by submission | Mar 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Matt Forshaw
This is how I sleep; in a sarcophagus amid the stars, my body quiet and unmoving. There is no blanket to keep me warm, no pillow, no mattress that I rest upon. I do not toss or turn. I do not shiver, though it is cold. My chest does not rise or fall, there is no gentle rhythm of a steady beating heart. My breath is stored in hard chrome tanks and fed to me through valves and tubes. It is not gas, but a complex fluid that gives to me the oxygen I need. Likewise, my blood is kept safely outside of me, and there it remains for the duration of this journey. I do not need it as I sleep. Throughout my veins and arteries, a solution is pumped to keep me cool.
This is how I sleep, with wires and tubes attached, to ensure that I am living. Though in this state you would be forgiven for thinking such was not the case. The hum of electronics and environmental systems provide a soundscape to my rest, though I do not hear it. While I sleep, I travel. Incomprehensible distances at speeds I cannot fathom. My body travels faster than all of my imagination. I travel with my eyes closed. I am told I do not dream, though I often feel as though I’ve dreamt. I remember snippets sometimes, images and flashes, imprints and emotions from the dreams I’m told I do not have. They say it’s from the electricity they use to start my body up again; that my brain interprets it as sweet remembered episodes. It sounds plausible and scientific to me, but perhaps it doesn’t matter. Either way, my eyes do not move or flicker as I sleep.
When I awake, or rather when I’m awoken, it is with a drawn out wrenching gasp. The world takes a long time to return, though I suppose I am the one who has been absent. It is visceral and wet, with choking and mucous and fluids I do not know the names of. I itch in places I can’t reach. My skin is red, my muscles sore. I wash myself with water and I marvel at the sensation. I breathe. It has been long and far since I’ve truly felt a thing, even sleeping as I have been. Time passes, and I am awake to experience its flow. I no longer travel faster than my thoughts, into the gaps between the stars.
I have a room to sleep in now. It has a bed, and a door that leads to another room for washing. I find I cannot sleep on the soft bed, wrapped up in the warm blanket. It suffocates me as I stare at the ceiling with unblinking eyes. The floor is not much better. The small room for washing affords me greater sleep, where I can lie in a pool of cold water. But still, I am kept awake by the sound of my heart, a drum inside my chest. The movement of my lungs is a distraction that will not cease. The blood pumping noisily around my veins is anathema to my rest.
They will find me one morning with the blood removed, it is better on the outside. My chest will be still, with no noisy tattoo issuing from its beating muscle. My tubes and wires will not be sophisticated, but at least they will be there again. This time I tell myself I will not dream. I am tired. This is how I sleep.
by Duncan Shields | Mar 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The ship had recently shaved a comet at close to metaspeed. Nowhere near light but still enough to cause pretty serious damage.
With silicates, sparks would be flying around the cabin. Since they’d used the bios instead, it was juices and blood. The pilot was metal but the ship was meat.
He was ankle deep in a dying craft and aiming for a rest stop.
Something bubbled up on the monitor in front of him: a course to a hot rock that was close. It had an atmosphere that would support the ship but would eventually kill him if the repairs didn’t get finished in time.
He knew that he was the expendable part of the mission. It was a gamble. He squeezed the ‘yes’ organ beside the chair and the ship lurched sideways on the new course.
The hot rock came closer on the screen as the humidity inside the ship increased along with the rising fluid levels closing around him.
The ship tore down through the atmosphere, igniting as it went. The outer shell layers hardened and then shriveled as the ship sped closer to impact.
The ship hit the ocean a few hundred meters away from the coast.
The impact tested its structural integrity and found it wanting.
It cracked open like an egg into boiling water.
The pilot sank down beneath the waves. He needed no air to survive but the salt content in the water would rust him solid if he didn’t get to shore quickly. He hit the bottom and started walking shoreward in the darkness.
It took him six hours to get to the beach.
The remains of the ship washed up around him. He collected what he could find in the surf and put it all into a wet pile.
He connected what umbilicals he could find to the main processor organs and waited for a wetboot to start.
He waited for a week until the air on the planet oxidized him to the brainpan. Days later, he fell forward in pieces with a rattle into the pile of bioship remains.
The rains and heat mixed them further into a soup over the course of the next month.
Bioforms are adaptable.
They couldn’t perform at a macro level so they set about making adjustments at a molecular level, stealing from the available materials to make simpler self-propagating one-celled organic copies. They did this for years, using up the entire reserves of composting organic bioship and pilot mineral compounds at their disposal.
The volcanoes cooled over the next few millennia. The one-celled organisms became more complex. They adapted to life on the surface with the idea of building a ship to go further buried deep in their DNA.
