by Duncan Shields | Jan 9, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Do I consider myself a citizen of Earth? Do I consider myself a human? Am I an alien sympathizer? Members of the council, I fear I no longer know what these questions even pertain to. They are meaningless sounds to me now with no more gravitas than the bark of a dog. I have only the following to say and I say it not in my defense for I know that is a laughable word in this court. I say for the sole reason that I must. It is on my mind and I fear the end of my career is near if not my very existence.
I have seen people who attended one meeting out of curiosity have their entire lives destroyed by the subsequent investigation. I have seen people who, solely by being accused by this committee, have seen their occupations disintegrate.
To be dramatic, you are angels with flaming swords, blind to the destruction you’re causing but unwilling to stop because you’re convinced your actions are just. If I was scared, you’d see it as guilt. But I am calm, and you see that as a suspicious flippancy. There is no victory for the accused in this room.
The sense of insolence you perceive in me is merely a sense of resignation. My life was doomed the moment your men knocked on my door. I have been brought before the all-powerful and my life is over. People who can’t even pronounce xenosympathizer have been dragged before you in tears after running from arresting officers out of simple animal fear that you mistake for culpability. Their attempt to flee and subsequent weeping are no more an admission of hubris than this table is carved from a block of cheese. You take far too much joy in your mission, your unattainable goal. No society can be spotless.
A human ship landed on that planet, yes. The ship was destroyed and the astronauts were murdered, yes. I don’t know if the pilot and crew were perceived as a threat or food but I do know that it was a mistake to land without further research. The fault is ours.
The aliens were not communists. They were insects. They had no concept of money or values. They ate and built. It was not a political philosophy. It was nature functioning at a base level. They drew no line in the sand and they did not belong to a side. They didn’t have the emotions with which to hate us. This is all our doing. We are guilty of genocide. Our act was not retaliation. Our act was a first strike.
And now, out of guilt and a bloodlust that was only fueled by their deaths, we are turning on ourselves. This, the aftermath of our shameful first contact, will be looked back on with even more horror than our mass slaughter of that race. No matter how many ‘sympathizers’ you root out and destroy, you will always be lady Macbeth and your hands will never wash clean of blood, both red and green.
I did nothing when they were destroyed as I have done nothing since. I have attended no meetings. If I am guilty of anything, it is of not raising my voice when it may have mattered. I await this mockery of human dignity to run its course and I am humiliated to be alive during this chapter of earth’s existence.
–Last recorded words of disgraced xenobiologist Jance Hayward, 63rd traitor executed in the state of Arizona during the post-Xenocleanse Purge of 2061
by submission | Jan 8, 2012 | Story |
Author : Z. J. Woods
Crowley said, “You sure you wanna do this?”
I brushed at the front of the faded jumpsuit. Nothing on it, of course. Nervous habit.
He took a long drag from his cigarette, sighed the smoke out. “Well,” he said. Expecting me to fill the silence. With what?
“Dammit, Crowl,” I said eventually. “Just do it. You won’t be back this way for … what? Six, seven years?”
“Seven on the inside,” he said. “Really can’t say.”
“I can’t wait that long.” Pictures of my broke-down apartment tumbled through my head. Leaky ceiling, peeling wallpaper, the works. Anything you can think of to make a home uncomfortable, that place had it. That whole damned world had it. “Do the thing before I change my mind.”
“Ain’t nothing much better out there,” he said.
“We gonna sit here all day?”
He shrugged, ground the cigarette into an ashtray that pulled out of the front console. Then he held the bike handle-looking thing with one hand and flipped switches with the other. “Ain’t too far off now. Look.”
The black mass blotted out the stars ahead. Space serpent, as Crowley had promised. Only they go fast enough to make jumping between the settlements possible. And only they know where they’re headed.
“The fuck do you plan to wrangle that thing?” I had to ask. “Can’t hardly see it.”
He tapped on a screen above the bike handle. The serpent squirmed, an orange blob
in green space. “Besides,” he added, “the harpoon knows its business better than I do. Nothing to worry about.”
When the ship knows more than its pilot, well, let’s just say it’s a hell of a universe we live in.
