by submission | Mar 15, 2016 | Story |
Author : George S. Walker
“The bird couldn’t have just flown away,” said Ms. Donaldson, pointing to the vacated spot in the photos.
The Director nodded. They spoke quietly in his office as rain lashed against the window behind him.
“Maybe the last ones there simply forgot to lock up,” she added.
He didn’t get the joke. “That wouldn’t have made any difference. There were too many approaches. It’s not like the old days, when we didn’t have to worry.”
The Director was old enough to be her father. In his youth, a theft of this magnitude would have been inconceivable. Back then, they’d relied on the difficulty of physical access.
“Has anyone checked for prints?” asked the Director.
“Not yet. Of course, there were lots already there.”
He turned from the photos to look at her. “Each one is unique.”
“I’m not stupid,” she snapped. Instantly she regretted her outburst. He was the Director.
He shook his head. “Of course not. But even a footprint is a clue.”
“You mean, like an inside job.” She’d avoiding mentioning that till now, the elephant in the room.
“No. I’d know if it were our people.”
Would he really? And how much had he known before she’d walked in? What if the Director himself was involved? The power of the institution had been spiraling down for decades. What if the administration’s elite had masterminded the theft as a publicity stunt?
“Then who?” she said, studying his face for some betrayal of expression.
“I can count on one hand the organizations that could pull this off.”
“Where could they sell it? Not to a museum; it’s like the Mona Lisa.” She looked pointedly at the Director’s curio shelf, where a small replica of the original perched, eager to fly, every detail lovingly reproduced. “A ransom demand?”
“They must know we’d never pay. No, I think whoever did this took it just to prove they could,” he said. “You have to respect their gumption.”
Gumption, now there was a word you didn’t hear anymore. “Theft isn’t something I respect. We put our treasure on display for all the world.”
“On a long dark night with no one on guard.”
Lightning flashed outside the window. The weather here was stormier than there, overlooking a tranquil sea.
“We’re spread too thin these days,” he said. “One of the A-men is dead and the other will be soon. They were the best we had, the last ones there.”
Those days, the days of boots on the ground, were gone. Unmanned surveillance was the future, and the Director still had his head in the past.
“Of course, the only thing there was the body,” he said, “the base. We lost the top long ago.”
“Maybe they’re after that, too. Wouldn’t that be something to see? The whole thing put back together?”
“What part of smashed to a million pieces don’t you understand? No, they just went after the easy part.”
“Easy being a relative term.”
“How many people know?” he asked.
“You, me and the one who discovered it missing.” The man with the enhanced telescope was an outsider. That had to hurt the Director’s pride.
“Who has he told?”
“It’s not public. Not yet. I made sure of that.”
The Director looked her in the eye. “Once I tell the President that someone stole the Apollo 11 lander stage from the Sea of Tranquility, heads will roll here at NASA.”
by submission | Mar 14, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rachel Khosrowshahi
The patient in question is male, race and age unknown, who refers to himself in what can be translated as The Luminary. When asked to explain his origin, he lapses into long silences and appears to suffer from memory loss or else paces his small room telling rambling stories in Hebrew and Russian. He communicates at length in his native tongue, tacking on lone words from English intermittently. When not making his living as a farmer he admits to dealing in pornography, though there is no way to confirm this.
The party searches for a new candidate. The President’s second term is up and the party is shaken by scandal concerning kick backs and blackmail. The Luminary is taken from his hospital room and transplanted to a no name hotel in the desert. There he is presented with the latest technologies. What these technologies are is not important, nor is it important that The Luminary understand their functions. The only thing of importance is how quickly these new technologies replace the old. The Luminary is shown VHS tapes of Reagan and Billy Graham.He’s encouraged to practice the more modern way of speaking.
The Luminary watches television nearly constantly. He laughs appropriately and appreciatively.His favorite shows are detective stories, after finishing a show he launches into protracted depressive episodes. He also enjoys reality television, in particular makeover shows for Brides to be competing for plastic surgery procedures. He thinks these shows are humiliating to the contestant, but no more humiliating than remaining ugly. In fact, the more humiliating the show, the more entertaining it is.
As part of a publicity stunt the Luminary agrees to appear on a late-night television talk-show. He proves himself to have good comic timing. His standing in the polls during the episode of a popular singing competition Time Square is bombed and gassed. The American public has the opportunity to see all on live TV. Ratings soar. Within a few weeks a variety show premieres featuring atrocity films and alleged snuff. The show is a hit. The Luminary makes frequent guest appearances.
