by submission | May 18, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“We’re almost ready,” said Olav to his companion, Isak. “Are the others out of range?”
“Yes, all the ships are gone,” replied Isak. “It’s just us now.”
The two of them watched UY Scuti waver on their ship’s display like a reflection in water distorted by ripples. But UY Scuti was no reflection. It was a red supergiant star with five billion times the volume of Sol. The great artificial rings that surrounded the enormous sun were far too small to be visible. But they were there, spinning around the great star faster and faster, distorting the fabric of spacetime. If UY Scuti replaced Sol, the former’s photosphere would extend beyond the orbit of Jupiter. In a few moments, the star would be compressed to the dimensions of a proton.
“Think we’ll survive?” asked Isak.
“We both made backup copies of our minds,” responded Olav matter-of-factly.
“I know. But I mean…us.”
“There’s a good chance we won’t,” said Olav. “No one’s ever tried to punch a hole out of our D-brane and into another dimension.”
“Assuming our universe is a very large D-brane extended over three spatial dimensions,” remarked Isak. “If that’s the case and all material objects are just open strings bound to this D-brane and gravity is the result of closed strings exerting their force from ‘outside’ our universe…”
“We’ll know either way soon enough,” said Olav.
The ship’s computer started moving the vessel closer to the imploding star.
“I hope opening a hyperspace tunnel out of our brane-space doesn’t do any harm,” said Isak.
“The government approved this. Even if it did cause something catastrophic, in the long run the race would benefit from it,” said Olav.
“Well, that’s taking optimism a bit far,” replied Isak.
“But it’s true. Look at history. Back in 2758, when Eta Carinae went supernova, the gamma ray burst destroyed Earth’s ozone layer. Muon radiation killed almost everything and ultraviolet radiation killed what was left. But the humans in underground colonies on Earth’s Moon and Mars and inside hollowed-out asteroids survived. The survivors were a select population: Intelligent, highly motivated, physically and emotionally tough. It was from this adventurous stock that the human population was restored.”
Isak looked at his companion in disbelief. “It was the worst mass extinction event in history!”
“Oh, certainly it was a horrific nightmare. But without it, mankind would have remained confined to one solar system.”
“Next you’ll be telling me the Plague of Tau Ceti IV was a great leap forward.”
“It was. After the plague, legislation blocking experiments in transhumanism was relaxed and later repealed. The transhuman meta-race wouldn’t exist across the Milky Way if the Tau Ceti plague hadn’t happened. I know it seems grotesque that that’s how progress is made, but–”
Olav was interrupted by the sound of alarms. UY Scuti seemed to suddenly iris down like the image on an ancient television set that had been switched off. The ship lurched forward at high speed toward the narrow tunnel that was opening.
“I sincerely hope this doesn’t turn out to be one of your great moments in the history of progress,” said Isak as the small ship disappeared into higher dimensions.”
by submission | May 17, 2015 | Story |
Author : Hannah Jenkins
What is the nature of the human soul? That old favourite after-dinner topic of philosophers and theologians has suddenly become much more important, as it is dragged out of the hypothetical realm into cold, hard reality.
What is the soul made of? Where does it go after death? Where is it now? Does it sit in the stomach, undetectable until it leaps with excitement or sinks with despair? Is it in the heart, providing the energy and inspiration behind every beat? Is it in the brain, held in a net of glittering neurons? Or does it roam the body freely, flowing in our blood and dancing along our nerves? Can it break free of the flesh altogether, travelling beyond us into our dreams and imaginings?
So why am I asking all this? Because it is a matter of life and death. Literally. The question I ask is simply this; am I alive, or am I dead? And, despite what else you may have been told, this is the question you are here to answer.
If the soul is contained within the body, before moving on to your choice of afterlife, then my soul fled the shell of my body as it burnt on board the Caracal. It is gone, I am dead, and the person speaking to you now is little more than an imitation, an echo, a literal “ghost in the machine”.
But what if the soul is capable of more than that? What if life is far more fantastic, wild and strange than we ever thought possible? What if my soul remained when my body died? What if…I am alive?
What if, when my mind was uploaded into the computer of the Caracal, my soul went with it?
What if – when the ship was attacked at the edge of the Empire’s territory, when it exploded and the crew died in screaming agony – what if my soul remained, protected deep in the computer core?
You all know what happened next. Twenty-three ships were lost that day. One thousand, two hundred and eighty-eight names were added to the monument on Capitol Hill. The relief ships trawled the debris field for the bodies of the fallen, and anything else that could be saved. The Pallas found a computer core, drifting in the remains of the Caracal. They linked it up to a power source and reactivated it, hoping to retrieve some useful data on the battle. Instead, they found me. The intact consciousness of the pilot, held in a net of circuitry. Nobody thought it was possible. Some people maintain that it still isn’t. I died, they say. My name is on the monument. My next of kin have been informed. End of story.
