by Stephen R. Smith | Jan 14, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Eratz perched on the last of the big branches reaching out from the forest towards the massive clearing the space-farers had scorched into his landscape . His body stretched almost flush with the limb, lost in the blue leaves and rough bark, one leg and one arm stretched out completely, fingers and toes curled tightly around while the remaining arm and leg were tucked up, coiled to launch him into flight. His bare skin bristled in the cool nighttime air, its colour mimicking exactly the bark he had veneered himself to.
He waited.
Beneath him, like clockwork, the patrol of soldiers lumbered by. Copper skin covered in tribal markings, hair cropped short, heavy weapons cradled in well muscled arms. These were the off-world intruders, masters of brute force and ignorance.
Eratz barely breathed as they slipped by scant few meters beneath him completely unaware.
When they stopped at the perimeter midpoint, as they always did, Eratz narrowed his eyes to slits and focused on a point twenty meters beyond, above the fence line, and in his mind plotted the trajectory and landing. When he heard the lighter snick, the soldier’s night vision momentarily spoiled in the glare, Eratz launched, arms and legs coiling and uncoiling with the fury of purpose as he reached the end of the branch without so much as moving it and launched into the air. His groundward flesh took on the colour of the night sky, and his skyward flesh the colour of the ground as he spread his arms and legs, pulling tight the glider flesh and made the fence-line and that distance again beyond in a silent rush, before diving and coming to a complete stop, his body now blending completely with the ground as he flattened himself to it and cooled his body to its exact temperature.
He barely breathed, didn’t move, opened his ears as wide as he could and once again waited.
Beyond the fence he could make out the steady inhalation and exhalation of the soldiers as they smoked their cigarettes, the measure of their laboured breathing. He could hear the hardware shift as their weapons were repositioned at the end of well worn carrying straps.
There were no sounds of detection.
Eratz cooled and conserved until the soldiers resumed their patrol, then he resumed his forward motion.
He kept plastered almost completely to the ground, arms and legs coiling and uncoiling, joints bending so as to keep his body flat, its only motion forward towards the landing platform. Where the ground cover changed into the glasphalt of the landing pad, Eratz’ skin adjusted again, taking on the smooth flecked grey of the new material as he continued across its surface.
He moved slowly, steadily, closing the distance to the nearest starfighter with spider-like precision of movement and laser focus.
If he turned his head he’d be able to clearly make out the guard towers at either end of the compound, and the control tower looming overhead. He would be able to make out the eyes of those soldiers inside charged with protecting their equipment from just this sort of intrusion. He didn’t turn his head as he knew he didn’t need to. If they spotted him, if his skin betrayed his true colour, or his body temperature rose so much as half a degree he’d be gunned down in an instant, there was no value in foreknowledge of that eventuality should it occur.
Once beneath the safe cover of the nose gear, Eratz cycled through the schematics of this craft in his head, then slithered up the skid into the landing gear compartment, dialed open the maintenance hatch and crawled through the munitions access tube to the navigator’s compartment, then between the seats into the cockpit proper.
He ran through the startup sequence once from memory, then in a mad flurry of fired switches and interface overrides the vertical thrusters bathed the tarmac in flame as the craft shot up into the night sky, nosed down as the take off thrusters rotated for forward motion and the ship was gone, Eratz madly coding through all the tracking interfaces and shutting them down as he pushed the throttle as far as it would go.
These intruders had taught him the value of invisibility, and once he’d grafted that to their firepower he would teach them to disappear.
by submission | Jan 13, 2015 | Story |
Author : Lydia Devadason
The whirr of the surveillance drone broke the silence. Georgie looked beyond the mountains of waste and makeshift huts housing her family and the rest of the excludes; she scanned the sky above the perimeter fence to try to locate the sound.
‘Quick, pass me the spanner.’ Tommy’s words fired from his mouth as he worked on the plane.
Georgie moved the mechanics book and scrabbled through the box at her feet. Spanner in hand, she ran through the piles of discarded metal. ‘I’ll take it from here. Move over.’
