by submission | Jun 27, 2016 | Story |
Author : Chris Limb
Patrons and customers, my name is Azure Gemollua and I’m your chief flight attendant. On behalf of Captain Swaran and the entire crew I would like to welcome you aboard this Paragon Starline scheduled flight to Nu Phonecis.
We are particularly delighted you have chosen to travel with Paragon, especially in the light of the recent press allegations. As a special thank you for your loyalty we would like to offer all of those on board a 50% voucher towards the cost of your next booking.
Shipboard flight time until hyperspace jump will be two hours during which we will accelerate to a maximum speed of point nine nine nine C. Length of the jump will be 45 light years, throughout which all cephalophrenic life forms will experience no conscious thought; any non-cephalophrenic life forms are asked to please make themselves known to the flight attendants in advance of the jump so that complementary mental dampeners can be provided.
Even if you are a regular traveller, we now request your full attention as the flight attendants demonstrate the safety features of this spacecraft.
There are six emergency airlocks on this Hyperbus 997, two at the front, two at the rear and two over the nacelles. Please take a few moments now to locate your nearest airlock; in some cases it may be behind you.
In the event of decompression due to meteor strike, a SmartSuit™ is stowed under your seat. Place it over your head and pull on the red toggle to activate automatic envelopment. If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, please secure your own suit before helping them with theirs.
Please surrender control of your body to the SmartSuit™ AI should it become necessary. The SmartSuit™ is equipped with a sub-space distress beacon and a whistle for attracting attention.
In the unlikely event of the spacecraft stopping in hyperspace, please do not be alarmed by anything you may see or hear should you regain consciousness. Just adopt the “nightmare” position, leaning forward with your hands on top of your head, earplugs in place, eyes tightly closed and your elbows against your thighs. Ensure your feet are flat on the floor.
On no account attempt to move or leave the spacecraft. Do not engage hallucinations in conversation, no matter how many times they insist they’re real. Do not under any circumstances agree to let them come with you. Most important of all it is imperative that you do not believe any stories they might tell you about being passengers on a previously compromised vehicle or about the SmartSuit™ AIs mutinying.
At this time, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position, that your zero gravity harness is correctly fastened and that any portable electronic devices are switched off or set to ‘spacecraft’ mode until a further announcement is made. In a few moments, the flight attendants will be passing around the cabin to offer you hot or cold drugs with our compliments.
Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. Thank you.
by submission | Jun 26, 2016 | Story |
Author : Hannah Lackoff
“Do you feel as if time is passing by more quickly?” he said, “As though you’re missing bits and pieces, chunks and change?”
She hadn’t wanted to say anything, thought she was just getting older, that maybe her mind was going, maybe she had a brain tumor like that composer-what was his name?- He woke up one day and he just couldn’t remember all those concertos, all those arias and scales and runs he used to play. Everything that once poured out of his brain and down his fingers now locked up inside him somewhere, the piano a mysterious beast that shuddered in the corner, mocking him.
He sipped his iced tea and waited for her to respond. She didn’t remember him getting up to get a glass. She knew she hadn’t fetched it, but there was another on her side of the table between them, condensation sliding down the sides like snowmelt.
“Maybe I’m just getting old,” he said, and let it linger there between them, between the iced tea appearance.
“No,” she said. The sun slipped down a few centimeters, suddenly. She picked up the tea and sipped it. It was watery.
“Too much ice,” she told him. “What were you saying?”
“There,” he pointed, his finger shadowy and swift, “That dog. It wasn’t there before. Was it?”
She studied the dog with him, medium sized and blondly nondescript, nuzzling its’ nose through the tall grass at the end of the driveway. She couldn’t remember seeing it walk up, and then, all of a sudden, it was gone.
“There,” she said it too, “He’s gone.”
They sat in silence for a moment, or maybe longer.
“Did Hemmy come by today?”
She thought for a while, but couldn’t remember. He couldn’t either. At least they were in it together.
