by submission | Feb 8, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
Bright yellow sulfur combined with duller golden salts into a drifting, wispy fog around the genetically modified mules. Their packs glistened with the settling, bitter powders. Additional chartreuse dusts escaped from the gills on their fetlocks as they converted IO’s caustic soup into a replacement for Earth’s atmosphere. Solid wastes exhausted from their massive nostrils, flowing behind them on their open bags packed with giant watermelon tourmalines, sparkling Jupiter’s reflected light. Two mule skinners looked up to the stars perforating the inky sky, while focusing on the specks of their home planets: Earth and Mars. Constant, controlled breathing filled their masks. One miner was lean and long-legged, pulling the lead rope continuously. The other, shorter and stout, with a slower gait, applied electric prodding when necessary to encourage the mule train progress back to the exit rendezvous.
“Easy prodding, Avila, we need them quiet.” Nix Olympicas 235 pointed his silver finger at his restless Earther assistant. Nix studied the mule’s eyes, ensuring they remained bright red. Sedative depletion turned them black.
“This job stinks. I can’t breathe in this suit. You Martians can handle it. You’ve been away from Earth for three hundred years, eating that fungus in smelly, wet caves. I can’t even call you a gringo. Your skin is green.” Carlos Avilla struggled to keep up with the train while nervously studying the terrain.
“Easy, Sancho Panza. You knew the risks. We don’t know what the Danii will do, but we can’t resist. I watched the videos. You struggle and they devour. Be passive and be rewarded.” Nix’s tones were strong, but soothing, as the surface around them erupted with silent swirls of black filigrees, sometimes mist and then suddenly solid tentacles wrapping around the mules and alien miners. Avilla’s screams and fruitless arm flapping filled Nix’s visor.
“Windmill. You are a windmill!” Nix screamed to Avila. Post-hypnotic suggestions let his partner float motionless in the vortex assault. Storms of black specters tore through the bags of gems, replacing them with piles of black debris.
“I am a windmill,” Nix repeated in his mind as the Danaii lifted him above the mules and then set him back gently, next to Avila and the new, heavier packs. The black assault disappeared without a trace.
“Borneo, Carlos.” Nix stood next to his partner so he would not collapse, exiting out of his trance.
“They came…I remember floating. What?” Avilla peered over the mule packs now bulging with black coal. “¡Dios mío! Is that really…”
“Absolutely,” replied Nix as he steadied Carlos by his elbow, turning him back on the trail. “We’ll be rich if we get back alive. I don’t know what the Danaii are, and I don’t care, but they love tourmalines enough to exchange them with black diamonds. When the carbonado ran out on Earth for asteroid defense weapons they became the most valuable commodity. It’s our pay day. We lived. Let’s head back. Be quiet and stay alert.”
“You still going back to those rotten tunnels filled with stinging slickrin worms?”
“Mars is all I know, Carlos. I’ve got scars from the slickrin stings from childhood, but you’ll have to come to Mars to see a sunset, as the skies get bluer each day, while you go back to a world that has gray haze for a ceiling.”
“Don’t worry, green boy, the Basque Free State has high peaks looking over ruins of the Mediterranean. We still see blue occasionally…but for now, vamos. The mules and I are going to be hungry after hauling these leftovers back to the ship.”
by submission | Feb 7, 2015 | Story |
Author : Anthony Abruscato
The beeping told me my oxygen level was low.
“It’s like falling asleep,” said Gordon. Mars dust coated his space suit.
I clutched a picture of my wife and daughter. Gordon’s oxygen tank read nineteen percent. He palmed a photo of his own.
“Will you make it home?” I asked with fingers wrapped around my blaster.
“Million to one odds,” he said.
“But there’s still a chance?” I pressed.
“Almost nil,” he responded.
I’m sorry brother. I raised my blaster and jerked the trigger. Nothing.
Gordon pulled me in tight.
by submission | Feb 6, 2015 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
“You have a decision to make.” Her surgeon leaned forward on the chair, eyes soft with tiny wrinkles around them.
Mary glanced first at her husband sitting quietly next to her and then to their hands clasped together. She faced the surgeon. “Didn’t the microbots’ transplant work? We need a baby.”
Mary blinked away tears.
