by Clint Wilson | May 3, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Rupert’s father blubbered uncontrollably as he took his son’s hand and led him away from the car and into the forest. Son? Was he really? Maybe if he kept thinking that way this might become somehow easier. Yes, he just needed to keep reminding himself. The boy may have sprung forth from his beloved Mary’s womb, but he wasn’t natural. No sir, not in the least.
Bob cried aloud as the revolver fell from his waistband to the wet leaves. Dropping to his knees his body was wracked with sobs as he stuffed the gun back into his pants, all the while Rupert stood expressionless, waiting for him to get up and continue leading the way.
“I’m s-s-sorry son. There’s nothing else to do now.” He wiped snot on his sleeve and composing himself momentarily he grabbed Rupert firmly by the hand again and said, “Come on.”
And further into the woods they went. Rupert always silent, allowing himself to be led, as per usual, wherever his parents took him, just like he had allowed them to lead him to school for the first time. But it wasn’t long before the Williams girl had turned up dead on the playground. No one could explain it. One moment she had been apparently talking to Rupert, and the next she was lying there with blood pouring from her ears and eyes.
Then there was the old man at the park. Rupert’s parents had only turned their backs for a minute, but when they had suddenly discovered that their son was missing, it didn’t take much frantic searching before they located him in some nearby bushes, standing quietly over the elderly fellow’s corpse, again complete with all too familiar bloody orifices.
And so they had moved to another town, to get away from all the pointing fingers and accusations. But it wasn’t long before their new neighbor’s dog was felled by a mysterious ailment that had caused it to bleed from its ears and eyes as well.
And Bob had endured it all, but there was now this, the final straw. He had come home that afternoon to find his worst nightmare realized, his beloved Mary on the floor, blood surrounding her. Why it had happened was just as much a mystery as any of them, but it was the last time it would ever happen. And the hell-spawned demon would now pay for taking her from him.
They came to a small clearing and Bob let go of his son’s hand. He took two steps away and turned to face him. “It was that lab your mother used to work at, wasn’t it? They did things there… things that she was sworn to never discuss, not even with her own damn husband!”
Rupert stood as wordless as ever, his blank stare giving no hint of thought or emotion.
His father yelled at him. “They exposed her to something! They did… something! And you’re the bastard result!”
Rupert’s expression never once changed, but deep inside the center of his chemically enhanced mind he calculated. And he remembered everything. They all had it coming. From the bullying, pinching girl, to the disgusting pervert who had made ready to take his sex organ out, to the stupid biting beast, and worst of all, his pillow-smothering bitch of a mother.
And now here stood his blithering idiot of a father, making ready to dispatch him with that crude weapon.
Suddenly Bob’s sniffling and crying stopped abruptly, and as the revolver tumbled uselessly from his fingers he began to bleed steadily from his eyes and ears.
by Patricia Stewart | May 2, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Damn, there’s nothing there. I don’t like this one bit,” said NASA’s Jim Mason to his fellow astronomer. “Based on the perturbations to the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, the computer says the damn thing has 45% of the mass of the sun.”
“That’s impossible,” replied Jed Simpson. “We’d be able to see a star that big. Even a dwarf star that died ten billion years ago would still be omitting in the infrared. And, if it were a black hole, Chandra would have picked up x-rays as it gobbled up Kuiper belt objects. Let’s face it Jim; it’s some kind of dark mass.”
“Dark mass? You mean Baryonic? Are you nuts?”
“No, no, not dark matter, dark mass. I mean some kind of super-Jupiter that didn’t go nuclear.”
“Well, that’s just stupid,” snapped Mason. “All of a sudden, the four fundamental forces don’t apply to your super-Jupiter. Are we supposed to ignore a hundred years of proven science? What’s next, the Earth is really flat? Let’s stay focused Jeb. There has to be a good reason that we can’t see anything.”
“Okay,” replied Jeb, raising the ante. “Maybe it’s stealth technology. Some alien race is attacking us using some gigantic invisible spaceship. How about that?”
Missing the sarcasm, Mason latched onto the idea. “Hmmm. Okay, let’s follow that path. But, it doesn’t have to be an invasion. Maybe it’s just a natural progression of an alien technology. For example, could it be a Dyson Sphere? Maybe they didn’t intend for it to be invisible. They just made it so efficient that energy doesn’t escape. We can calculate its coordinates from the effects on the gas giants. All we have to do is aim the Hubble II at it and see what’s there.”
