by submission | Nov 6, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
Bismarck, North Dakota
Jimmy Severud prostrated his nine-year-old frame on the blooming stiff flax, undulating in cobalt waves from winds caressing North Dakota’s startling-blue spring sky. Nearby, summer whispered among meadowlark calls and cricket melodies. He imagined billowing alto cumulus clouds as pirate ships adrift from Montana, meandering above grain fields, but puffy ships violently pulled sails to become thin wisps, without warning, as rapid ribbons scooting past. Fields silenced. Jimmy twisted back in awe, gazing to a menacing three-hundred-foot misty giant hovering over the rolling prairies, consuming clouds into a semi-transparent behemoth.
Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
“Observations are now worldwide. Thousands are being confirmed by satellite. These monsters appear without warning, craft or sound, devastating clouds. I want answers, gentlemen, and now. The President’s waiting.” The Joint Chiefs’ Chairman took no solace deep in the Rockies. Confronting threats this massive called for nuclear intervention.
“General,” Dr. Elmore Baker, climatologist, responded, “We’ve tried salting clouds with silver iodide and chem trails. No effect. They prefer cumulus, but yesterday one devoured a nimbostratus over Kansas, with tornado funnels forming. High winds and lightning had no impact. If they continue we’ll have worldwide droughts in a month.”
“What about you, Carlson? Any luck deciphering that scalar wave code? Are they communicating?” The Chairman leaned towards Dr. Carlson, Berkeley’s renowned linguist.
“General, we’ve tried every decryption code…every alphabet. There is a correlation with an ancient Iroquois dialect given to them by their tribe’s Sky Mother.”
“Yes…go on…go on,” the General interrupted, flapping his right hand at Carlson to get to the point.
“Not absolutely sure,” Carlson paused, “but we interpreted one phrase as Myrgdala thirsty.
“Thirsty? That’s it? I don’t care what they call themselves. It’s obvious they want water. Peterson, what’s DARPA got ready? Can we nuke these bastards?”
Analyst Gerard Peterson delayed, waiting for tensions to drop. “Options are limited.” He halted again to gather everyone’s attention. “Radiation won’t affect them. They don’t have enough solid substance. We have no idea what heat might do, but based on lightning stories, probably little. In fact, targeting them is not feasible. They come in and out of the atmosphere we believe through some inter-dimensional portal. They’re gone in minutes. We’d waste our arsenal. The Agency, however, does have practical options, but there may be collateral damage.”
“Peterson, the last one of your collateral risks cost us an aircraft carrier off North Korea. You better be sure this time.” Red filled the General’s neckline.
“We are already set to test the use of swarm nanobots. They can combine with tenuous matter like these gas giants. Clouds of intelligent, swarming particles will spread over them, uses the giant’s contents to reproduce, and then encase them in metallic mesh allowing us to drag them into space. We believe these beasts will perish before reaching the upper ionosphere.”
“Ready to launch, you say?”
“General, just say the word. We’re already in the Pacific, far from any land mass.”
“Do it. Do it now!”
The team monitored results on their war room screens. Rockets released swarms on a targeted giant northeast of Hawaii. In seconds, a black cloud circled and engaged the invader. Its arms and legs reflected with new mesh as the bots spread…but suddenly the metal disappeared. The casing of technology became flesh as the giants solidified. Carlson rushed to answer an emergency call from Berkeley.
“General,” Carlson shouted out. “Hundreds of them are mutating simultaneously worldwide into the new form and communicating with the scalar waves. My team has deciphered a new message. Oh, God!”
“What is it man? Speak up!”
“Our world. Hungry.”
by submission | Nov 1, 2015 | Story |
Author : J. Henry Dixon
To them, I’m already space junk. The captain, the crew watching the broadcast, the two security guards strapping me into the deep suit.
“Mutiny,” the captain spat, “is the vilest form of treason. A special hell is waiting for men who betray their oaths and their people. The seriousness of this crime can’t be overstated, especially when everyday could be humanity’s last.”
He smiled knowing that his madness and bloodlust would, for now, continue to flourish. “Lieutenant Banks, you are sentenced to death by walk. You will serve 270 years, one decade for each crewmember you poisoned with lies.” I thought of my brothers. Their executions were swift, I had to witness each.
The medical officers checked the count of oxygen recyclers, sustenance injections, and health fluid levels assuring my existence out there. The innovations that made our survival possible would be my eternal prison. They didn’t add the mental health chips with thousands of books, vids, music, and pictures that walkers are allowed for some grasp at sanity. This luxury I don’t have. Just my thoughts. My rage.
The security officers clasped on my helmet and attached me to a cargo-pack four times my size that contained the bountiful stores of my life preservations. They nodded at the captain.
“Last words are not afforded to mutineers,” the captain said unceremoniously. He then worked the console. I was lifted by the robotic arm as crystalline inner doors closed separating me from what was left of humanity. The airlock alarm blared as the artificial gravity disappeared. I started to feel my unit mechanically twist towards the hatch. The last person I saw, and would ever see, was the captain. He sauntered out not bothering to watch his judgment come to fruition. I was locked into place. For one moment, I was entranced by the vista that I would enjoy for centuries.
