by submission | Dec 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Gavin Raine
It’s ironic, but I’d been having having such a good day. The children all had their heads down, working on their numbers, and I even had a little time to daydream for once.
Then, I had that strange feeling that my chair had just sunk six inches into the floor – you know the one – and I knew it was real because the children reacted too. I was just about to reassure them that everything was OK when the gravity went off and all the lights went out and everybody started screaming.
The darkness only lasted a few seconds, of course, but it was terrifying for them – and for me too. If I hadn’t been shouting at them to be quiet, I think I would have been screaming myself.
Anyway, the emergency lighting came on and I started grabbing children out of the air and pushing them towards their lockers. They were all very good really and they remembered their drill perfectly, but it’s not easy getting into a pressure suit in zero gee. Most of them were crying and one of the boys was sick and Molly Davis got it in her hair and… well it was just a god awful mess.
We were just about getting organized when that idiot Lieutenant Birch started talking on the PA. “Wow that was a big one!” he said. “The engines have cut out because we’ve got a bit of spin,” he said. “We’re going to have a nice new crater after that one,” he said. He talks to us like were a bunch of kids on a fucking fairground ride! I’m sorry, but it’s just really inappropriate.
Listen, I know we’re inside an asteroid with a shell ten meters thick, but this is happening far too often. Inter-stellar space isn’t as empty as they told us it would be and traveling at 80% of the speed of light is just plain suicidal. We’re still six months from the turn-around and we can’t slow down, or we miss our target, so you know it can only get worse.
I’m sorry Captain, but you’re going to have to find yourself a new schoolteacher. I’ve made my decision and I’m going into the freezers tomorrow. All things considered, I’m not prepared to sit around and wait for the big one. I think it would be better to die in my sleep.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 24, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The body was huge. Seven feet tall, at least, and heavy.
X-Rays had shown a delicate tracery of machinery throughout, strengthening the huge frame to allow it to move quickly.
Its bright, neon-blue hair glowed in the dark. It was the same colour as the lips, fingernails, and nipples.
It was the same colour as the glittering eyes.
It was dead now.
It stared out at the scientists, unblinking, and awkward.
It had been found, naked, stumbling through the snow up in Alaska close to a week ago. Its skin was as white as the snow.
We called it Codename Winter because of it.
In the week before its death, it had picked up a few words of our language and could respond to rudimentary questioning. It was a slow process as it seemed to be straining not only to find the words but also the concepts behind them. I hate to say it, but it seemed really stupid.
Its story, told through clumsy mime and pieced together as best we could, was that it had come here from space and had left its ship to explore the wilderness in Alaska. A passing human airplane had spooked Codename Winter’s ship. The ship bolted and the alien was left alone.
It insisted that it was the only one on the ship. It insisted that the ship was probably worried about it and was looking for it.
It had been dead for two hours and there had still been no contact with the ‘ship’ of its story. Planes that had passed in the region she was describing witnessed nothing.
While it was alive, a tennis-ball sized lump of what we took to be biocircuitry in the center of it had given off a steady stream of data that seemed to be directly tied to its sensory organs but we couldn’t decipher the data we collected from it. We were still trying to figure out what the densely packed stream of trinary data meant.
However, it had not issued any transmission that we could detect after the alien’s death. No homing beacon, no SOS message, nothing.
Its death had been immediately preceded by a burst of a data washing through the biocircuitry that burned it out. Codename Winter had looked at us, puzzled, and died that way.
We’d come up with a saddening hypothesis:
Its warranty was up and it had been switched off like a light.
Its ship had scanned our planet, looked at the dominant life-form and made a copy out of the material it had on board. The ship drank in all the information that skin, eyes, ears and nose could provide. Maybe it didn’t waste time on colour or maybe it just had no idea what colour was.
Maybe the next step would have been to make a better copy that could fool us and let it wander around downtown Los Angles or something.