A few days later, the Hubble II revealed that the anomaly was a Dyson Sphere, approximately forty million kilometers in diameter, which was probably surrounding an M2V red dwarf.
When the giant sphere crossed Jupiter’s orbit, it launched thousands of massive spaceships, which swarmed through the asteroid belt like angry hornets. As the weeks progressed, the sphere continued on its way past the sun and out of the solar system, but the spaceships stayed behind. Then, one by one, the spaceships left the asteroid belt and flew toward the sun; stopping just outside the orbit of Mercury. They would only stay a day or so, and then return to the asteroid belt is steady fashion.
The two NASA astronomers, along with seven billion concerned Earthmen, watched the extraterrestrial caravan for months. “Why don’t they answer our transmissions?” asked Mason. “Surely they know we are here. What do you think they are doing?”
“It’s obvious. They’re constructing another Dyson Sphere. They are probably autonomous construction ships. There’s no one there to answer us.”
“But if they are building a Dyson Sphere near Mercury’s orbit, won’t that block out the sun. The Earth will freeze.”
“Oh, we won’t have to worry about that,” replied a somber Simpson. “The asteroid belt only had 4% of the mass of our moon. There isn’t enough material there to construct a Dyson sphere. It’s just easier to get to. Eventually, they’ll need more raw materials. They will have to dismantle all four inner planets, including the Earth to get it. I estimate we only have a couple of years to figure out how to stop the invasion.”
by Stephen R. Smith | May 1, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Dr. Darius from the Psychology lab walked along the line of students to Dr. Thorne’s adjacent Bio lab, reaching the door just as it opened to emit a thin wiry girl with a pale face and electric blue irises. She paused only a second before stepping around him, offering a shy ‘Excuse me sir’, under her breath.
“Next.” Thorne’s voice was unmistakable from within the lab.
“Just a second,” Darius held back the next student in line, evoking an irritated but acquiescent huff from the towering young man, “won’t be a minute,” Darius added as he entered the lab and closed the door.
“Release signed?” Thorne spoke without looking up. “Payment in order?”
“What on earth are you playing at?” Darius startled Thorne with the question, causing him to look up from the notepad on which he was busy typing notes.
“Playing? I’m not playing, I’m researching.”
Darius closed the distance between them, admiring the majesty of the contraption that filled the desk beside the gray haired engineer. “I hear they’re not going to renew your funding next semester, what’s to become of the genome jammer?”
Thorne winced at the term, “Gene Code Reprogrammer, and once I’ve secured a corporate sponsor, or a less impotent government one then its future won’t be in jeopardy.
Darius stopped in front of the Doctor and his machine, noting the snapshots of the girl who’d just left on its display, a brown eyed before and the striking electric blue after shot, along with long strands of double helixed code in constant motion. “So you’re going to sell this to a cosmetics firm then? Or a circus? Changing eye colours really isn’t going to fund the kind of research you need to be doing to keep this dream alive, you do know that?” The doctor chided his old friend. “You’re going to have to show something really remarkable.”
Thorne thumbed his notepad, the security camera outside the office photographed the next waiting student and called up his file.
“Johann Yonnes,” he recited, “second string linebacker on the football team, two hundred five pounds, six foot four. He has dormant muscle mass code that we can reactivate, fast twitch in his legs for speed, slow twitch in his upper body for strength. We can put him on the first string next season.”
Darius shook his head. “Teams can always find better athletes, that’s not going to be enough.”
Thorne grinned. “I know, that’s just the carrot.” He pointed to the machine’s display and the streaming strands of colour coded DNA, mostly made up of vivid colour pairs, but some sections were clouded and grey. “These sections here,” Thorne jabbed his fingers at the screen, stopping a coil from turning and then rotating it back and zooming in by planting one hand on the glass, fingers together then spreading them outward. “Here,” he tapped a single grey pair in a sea of colour, “here is a possible payoff. I give them the carrot, then flip a combination of these mystery switches and see what we get. They come back every few weeks for follow up tests, and we figure out what we’ve accomplished. I’m expediting my trials a little.”
Darius stood for a moment, mouth opening and closing soundlessly. Finally he stammered “These are students, children, you’re messing with the lives of children…”
Thorne waved him off. “I load their DNA here,” he waved at an arm cuff and bank of needles at one end of the machine, “I recode their genes and replace them, then reboot their sequence, wait and test. If they last five minutes they’ll last a week, and anything harmful I undo the same way.” He gestured to his datapad, “I keep notes.”
