by submission | Jan 28, 2014 | Story |
Author : Willis Weatherford
Weighty darkness pushed in on the edges of the cavern, craving admittance to the subterranean council meeting. Eight faces made ominous by three weeks of beard growth stared across the glowrods at one another. Blued gun barrels, gripped tightly, glinted softly, and the steady flow of an installed stream gurgled up from a crack in the floor, like the last bloody breaths of a dying animal. They were the Remnant.
“Chronos, how long until sunrise at our entrance point?”, inquired Achilles with a quick glance at the timekeeper. Chronos had been an executive before the Excavation and Descent, and owned the only working watch. His detail oriented mind was also adept at estimating the two times that still mattered: sunset and sunrise.
“Five minutes until the sun first touches the horizon.” They had quickly discovered – all of them – that the Excavators could still function in the pre-dawn sunrise glow. Only direct light sent them lumbering underground.
“Good.” Achilles rubbed his heel, injured in a past foray. He had chosen his “Nom de Bellum”, as they called their new names, for just that reason. One of the first things they had done after the Excavation was cut out the subdermal IDNodes and change their names. Both had been crimes against the State before the Excavators emerged. Now, there was no State to enforce the Universal Identification Act of 2063, and any connection to the DataBase was a death sentance.
“We top out in one minute, arrive at the target at 0 past sunrise, extract Citizens 11 and 12 within two minutes, reboard as soon as possible, and hopefully return by 8 past sunrise.” Everyone seated around the glowrods was familiar with this routine by now. Everyone except citizens 7 and 8, now renamed Guns and Bolts, had been on at least one or two successful rescue missions. Guns and Bolts had been on only one, a failed attempt to extract citizens 9 and 10. They had been Guns’ friends. He glowered in the monochrome light, eyes sunken and red.
“Remember,” Achilles said with a new weight in his voice, “more than two is not an option. Gravity will not allow it. Only 11 and 12, nobody else. Ok. Let’s move out.”
Eight pairs of boots stomped through the grey dust towards the surface. At the hatch, they donned tanks, and regulators, and headlamps. The hatch opened, the cold rushed in, and they walked out onto the dark surface. A few miles away, they could see the familiar band of sunlight right where it always was, highlighted on the circular rims of craters. A few steps brought them to the only remaining functional vessel: StateProbe 21. They clambered inside, buckled in, and blasted off towards the earth. As they hurtled through space, Chronos could see the Moon quickly diminishing behind them from one window, and the earth quickly growing in another. They were headed straight for the line between terrestrial day and night, light and darkness. Then he caught Achilles’ eye. The old man, once a maintenance worker at a city park, gave a grim smile, and gave a familiar speech:
“Rescue Mission 5 is underway. May we bring new souls from the terror of light into the safety of darkness. May each man count it a glory to blow even one Excavator off the surface of our planet. May our return add a few more to the the Remnant.”
by submission | Jan 27, 2014 | Story |
Author : Liz Shannon Miller
When she opens her eyes, she expects…
Well.
She doesn’t expect to be in space.
At first she’s floating, adrift, the starlight from far away galaxies flickering into her view as she waves her fingers across the void.
She fell asleep so normally. Well, abnormal for her, because it actually meant sleep. Real sleep, head on the pillow before 3 AM, not worried about the heart palpitations she’d experienced a few weeks before. Not worried about the hundred problems that haunted her, the other hundred things that she used to distract herself from those problems.
As she’d fallen asleep in her bed, for a rare moment, she’d felt peace, escape from the mental disorders and medications she used.
And now, she was here.
It takes her a while to wonder if she’s naked, but when she decides to check, she discovers she’s not. She can’t really focus, though, on what she wears — at one moment, it’s red and black spandex, then baggy orange comfort, then black skintight leather. She shifts, in and out, echoing so many things she’s loved. So many things she hasn’t left behind.
It doesn’t surprise her that the prism through which she saw this experience was the science fiction she loved, because that prism was a prescription engrained into her glasses. But that was simply how she saw the world. The corrective features almost secondary.
Eventually, a framework coalesces around her. A ship. She’d never been the best driver, or maintainer of automobiles. But she pilots this ship like a pro as the cockpit comes together, as she finds herself gripping the wheel. She’s a fabulist, she knows that a spaceship wouldn’t drive like a car would. But she’s at the helm, and she’s ready to go.
Through the stars, she soars. She never expected to be in heaven.
But she is.
by submission | Jan 26, 2014 | Story |
Author : Eric Spery
The starship’s Captain stood in the causeway between the dining module and the guest berths. As he stared at the observation port, one of the guests came through from the berths.
The captain knew every passenger he carried on the two month run between Sol and Betelgeuse. This passenger was an old retired military officer from Terra. Just a few years older than himself.
He stopped and stood beside the Captain and stared through the glass at the tapestry of unmoving stars.
“They’re so much more beautiful here,” he said with a slight trace of an accent that the Captain couldn’t place.
“What are?”
“The stars. I’ve never been outside the Earth’s atmosphere. I’ve spent my adult life in cold foxholes looking up at the twinkling stars through the smoke of battle, praying I would live long enough to see the stars again the next night. Praying some day I might leave for good. Leave for the stars and never return.”
“Are they everything you hoped for, sir?”
“They are, Captain. I thank you for taking me on my last journey. To stars that no longer twinkle.”
The old soldier solemnly shook the Captain’s hand and then continued on towards the dining module.