The ship wasn’t coming back for this creature any more than we would return to the site of a picnic for a lost fork.
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Andy knew he was a relic. He used to violently object when it was suggested that he was past his prime, but after a while the reality was too apparent to ignore.
It had been years, maybe decades since he’d been able to find factory fresh parts. Most of his equipment now was made up from bits scavenged and scrounged, then adapted as best he could.
Sometimes there would be an accident in the construction projects, and if he was lucky, and quick, he could tear off whole limbs or liberate power cells before the maintenance crews arrived to chase him away.
Most of these parts were too new, but some could be modified to fit, the rest traded away.
Andy found himself wandering through a section of the city that he remembered as it had been, vibrant and alive, but as he trudged down the streets and through the alleys, he found the roads in disrepair and littered with rubble and refuse. The once tall and gleaming buildings that reached skyward were now bent and broken, some leaning across the street on a neighbor, as if seeking comfort from the overwhelming decay.
This part of the city too, it seemed, had outlived its usefulness, now just awaiting its turn to be torn down and born again.
His head turned skyward, marveling at the battered structures holding each other aloft, Andy didn’t notice the road had given away before him until his weight had shifted too far over the empty space to recover.
Safety systems gone out of alignment and a battered gyroscopic guidance system struggled to orient him for a favorable landing, but Andy hit hard, scrambling circuits already oxidized to the point of being barely functional.
For a while, Andy was still, his world dark.
When he regained motor control, Andy pulled himself roughly and unsteadily upright. He was aware that he’d fallen, but could not recall the events preceding it. Around him he could make out the rough structure of a transit tunnel. Metal rails reached off in either direction in triplicate, no longer shiny from use but rather tarnished and pitted with age. Andy knew how they felt.
Andy picked a direction at random, and had trudged for some time before the tunnel opened up into a larger cavern on one side. In the middle, a pile of refuse burned surrounded by a cluster of shadowy figures who scattered into the darkness as he approached.
“Derelict maintenance droids, ” Andy muttered to himself, then loudly at the retreating figures, “if you were working for me I’d have your parts.”
Andy pulled himself up on the platform, then trundled to the fire, carefully stamping it out.
As he stood surveying the scene, he noticed one of the droids had not left, but rather was lying in a heap on the ground. Andy nudged its head with the toe of one large foot.
Nothing.
Excited, Andy pulled the droid into the middle of the platform where he had room to work. The droid was relatively small, but no doubt useful. As carefully as his tools would allow, Andy set to work disassembling the wiry unit.
Hydraulic fluid spilled everywhere, it’s plumbing obviously ruptured internally having no doubt resulted in overheating or loss of motor control.
Andy marveled at the delicacy of the inner workings of the unit, but was frustrated and confused that there didn’t seem to be a single part compatible with his own chassis.
Arriving back at the head, he examined the dent his foot had left in the casing. It was at this point that his headlights fell full on the droids eyes.
Andy paused, awestruck by the workmanship of these white and colored orbs staring back at him. They truly would be beautiful, Andy thought, if they weren’t so vacant.
by Collaboration | Dec 15, 2009 | Story
Author : Adam Zabell and Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Fifteen days after we landed on Io, Jupiter’s innermost Galilean moon, a faulty weld on the ascent module’s fuel tank ruptured, venting all of our liquid hydrogen into space. Janice O’Connor was able to repair the tank, but if we couldn’t replenish the hydrogen, we’d never be able to reach the Return Module orbiting Callisto.
Command and Control tried to help, but the 90 minute round trip conference calls to Earth were quite literally killing us. Janice died while removing a flow regulator that C&C told us to replace “ASAP”. Thirty minutes later, a message arrived warning us of a potential explosion. That’s when I decided to take Earth out of the loop. After all, I had a ship full of scientists; surely they could come up with a solution on their own. I asked Kristoff Heise to head the Hydrogen Replenishment Team. Kristoff is the brightest we have up here. Marooned on a deserted island, he’s the guy who could build a hovercraft from a dead car battery, some palm leaves, and six coconuts. Of course, he’s also the guy that would die of starvation because it wouldn’t occur to him to eat the coconuts. Short leash, specific goals; that’s what it takes to keep him focused.
