by submission | Jun 9, 2016 | Story |
Author : Richard Day Gore
“Lover, question the Question.”
My Karala was like that. She spoke in riddles. Her thoughts were a maze designed so that only she could extract their meaning. But she was no match for the Gods, and their voracious hunger for our gold.
Why do the Gods need gold? Feeding their sky-chariots with the yellow metal has been our reason to exist since before the Bal-Kari, before the First Sweeping of the Tells. We’re taught not to question, only to do. To dig it from the rocks and mountains the Gods gave us, to extract and refine it in the fire they bestowed on our ancestors as reward for pledging their progeny—us—to the slavery of mindless worship.
Several Gods arrive today, their heavenly vehicles swathed in pulsating light that pierces the eyes and makes us bow our heads. It’s only after they dismount from within their chariots that we can glimpse them, if we dare. Grey and scaly like night-lizards, without the organized form of skeletons like we humans have. They have no faces, no arms to reach us, nor fists to strike us. Instead they are surrounded with a pale, glowing sphere of energy that prickles the flesh like a flood of stinging nettles, that pierces us without bleeding, that plants in us the single, inescapable thought that overrides all others: Obey.
That I do today, even as my heart collapses into its own emptiness. Karala. Karala! Her name crashes through my mind, battling with the specter of fear and obedience that keeps me shackled with my brothers to this wicker basket. To the fire. Then back for more. Endless toil under a sun as hot as our furnace, until night delivers us to sleep, to forbidden dreams.
Karala was my dream since we were children. But after we gave birth to a new gold-finder, the Gods took Karala from me. Because she questioned. Not even Karala, with her strong mind and stronger will, could keep the invisible nettle-sphere from penetrating her and extracting her thoughts.
So now, as one chariot departs in a searing flash, and another lands in a thick cloud of dust, I try to cloak my thoughts within my memory of her, and carry on carrying. Respeth, who crushes boulders on a massive anvil… Badomash, who spills the mountain of pebbles into the furnace… The Gods took their wives away. Like Karala, their mates questioned: Why do the Gods need gold? We see it in each other’s eyes, furtive glimpses only—dangerous gazes carefully withheld. Meeting each other’s eyes would draw the question from our minds, where it would be intercepted, and we would perish like our women.
So I struggle without and within, spine and limbs twisted by the weight of this basket, and try not to think of Karala and her riddle. But I must.
“Lover, question the Question.”
And it’s now, as I tip the basket towards Respeth’s anvil, that the swirl of words congeals into something resembling deliverance. Yes, my Karala, I honor you by questioning the question, Why do the Gods need gold? And within it is the germ of the solution…
If they are really gods, how is possible that they would need anything? Suddenly, the answer rockets through my mind:
Because they are not gods.
An exaltation of power courses through me. Suddenly, my weariness vanishes as I lock eyes with Respeth and Badomash. The words, the Answer, burst up my throat. My lips form around them and begin to speak.
A flash of light washes over us. The nettles envelop me.
My Karala, I am coming!
by submission | Jun 8, 2016 | Story |
Author : Terry J. Golob
Completely naked, sinking slowly into the murky depths, I know these things:
One. Our attack failed.
Two. I am a prisoner of the Katal-Kuar-Eye.
Three. The tiny dead things floating in here with me, that wispy strand of flotsam, that bony crag of jetsam, aren’t dead; they’re interrogators for the Katal-Kuar-Eye. At my slightest movement they will bore into my flesh and chew their way painfully through my neural pathways and consume my every living memory. Not fully satiated they will then devour the rest of my brain and body. My bones will clatter at the bottom of this enormous flooded chamber with the rest of my battalion.
Four. No one has ever escaped alive.
Five. I was trained for this.
