by J.R. Blackwell | Apr 11, 2008 | Story
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer
Kala waited till the sun rose above the mountains, and then got up out of the dirt to find Awn. Kala was covered in dirt and dust, some of which had gotten into the metal shoes that were locked to her feet. Awn was standing in a stream, cleaning the dirt off the vicious red brand mark on her thigh.
“You’re going to have to get dirty again come sunset,” Kala said.
Awn splashed water on her chest. “I’d like to feel human for a couple hours.”
Kala dipped her feet in the stream, letting the water get into her shoes and soothe her bruised feet. “I like the dirt. Makes me feel as if I’m less naked.”
Awn raised an eyebrow “Oh, you’re still plenty naked, Commander.”
Kala sat down. “We’ll make it, Ensign. We will.”
Awn laughed bitterly. “Sure. If the Leeches don’t eat, shoot or discover us and if we make pickup.”
“We’ll make it.”
“Why do you think they picked us for this mission?”
Kala leaned back on her muscular elbows. “Youth. I just got the rejuvenation done, and you’re young. Both of us know the Leech language and I’m a veteran.” Kala smiled but she knew Awn was expendable. Awn was just there to watch Kala’s back, watch her get the work done. They were commodities.
The weak green sun dipped behind the mountains and the Leeches rode into view. Kala didn’t know where they burrowed themselves during the day, but at night they rode on their skittering mounts, and drove them forward, towards their final destination.
Kala had to remind herself that genetically, these Leeches had human ancestors. But now, with their translucent skin, white lidless eyes and gaping circular mouths, they were only human in the barest outline. The Leeches drove the human herd, engineered to be mindless beasts, over the rough terrain.
On the third night, their feet sore in their metal shoes, the herd and the Leeches reached the military compound. They drove them into pens and negotiated loudly the price for wild humans.
Most of the herd fell asleep, but Kala and Awn remained awake, waiting. Soon, they would have their chance to fulfill the mission. The Leeches assumed the humans were stupid. From inside of the military compound, they could easily reach their target and then slip out into the night to await pickup.
Then the armored Leeches came to the pen. They smacked their round mouths together and pointed in the pen. They dragged one human out, and then another, slicing into human flesh with their rows of slender teeth, sharing flesh with each other, clamped on waists and thighs and shoulders.
They dragged Awn out of the pen. Awn looked at Kala desperately. Kala had the weapon: an electric charge hidden in a fake finger. Enough to kill her target, but not enough to save anyone. Kala buried her face in a pile of sleeping humans and looked away as they tore Awns flesh from her body.
When the sickly dawn came, Kala slipped out of the pen and through the compound on the route she memorized. She entered the sleeping chamber of the Leech General and flipped back her finger. She touched it to the Leeches face. It jerked once under her touch. Kala had hoped for something more, but that was all, a gentle death.
The sun rising in the sky, she walked out of the compound back into the dessert, her bloodstained shoes leaving a trail in the sand.
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by Sam Clough | Apr 10, 2008 | Story
Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer
Robert Meier quietly walked between the rows of tanks. Each tank held a blank, a three hundred kilocredit backup body for whoever could afford the fee. They were low-maintenance, but regulations meant that a pair of eyes had to check each tank at least once a day. Every now and again he had to tweak the physiological mix that suspended each body, and about once a month, someone came to pick up one of the blanks. It was a job that no-one really wanted.
Robert took it because he had thought of a plan to bring a little more happiness into the world.
Set apart from the rows of blanks, a small cluster of tanks were given over to creating clusters of tissue-neutral organs and antigen-free blood. Most of his job was the preperation of these for shipping to the nearest hospital. Robert whistled to himself as he filled one-unit bags with blood, laying them out carefully on a desk for packing. This was his favourite thing to do. He had no morbid fascination with the artificial blood, but instead smiled at the chance to be philanthropic. The blood was his conduit to good works. It carried his gift to the sick and the ill; something to lift them and show them what life could be.
