by submission | Mar 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : David Stevenson
You had to have a hobby.
Sure, he had spent hundred of hours on this project, but at least he had built something.
You might as well do it right. He could use cardboard covered in metallic foil, but why bother? Far better to spend an hour or two at the lathe, cutting brass until you had the piece you wanted.
Finally it was finished. He had found the drawing online. Whoever had made it was another enthusiast. They had made it look like a genuine 19th century blueprint. If some Victorian mad scientist had come up with plans for a time machine then this is exactly what they would have looked like.
The attention to detail was astonishing. They even specified various supplies, such as gold coins, dried food, a pistol, that a time traveller might need.
And now the machine was done.
He would have to wire up some effects. Some humming, and an eerie blue glow; that sort of thing.
There was a hum, and an eerie blue glow illuminated the machine.
He looked over the machine. A minute ago it was still, but now brass wheels turned in polished wooden cages. Wires hummed, vacuum tubes glowed.
In the centre of the machine was a chair. He had used a green wing chair. It had been expensive, and he was not expecting to see it flicker and and disappear. When the chair reappeared the second most noticeable change was that it was now made of red leather. The first most noticeable change was the lady sitting in it.
“Greetings! What year is it please?”
He told her what year it was.
“Splendid! I was hoping for one hundred years, but almost one hundred and fifty is more than I had dreamed of.” She looked around. “Excellent work on the machine. I hoped that the plans I left were sufficiently detailed.”
He agreed that they were.
“Yes, the plans were mine. I could have made the machine better after building my prototype, but it was important not to change my plans. I don’t know if anyone else has attempted to build the machine over the years but if they did then it wasn’t sufficiently close to my own machine. I couldn’t test mine until you made yours.”
He asked the obvious questions.
“My theories predicted I could only travel to other times when the machine already existed. I could keep it well maintained for 10 years and then go back, but what would be the point in that? Going forwards would be impossible because, if I jumped 10 years into the future then I obviously wouldn’t be there for that decade to keep the machine working. Bit of a paradox, no?”
“So, the obvious thing to do was to draw up the plans and make arrangements for them to be distributed after my death. Arrangements which, from my point of view, I completed only a few minutes ago, before noticing the machine was operational. From your point of view, I assume that you have only recently completed the machine?”
He nodded.
“Good. I did regret leaving in the appendices, but then I reasoned that I would be able to travel forwards to the instant that the machine was finished, and that would be before the builder had collected the other equipment.”
He was still working his way through the implications of this sentence when she took her hand out of the carpet bag on her lap and revealed it to be holding a pistol which was pointing at him.
The rest, as they say, is history.
by submission | Mar 8, 2013 | Story |
Author : Xauri’EL Zwaan
Evelyn offers me a bouquet of white lilies. I know immediately that she’s hiding something, but I indulge her little game. I take them and breathe deeply; she knows how I love complex smells. These have a spice that matches nothing in my chemical pattern bank. Genemod flowers; that’s unlike her.
“Happy anniversary, Darling.” She’s not happy, but trying desperately to sound it.
“What’s wrong?”
She flashes with anger. “Nothing.” I know she’s lying, but I also know that forcing the issue will just mean another fight. I’m not eager for a week of verbal silence and kinesic screaming, so I drop it.
I’ve put every ounce of the love I still feel for her into dinner. She picks at it in silence.
She asks me about my day. Surprising; she never wants to hear about work anymore. I tell her about charting trajectories for blinkships in Reimann space. She’s becoming angry, hostile; my words trail off.
“Your enhanced genetics must help you a lot with that.”
I sigh. “Can we please not do this today?”
“I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t stand it — being read like a book, feeling stupid and incompetent all of the time. I’m done with you. It’s over.”
I stop thinking about work, about the books I’ve been reading, about sex. I stop browsing blogs and watching the stock ticker. I focus entirely on her.
I’ve been expecting this for months now. That’s not the problem. Everything is out in the open now; but she’s still hiding something. She perches on her chair like a vulture.
My lips and fingertips are starting to feel numb.
“What have you done, Evelyn?”