Tommy stood his ground. She shoved him in the arm.
‘Come on, I’m quicker than you. Shift!’
Georgie’s heart punched her ribs as Tommy crawled away. The spanner was too big and it took a few attempts to grip the nut. Finally, despite her hands slipping on the handle, it turned. And tightened. The metal buckled from the strain.
‘How’s the glue?’
Tommy prodded the tail with his finger. ‘Still sticky.’
The wind picked up, swirling rubbish in their direction.
Gripping the metal, Georgie tugged. ‘The cockpit’s sturdy. It’s fixed!’
Or at least, it resembled a plane once more.
‘Do you think we can do this?’ Tommy’s eyes widened. It was his turn to search the sky.
‘Yes.’ Georgie couldn’t look him in the eyes. ‘The propeller and controls work again. We’re almost there. This is it – our ticket out.’
‘But—’
‘Tommy, we have to get help. Suppose we find houses, where people aren’t forced to eat the others’ leftovers?’
‘B— but what if there’s no such place? Or what if the others don’t want us? Mum said the prisons were full so they dumped grandma here.’
‘No, that’s not right, people wouldn’t leave us. Something’s happened outside the fence – a disaster.’
‘But – then who’s operating them?’ Tommy pointed at the metal object buzzing towards their position.
‘Not now, Tommy, get in.’
The boy stopped. Tears streamed down his cheeks. ‘There’s no time, Georgie, we won’t make it.’
She looked up. Two hundred feet tops.
She punched the ground. ‘Arrgh! We won’t get it back in the den. Quick, help me hide it.’
They rushed around, piling wood, metal, bones – anything within their grasp – over the conspicuous shape.
Eighty feet.
‘Georgie, come on, we’ve got to get out of here.’
‘Wait.’ She covered the wings.
Fifty feet.
Georgie grabbed Tommy’s hand. They ran and dived into their hole. She pulled the metal sheet across, but left an inch so she could watch the drone, as it hovered over the place they’d been. She felt Tommy tremble against her leg. Her heart skipped in protest as she held her breath.
A flash lit up the sky; a loud bang.
Tommy jumped but she didn’t react. Smoke billowed from the ground where the mountain of waste had previously sat.
There were no tears this time. Instead, heaviness dragged her stomach and head down, down, to the bottom of the hole, and her lungs ached with every breath.
Tommy squeezed her hand. ‘It’s OK. We’ll try again, tomorrow, with one of the others.’
Georgie turned her head. She watched the drone fly across the rows of wrecked planes and into the distance.
‘Yes, Tommy,’ she said finally. ‘We’ll try again – tomorrow.’
She wasn’t sure there’d be a tomorrow.
by Duncan Shields | Jan 12, 2015 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
We are on a planet whose proper name is unpronounceable by us according to the aliens who left us here. We call the planet Here, Prison, Earth2, Re-earth, Zooplanet and many others names. We haven’t been here long enough for one single name to stick.
It looks kind of like what I remember Africa looking like when I saw it on television back on Earth. Lots of arid land with occasional fields of tall grass and little tiny lakes scattered around, lots of sun.
We’ve got three suns and sixteen moons. The suns are weaker so we don’t cook. They add up to a constant summer. The moons make for a much brighter night. Both days and nights are twice as long here but we’ve adjusted.
We sleep half the day and then half the night. The protective atmosphere here is not flawed. We tan here with no burning and no skin cancer.
Over a year ago, the aliens came down to Earth and left a puzzle for us floating in the middle of the Pacific; a giant geodesic dome bobbing in international waters. They made a lot of noise leaving it there. Our weapons had no effect. We watched the ship leave and turned our attention to the artifact.
One by one, the countries sailed out, surrounded it and stared. For once, the UN came in handy and volunteered to be first to go into it.
Inside the dome were a series of simple puzzles that became progressively harder. The puzzles were relayed back. The world got busy.