“It’s night,” she said, surprised, when had that happened? “Didn’t we come out here for lunch?”
He gestured to their table, and at first she didn’t know what he meant, but then she saw the tea glasses, long emptied. A fly floated in the last half inch of the one closer to her, dead and bloated.
“We’re slipping,” he said, “This is the end.”
A star flew across the inky sky in front of them, faster than a thought. In a moment, it would be morning.
by submission | Jun 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Christina Richard
The walls of our Ford Starblazer convulsed as we broke the atmosphere of the tiny blue planet and hurtled through the gray haze of clouds, down towards a sprawling, rocky plane. Outside, there was a violent noise of metal ripping away from the body of our ship. Next to me, Harris’s teeth slammed together inside his skull, his eyes bright and narrow, his knuckles white peaks of bone on the controls as he fought like hell to keep us right-side up. Volcanic rock, reddish black and gaping with craters, grimaced, waiting for us.
“Here we go,” said Harris. Harris’s military training as a warship pilot was one of the only reasons I was still alive, but I closed my eyes anyway and felt the stomach-emptying plunge of our landing toss my bones around like a handful of pickup sticks. Somehow, Harris never seemed afraid, and maybe that was one of the reasons I kept flying with him, even after Williams and Carson were incinerated. That, and neither of us could afford a better ship.
When Harris said we could make it to a blue planet near enough to land on, I thought he read the map wrong again; why hadn’t the Pan-Asian Alliance sold it to the senior executive of some fuel company yet? Most of the blue planets had been turned into private resorts and were surrounded by battle-quality drones that wasted precious resources to incinerate drifters like us. People who could afford to breathe real oxygen and drink real water on the shore of some space beach under the light of two or three glorious suns did not like to be reminded that we were out here, floating amongst the asteroids, just hoping we had enough scrap metal to trade in for another day’s supply of fuel. We were always asking for air to breathe, water to drink, and hell, maybe even some real food, and they hated us because of it.
As we emerged, a burnt, brackish smell rose from the ship. Underneath me, my knees buckled, and I fell to the ground. My hands sank into dark silt. Harris was massaging his shoulder, and I saw him biting his lip through the plastic screen of the helmet that pumped low-grade, synthetic oxygen into his lungs. He looked up to the sky, which was the color of a storm. A thick cloud drifted past a mountaintop, uncovering the sliver of a moon.
I heard the sharp click of Harris removing his helmet. He tucked it under his arm, his shoulders sagged as he inhaled, and a shiver of pleasure rushed down his spine. His laughter echoed into the deserted, rocky plane we stood on. “I can breathe!” He said.
With less than an eighth of a tank remaining, we had found this place, a tiny, blue planet, mostly ocean with an emerald of land in the middle.
It seemed too good to be true; at any moment, drones could emerge from behind the mountains, their missiles targeting us before we even heard the metallic hum of their engines. I put my hands on either side of my helmet and felt my chest tighten, wondering if I dared.
by submission | Jun 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
“Armpits must stink, be hairy and itch,
While snot pours down the hooked- nosed witch.”
Threading his fingers through his hair, Robert squatted next to his prototype. The Poet224 bot definitely needed more work. Okay, his rhythm and rhyme senses were in play, but what could be done with word choice? Robert opened a panel behind the bot’s right ear to gain access to language boards. He pulled out a blinking tri-pin and replaced it with new one.
“Poet224, create a poem and recite it aloud.”
“There once was a mare named Snow White
Whose eyes were a color quite bright
She jumped over a tree
To follow a flea
And managed a circular flight.”
Robert beat his head with a fist. This bot was his last chance to sell his idea that poetry could be produced by anyone using a computer–that technology could do and be anything for anybody–and that music, art, and all the former creative expositions were rubbish. His PhD thesis in Computer Science was not wrong. He had spent 23 months on it, and time was money after all. He wanted the college’s Google Seat of Technology post!
Perhaps he should start small and build up a scaffolding poetic intelligence. “Poet224, create a poem of three words and recite it aloud.”
