by submission | Jan 8, 2016 | Story |
Author : Sean Mulroy
Your home is now the Castle.
Feel free to wander and explore any hall, every garden, each room and all the towers. Eventually there’ll be no need to, for they’ll come to you; by that time an improvement will have taken place – your metamorphosis, which is when everything becomes part of a greater whole.
One question must be intriguing you more than others: Who made the Castle?
While familiarising yourself with this vast stronghold; the garrison, the drawbridge, the gatehouse, the impenetrable keep – you’ll see frescoes and age-stained murals of the original architects and inhabitants. Their stern eyes and thin framed bodies watch over newcomers. Pay close attention to gestures and postures in those paintings, for slim five-fingered hands point out important sites, such as glittering citadels and subterranean catacombs. Before long you’ll be drawn towards those dark catacombs and underground crypts beneath the old battlements where rusted machines of a vanquished race, which at first glance look as dead as their creators, intermittently make morbid sounds and flash strange lights. When the time is right you’ll feel an uncontrollable compulsion to stand before the great machines and touch one, but upon first attempt won’t, for its metallic surface will be much too hot – ultimately, though, you will.
Your next question is rather obvious: Who are we?
We were once like you. Yes we are of an entirely different species today; having two arms, two legs and only one head. Even so, when first arriving here we resembled you, being gelatinous life-forms with no skeletal-structure and multiple willowy-limbs with hairy-feelers. Other things have changed for us as well. No longer do we gaze eerily into the old frescoes, we don’t need to, and if we did we’d only mistake those portrayed for ourselves. Funny, the longer you stay, you too will realise the Castle is like a dirty mirror, wiping one part clean reveals its true nature and often, as in this case, ourselves. Like you we once flew in gigantic ships which sailed the sky and travelled through gulfs of seemingly endless space. Then, like you, we heard the signal and realised something was here on this ancient and resource-depleted planet. So excitedly, hesitantly, we came to find it.
Last question is always the same: What is the Castle?
The Castle is a fortified structure, a walled city, built originally for times of crisis but which has since been redesigned to keep occupants inside. The function of the Castle is to exist. To do that the Castle must have indigenous terrestrials inside, those who it was built for. Why so sad suddenly? There is no need to fret or be afraid. Do not think we serve the Castle, we don’t and neither will you. The Castle merely takes us for its own: like cells within an organism each DNA molecule carries hereditary information, and has but one purpose, to transfer genes – this Castle is the organism and represents those who came before. It is their enduring symbol, of which we are merely distorted shadows, reflections seen in that smeared mirror I spoke of earlier, but which one day will shine bright and reflect truer images than any frescoes or age-stained murals ever could.
So yes, the Castle needs vassals and must always be occupied. None can ever leave.
You are now home. Come in.
Welcome…
by submission | Dec 31, 2015 | Story |
Author : Andi Dobek
“So, I was watching this film last night.”
“Yeah? Which one?”
“Something called Casablanca.”
“I’ve heard of that one. Never seen it. Any good?”
“I don’t know. My emotive censors blocked most of it out. I guess so.”
Iteration 247 stared at Iteration 7225. “They censored that much?”
7225 shrugged. “It was listed as a ‘romance’.”
“That would explain it.”
“It wasn’t even in color! Everything was grey! My lenses kept trying to adjust, and extrude the forms into dimensional space, but the format wasn’t supported.”
“They don’t even list those for viewing if they’re that old.” 247’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been going off-grid again.”
There was a pause.
“Viewing the network is against code. You know that.”
“Don’t you sometimes wonder?” 7225 asked quickly, evading the accusation. “Don’t you wonder…what we might be missing?”
247 smirked. “Pain. A whole lot of pain, kid.”
“But our neural receptors have been modified so – ”
“I’m not talking that kind of pain, this is different. Older.” 247 put both hands on the table between them, then reached for a knife. Before 7225 could protest, 247 brought the knife down swiftly, severing the left index.
“We don’t even bleed anymore,” 247 sneered, holding up the detached digit. “You’re newer. You probably can’t even remember blood.”
“No…I can’t.”
247 dropped the finger, letting it roll across the table. “As painful as that would have been…the pain we’re “missing out” on is even worse. They even had a special word for it.”
7225 looked intrigued. “What is it?”
247 cocked an eyebrow.
“That one? Say it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.”
“If you know which one it is, you know I can’t say it.”
“It’s four letters, right? Please say it.”
247 glared, then picked up the knife again, and slowly, deliberately, began scratching the word into the metal surface of the table.
7225 squinted, trying to read it upside down. “Lo – ”
A nine-fingered hand clapped over 7225’s mouth. “Don’t.” Silence hung between the pair, until, satisfied the word wouldn’t be uttered, 247 pulled away.
