasted the first Razomorph to attack. Pumping two rounds into its slender chest, causing it stagger before it came crashing down. Two more flashes closed in on his right. Alternating positions forcing Rajacel to miss a shot, “damn” he muttered. His helmet pinged again, “1 kilometer left.” Rajacel fired more rounds forcing the Razomorphs further back. He scrambled with his wrist comm, desperately trying to release the pressure lock. “Door opening,” his helmet said. A loud clunk sounded in the distance confirming the door had opened.
Razomorphs were closing again, going through their double formation tying to prompt Rajacel to fire. He hesitated noticing that the charge the charge indicator had fallen half way. “Shit,” he muttered firing a single round back. “500 meters,” Rajacel punched into full gear. “400,” the Razomorphs increased their speeds, gaining precious ground on Rajacel. “200 meters,” the Razomorphs fell wit in arms reach, stretching their scaly gray arms out towards his hem. “50 meters!”
The door jutted shut behind him locking the savage creatures out of the control room. They belled and whined at a high pitch sending a warm fuzzy chill up his spine; the serum began to wear off. He wasted little time, as the sound of a loud pounding came against the door. “Computer,” he spoke, “activate evacuation procedure delta 6-9.” A large monitor lit up, running procedural checks before takeoff. The loud banging at the door was beginning to become more rapid. Rajacel stared out of the control room window to the horizon beyond. A final countdown began as the tall aero rockets began to emerge from beneath the ground.
“3, 2, 1 ignition,” the rockets flared up against the red sandy back drop spreading the crimson dust out in a fiery haze. The rockets lifted up disappearing into the heavens above, trailing behind a mist of glorious red. The pounding was more rapid now. The metal began to deform, the door caving in, knocking lose nuts and bolts with each methodic strike. Rajacel took a deep breath as he collapsed down in the captain’s chair; he checked his plasma pistol’s charge. “Huh only one bullet left,” So it goes. End.
by submission | Apr 19, 2014 | Story |
Author : Art Klein
I know there are more of them than before. Why have they stayed so long and why have even more of them arrived?
“What’s going through your head now, Jack?”
I looked at Tom across the table in a bar we frequent, and realized that I had once again fallen into that mood I had been trying to shake for…I don’t remember how long.
“Just thinking, Tom.”
“Those same thoughts about ‘Them,’ Jack?”
“’fraid so. I can’t seem to get them out of my head. And I do mean ‘Them’.”
“How much do you remember? Do you still have those vague spots you’ve told me about?”
“Yeah. They’re still there. And I don’t know how to fill them in,” I replied. “Maybe I’m getting worse. There are more signs in their language than in ours. Or am I just imagining that, too?”
“No, Tom. What you’re seeing is there: ‘Them’ and lots of signs in their language. How far back can you remember?”
“I remember the war. Not all of it, but more than enough of it to make my skin crawl. The radioactive, chemical, and biological sprays in building heating and air conditioning ducts, subways, sports arenas; any enclosed place where there were lots of people. Later on, crops shriveling and dying as they started attacking outdoor targets. The water turning that foul-smelling milky white.”
“Can you remember where you were when the war ended?”
I tried to answer Tom’s question, but the only thing I could come up with was one of those vague spots he had asked me about.
“Sorry, Tom. But I’m drawing another blank.”
Tom considered what I had recalled, and said, “That’s pretty much what happened. Do you remember when the UnifiedTerror teams broke into the big stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons here and in Russia and China?”
I had to dig for that one. “I think I remember some of it,” I replied.
“Do you remember when we received the first message about help being on the way?”
“Yes. That transmission was said to come from some planet located above the plane of our solar system. If I remember correctly, they, whoever ‘they’ are, said they were on the way to help us. Are ‘they’ my ‘Them’?”
Tom nodded his head slowly and said, “Not any more, Jack. They did help us. It didn’t take them long to finish off the UnifiedTerror movement. But even as quickly as that was accomplished, too much damage had been done for us to survive there. You were still unconscious when the wars ended. They took our side’s survivors home with them.
“Jack, here on their planet, we’re ‘Them.’ ”
_____________________
by Desmond Hussey | Apr 17, 2014 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
I call it World War Bee. Perhaps not an apt label for what’s really going on, but it gets the buzz out.