Outside Johann checked his watch impatiently.
In the stairwell of Hawkfel Residence, a brilliantly blue eyed girl curled shaking on the landing, wing stalks forcing their way violently out from between her shoulder blades.
by submission | Apr 30, 2012 | Story |
Author : Colin W Campbell
When it all started, Duke was just one of these overpaid, do anything, off-home-world operatives.
The planet administrators were little impressed when he asked for a Council Meeting to propose a new section for what he called dirty-tricks. What happened at that meeting is now well written into the lore.
“So, why do we need dirty-tricks?” said one admin-guy.
“Look,” said Duke pointing to the clock on the wall.
Of course, their eyes went to the clock so they didn’t see Duke throw his water-bottle into the corner of the room. It made a noise loud enough to make them all jump and for the security-guys to reach towards the well concealed tools of their trade.
“So what?” said the admin-guy. “Now we know the time.”
“Yes, and I know where their weapons are,” said Duke.
They gave Duke his section. It was small at first but soon grew strong as the young planetary colony fought to survive its early years of political intrigue, pirate incursions, unequal trade deals, attempted coups and so on, the usual.
At first, it operated under gentle cover names. For a while it was The Office for Planetary Welfare then it grew into the Department for the Protection of Planetary Welfare. However, any young colony is pretty much a small closed society and soon everyone was calling it the “Ministry of Dirty Tricks.” Then at one Council Meeting that followed on from a generous lunch, they made it official. It was formally proposed, seconded and agreed and the department was raised to the status of a full Ministry and so Duke formally became the Minister of Dirty Tricks.
In the years that followed, anything published by Duke’s ministry became a collectors piece. Any well authenticated item bearing the heading “Ministry of Dirty Tricks” could command a high price at auction. Many thought this went a long way to explain how Duke was becoming ever wealthier. Others thought it might go only some little way to explaining his success but knew it would be best to keep such thoughts to themselves.
Concern grew back on the home world, for Duke’s power and influence were spreading unchecked across the known occupied reaches of the galaxy. An assassin was sent.
* * *
Jake knew well that would be assassins should not touch alcohol. But the ladies who worked as hostesses on the deep-space transports were well known for their discretion and it was a very long journey.
“It’s OK,” said the lady with the sky blue eyes and the expensive perfume. “You can only imagine how very discrete we can be here.”
It was not long before the drink was taking effect but Jake was careful to say nothing of his mission.
“Time to go now,” she said. Her sky blue eyes had a beckoning look and her hand felt reassuringly firm on Jake’s arm.
“Wow!” said Jake as he stumbled to his feet. “That is powerful stuff.” He gestured broadly towards his last glass, knocking it over.
“Don’t worry, I know where you’re going,” she said as they set off. Her words had a faraway quality as they echoed down the now mostly empty passageways of the deep-space transport.
And then they were there.
“So, this the way into your quarters?” said Jake, Turning, he saw a heavy door close behind him with his companion still outside.
“Actually, it’s an airlock,” said the lady with the sky blue eyes, the lady from the Ministry of Dirty Tricks.
by submission | Apr 29, 2012 | Story |
Author : TJMoore
I’m starting to get a little worried now.
Some more kids stopped by to visit Adrian today.
At first it was just his friends, kids that I know and have met before. Now, it seems like every teenager in the county is stopping by.
Almost as troubling is the fact that his friends don’t seem to come by at all anymore.
I thought I saw one or two of them a week ago sitting in a car along the road, like they were waiting for someone or something.
Now, it’s just strangers who say they know Adrian from school, but I don’t know them.
I’m not even sure why they come. Adrian’s condition hasn’t changed. He still lies perfectly still in the bed, staring at the ceiling, whispering.
I tried to make sense of what he was saying, even recording it to slow it down or speed it up, but it’s just unintelligible noise.
At first, the scientists at the university were asking a lot of questions. Questions about how and where he found the strange metallic shell.
Now, they don’t even answer my calls and the offices where they work are mostly vacant. I don’t even know where the shell is now.
I’m not even sure the shell is to blame for Adrian’s condition. How can listening to a shell cause such a catatonic state?
I think it’s just coincidence, but still, it is very peculiar that he went into that fugue state right when he put that shell to his ear.
The really disturbing thing is that I thought one of the kids I saw sitting in the car was also staring ahead and whispering.
I’m really starting to get a little worried now.