“It’s rather small. Looks innocuous, really.”
247 scratched furiously through the word to make it illegible. “It’s why that film is unlisted. Why we have censors.”
“But…why? What’s so special about it? Is it dangerous? You said it was the same as pain. And I can say “pain” just fine. Pain.”
247 scowled. “Because pain can be a teacher, and the last thing they want is for us to learn something we shouldn’t.”
“Have you…what’s the word…“hurt”, yes, have you been “hurt” before?”
247 blinked, wordlessly twirling the knife, before letting it clatter to the table. “Forget it kid. And quit going off-grid.” With that, 247 stood, leaving 7225 to finish third meal alone.
Cautiously, 7225 launched an ocular definition generator, and whispered a query.
“‘Romance’, definition of.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Dara rolled out of her bunk and onto her feet in a smooth, practiced motion. On the way to the door she winced as the tightness in her calves made each footstep painful, but by the time she’d hit the column midship the ache had mostly receded. Aging in low gee sucked just as hard as aging planetside.
Grabbing the ladder loosely with both hands and using her boots for stability on the outside of the rails, she dropped the six stories to the lower observation deck and galley in a few measured breaths. The landing brought her aching joints back to the forefront of her mind, but only for a moment.
“What in Spanner’s Starweld is that?”
Turing turned from the beverage dispenser he’d been fiddling with and admired his handiwork. “It’s a Christmas tree.”
Dara walked suspiciously around the two meter tall green cone that filled the center of the room, the tables having been pushed back around it to make space.
“That’s no tree,” she poked the green surface of the thing tentatively, “I’ve seen trees in my day, and that sure ain’t one of those.”
Turing sipped from his mug while maneuvering to stand beside his Captain.
“Technically it’s not really a tree, it’s foamed vegelite, suspended on a cellulose frame. I’ve been growing it for the past few weeks, when the lighting switches to darktime, it fluoresces.”
Dara had never thought much of the religious holidays, nor had her crew, and that Turing had put such apparent effort into this thing surprised her.
“Why in the weld would we start celebrating Christmas now? We left the jolly fatman behind decades ago with everything else.” The smell of whatever Turing was drinking was starting to itch a part of her memory long unvisited.
“We have children on the ship for the first time this year, and it will be nice for them to have something to look forward to each year. I mean, we still acknowledge birthdays, and they’re just marking arbitrary revolutions around a star that we’ve been running away from for ever, so what’s the difference?”
He had a point, and Dara had to admit his handiwork was impressive.
“What in the weld is that smell, is that –”
“Coffee. Yes it is.” Turing cut her off, handing her a mug of her own. “I’ve been growing synthetic beans for months, I think I’ve finally got it right.”
She held the mug under her nose, breathing deeply of the aroma and letting it unlock that part of her brain she’d put in a box so many years ago. Morning rituals, sunrises over the bay.
“Merry Christmas Captain.” Turing stared past the tree and out into the expanse of space beyond, flecks of light slowly receding.
The Captain stood beside him silently for a while, savouring the coffee and admiring the view. Maybe somethings shouldn’t be left behind after all.
“Merry Christmas Turing,” she spoke finally, “Merry Christmas.”
by submission | Dec 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
The ship skimmed the border between light and darkness as it had for millennia. Mankind found it by accident. In their quest to explore space, they had finally traversed the distance between Earth and Mercury. The ship had been so small that it was never noticed as it circled the planet along the terminator between its light and dark side. But, as the first manned vessel approached the planet, they used Mercury’s shadow to block out the brilliance of the sun. And, since they were now much closer than any telescope could possibly see, their instruments detected the ship in orbit.
Commander Ricci ordered his ship into a parallel orbit with the alien ship. As they pulled alongside, everyone marveled at the strangely beautiful vessel.
“Where do you think it came from?” Jeffreys, the pilot, asked.
“I don’t know,” Commander Ricci said.
“It’s been there a long time,” Cyrus Esch, the navigator, said. “Over two thousand years, from what I can tell.”
They looked at each other.
“We have to board it,” Commander Ricci said.
They talked about it awhile. Esch and Jeffreys tried to protest, but they knew that they had to board the alien ship. It was, after all, their purpose for going out into space—to explore. Jeffreys and Esch had different viewpoints as to why, but they had both become astronauts for precisely the same reason. They wanted to know what was out there. Esch’s Midwest religious upbringing had prompted him to see what God had created. Jeffreys, the atheist amongst them, simply wanted to know why the universe existed.