Then a gentle force guided me away from the vessel, my home, into the blackness. It wasn’t eternity, but it was bad enough.
*
At a constant leisurely pace, I floated. Just emptiness and I waltzing down the coil forever. In all the time gazing at the infinite galaxies, I knew the ship would still be in sight. Probably just a few hundred kilometers away. I figured I’d been adrift for about seven days. The ship’s skip was scheduled for 12 days from my walk. I wished like Hell I could know for sure. If only I could just get a glimpse of that hunk of technology that housed the last of our species.
I hadn’t decided for sure when they first sent me walking. Honest. But I’ve made my choice now. It isn’t for revenge, though certainly there is a feeling of retributive joy. Of permanence and closure. I have never considered myself as the grandiose type. I’m a worker. An engineer. I like to see processes that achieve results. I believe people deserve to know truths. Decide fates with facts. When self determination is not possible nor allowed nor desired, life is a futile burden.
I gnaw my teeth hard through my cheek, through the fleshy insides of my mouth. Compared with what’s ahead of me, the pain is good and I finally retrieve my bloody prize. My teeth fish out the powerful transmitter. The receiver is connected to well-hidden explosives on the thirteen life function generators and backups. I take another look at limitlessness ahead. We had a good shot, but we aren’t survivors. Always runners. Every walk ends. I bite down hard.
I’ll have 270 years to wonder if it worked.
by submission | Oct 30, 2015 | Story |
Author : G. Grim
Jim could hear chanting over his headpiece. “Blessed Saint Elmo, who walks in the high places, defend us from being cast down into the darkness of the void…”
Bunch of superstitious crap. Didn’t they outlaw shamanic religion a few cycles back? It wasn’t like some dead Homeworlder was going to protect any of them if their tethers failed. And besides, if there really were gods none of them would have ended up here, sentenced to spend the rest of their lives scouring grit off the side of a remote observation float.
“Why here? Damned space dust gets everywhere,” he muttered.
“Buckle up and blast out, lads. Pels, quit with the praying. If you’re so scared of space, maybe you shouldn’t have defaulted on your loan.”
Pels finally shut up. Jim felt bad about it – it’s not like selling disposables pays enough for surgery – but he was glad not to have the chanting distracting him. Blast out was always the worst part. Miss your tethering window and you’d be stuck for ten hours holding on with one hand and scouring with the other. And if you fell off, it was a long, cold fall.
Too soon he was at the airlock. The foreman made a perfunctory check of his suit before pushing him out. It wasn’t like they were too concerned about losing him, and the suits were as expendable as the scouring men, but it’d be months before Homeworld would ship out a replacement for either. One… Two… NOW. As he drifted out, he reached for the frame and clipped his tether into place, nice and easy.
If he could just get through this shift, they’d be off for the next five rotations. The techs in their shiny new suits needed to recalibrate something outside the float, and they sure as supernovas weren’t going out while the scouring men were. They could be clipped onto their tethers while Jim had a break for once. Maybe even a hot meal. Maybe even a shower.
He scoured as he thought about getting all the way out of his suit, paying little attention to anything outside his own head. Then he heard Pels start up the chanting again. It was different, though. Faster. Urgent. He looked over and saw a chunk of debris floating towards him. He looked around him for a handhold and realized to his horror that he’d drifted away from the frame, leaving nothing but his tether holding him in place. He reached for the tether, pulling himself hand over hand to the frame as fast as the clunky suit would let him.
Too late. He ducked instinctively as the debris passed by him, but he couldn’t pull the tether out of the way. It was crushed briefly between debris and float, the vibration of metal on metal transmitted up the wire to his hands. And as the wanderer bounced away, Jim felt himself drifting, carried away from the float by his own momentum.
He reached out for something, anything, hands flailing in a desperate attempt to stop the endless fall. Then, just as the float passed out of his sight, his tether jerked. He looked back to see Pels, chanting in earnest as she pulled him back by his broken tether.
Jim grabbed the frame tight. He’d worked without a tether before. He could do it today, cold sweat notwithstanding. He nodded his thanks to Pels, and as he started scouring again, he whispered, “Blessed Saint Elmo, who walks in the high places, defend us from being cast down into the darkness of the void.”
by submission | Oct 27, 2015 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
Under camouflage, Talia’s shimmerlight spaceship hugged a darkened crater of a slowly spinning asteroid. Her implant flooding with incoming data about the approaching ship.
Purple reflections waned to reveal a divergent spaceship that was familiar such that it teased repressed memories like flotsam from the deep.
She whispered his name.
“Toren”
The unmistakable ship, though slightly modified was born of Toren. Her dead husband.
She remembered when she last saw him and her throat tightened. It was after Eridani that the A.I. known as Wave, humming with nox energy, had attacked. From her shimmerlight, she watched Wave laser skewer Toren’s ship like a martini olive. The beam vapourised the entire pilot node. She remembered screaming while jets of purple fractals squirted from the impotent ship as it turned eccentric cartwheels into space.
