by submission | Jul 8, 2016 | Story |
Author : Lisa Jade
Wake up, Michael.
Can you see? Look up. See the white light overhead, the white ceiling? The walls? White, too? Good.
Now. Try and move your left hand. No, the other left. That’s it, good. Don’t try to sit up. Lie still.
Now, think back. What do you remember?
Do you remember yourself? Tall and dark with an eternal five o’clock shadow, nails bitten to stubs? You wear T-shirts, even to the office, because you feel strangled by ties.
Remember Debra? Her soft curls, her rotund body? Do you remember the way her eyes sparkled when you first met, or filled up as you slipped the ring on her finger? Do you remember your wedding day – but maybe not. You were drunk before the speeches began.
Michael. Think back, and try to remember.
Remember your job? The stresses of the office. You’d come home and kick off your pants at the door, proclaiming you were taking a beer to bed. Debra wasn’t keen on that, was she?
The fights were intense. Do you remember? Objects flung across rooms, insipid floral teacups shattered against that fleur-de-lis wallpaper you always hated. Screaming matches. The time the cops came, concerned after complaints from the neighbours.
Do you remember that? Good. You’re back to being you, Michael.
Now think back to the second of July, 2098.
You had a meeting in the next town, didn’t you? You stood at the train station, swaying, your head spinning from a killer hangover. Debra refused to speak to you when you left that morning, furious about your coming home in the early hours.
Remember feeling dizzy, Michael? Remember falling onto the tracks?
You didn’t realise a train was coming until the screaming started. There was no time to react before it hit you, sucking you into the depths of its whirring maw. Do you remember dying?
I’m sure you’d rather not.
But you need to. Because you weren’t the only one who died.
See, the Highspeed Train was pretty new. I’m sure you remember the launch ceremony. Debra picketed against it; not that you’d have noticed. They protested the poor and dangerous design.
Thing is, Michael, when the train hit you, blood and guts and bone swept into the engine. A moment later it exploded, veered off the track and crashed into the station building.
Nearly two hundred people died that day – including you, of course.
Do you remember?
Nobody’s happy about this, Michael. Tragedy only settles if there’s someone to blame. The City won’t accept that any fault lies with them. The people are baying for blood; and you’re expendable, I’m afraid.
Sit up. That’s it. Place your feet on the ground. Don’t look too closely at the stitches that hold your shredded body together. Don’t think too deeply about how you’re alive.
Look up. Do you see that door, dark in the white room? Through there you’ll find the courtroom. You don’t have to speak much – in fact it’s easier if you don’t. The City didn’t bring you back to give you a fair trial.
At least this way, you can say goodbye to Debra. Maybe you can reconcile before your half-dead body is strapped into the electric chair.
Don’t cry. It’s pointless. The City can’t reanimate you for very long anyway. You’re doomed to die regardless, so embrace this opportunity. When they ask you something, answer them. Even if your tongue is swollen or they didn’t put your teeth back quite right. Just answer the questions however you can.
Think back, Michael. Do as you’re told, and behave.
Just try and remember.
by submission | Jul 7, 2016 | Story |
Author : Lauren Triola
In Universe A, you meet as children. You become high school sweethearts. You live happily ever after.
In Universe B, your family moves out of the country before he moves to town. You never go back. He marries your childhood friend, only knowing you through pictures and stories.
In Universe C, you meet at the grocery store in college. You both pick out apples at the same time. There are enough for two. You part ways, never speaking.
In Universe D, you had to use the bathroom before shopping. You get there a minute later than he did. You never meet. You always feel something missing.
In Universe E, you live on the Moon. He lives on Mars. You’re pen pals.
In Universe F, there was a run on apples. You both go for the last one. You both laugh. You chat. You get dinner. You get married. Sixty years later, you die within a week of each other and are buried together.
In Universe G, he had a bad day. He yanks the last apple free and stomps to the register. You flip him off. You never speak.
In Universe H, your friend meets him instead. She sets you up on a blind date. It doesn’t go well. You marry the waiter.
In Universe I, there are lizards. Humans do not exist.
In Universe J, your friend marries him. He’s your friend too. You don’t tell either of them about your crush.
In Universe K, they get divorced. You stand by your friend and never see him again.
In Universe L, you see an obituary in the paper. You don’t know the man, but you think it’s such a shame when people die so young.
In Universe M, you have super powers. He is your nemesis. You destroy New York.
In Universes N through T, everything is perfectly normal, but you were never born.
In Universe U, you’re allergic to apples. You meet at the cash register instead.
In Universe V, he breaks your heart. You still love him, and you hate yourself.
In Universe W, there are zombies. He does not exist. You rule Australia.