“Alright now, watch this.” Crowley did something with the bike handle, and the harpoon roared out faster than the old tug it came from could ever hope to go. Took about twenty, thirty minutes to hook the serpent. When I tell you I could hear my heart beat the whole time, wondering if it’d work at all or if Crowley was just a crazy bastard like he’d always been, God knows I’m not exaggerating.
I can’t say Crowley isn’t crazy, now, and he’s sure a bastard, but one thing he isn’t is a liar. Pain kicked the serpent into action. The line behind the harpoon pulled tight. Space disappeared.
Seven years. On the inside.
by submission | Jan 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Creak.
Edwin stopped his writing stylus. The screen pulsated waiting for the next letter.
Silence.
Once more, he began gliding the stylus, writing his letters with meticulous care. Edwin did not know why this was necessary when thoughts could produce the same effect on the screen, but his father had told him to do it. So he wrote.
Creak.
He stopped. Would the door open? Would he see his father? He sat, waited, and wrote. How long had he been waiting for his father’s return?
Creak.
The door opened, and his android approached him.
“Your father said to go to bed.” The metallic voice expressed nothing beyond the words.
“Is he home?” Edwin did not expect an answer, but he had to ask.
“Your father said to go to bed.”
“All right, I’m coming.” Edwin placed his stylus in its holder and turned off the screen.
Edwin and his companion moved down the dull metallic hallway and into Edwin’s bedroom. The android prepared him for sleep, and helped Edwin lie down on his smooth bed.
After a few minutes, Edwin’s father arrived accompanied by a woman. They stood together looking down at Edwin. “Yes, I think we’ve found an answer to the problem.” He held Edwin’s lighted screen in his hands:
“…Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh I am tired of writing letters Ii Jj Kk Ll…”
“Edwin has self-awareness.”
Sleeping yet not asleep, Edwin felt his father touch his hand, and the warmth spread up his arm. He heard them both leave the room.
His father’s words hung in the air behind them.
“We’ll add self-warming with the next one. We’ll name him Fred.”
Edwin touched one hand to the other. Cold. He blinked his eyes.
“Father?”
by submission | Jan 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Shaun.K.Adams
South of his lofty position in Tempest stations observation tower, Kane De Souza observed a vast cyclonic column of dust drifting across the Syria Planum. He marvelled at its frenetic energy as it tracked slowly across the highest plateau elevations on the Tharsis bulge, unleashing a dazzling light show of dry lightning stabbing at the Martian landscape. It reminded De Souza of a crazy monster, railing at the world, full of spite and fury. A wild and unpredictable thing, spitting and cursing at its environment as it headed out into the plains east of Arsia Mons.
During the eleven months that Tempest station had been operational, De Souza had witnessed many such dust storms, so far none of them had hit the small human outpost head on. Some aberrant part of him felt disappointed that this was the case. Although he was almost entirely certain that the station could withstand such an assault without so much as a scratch, it would be interesting to test its mettle so to speak. It might also alleviate some of the crushing boredom of the last eleven months here on Mars.
The steady clank of a centrifugal lock opening a hatchway cover and footsteps on the spiral staircase below him meant De Sousa was about to have company. As the sounds of laboured breathing rose towards his ears, he continued to stare after the receding dust storm through the 360-degree Armorglas viewing plate, only turning away when a head appeared above the circular Nano tube platform on which he stood.
“What brings you up here, Dorothy? You look terrible by the way.”
De Sousa grinned as his visitor sat down heavily on the top step, flipping him the bird with her free hand as she caught her breath back. Dorothy unzipped the top of her standard issue padded green coveralls and pulled out a bottle and two plastic cups.
“I came to wish you a merry Christmas you unsociable bastard.”
She cracked open the screw top on the bottle of Glayva and poured the amber liquid.
“Best liqueur in the world.” She said, offering a cup to, De Sousa.
“We aren’t in the world this came from, in case you had forgotten,” he said taking the proffered drink.
“Lighten up, Kane. It’s Christmas day. We all have to make the best of this situation.”
De Sousa took a sip of the liqueur, savoured the taste and sat down next to his companion.
“Sorry, Dotty, how are your lungs holding up?”
“Tight, after climbing those stairs, sunshine. Second stage remission, the new meds from Phobos base are kicking its arse.”