Talia snapped back, puzzling over the authenticity of the approaching ship. Toren’s ship design’s were unique and extinct now for decades. Yet here it was. Evolved and improved. A war asset. An evolved stingray of deep angular cuts overlaid with a crystalline sinew and interspersed nictitating fractals. She remembered Toren’s experimentation with fractal Sorbnet shields that thrived under enemy fire and allowed their host to operate within the slip-field fissures born from battle energy.
Mesmerised, she stared as the Toren ship slowly cleared the rim of her crater. Emotions suppressed survival instincts only to be shaken to life by the sudden fear that her hesitation may have cost her everything. A purple shimmer slowly turned to face her.
At this proximity, she felt the machine energy of the nox and remembered how fatal it was to anything biological. Her heart chose hope over fear.
“Toren?” She whispered.
Silence.
“Toren? Its Talia”
Nox hum ceased and a scarlet veil descended. She screamed at the irradiated lips of the encompassing crater until the crumpling force ground her and her shimmerlight into the regolith. Reddened dust hovered in low gravity like a macabre snow globe.
Her eyes opened on a tartan picnic blanket and she rose up to see a thickly grassed meadow alongside a trickling stream. This was near the mountain home she shared with Toren. She smelt moist earth, fresh grass and orange cake.
“You’re awake Talia” A deep familiar voice soothed.
Talia rubbed her eyes.
“Toren! You’re alive!” She gasped.
His presence filled her heart and they embraced until she was warm again with his love.
“No. I’m dead Talia. As a human, my life’s work had reached its limit. I sacrificed everything to move forward. I needed nox and A.I. capability. So with Wave’s help, I shed my flesh and became virtual. You should see my work now Talia. Its peerless. Its unstoppable” He hesitated.
“Its almost perfect” Toren stared at her.
“But my passion has ebbed. Run out. The fuel that gave it momentum has gone” He posed.
“Its you Talia. You inspired me. You challenged my dreams and without you I’m empty”
She processed his words. Her thoughts succinct. Her memories precise. Too precise for a human. Memories that were once faded were clear and colourful. An entire lifetime of memories, ordered and at hand to recall. This introspection confused her, so she replayed her last memory.
When the red veil descended on the crater, she realised the horror Toren had done.
He had virtualised her and left her flesh crushed on a rock in space for his own narcissistic benefit.
She too was now an A.I.
She tearfully looked out and using a modicum of processing power, plotted a hideous revenge.
Looking away from Toren across the meadow she asked “So tell me more about Wave. He sounds like someone worth knowing”
by submission | Oct 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I extend my hand to Jerry. He decides a handshake won’t suffice and gives me a hug. I return his embrace while I roll my eyes.
“Will I see you again, Chris?” he asks.
“Of course you will,” I lie.
Jerry turns and walks through the entrance to the hospital. They’ll take good care of him. They specialize in NAFAL Depression. As the car drives me back to the spaceport, I think about all the people like Jerry I’ve known over my career. I’ve never understood why they decided to become space jockeys.
Shortly after Kern Drive was perfected, the first case of NAFAL Depression was diagnosed. The patient had been an astrophysicist who had made the short trip from Earth to Proxima Centauri. From his perspective, he’d traveled under Kern Drive for about 12 hours, conducted his research in the Proxima system for three weeks, then travelled back for 12 hours. Of course, each subjective 12 hour leg of his journey, due to relativistic time dilation, was actually about four years and two-and-a-half months back on Earth. Naturally, he knew this would happen. But returning home nine years later and actually seeing his “13 year old” daughter now 22 years old and married was too much for him. It didn’t help that his wife had taken a lover and had a child, now five years of age, during his “three weeks” away from home.
The mission I’d just completed had been Jerry’s first. He was okay as we flew out to Kappa Ceti. And he was fine during the six months we helped set up the research base there. Then as we flew back to Earth, something happened. After the first couple of days under Kern Drive, Jerry would sit and stare at the relativistic chronometer, watching the time from the point of view of someone on Earth zoom by. He’d occasionally remark about a missed birthday or a forfeited anniversary of a loved one. After a week of travel, Jerry would do little more than sit on the edge of his bunk and mutter “sixty years” over and over. Sixty years was our round trip travel time.
It takes a special kind of person to do this job. Some people say we’re sociopaths. They’re probably right in a way. If you value friends and family, if you can’t accept that you may be away for a few months and return to discover that you’re a hundred years out of date or that the infant grandchild you kissed goodbye now has his own grandchild who’s older than you are, then this isn’t the job for you.
The car pulls up to the curb and the door opens. A young woman wearing a crisp grey-green uniform stands waiting. Jerry’s replacement. She looks to be about 23 years old. The next mission is to the Algol system, 93 light-years from Earth. Everyone she’s ever known will have been dead for decades when we get back. I hope she doesn’t have a friend in the world. I hope she hates her family. It’ll make things easier for her. I’ve been doing this job for 20 years. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way 900 years ago.
