by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Lauren struggled to open her eyes, the lids heavy, the light in the room blinding. What time is it? It was evening when–
“You’re awake, good”
Darren. They were having dinner when she–
“The sedative will wear off shortly, you’ll be a bit groggy, and the epidural will make it impossible for you to move, but try not to be alarmed.”
She forced her eyes open, blinked as they teared against the bright light of the room. Darren stood facing her, stripped to the waist, one hand cradling the other elbow, idly stroking his chin with his free hand.
“The van I brought you here in is radio opaque, and this entire building is wired such that we’re untraceable. I don’t expect company.”
He moved to a chair opposite, still watching her. On the table beside him she could make out an array of tools, and a camera on a long articulated arm, which he pulled and pointed at his midsection while he continued to talk.
“It’s entirely possible that you don’t know why you’re here, and if that’s the case, I will be happy to apologize, but I’ve a nagging suspicion that you do, in which case – well – we’ll get to that later.”
She could see clearly now, a flat screen on the table beside him flared to life, displaying a high definition view of his lower right abdomen, each individual muscle clearly defined, sweat glistening on the olive-coloured, tightly stretched skin.
“You won’t remember,” he continued, “around my nineteenth birthday when my appendix ruptured. Messy business, rushed to the ER. Doctor went in through my stomach with what I can only assume was an axe, judging by the scar he left behind. Hurt to do anything for months while it healed. Sneezing, oh my god sneezing was exquisitely excruciating.”
He doused a cotton swab with dark brown fluid and scrubbed his right flank.
“Three years ago my body rejected the stitches they’d used, presumably they were supposed to dissolve, but they didn’t, and eventually my body took notice and an abscess formed around them. Messier still than the first round, rushed back into the ER, and another Doctor went back through the same scar tissue with, I’m guessing, a saws-all this time and cleaned everything out.”
He picked up a scalpel from the table, and paused, making deliberate eye contact.
“I’m pretty sure that’s when they put it in.”
She flinched and looked away, there was something about his eyes, a cold clarity that she wasn’t used to that frightened her more than the fact that he’d apparently kidnapped her and stuck a drip line into her spine.
“One summer as a teenager I spent a day out at the beach, it was overcast and I didn’t think about the sun but I burnt to a crisp. Do you notice the tan I’ve got now? Don’t you think it odd that my delicate white skin has become so resilient to UV rays? Last week I was at my barber and he complemented me on my hair replacement program, wondered who I used because he’d never seen a bald patch grow back in so quickly and completely.”
Still fingering the scalpel, he retrieved a number of gauze pads on their opened sterile wrappers and laid them on his lap.
“I can hear things far beyond what’s natural, and I can feel things with a depth and fidelity that I’ve never known before. I can feel this,” he waved the blade around his abdomen, “this foreign body in me, feel the virus it controls coursing through my veins. I can sense when they change its instructions and feel the ripple through my body, the newly versioned cells overtaking the obsolete ones as they die off and my entire being upgrades.”
“Have you noticed, the scar on my stomach?” He stretched pulling the camera closer and panning across the smooth flesh, devoid of any imperfections. “You never commented that it had gone, but you must have noticed. Didn’t that seem strange to you?”
Lauren studied him then, there was no doubt he was not quite the same man she’d first been introduced to, he was better in so many subtle ways, like a Darren that had been iterated over in design relentlessly.
“What do you want from me?” She sounded braver than she felt.
“Well, first I’m going to carve out whatever device they’ve buried inside of me, and I expect I should heal back up with alarming rapidity, and then we’re going to determine whether the virus they infected me with is contagious, or if you’re an observer, or perhaps this is just a double blind study and you truly don’t know anything about it.”
Lauren flinched. “What do you mean?”
Darren drew the scalpel across his stomach, blood welling out around the wound.
“Someone’s been following me, that much I know, and I’m curious, for example, how when I met you, you were blind as a bat, and yet you’ve been able to pay such close attention to what I’m doing when your glasses are right here on my table.”
by submission | Aug 23, 2015 | Story |
Author : Soo Kim
I had been taken.
Her hands clutched the bar across her lap, as the seat swung to some soundless melody. It hovered expectantly, like the next carriage of the ghost train at a macabre amusement park, waiting to lurch forward, through the chill, silent night.
Wrists aching from the bandages, ragged now where they hid the razor’s kiss. She turned to look at him, white beside her. Only his long hair moved, like sinewy gossamer waving slowly. She dared not breathe.
