by submission | Apr 13, 2016 | Story |
Author : Sharon Molloy
The bean juice tastes as bitter as it always does. I drink it only to stay awake and so live another day.
The rest of the tribe piously swallows it as part of the sun worship ritual. They also swallow stupidly circular logic: This plant is the sun’s favorite, because the sun gives it more energy, and it does this because…
The moment the drinking concludes, the village races to the ceremonial hut, to don the special costume and seize a musical instrument: drum, flute, or wooden clacker. I don’t want to do any of it, but I have no way of declining. The ritual will work, they say, only if the entire village participates; any who hesitate, let alone refuse, are “removed.”
We quickly assemble to march up the mountain. They say they meet the sun halfway, but I’m certain it’s much higher than they think.
They dare not keep a sensible pace. They believe if we are not all in place before sunrise, the sun will never rise again. They won’t even make the climb less dangerous by lighting a torch; if the sun thinks another sun got here first, the idiotic story goes, it will feel rejected and abandon us forever.
I always lag. Always. For some reason, I can neither awaken early, nor get to sleep early. Despite the powerful drink, some mornings I barely make it through the ceremony. I fight my body just to stay conscious; with each blink my eyes stay closed longer and longer. My head feels far away and my heart is beating cold water.
So unbearable is this daily torment that I once dared suggest we try ensuring the sun’s return by enacting this entire ritual at sunset instead. Nobody would be getting up before dawn, and nobody would have to stay up late, either.
That was when the rumors began, and a dark cloud of suspicion has hung over me ever since. They are still trying to decide if I hate the sun or if it hates me. Neither, of course, is true. (Neither do they notice me continuing to work all afternoon even as they sneak off for naps.)
With every step, my feet grow heavier. Just as I am about to collapse, we reach the top of the mountain and begin begging the sun to return… as if it was going to do anything else. The music, or noise, starts, an idea they must have gotten from watching birds and frogs attract mates.
Even as the eastern sky grows pale, the noise increases to an alarming crescendo. Every single morning, the village believes anew that this could be the fateful day when the sun does not return.
Finally, a ray of sunlight shows above the edge of the world; everyone screams, cries, hugs each other, leaps into the air. Once more, the ritual worked; the world won’t end today after all. I’m just relieved it’s over and slump –
“ – is sleeping!”
“ – offended the sun!”
“ – only one more day!”
“ – will be the last sunset!”
“Remove him! Remove him!!”
“No! Please! I’m awake… I saw it rise-”
They won’t listen. Countless hands seize me and
drag me toward the edge of the mountain; jagged rocks wait below like the teeth of a –
“Hey! Good morning! All ready to get started this bright and early morning?”
I stand up and rinse my coffee mug without one word to my irritating coworker. Just having to be here this early is bad enough.
by submission | Apr 12, 2016 | Story |
Author : Charlie Sandefer
The elderly scientist took a nervous breath before he stepped into the machine. He typed in May 23, 2016 and flipped the switch on the center console. The machine began to shake violently. His frail frame was slammed against his seat. He tightened every muscle in his body, fighting against the G forces. He felt his consciousness begin to fade away, but before his vision was swallowed by darkness, he thought of his son. He also remembered the crash. At the time of the accident, the old man was checking his phone. It was his own fault that he didn’t notice the sedan pulling out in front of him. He walked away, but his son didn’t. The death of his only child wracked the man with grief and guilt, but he was on a mission to bring him back.
The scientist awoke lying flat on a concrete surface. He jumped to his feet, trying to make sense of his surroundings. He realized he was in the basement of his own home. He tiptoed up the stairs to investigate whether or not his device was successful. He cracked the door to his room and under the covers of the bed was his former self. The scientist celebrated silently, elated that his machine had actually sent him ten years into the past. He looked at the alarm clock next to the bed. It read 5:30 am. In two hours the accident would occur and his son would be killed, he had to work fast.
He racked his brain for a solution to prevent the crash. Then it came to him, he was texting while driving, which caused the collision. If he destroyed his phone, he could prevent the accident. His smartphone was sitting on the bedside table. He snatched it and ran outside. The large rock he found in the backyard smashed the phone into several pieces.