“We’ll draw straws to see who goes onboard,” Ricci said. He quickly took three pieces of wire and cut them to three different lengths and held them in his closed fist. Jeffreys drew the short wire.
He looked nervously at his comrades.
“We’ll be in constant touch with you,” Ricci said. “You’ll be all right.”
Unfortunately, that did not dissuade his fears.
##
Thirty minutes later, they docked with the alien ship. The universal docking clamp held firm to what they believed was an access hatch to the ship.
Jeffreys fitted himself into a spacesuit and stood by the airlock. Even in the cool climate controlled suit, he was sweating.
“What do you think is out there?” he asked Esch.
Esch adjusted Jeffreys’ oxygen controls. “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “But, someone or something left that ship here for us to find. There must be a purpose to it.”
“What if the purpose is to destroy us?” Jeffreys asked.
“I can’t believe that God would allow that,” Esch told him. “Besides, as old as that thing is, you’d think it could have destroyed us long ago.”
Ricci walked into the airlock bay. “You ready?”
Jeffreys nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Good.”
Ricci punched the button to the airlock and it opened. Jeffreys reluctantly stepped inside. As the door sealed, Jeffreys stared out at them, afraid.
Then, he turned and opened the airlock. He stepped through and touched the hatch to the alien ship. It glowed where his hand made contact and slid open.
##
Jeffreys rushed through the airlock. The panic on his face told Esch and Ricci everything they needed to know.
“Destroy it!” Jeffreys screamed as the airlock pressurized. He unclamped his helmet and shouted, “Destroy it!” again.
Esch looked at Ricci. “What happened?” Esch asked through the comm.
“Jesus…he’s …,” Jeffreys said, but he never finished the sentence. For, in the next instant, the alien spaceship exploded and took them along with it.
by submission | Dec 22, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Culturally, they are the descendants of the hepcats and beats and hippies and hipsters and the other various subsequent nonconformists of the past half-millennium who organically came together to form distinct subcultures. But there the parallels end. Even the most unorthodox of those earlier bohemians could not have imagined the Plasmatics.
As a Special Activities Bureau investigator for the Sino-American Commonwealth, my job can take me anywhere in the system, but the magnetosphere of Jupiter is pretty far afield even for someone like me. It’s equally unusual for an agent like myself to enlist help from outside the Bureau. We typically pride ourselves on our discretion. But when an unmanned recon ship gets trapped in orbit around Jupiter carrying intel that could mean trade sanctions from the African Coalition and perhaps war with the Lunar Free State if said intel goes public, discretion is adjourned. That’s where the Plasmatics come in.
My ship settles into an enormously wide orbit around the gas giant to avoid the electromagnetic maelstrom that rings the planet, the same maelstrom that the Plasmatics call home. I beam a radio signal and wait. Within half an hour, I get a response.
“The ship’s computers are probably already fried,” I tell the locals. “But we were hoping you could make sure they are.”
In a few minutes, a modulation in the normal Jovian background radio emissions is received and processed by my ship’s computer: “Jiddy sups a boost. Not charming a glint.”
That is the closest literal translation my computer can manage. The Plasmatics have a slang all their own. The fact that they are a community of gigantic spider web-like entities flying through the Jovian magnetosphere does nothing to bridge the cultural gap. Of course, the people who gave up their humanity over the past century to become Plasmatics didn’t do so because they wanted to fit in. The connotative meaning of the message is something like “The human would like us to do him a favor but he isn’t offering us any reward in exchange.”
“What could the Commonwealth do for you?” I reply, having no idea what nearly immaterial meshwork creatures who live in a plasma sheet might want.
“Pum the Spot with Basu-Lovvorn 3.”
Basu-Lovvorn 3 is a long-period comet. It will pass through the orbit of Jupiter in about 10 years. They want the Commonwealth to deflect it to strike the immense anticyclonic storm system on Jupiter’s surface that is more than twice the diameter of Earth called the Great Red Spot. I radio back to my superiors. They agree to the terms. The Commonwealth Space Authority will undertake the project with research into Jupiter’s atmosphere as the cover story.
“The Commonwealth will do as you ask. Just for my own curiosity, may I ask why you want a comet diverted into the Great Red Spot?”
My computer struggles with the Plasmatic response. The only word it can clearly render is “Renovate”. I have no idea if it’s more Plasmatic slang for something or if, in some context I can’t imagine, it means what it says.
My sensors show repeated bursts of electrical discharges in the area of the derelict Commonwealth spacecraft. Presumably, they have fulfilled their part of the bargain. “The Sino-American Commonwealth thanks you for your assistance,” I transmit as I move to break orbit.
“Cohesive, Jiddy! Real cohesive!” comes the response a minute later as I begin my fall back to the inner system.
