by submission | Jul 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Todd Hammrich
I never thought I’d live to see The End. In fact, the way I figured it, no one should see The End, I mean, that’s why it’s called The End, there is nothing after that, and certainly no one to see it. And yet, here I was. Floating gently in the shuttle. Watching the Earth float by in the view port. And I had seen it happen.
Being an astronaut was every young boys dream, and I had always been a dreamer. I trained and worked my way through courses, evaluations and simulators until my dream came true. There was much to do in space. There was quite a bit of it and we were trained to take it all.
My first mission was to help in construction of a small research station and I’ll never forget the excitement I felt at the prospect of being launched into space. The day of the launch passed like a dream. The final checkup with the doctors, the meeting with the mission director and the small medicine bottle given to me before take-off, all of it was a blur. The pill was standard procedure in case of malfunction or serious accident and every astronaut gladly accepted the small dose of reality for a bit of their dream. After four days in space I returned successful and my career was off.
As World War III broke out my missions became even more critical. Whoever could conquer space would win the day, as the War for Earth would effectively end. On my third war mission, a communications satellite repair, I witnessed it. The End. It happened without warning. I was in the shuttle while my partners worked on the satellite when the missile struck. I don’t know whether they knew we were there, or if they even cared, but the satellite was destroyed. The shuttle drifted away, atmospheric containment lost in several areas. Luckily the command area was sealed off and pressure contained. I was still alive.
Out the view port I watched it unfold like a horror story or nightmare. My dream had saved me, but the non-dreamers below were doomed. Streaks of fire filled the globe from horizon to horizon. Missiles streaked from every country in the world. One by one the cities darkened until there was no light left.
I had enough air to see it all. No one answered the radio. Maybe no one was left. I saw the world die. I saw The End. There was no more lights on that large barren rock below. It didn’t matter anymore though. I smiled as I watched the world. An empty pill bottle floated gently beside me. Maybe it hadn’t been The End, either way, mine was coming soon.
In the beginning God said Let There Be Light. We came forth unto the world and were not satisfied. We looked outward to space and we tried to take it. Man was not satisfied with what he was given and Man said Let There Be Darkness and we were no more.
The End.
by submission | Jul 4, 2009 | Story
Author : Lillian Cohen-Moore
I died for this country. Then..
…I came back.
Mock me all you want. Say, no, what I mean to say is, “I would have died for this country.”
Or, “I nearly died for this country.”
You weren’t there, were you? With the grit in your eyes and the suns streaming down on you. The sand eating away at the tanks. Filling our uniforms with dirt. You didn’t see how empty the deserts seemed, except for the automata of war. You weren’t there when the night talked to us.
It took Jack first, out into the ravine of water we couldn’t drink, and left him lifeless.
It devoured Trina’s screams as much as it devoured her flesh from her mid-section, leaving her staring up into nothing after she died. Her last memory embedded in her eyes–vitreous fluid showing us a cloud. Something. A shape.
Artifacts, they say. Too much adrenaline. Too much fear. Blurring the picture in her eyes. Unusable in court or for investigative purposes. They said it must have been an animal.
It took others. So many others. Till it took me.
It didn’t come again, after it took me.
I came back. I got discharged. Honorable. Combat duty conducted with bravery, they told me. I took stupid risks, because risks don’t mean anything to me anymore. I just needed some way to cover it all up, to get out.
I know the truth. I saw its face, under the moon, under the refracted light of too many suns on a planet that shouldn’t have mattered. I know it’s what is native to that planet. That place.
I think. Maybe fear. That it’s what I’m becoming.
I felt my blood gurgle out into the sand dunes, as it kissed my wounds, sticky sweet, hot and cold, steaming, saliva-and-blood. Flesh and flesh.
They call me a hero. When they talk… I swallow saliva. I feel it feel my mouth, and I swallow it. I stay away,now. From everyone. Women and man alike. Anyone who approaches me. Till you. You wanted a story.
I’ll tell you a story.
I felt my heart stop, the night I died for my country.
Tonight, you’ll die for me.
by submission | Jul 3, 2009 | Story
Author : David Bradshaw
I always believed that magic was simply what science had yet to explain or tame. When Ashford’s empty frame crashed to the ground, the wild forces at work became far more significant.