His plan worked perfectly. The father left the house without his phone that morning. After the car pulled out of the driveway, the elderly scientist came out of hiding, a smile on his face. The grin faded, though, when the car turned right instead of left. To find out where the automobile was headed, the old man hot wired the neighbor’s car and sped after it. He was finally able to get the vehicle back in his line of sight. It signaled to turn into the electronics store, but before it could complete its turn, a large pickup truck ran the red light. The old man’s jaw dropped as he watched the car get crushed like a tin can.
He ran towards the totaled vehicle and clawed at the twisted metal, desperately trying to free himself and his son from the car. The damaged gas tank ruptured and caught fire. All hope of saving the two victims was lost when the bodies were enveloped in flame. Tears filled the man’s eyes as he stepped back from the wreckage.
Before he could come to terms with what just happened, his fingers began to tingle. The flesh on his hands started to flake off and the bones turned to dust. The scientist started to scream when he realized that his mistake was also fatal to his older self.
If his younger self died, the older version would never have existed. The universe had discovered its discrepancy and corrected it. The man gulped down as much air as possible and let out one final howl before he was stricken from the record of space and time.
by Julian Miles | Apr 11, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s a blue moon above and it’s nothing more than that. Here on Libby, the moons are blue. The rocks here are all shades of blue thanks to a chemical process that occurred during the creation of this planet.
The vegetation is blue because Alistair Peabody was a hopeless romantic as well as richer than several star empires. When his little blue companion of twenty years coughed her last, he swore he’d make a world in her memory. He bribed and cajoled and financed takeovers and had technology stolen.
He set out to make Libby the blue heaven he’d promised to make for his girl. A place where the lonely could come to be eased, the dying could come to find peace, and he could visit when the memories got a little overwhelming.
Over there is the mausoleum he built for her body, and it’s as surprising as the rest of this place; tasteful, delicate, a true work of art. The blue marble shines with an inner light that even the scientists were at a loss to explain. I’ve guessed that it’s a side effect of the white marble innards slowly being turned blue.
Libby started with a dozen work teams: over two hundred people. It now has a population of eight, and will never have more. The blue motif Alistair determined for his memorial needed to go deep, and he implemented some truly ground-breaking technological solutions.
Unfortunately, the pigmentation thingys proved to be very good at blue. After turning themselves blue, anything and everything else turned blue. Animals. Insects. Spaceships. Biscuits. People.
And that blue is contagious. Blue from Libby will attempt to turn everything it comes into contact with blue. It’s the first human-created, galactically recognised technopestilence.
So I’ll sit here and sip blue coffee laced with blue rum as the blue bats flit about my head and my blue hair remains without a trace of grey despite this being my ninetieth birthday. And no, I have not the slightest clue how I can still see. My eyes are orbs of blue, but they still work. It’s something the scientists stranded here researched until they died – still without the slightest glimmer of a solution.
Damn you, Alistair. I only signed on to design the formal gardens around the mausoleum – the ones that no-one will ever visit.
by submission | Apr 10, 2016 | Story |
Author : Joshua Doyle
We could have seen it coming for a couple of years. Identification of pathways that lead to cell aging, the discovery of a method of removing the “unwanted side effects” from THC, the discovery that tetrahydrocannabinol could be used to target and suppress specific gene expression pathways.
Each discovery was compartmentalized and the information remained on tech sites, rarely surfacing on general news sites and completely ignored by the television networks. Lab coats couldn’t compete with exhibitionists thrown together in an apartment. Most people had no idea it was even on the radar.
You have to hand it to Big Pharma – they’d really nailed the whole targeted marketing thing. If you didn’t have a net worth of 8 figures, you didn’t even hear about it for the first few years. There were rumors, but they usually came from potheads and were easily ignored.
Then Jean Fabre sent a stash of documents to WikiLeaks, and all hell broke loose. He disappeared before he could find a state that would provide asylum, but the information and evidence he provided turned out to be harder to eliminate. When news of the jade pill reached the general public, doctors’ offices and pharmacies were flooded. The global economy basically ground to a halt for a week as everyone skipped work to wait in line.
The riots started when they heard the price.
For a while, the principal goal of any person living on the planet was to make enough money to afford Vialogy. Forget the latest, highest definition television – paying their dose became the main goal of the “middle class”.