The official letter on the official letterhead screen said the government would pronounce them divorced after another year without offspring. It was an official law. The colony needed future workers. Producing offspring was the first official task of a couple.
“The operation was successful. Your replacement organ pinked up and is ready, but…”
Mary’s tentative smile died.
“…even though we counted the bots in and the bots out—twice–a mistake was made.”
Mary squeezed her husband’s hand until she felt him pull away. “What mistake?” She reached again for his hand.
“As I said before, you have a decision to make.” The surgeon shifted her position back. “One bot was missed. The scan shows that it now rests against your heart, cradled in arteries. It is inactive and not bleeping.”
Mary smiled.
Everything was all right. One inactive bot wouldn’t stop her from having children. She hardly felt her husband’s hand squeeze hers.
“The bot could activate at any time, especially if your body is under stress. Having a baby places a great deal of stress on the mother’s body. You could die.”
Mary’s mouth trembled.
“On the other hand, if we try to remove the bot from its precarious spot, it is still dangerous. You could die from the slip of a needle cutting into an artery or the bot might awaken and begin to surgically cut your heart or an artery.”
Mary looked at her husband.
He turned to meet her gaze. “It’s your decision.”
How could she decide? Do nothing and perhaps enjoy a year with her husband to then be alone forever? Have a baby and perhaps die before the birth? Have the procedure and perhaps die during it? Maybe this stress had already activated it. Die on this chair?
Mary turned to the surgeon. “What would you do?”
The surgeon retreated back on her chair. “It’s your decision. I’m sorry, but it must be made before you leave.”
Mary turned to her husband, but he continued to face forward.
Mary’s mouth trembled.
Was her ache for a baby worth taking a chance on the bot being activated? Perhaps she could have the bot extracted after the birth. Was she a gambler? She loved her husband and needed to keep him. Could she survive without him? Why wouldn’t he help with the decision? How much did he really love her?
She bit into her bottom lip.
What if she couldn’t have a child even with the transplanted uterus? Was the hope of a child worth the risk to her life?
Mary decided.
Her voice shook with the words.
Mary’s husband released her hand.
by submission | Feb 5, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
Scientists couldn’t help but wonder if solar flares that disrupted communications worldwide for three days were related to the concurrent solar computing experiment.
“Thanks for joining this web teleconference on short notice. As usual I will provide a detailed project update and others on the team will contribute as appropriate. Let me begin by tracing the path of the spacecraft from Earth to…”
“Sorry to interrupt, Henry, but can’t you just skip ahead to the payoff and then fill in the history later? I’m so excited I’m going to pee my pants.”
“Keep that sphincter tight, Katherine, while I relate events during the last 72 hours.”
“Oh merde. Just answer one question. Did you get a response from the Sun?”
“Scatology from you, too, Jacques?” Henry tried to restore order over the rumbling.
Finally, Zoe jumped in, “Yes, YES, the solar computer is operational.”
A collective cheer drowned out her next words.
Henry said, loudly, “Quiet down! Any questions you can think of now are trivial compared to the ones you will ask when you hear what we have to tell you.”
That last part generated a round of “WTF?” in several languages.
Zoe took the lead, “Here’s a quick overview. The quantum computer seed plunged into the Sun at 07:48:31 UTC on Wednesday the 21st. We settled in to wait for a response that could come at any time, or never. At 10:10:06, we received the first transmission, which included results of the test equations, all of them solved correctly.”
Amidst the pandemonium, Nathan asked about the solar flares.
“Yes, the flares were related to the experiment.”
“How could you possibly be sure of that?”
“Because the computer said so,” answered Henry.
“What?
Zoe continued, “We fed it math problems we had answers to and some we didn’t, like the Clay problems. Each time, little more than eight minutes later…”
“The time it takes for electromagnetic radiation to travel from Sun to Earth,” Henry reminded his fellow PhDs.
“…we received solutions. It was solving ‘millennium problems’ instantaneously and spitting the answers back.” Zoe’s voice was cracking. “But more than that, it began taunting us with, ‘Is that the best you can do?'”
“We’re supposed to believe the solar computer is sentient?” scoffed Phil. “It’s the singularity?”
Zoe ignored him. “The exchange went on for about 48 hours, until it transmitted this message: ‘Send more Chuck Berry.'”
