by Kathy Kachelries | Mar 18, 2006 | Story |
The judge pounded his gavel three times on the sound block. “Next case!”
The bailiff stood at attention. “Sol versus Robert J. Walsh. Case Number 28769-807.61. Mr. Walsh was clocked doing 121,546 kilometers per hour within the ecliptic.”
The judge scanned the arrest report on his monitor. Without looking at the defendant he asked, “How do you plead, Mr. Walsh?”
“Not guilty, your Honor. I was beyond the orbit of Saturn. There’s no traffic out there. There’s over a million kilometers of empty space between ships. I don’t see why there should be a speed limit beyond the asteroid belt. It’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe so, Mr. Walsh. But the speed limit extends to the Kepler Belt. The law is very specific.”
“Then it’s a dumb law.”
Visibly angered, the judge pounded his gavel once again. “I’ve heard enough. I find you guilty of violating Solar System Statute 2375.329 for exceeding the beaconed speed limit, and for reckless flying within the ecliptic.” The Judge turned back to the monitor. “I see that this is your third offence, Mr. Walsh. Therefore, I have more options in sentencing. This time, you will perform system service. And, since you appear to enjoy traversing the solar system, you are ordered to tow an ice comet, not smaller that 100,000 metric tones, which contains at least 50% of its mass in the form of water-ice, to the Deimos colony in Mars orbit. You have to tow the comet by yourself, Mr. Walsh. You cannot use your father’s credits to hire a towing company. You have six months to deliver the comet, so I suggest that you start hunting for your snowball right away. Try looking in the asteroid belt, or the rings of Saturn. You are dismissed Mr. Walsh. And I recommend you obey the speed beacons in the future.”
The defendant jumped to his feet. “What! Are you nuts? Tow a comet to Mars? Do you know who I am? I’m not an ice-jockey. I have three college degrees, including a PhD in Political Science. This sentence is ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. The damn speed limit is ridiculous.”
The judge pointed the business end of his gavel toward the defendant. “Make that 200,000 metric tones, Mr. Walsh. And if you don’t like the law, run for congress when you get back from Mars and change it. Now, if you don’t want to be towing ice cubes the rest of your life, I suggest you get the hell out of my courtroom.”
The judge pounded his gavel three times on the sound block. “Next case!”
by B. York | Mar 14, 2006 | Story |
We finally did it. For centuries philosophers both of science and religion wondered how much it would take to push ourselves to the brink. They hypothesized and prayed to what end man would come if they kept pushing the limits. All of the wars fought, the corruption broadcast and the sin rampant in environment and in our everyday lives could never have awoken us to the simple truth that we had been sliding down this inverted mountain since the day an ape chose a stick over its bare hands.
They wanted to know what would happen if we continued along our ways. Today they got their answer.
I was what you would call a believer in nothing. Nihilism wasn’t my game it was the mark of atheism that took me by its reigns. Being an atheist wasn’t my problem. Not thinking that there was something right in front of us that we’d all been missing that was. When I woke up today I didn’t question why things were different I just knew that they were.
Even when I walked outside I knew that something was missing more than the obvious and I felt cold and dim. The news yesterday had announced how many had died from the nuclear affair in the east and how many more had been killed in the name of having the almighty on ones side. Truly, I never thought that our time would be the last straw.
Everyone did the same thing upon waking up. Hell, I did it too. We all checked our clocks, we looked at the date and we tried to come to grips that we weren’t crazy. No, I knew it was more than just a lost point in our daily lives that was gone. I stepped outside and I didn’t have a shadow anymore. No one had shadows anymore.
The news didn’t come on today and I knew it was because they felt the same as I did. You wake up; you expect it to be there to greet you. It was right in front of us and we had it right a long time ago but science made it like unto a fairy tale.
All of us woke up today and found that the sun was gone. It didn’t explode and it didn’t fizz out. It left. The warmth that was lost was more than just from the heat the rays gave us. We felt empty inside, we felt cold in a way that not even electric heaters turned on high could fix. The wars might stop, they might not. Something gave up on us today and it left because we were beyond hope. I have to wake up tomorrow knowing I am hopeless; knowing this world is lost.
