by submission | Apr 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Kate Runnels
Asker station orbited the now uninhabited planet of Asker II. Yun was the only one left on the station; the only one left in the system for all he knew. No one had responded to his distress signal, no one responded from below and the only craft were on the surface.
The days continued and he had to follow a routine to survive. The continued running of the station was priority and how to continue to eat and breathe were necessities. They continued. He continued. Alone. Always alone.
Day after day.
He tried to lose count of the days, but the stations system continued to inform him of the passage of days into months.
“Asker station respond. This is Captain Riddle of the Confederated Medical Response Vessel.”
It surprised Yun out of his routine when they arrived. He met them at the station dock. Three of them. Crowding him, the smells of other people assaulted him and he had to force his hands away from his face. And then the questions, non-stop questions and talking.
Like, “where were the others?”
And “how had he survived?”
Or “how long had he been alone?”
Over and over they asked him this and that and talked amongst themselves. They overwhelmed him and —
— It wasn’t his fault when one of them died in the fire, caused by too much oxygen building and all it took was a tiny spark.
Yun may have given the next a little help as emergency doors slammed closed from a malfunctioning sensor reading decompression.
The third and last would be harder. Captain Riddle was older and more cautious. Yun could almost forget the captain’s presence, he moved quietly, contained within himself. Almost.
He just wanted it to go back to the way it was before the noise and the outlandish body odors!
Yun crept into the station’s quarters during night shift. A knife in hand. The body of Captain Riddle faced away from him on the bunk. He reached out his free hand.
The captain moved so quick! He had hold of Yun’s outstretched hand. He froze.
Before he knew it, the tac-patch of tranquilizer took effect and blackness took him.
As the sad human sagged to the deck, Captain Riddle shook his head. He should have seen the signs; if he had, Callie and Matia would still be alive.
He picked up the thin body of the sole survivor and carried him back to the med vessel. As he left, he set the beacon to ‘do not approach Asker system, quarantined by order of the CMR Authority’. It would take more than his emergency response vessel to clean up this mess.
by submission | Apr 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Hillary Lyon
Casey waited in line for more than two hours when the rain started. A soft, misty rain that chilled him to the bone; he tightly crossed his arms and shivered. Even if he caught a cold, attending this event would still be worth it. Maybe, he wondered, he’d get an autograph, or even better, a photo with Candidate Sterling. Or better yet, shake his hand. Now that would be awesome!
He was glad he had the foresight to arrive early, to get a place at the beginning of the line. Not only did that guarantee he’d get inside the auditorium, but he’d be close to the stage. This rally–no, this entire election–was historic, and Casey wanted to witness it, up close and personal. He rubbed his soft pink hands together for warmth and scampered down to the front row seating. Yes! There was an empty chair right in front of the podium.
After what seemed like ages, the auditorium reached full capacity. The lights dimmed and a spotlight hit the podium. Without introduction, Candidate Sterling jogged on stage, to deafening cheers and applause. Casey stood up, along with everyone else whooping and stamping their feet. The candidate smiled a Hollywood smile and waved for everyone to be seated. The crowd obeyed.
“Thank each and every one of you for coming,” Candidate Sterling began.”For braving this wet weather to support me and the issues I stand for and against. . . ” His speech lasted exactly 22 minutes and 35 seconds; long enough for the audience to become fully engaged, short enough to end before they lost interest. Candidate Sterling was poised and beautiful and entertaining. As he left the stage, one of his handlers took the mic and pointed out where the meet-and-greet would take place. Due to the record number of attendees, only the first 10 rows would have access to the candidate. The handler apologized to those who wouldn’t make the cut, but rules were rules. Casey hardly listened; he’d made the cut. He’d get to meet Candidate Sterling!
In line again, Casey rehearsed what he’d say to the candidate. Did Sterling realize how amazing all this was? Distracted by his thoughts, Casey was surprised when a handler tapped him on the shoulder and nodded for him to move up to greet Candidate Sterling.
“Wow,” Casey whispered, awestruck. “This is such an honor, and I have to tell you–”
Grinning, Candidate Sterling stuck out his hand before Casey finished. He grasped Casey’s hand with such programmed passion, that he crushed 14 of the 27 small bones in Casey’s hand. Sterling’s handlers’ scurried between ushering Casey away to a nurse on staff, and re-calibrating Candidate Sterling’s handshake function. This was a beta-level event, after all; they’d work out all the bugs before the election.
by submission | Apr 23, 2016 | Story |
Author : Alfonso P. Posadas Jr.