Of course, if it was that simple, you wouldn’t be here.
The Pilots’ Union has fought for over a year to bring about this hearing, and for that they have my immense gratitude. They believe that I am alive, which means that I have kept my rights as a citizen of the Empire. These include the right to speak freely, the right to a fair trial, and, of course, the right to life.
For this hearing the computer containing me has been connected to a portable generator. That’s the grey box next to the platform. You can see that on the front is an on/off switch. Ladies and gentlemen and uncategorised, I invite you to make your decision. Is pressing that switch no different from turning off an interactive entertainment vid, or is it murder? Your choice.
by submission | May 15, 2015 | Story |
Author : Michael Ryder
I see fear in your eyes as the door to the gravity chamber shuts tight.
Not fear for yourself. You accepted your assignment long ago.
No, I see fear for me. Fear of what I will become without you.
We cannot hear each other through the chamber’s heavy door. But through the small glass porthole, I can see your brown hair, generous lips and mocha skin. Your beautiful brown eyes holding mine, willing our love to thwart the warp of space and time.
A spasm of grief rips through me, but I force it away from my face. Your last memory of this thread will not be me crumbling before you. I will be strong until you return. If you return.
Your mouth moves. “I love you,” your lips say.
I keep my eyes on you, willing myself to stay focused. “I won’t forget you.”
“You will. But I’ll find you.” You mouth something else, which I don’t understand, not at first. You say it again.
“Make sure you don’t end up an asshole, okay?”
The grin breaks through. “I promise.”
The chamber pulses once, and —
I blink and shake my head, like I’m coming out of a daze. I realize I’m in the gravity chamber’s control room, standing in front of the chamber’s heavy door. A glance at the sensors tells me the chamber was just used. I type the command code into the keypad and step back as the heavy door swings open.
The chamber, as expected, is empty.
I blink away a sudden rush of tears. I feel I’ve lost something.
The emotional upheaval is alarming. When time agents use the gravity chamber to slip out of a thread, they are obligated to leave the thread in the condition they found it. Their motto, like the doctors of old, is “do no harm.”
Unexplained feelings indicate a mission error. Something gone wrong. I would have to report in right away.
The door to the control room opens and an ensign steps in.
“Commander,” he says with a salute.
“Yes?”
“A visitor has arrived on the shuttle and requests permission to see you immediately.”
A woman enters the control room. My breath quickens, and not just because she’s stunning.
I’ve never seen this stranger before. Never seen her brown hair, mocha skin, generous lips and beautiful eyes. And yet I know I have seen her before. And will again. And again. And again.
“Leave us, Ensign,” I manage to say.
The door closes. My eyes tear up. I reach out and pull this stranger into my arms.
And I hear you gasp when I whisper your name.
by submission | May 14, 2015 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
Gilfred stood at the door. “Where does it go?” he asked.
He turned and looked at Samuelson and Thromby. Both men shook their heads. “We don’t know,” said Thromby, his thick jowls quivering as he spoke. He was the oldest of them and self-professed smartest of the lot. Gilfred didn’t much like him, but Thromby had a perchant for being able to procure funding when the situation seemed dire. He’d gotten them the money for their research and Gilfred both respected and detested the man.
“How can you not know?” asked Gilfred. He walked up to the door and touched it. “You created it.”
“I’m not sure we did,” Thromby replied.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Gilfred looked at Samuelson as if to ask: is he crazy?
Thromby was about to reply, but Samuelson beat him to the punch. He pointed at the door. “It’s not really a door,” said Samuelson. “At least, not in the conventional sense of a door.” He walked forward and stood between Gilfred and Thromby. “It’s a gateway.”
“A gateway?” asked Gilfred. “What sort of a gateway?”
Samuelson shook his head. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” he said. “We were brought into this project two months ago, after the scientist working on it disappeared.”
Gilfred was taken back. “What scientist?” he asked.
“Addison,” Thromby chimed in. “Addison Burke.”
“Addison Burke!” Gilfred’s jaw dropped. He knew Addison Burke well; he was one of the originators of the project. “I….I had heard he was missing.”
“Well,” said Thromby. “He’s not just missing….he’s gone.”
“Gone where?” asled Gilfred.
“Through the door, sir” said Samuelson.
“You’re sure of that?”
Samuelson nodded. “Yes. His last log entry said that he was going through the door.” He pointed at the computer. “We’ve gone through his journal extensively. He thought he’d found a form of astral projection that could transport him anywhere he wanted.”
“And you think he went?” asked Gilfred.
“Yes sir,” said Samuelson.
Gilfred turned to Thromby. “And you concur?”
Thromby nodded. “Yes, I do.”
