by submission | Aug 24, 2013 | Story |
Author : Rob Sharp
‘I can’t believe you’re doing this. This is the greatest moment in human history and I’m missing it. I need to be let through!’
‘I’m sorry sir, but you can’t come in,’ the Security Guard said. He stood firmly in front of a pair of heavy oak doors into the conference room.
‘But I’m the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, I brokered this deal! The Filiansal wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for my intervention on Mars.’
The Prime Minister’s eyes softened and his voice shifted into the same jolly tone that won him a landslide victory and ever decreasing majorities in parliament over the last ten years.
‘I know why you won’t let me in. The protocol is clear: it’s designed to stop us spooking our guests. But I’ve already spoken with them, they know me,’ The Prime Minister closed his hands into fists and made a series of movements that, if one were generous, could be described as sparring at the man in front of him. ‘So what do you say?’
The Security Officer flexed his fingers on the butt of his steel, spring coil extendable baton.
‘My superiors have made it quite clear that I’m to let no-one in to the meeting once the formal introductions have been made,’ he said.
‘Perhaps I could speak to your superior,’ the Prime Minster moved in closer to whisper. ‘I happen to know Sir Marcus personally.’
‘My boss is a man called Barry, sir. I could call him on my walkie-talkie, but I believe he’s on the other side of the door and it may cause our guests some distress.’
‘Good point,’ The Prime Minister replied. He took a step back and hopped from toe to toe as he strained to look through the frosted glass above the doors into the conference room. His bulky frame wobbled slightly when he stopped and a bead of sweat had formed on his brow. ‘I’m sure he’s busy.’
‘Yes, sir.’
A low pitched, musical stop-start hum, the first sound from an alien tongue spoken on Earth, was barely audible through the door. Several voices joined together to form a chorus. There was a gasp.
‘Look it’s all just a misunderstanding…’
A young, feminine voice pierced through the door like a javelin. After a moment of absolute silence, the room erupted in terrified cries and shouts, quickly followed by heavy thumps against the door. The Security Officer didn’t flinch.
‘Let them out man!’ The Prime Minister moved to the conference room, but the Security Officer stood in his way and pushed him to the ground. The door creaked as the screaming and dying desperately pushed against it, but the ancient wood held firm. A splash of red liquid struck the frosted transom, turning the light in the antechamber a shade of sanguine pink. Blood began to trickle through the gaps of the door and a rapidly spreading pool flowed around, and then enveloped, the Security Officer’s heavy boots. The Prime Minister tried to scramble to his feet, tripping and falling in the wet mess, before finally resting on all fours.
‘My God, what have I done?’
‘Don’t worry, sir. You won’t have to think about it for much longer.’
The screams became quieter and the Prime Minister could hear the singing again, except there was no harmony in the voices now, it was a discordant dirge of hate and violence.
‘They’ll be coming out soon. You’ll see for yourself.’
by Julian Miles | Aug 23, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The post-incident review was in closed session and after the presiding officer read the first line of the bonded testimony, the session was restricted to herself and Brevet Captain Danyls alone.
“We are in complete privacy, Danyls. Having read your report and the recommendations of those with reputations to protect, I’d like you to take me through the end of the Vigilance’s last mission.”
With a nod, the frowning young woman stared at the blue fluctuations in the anti-snoop field and started to tell all in a calm voice.
*
She dived onto the bridge, heart hammering, smoke searing her lungs. Across all the port viewscreens, the impossible hulk they had hit hung like the gigantic headstone it was about to become. Her eyes were drawn to the video feed from Pinnace One, where Mike was buckling in.
Her hand slammed down on the intercom button. “Mike, what the hell are you doing?”
He looked up at her, guilt-faced “Sorry, Helen. It’s got to be done.”
“You don’t have to do this, Mike. What about us?”
“What I did with you was wrong and I admit my actions are tinged with relief in knowing you’ll never tell.”
Helen lurched back as if struck.