The first six were completed in days. Prime number sequences, geometric and logic proofs, a couple of theoretical physics equations. Then they got hard.
We made it up to question twenty. Hawking died trying to figure it out.
After no more puzzles had been solved for sixteen months and a few of them had been answered incorrectly, the aliens came back.
Twenty-three million of us were collected at random. We simply woke up in the cargo hold of the arkship floating around our former home, a mathematically fair cross-section of ages, races, nationalities and gender. Family ties were not taken into consideration.
As the Earth grew smaller, we saw it flash a number of colours.
We were told later that the Earth had been sterilized and cleaned for its new tenants. That meant that every human not on board the ship was dead.
I missed my parents. We all still had nightmares. Some of the women have given birth, though, and a new generation has been born here.
There was initial fury, insanity and sadness after we left the arkship. Factions developed, readying themselves to attack the aliens if they returned and trying to rally others. The aliens have not come back and those factions are being listened to less and less.
There are still some that see us as victims rounded up and put on some sort of a reservation. Their numbers are dwindling. The grief-stricken are starting to rejoin conversations and laugh sometimes.
The silent surroundings and lack of predators are calming. You can’t die from exposure to the elements here. It’s always good weather. The plants and food and game animals are plentiful and none of it seems to be poisonous.
There’s no money here. The unemployment rate is 100%. The air is clean and so far, the weather’s been a flat and uneventful paradise compared to the growing superstorms on Earth.
The fact is that most of us have taken to thinking that technically, we’ve been rescued.
by submission | Jan 11, 2015 | Story |
Author : Michael Hughes
Remer opened his eyes, but the room was coming into focus more slowly than it should have. The synthetic glare of the fluorescent bulbs made it difficult to think. Where was he?
He searched his mind for the last thing he could remember, but kept coming up blank. The harder he thought, the more he realized he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember anything beside his name. He had no sense of time to help process how long he’d been out. He could sense the shells of memories that should’ve been there, but they were empty: a void of a memory that no longer existed within his mind.
Then he heard voices. His hearing was coming back now, but his eyes still hadn’t been able to focus on his surroundings. The voices were speaking, but not to him. He could clearly hear the words they were saying, but they held no meaning. The words they spoke were as empty as his memories. He felt he should understand them, but again, nothing came.
Finally, his eyes began to focus and the view he was presented with was completely foreign. He was lying on a table of sorts, perhaps an operating table. Had he been injured? Trying to access his memories was useless and he made no serious effort to follow that train of thought.
He wanted answers. Perhaps the voices, now belonging to strangers who stood near the table, could provide them. He tried to speak, but no words came. He struggled and lifted his head, again trying to muster the strength to speak. But nothing came.
The strangers noticed his movement and quickly surrounded the table muttering more empty words. Their tone was urgent. Not yet harsh, but something was definitely bothering them. He tried again to speak, this time a small squeak managed to escape his mouth. One of the strangers stopped and looked him in the eyes.
He said something to the others and they stopped as well. All of them now focused on Remer’s face. The first stranger said something to Remer, but he still couldn’t understand him. The tension built inside Remer’s mind, he knew he should be able to understand them! The stranger repeated the phrase. Tears of frustration began to build in the corners of Remer’s eyes. He tried to respond. He gave everything ounce of effort he had in him! And it worked!
“Where am I?”
The words were weak and no more audible than a single drop of rain on a forest floor in the spring. If the other strangers hadn’t been so focused on him, it’s likely they never would’ve heard it.
As soon as he uttered the words, memories and understanding flooded Remer’s mind. He could understand the strangers now. It was as if the words he spoke shattered a mighty dam that held back the very fabric of his being.
He turned to the first stranger, who he now recognized as a doctor, and asked one simple question, “Why am I here?”
The man looked him in the eyes, his face grave and bathed in sorrow.
“Mr. Remer, you are not who you think you are.”