I woke up today and walked outside to a world with no sun and no warmth. I looked on the ground and saw that I had no shadow. No one had shadows anymore. We were the shadows now.
by J.R. Blackwell | Mar 2, 2006 | Story
On the night Alpine Zanzibar died, that diva light, that genteel fantastic, the people that loved him bought him the moon. Together his friends pitched a fortune and purchased the lunar landscape for the entire night, inflicting their choices for the moon’s color on the entire earth. At 6PM the moon was a crisp blond color but at the strike of midnight it turned a dark and mysterious blue. The gold of that light was to celebrate the long life of Alpine Zanzibar, and the blue was to mourn his passing.
The party was at the Silver Swan, the establishment where Alpine Zanzibar held his bohemian court. The Silver Swan was not just bar, nor a cabaret, but the night home of the residents of Second Paris, a place were hearts were mended and souls found, glory on a honest to damn wooden stage. Years before most of the patrons had even been born, the genteel fantastic Alpine Zanzibar had opened the Silver Swan and had commenced the nightly revelry as the city of Second Paris grew around him. The party was part roast, part jazz funeral, but most of all like a birthday and all of it like the life of the man it celebrated, all glory, all fabulous fantastic.
Alpine Zanzibar himself appeared an hour into the festivities, having just emerged from a day spent with his closest friends, his created family, those brothers and sisters holding back their tears and throwing back bubbly drinks. He wore robes of shining purple and glistening blue, the colors of the evening, past the set sun.
In accordance with Zanzibar’s own request, they held the usual cabaret; girls dancing, the political puppet show outlining the faults of the United Parliament, the heckles and the teasing, the stripping and the finale, which Zanzibar sang himself. He sang his torch song, his familiar standard, the old love song, almost antiquated until Zanzibar put it past his lips.
Suddenly, as the last chord played, there was the sound of wild horses, and the laugher of women. From the cold autumn night, like a crisp wind blew in that proper villain, that rouge, the gypsy Prince; Vlad of the Jagged Spire. He entered with his cadre of gypsy girls in their striped corsets. Vlad wore his stylishly disheveled Victorian tails, and top hat. His dark hair curled around his shoulders, and the crisp click of his heels on the ceramic tile sent the crowd silent. Long had Zanzibar and Vlad been rivals, Zanzibar stealing Vlads gypsy ladies to his stage and Vlad temping Zanzibar’s lovers into his caravan.
Vlad swept through the silent crowd, holding the edges of his stain lined cape and mounted the stage with an effortless little hop.
“Long have we been rivals, Alpine Zanzibar, but tonight, that ends.†Vlad wrapped his arm around Zanzibar’s waist, pulling Zanzibars body towards his in a smooth, practiced motion. Vlad caught Zanzibar in a long and passionate kiss. When they finally parted, Vlad bowed to Zanzibar. “A decent rival happens once in a thousand lifetimes. My deepest thanks.â€
Zanzibar lifted the glass thrust into his hand, and proposed a toast to Vlad, and Vlad toasted Zanzibar, and into the night the patrons of the Silver Swan toasted each other and danced and laughed and sang away every hour.
Alpine Zanzibar took the key from around his neck, that brass key to the Silver Swan, and placed it around the neck of his lover, the doe eyed boy named Daniel, whose white shirt clung to his ribs like paint on a wall. Daniels eyes went liquid, he lost a crystal tear to Zanzibar’s thumb on his cheek and a kiss that was tender and sweet, a taste, an echo. But Zanzibar wouldn’t let his lover cry for long. He encouraged the band with a dramatic wave, let the drink pour from the fountains, and danced with the girls. Vlad whirled, skirts flew, and the organ played on.