The chasm opened in front of them; a gaping toothless maw. At last with a jerk the seat propelled forward, and they entered the dark, ducking and weaving through the naked girders of the cavern’s supporting structure. The deepening black, spread beneath, like an oil slick, thick and sticky on their eyelids.
There was presence here. She could see the red blinks of tiring LEDs, that caught reflections off metallic bodies strewn like straw, limp over twisted mounds of junk. The fug of abandon twitched at her nostrils. It took hold of her, the still broken lives of the machines.
She knew that they were waiting, watching ready to rise up and take her; to strip her and change her into what they were. Empty broken things. She clutched the talktalk to her chest, afraid it would betray her, its pulsing light and vibration would be enough to wake those frozen limbs into clutching hands and desperate, wailing voices. The seat carrying them forward slowed. A raised service platform of punched steel plate appeared, dimly lit above the mechanical graveyard they were travelling through. She thought that it looked like a stage awaiting some kind of monstrous freakish act.
They stood, together on the platform, an island, surrounded by an ocean of malware. A still obidient audience, waiting the final performance. He turned. Behind her there was a flicker of movement in the dark; a strange grinding squeak as if from a rusted clockwork mouse. He pushed roughly. She fell towards the sound, tumbling to the feet of figure tainted with the glimmer of metal emerging from the dark.
Tall, breasts firm and high, her once golden skin tarnished with age and streaked with oil and grime. But she was still whole and strong. Her face hidden, hunched. The slow mechanical squeak was coming from her turning hand like a sour organ grinder. She straightened, the wrenching caught and her face exposed. The frayed jumble of optic fibres finished in empty sockets and her nose a collapsed bridge falling into a deep ragged hole from the middle of her head down to where her mouth had been. Her hand still clutched the arm of the mangle where what had been the remnants of her hair was caught between the massive rollers, her head mottled with broken stubble twisted chunks bleeding black from the roots, down the eyeless sockets, dribbling down her neck.
And she knew it was HER and that HE had brought her here and SHE was to be her tool. She heard a voice, still strong and deep and she felt the desire and the will of HER voice – what would it take to make me beautiful again…
by submission | Aug 22, 2015 | Story |
Author : David J.Wing
Glen sat there, silently and watched as his star ship slipped backwards and at a slightly funny angle into the Black Hole. It was fair to say that being stranded, as he so clearly now was, would be a hindrance to his plans for a luxurious holiday, but given that he had managed to avoid being torn molecule from molecule, it had to be viewed as some sort of success.
The light from the neighbouring satellite planets shone defiantly in the face of the hole and while they were destined to slide one by one from existence, it was comforting to Glen that he wasn’t the only one left alive.
The ratty little creatures that scurried back and forth squeaked and cursed as they searched for safety, surely sensing their imminent end. The high pitched squeals that shot through the wind seemed to foreshadow the fall of the sky and the rising of the seas.
Glen scratched his thigh, the back of his head and finally his left bum cheek, then stood up and tried his communicator once more. The static was a welcome relief from the silence that had come before. He tuned along the mid-range, pressed the record function and called.
“Mayday, Mayday, this is Glen Charles IV. Sole survivor of the tour ship, Regal, addressing any ship within range. My vessel was caught in an anomaly and I am stranded on the Green planet. Mayday.”
Glen set the message to repeat and lay back on the sand. No point in not enjoying this enforced shore leave. The tour ship had been a disappointment from beginning to end. The catering was sub-par, the accommodation severely acute and the company, save for a rather lovely Anterran, entirely too foreign and while there seemed to be no opportunity for canoodling here either, Glen thanked these not-so-lucky stars that there were no Honushions with him. Their aroma, reduced to a manageable tolerance on board thanks to the scrubbers, would surely saturate and impregnate this little planet in minutes.
It was doubtful even the rattys would survive them.
The message tittered along and Glen opened one of the three bottles of Champagne he’d salvaged from the Galley before abandoning the ship. It was a little warm but the pop was gratifying and scattered a few insects that had sought to avail themselves of his booty. The hours passed and the lights in the sky continued to blink, three, then two, then one and gone. The sea rose in the distance and save for the debris washing up to his left and right, carried with it a calm devastation.
The communicator squawked into life.
“This is the merchant ship, Jalin, we received your distress signal and stand ready to assist you. How many survivors?”
Glen frowned a little and then hit the reply button.
“Jalin? From the Honushion nebula?”
“That’s right.”
Glen screwed up his nose and watched the tidal wave rush ever closer.
“It’s OK, think I’ll wait for the next one”.
by Julian Miles | Aug 21, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Written this 10th day of August in the year of Our Lord 1708.
