by submission | Jul 19, 2012 | Story |
Author : Darrin Drader
I remember giving her one last kiss as I prepared to step into the elevator that led to the nine-stage rocket.
“Please, don’t do this,” she said. “I love you.”
I remembered laying out in the lawn looking up into the stars of the night sky as a child. I had grown up on a farm, away from the light of the cities. I could see the clusters of stars, and I had always felt drawn to them. So many times I had put myself at this moment in time, getting ready to launch.
“This is what I was born to do,” I said simply. And with that, I had turned and left her, and the planet, forever.
I’d signed up for exploration, but that was before we learned of the others. When their signals reached us, it became clear that they were jealous, petty, greedy, and worst of all, warlike. The idea of welcoming them into galactic society was repugnant. They exploited everything they touched, including each other.
The first five stages of the rocket propelled it out of the atmosphere. Once in space, the next three had sent it moving ever faster toward the edge of the solar system at relativistic speeds. This portion of the journey lasted the longest, and it was the loneliest. I couldn’t help but question whether I’d made the right decision to volunteer to die.
“They’re getting close,” the General had told me. “Despite social, religious, and political forces working against them, they’ve finally unlocked all of the science. It won’t be long now… It’s a hell of a thing to volunteer for, but we’ll remember you. I promise.”
Three weeks of remembering her, our love, and our life that would never be. Three weeks, cut off from the planet because they’d said it would be easiest for everyone if the only communication was an automated confirmation of success or failure.
The faster than light engines had kicked in once the ship had made it far enough away from any of the planets to cause damage to them. This portion of the journey lasted only minutes. Entire solar systems sailed by in the blink of an eye.
They could have sent an unmanned missile to do the job; however, such missiles weren’t able to guide the warhead in manually if the enemy managed to hack the main computer; and this species was far too dangerous to allow even a chance of survival. Given that communication moved at the speed of light, and the kill order was given decades ahead of when this species would likely achieve faster than light travel, it was entirely possible that they were already building their ships. Once our existence had been detected, it would be all over.
The engine cut out inside the orbit of the single moon. The enemy had referred to it as “Earth.” However, what awaited me was not what I expected. Instead of blue oceans and green continents, I saw only brown craters. Even the oceans had boiled away.
My four hands quickly worked the controls to disarm the missile, change the trajectory, and abort the impact. These idiots had destroyed themselves; my sacrifice was unnecessary. I didn’t have to die! I could return to her.
The planet’s gravity captured the vessel and I fell into orbit.
That was when I remembered that this was a one way mission. The faster-than-light engine was spent. They’d said it would be easiest for everyone if the only communication was an automated confirmation of success or failure…
by Clint Wilson | Jul 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The chancellor stood at the front of the room and cleared his throat. The grand science delegation from all corners of the planet gathered before him and awaited his words.
“Despite all our efforts at rectifying the situation The Almighty System has given its answer. You all know what this means.” And they most certainly did. Despite everything they had tried, scientifically, socially and otherwise they had been unable to rectify the race’s need to murder one another.
They had evolved to the point of self-sufficiency. Their technology was fantastic, automating everything and leaving nothing for any person to ever want for. They were fed, clothed and cared for far beyond their needs. Yet something had gone wrong in their evolutionary growth. They were still essentially savages.
The crowd remained silent as the chancellor read the judgment aloud. “It is hereby decreed by The Almighty System that all citizens of the world shall immediately begin the process, as laid out in the general operations manual, for de-evolution and hopeful eventual reinstatement.”
They might have been savages at their core, but they were obedient savages, following subliminal hypnotic suggestions implanted at an early age.
The scientists shook each other’s hands and then made their way single file, out to the lobby to a row of medical booths. There were similar ones all over the planet. A skinned knee could be sterilized and bandaged, or heart surgery could be performed by laser. They were part of The Almighty System’s original plan for complete automated care for the race. Now unfortunately they had all been reconfigured.
One by one the scientists stepped inside, while other citizens all over the world, having just received the judgment, also stepped into their own neighborhood booths. And all over the earth all the people were lobotomized.
Then the stores closed and government services shut down everywhere. And the artificially disabled people were forced to fend for themselves. At first it was mayhem. The urgent need to stop senseless murder initially only spurred more on. Cannibalism was rampant. But eventually, as doors remained locked and supplies stayed shut off, a scant few went into the wilderness and managed to slowly learn how to live off the land.