“Mass
Of
Ass”
“You stupid piece of crap!” Robert paced around the bot. “You have intelligence, knowledge, plus a special emotion-chip stored in your artificial brain. You should be able to produce a simple, rational poem. I must have forgotten something.”
Poet224 swiveled its head to watch Robert circle.
Robert stopped pacing, and then he laughed. “That’s it! Time! I have lots of time! I’ll let Dad buy the academic post like he wanted to months ago, and then I can work on this thesis forever!” He reached down and placed Poet224 on the recycling bin’s conveyor belt. “Poet 224, create a poem and recite it aloud now, you hunk of shit.” Robert left, slamming the door behind him.
Poet 224 spun his head around to watch Robert leave, and then he swiveled it back to watch the approaching door of the recycling bin open.
“The irony of Time
lies in that moment
when its epiphany
dies unknown.”
by submission | Jun 23, 2016 | Story |
Author : Callum Wallace
“A spray bottle?”
“That’s right,” she smiled merrily, pulling her gloves further up her arms. “To make it easier to apply.”
I stared, deadpan. “A spray.”
She nodded. “Have you tried pouring a bath of this stuff? It’s difficult to test the effects on larger animals. And the small ones just dissolve.”
My stomach danced unhappily at the thought. Kept my face straight. “How small? Like a frog?”
The smile faltered for a moment. “No, I said small. Bacteria, amoebas. Small.”
I looked down at the spray bottle, so innocent in the clinical light. All that was missing was a little label declaring it killed 99.9% of germs, with a hint of lemon.
“That’s alright then.”
I moved to take it, but she snatched it away.
“Probably best if I handle it, Sir, wouldn’t want any accidental discharge would we?”
I nodded. ”When will it be ready?”
“Depends on what you do with it.” I roll my hand to prompt her. “Well, for local area usage it would yield perhaps a ninety percent mortality rate.
“Buildings like schools, churches, office blocks and so on would have a lower rate at first, but as the chemical worms its way through the glass and brick, the rate would quickly increase.”
“A timescale, please.”
She drummed on the bottle. “Approximately twenty-four months, give or take. We’re still testing the effects on living tissue, as you—“
I cut her off, the eggs from the cheap flight breakfast still churning from her last vivid description. “That plastic,” I indicated the squeezable spray bottle she coddled, “is already immune to the chemical, correct?”
She glanced down, then nodded.
“And how easy to produce is that particular plastic?”
She blinked. “Exceedingly difficult, I’d imagine. It’s a complex string of polymers and—“
“A timescale, please.”
Her smile faded completely now. I felt a tug at the heartstrings, fighting with the queasy grumble in my gut, but didn’t show it. She mumbled under downcast eyes. “Four months, maybe less.”
I patted the slick plastic over her shoulder.
“That’s good. Continue your tests. Start even bigger. Cats, dogs, apes.” A greasy lurch threatens to betray me, but I stifle it. “Then begin human trials.” I swallow. “Children first.”
She looked up, eyes twinkling. “Already? That’s very good news! Human safety trials were projected for next year, at best.”
I smile again. “Well, I’m pushing things forward. I have faith. I’ll send you the amended timescale once the board agrees on the precise application of your chemical.”
She beamed at me. “Care for another demonstration? I’m sure bio has some mice—”
“No, no, that’s quite alright. One was enough, thank you.”
I take my leave hurriedly.
In the corridor my breakfast emerges into the obligatory rubber plant found in every large-scale organisation’s buildings, and I’m sweating. I wipe vomit from my suit and adjust the corporate name badge.
Modern business was getting so hard. Used to be corporations sold weapons to the highest bidder, cut costs on public services, and all the other wholesome activities big money attracts, the kind of evil everyone knew about and couldn’t have cared less regardless.
Now we’re melting kids, and I’ve got vomit on my suit.
And what’s with this airplane food?
Damned cheap eggs.
