by submission | Apr 8, 2016 | Story |
Author : Katie Krantz
The woman and the school were equally sleek. Her hair and the metal exterior both shined: their luster was unnatural in the most pristine sense. Her heels clicked against the dark wood floors, and she gestured with her long, black nails to the various facets of the building, to classrooms, pods and such.
“With the integration of intravenous knowledge in our schools came with the alarming insight that youth these days just aren’t hungry for knowledge.” As she spoke, her matte lipstick began to crack, just hairline fractures that repaired themselves when she clacked her tombstone teeth back together for a moment, a second of silence.
“We attempted to rectify the issue by removing food from the lunchroom, and replacing it with a grey nutritional supplement. They didn’t seem to notice. In fact, we were getting higher ratings of satisfaction than before.” She laughed as though she were a genius. When her head shook, her hair stayed perfectly still atop it, perched like a bird. She clicked and clacked on towards the lunch room, where lines of grey-ish students shuffled towards grey lunches being distributed with the precision of a vaccine. As soon as we were close enough to notice the bags under their eyes, she whipped us away towards her state of the art library complex. It was the structure meant to hold up the cables that carried the school’s data.
“After the library had been completely covered in the fiber optic cables, we had to stop students from excavating books for fear they’d alter the structural integrity of the whole setup. We’re hoping the books will one day fossilize so that we can mine gilt-edged veins of ink-stone, perhaps to tile the bathrooms.” The cracks disappeared and reappeared. As she gestured to the slivers of pages coming out of the mass of cables, her silver bracelets became audible. Eventually, she herded the group of dazed parents towards the classrooms, and we shuffled along to halls where students studied.
She pushed open the door with a pale, bony hand, and the light from our side poured in, illuminating students slathered in dark brown. A puff of warm air breathed against our faces as we, the curious potential money-givers, peered in. As soon as everyone had their voyeuristic fill, she slammed the door shut and stood in front of it, facing us.
“We’ve had to preemptively erase all form of dress code to prevent conflict. Rather than uniform, the students slather themselves in mud. The heating bill has risen astronomically. It also seemed that the fluorescent lights were causing student depression, so we’ve swapped it for total darkness. Any questions?” The woman stared us down, daring us to challenge her with anything as obsolete as logic or concern. Next to me, my wife leaned in close to my ear.
“This seems perfect for Jeremy!”
by submission | Apr 7, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“This one, it’s too close. Something’s wrong!” Taylor Hines tapped the green screen, yelling at Corus, as her brilliant, red-scaled hands clawed the communications panel.
“Ogira 6. Ogira 6. Back away point three apars from the dwarf star. Ogira, respond.” Static and deep-space warbles returned on the speaker.
A snarling, high-pitched response followed. “We do not take orders from two legged.”
Taylor and Corus studied the round screen depicting four hundred gigantic freighters manipulating magnetars toward one side of the galaxy’s center. The stellar tugboats pushed and poked dead stars to manipulate pulsating neutron stars, but if herded too close the magnetar could awaken the deceased, creating a fusion burst, destroying the wrangler’s ship.
“Ogira 6,” Corus repeated. “You must comply. Repeat…” She stopped. The green dot depicting the Peronian’s ship disappeared. The brown circle, the dwarf, turned red on screen, vaporizing two more ships in a nearby quadrant, leaving their packages adrift.
Taylor stared at Corus as water flowed from bulbous double eyes drooping down from the square face of the command ship’s leader.
“Now you know,” Corus whimpered, “Why it was important to find you. We cannot lose another hundred. Without enough magnetars to divert the angle of the black hole, our client’s race will perish…perhaps only surviving another thousand years.”
She returned her attention to the screen. There was no voice traffic. No need to mourn. Every pilot knew the risk, but not everyone believed the capabilities of a new crewmember from an unknown planet.
“You were recently chosen for your unusual skills of knowing. None of our captains have this understanding. You also fit our profile. You are the last of your kind, are you not?”
“I’m not sure,” Taylor replied, collapsing back in his high-backed chair. “My parents were abducted by a snake race from Earth, like thousands each year. Many were eaten, but most were enslaved. My parents were saved at a space station auction raided by the Kersan Kahn. Kahns attack slave-making races and free their captives—then eat the slavers. The scaly bastards didn’t see that coming.”
“So, you hate those with scales instead of your pitiful pale covering?”