The Luminary wails and has temper tantrums if he is not provided with the latest in new gadgets. His favorite gadget is the handheld camera. While sorting through some of the home videos his campaign advisors find tape after tape of the Luminary engaged in sex acts with various cripples and the elderly. The opposition receives the tapes by mail from an anonymous sender and leak them to the media. To the surprise of the opposition, the tapes receive an overwhelmingly favorable response from the public.
In a small town in the mid west a huge likeness of the Luminary is created from mud and chicken wire. Free appliances are given away to families without electricity.
The monolithic sea spits up jelly fish beaten to Vaseline. The Luminary hires teams to interpret the tide’s leavings. The sky is actually huge and edgeless. The shopping malls teem with t shirts showing menstruating vaginas. The sun, thirsty, drinks an ocean.
Liturgy and hymns and lots of paper money. The Luminary keeps a small picture of the Virgin Mary in his room who he calls “God Bearer”. He reads aloud from his blog to the picture. “You just can’t go wrong with good material” he says. The night after Christmas twelve synagogues are burned. He releases a statement to the press declaring his joy in seeing the public embracing religion again.
Within two weeks of the election the Luminary is gunned down. He cries out “God Bearer” and falls. His running mate, a transsexual hairdresser named Lady Lady declares martial law.
by submission | Mar 13, 2016 | Story |
Author : E.S. Wynn
One ferrous meteor. That’s all it took to end it all.
That little world– they put up a hell of a fight, far more than any of us expected. When we arrived in-system, they were too busy organizing tribes in massive attempts to wipe each other out to notice us. Hell, I think we were in orbit before anyone down there planetside even tried to talk to us. Worlds with life that primitive– they’re everywhere in this galaxy. That world’s life was nothing special. We all thought it was going to be really easy to wipe them out and clear the land for colonization, but they turned out to be far more resourceful than any of us ever imagined.
We followed standard procedure for the first wave in. Big, scary colony ships perched over every major city on their little world. Posturing, just lots of posturing. Surrender yourself or die, that kind of stuff. Some of the tribes gave in immediately, but the biggest ones stuck it out, called our bluff.
Now, it isn’t often that a world that primitive stands up to us like that. Usually they see the futility of their situation and then they lay down so we can kill them without losing any of our colony ships or equipment. Not that world– that world was ruled by the dangerously insane. Even before we threatened to subjugate its people in a bloody and destructive conquest, the disparate tribes were already beginning to band together, were already working on joint projects, rushing prototype weapons into large-scale production. Usually when we come in, we fire the first shot. Not this time. This time, there was no warning shot. This time, they came at our colony ships with swarms of sleek, glossy interceptors, all remotely piloted. Didn’t even leave a scratch on our colony ships, but their attempts to drive us off were amusing to watch.
I think that’s why our President decided to throw the meteor at them. We had the power to wipe them out with minimal effort. Hell, we could have killed them slowly, sterilized them all with a flash of gamma radiation and waited for them to die off. We’re immortal. We could have waited a hundred years, two hundred, whatever it took. I’ve had VR game sessions that lasted longer than that.
No, the rock was meant to be flashy. It was meant to get their attention. It did, too. One impact, one big city, and they all put up their hands in surrender. Took about a month to skin their brains, digitize the entire planetary population and stash their collective data in the cultural archives for the academics to pick over and play with.
And that was it. That was how the whole thing ended. We moved on after that, picked another target and set a course for it. That planet– didn’t matter how fierce of a show the primitives made when we came in. In the end, it was just another hunk of rock, another world in the bucket for the good ol’ United States of Earth.
by submission | Mar 12, 2016 | Story |
Author : Jason X. Bergman
“You hold my amulet. I am bound to grant you three wishes. Three wishes and no more,” spoke the jinn.
“I need only one,” said the prince. “My beloved Meredith, killed by the dark wizard Neirin. I want her back.”
“This I cannot do,” said the jinn, shaking his head. His hair was as black as the night was dark. “She was killed by magic. I can bring down the heavens with a thought, but even I cannot bring her back to you.”
The prince thought for a moment. He thought of Meredith, his love, his life. He thought of Nerin, whose cruelty took her on what would have been their wedding day. His hand clenched. He looked into the jinn’s black eyes and said, “Very well. Then I want to end it all.”
“Your life?” Said the jinn, with a smile. The jinn are dark creatures, and taking lives is something they take great pleasure in. “This I can do. Tell me how you wish to-”
“No,” said the prince. “Magic. I want magic to go away.”
The jinn was shaken by this request. “That could be arranged, but-”
“I want all of it to go away. The wizards, the unicorns, the dragons, the fairies, the ten floating kingdoms. All of it.”