“I’m sorry, kiddo. You were great in the sack but in the end, I’m the irreplaceable asset on the Vigilance.”
“But Mike; Captain –“
“No time or interest in long goodbyes, Danyls. It was a pleasure having you.”
The screen went blank and the ‘clang’ of the departing pinnace shook the Vigilance.
*
Helen brought her eyes down from the blue.
“You have to understand that until his second sentence, I thought he was about to sacrifice himself to save us.”
The presiding officer nodded. “Go on.”
“After that, I suppose I could have interrupted him. Maybe I should have.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, ma’am. I let him launch from the occluded side of the Vigilance, straight into the hulk. The reaction to his launch combined with that from the explosion when the pinnace hit the hulk broke us free.”
“After which you stabilised your drift away from the planet while the hulk entered the atmosphere, eventually causing a Category Eight catastrophe when it hit.”
“Yes, ma’am. But it went down without taking the Vigilance with it.”
“Your recommendation?”
“Captain Michael Tiernan should be buried with full honours, a Captain who died saving his ship and crew. The data that he was a philanderer and a coward who didn’t know the way around his own vessel is of no relevance to history or to his family. The result displays the proper command attitude.”
“Agreed. Captain Tiernan will be a feted hero. You, Deputy Danyls, are offered command of the Vigilance Two. Your recommendation proves that you have learned a hard lesson.”
“I accept. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Very well. Captain Helen Danyls, you are dismissed.”
by submission | Aug 22, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The policeman and his young partner crouched down by the doors of the warehouse. Their night-vision contact lenses allowed them to see perfectly in the darkness.
“You ready?” asked the older cop.
“Ready,” said the rookie.
The veteran officer considered his partner. The young fellow has the courage of ignorance, he thought. He recalled having had similar self-confidence just before his first raid. It’s easy to be brave when you’re up against an abstraction. It doesn’t look that bad in the pictures and videos. Encountering what’s on the other side of that door in real life is a substantially different experience. A few people can face it head-on and do just fine. Most need some measure of acclimation. And then there are those who just can’t take it. For the latter, their first raid is also their last. They have to find another line of work.
The older cop motioned for a robot to approach. The machine quietly padded over and began spraying a thin stream of solvent on the lock between the two doors. The metal started dissolving. The two flesh and blood policemen took up positions on either side of the robot. The senior cop nodded at the automaton. It pulled the doors open, the corroded bolt between them crumbling to the ground, and rushed in, its headlamps shining brightly, twin guns attached to either arm at the ready. The two officers followed it in.
“Get down on the floor, face down, put your hands behind your heads, and interlace your fingers!” the older cop barked at the six rough looking men in the warehouse. One of the men tried to go for a gun that was sitting on a counter. The robot’s left gun arm locked on to him and fired. A taser bullet struck the criminal in the left shoulder, the barbed, electrified slug dropped him to the floor.
“ON THE FLOOR!” screamed the officer. The remaining suspects complied. Lights shone in through the windows around the warehouse: additional police robots.
The rookie looked in stunned silence at the enormous room. The carcasses of cows hung upside down suspended by their hind legs in one part of the warehouse, blood from severed carotid arteries and jugular veins draining into large basins. In another section, pigs were in various stages of dismemberment. Over to the right, a door to a walk-in freezer was open, the raid having taken place just as one of the men was stepping out of it. Frozen chickens could be seen inside.
On a hot plate on a counter, bacon sizzled in a skillet. Testing the product. The scent filled the air. The rookie turned pale and promptly threw up. Two police robots walked in through the front doors and proceeded to restrain the suspects with plastic cable ties.
“You okay?” the elder cop asked his young partner.
“Yeah,” the young man said, his voice thick. “Sorry. I didn’t think I’d…” He let the sentence trail off.
“It happens. You get used to this. Sort of.” The senior officer shook his head. “Texturized vegetable protein, 3D printed synthetic meat, tofu and tempeh. We like to think we’re so civilized and that mass murder like this is a thing of the past. There are even some sickos who’d like to turn back the clock and decriminalize eating meat.”