Surprisingly, they quickly adjusted to this new life, drawing from their primordial instincts. And when they mated, the one and only old-world command they remembered and understood, was to take their offspring into the ruins of the falling down cities, where the medical booths remained open and quite operational. And there they had their young also lobotomized. And the ordered neurosurgery would continue for some dozen more generations, each new wave of descendants bringing their own young for the surgery early on in life. While all around them every other scrap of artificialism biodegraded very quickly. In another millennium there would be virtually no trace of the thriving technological wonder that was once their society.
Then finally one day, the simple people, as per their tradition, brought their younglings to the now dilapidated falling down booths… and found that they no longer functioned.
So after their developed intelligence had been effectively washed away, the first generations of these new humans cooking over their open fires and wrapped in animal skins began their long and arduous journey so that they too could one day achieve technological greatness.
But hopefully these ones would be different. Hopefully they would embrace what they built for themselves, be happy for their great fortune, and stop the senseless killing once and for all.
by submission | Jul 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
He thought that maybe he should be angry. After all, everything he had ever known was falling apart and there was nothing he could do about it. His hands shook with the energy of the blow-by self-consuming passion of intense anger, and his eyes were clouding up with tears. It really wasn’t fair.
Samuel screamed, shouted at the sky, shook his fists at the God he’d never believed in. Where was the bastard now, when everybody needed him more than ever? Gone, it seemed, to some other planet down the road where some other fledgling race needed their pot stirred and their morals directed.
Maybe this was God’s way of punishing man for overstepping his boundaries and assuming the role of creator when he was only the apprentice, like a parent who forces a child to figure out his own mess.
In the valley below Change writhed.
The news reports said it was an accident, an experiment in physics gone awry, changing the fundamental workings of space and time itself. As near as the scientists could tell there were no neutrons in the expanding haze. There were no electrons or protons, either. Really, there were no recognizable particles of any kind.
And it was growing, too, extending tendrils into real space like some sort of giant, horrifying, laws-of-the-Universe defying amoeba. Samuel watched one expand into the air above the zone of occurrence like some lance of the burning workings of the unknown, touching the air and turning it into something else. It was simultaneously too bright and too dark to see.
Samuel thought that he should be angry, but he wasn’t. He was tired. The world around him was falling apart and there was nothing that he could do about it, but hadn’t life always been that way?
The air had a cold November chill to it, and the leaves had all left for the winter. Everything seemed sharp, too in focus to be seen. Samuel sat back down in his lawn chair at the top of a hill over looking the End (Or was it the Beginning?) and picked up his bottle liquor. As he drank the warmth spread out through his stomach and into the deep and hard-to-reach places of his body and mind.
Surely there must be a way out of this, he thought, though for the life of him he couldn’t think of one. Perhaps if the same experiment that had gone wrong were repeated… But that was an impossibility now. The equipment was gone, the knowledge too. What else was there?
Most certainly there would be an end. That thought, at least, comforted Samuel in a way nothing else could. The black and bright nothings of something new lapped at the foot of the hill he was sitting on. Soon, while everybody else lived on running in circles from something that inevitably would always be front of them, Samuel’s life would be much more peaceful.
He gazed up, again, at the long fingers that extended further than he could see toward the cold reaches of space. There had always been a lingering question at the back of his mind his entire life: Was mankind’s dream of reaching the stars a joke? Was it the grandiose dream of a megalomaniac young race? He looked the the growing certainty before him. He looked at the shapeless hand stretched out toward Heaven, God, and Hell, and he knew.
Man had reached the stars and would grow out among the alien world and sights of space long after He was gone.
Samuel smiled.
He didn’t feel a thing.
by submission | Jun 30, 2012 | Story |
Author : Cheryl A. Warner
I have two minutes to live.
That’s a short time to sort out the sum of your life, but it will have to do. Up here, the only currency is air, and I’ve already run out.
They start calling you a “short-termer” when you reach the two-week mark. Both the guards and the other prisoners eye that red badge on your suit and give you a wide berth. We’re all up here to die, but when you only have a handful of days left, there’s danger in your eyes.
I didn’t take advantage. I didn’t yank anyone off the rail or try to cut through someone’s air line. I’ve already delivered all my evil to the world. I used it to cut down two women, beautiful, innocent things, then never wanted to hurt anything again.
I still get to die for it.
All that’s left of my vision are a few bright spots. I can feel my body shaking like it’s attached to a jackhammer.