“It’s going to be one of mankind’s defining moments!” Ashford ranted in the bunker’s cafeteria earlier that day, “And I’m going to be in the middle of it…” He trailed off, wistfully.
Since we got clearance to run a human trial, he’d been like this, cycling between raving and muttering. Ashford was supposed to be the world’s first living human to undergo transportation.
Ingram snapped at him, “Don’t be a show off. Sit down and eat something.”
“Hell no. Anything in my stomach will just be more for the machine to chug. Besides, I’ve been too jittery to eat much today, too excited,” said Ashford. He kept good spirit, I had to give him that.
I excused myself to get to work preparing the apparatus for the afternoon’s test. The hours disintegrated into minutes, then seconds, and blew away.
Eventually various personnel from the labs trickled in, huddled around the camera for a good view. Despite not being known to the press or public, this was going to be a popular show.
When the whole team assembled, Ashford stepped forward to address his audience.
“This is test 5.1, the first living, human transportation. As you can see behind me, two tanks are positioned side-by-side. I, Dr. Joseph Ashford, will enter the chamber on the left and be transported to the chamber on the right. I assure you,” he said with a grin, “this is not a trick or a joke.”
Ingram could hardly contain a groan. Ashford was just a natural showman, or at least too charismatic for just a scientist.
He stepped into the chamber and gazed confidently upon his fans. The bright white lights on the equipment became stage lighting. The door sealed behind him, a red curtain descending.
All eyes were on the video feed. I began counting down. In my head, a calming habit of mine, I thought the numbers in Latin: Decem, novem, octo, septem, sex, quinque, quattor, tres, duo, unus.
As I stabbed the button deep into the terminal, a thought appeared at the forefront of my mind, “Magic is what science cannot yet explain. We’re standing on the edge of something magic cannot explain.”
In the first chamber, Ashford went to dust. In the second, dust went to bone, to flesh, to skin, to hair, and to a body. It lamely collapsed against the cool metal. As the door automatically pulled open, Ashford’s sepulcher gave birth to his limp corpse.
A dozen scientists in the room, we all started talking. Rushed yet hushed chatter. A skittering cacophony flying across every surface like a cockroach. Ingram checked the thing’s pulse and, finding none, let its arm drop to the ground, unceremoniously.
I looked down at the button I pressed that initiated the sequence that teleported Ashford. I doubted that anything could pull me away from the image of what was let. Guilt couldn’t drive out the horror.
A small voice in the crowd of sound and fury pierced every other word uttered, “Did we… Get his soul?”
by submission | Jul 2, 2009 | Story
Author : Gavin Raine
When he entered the room, Olivia was sitting on the edge of her bed and looking out of the window. He allowed the door to close noisily behind him and waited to see if she would notice, but it was hopeless. She was looking at the gardens without seeing them. The corners of her mouth were damp and her jaw was working slowly, as if kneading at invisible gum. Apparently, this was not going to be one of Olivia’s good days.
He adjusted the volume and pitch of his voice to levels that suited Olivia’s ruined hearing. “Good morning Mrs Jones,” he boomed. “How are you today?”
Olivia whirled around, startled. “What are you?” she said. “Where’s my Harry?”
“It’s all right Mrs Jones. I’m Andrew, your robot care assistant. You see me every day – remember?” She looked blank, so he tried another approach. “Your husband, Harry, died almost twenty years ago. You do remember that, don’t you?”
Olivia smoothed-down her nightdress in a gesture she often used to cover her confusion. “Oh yes of course,” she said, “so where’s my boy John then?”
“Your son lives at this facility also”, said Andrew, moving forward smoothly and placing a breakfast tray on a small table. “You’ll see him in the day room later and don’t forget to wish him a happy birthday. He’s one hundred and fourteen today.”
Olivia began running her hands over her nightdress again and he made a quick exit before she could frame another question. “I’ll be back later,” he said, pulling the door closed behind him. “Drink your tea now, before it gets cold.”
Taking another breakfast tray from the trolley, Andrew moved to the next door and knocked. There was no response, so he pushed it open calling, “Good morning Mr Jackson.”
