by submission | Jun 2, 2015 | Story |
Author : Janet Shell Anderson
The sunlight’s dim, strange, blood colored. “I was framed.”
He doesn’t say “That’s what they all say.” He doesn’t know enough. He doesn’t know what I am, what he is, what it is to be horribly in love. He will.
I’m in prison on KEPPLER 442b, a Goldilocks world, and lucky to be here.
“You killed five people,” he says; his voice cracks slightly. He’s fifteen, knows nothing, has never been off this world. He’s interviewing me because he’s an aristo here and they have to do civil service from the time they’re kids, start at the bottom.
A murder conviction on homeWorld gets you death, immediately, unless you’re pregnant, then death immediately after the birth, unless you can raise the wind, get enough cash to go to KEPPLER 442b instead. I got pregnant, got the cash, took the sickening long trip to this dim world with its red dwarf sun. Kids run the prisons. They’ve got lists everywhere on every wall. Everything that’s not forbidden is required.
I’m a Temptress Level Three. I don’t work well with lists.
“How are you getting along?” he asks.
I’m homesick. Who would think?
“It’s beautiful here. I love it. The people are so kind,” I lie.
They’re idiots. Who puts their children in such danger? The place is all desperate felons, red light, deserts, waterfalls, falsepalms, fancy plumed redfish in the pools, legged snakes that sing till dawn, starry, starry nights. No walls. No fences. Where would you go? Out beyond this oasis there is nothing but red rock, red sand, death.
It’s called MUCHADO.
“Your family are beetle producers?” I ask him.
What’s his name? All the big money here in this oasis is in beetles. These people raise them, eat them, wear them, just about marry them. Name them. That bugs me. Not sure what the beetles think of the relationship. Maybe it’s mystical.
“Yes. I’m glad you like it here,” he says.
I hate it. I spent a fortune and hate it. I miss DC, the Tidal Basin, the Potomac, the White Mansion, the Lincoln Temple, the reflection pool, the Capital of Allworlds, Rock Creek, tulip trees, Meadowbrook Stables, light baths, Beech Drive, winter. I miss Loki, my seventy-five-pound, semi-domestic Norwegian Forest Cat who could talk. Mostly he said things like “Wurp” and “Wow,” but he tried. I miss my ex.
What is this boy’s name? Patrick? Philip? My ex was Cecil Howard; we married at thirteen. His family had it annulled.
“Philip,” I say, and he smiles. “How do you raise beetles?” I sit close, smile. I’m twenty going on one thousand. His pupils are wide. He likes me.
By midnight he will be horribly in love.
“Beatrice,” he says. “It’s a wonderful name.” Sure.
After the annulment, Loki and I went to a few houses of the rich, late at night, when no one was home, borrowed a few things, jewelry, whatnots, paintings, this and that, sold some of it. Nobody missed it much. Being a Temptress Level Three gets tiresome, so much changing clothes. We got caught by some frat boys from Sigma Sigma Sigma Sigma Aldebaran. They threw Loki into a high-beam light bath, and he screamed “no, no, no,” as he died. I’ve never forgotten. Five of them died after that. One ran away.
My cousin represented me. Selda McGregor. She wanted to plead down. To what? Hanging instead of being shot? I said to give me five minutes with the judge. Five minutes. She said she’d be disbarred.
Now the kid’s gone walkabout. I’m here in my “room” with my illegal pearl earrings that change perceptions, illegal face powder that’s really a drug, illegal lip rouge, a drug I actually like, my deadly and illegal scent from beetle wings, my prison uniform that I can make transparent, and my strappy shoes that cost a mint. My eyes can be any color I want, my hair the same, my body, any shape I want. The kid’s going to fall horribly in love and remember me forever; I’m going to escape and go home.
Selda will be about a thousand years old when I get back, my child almost that old. Who knows if my ex is alive? Cats have nine lives. I’ll bring Loki back.
And then cat and I will find the one that got away. How old will he be, I wonder?
by Julian Miles | Jun 1, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Chandra Fourteen is an archaeological mystery. Not regarding its lost civilisation, nor the history of that civilisation. What everyone who encounters it becomes desperate to answer is why they did what they did.
Imagine a society at a pinnacle only dreamt of by man. Disease all-but banished, global peace established, a society turning itself toward furtherance of the physical, philosophical and spiritual sciences. A bright, beautiful world, geologically stabilised by a marvellous series of vents and pressor systems – that we still don’t understand – around their equivalents of the ‘Ring of Fire’.
That society has over ten thousand years of recorded history, showing parellels with humanity that cease when they nearly destroyed themselves in a global biowarfare holocaust. From that point it was as if they had gained something from the event that man has yet to realise. If the records found are complete, they never made war after that near-apocalypse.