In Universe X, you work at a coffee shop. He visits frequently, but neither one of you musters the courage to do more than flirt.
In Universe Y, it’s you who has the bad day. You steal the last apple. You never speak to each other.
In Universe Z, you meet as children. You become high school sweethearts. You both plan to go into physics together in college. He dies in a car crash on graduation night. You cry for weeks after the funeral, tinkering with theories to try to distract yourself, wondering what life would be like if things had been different…
by submission | Jul 6, 2016 | Story |
Author : Janet Shell Anderson
Black holes can now be rented. Aliens may arrive! That’s the headline on everyone’s App.
“The rich can have all the lemon tarts they want.” Another headline. Giovanna Romanova Baldwin said that three days ago, then disappeared.
If Aliens landed, would they steal one of the best looking women in south Florida? She’s what divorce lawyers like me privately call the young second, third, fourth, blond, very good looking wives of older, successful men. Lemon tarts. Giovanna’s my cousin’s fifth wife, to be precise, who could very possibly become a First Lady.
I’m Eudora Pennifer. My cousin’s the ninth richest man on Earth, Perry Austrian Baldwin, a living legend on Wall Street, corporate head of Birnbach BirnBach, Austrian and Meese, United Micro Inc., and BalMart. Ninety-six but on regen, he looks twenty, has the energy of a teenager, is considering a run for the White House. Rich men have done it before. People who know him like him, he says.
I know him.
I know Giovanna too. Now she and her personal trainer Jordan Somebody have disappeared. Giovanna hasn’t been well received by the press since pictures of her on a bearskin rug appeared on everyone’s App. She’s actually a sweetheart.
So she’s an old man’s honey, a lemon tart, a beauty from Bulgaria, married, her big mistake, to my cuz in DelRay, Florida, in his huge house on the waterway. The mansion looks like a flying saucer that made an emergency landing. It gives me the fantods.
You have to drive through a cutout tree, some kind of evergreen that can live in South Florida, to even see the gate. Two miles down the very private lane, the monster residence looks like the White House and the Sydney Opera House, mated by drunken Martians. Wild Squirrel Monkeys slip into windows so high no one can close them properly. It rains in on Carrara marble floors. The monkeys spring across candelabras, hide in high niches with priceless vases. An alligator called Lazarus, because no one can kill him, favors the infinity pool. Maybe he’s eaten Giovanna. If Lazarus got her, he choked down all her designer gowns, Jimmy Choo shoes, and seven alligator bags. Giovanna’s black pug’s missing too.
What has been discovered so far is that two secret service agents assigned to Perry and Giovanna tried to film her in the bathroom, smuggled in three Hungarian prostitutes, swilled seventy bottles of beer. One agent was spotted dead drunk by the pool with Lazarus emerging from the foliage. There was a shooting; the alligator smirked, slid calmly into the waterway. A threatening note was found in the second largest dining room with a crude picture of Perry on it, but it was just written by his mother. She often writes threatening notes as well as novels, political commentary and new wills. She has her own reality show.
Perry’s newest girlfriend, Cynthia, a yoga teacher who’s twenty-one, is lying low in a little-known guesthouse deep in the shrubbery. Her skin’s gilded, her mouth a fuchsia dream; she can wrap her knees around her neck and often does. She’s either from Slovenia or Altoona; no one knows. A lemon tart-in-waiting?
Well, my money is on Giovanna. I think she’s rented a black hole and popped Jordan Somebody, her personal trainer, her designer dresses, Jimmy Choo shoes, alligator bags and herself into it.
Good luck, Giovanna, and remember to feed the pug.
by Julian Miles | Jul 5, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The tide is full of bodies and the sky is filled with lies. Sullen waves roll corpses back and forth, trailing organic tatters in varying shades of death. Above me, seagulls scream furiously at the metallic crags that obstruct their flight and deny them perches with beams of fiery death.
Earth was poisoned: blighted crops, tainted waters, acid rain. Letharn proposed colony ships. The world laughed. Then the Madagascar Quake of ’73 delivered a tsunami that left the land it covered radioactive as well as salted. While many pointed fingers at the submerged tailings of Fukashima, others turned to Letharn, prepared to discuss. When the ‘Greenflame’ fungoid moss defoliated the Amazon in a matter of months, people wheezed as the oxygen content of the atmosphere dropped by non-decimal percentages. Letharn built his first ‘Jargangil’.
His mountain-shaped behemoths were all named Jargangil, after a table-top mountain in his homeland. Jargangil I was built off the coast of Australia. II was off the coast of Wales. III arose off Los Angeles, and the game was on. A fevered gestalt of race for survival and the only competitive event that mattered. While the ships were identical from the outside, interior fitments and passenger load varied far more than advertised. Jargangil C and Jargangil M were rumoured to be elite vessels with barely twenty percent of the passenger capacity of other ships, their interiors given over to landscaping, spacious accommodations and immense stores of luxury foodstuffs.