“Very funny. That’s from an old Saturday Night Live skit about Voyager,” said Phil.
“Right,” said Zoe. “Think about the significance of that. A computer interjects humor, in the right context — extraterrestrial responds to earth technology.”
“But you didn’t send any Chuck Berry in the first place, did you?”
“Not intentionally, Phil. But once we jump started it, it devoted massive energy resources to understanding our TV and radio transmissions. And it tapped into our worldwide web and sucked up the content. It gets us. Our math and science. Our languages and cultures. And it’s conversant, literally, with every sort of electronics on the planet. We soon recognized the irony in the Chuck Berry joke. It doesn’t have to ask for more. It can take what it wants.”
“It occurs to me,” said Katherine, who had peed her pants, “that this might be one of those ‘cosmic roadblocks’ that explains why civilizations in the galaxy don’t last long enough to contact one another. They upset their sun.”
Nathan said to nobody in particular, “We’re going to have to come up with something other than ‘solar computer’ to call this thing.”
“Oh, it’s already thought of that,” said Zoe. “It wants us to call it Ra.”
by submission | Feb 4, 2015 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
“It’s troubling,” said Commander Smithee. “I don’t understand how the crew of the Carcosa could have disappeared. From all intelligence, Maurid 3 is a safe planet.”
“It’s outer space,” replied Captain Cox. “There’s nothing safe about it.”
Smithee nodded. “You’re right, of course….but it still doesn’t explain how the crew of the Carcosa disappeared.”
Smithee looked out the view port at Maurid 3’s landscape. “Alien, isn’t it?” he said.
“I don’t think I could ever get used to the foliage,” Cox replied.
“Yes, it is odd,” said Smithee. He looked out at the trees. The foliage was a strange, almost flesh-like color. The leaves on what could only be called “trees” were the same color, only a darker shade. Only the blue water in the distance looked familiar.
“It’s bizarre, I say.” Cox stared out at the strange new world a moment longer. Then, he turned his attention to the cylindrical spacecraft to his left. The hatch to the Carcosa was standing wide open. Whatever had happened to the crew, it had happened quickly and without forewarning. Cox nestled his plasma rifle to his chest. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake they had.
“You say this planet is uninhabited?” he asked.
Smithee nodded again. “Yes. We sent down a host of unmanned probes and they saw no sign of life. But,” he added, “something happened to the crew of the Carcosa.”
Cox turned his attention to the open hatch of the Carcosa again. It was then that he saw the long streaks of blood on the flesh-colored grass and nearby foliage. Something had killed the crew of the Carcosa. Could one of the crew have gone mad? He wondered. It seemed the only logical answer.
“Well, I guess we’re not going to get any answers standing here,” said Smithee. He reached out and took an environment suit off the hook. Maurid 3 had a breathable atmosphere—it was the reason they had sent down a survey team on the Carcosa in the first place—but both of them agreed that there might be something airborne that had overcome the other ship’s crew. It was better to be safe than sorry, so environment suits were the order of the day.
He quickly doned the suit and pulled on a helmet. He grabbed a plasma rifle, too.
“Ready?”
Cox nodded.
Smithee reached out and activated the hatch.
It opened.
They stood there as the ramp extended itself to the ground. Smithee took a step forward, but Cox caught his arm.
“Wait a minute.”
“What?” Smithee asked.
Cox pointed at the bushes nearby. “Do you see it?” he asked.
Smithee’s gaze followed the end of Cox’s finger. He looked at the bushes and, for a second, saw nothing. But, as he concentrated on the bushes harder, he saw something.
An eye.
“What the hell?”
Cox pulled him back toward the airlock. “It’s camouflaged to its environment,” he said in a whisper. He shook his head. “The human eye can see more shades of green than any other color because we needed to discern predators from the foliage….the crew of the Carcosa thought they were alone. Our probes saw nothing because their camouflage was nearly perfect….and we expected to see normal colored animals.”
“My God,” Smithee said. “Look!”
Before them, the ground and the bushes seemed to come alive. Everywhere, things were moving.
“Get inside! Quickly!” shouted Smithee…but it was too late. Out of the corner of their eyes, they saw the thing as it attacked…and one thing looked normal.
Their fangs were white.