Reading the summary from his preliminary report made my eyes crossed. If I understood correctly, and that’s debatable, Kristoff devised a way to turn Io into an electric generator. “…The orbit of Io lies well within the intense Jovian radiation belt. This bathes the moon in highly energized electrons, protons, and heavier ions. A coarse calculation (see Equation 9, Section 3.2.14) indicates an electric potential of 175.9 volts per radial mile. Therefore, if we construct a modified magnetic reconnection antenna (see Figures 12 thru 17) there are hundreds of amperes of electric current available (Equation 11, ibid). By establishing a…” Ahh, whatever. When I brought him into my office he simplified it. “If we tap into the electric potential of Io, we can power an enormous electrolysis cell, separate gaseous hydrogen from the disassociation of melted Ionian ice, compress the hydrogen into a liquid, and refill the tank.” Why didn’t he just say that in the first place!
After hours of listening to his scientific babbling, I snapped. “Kristoff,” I yelled, “just appropriate whatever you needed to do the job, and stop bothering me.” In hindsight, I probably should have worded it better. The next thing I knew, he had the entire science team postulating, designing, planning, and whatever else those brainiacs do. They removed the heating coils from the life support system, the tanks from the water recycling system, and the compressor from the carbon dioxide scrubbers. I tried to explain the biological ramifications of dismantling equipment that kept us warm and allowed us to pee and breathe, but they were in the middle of an egghead feeding frenzy over heat transfer coefficients. “Besides,” they constantly reassured me, “we’ll put everything back together once the fuel tank gets filled.” Yea… that makes me feel soooo much better.
Two days later, our cargo hold looked like a farcical blend of MC Escher and Rube Goldberg. However, I have to give those nerds credit – the hydrogen tank is 50% full and climbing. On the other hand, I’m wearing a parka, sitting with my legs crossed, and trying to learn how to breathe carbon dioxide. Lately, my oxygen deprived brain has been reflecting back on my life, trying to figure out which cosmic deity I piss off enough to make me the captain of this ship of savants.
by submission | Dec 13, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Ersinghaus
He gave away his parts at the proper time.
Downtown he saw a man without a foot, so he gave the man his foot. A friend told him that the box full of left shoes he put on the sidewalk was a good idea.
He gave his right arm to a construction company for they were in need of day labor and his right arm had always been his best.
“You’re fading in front of me,” his girl friend said. “We should discuss the benefits of travel through France.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve heard about a town in Alaska in serious need of ears.”
He loved the train. He remembered the hammer of the mechanicals under the soles of his feet. But these were newer, faster trains. He disembarked somewhere in the middle of the country where the children asked, “How far can you kick with your robotic foot?” and “Those look like ear buds.”
“Because they are, you little shits,” he said. “And I’ll show you just how far I can kick. Come to me when you’re in serious need of livers.”
They needed eyes in Florida, testicles in Texas, whole shoulders in a small village in Queensland, legs here, fingers there. This neediness kept him busy. “You’re fading and fading fast,” his girl friend said. “You’re a machine and I sleep cold beside metal in the winter. We should seriously consider a cruise.”
“Some other time,” he said. “There’re dangerous places in space. Common flesh is unwilling. And my processors roast in this gravity. The sea air’d glue me to the shell.”
“Call me when you can,” she told him as they closed the hatch to the shuttle set for deep space.
Inside, the techs slipped him into a slot, watched as his file appeared on screen, mounted him into the communication and guidance system, then departed.
After take off, over the Com, he said. “I feel cool and calm and robust brothers and sisters. I fear losing nothing. I’m speeding through and can see the angels. Tell them to believe me: you won’t miss blood flow.”