My king, I fear for the custody of the charge you bequeathed me, so many years agone. My health is failing, and while that which is our burden seems to be weakening, I am sure that my end will arrive sooner.
I have made as much preparation as possible, but as you urged me to be diligent in all things regarding my charge, I have to let you know that the good Lord may take me into his care before he sees fit to lift your penance.
As you requested, this is the current disposition of my charge –
He awakes at dawn and undertakes votive prayers to the false-idol star that he refuses to recant, despite the diligent efforts of the chaplain you assigned. He breakfasts upon water and mealy bread, and it is noticeable that he quaffs far more than he devours these days.
He spends his morning performing arcane rituals as always. I think that La Riviere’s contention was correct: “computay shonal” operations are related to the discipline of mathematics in some manner that we do not yet grasp.
The afternoon is spent sitting motionless in whatever daylight he can attain. His preference for strong sunlight has increased, but he is never forceful, merely insistent that he get the best seat within his limited demesne.
He remains cheerful, polite, noncommittal and entirely lacking in the remotest understanding of the concept of death. His requests to talk to “Leonardo” really do refer to the Sage of Vinci!
After sunset he gratefully accepts assistance in removing the mildew that accumulates upon his mercury skin each day. I note that the mossy tarnish spreads faster and is increasingly difficult to remove. My manservant has to scour it away with potato spirits and coarse vinegar.
Post-cleansing, he settles to rest without evening rituals or further converse.
This routine remains, of course, without deviation.
In regards to his ongoing care, I attach an authority for your signature, as black velvet of requisite weight and size for his veil has increased to a price beyond the stipend allowed for his upkeep.
This is the whole of it. I expect that this may well be the last missive you receive from me. I beg that you make ready for the continuance of his care in the event of my death.
I trust that you are in robust health, as France depends upon her Sun King.
I pray that Our Lord bestows mercy upon you and takes the changeling soon. Should I find myself blessedly chosen to be worthy of heaven, I shall entreat the angels upon you behalf.
I remain, as ever and until the Lord gainsays me, your humble servant –
Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars.
by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 20, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
When the Alphas slaughtered the Charlies, Victor7 logged the incursion in his paper notebook and then meticulously removed all evidence of his tampering from both of their communications systems. The Alpha’s had received ‘intelligence’ that the Charlies were going to sabotage their base for much needed supplies, and when they mounted a pre-emptive strike, the Charlies didn’t know what hit them.
The Alphas had received similar intelligence about the Echo base, the Deltas and the Zulus, and misinformation, coupled with a modification to the stress inducing chemical makeup of the Alpha base rebreathers and food printers, made them an effective tool for reducing the clutter on the pretty blue rock they’d all been deployed on.
When mother arrived, it would be Victor7 and his brothers and sisters that stood as the Apex predators of record. It would be they who had adapted and overcome such that their DNA was most prominent in the population of the world in waiting for the coming children.
Victoria3 infiltrated the Tango and Kilo bases while they were turned away from the sun, the greenhouses safely isolated in the darkness while the rest of the station atmosphere was evacuated in one swift gasp. Safeties overridden, environment suits safely near the airlocks, just out of reach of those who so desperately needed them.
Their records would show an apparent murder-suicide by Tango2, and a drunken act of sabotage by one of the Kilo commanders when the news of her Tango lover’s death reached her.
Soon the remaining bases deployed on this planet will be engineered to eliminate each other, all of them oblivious to the fact that the Victor base had ceased to exist on any of their servers or systems within hours of their awakening. Should anyone scrape through and find any reference to the Victor base and be curious enough to go look, they would only find a crater in the space it had never really been. The Victor team’s invisibility was absolute and several levels deep.
Once the Alphas were no longer necessary in this engineered genocide, they would suffer a catastrophic failure of their fuel storage systems. “And that,” Victor7 chuckled into his helmet, “will be the end of that.”
Victor and his brothers and sisters would then spend the next months unpacking additional clone resources to man the necessary stations, consolidating the equipment and supplies into the active ones, shutting down any they couldn’t easily maintain, and rewriting logs, records and personal communications across all of the bases to make it apparent how dangerous and treacherous they found their deployment to be, and for it to be clear how strong the Victor team must have been to survive when so many others perished.
They would ultimately unpack some of the remaining bases’ clone stock from storage to breed selectively, but only once their engineering team could guarantee Victor-trait dominance. Genetic diversity was an unpleasant necessity, but the Victor lines must be maintained at the highest level of purity possible.
They were brilliant strategists, expert cryptologists, and fabulous story tellers. When mother arrived several genetic iterations in the future, that would be the message, that would be their history, just as they had written it.