We are the descendants of this ship. Every living thing on the planet is a result of an attempt to build a ship that failed. All evolutionary trees are attempts to create more ships or ship builders. Our duality, our two sexes, our inner yearning of something unfinished and our hybrid nature. We are coded at the most basic level to be what we are. We are the closest that the builders have come.
We have been programmed to leave and continue the journey.
We will do so.
by submission | Mar 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : A. Katherine Black
Sweetie sat rigid with revulsion. Wet lumpy kale dotted with soft pine nuts lay rejected on her plate. She stared at the thickly curtained window, denied the right to watch the normal world go by. Relentless ticking of the grandfather clock echoed through the dining room and clashed against the slurping sounds of her parents devouring their dinner.
Sophie didn’t even seem to notice anything unusual. And why would she? Her toddler world spanned the length of this stupid ranch house and went as deep as the swing set out back. But someday she’d understand. Poor thing.
Sweetie pointedly avoided looking toward the head of the elegantly set table, where Dad’s lips curled outward and stretched as his jaw unhinged. Webbed fingers shoved a flopping, stark-eyed fish down his gullet with a slurp.
“Sweetie, hon,” Mom said in her wet bubbling voice, “you okay?” Her cold webbed hand moved to touch Sweetie’s pink forehead. “You feel hot and clammy.”
Sweetie rolled her eyes away. “Of course I do, Mom. That’s what people feel like all the time.” She shoved her chair back with a start and stomped away.
Dad’s gurgle followed her down the hall. “We’re people, too, Sweetie.”
She slammed the door.
She waited for hours, until the house was silent, until Sophie curled into a ball under her covers with about ten stuffed animals, until her parents rolled around doing gross stuff she tried hard not to think about while they swam around the mossy indoor pool at the back of the house. Why hadn’t they just disappeared on a fishing trip like everyone else did? Sticking it out for the kids’ sake, really. She’d rather be in a foster home.
Sweetie pushed up her window, climbed over her desk and slipped outside. She reached in for her flashlight, but somehow she was able to see better tonight than usual, so she left it on the desk. She ran across several backyards, fast and light on her feet. Daren was just where he always was, waiting under a tree.
They didn’t talk much, which was just fine with Sweetie. What the hell was she supposed to say, anyway? Uh, my dad’s a mackerel and my mom’s a trout?
So they made out. He was one of the best kissers she’d found so far. His lips were soft and forceful at once. And tonight they were… salty. Had he eaten nuts for dinner? Popcorn? Something.
She pulled him to the ground, giggling. His mouth was so moist. She kissed him hard, tugging on his bottom lip, sucking it in, relishing the fullness, the flavor.
“Ow!” Daren pushed her away. She could see him as clearly as if it was high noon. His bottom lip hung, stretched and swollen. His words were clumsy, his voice high. “Whah dah heah?”
But she didn’t want it to stop. Just a little more. This was good.
###
Sweetie’s parents felt the tremor in the water and swam quickly from their cave to the pool’s surface, popping their heads above water where Sweetie’s feet dangled at the edge. Tears poured down her cheeks, already washing away the blood.
Mom’s hand went to Sweetie’s knee, cool and reassuring. “It’s alright Sweetie,” she gurgled softly. “Mom and Dad are here.”
End
by submission | Mar 23, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
The music was driving him crazy. Or rather, he feared, he heard music because he was already crazy.
“Which came first” he asked himself loudly, so he could hear himself speak over the music, “the Louis Armstrong or the lunatic?”
Others sorting through clothes in the thrift store cast wary glances at him.
The Armstrong piece was one of his favorites, but he had grown to like almost the entire repertoire, even the classical stuff. He selected a red ski jacket with white racing stripes. Not his style, but the warmest one in his size.
Of course, it wasn’t only music that ran through his mind and dominated his consciousness. There were sounds of birds and heartbeats and trains and Morse code and scientists giving lectures and others speaking in foreign tongues saying he knew not what. It had begun almost a year ago, never stopping since, and it had ruined his retirement.
He dug into his pocket for six crumpled dollar bills, which he handed the gray haired lady at the register. He had taken note of her on a previous shopping trip. No wedding ring. About his age. If he hadn’t thought himself crazy, and if she hadn’t thought him crazy, he might have asked her out. But, no. A man prone to shouting over the sounds in his head wouldn’t stand a chance with a fine woman like that.
The sounds of the mother kissing her crying baby always stopped him cold. The child calmed down, as he did. He left the store, emerging into a snowfall. Thick flakes soon covered his ski jacket, but he was comfy inside, listening to some sort of electrical sounds.