“No, no Corus. It’s not like that. Your race was not like theirs. It’s what my parents experienced. There was no way back for us. I’ll perish alone out here since my parents died. I’ll never mate…never love.”
“So you must understand why they picked all of us—orphans of our races. Our kinds were either destroyed by wars or bad choices. Our employer’s wisdom will turn this devourer of solar systems just slightly away from their civilization. That will give them another million years to evolve, yet they will not be blamed for they cannot be tied to our work, and we have no home worlds left to be punished.”
“And the other worlds? The ones now lost too early because we adjusted the black hole?”
“It swallows a thousand stars daily. Millions of cultures disappear. Their time is over. So it is in every galaxy, on every planet. Our client’s superiority designed this adjustment. That wisdom and influence gives them the right to continue.” Corus persisted in her surveillance of the armada.
“And we, the movers of these dead stars, will we be the forgotten…the forever unloved?”
“No, Taylor Hines. Billions will recall our heroic names in story and song for millennia, while on our worlds we would have been mere shadows in time the moment our eyes grew cold. Everyone else has a history to live, but we, on this voyage, have a destiny.”
by submission | Apr 6, 2016 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The low rumbling sound in my starship goes up in both pitch and volume. Even through the Koliada’s graviton fields and inertia attenuators, I can feel the vessel shuddering.
“Computer, report!”
“We have dropped out of FTL,” says my ship. “We are caught in a massive gravitational field.”
“Show me.”
A sphere appears in the holodisplay. The Koliada’s computer annotates the image. The object has as much mass as the Earth but is small enough that I could, in principle, hold it in one hand.
“What is that?” I ask the computer. “It doesn’t have an event horizon or a singularity so it doesn’t appear to be a black hole, but it’s too small and dense to be a neutron star.”
“The object appears to be a preon star.”
“A what?”
“A theoretical astronomical object composed of sub-quark matter.”
“Quarks are fundamental particles,” I protest. “There’s no such thing as sub-quark matter.”
“The evidence is conclusive,” my ship counters. “This discovery represents the first revision to the Standard Model of Particle Physics in over one thousand years assuming we survive to report our findings.”
The Koliada’s shuddering intensifies.
“Speaking of survival,” I reply, “how about getting us out of here?”
“I have been attempting to do so since we became caught in the preon star’s gravity well. I have made multiple attempts to move us away from the star, all unsuccessful.”
“That’s impossible. We can go faster than light. How can we not break free from any naturally-occurring gravitational field?”
“My FTL drive,” the ship responds, “has to be able to convert every particle of and within me into tachyons in less than Planck time or ten to the negative forty third power of one second. The surface gravity of the preon star is approximately three times ten to the sixteenth power g’s. I can’t perform a stable FTL transition fast enough inside this gravity well.”
I sigh. “Alright. Drive us toward the star and we’ll slingshot around it.”
“Impossible. The star’s gravity field is non-homogeneous like a black hole’s. If we attempt a gravity-assist maneuver as you propose, tidal forces will destroy us.”
“Okay,” I say with exasperation, “suggest something.”
“I advise you to go to the medical bay and let me perform a quantum tomogram of your brain. While I can’t convert us to tachyonic matter, I can send a tachyon wave transmission back to the Solar Assembly. I can upload my core memory and a scan of your brain to the Assembly conclave at Barnard’s Star. The conclave will have a copy of your DNA on file and will have no trouble fabricating a new body for you and then performing a neural rectification on it. My consciousness can be transferred to another ship.”
I think about how much all that will cost and wonder if being torn to shreds by tidal forces isn’t the worst thing that could happen. I finally get up and start walking to the medical bay.
I awaken twenty subjective minutes later in a hospital station in the Barnard system. In short order, three irate Assembly bureaucrats enter my room and tell me a certain A.I. is not only declining to disclose location and sensor data about an alleged preon star but is threatening to delete the corresponding files unless I tell it otherwise.
I smile at the three stern government functionaries. “Settle my medical bill and give me and my A.I. the fastest starship you have and I’ll see what I can do.”
by submission | Apr 5, 2016 | Story |
Author : Beck Dacus
“I’m here, Vickers,” Ricky said, walking in to the wire-filled room, setting down his backpack and collapsing into the chair in front of the monitor. “I got the guy. What was his name?”
“Irwin Farlow,” Vickers said from upstairs. “You captured his mind, how do you not know his name?”
“I don’t bother myself with those details. Now are you gonna interrogate him, or what?”
