by submission | Apr 28, 2007 | Story
Author : Christopher Albanese
With her eye pressed to the inside of the window and his eye pressed to the out, their lashes navigate the viscous silicate surface of the glass. Somewhere inside, they twine.
The same happens at each of their fingertips — ten hers and ten his press to the window, hers on the inside, his out. A human eye cannot see the wriggling strands of DNA trickle and tumble from the sweat on their fingertips to push through the glass, seeking the heat from the other.
A human eye cannot see the surge, the urgent chemical transaction that occurs as these strands strive through the silicate surface with a drive not unlike that of spermatoza starting new life. Incensed and alive, these precious pieces of their selves wriggle and writhe as they drive on, headlong.
The glass heats to liquid beneath her fingertips. She presses out tighter, her fingertips. Just beyond the glass, on the outside of hers, are his. He is receiving.
Behind him, lightning crashes across the stars and indigoes bleed from bruise to red as chemicals cut the sky. Inside, the space behind her is vacuum silent, vacuum empty, vacuum deadly. Yet, she lives. She is a new form of life, and she is limitless. He is the way of all things. They peer through the window, and a new form of creation has been engaged.
They open their mouths and press their sets of lips to the window, hers on the inside, his out. Her blue eyes blink and his green do, too. Sealed in this O-ring kiss, they inhale – her the vacuum, him the stars.
A skin like mercury bubbles into the cavity created by the kiss. It takes four minutes for the glass to cease to resist. The sound that shakes them apart is not a shatter, but a torrent. The sound that shakes them apart is the union of all things to the vacuum. The sound registers at the frequency of a new form of creation screaming alive.
Their invisible barrier boiled and broken, they melt the space between them as lightning screams down indigoes from the sky.
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by featured writer | Apr 27, 2007 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer
I wake up from a dream about bookshelves and the answers to life. The sheets are damp with sweat and tangled around me. I sit up and look around at my dark room, allowing my eyes to adjust. The stars twinkle outside my living quarters window.
I’m one of the few people here who remembers life on Earth.
I fumble a cigarette out from a pack on the bedside table and wonder for about the hundredth time why there isn’t a twenty-four-hour kitchen on this station.
I stand by the window for a few minutes with the sheet wrapped around my shoulders like a cloak as I smoke. I look back at the bed and can still almost see the impression that Janet made after being there for six weeks. She hasn’t been there for the last two nights and has no plans to return.
I am worried about how little I care.
I have no position of authority here but there is a certain mysticism surrounding the fact that not only have I been on a planet, but I’ve been on the very planet that birthed us as a race. To tell the truth, I remember very little about those days back on planet Earth but I don’t let on.
I stand and smoke and look out the window and wait for the timers to turn on the morning lighting.
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by submission | Apr 26, 2007 | Story
Author : CK
“Synaptic couplers disengaged.†Andrei Milosovic sat up in the recliner, gingerly rubbing the back of his neck. He glanced at the control room window; his colleague there beckoned him up. The Institute had paid for the nanosurgery and training- all so that one of the country’s most promising minds could be one of the privileged few with unrestricted access to the whole of human knowledge- and for what? Fields of fog, and chills down the spine. Milosovic swung his legs over the side of the chair and made his way upstairs.
“Mind telling me what I’m supposed to be seeing?â€
“Look. Right there. Those aren’t human alpha patterns.†Albert Gürz pointed to the screen displaying the records of his colleague’s MMI session.
“Not on the screen. I mean during the interface. It’s all gray.â€
“Like I said, these aren’t alpha patterns. Maybe you aren’t relaxing?†Milosovic snorted. It had taken him years of psychological exercise to achieve a restful, ‘alpha’ state during these sessions, despite the fact that the previously sacrosanct boundary between his consciousness and the world outside had been so brutally violated by this machine. The thought that his training was failing him, now that it finally came to it, was laughable. He peered at the screen again.
“Was I asleep?†Gürz looked puzzled.
“No. Why?†Milosovic remained silent, instead merely indicating a section of the brain wave graph in response.