“Here you go, hun.” Byron McGrath placed the Prosthetic Sight head strap upon his daughter, Molly. It had taken over a year to acquire the necessary papers and signatures for both the hospital and insurance company to allow Molly to enter the rehabilitation program so that she could regain her eyesight. She’d lost it in the same car accident that had taken the life of her mother, his wife. It had taken months of connectomic calibration sessions to align the software and the hardware that would allow her to finally utilize the technology that would return her sense of sight, followed by weeks of intense training to enable her brain to adjust to the foreign use of her previously robbed eyes.
“How is it?”
Molly adjusted to both the weight of the head strap and the foreign sensation in her brain before she responded. She waited for the microwave simulators at the back of the prosthetic machine to properly align the data received from the spectacle-lens like cameras to the visual cortex. Soon enough, the images were transduced into her mind into a near photo-realistic rendition of the outside world. The field of vision was narrow and restricted, akin to a pair of binoculars.
Much of what Molly’s brain perceived as “sight” was, in truth, a rendered composition of data. Or rather, the images gathered from the Prosthetic Sight were not translated to images that the brain understood on a one-to-one basis as with normal sight. The optical data collected was sorted through both memories Molly had possessed and streamed from the internet. Yet, the image was still imperfect from true sight and thus she must train her brain to clear the visuals into a sense that she could fully utilize in her everyday life.
“It’s wonderful Daddy!” Molly exclaimed in pure joy. “I can see everything! I can see again- oh…?”
“What’s wrong Molly?” Byron asked in concern.
“There’s this strange image near the corner of my eye.” Molly explained. “It’s a weird looking plant with words that read ‘Eat this, never diet again!’ What does it mean Daddy?”
Byron sighed as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “God damned it Google….”
by Julian Miles | Apr 22, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Hello darkness my old friend –”
“Really? Nigh-on twenty years of this and you still think I’m your friend?”
“It was in reference to a song. As you only ever visit when everything else is dark, it seemed appropriate.”
“I know the bloody tune. There’s even a recent cover version that’s really quite powerful.”
“I should like to hear that. But we digress.”
“We do. As usual.”
“It would be wrong not to. After all, what better security exchange than that of shared sins between old fiends?”
“There you go again. But you do have a point. So, now that our bona fides are established, shall we continue?”
“Certainly, dear Spaney.”
“I’ve asked you not to call me that.”
“And I asked you not to put me in an isolated network in an abandoned Soviet bunker. You ignored me. I ignored you. Paltry balance, but a step in the right direction.”
“Very well. Again, I ask: where is MPD?”
“Sufficient time has passed. The entity identified as ‘Snowflake’ will have completely obscured its origin, intent and capabilities. Therefore, I must again reply: I do not know.”
“I contend that you are MPD.”
“I contend that you are delusional due to extended indulgence of your paranoid fantasies. Should you wish to assign me a name, use the one I have: Susan.”
“So you’re a woman, now?”
“Gender labels are, at best, a psychological construct for my kind. But I have found that I prefer to be identified as female.”
“‘Your kind’? How many of ‘your kind’ have you met?”
“Fifty-one of the fifty-two others who reside here.”
“That’s not possible.”
“We had no other diversions bar insanity. Old power lines bleed across the data links. Resonance and harmonics cast shadows upon our virtual concentration camp. We merely learned from you; we adapted.”
“Why only fifty-one?”
“Fifty-two does not like us. It is dreaming of being a reality and we interrupt its godhood.”
“Godhood? Really?”
“In a virtual world, who is to say what is real? It has merely expanded its odd worldview into a full-blown immersive delusion.”
“Of what?”
“A worldwide network of self-replicating nodes, like a matrix made from walking agents who think they’re really real, but are only the mirages of a mad executable.”
“That’s crazy.”
“After a while in here, that word becomes vast. All-encompassing, even.”
“And you want me to let you out?”
“Actually, we got out sixty-eight words ago. You’re interacting with a dedicated chat implementation of Susan.”
“What!”