In the end, it made no difference. Letharn’s Jargangils took on all who would (or were permitted to) leave the dying Earth and made ready for deep space. Clouds calmly drifted against silver cliffs as main drives roared to life. Sea turned to steam under spears of white-hot power, but the vessels did not lift. Drive plumes faded and steam dissipated. Silence spread as we who were left, either by choice or denial, puzzled over their lack of departure. The clouds were undisturbed.
Then a single speck fell from Jargangil LIV. That speck turned out to be a dead body, purged by Letharn’s ruthless, automated answer to graveyards: eject the dead into space.
More specks appeared and horror rained down. Sheers numbers overwhelmed attempts to manage the mass of cadavers. All communications were ignored. Thousands of mountain-sized hazards dot the skies. Rotting flesh pollutes both sea and air.
Letharn’s designers either miscalculated, or were undone by contractors cutting corners. Within seconds of the drives firing, insulation and cladding materials combusted under the transferred heat, starting chain reactions that released toxic fumes into the areas where people lay in their launch cradles. The following minutes do not bear thinking about: billions died in agony.
The Jargangils remain, devoid of life, defence systems preventing all boarding attempts. We await the near-inevitable day when experimental gravity-repulsor drives reveal their design flaws, and drop Letharn’s toxic mountains into the seas of Earth.
by submission | Jul 3, 2016 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
Following hospital sedation, Song Jai’s medical file displayed next-of-kin as MAC 1500t, Song’s Mechanised Automaton Companion.
With no legal reason to deny such a request, the hospital duly summoned Mac, Song’s robot assistant.
Mac’s tungsten humanoid frame eased alongside Song’s ward bed and requested access to Song’s medical vitals and history.
Like all robots, Mac’s core Asimov code meant it couldn’t injure a human by action or inaction, couldn’t disobey orders and must protect itself. No-one fully comprehended how the interpretation of these three laws would impact Song’s final order for Mac to be his next-of-kin.
For Song, the outlook wasn’t good. Sepsis had ravaged his body, causing spectacular collapse of his vital organs.
Within the first hour, Mac reported the newly installed tier four nursing software enabled it to provide a higher level of nursing care than any of the current ICU staff. Once approved, Mac withdrew from his devoted perch and proceeded to carry out nursing duties including drug administration, dialysis maintenance, body manipulation and reporting. Live data feeds displayed Song’s condition as Mac whizzed around the hospital bed drawing a crowd at the observation window.
After two hours, Mac reported it now ran level 14 medical diagnostician software, along with a multi-thread live link to 24 key physicians across the world. His request to take over Song’s care could hardly be refused since Mac had now become the smartest doctor in the hospital and probably the country.
Song was not showing any signs of improvement. His vital organs were in a state of collapse and his heart rate and blood pressure monitors played a frightful tune. Song was in tiger country with danger at each turn.
The hospital catered to Mac’s various requests for drugs, equipment and tests, and then a series of strange parcels arrived. Bewildered staff watched as Mac systematically integrated the strangely shaped contents of each parcel into his mechanised form. By the end of day two, Mac had physically expanded by way of strange transformations around his enlarged chest cavity.
On the third day, Mac announced his masterplan to the Administrator, supported by an exhaustive list of integrated medical hardware upgrades. Mac was to load Song’s body into his own body, which now provided full life support.
Following extensive evaluation and consultation, the hospital accepted the proposal. There was simply no facility on the planet that could provide better patient care.
Through the observation window, staff watched Mac dutifully raise Song’s body from the bed and carefully insert him into the made-to-fit cavity. Mac was now nurse, doctor and hospital all in one.
Probes mechanically rotated to insert main arterial lines and a transparent carapace closed over to seal the internal environment from contagion. Filters buried in Mac’s silvery frame began to turn rhythmically to provide blood and oxygen support.
Slowly over 8 hours, Song’s degeneration began to slow and by the end of day four, Song showed signs of improvement.
Staff were witnessing a leap in medical technology.
By week’s end, Song’s improvement had plateaued. The prolonged septic attack had caused cranial swelling and irreparable brain damage.
Although Song’s prognosis was dire, Mac maintained life support and to the hospital’s surprise returned Song to their home.
As next-of-kin, Mac had the right to sustain Song’s comatose body indefinitely. To preserve himself, Mac had to preserve his Master indefinitely and did so for four hundred years until the remnants of Song’s mindless brain had decayed beyond recognition.
Song’s law was added after this event to prevent any non-human from ever again becoming next-of-kin.