It is an exercise in complete restraint. Repeating my mantra only in my mind, “delay” is the one word that anchors my corpse to its motionless state. To even blink or move my eye is to die. Fortunately the viscosity of the liquid matches my tear ducts; thus, blinking is unnecessary. Swathed in thin black mucus upon splashdown, the veil dissolves and my eyes remain unmoving and open, bared to see the horrors of the flotsam and jetsam. A single blink and my comrade’s eyes are bored out in crimson flailing billows. Mortis reflex: limbs spasm as their minds are devoured. Delay. An endless rain of skulls, clavicles, spinal columns, and tibias drop through my field of vision. The bones falling close to me still have dangles of pink meat and cartilage.
Six. No one has gotten this far before.
I land on my stomach atop a mountain of bones overlooking a pink shrouded valley. A ribcage punctures my torso and a scapula cuts into the soft flesh behind my knee. Upon another bony hillock, face up, is a blond little girl, eyes wide, motionless. Other skeletons are piling on top of her like they are piling on top of me. Her blond hair undulates in gentle waves. I see her pale green eyes. I imagine she can see mine. This little girl has nerves of steel. I wonder what her mantra is? Then I see the tendrils, thin black eels rising from the blood cloud, stripping the bones of flesh and cartilage: snaking their way towards the both of us. One. Two. Three. They strike her tiny body. She grimaces and the flotsam and jetsam move in. Eyes replaced by red fog, which in moments, a current gently sweeps away revealing the tiny sockets in her empty little skull. Delay. Steel is my resolve. I get ready for pain, hear them gnawing on flesh and sinew close to me. They strike: chewing into my calves, chest, neck, cheek and wrist – disappearing inside me. At the bottom of the crimson valley a tight blue sphincter glows, then opens, sucking in liquid and bones. Skeletal collisions rattle above and below as suction draws everything down. Delay. Nobody has ever seen this before. Crammed into a narrow crevice, I watch the blue sphincter circle; then close. Darkness. Bone Crusher. End of Transmission
by submission | Jun 7, 2016 | Story |
Author : Michael F. da Silva
The siege lasted two years and we were about ready to throw in the towel by then.
We had no air support, had been pushed back to the fortified bunkers all the way from the enemy’s beachheads and under heavy shelling. It was taking a toll on our morale. Not only that, but the last we heard from GalCom said that fourteen other incursions had been made all over Human space. FUBAR, as the expression went.
Local command tried to keep our spirits up by keeping up a steady trickle of low-scale sallies. When Espareth ships were too far off on the other side of the planet for close air support, we’d hit their ground forces with everything we had and charged them fast enough for blade work. We made good advantage of the hardened tunnel systems for that. Something GalCom got from the history books about static defence and asymmetric warfare.
Near the end though, we were about done. We were low on ammunition and able bodies. The civil engineers were holding the water replenishment systems together with spit and baling wire. There were a few cases of dysentery whose rumours couldn’t be quashed before some of the civilian authorities started to push for surrender. I have to hand it to Colonel Abrahamson. That man was a rock for the duration.
And you can bet he was just as glad as anyone else when a relief task force broke through. The Espareth had spread their forces too far too fast across Human territory and their contain-and-invest strategy hadn’t worked as well as they had hoped.
I was right there with the mechanised infantry brigades when the blast doors opened outward fifty clicks Northeast of New Lisbon. Colonel Abrahamson was the age-old avatar of chivalric glory as he carried the sky-blue banner over the crest himself in his own gauntleted hands.
We pay homage now, assembled in full regalia in front of that same gate, two years later. The military band plays solemn tune as the banners sway in the breeze in front of the Abrahamson Cenotaph. He fell in that final battle that annihilated the remnants of the invasion force. His was the death to which every great soldier aspires; in victorious battle.
There is popular support for renaming this rock after the Colonel. Worlds should be named for those who sacrificed the most to build them, people say. No matter what the Colonial Office says, we will always know this is Abrahamson’s World.
by submission | Jun 6, 2016 | Story |
Author : Lucy Mihajlich
I thought there was a grace period.