Take time to mentally voyage across a world resembling the finest of climes that Earth has to offer, from sub tropical to frozen poles. See the artificial volcanoes that stabilise the world and allow a measure of weather control.
Now turn your gaze eastward, looking out across a gigantic ocean, seeing the peaks of the volcanoes like fenceposts stretching for hundreds of miles, then pause as you see that one of the ‘fenceposts’ has grown.
Impossibly tall, the vent installation at the centre of their greatest ocean stretches into orbit, a feat of engineering that has human engineers scanning it with a mix of glee, awe and despair.
How long it took to accomplish that feat is unknown. What followed took a lot longer, was far more difficult and infinitely more puzzling. This enlightened, advanced civilisation channelled it’s energies into putting the magma from the planet’s core into orbit.
It is insane to see this hollow sphere of barely ten-kilometre thick pumice, wrapped about a framework of a ceramic/metallic alloy that is still deemed impossible by our science. That sphere encases a dead planet, dead in a way never before encountered. They shut out the sun and, as far as can be ascertained, waited for one of the various lingering deaths to claim them. A monstrous, planetary suicide.
Professors Eppes and Rhodensteen have only one tenuous explanation, which is causing an uproar that looks to increase before it settles. It is based upon the one inscription on the atmosphere-piercing spire. At the top, plainly etched after the insane pyrospire ceased belching magma, is and inscription that translates as ‘We have become polluted/unclean’. From that, the learned Professors have drawn a conclusion: the society fell foul of mass delusion prompted by religious dogma.
When everyone has stopped screaming at each other, maybe we can return to looking for the truth – be it heretofore unexpected reason, or sad proof.
by submission | May 31, 2015 | Story |
Author : Page Turner
The plastic cover Nadia had snapped onto the mattress earlier crinkled as she sat down. Lazily, she stretched out on her bed and picked up the remote. Click. Car racing, sit com, cable cooking show. Informercial, infomercial, informercial. Golf. Infomercial. Nice little exercise machine though. It was a shame she was so in shape.
She watched as a young woman with outdated spangly earrings tried to sell her a white blouse she called “simply marvelous.” Give me a break, Nadia thought. Who says marvelous anymore? Turning off the TV, she picked up the phone, a big heavy relic she kept around because she loved the weight of the receiver in her hand.
“Hello.” She had to hand it to him. Not everyone could get it on the first ring every time.
“Hello, Isaac.” She let her voice sit for a moment, knowing he would recognize it.
“Geez, Nadia, it’s freezing over here… what the hell did you do?”
She smiled. “Oh, just a little something. Don’t you worry about that… I have more important things I’d like to talk about.”
“No,” he said. “You listen to me! I want the heat back on soon or I’ll –”
“What’s that, honey?” she said, raising her voice .”I’ll have to turn down the furnace so I can hear you.” She dropped the phone onto the handset.
Three seconds later, the phone started to ring. Nadia looked back at it. Sighing, she pointed at the phone with her finger. Closing her eyes, she imagined the explosion. When she opened them again, the phone burst into flames. With the level-headed stare she gave it, the fire went right out, leaving the phone completely unscathed.
There, she thought to herself. He won’t be calling again. Human males are such pests.
by submission | May 30, 2015 | Story |
Author : Emily Stupar
“I know it’s not glamorous, baby. But someone’s got to fill out the paperwork, and you’ve got the best handwriting.”
Stephanie looks up at him from the couch, her face neutral. “I’ll do it, but you know what it’s gonna cost you.”
Gil nods. “Fine, fine, fine. I’ll feed the damn baby.”
He wanders into the kitchen and hits the switch for the flickering light. On top of the tiny refrigerator sits a tin overflowing with plastic clips, rubber bands, and empty lighters. Gil dumps the entire thing onto the counter top to find the patch he’s looking for.
A minute later he bounds back past Stephanie and down the apartment’s only hallway. He returns with an infant held triumphantly in the air. “How are you, baby boy? Ready for some lunch? You are!”
Through the feeding, cooing, playing, and eventual luring of the child to sleep, Stephanie remains impassive on the couch, dutifully completing the monthly Department of Emotional Services form.
Gil returns and collapses on the couch next to her, peeling the spent patch from his forearm. The color fades from his cheeks and the lopsided smile loses all its warmth, hanging dead and misplaced for a beat after the emotion dries up.
“Baby’s asleep.”
Stephanie responds with a grunt. Gil stares in silence at the wall until she plops the forms and pen down. “They’re done.”
“Great. What time did you say Rondo’s coming?”
“Half hour.”
An hour later there comes a knock on the door and Rondo lets himself in. He spreads his arms wide, practically bouncing around the room and speaking so fast his words blend together. “Hey GilSteph! SorrI’mlate I just had to, yaknow – Well I got somegoodstuff and I was droppinoff and then I remembered I promised! You gottatrythis, man!”