As soon as he entered the room, it was obvious that something was wrong. Mr Jackson was slumped across his bed at an unnatural angle, with his eyes open and his mouth hanging slack. Andrew checked his pulse, which was a strong as ever, and then spread his hand to place his fingertips at specific points on the man’s scalp.
A minute or more passed, while the sensors in Andrew’s fingertips monitored the electrical activity inside Mr Jackson’s skull. As he had suspected, there was nothing to detect. He sent a command to Mr Jackson’s mechanical heart, telling it to cease operation, and eased his body back into the bed, covering it with the sheet.
It was usually a brain haemorrhage that got them in the end. The doctors could cure their cancers and replace or re-grow their organs, but their brains had to last a lifetime. However, brains degenerated with age, until synapses barely fired at all, and blood vessels became as fragile as dry autumn leaves.
Andrew left the room and fired a message to the care home’s core computer: “Escapee in room 15248”. He knew the core appreciated a little gentle irony.
Then, he took another tray from the breakfast trolley and tapped on the door of room 15249.
by submission | Jul 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Stephen Graham Jones
It came like a Buick from the sky but it was on fire or close enough, hot anyway, blistering white and maybe even velour in places, its rocket engine disturbing the neighborhood at a molecular level, at an emotional level, the individual blades of grass in the lawns rubbernecking it in small imitation of the men, who have the beer and the cigarettes and the vocabulary of denial.
‘Looked like a big silver cigar.’
‘With tinted windows. Shaved doorhandles.’
‘Didn’t know they could go so low.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘Do they . . . sleep in it, you think?’
‘Sleep?’
‘It seems they would have to.’
‘I don’t think they have motel arrangements, if that’s what you mean.’
‘They’re not like us.’
‘No, they’re not.’
‘Maybe we’re wrong, though. Maybe it was something else.’
‘Trust me, it wasn’t, isn’t. You saw it yourself.’
‘Maybe it was lost, then.’
‘You don’t come here by accident. Not twice in one week.’
‘You’ve seen it before?’
‘You were gone last Tuesday, right? Around nine?’
Witness a reluctant nod, a man sagging into his life.
‘Don’t punish yourself. I’d have rather been out too.’
‘If I were a turtle, the inside of my shell would be a visual landscape I’d be romantically involved with.’
‘If I were a lemming I’d be running for the sea.’
‘Yep.’
But why? Because not five minutes ago their wives were standing around the corner, their elbows cupped in their hands as if cold, and they’d been standing like that long enough that they’d begun to actually feel cold, so that when it cruised through their neighborhood like a great silver cigar from the sky it seemed as if the light it bathed them in was warming, vital, necessary enough that they didn’t hesitate to climb into the sterile interior of another world, out of their own.
‘I didn’t think it would be like this,’ one said.
‘I know . . . velour?’
‘Abduction, I mean.’
‘Missing time. Time I won’t be able to account for.’
‘When you go this fast, time slows down.’
‘Where do you think we’re going?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I’m going to go ahead and put my clothes on inside out, I think . . . ’
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself.’
‘Of course. Thank you. This is all so new.’
‘Maybe that’s not even how it’s done anymore.’
‘We probably won’t even remember this.’
‘The way this dark glass makes the neighborhood look not unlike the landscape passing by the window of a train in an old-time movie.’
‘It’s hardly real anymore, I know. God don’t I know.’
Picture the two of them as their husbands do: on-screen, at the speed of light.
‘Last night my son asked me if they’d have buglights on the moon.’
‘You’re just having pre-traumatic stress.’
‘I know, I know. Tell me again about the probing.’
‘Well, there won’t be physical evidence. So no one would believe you even if—’
‘I wouldn’t. Won’t. Not even to myself.’
‘Me neither.’
And they won’t have to, because the men with their cigarettes cupped against the wind still have their vocabulary set to denial, are talking now of atmospheric phenomena, the way street light can pool and puddle in the fingerdeep clearcoat of a chrome lowrider as it pulls away from the curb, the man at the wheel already talking to their wives in his alien tongue, the wives draping themselves over his velour bench seat, the carbon monoxide in the car’s rich exhaust lingering after they’re gone, driving the love bugs into a frenzy, one of the two men stepping forward into his life for a blinding moment, fanning the bugs up, up, into the blackness of space.