Sorry, bad joke. Levity is the only thing keeping me sane these days.
In all fairness, the war wasn’t the bee’s fault, but it did start with them. Now, the war is all around us, in the rocks and soil, in the trees, in the animals, carried by the wind. Bacteria, pathogens, spontaneous mutations, those are the weapons of the enemy. We fight back with nano-tech, combat drones and chemicals.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, I’ll explain. The sudden widespread death of bee colonies at the beginning of the 21st century triggered a worldwide famine.
Remember starving? That was why.
Turns out bees were responsible for nearly a third of our food supply as they pollinated our crops. It was determined that the excessive use of neonicotinoids in fertilizers, as well as the cocktail of herbicides and pesticides regularly sprayed on fields, were responsible. So, rather than changing our agricultural practices, which was deemed too costly, someone came up with the novel idea of creating our own bee which would carry out the business of pollination for us.
That someone was me.
I invented the BeeBot and it did exactly what it was designed to do, industriously buzzing through orchards and fields with their little pollen collectors, fertilizing crops as well as, if not better than, ordinary bees, since we could control when and where they were put to use.
Pure, unadulterated hubris.
Then the worms disappeared. So I helped engineer our own; little, red, plastic-coated wrigglers that aerated the soil and broke down organic waste. Then a multitude of bacteria and other organisms, insects, etc, vanished – mainly those responsible for breaking down larger organics. Food waste, wood and grasses ceased to rot and corpses would lie around for months as the decomposition process was retarded.
Once again, I came up with radical solutions; specially designed Nanotech and chemical vats to break down organic matter, but for every ingenious solution I came up with, Nature would trump me elsewhere. It appeared, for all intents and purposes, like the human race was under deliberate attack from Mother Nature herself, but those who made such claims were ridiculed into silence.
People like me.
Then the mutations started. Creatures spontaneously evolved that could counter my engineered facsimiles; strange birds attacked BeeBot populations, new bacteria appeared in the soil which broke down the plastic casings of the WormBots, previously unknown fungi wreaked havoc with the nano-tech and mysterious air-born pathogens began wiping out human populations within days.
It was undeniable. We were at war and Mother Nature proved to be a real bitch when backed into a corner. She fought like a rabid banshee and could adapt, and adapt quickly, to anything we threw at her.
Thirty years later, the surface is a hostile, unrecognizable war-zone. Those not directly involved in the war effort simply hunker down in man-made bunkers or deep caves waiting until it all blows over, if it blows over. Every year there are growing reports of new aggressive plants, weird beasts and diseases that stalk the land, corrupt water supplies, and pollute the air. Every year we release our counter-measures – combat drones, vaccines and updated filtration systems.
We’ve been evicted from the Garden of Eden; expelled from the circle of life. Mother doesn’t want us anymore. Most days, I can’t say I blame her. I’m beginning to wonder if this is one war we shouldn’t win.
by submission | Mar 29, 2014 | Story |
Author : Dakota Brown
His words were calm and thoughtfully processed. Though the harsh and forceful voice wasn’t as evident as it was previously, she still recognized what was at the heart of the matter.
He wanted her to finish the job.
The room sparked and stank of chemicals. The machine had begun its process, its result either finishing her job or extending the pressure.
The gears squeaked to a halt and the hissing turbines fell to silence.
Nothing fell into the machine’s tray. The process was a success.
She held the nothing up, showing it to the project leader. His breathy, monosyllabic retort signaled his content.
From where the project manager stood, his employee held a square of nothingness that showed only the space behind her. She held invisibility. She held the future.
He left her with a smile, a few words of congratulations, and (in his excitement) his clipboard.
On the clipboard she found the plans for her invisibility sheet. It would end war by making war and cease fear by causing fear.
Technology takes time to incorporate other technologies. Hers was the new one, and had nothing to combat it. It was with ease that she printed a larger sheet, destroyed the machine, and left the complex.
Discarded on either side of the Earth are two sheets of nothing, one slightly larger than the other. They were left as trash is, forgotten and useless, because “nothing” can’t stop war or fear.