After midnight, when everyone was drunk and singing, Zanzibar went to the back room and changed his clothes. He wiped the paint off his face and put on grey trousers and a flat, black cap. He picked up his satchel, the one with a change of clothes and his new identification cards, the ones that said Eugene Johnston, freshman university student in physics. He opened the back door into the alley and walked towards the public transport pod-station. Behind him, Alpine Zanzibar’s friends were toasting the life of a man they loved, ahead, Eugene Johnston started his life.
by B. York | Feb 25, 2006 | Story |
Science has become the new standard of belief. It became the boundaries of thought and idea. I helped it grow to that, I helped to smite imagination and faith. Isn’t it strange that I call upon you now?
When we completed the humane genome it was called a genius. I bore medals that weighed on me heavier than any pressure ever had of completing the sequence. Still, I persisted and sought to copy everything we were. It began in an egg and a sample, and it was complete. One child became two children became hundreds of children became thousands upon thousands.
Perfection is the word many would use to tell the stories of the population becoming less flawed and more like it should have been all along. I did that, and even then the medals outweighed my guilt. It didn’t stop me, however, and I sought to perfectly secure the world of the past in nothing but a tube of glass. Already, science was becoming a crutch for everyone as the imperfect died of disease while the processed thrived.
It was I who brought back the extinct ones, and even then I started to forget where they came from in the first place. My mind was so transfixed upon finding more out about ourselves that I had misplaced the idea of the unseen. Instead, I saw the prehistoric fly again and the tribes of Australia’s natives walk again. The Croatian tribes were born to sterile labs and I watched them grow to become perfect like the others.
I gained perfection. I extended my life by altering my own code so that my work could live on. Others found this, and they too came to cease aging and continue on as if nothing had been different from the day they stopped growing older. I killed off the very idea of dying men. I made the human race happy, and I also made them empty.
They tore down their instruments of war and pollution and they cheered me still. They venerated me in books until they were also burned into nothing. The books came first and the churches came next. The symbols were gone; the texts were ash. I admit it all. I killed you, and I am so very sorry.
They will not allow this in public any longer, so here I am on my knees and my hands clenched together crying out for God. Even inside here, it is not safe. We’ve become two hundred and seven now and we are without you. Faithless and lost despite what everyone else believes.
There will be no more children, now that we all live forever. There will be no one to think differently or learn anew. I started out with a test tube and placed you inside of it to suffocate you. We never meant for this to happen, we just wanted to perfect ourselves. Things weren’t so simple and I want you to come back. I’m praying for you now and hope that you forgive me for doing it. Please come back so that you can forgive me. Please.
by J.R. Blackwell | Jan 28, 2006 | Story |
We know its flimsy façade, we know it’s a broken promise waiting.
They said that if we kept working, someday we could make enough to send our kids to college, never mind the dying, the slaughter in the world. Remember the holocaust, they said, but forget the horror of today. Love the planet, but buy a car that guzzles foul gas. Study hard, get a good job, spend your cash on trinkets and drugs. They want us to live with success and debt, hand in unlovable hand.
The thing that still gets me is that no one noticed. It was a hunch that no matter how obvious we were, the fact that we were middle class, well-dressed white people would keep us safe. It was racist, and oligarchic and it delighted and disgusted me that it worked. We looked like we were doing what we were supposed to. We studied hard, politics, chemistry, biology, psychology, physics, film, sociology, philosophy, and computer science. We studied hard. We learned how the world works, and now we plan to change it.
We can build a hundred different kinds of bombs. We can genetically engineer a bacterium that could give everyone colds for weeks. We can send you a virus in the mail. We could break your servers. You cannot find us by your profiles, we come from different faiths, we are poor and wealthy, we are students, union workers, and businessmen. We could kill billions.
You are lucky. We are not as brainwashed as you wanted us to be. We will use the power we have to recreate the system through the frequency of sound, through the meter of light. We will alter the status quo; we are moving slick and sweet over your mega-conglomerate. We will be the underground and the mass consumer appeal. In every dot of perceivable digital light, we will be sending our message right to the brains of your friends, your children and your pets. You can’t hide, we are the mainstream.
This is the Revolution of the Meek, stay tuned.