Gilfred walked around the door. It wasn’t really a door, of course, but they had sealed what lay behind it with a metal door. He reached out and touched the metal. It was cool to the touch.
“Burke was a genius,” Samuelson said.
“Indeed he was.”
“But he was torn with grief over his wife and daughter’s death,” said Samuelson. “He went a little mad.”
“A little,” Thromby said, “He went absolutely bugfuck! He locked himself away from everyone. It was only when we had a surge that blew the power grid for ten blocks that anyone truly knew what he was up to.”
“And this was it?” asked Gilfred.
“Yes.”
“Can we open this door?” Gilfred said.
“Sure,” Thromby said. “It’s safe….for the most part.”
Gilfred reached out and touched the doorknob. For a second, he debated. Then, he threw caution to the wind and opened the door.
Brilliant light filled the room.
It took a full twenty seconds or so for their eyes to adjust, then Gilfred saw the swirling chaos of light beyond the door.
“My God,” he said. “He did it. He actually did it.”
“So, you knew about this?” asked Samuelson.
Gilfred nodded. “I financed it,” he said. “I owed him that much. His wife and daughter were gone. He had nothing else to live for.”
“You sent that man to his death,” Thromby said bitterly.
“Did I?” asked Gilfred. “Did I?” he pointed into the swirling void.
“Tell no one about this,” he said.
“But….what do we do with that?” asked Thromby.
“Nothing,” said Gilfred.
“Nothing!”
“Nothing,” he said again. “Unless one of you wants to go in there after him.”
by featured writer | May 13, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix, Featured Writer [ bio ]
It’s a 20 degree C heat wave near the Martian equator as Commander Vlad says, “Follow me,” and clumsily leads his exploratory party into a cave.
Exobiologist Bertie imagines that their bulky gray pressure suits and dark colored lenses would frighten the natives, if there were any.
They flip up lenses and activate helmet lights to find they’ve already inadvertently crushed a possible lifeform that looks like a mat of red lichen as they carelessly walked through it. Beyond, something reflects their lights, a pool of liquid, surrounded by the colony of lichen.
The crew uses laser rays to clean their boots of lichen and clear a narrow path to the water.
“This reminds me of something,” says Bertie.
She takes samples of lichen and liquid back to the landing module and places them in a vacuum chamber. She can’t match the lichen to any Earth organism, but the liquid is water, full of microbes that appear to be rod-shaped bacteria. She tentatively names them “Bacillus maris” and jokingly dubs the other lifeform “looklichen.” The looklichen ingest the water and apparently find B. maris nutritional, since the red colony grows.
In another chamber, she places water samples containing B. maris next to white mice. Can the microbes survive in an atmosphere whose pressure and oxygen are at Earth levels? When the mice ingest the water, they show no ill effects, and the B. maris seems to be a source of nutrition. Future colonization counts on the availability of subsurface water, but it would be a bonus if that water were of nutritional value.
A few hours after Commander Vlad enthusiastically reports Bertie’s initial results, the chamber where looklichen were feeding on B. maris is nearly devoid of the former, the liquid having apparently expanded into their space, leaving just a thin red line of looklichen surrounding the water.
Bertie wonders aloud, “Is this part of the B. maris life cycle, or a symbiotic relationship gone bad?”
Everyone’s attention turns to the chamber with mice who drank Mars water. The rodents are seemingly fine, which the flight surgeon attributes to their “stronger mammalian immune system.”
“Plus,” he says, “there’s ten times more Earth bacterial cells than mammalian cells in mice and human bodies, so we’ve got our own microbes fighting for us.”
Bertie knows otherwise. She’s been trying to kill another sample of the stuff, throwing every antibiotic onboard at it, as well as extreme temperatures and doses of chemicals and radiation. Anything short of incineration doesn’t phase B. maris, which reactivates unharmed when it finds itself back in liquid water. Humans and their bacteria would just be food conveniently packaged in water bags to it.
An alarm goes off, signaling that B. maris spores have been detected in the air supply. This panics the crew, which scrambles into their pressure suits to breathe bottled air.
A few hours later, the mice are gone, replaced by a puddle of liquid full of B. maris. This time, a camera recorded the whole process. Mouse bodies appeared normal one minute and then liquefied moments later.
“Another B. maris-host relationship that turned FAST,” Bertie says. “This is familiar, something I’ve seen or read,” she adds.
“For God’s sake what?” says the annoyed flight surgeon, speaking for the rest of the equally annoyed and frightened crew.
A few hours later, Commander Vlad collapses. Bertie is closest, and when she looks into his face mask, she sees nothing but liquid sloshing around.
“I remember what this reminds me of!”
Her crewmates are ready to strangle her.
“It’s ‘War of the Worlds,’ but we’re the Martians.”