Then some enterprising biochemist named Alice discovered that the active ingredient in the jade pill could be generated with a simple (to her) modification to the genome of a particular sativa strain. Against all odds, she managed to get it out into the world before her minivan exploded on the highway with an abnormally high lead content.
The “War on Drugs” quickly went from a government-driven operation to a privately funded campaign as pharmaceutical companies tried to protect their golden goose. Private armies descended on grow-ops around the globe. The scope of the operations resembled the wet dream of a Bureau of Prohibition agent.
In the end, they were no match for, well, everyone. The world had found its unifying cause, and it wasn’t an asteroid or aliens. Finally, numbers truly outweighed wealth.
Within a year, marijuana was legal worldwide and Alice was being grown openly in backyards and apartment closets around the globe. The version of the drug without the psychogenic effects became readily available, but most people chose to use the “natural” version.
While some have associated the drop in crime and the reduction in war around the planet to the fact that the majority of the global population is permanently stoned, others say that the change in perspective offered by the reality of the modification is the driving factor. But in the end, does the why really matter?
The world hasn’t seen a war in 70 years. While the modern state of the world has created new problems, the new perception of timelines seems to be concentrating efforts on resolution of these problems instead of simply pushing them off for future generations.
There is a new fringe group. The Mortalists claim that our current society is unnatural and inherently evil, but they are easily marginalized. They have even been added to the DSM as a mental disorder, obviously.
After all, who wouldn’t want to live forever?
by submission | Apr 9, 2016 | Story |
Author : Stephen Ahlgrim
May 16, 1787
I cannot pretend to hide my excitement. My ship sets sail today, to the Misty Islands I had only read in folklore. Origin of the Species sits apprehensively on top of my sack. I am certain that Darwin’s spirit is as anxious to see the fabled Homo Triumphus as much as I am. My dreams in the past weeks have danced with sharpened sticks and loin cloths and campfires where these peoples tell myths of their ancestors. A history all their own unspoiled by civilization. I wonder greatly if they have invented a language of their own.
June 6, 1787
Last night’s storm has left us with fewer rations than I am comfortable with. We are miles off course, but the Captain whose name escapes me assures me that we will reach the land God forgot about. I cannot believe such a mystery still exists in the Atlantic, a tamed ocean. It is strange to think that I have not seen a bird in 9 days.
June 12, 1787
Smoke! Oh God has surely not forgotten me, even if my destination is beyond His great sight! The Captain, whose name I have since learned is Abel, saw the pillar that would be our saving billowing into the air briefly before sunset. I am filled with glee to know that tomorrow, with the wind at our backs, we will reach the Misty Islands. I am famished, yet the only thing I hunger for more is discovery. To shake the hands of these simple nomads and fishermen, to see the color of their skin, and to be the first civilized person to record their existence beyond the inebriated tales of pirates and traders is a yearning in my belly far greater than that of forgone sustenance.
June 15, 1787
We were attacked! The assailants were unseen, however I believe them to be my Homo Triumphus. Seafaring craft. Who would have thought! Our ship’s mast has suffered greatly, though not as much as Captain Abel. An arrow-head pierced his empty belly. The tip was made of a metal I am unfamiliar with. A cleverly crafted serrated hook on it made removal difficult. Besides his wound, he has taken immediately ill. The tip glows slightly in the darkness. Was it poisoned? Without a mast we are helpless to sail further. I await our next visit with the arrow safely in my pocket. I still clearly see the tower of black smoke, so they will surely come again tonight.
June 16, 1787
I fear these may be my last words to the world. Discovery is not what it seems. The beauty in Darwin’s theory of evolution is a perverted romanticized lens of the truth. God did not forget these lands. He banished them. Tiny demons, covered in black soot forge these seas without sails, in metal ships without smoke stacks. Our black powder is meaningless to their armor that gleams like knights of old. They launched their tiny glowing hooks without shafts and bows. Amidst the cries and screams of a seemingly complex language, I have only picked up one word, though not its meaning: croatoan. In this endeavor I suppose I have been successful. If anyone by God’s grace comes to read this final chapter of my life, please take heed, and stay far away from the Misty Islands. Homo Triumphus is a predatory and vile species. They are not our brethren.