That’s what you think. You miss a payment, and you get different colored emails for a few weeks before the repo man comes. Turns out that’s a load of trollshit.
The repo man came one day after my bill was due. I didn’t even know he was a repo man at first. If I’d been expecting a repo man, I would have been expecting some thug in a tow truck and plaid flannel. Not a short man in a Subaru and a hurry. The minute I told the door to open, He thrust a tablet in my face.
“Are you Tanner Green?” he asked.
I almost said no, but not because I’d finally figured out he was a repo man. I’d gotten used to going by my Flame War usernames: boobz, xxxboobiesxxx, bo0bs, 80085, and global warmers. It had been a while since I’d gone by any of my professional usernames. Hence, the repo man.
“Excuse me, sir. Are you Tanner Green?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I need your digital signature, please.”
“For what?” I asked, already taking the tablet. It felt heavy for something that weighed less than a Quarter Pounder. I’d also gotten used to not needing things like tablets.
“Acknowledgment that I notified you of your repossession.”
“Fuck,” I said. “My car?”
“No.”
“Not my house?”
“Your Brainframe.”
“Fuck!”
“The terms and conditions, which you indicated you had read and understand upon purchase, contain the terms of repossession.” The repo man spoke on automatic. They might as well have sent a robot. Or a singing hologram. “Surgical removal of the Brainframe™ is expensive and resale is impossible. Therefore, repossession entitles Brainframe™ to take possession of your brain.”
He actually said the TMs. I reached out to make sure he wasn’t really a hologram. I’d been to Madame Tussaud’s last week, and they were pretty realistic these days.
“Please don’t poke me, sir.”
“Wait what?” I probably shouldn’t have vaped a synthetic weed cartridge for breakfast. “Take possession of my brain?”
“It’s all in the fine font.”
“Killing their customers if they miss a payment is in Brainframe’s terms and conditions?”
“No, no. Of course not. They’ll just access the RAT- That’s Remote Administrative Tool.” He spoke slowly, as if I was stupid or Siri. “They’ll take control of your Brainframe™ and make you do manual labor in one of their factories until your bill is paid in full. You’ll probably get sent to China. It’s practically a vacation.”
“Manual labor? What do they need me for? Brainframe makes, like, all the robots. I thought the robots took our jobs.”
The repo man shrugged. “Robots are more intelligent than humans now. They took the skilled labor. We’re only good for manual labor. Oh, and the CEO of Brainfrme™ is a robot, so I suspect it’s probably biased.”
by submission | Jun 5, 2016 | Story |
Author : K.L. Kelso
I first noticed the owl while I was out chopping wood. Slowly, it circled overhead. It’s movements seemed odd. Not quite natural. I continued working and watched the strange creature from the corner of my eye. I could not let on what I suspected.
Eventually, the owl landed on a nearby limb. I hefted my axe onto my shoulder and walked past it, doing my best to appear that I was headed into the woods to look for another tree to down. When I was close enough, I struck.
One hard hit was enough to reduce the owl to a pile of smoking junk. Truthfully, the android bird was junk before I hit it. The Project must be pretty desperate.
With its primitive servos humming like an old refrigerator and barely functioning artificial intelligence, the owl was a crude machine at best. It was nowhere near the beautiful android prototype I had built, and later stolen, from the Project.
Crude or not, They had found us once again. I felt more sorrow than fear. I had hoped, this time, we were finally free. I’d learned over the years of running to be ready. Everything I needed to leave behind one life and start another was already packed in the trunk of my car.
I hurried back to the small farm house that I had called home for the past year. While getting into the car I gave three quick honks of the horn, our prearranged signal. My beautiful little girl burst from the house, as usual, carrying her favorite doll.
“I’m sorry Eve. We gotta run again”, I said.
“That’s OK Daddy”, She replied.
She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and buckled herself in. I couldn’t help but smile with pride. Her servos never made any noise.