They sit still and pliable on the couch while he produces a pair of patches and slaps them onto their forearms. Stephanie vaults out of her seat.
“It’s cool, Rondo, don’t worry about it. Wow, I dunno the last time I had such good Happy stuff. Must be selling like crazy, huh?”
Gil wraps an arm around her waist. “Oh, of course, I bet it is. Wow, really great, we weren’t expecting anything good until after we get our papers in. Just let me know if you need me to take some off your hands.”
Rondo laughs and makes himself comfortable on the couch, running through a few non sequitur stories of clients and run-ins with the cops. The patches are just starting to wear off by the time he springs out the door: a miniature whirlwind leaving destruction and a terrifying silence in his wake.
Stephanie and Gil curl into each other on the couch as the replacement emotion drains slowly out of their systems. Tomorrow one of them will take the completed paperwork to the Department of Emotional Services and receive a new stockpile of the essentials: love, nurturing, anxiety, and, since the baby’s birthday is coming up, a bit of state-sanctioned excitement.
Drifting to sleep next to Stephanie, residual remnants of Gil’s fatherly instincts ghost through his veins. Outside the window, a cat yowls with a sound like a distressed infant and he fidgets but doesn’t wake.
by Stephen R. Smith | May 29, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Tamis woke under the heat of the mid morning sun, the ocean reaching tentative tendrils up the smooth sand to lick at his feet. The last evening was a grey cloud, but he’d evidently passed out on the beach again. Levering up on one elbow, he followed the beach-line unbroken to the horizon, then pushed up into a sitting position and turning, scanned to the horizon on his other side. Nothing to see, apparently nobody up yet.
Last night…
A fragment of a song flitted through his mind, and he latched onto it, pushing at its edges to try and expose the entire tune. There was something familiar, but without context…
The girl breezed by in the periphery of his mind’s eye, but as he reached for the memory it dissolved, like a chalk drawing in the rain.
On the sand he’d absently scratched the crude outline of a heart, and the letter ‘T’.
She must be here somewhere.
Climbing to his feet he began to walk along the shoreline, the waves still reaching for him and he staying just beyond their touch, taunting the massive body of water. ‘You can want me, but you can’t have me.’
The beach gave way on one side to a thick expanse of jungle, trees reaching skyward choked at their bases by vines and bushes peppered with brightly coloured flowers. Birds chattered to each other unseen, and occasionally something big would breach out in the open water. Close to the shore schools of needlefish darted towards the shore and back again, a glittering mass of light-ribbons moving as one just beneath the surface.
He passed an almost familiar Victorian mansion set back in the greenery and covered with plant-life, it’s architect long forgotten and the jungle slowly reclaiming it. The structure filled him with a nagging unease that he could neither shake nor coax out in to the light over the next hour of walking.
From the corner of his eye he saw her again, tanned skin wrapped in red tropical printed silk, but as he turned to look she had disappeared into the green. A fist closed on his heart and his stomach lurched, he had to find her, had to have her again… Again?
In the sand at his feet was the crude outline of a heart, the letter ‘T’ scratched inside.
Had he been walking that long? Was the island that small? He looked again, slowly turning, following the beach to the horizon in both directions.
Not an island. A loop. A construct.
His mind raced as he started walking again, consciously willing his heart-rate to remain neutral, his pace natural. If he was jacked in someone would be monitoring his vitals and he needed to exploit the relative freedom the unpopulated beach afforded him while it lasted.
Venturing closer to the water, he let the cool ocean wash over his feet as he walked, the schools of needlefish parting and swimming past him seemingly unconcerned by his presence, but not oblivious to it.
Stopping, he dropped to his hands and knees in the sand and dug a hole half a meter across, forming a berm with the wet sand around its edges. The hole filled from the water beneath, and once it was complete he busied himself coaxing the slender fish towards him then flipping them out of the ocean and into the pool. Having trapped enough, he sorted the construct’s predictably sized simulacra, small, medium and large, and returned all but three of the largest and half a dozen of the smallest back into the ocean. The remaining fish he pinned gently to the bottom of the pool with one finger, watching his print burn into their scaly skin. He could affect the programming of insignificant things, he’d spent enough time in virtual and coding constructs to do that, but he would need to be very careful. He sequenced them, the short ones one through three, and seven through nine, and the long ones four through six, then busied himself for a while digging a trench from the pool back out to the open water.
When the fish had all escaped, he struck off towards the jungle and the red dressed woman he knew he was expected to find, but must be careful not to. Whatever she was, whatever piece of knowledge she represented, it must remain out of his reach, and thus the reach of his interrogators until his message arrived and a trace negotiated back to him.
The song fragment raised itself again, and he pushed it aside, humming instead a Gaelic tune he’d practiced for such an eventuality.
It was a song he could lose himself in for days.