“And to think for most of history up until a hundred or so years ago most people actually ate this stuff,” said the rookie.
The old cop looked at the restrained detainees seated on the warehouse floor.
“Damned omnivores.”
by Duncan Shields | Aug 21, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I’ve stabbed deep into the envelope around the white dwarf sun at the center of this solar system. My gravity repellers are maxed. I’ve skimmed the perihelion right in the onionskin. I came in at .75c and the slingshot here has nudged me just past full light. This experimental craft is performing perfectly. A silver arrow of flexible diamond called The Needle. The seventeen thrusters that have burst-accelerated me across a fifth of the Milky Way to end up here have all been discarded behind me like Fibonacci-spaced buoys. I was by all accounts the fastest human-constructed artifact in the universe.
I am seven miles away from the surface of the dwarf and here I will stay.
I can look up from my cockpit and see the whorls and radiation of the star like a static, unchanging borealis. My ship’s cabin protects me from the effects as does my hubris.
I have found out what happens when a ship with mass goes faster than the speed of light. Caught by surprise, physics found a mutually agreeable solution that I have not found agreeable.
The moment I hit 1.0000001.c, all of my control panels stopped. They didn’t turn off. They just stopped. Anything that oscillated froze in mid strobe. My shuddering, screaming, deafening ship became silent. Oddly, I am free to move about. I can touch everything in my cockpit but I cannot move it. It’s like I am immersed in a three-dimensional photograph.
I am a fly trapped in an amber bulb of time. Why my consciousness has been permitted to remain alert is a mystery. Perhaps something to do with Schrodinger and perception. Even though there will be no outcome, there needs to be an observer.
The folks back home are waiting for telemetry from my ship. By my viewpoint, they will always be waiting.
I have been here for six days so far. My ship has not moved forward and I have not run out of air and I’m felt no hunger or thirst. I seem to be destined to remain here. In a few years, I suppose I’ll find out if I’m even aging at all.
If I’m caught in a loop, it’s a loop too small for me to detect. I won’t go forward. I won’t go back. I have been put ‘oh hold’ by the universe’s laws.
I wonder how many alien astronauts dot the border of light with me, strung out across the galaxy like doomed fireflies in jars.
Perhaps when the universe ends and physical laws break down we will all be set free to complete our parabolas.
Until then, my orbit is not done. My orbit will never be done.
by Clint Wilson | Aug 20, 2013 | Story
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The team signaled goodbye to the assembled early humans. The tribe of twenty-three men, woman and children stood there in their animal skins. Many of them held the new tools. All of them now held the knowledge that had been passed on to them in the past four months.
Professor Smith would miss his subjects dearly. He had grown not only to care for them greatly but had come to think of them as family. It was the same with the other six researchers. There had been one more traveler when they arrived in the spring but a saber-toothed tiger had seen to her demise.
There was a flash of white light and then the early humans stood once more alone in the vast unscathed world.
Inside the machine the researchers all stood looking at one another. They remained silent during the twenty-minute time transfusion. They all knew well enough what they had done. The results of this experiment would be permanent as they all hoped to greatly advance the technology of the human race within their own lifetimes. The real mystery was what they would find when they got back home.
They would land less than a nanosecond after their initial departure; to witness the alternate future they had now created by introducing so many technological advances to the once uninformed bipedal creatures.
The humming of the wormhole engines wound down to a halt and the blackness outside the windows lightened once again to reveal the year 2013. And what a year they encountered!
All the roads seemed to be covered in a hard cement-like substance. Strange sleek horseless carriages raced by, traveling at least thirty or forty miles an hour. And the buildings, some of them reached ten or fifteen stories high!
The travelers huddled together behind their tinted glass. Never before had they witnessed such marvels. All of them, including Professor Smith, silently wished for their old slow world and simple architecture, with structures that rarely reached higher than two stories, and hand painted signs that didn’t light up. This was going to take some getting used to.
zp8497586rq