De Sousa ran his finger over the hazard rail at the top of the stairway then held it up to his eyes for examination. A fine red powder adhered to his fingertip. The ‘it’, Dorothy Penhaligon referred to was a condition known as ‘Red Lung,’ the first cases of it had begun to show up among the thirty members of Tempest stations crew less than a week after the orbiting Gravity Tractor had lowered the entire station to the surface of Mars.
“The Providence just left Earth orbit to re supply us, Kane. With her new generation Ion drive she will be here in less than three months, the quarantine will have ended by then. And I have more good news too.”
Dorothy reached over and took Kane’s hand in hers, wiping away the red stain with her thumb.
“The doc, says I am pregnant, my love. Our child will be the first Native Martian.”
by submission | Jan 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Erin Cole
Dawn fractures through the glades of the development. Solar-paneled rooftops refract the cadmium light of sun and men prepare for their busy days, hefting briefcase to hybrid. Jen-6 wakes and rises erect.
Inside a petite helmet, embedded with black silks, is a cellular mass of encrypted energy. She snaps it into her eco-friendly skull.
There is a crackle of voltage, irregular in function, but robot mommy doesn’t report. To do so would expose dysfunction.
Dysfunction leads to the gooey darkness. Jen-6 reboots. There is no dysfunction in her world today’she is robot mommy.
Downstairs, sweet pigtail blue-eyes yawns for a bowl of muesli.
“I want a waffle, plain, cut up with syrup!” shouts the little tyke.
The glum girl in black, doesn’t respond. This presents no dilemma for Jen-6. Her upgrades included telepathic features: she wants the usual oatmeal, not too hot, or cold, stirred thick as lentil soup. With technology behind her stride, she can do anything today. She is robot mommy.
A trip to the downtown pergolas throws Jen-6 into the sharp points of shifty stares. The townsfolk are unwelcome to the new developments in robotic child rearing.
“She’s one of the new androids.”
“Who would ever trust their kids to a machine?”
“Of course they would design her after Barbie.”
Jen-6 strides past them, aloof, yet in the void of her makeup, she wishes to be one of them, to feel the heat of real neurotransmitters.
Jen-6 pays for a bundle of bread and steers away from hostile minds. Further into the arms of the city, dust from construction billows into the clefts of her sleek frame. She activates ionic cleansing agents, but her power pack has only two bars left. It is a long walk to the park and rain complicates her journey further.
Returning home, her leg casings crack and flake into metallic scales. Saline-drenched skies have eroded her modules. She slumps into a chair, stuttering incoherent terminology.
“Father, robot mommy is crashing.”
Father kneels beside her. “Jen-6? Can you reboot?”
She is unable to restart. Irises that were once silver-blue are now the shade of an eclipsed moon. Father hangs up the phone; his pleas ignored by The System. A diamond-shaped pack of guards march up the drive and heave Jen-6 into the back of a utility vehicle. Father makes a cross at his heart, hoping for another, maybe a red-haired one next time.
Thick gelatinous water rouses Jen-6 from an ashen-colored sleep. She is drifting, sinking. Quicksilver spores adhere to her body, replenishing synthetic carbon-based layers of tissue. She sways sideways, past the beams of orange-filtered lighting, down into the gooey darkness. A glitch in her system fires, a crackle, and for one diminutive moment, Jen-6 is scared, angry…human.
“Cer…eal…waffle…plain…, glum gir…oatmeal…lent…soup”
***
Dawn fractures through the oaks of the countryside. Shingled rooftops smoke from heated dew, and men ready for their busy days, steering tractor to field. Jen-7 wakes and rises erect. She is the newest protocol, rigorously tested to face every obstacle to date. She snaps a petite helmet, embedded with golden silks, into her eco-friendly skull.
Downstairs, a brown-eyed, wobbling babe wants eggs scrambled, toast with berry jam, and juice in his favorite cartoon cup. Little baby twins cry for a warm bottle of immunization-enhanced, homogenized milk.
A small hiccup in Jen-7’s system flashes a vision behind the optic sheath of her lids: a line of children at the downtown pergolas and a man in a tailored suit. Jen-7 computes the error and reboots. There will be no dysfunction in her world today. She is robot mommy.
