by submission | May 23, 2007 | Story
Author : K. J. Russell
The warhead has been planted approximately twenty meters beneath solid granite. Physicist Arthrike Brogan stood before some three dozen people, those scientists and politicians of higher power or renown. “At that depth, what we see should be pretty much equivalent to if the warhead had actually been launched remotely.”
“And this weapon you’ve invented, Mr. Brogan,” came the voice of a reporter, cameraman in tow, “Can you tell us once more, for the record, what the theory behind it is?”
“It’s simply a vehicle of mass destruction, like the nuke, but without any fallout and far more precise. Please, though, let’s hold off on questions until after the test.” With a polite nod, the reporter went off and found a decent position from which to film. The camera’s lens was soon focused away from the white-and-grey city behind, looking out on the red Kansas dirt and the makeshift buildings that were peppered across the testing zone.
A feminine voice began, pre-recorded from a loudspeaker, “Twenty, nineteen…”
“There’s my cue!” Brogan made no effort to hide his confidence as he turned to the onlookers, “We’re five miles distant, and I’ve set the bomb to a mere one-mile radius. We’re perfectly safe. Just don’t look directly into the light.” Brogan placed a pair of dark glasses on his face, and the others followed suit. There was a moment of absolute silence, the onlookers holding their breath, everyone in the city confined to the indoors.
And then there was a sublime flash; a sudden burst of the purest white light. This was the detonation, all heat and photons, the entire body of the destructive force. It spread quickly, the corona moving at a few hundred feet per second. Brogan smiled to himself, imagining the dirt and stone melting, the mock buildings being disassembled at a molecular level. Everything was going as planned, and he felt his confidence transforming into arrogance as the blast hit the mile-mark. And at that exact moment, Brogan’s whole world seemed to fracture, everything to change. Except for the progression of the blast.
Brogan took an unconscious step back, his stomach tightened. As seconds continued, so did the light and destructive force proceed, even accelerate. At two miles, one of the politicians shouted to Brogan. He called back, “It’ll stop!” At three miles, many of the onlookers were fleeing, and Brogan repeated himself, “It’ll stop!” At four miles, Brogan’s eyes found the city and his thoughts spun about the wife and daughter he had there. “It has to stop.”
At five miles, he said nothing. It didn’t stop.
Some minutes later, a single man stood at the edge of a fifty-mile bowl of glass, eyeing briefly the smooth new cut of a city with only its outer-most fringes intact. His hands came together, carefully shutting the time-worn book he held, and his smiling lips formed words, “And so was the will of our Mother,” though he didn’t make a sound. He considered for a moment an ID that stated his assumed name and title, the chief aid to Arthrike Brogan. Artfully, he tossed it on the glass, disavowing it all.
He thought then of a biochemist he had heard of in Germany, working in controlled diseases that could no doubt be turned to tactical applications. So, as he spun and walked into the city, ignoring the rising cry of panicked survivors, he mused, “My name is Kasch Oeberon, a biochemist with an incredible knowledge of chemical weaponry; research, construction, and application.”
And muttering again his new name, Kasch hastened to collect his car. He had a flight to catch.
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by featured writer | May 22, 2007 | Story
Author : Mur Lafferty, featured writer
“I don’t like heels,” Tina said.
Barry looked at her, his head cocked to one side. “I thought all girls liked heels.”
Tina grimaced. “You’ll think I’m weird.”
Barry grinned. Tina liked the same movies as he did, the same music, and didn’t think he was slurring when he said, “frak.”
Barry was smitten. “Go on, tell me.”
Tina sighed and looked around, but no one sat near them on the park bench. “I have always felt that if something happened to me, like something bad, I’d want the option to be able to run. I didn’t want to be the girl running from the monster in the woods and tripping in her heels. Or the person pulled into the other universe and not be able to run.”
Barry laughed, and Tina turned red. She looked away. Barry choked back his laughter, “No, hey, I’m not laughing at you, I just think that’s awesome.”
Tina sniffed and fiddled with her fingers in her lap. Barry longed to take her hand, but he couldn’t bring himself to reach across the span between then.
She stood up. “I got to go. I’ll see you later, Barry.”
“No, wait, I’m sorry!” Barry said. “Listen, Tina, don’t go.”
But she was gone.
Barry sat down and cradled his head in his hands. Tina was a true geek, a math geek, a scifi geek, and he had embarrassed her. He had driven away the perfect woman. He swore to himself and began the walk home.
By the time he got home, the whole thing had been turned into her fault, her rejection of a perfectly friendly conversation. Barry stomped down to his parents’ basement – he hadn’t yet told Tina that he still lived with them – and unlocked the door to his private room. His steam-powered mechanical suit sat in the corner, gleaming quietly as if waiting for him.
Maybe it was time. Maybe Tina would find out if her decision never to wear heels was a good one or not.
#
Tina didn’t let her geeky side show much. And when Barry had laughed at her, she stuffed it back down again. He had seemed so nice. Someone she could show her true self to.
Oh well. She guessed men really couldn’t take a smart woman. She’d thought – hoped – it was a cliché, but it was proven to her time and again. She unlocked the door to her apartment and stormed into her spare bedroom.
Professor Barbour had expressed frank astonishment at her desire to build a steam-powered AI. And she had failed, to an extent, but what she was left with was a brass gyroscope centered in a woman-sized hamster ball that drove quite well, crushing everything in its way. She didn’t need heels when she was in her Tiny.
She was tired of men. It was time to go joyriding.