Gürz’ eyes narrowed and his hand moved towards his chin, mannerisms characteristic of his most pensive of moods. “They look like delta waves.â€
“I know they do. Does the system work both ways?â€
“That’s immaterial. Even if we had built it to, there would need to be a consciousness on the other end. It was made to be an interactive database, and that is what it is.†Milosovic remained skeptical. His training allowed him to seamlessly exchange data- information, but also sense data, emotion, unadulterated thought- with the machine’s processor. But what it could not prepare him for, and what Milosovic was having difficulty accepting, was the machine’s response to the most human of these processes. A machine has no use for emotion, but where Milosovic had expected an inability to parse such data, he instead experienced a void, as though the bits and bytes of his humanity were absorbed in their transmission: processed and rejected. Computers were cold and impersonal by design, but this mind-machine interface seemed cold by nature, if machines possessed such a thing. The looming monstrosity of the processor’s protrusion into Milosovic’ thoughts left him with the impression that he was dealing with an analytical, dispassionate individual as opposed to an information-relay engine, and it chilled him to the bone.
“Punch up the brainwave reader.â€
“What? Why? You’re disconnected. There’s nothing to read.â€
“Just do it.†Gürz tapped a key and his eyes widened in shock. There, though the machine displayed operational standby, were patterns coherent with human delta brainwaves, indicative of deep sleep. An iron fist closed around Milosovic’ gut.
“It’s dreaming…â€
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by submission | Apr 25, 2007 | Story
Author : S. Clough aka ‘Hrekka’
“Excuse me, umm…”
“Can I help?” Roisin responded pleasantly, turning to see who had addressed her.
“My name’s Gillian…I’m looking for someone who could courier something for me…do you know…?” Gillian’s question tailed off. She had never been able to approach strangers with any degree of confidence.
Roisin hadn’t met Gillian before, and her Captain had taught her to be immediately cautious around strangers. ‘It isn’t possible to be too suspicious.’ These words became a mantra after a time. Strangers, especially here, at the races, made her particularly uneasy. Roisin had drawn up a graph before, charting proximity of any gambling opportunity against ‘number of people who Kate owes money too’. It came out as you’d expect, really.
There was nothing about this woman that might mark her as a run-of-the-mill debt collector. She wore ornate clothes, oriental in style, in white and patterned with green. The collar was high enough to almost cover her mouth. Roisin judged her to be approaching thirty, if she hadn’t had any age mods. Her hair, though, gave Roisin pause. It was impossibly tall, bubblegum pink and there wasn’t the slightest chance that it was in any way natural. All these thoughts passed in a moment, and Roisin put on a warm smile, whilst nonchalantly letting one of her hands drift to the pocket of her overalls to wrap her long fingers around the spanner tucked there.
“Well, Gillian,” she said, her face genial, “that depends. I assume you know what kind of ship I work on?” She gestured to the dark shape of the River, behind her, dominating the bay. “We don’t usually run cargo. You’ll have to give us a few very good reasons as to why we should make an exception for you.”
“Umm…well…”
“Spit it out.”
“It’s the cargo.” She hesitated, shuffling her feet nervously. “It’s…different.”
“Show me.”
Gillian bit her lip, and nodded.
“Okay.”
She led Roisin down one level, into the cargo storage areas. The young docker followed her through a maze of utility bays and lockers, until they finally drew to a halt in front of a door unremarkable from the next. Gillian palmed the door open.
Roisin took a step back.
“Whoa…”
The storage bay was almost filled by some species of giant lizard. Mucky green-and-purple scales caught the light from the corridor at odd angles, a blunt head turned slowly from side to side, nostrils flared, seeking scents, while a long tail twitched around, occasionally ringing off the metal walls. A brown leather harness and saddle had been stretched over its head. Gillian approached it. Roisin pressed herself against the door on the other side of the corridor. Gillian stroked the lizard’s head, and cooed to it. Roisin was scoping the exits.
“What the hell?”
“His name is Bellial. I need to get him away from here.”
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by featured writer | Apr 24, 2007 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer
I’m a human channel changer for reality. I invented the device. I’m testing it on myself. I had my medibot install the absurdly simple wave generator in my cortex. If I concentrate in a certain way and jump at just at the right time, I land in a different Earth. It’s like having a dream of flying where the flexing of certain muscles makes it seem plausible that you could fly. It looks to me like the whole world around me is changing but it’s actually me who’s flipping from one possible reality to another one.
I don’t know yet if I’m switching places with my counterparts or if I’m somehow just a person with no ‘others’ in the quantum tide.
The first Earth was culturally similar to the one I started from. They’re getting progressively more and more divergent from the Earth I left as I keep jumping. I just went through one where English is the dominant language and there are still redheaded people in the world. It was odd seeing people over sixty walking around like they had a right to. I can’t be sure but I also think I saw some Christians.
This is becoming more and more of an adventure as I go. What’s next, I wonder. People without phasics? Women that don’t have twins? No peanut butter? I’m curious and alive. This is wonderful.
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