“These flowers have enhanced genetics, too. They were made just for you, darling. Just for your DNA.”
“But I love you.” She stands over me as I slip to the floor.
“You smart bastard. I finally got one over on you.”
by Clint Wilson | Mar 7, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Just because mankind has invented time travel doesn’t mean we can go traipsing along down through the ages all willy-nilly. Firstly, one may not, under any circumstances, completely materialize into any previous plane of existence at any time whatsoever. Paradox has been proven and if one chooses to reverse then it will be strictly as an observer and an undetected observer at that, spying from the fringe of existence and never any closer.
And due to phase fluctuation one must always traverse dressed in period correct attire in case of temporary accidental fade in; the technology is good but not perfect. I knew all too well the rules, and when it was finally my turn to use the machine, I came prepared in my Victorian era brown tweed suit and bowler hat.
I sat inside the chamber and as the batteries charged up to wormhole penetration strength I rested my hands upon my umbrella walking stick and readied myself for my fantastic journey.
With a flash my surroundings disappeared and I found myself sitting on a bench in the second story of a Victorian mansion. I turned and looked out the multi-paned window to a beautiful garden below, where a horse and carriage were just pulling up to the grand entranceway.
I heard a noise behind me and spun my head quickly to see a well-dressed family appear at the top of the stairs. Even though I knew that I was invisible to their eyes my every nerve froze as I listened to them chat in their mundane and pompous fashion. So and so was rumored to be engaged to such and such. How much money did they have? Were they of proper breeding? I continued to remain motionless while the group came up to the large window and looked out… through me!
Suddenly a voice called from down the stairs and the father grinned and shouted back, “Coming right along Simpson, you don’t have to invite me for a drink twice.” Then they all turned to go.
I found them all so intriguing with their stiff clothes and their plastered down hair. And as they made their way off I stood up from the bench to get a last glimpse of these wonderful historic creatures, long since dead yet so vibrant there before my eyes. And as I did, the young son of the family, a boy of maybe ten or twelve years, turned in his wide brimmed hat and his smartly tied neck ribbon… and he saw me.
For an instant his eyes locked with mine and I knew I had phased in; and just as quickly the super computer back home adjusted my temporal position and I disappeared from the boy’s sight. But in the split second before I blinked out of existence I heard the lad say, “Look mother, a ghost!”
It wasn’t a result they were happy with back home, but still an acceptable cover to avoid paradox nevertheless, one that worked over and over again while they worked out the bugs of the great machine.
I returned back through the wormhole more excited than ever, already planning my next visit should I get the chance, utterly thankful and completely in awe of the brilliant minds of my time.
by Patricia Stewart | Mar 6, 2013 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
As the FNG, I was the crew’s gofer. When anyone needed a lackey, I was the guy. But hey, it was the price I was willing to pay to get into space. Today, I was helping the Chief. He needed to replace the Finnegan Pin that couples the ion reactor to the primary bulkhead, and that meant that we also had to stop the ship’s rotation. How awesome is that? Getting paid to work in zero-g. I love my job.
“Okay, Josh,” said the Chief, “go to the maintenance locker and get me a three foot spanner wrench. And make sure that it has a Heisenberg insulator on the handle.”
“Roger, that, Chief,” I replied as I launched myself toward the aft section. After an effortless flight across the 120 foot wide engine room, I snagged the top rung of the safety rail surrounding the upper deck, and pirouetted myself feet first toward the tool lockers, waving to the Chief as I disappeared through the open hatch.
I drifted over to the inventory control terminal and entered the code for the spanner wrench. While I was waiting for the retrieval cart to produce the wrench, the ship’s intruder alarm sounded. I could hear yelling in the distance, and PPKs discharging. I froze for a few minutes, not knowing what to do. I came back to my senses when I heard the Chief arguing with an unfamiliar voice. Gathering my nerve, I peaked around the hatch. There were two pirates roughing up the Chief.