I dreamed about floating off the rail a million times, hoped for it even. They only send the worst criminals up to the rail, those that are scheduled to die anyway. Murderers, all of us. Those of us that behave are granted shorter sentences. They call it justice. Only two years on the rail and I finally get to leave this place.
I’ve watched guys go through this, one every few weeks. It’s not pretty. I figure I’m probably blue by now.
I can still imagine the rail out there, just a thin silver line, the guys tethered to it like legs on a caterpillar. One day, they’ll finish it and there will be trains to the moon. If I had any air in my lungs, I would laugh. After two years, it still seems like the fantasy of some millionaire who read too many science fiction novels.
I know I should probably feel cold, but instead I just feel numb. They took my clothes before kicking me out into space. They need the suit for the next guy they ship up to the rail. Can’t waste it on a dead guy. I don’t mind. It’s the first time in two years that I don’t have plastic an inch from my face.
I imagine there are hundreds of us out here, floating along blue and bloated. A graveyard of earth’s vermin. Dumping us in space is an easy way to kill the infestation.
One day, maybe aliens will find us out here in the void. They’re going to think humans are ugly. They’ll be right.
Something is happening with my heart now. I don’t think it’s beating.
My two minutes must be up.
by Patricia Stewart | Jun 20, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Sir, it’s either artificial, or a new form of celestial object,” reported the Essex’s science officer.
“Explain,” probed the captain.
“It has about one quarter of Earth’s mass, squeezed into one-sixteenth of its volume. Its average density is 23.5 grams per cubic centimeter. That’s higher than the densest natural element in the universe, osmium.”
“Interesting. Can we send down a landing party?”
“Affirmative, but it won’t be a cake walk. The surface gravity is one and a half times Earth’s.”
“We’ll keep it brief. Have geology send a team to shuttle bay number two. Put us in low orbit, Mr. Donner.”
However, as the ship neared the planetoid, a large iris in the base of a crater opened up, revealing a subterranean cavern. “Tractor beams locking onto us, sir,” reported the helmsman. “We’re being pulled in.”
“Full astern,” ordered the captain. But it was to no avail. The ship was dragged beneath the surface, and the iris closed.
“We’re being scanned, sir. They’ve accessed our main computer.”
“Lock down tactical. Secure all primary command functions.”
“This is odd, sir,” reported the science officer. “They are only accessing our personnel files. Should I attempt to terminate their link?”
“No, that seems harmless enough. Maybe they are just trying to find out who we are. But see if you can gain access to their computer. Let’s see if we can learn something about them too. Security, assemble an away team.”
“Eye, sir. But we’ll need full environmental suits. The atmosphere outside the ship is 25% hydrogen-cyanide, 10% methane, and 65% nitrogen.”
“Understood. Lead the team, Commander. No visible weapons. Let’s try to look friendly.”
Two hours later, the bridge crew watched the main viewscreen as the away team lumbered across the alien deck, clearly suffering from the burden of the environmental suits and the excessive gravity. As the men approached the far wall of the subterranean bay, a door opened. Seconds after they bravely walked through, the door closed, severing the comm link with the away team.
Days passed without progress. All efforts to communicate with the missing men had failed, as did their feeble attempts to break free of their captives. Their one ray of hope was the link to the alien computer. Apparently, the aliens didn’t consider the earthmen a threat, as they allowed them unfettered read access to their computer. However, making sense of the alien technology was nearly impossible. A team of linguistic and programming experts worked tirelessly trying to decipher the alien language. To make matters worse, the high gravitational field produced an unrelenting drag on the crew’s physiology, as well as their spirits.
“Sir,” reported the acting security chief at the beginning of day seven, “roll call revealed that another six crewmembers are unaccounted for. We still can’t figure out how the aliens are doing it. I’ve required all off duty personnel to hunker down in the assembly area, and posted a 24 hour guard.”
“Good thinking, Lieutenant,” replied the captain. “Mr. Carib, any progress with the alien computer?”
“A little, sir. We’ve stumbled onto the copy they made of our personnel files. They’ve compiled a table listing all 354 crew members. We appear to be categorized by gender and race. Linguistics thinks that they can decipher the table headings soon.”
“Excellent. Keep me posted.”
Several hours later, Carib‘s face turned ashen-gray after reading the translation. Spotting his ensign’s reaction, the captain asked, “Let’s have it, Ensign.”
“My God, sir,” replied Carib’s trembling voice. “The alien table, sir. It’s a dessert menu.”