“But you and I, we are creatures of magic!” The jinn protested. “If I do this it would be as if none of us had ever existed. Magic would exist only in the dreams of men. Do you realize what you are asking?”
“Can it be done?” Said the prince. “Or do you lack the power?”
The jinn was not pleased to have his power questioned. “I am the most powerful creature in all the ten kingdoms, mortal. I could do this thing with a flick of my wrist,” and he flicked his wrist, for emphasis. “But I will not.”
“You forget your place, jinn,” said the prince. “I defeated the seven beasts to find this place. I hold in my hand your amulet of power. You have no choice but to do as I say.”
“You are correct,” said the jinn. “If you command it, I must respond. But consider what you are asking! Without magic, what would remain?”
The prince held up the jinn’s amulet. It glowed with red fire, casting a flickering light across the cave. “I hold your amulet and command you. As my one and only wish. Remove magic from the Earth. Now and forever.”
“By your command,” said the jinn, resigned to his fate. “So it shall be.”
The jinn held his arms up, reluctantly, and began his incantations, but it was clear he took no delight in them. Red light poured from his body as he spoke, enveloping the room. It spread beyond the cave and swept across the land. It covered each of the ten kingdoms and flew across the seas to the lands beyond.
The world went dark. And was reborn.
And the rest, they say, is history.
by Julian Miles | Mar 11, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Teatray!”
We all duck behind or under solid objects until the sound of a small crash landing gives us the all-clear. Wandering over to check the corpse, there are expressions of dismay. We’ve just clocked our first RAPTOR. I don’t know what the slang acronym means, but basically it’s a drone using ducted fans within a body designed to resemble a city hawk.
“Somebody’s lost a very expensive toy.” Mitch is unsympathetic: rogue drones cause more mayhem than any other form of technology.
I grin at him: “Looks like his birdie took a QR to the CPU. Someone won’t know we hit it.”
Mitch nods. He points toward the dot drifting high above and makes a circling movement with his index finger: “Hunt ‘someone’ down.”
That dot is Nils. Early experiments in drone policing used trained eagles. They were effective, but the wounds to the birds were increasingly horrific as drone operators started sharpening the edges of their rotors. Nils is an Osprey, brought into the program as they are the only eagle with reversible outer toes, giving them better grip to deal with drones. He was effective, but barely survived taking down a drugbug – drone full of heroin – losing both legs and part of a wing.
That was when Colonel Mitchell ‘Mitch’ Everton-Masham of MI22 – Cyber Intelligence, an evolution of MI16 – stepped in and gave me a new friend to work with. I’d handled a few birds of prey, but the first cybereagle was a whole new level of challenge. Thirteen months later, a rogue over Buckingham Palace got a photo of its killer that went viral: sunlight reflecting from the steel pinions of an otherwise-silhouetted giant bird of prey. Nils had arrived.
He’s also got a clever QR code between his wings, so drones with defensive scanning can read the encoded low-level command and obey the ‘land immediately’ directive. However, as rogues are frequently hacked to get around safety restrictors, some just fall out of the sky. The ‘teatray’ warning is one of ours, taken from the Mad Hatter’s song.
I nod and tap my comms: “Nils. Trace commsig.”
Nils spirals out westward, following the frantic commands being sent by the drone’s operator. A Metro chopper paces Nils about eight hundred metres behind: operators can turn aggressive when their getaway is interrupted.
When Nils gets within a hundred metres of the ground, his visuals sync with our main board and we get an HD view of two blokes in slouchies and donkey jackets staring in awe as Nils sidle-hovers with an eerie blades-from-scabbards noise made by his rapidly moving wings.
The audio pickups filter the noise so we get to hear the word that accompanies the operator’s stunned expression.
“Beautiful.”
I tap my comm twice to speak via Nils’ speaker: “Do not attempt to flee. Armed response is inbound.”
The two figures look relieved. There are whoops of glee behind me: these lads were leasing their expensive drone. They’ll take custody and anonymity to save themselves from mutilation by the crime lord who is out of pocket. We may well be able to roll up an entire rogue wing, right back to production facilities and related smuggling operations.
Mitch slaps me on the shoulder: “Tell your boy it’s steak ‘n’ giblets tonight.”
I grin and tap my comms: “Nils. Good lad. Come home.”
A piercing whistle of joy in my headset accompanies our display wheeling in an arc that lays London’s skyline out for us as my friend Nils, a.k.a. Pandion One, puts the sunset behind him and heads for dinner.