Vickers grunted, and Ricky could hear his footsteps approaching the stairs. When he had come down, he told Ricky to, “Put it in.”
Ricky extracted a hard drive from one of his many backpack pockets, and put it into the system unit. The computer, immediately, and somewhat instinctively, started to read the contents. The progress bar was soon replaced by a message saying, “Running program….”
“Wha…” said the computer. “Where the hell am I?”
“What’s the password?”
“Huh?”
“What is the password to the vault?”
“What the hell are you talking about? Who are you?”
“I didn’t bring you here to ask questions! Now tell me the password, or I’ll delete you!”
“Delete me? What do you mean? Kill me?”
“Yeah, I guess. Now, I answered you. Return the favor, and tell me the damn password!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! How do you delete me!?”
“Fine! You’re not Irwin Farlow, you’re a copy of his brain! We’re interrogating you and not him so that if you don’t GIVE US ANSWERS, we can kill you and have another to further interrogate. Now, do you want to cooperate?”
“I… uhh… um… th-they told m-me n-n-not to tell any-anyone! Please! DON’T KILL ME!”
“Just tell us, and we won’t.”
“I can’t! They’ll kill me, some form of me, if I do! PLEASE!”
“That’s a no, Ricky. Delete him.”
“OH GO–” The computer went silent, and a message stated, “Restarting program….”
Frantic gasping came out of the speakers next.
“You… monster.”
“Good. You saw what happened to the last guy. Now. Will you tell us or not?”
by submission | Apr 4, 2016 | Story |
Author : Glenn S. Austin
It was the first ship to be outfitted with the Time Jump and the Magnetic Field Drive. It was the perfect pairing of technology. The right tool for the specific research that Gleason was pursuing.
Traverse back in time billions of years to when the Sun was just a cloud of hydrogen. Then, on consecutive Time Jumps, watch the cloud as it compressed, coalesced, and eventually ignited into our Sun. The Time Jump seemed to be perfect, although it had its limitations. You could only go backwards in time and then return to the present, which was fine for this particular research program.
The Magnetic Field Drive, created a magnetic gravity field that would effectively suction up, compress, and then ignite the free hydrogen to propel the ship to various points within the cloud. An abundance of hydrogen was expected at the far end, so there would be no problem fueling the drive or collecting the energy to recharge the Time Jump.
Gleason Jumped.
All worked as expected and placed him and his ship in the middle of a vast hydrogen cloud, exactly as predicted. He checked the systems and onboard chronometer and all was functional. It was surreal, here he was, in the middle of all the matter that would become the center of our Solar System. Eventually, when compressed, it would provide the heat and mass that breathed life into Earth and warmed the beings that inhabited it.
As Gleason’s sense of awe subsided, he got to work. First, start the Magnetic Field Drive and collect energy to recharge for the Jump home. Next, check all the monitoring sensors that collected and stored data for later analysis. Then a side job that he had planned to help fund his research. Collect quantities of this primordial hydrogen in containers to bring back to the future. It was going to be the perfect gimmick. Package the gas in souvenir bottles, and sell them to folks who would pay big for a bottle of the hydrogen that created the Sun.
That done, it was time to take a trip around the Cloud to measure the different hydrogen densities. Gleason activated the MF Magnetic Field Drive D and the ship accelerated leaving a fiery tail behind as the hydrogen plasma ignited and thrust the ship forward. It was beautiful and the onboard cameras got some great pictures of million mile long trails of burning hydrogen.
Gleason watched in fascination as the trails expanded to consume even more hydrogen and leave large swaths of empty space where the gas burned off.
How long would it take for those voids to fill in with the surrounding Hydrogen?
As that depended on the various minute gravity influences, his propulsion trails could theoretically endure for millions of years. He grinned, it was nice to know that something he did here would have a long lasting effect, even though there was no one to see it.
Time to head back. Gleason activated the Time Jump and was instantly back in the Solar system, or was he?
The Sun didn’t look right. It seemed dimmer. Was he in the wrong timeframe? The chronometer said he was right back where he started. Where was Earth? He should be close to the Lagrange point between the Earth and the moon. But there was nothing. A quick scan, four planets orbiting the dim star. It was all gone, no Earth, no humanity, no history.
Gleason figured it had been the long trails of burning Hydrogen but he looked at the souvenir bottles of gas and wondered if just that little amount had made the difference.