After the portal closed, the Captain turned back to the observation port. How long had it been since he’d noticed the
stars outside? The only thing he saw anymore was his own reflection: old, tired and ready to go home. Hoping to never look again at stars that didn’t twinkle. To go home and never return.
by submission | Jan 25, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jedd Cole
The hours have become mere tick tocks of clock hands since Lonny flipped ahead on his desk calendar this morning, noting with some surprise that the pages stop tomorrow with the End of the World.
He eats his bowl of wheat puffs contemplatively. On his commute across town, he calls his mother, waking her up. They talk about the year since he saw her last, and Lonny’s breakup with Veronica last week, and his sister Fawn’s new baby. There’s a car accident that holds up traffic. He wants to ask her if she’s looked at the calendar, but doesn’t. He arrives and has to hang up.
The stack of forms on his desk is taller than it was yesterday, and he gets to work, sipping coffee. He imagines himself throwing the coffee all over the paper and laughing maniacally and jumping out of windows and running naked through the domed city.
At lunch, he listens to Greg from Marketing while eating his peanut butter sandwich and looking out the window at the dome and the orange sky on the other side. Greg goes on and on about his dogs, how Jupiter snuggles with him in bed, how Smoky pees on the carpet, how Dakota jumps through sprinklers and humps the neighbors. Lonny wants to ask Greg about the End of the World, but the guy won’t stop talking.
There’s still a stack in Lonny’s inbox by five-thirty. The elevator down is full of silent people who don’t look at each other. In the car, Lonny calls his sister Fawn. They talk about the End of the World a little before the topic of her children comes up, and she can’t get off it. The drive back is slow, and he passes two accidents.
When Lonny gets home, it’s six-thirty. Time for Hours of Their Lives on channel four. He turns the screen on and heats up a frozen dinner of fettuccine alfredo.
He feels like he should call somebody else, but can’t think of anyone. The show is over at seven, and he throws away the empty foil container. The next show is Extreme Starbase Makeover and he turns it off. He spends the next hour on the net, browsing the updates, and thinking about the End of the World.
At eight-thirty, a knock on the door wakes him up. He had fallen asleep at his desk, and probably has a red spot on his forehead. Lonny opens the door and sees that it’s Veronica. They say hi, and she asks if she can come in and talk with him. Tenderly, they apologize for the fight last week and settle down with some vanilla ice cream. They watch a movie about promiscuous city people falling in love, and laugh a little at the funny parts.
By midnight, Veronica is asleep, and Lonny is thinking about the End of the World. He checks his watch. Only a few more hours. Looking out the window at Earth’s bright spot in the sky, he decides to step outside to sit in a lawn chair and observe. It happens about three in the morning, and he starts to get tired before it’s over. He reflects on the loss of sleep, but then remembers it’s a long weekend, and tells himself not to worry.
by Julian Miles | Jan 24, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I can hear them inside, their voices loud and fast with teenage enthusiasm. This was a bad idea; I should never have taken the assignment.
“Look at that! Hyper-alloy combat chassis, full-spectrum vision, cross-frequency hearing, graphene augmented muscle strands. Mark eighteens were the best: “
“Yeah, but they got decommissioned like everything else. What happened to them?”
“I read that they got killed off or became freebooters.”
Not quite: the killing off bit is true. A lot of my kind got a little too fond of the murdering and destroying. There was no way they could be reintegrated into a society they left as humans.
I reach up and press the call pad.
“You gotta be kidding! Twenty minutes? Out here?”
A girl’s voice: “I’ll get it!”
There’s a chorus of negatives. Then a single male voice: “Not likely. Let me get it. Johnny, get the gat.”
Smart kid. You never know who’s calling out in the estates after dark.
The door opens a little way.
I smile and point at the face that appears: “The gat’s a good idea, but a simple chain catch gives you the time to react.”
“Oh crap.” His voice has gone quiet as his face pales in the glow of my optics.
“Good evening.”
“Don’t hurt the girls.”
I bring my insulated bag into view: “No intention of doing that. I’m just delivering.”
His eyes widen: “You’re kidding.”
With a smile, I half-bow: “Us mark eighteens have to fit in somewhere.”
He nods in comprehension: “Yeah. Nobody delivers out here, it’s too dangerous.”
Precisely. Neighbourhoods overrun with crime are getting civilised quickly. All of the services are being staffed by my kind. You can’t scare or threaten something that has walked through the burning cities of Tharsis, has held the line against the mechanised tigers of Betelguese or has carried the heads of his comrades back for Transit.
The door opens wider. I see a real fire burning and a mob of kids in Steelhead T-shirts.
“Good taste in heavy metal, ladies and gents.” The mark eighteens who formed that band found that celebrity made society ignore their occasional fits of devastation. It’s expected of rock stars. Lateral reintegration at its best.
The kid tucking the gat into his thigh-high pocket smiles tentatively: “You know Steelhead?”
I grin: “Served with two of ‘em during the defence of Kandyr.”
The girl, presumably the sister, rushes up holding out a condensation-dripping can of beer: “You wanna come in?”
With a smile, I use combat speed to extract the pizzas from the bag, put them in the hands of the lad reaching for them, sling the bag on my back, step inside the place while steadying the pizza boxes and pluck the beer from her hand.
“Love to.”
There are collective squeaks and sighs of awe. The first lad grasps the pizza boxes and kicks the door shut with his foot.
A boy with glasses watched my move over the back of the settee. He swallows before commenting: “That was surreal.”
I think I’m going to do well around here.