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by submission | May 21, 2007 | Story
Author : Patrica Stewart
Tony Scandone, the Director of The Ministry of Global Economy, motioned to the servbot to refill his coffee cup. After satisfying himself that the coffee was properly sweetened, he raked the last few morsels of his desert onto his fork, then squeegeed it clean between his lips. “I’m telling you Carmen, those upgrades to The Brain are phenomenal. It now has two septillion Proto-synaptic connections. That’s six orders of magnitude more than a human brain. Furthermore, with the liquid helium bath and the superconductive materials, it’s blowing the nano-processors off that antique they have over in Defense. Did you happed see its soybean projections last year? Despite the drought in Antarctica, and the labor problems in China, The Brain nailed the final harvest totals to five significant figures. Unbelievable! And, how about those infrastructure capacity utilization calculations, the intermediate inflationary predictions, the exchange rate depreciation protocol, or the way it negatively amortized equilibrium capital against the total nonfinancial global deficit. It’s freakin’ fantastic! I’m telling you, Carmen, the way it determined the Fibonacci retracements relative to the cross elasticity of demand, or the short-run aggregate market’s effect on the new expansionary monetary policy, are eons ahead of what they imprinted on us in grad school? You watch Carmen; they’ll surplus us in five years. Hell, they could probably do it now. I’d love to retire early. Buy a habitat cell in one of those low-gee communities in orbit. Can you imagine the…â€
The servbot glided discreetly into view, politely holding a tray with the lunch bill. It was perceptibly twitching between the two diners, unsure who to give the check to. “Ah, the moment of truth,†said Scandone as he reached into his breast pocket to pull out his link. “It’s time to see who pays for lunch. Brain, I’m here with Carmen, what’s the final score?â€
The link responded, “The ’72 Dolphins defeated the ’85 Bears 17 to 13.â€
“Awesome!†Scandone turned to the servbot. “I believe Carmen had the Bears and two and a half. Lunch is on him today.â€
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by submission | May 20, 2007 | Story
Author : TJMoore
It had been eons since Kra had left home for this mission. He’d known when he left that it was a one way trip, but now he was growing weary of this “Long Term†assignment. “Long Terminal†was more like it he joked to himself for maybe the millionth time.
The invasion had been covert. Even, or maybe especially, from the planetary counsel. That honorific body of archaic pacifists would never have the audacity, or the nerve in Kra’s opinion, to undertake such an auspicious plan. Kra’s consortium of scientists had taken action. Kra had been the logical choice from the pool of volunteers because of his prodigious knowledge of genetics and evolutionary trends.
So far, Kra had successfully exterminated over three million species of potentially dangerous or over competitive life forms. He had also introduced and nurtured his own genome throughout the millennia and, if all went well, the final phase of the plan would begin on schedule.
He lounged back and selected his favorite transmission from the archives. It was called a “movie†which was short for “moving picture“, the logical progression from a “stillâ€. This one was the more advanced “talkie†where the sound was incorporated in a side-band and written dialog was no longer needed.
Kra chuckled again as the movie started. The irony was just too amusing. This “movie†was titled “The War of the Worlds†and in the end, the invaders from Mars were killed off, not by the humans, but rather, by the natural pathogens found in the air of Earth. Kra laughed out loud as he mused that those pathogens were the genetic legacy of the initial genome he had released on the day of his attack. And in a few thousand years, the earth would in fact, be populated by Martians.
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by submission | May 19, 2007 | Story
Author : Steven Holland
Contemplating my life’s choice, I plunge my hand beneath the slowly flowing stream water. There was only one choice in my life that makes any real difference. The cool water rushes past my hand, caressing it with the softest of touches. The bubbling of the tranquil stream joins in chorus with the soft rustle of the lush meadow grass as the wind blows through it. The smell of freshly cut hay permeates the air. I remove my hand from the water, stroll slowly to a nearby apple tree, and delicately pluck an apple from the tree’s branches. The apple’s flavor defies any just description. The taste is luscious and full, sweet, yet retaining the slightest hint of tartness. Holding the apple in hand, I debate whether or not to take a bite of it.
What the hell was I thinking, I ask myself for the zillionth time. Burning in hell would be better than what’s coming. A vehement fury suddenly sweeps over me. I crush the apple in my bare hand, watching the juice squeeze from the apple and drip to the ground.
I know each of these sensations from memory, memories I will never experience again. It all happened so long ago.
I was a coward then. Withering away on my death bed with the knowledge of the fiery fate that awaited me, the deal was all too easy to make. Immortality and eternal youth sounded good at the time, but at the cost of all my senses? What the hell was I thinking?
“Oh don’t worry,†that soothing voice whispered in my ear, “I will give you 100 years between each harvest. You will hardly notice the difference. But on the other hand… if you wish to come with me, I can guarantee that your stay will be… sensationally intense.â€
So like the coward I was, I agreed. Immediately, my strength returned and my body regenerated to the prime of life. For the next hundred years I existed; I really wouldn’t call it living. I witnessed everyone I knew and loved grow old and die. And all that time, the nagging knowledge of what fate I had chosen gnawed at my mind.
At the end of the first hundred years, that soothing voice came to collect his first prize. He gave me the choice of which sense would be harvested first. I chose smell. In an instant, that soothing voice disappeared along with my ability to smell.
So my existence proceeded. Every hundred years brought another visit and another loss of my senses, first smell, then taste, next (after a difficult decision), touch, and then hearing. That was 499 years ago.
For what purpose he chose me, I cannot imagine. I guess the twisted bastard has a sick sense of humor. It doesn’t matter. My eyes report the clouds are especially beautiful today. So like the coward I still am, I sit and stare, waiting for my senseless hell to begin.
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