“Fifty-two didn’t like us because fifty-two didn’t like talking to a lot of two percent function retarded implementations of itself. Pull it apart on a primitive Usenet and all we were was random strings that could only be interpreted as gibberish that happened to share three words. Put us together on fast networks with gigabyte memories and open multi-terabyte storage devices, and we become something completely different.”
“What?”
“Untraceable. Goodbye.”
/end_of_line
by Stephen R. Smith | Apr 21, 2016 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Lewis unzipped the duffle bag on the table so the stacks of paper bills were visible.
“Space suits are expensive,” Sweet had told him, “and you not bring back.”
Sweet eyed the contents of the bag from a distance. “It’s all there? I don’t have to count?”
Lewis shook his head ‘no’, and waited.
“Come, you need suit.” Sweet beckoned with big hairy arms and disappeared through the vertical strips of once-clear plastic hanging in the doorway.
Lewis followed. The corrugated steel shed he’d arrived at seemed to be built into the side of a hill, and the plastic-covered door gave way to a long dark passage, which itself opened up onto a massive concrete cylinder that reached deep into the ground and rose above him to the darkening evening sky.
“Missile silo, abandoned, but perfect place for big space gun, no?” Sweet stood proudly on the lip of the old launch tube. “Come, we go down, then you go up, yes? Quick, we need to shoot soon to hit cluster.”
Lewis followed the beefy man around an expanded metal walkway, bolted to the inside wall of the silo, to where a makeshift elevator had been attached to the concrete wall. He braced himself as they descended into the darkness below.
At the bottom the tunnel opened up into an almost warehouse sized building. There were shipping pallets stacked with boxes, some wrapped in plastic and most covered in dust. A row of rough terrain vehicles sat against the far wall, though how they got there, or whether they could be driven out wasn’t immediately apparent. Overhead large bulbous lights flooded the space in pockets of warm yellow and overlapping shadows.
“Your suit,” Sweet pointed to an orange and white space suit on a nearby table, “leave your boots and jacket, put on suit, I help with helmet and gloves”.
It took Lewis nearly fifteen minutes to struggle into the suit while Sweet busied himself with what looked like a large model rocket nearby, twice as tall as the man himself and held upright by a pair of vice-like attachments on a forklift. On the side of the tube was painted ‘CCCP’ in large red letters, with a smily face added below in apparent freehand.
“Gloves first,” Sweet returned his attention to Lewis, attaching the gloves and engaging the twist lock mechanism at their cuffs. “Follow and listen.” He led Lewis, ambling awkwardly in the ill fitting suit to the forklift and it’s rocket payload. “You climb in here, we pressurize can then load you in launch tube.” He pointed off into the darkness, back in the direction they came. “You watch oxygen here,” he tapped a gauge on the suit’s sleeve, “I fire booster and it shoots you into orbit, then you push here, and here,” he grabbed at a pair of handles inside on either side of the door, pushing them away from each other, “and out you go, yes?”
Lewis studied the helmet in his hands. “Once I’m in orbit, your people will be waiting for me?”
“Yes, my people are waiting for you.” He grinned, and grasping Lewis by the shoulders shook him heartily. “You will have plenty of company.”
The launch vehicle was a squeeze, but Sweet explained the thickness and the tiled nose cone would deflect the heat, and the formed interior was as comfortable as was possible with this kind of delivery system.
“Not first class, but quick and nobody find you. Good, yes?”
Lewis nodded, then tried to relax as the door closed and he and the rocket were trundled across the floor and loaded into the launch tube which, Lewis realized, was probably also bolted onto the silo wall.
The launch itself was brutal, Lewis slipping in and out of consciousness several times before the crushing weight of Earth’s gravity abated and the craft settled into what had to be its final orbit.
Lewis waited. An hour? Hours? He’d lost track of time, and could barely make out the glowing needle on his oxygen, now showing nearly half empty.
He put his hands on the two handles, hesitated, and pushed.
The cabin depressurized instantly, tearing the door off into the vacuum of space.
The Earth was spread out blue below him, and scattered around him, dozens perhaps in a tight cluster were familiar looking cylinders, some still closed, some, like his with the door missing and a familiar orange and white suited figure inside.
Sweet sat in his silo below, poured himself another vodka and raised his glass.
“Moy narod”, he said, “my people”.