Before we had set off, we had been briefed by the Rangers that pirates were in the sector, and freighters were easy prey, because they knew we would run with less than a half dozen men. I thought about working my way through the vents to get to the Bridge and radio for help, when one of the pirates left the engine room. The lone pirate had his back to me. That’s when I decide to help the Chief first. I grabbed the spanner wrench from the tray, and slowly moved onto the balcony. I launched myself toward the pirate. Like a peregrine falcon, I swooped down on him. With all my strength, I swung the wrench and split his skull with a vicious two-hander, and then tumbled out of control into the reactor fairing. With lightning speed, the Chief grabbed the PPK and rushed to help me get reoriented. “Great work, kid.”
“We need to help the Skipper” I stated.
“Too late, Josh. Those bastards pushed him, Pete, and Gabriel out the airlock. They’re only keeping me alive long enough to restore the gravity.”
“What do we do?”
“I suppose most on them are scouring the ship looking for you. Maybe they left their ship unguarded. Let’s find out.”
When we entered the pirate’s bridge, we found two of them looking out the ports toward the Endeavour. They weren’t expecting a counterattack, so they were easy pickings for the Chief. As I went for the radio, the Chief went back to the docking station. I heard him fire a shot, and then I heard the outer hatch of the pirate’s ship slam shut. When the Chief released the magnetic clamps, the decompression blast from the Endeavour pushed us clear. Looking through the port, I saw three flailing pirates blown into space with the venting atmosphere.
“I blasted their controls,” the Chief explained as he came back to the bridge. “They can’t close the hatch. In ten minutes, they’ll all be sucking vacuum. Ah, nice. Here come two more,” he said with a satisfied smile.
by Duncan Shields | Mar 5, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Humans are crazy. This is a long voyage.
I pretend I’m a greedy Noah sometimes. I pretend that I brought two hundred humans and said ‘fuck it’ to the animals.
Transporters have given the human race the ability to flicker from post to post at speeds previously believed to be impossible. Good for us.
However, a human can’t just beam to Alpha Centauri. There needs to be a receiving station there.
There are long-range ships peopled with volunteers like myself that take centuries to reach far-off planets and set up a transporter sender/receiver. Input/Output posts, they’re called, or I.O. towers. Fitting, since the first transporter was invented on Jupiter’s moon Io by the poor, doomed, Doctor Swanson. The one that took a bite out the gas giant, adding an extra eye.
The ship is huge and mostly automated except for us humans. There are two hundred of us. Only one is awake at a time and we work in two-month shifts.
There are astrophysicist and engineering specialists amongst others that have downloaded their brains into A.I. constructs that we can awaken if an emergency arises.
Other than that, we are free to stare out the windows, eat, and just monitor the passing Doppler universe as we skate under the milk-skin thin ice of lightspeed.
Personally, I think us two hundred volunteers with a penchant for loneliness are completely redundant. I mean, if a true emergency happened at these speeds, we’d wink out of the universe in a flurry of greasy atoms and be none the wiser. We wouldn’t know what hit us.
I think we’re included as lucky charms. We’re the prize in the cereal box. The drive to include humans on the ships is verging on nostalgia. It’s inconceivable to have a space mission without humans, regardless of how superfluous we are.
But hey, that’s why I signed up. I like the isolation. Sometimes, I turn on the lights in the crew room. 199 full green tubes and one empty one; mine. I’ll walk down the white alley and look into the green tubes. I’ll see my co-workers faces, sleeping in fluid, suspended like they’re falling. I’ve only ever met Jared and Tina, the one who comes before me and the one that comes after me. There’s an hour of overlap. I wake them up, they put me under. It’s brief and we don’t talk.
We’re all the same, picked for our sociopathic natures. We prefer to be alone.
Communications at this speed are nearly impossible. Sometimes, I wonder if we’ll get to where we’re headed and it will already be populated. Like we’ll be regarded as antiques or that day’s curiousity. Maybe there’ll be a parade.
Or maybe it’ll just be a rock system and we won’t be able to find any planets to hook up our terraformers to. We’ll just spend our lives in the spaceship, out of fuel for a return journey, winding down like a handmade clock.
Most likely, everything will go textbook. Computers are hardly ever wrong.
I’m a passenger and I’m happy about it.