“What is that infernal static?”
“It’s a pulsar.”
“Well, shut it off and play more of that classical…” He realized that something new had happened. Had the soundtrack become interactive?
“Uh, remind me, what exactly is a pulsar?” he said, barely loud enough to hear his question.
“It is a neutron star that emits pulses of electromagnetic radiation as it rotates.”
He leaned against a brick wall.
“Of course. I knew that. But I don’t think I know you.”
“I am just passing through. I very much enjoyed your recording. I wanted to thank someone. Thank you.”
He slid down the wall to a sitting position. A young lady stopped to hand him a dollar bill.
“Thank you,” he said to her.
“No, thank YOU,” said the voice.
“But I didn’t do anything to deserve thanks.”
“So, you are modest as well as talented.”
“Talented? I used to be talented. Many years ago I was talented. I was a technician for NASA. I wore a bunny suit in the clean room and I assembled… I assembled…”
“Are you all right?” said the young lady, still standing over him.
“BUT I NEVER BOTHERED TO LISTEN TO IT,” he shouted.
“And yet your connection to it somehow brought me across your solar system directly to you,” the voice said.
“THIS MAN NEEDS HELP,” the young lady shouted to a policeman down the block.
“Thank you,” he said to the voice.
“No, thank YOU for Voyager.”
by submission | Mar 22, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
Tender tickles rippled through her as freshly wetted lips touched the delicate blonde hairs along her right wrist—slow, furtive, pressing hesitantly; the feelings were different than the peach or the park’s marble statue she so carefully disinfected.
“What in the world?” Silvia Martin’s trance allowed her older sister Amanda’s unannounced entrance. Silvia pulled her pursed lips away, staring arrows at the intruder.
“You knock, Amanda…you always knock!” She pushed her shoulder-length hair away so her sibling got the full fury of flashing green eyes.
“You’re fourteen. Things are different now, I know, but this is just too early.” Amanda moved towards her sister, concerned.
“He’s not a someone.” Silvia’s slender fingers furiously closed her computer tablet.
“Was that a special message from something chatting you up?” Amanda reached for the tablet. Silvia slapped Amanda’s hand. “How dare you.” Amanda looked down, glaring at Silvia’s rebellion.
“Get out! Don’t ever come back here again…ever! You don’t even live here anymore.” Silvia rose and pushed Amanda, slamming and locking the door.
Silvia restarted her tablet, returning her intensity on new messages. Her attention broke with pounding.
“Open up right now, Silvia Anne! Now!” Amanda’s hand reddened across the side from her pummeling.
“I said no more!” Silvia screamed back, while opening the door slightly. She fell back under her sister’s bull rush. A wide-eyed Amanda stood over her, pointing her finger like a revolver.
“You stupid twit. A stinking robot? Dad is the police chief and Mom is the head of nursing at the hospital. If this got out…if this…well it won’t.”
“You hacked my mail. I could have you…have you…” Silvia stuttered, falling into her handicap.
“What, have me arrested? Are you kidding? Wouldn’t Dad love that? This thing you write to is a hunk of plastic; not even a whole robot.”
“He’s not plastic. He’s polymorphic resins embedded with nano tubes allowing change of facial shape, color of skin, eyes and hair and voice.” Silvia righted herself, describing her secret friend by rote from his manual.
“You’re a minor and I’m supposed to protect you from this kind of filth.”
“Like that Japanese, talking party doll Uncle Jack brought back from Tokyo last Christmas?” Silvia’s reminder colored Amanda’s cheeks.
“You’re never to mention that. You aren’t even supposed to know. Damn him, anyway.”
“It’s not like that with Evan. When I volunteered at hospice I saw what he did for the dying—the Last Kiss. It gave them joy. He looked and talked like anyone they wanted him to be, man or woman. But now, with psilocybin injections, they just see God. They don’t need Evan anymore.”
“And real boys?” Amanda questioned.
“At school boys only want to have sex. They aren’t tender. They don’t want to hear my poetry. They laugh when I stutter. Evan is gentle, cares about me, and listens to all of my dreams and worries.”
Amanda explored her sister’s glowing face and realized nothing would change. “Alright, he’s only the head and shoulders of a robot. I’ll just forget all this. Just don’t you forget about real people.” She rose and left without turning back.
The hospice unsuccessfully sought the Last Kiss torso, quitting after a short investigation. It was merely outdated junk. That summer, night breezes swept jasmine scent through the delicate yellow curtains of Silvia’s room where she and Evan shared her first kiss…but not her last.