Once forty bags were filled, he got his syringe and the case of vials from his jacket, and pushed three hundred and fifty milligrams of metaescaline through the seals. Anyone who needed blood today would walk in Robert’s world for twelve hours: bright, vivid, fast and full of wonder. He packaged up the blood carefully, and called for a courier to take it away.
It was easy to lose track of time with the tanks. Once in a while, one of the blanks would talk to Robert. He could listen to them for hours as they spoke on any kind of subject. Normally it was one that he had some knowledge about, which was always a good thing. It was just getting dark when a young man with a hospital ID badge knocked on the door, asking for an extra few packets of blood. Robert happily fetched three from the fridge, bags that he’d prepared earlier. The man – a pathologist, his badge said – thanked Robert, and left with the blood.
The following day, the pathologist was waiting at the door when Robert went to work.
“Hey there!” Robert greeted him cheerily.
The pathologist punched him, hard, in the jaw.
On the ground, Robert woozily pressed a hand to his throbbing jaw, and decided that this man probably wasn’t real, Real people wouldn’t object to be freed for a few hours.
Later on, a police car came to pick him up. He recognised the faces of some of the officers from amongst his blanks. He tried to talk to them, but they wouldn’t stop talking some nonsense about him being a murderer. Robert knew he hadn’t killed anyone, so just ignored them.
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by submission | Apr 9, 2008 | Story
Author : J. S. Kachelries
The host of the very popular holovision show slithered to the center of the stage. The thunderous ovation of 1500 tails pounding on the floor died away as the host’s three antennae motioned them to quiet down. The holocameras panned slowly from the audience to the host. “Thank you…thank you…welcome to Alien Encounters. Tonight is our final show focusing on the sentient life form on Sol-3, in the Sirius Sector. As our regular viewers will attest, these earthlings are a very entertaining species. They have to be the easiest species in the galaxy to mess with.
“For those of you unfamiliar with the show, we sent three teams of college students to Earth with instructions to convince as many earthlings as possible that ‘extraterrestrials’ exist using as little evidence as possible. The team producing the highest gullibility quotient will win an all-expense vacation for five at the Holiday Spa on Orion-3.
“Our first team, from Dorfox University, matted down a circular pattern in a vegetation field on one of the planet’s island countries. Despite the fact that no spaceship would leave such a simplistic impression, the earthlings became obsessed with wild speculations about alien visitors. The Dorfox team followed up with some really bizarre geometric patterns that had no practical significance whatever. Despite the 80/20 rule, very few earthlings accepted the simplest solution. They think we’re sending them complicated, encrypted messages. Hellllloooo. It’s not a complicated message guys, it’s ‘Get a life!’
“Our second team, from Darrvah University, shredded a weather balloon and scattered its remains across an arid silica wasteland. Not only did their news media go overboard, but they are still obsessed with the ‘alien crash site’ decades later. The really funny part is they think their government is involved in a conspiracy to cover up the incident. The more the government denies a cover-up, the more convinced the fools are that there are flying saucers and alien bodies hidden in a secure warehouse. It makes you wonder if these beings ever heard of Occam’s Razor. To this day, local souvenir shops still sell millions of little green humanoid dolls that are supposed to be us. Do you believe their arrogance? They think all intelligent races must be bilateral beings that look like them. Unbelievable!
“Finally, our third team, from Gihhel University, mind melded with an aspiring actor and had him broadcast an audio only “breaking news story†about aliens invading their planet. It was hilarious. Thousands of people were convinced we were going to turn them into slaves and sex toys. They grabbed projectile weapons to fight us off. Do you believe that? They thought they could chase away a superior, technologically advanced race with pop guns. And slaves? Why would we want intellectually challenged earthmen as slaves? That’s what robots are for. And sex toys? Hey, I’ve seen their women. I’d rather mate with a Cassiopeian swamp lizard.