“What do you mean? I had some trouble remembering when I first woke up, but now everything is clear. I am Jonathan Remer, CEO of Remer Industries. I run one of the largest medical cloning facilities in the Western Hemis….”
His words trailed off. He was a smart man and realized now the gravity of the situation.
“I am a clone, aren’t I?”
But he already knew the answer.
One of the other doctors approached him carrying a syringe, a single tear forming in the corner of her eye.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
He didn’t resist as the needle entered his arm. The room began to fade to black. He thought he heard faint weeping.
Then everything fell silent.
by submission | Jan 10, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
(Thunderous applause over a musical flourish)
“Thank you! And welcome to ‘Interview With A Dictator’! We’ve got the old quantum teleporter warmed up and ready, so let’s bring on tonight’s guest!”
(Applause)
(Computer voiceover) “Tonight we have a despot from ancient Earth who ruled the Italian nation-state circa 8048 BN, Galactic Calendar, or 1922 to 1943 on the old Earth calendar. We’ve locked on to his coordinates and are ready for transport.”
“Folks, let’s welcome ‘Il Duce’ himself: Benito Mussolini!”
(Thunderous applause. A flash of light and a tired-appearing, heavyset man materializes in the chair opposite the host. The newly-arrived man looks terrified and confused. The chair’s armrests extrude themselves around his wrists to form manacles. The chair’s legs similarly bind his feet.)
“Where am I?! Who are you?! What is this place?!”
“Benito, I’m Davvit Ril-Watyn and you’re on ‘Interview With A Dictator,’ the Milky Way’s highest rated talk show. Now, you and your mistress, Claretta Petacci, are about to be machine gunned to death by anti-fascist partisans in the Italian village of Giulino de Mezzegra at the end of the Second World War in your subjective reference frame. We’ve brought you forward in time to what on your calendar would be the year AD 6893. We also installed a translator device in your brain during your teleport so you can understand and speak in Galactic Standard. The laws of physics will only let you remain with us for a minute or two after which you will rematerialize back in 1945 and die. So let’s have an…”
(Audience in unison) “Interview With A Dictator!”
(Mussolini trembles, perspires profusely) “This is madness! This is a dream!”
(Ril-Watyn leans in with his elbows on the desk, cradling his chin in his hands) “Ben, the Italian and German fascist militaries had exquisite uniforms. But it seems like the better-dressed armies always lose to sartorially inferior enemies. Do you think your impeccable sense of style was a tactical mistake?”
(The Italian struggles with his bonds) “I must leave here! Let me go!”
“I wouldn’t be in too big of a hurry if I were you, Ben.” (Ril-Watyn lowers his voice to a faux-whisper) “They’re going to hang your corpse upside down from the roof of a gas station using meat hooks.”
(Audience groans, Ril-Watyn smiles and shrugs) “Well, they are.” (Audience laughs)
“Okay, Ben, let’s get down to brass tacks. We all know that another fascist dictator got the spotlight while you — let’s be brutally honest here — had to play second fiddle. Why was that? Was it the mustache, you think?”
(Mussolini stares wild-eyed at Ril-Watyn) “You are working for that communist, Walter Audisio! You are doing this to torture me before you kill me!”
“Hold that thought, Ben. It’s time to put in a word for this cycle’s sponsor, ‘New You’. When you decide it’s time to change species, trust the species-reassignment company with over 2,000 years of experience. Trust ‘New You’. Now, Ben, even after almost 5,000 Earth-years, the word ‘Italy’ is still synonymous across the galaxy with great food. Let’s talk about fettuccine alfredo.”
(Buzzer sounds)
“Oh, Ben, I’m sorry but we’re out of time.”
“Let me go! I have money hidden away! I will give you a fortune!”
“Sorry, Ben, I’m afraid you died 4,948 years ago…right now.”
(A flash of light, the chair is empty)
“Folks, the very late Benito Mussolini!”
(Applause and whistles)
“Next week on the show: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known to history as ‘Caligula’! Good night, folks!”