Anyway, these are the three finalists. Will it be…Crop Circles, Roswell, or War of the Worlds? Which set of contestants made the most number of earthlings look like the south end of a north bound usagiuma?†The host reached into his pouch and pulled out a datapadd. He paused for dramatic effect. The audience began chanting for their favorite. He flipped open the padd and read “And the winner is…â€
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by Duncan Shields | Apr 8, 2008 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
It wasn’t until I opened my eyes that I knew what had happened.
Lisa Sagan and Andrea Hawking were helping Petra Turing make sure my vitals were stabilizing. It was Henrietta Einstein that was chairing the ‘wake. I could see my dear Shelagh Newton looking down from the observation booth with tears of joy in her eyes.
I’d been caught and killed. They’d had to wake up another copy of me.
I needed to know how much memory I was missing and if the Two-X project was still functioning.
We’d wrested control from the governments. We were the smartest minds on the planet. We’d taken over from the war-mongering males and turned the entire continent into a matriarchy that was feared and respected.
It wasn’t enough.
We need the world to be with us if we were to conquer space.
“Don’t try to move†said Carla Marconi. I bristled at the sound of her petulant voice but remained still. Soon, I would leave this hospital bed and be debriefed and rebriefed. The project was safe. I could see that much from here.
The black ceramic hummed above us in the nuclear cooling tower. Miles long, it crackled with barely restrained power. It wouldn’t be long before the world would fear us and have no choice but to obey. It was regrettable but the quickest solution.
The weapon is of my design.
My name is Tamara Tesla. A glorious future awaits.
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by | Apr 7, 2008 | Story
Author : hraesvelgr
“Solar Systems are easy to program. Way easier than I thought.”
“Told ya so,” I could hear the Director’s voice crisp and clear. “Did you enjoy the challenge?”
I smiled down at the still water of the lake before me, reflected in it a perfect image of Earth and its moon as viewed through the dome of my Surveyor Station. The sight was pristine, perfect; not just the beauty of reality as a canvas, but now that I knew every detail of the situation’s physics, now after I had run millions upon millions of equations, sorted through mathematics that had previously been beyond my imagining, I could appreciate the movement of the planets and satellites in a way no other human being would ever be able to.
“Yes,” I answered plainly, after a long pause, having almost forgotten the phone at my ear. “I mean. I love what I do.”
“Someone will be there in the morning to check on your productivity, but from the sound of things, I’m guessing all those recommendations were right about you.” The Director’s voice had a certain allure to it; one that told of a promotion, maybe even a bonus or an upgraded  Surveyor Station. “Once I get the report, kid, there’s a chance we can talk about getting you to work on Letser 920. It’s a sixteen-planet job.”
More work! I stifled a small laugh of sheer joy, still eyeing the reflection, watching as the moon drifted gracefully so near earth that it looked for a moment that the two might touch. “I’m up for anything you can throw at me, boss. Now that I have a handle on it, I could probably even build a solar system from scratch.” There was a flash of light in my little lake, reflected from above where the sun was peeking out from between the two celestial bodies. My distracted mind thrummed over the math of the event for a moment, and there was a little tick in my subconscious telling me that the sun was still three hours from that sort of dawn. The Perturbation Theory could account for that, maybe. But, really…
My thoughts paused to reprocess what was going on, taking their time, going over the calculations I’d run and trying to figure what had…
Happened. I snapped my head away from the reflection. Looking up, I saw with my own eyes, the flash of light hadn’t been from the sun; Earth had just suffered a head-on collision with its own moon. “Son of a bitch!” Goodbye, Africa.
For several seconds I just stared upward, speechless, only partly hearing the director’s inquisitions about my sudden explication. I could see it all now: the perturbations that had gone wrong, the prophetic calculations of what was to come, the Earth breaking apart, the orbits of the other planets all skewed into catastrophic spirals. It was to be a dead solar system. And what’s worse, it was going to be hell for me to score even a two-planet job after the Director heard about this one.
