by Patricia Stewart | Aug 13, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Approximately 800 light-years from Earth, the DSX-13 “dropped” out of hyperspace, and reentered conventional space-time. This was Earth’s first sojourn beyond the “local neighborhood” (100 light-year radius). It took fifteen jumps, and over two months, to reach the intended target, Zeta Orionis, a rare Type O, blue supergiant. The mission profile was simple: explore the system for a few weeks, collect some asteroid and comet samples, and return to Earth. However, when the DSX-13 was mapping the system, they detected an abandoned one-passenger spacecraft in orbit around a lifeless Class-M planet. The derelict ship was the first direct evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life discovered in the 83 star systems explored thus far. To make room for the alien ship, all of the expendable equipment in the primary cargo hold was jettisoned into space. The alien ship was stowed in the cargo hold, and two months later, it was transferred to a secure hangar at a Top Secret base in North America.
Earth’s best scientists spent a year accessing the ship’s electronic systems and downloading the data into “The Brain,” Earth’s most sophisticated Mark VI supercomputer. Eventually, the Brain was able to translate the alien’s language and play the audio and video logs. The information contained within the logs terrorized the scientists to their very souls.
The alien ship belonged to an advanced race called the Alnitak. They were a fierce, super aggressive species that systematically plundered the resources of any world that they found, regardless of whether or not it was harboring life. Even sentient species were destroyed without the slightest consideration, because to the Alnitakians, they were less important than iron ore. In fact, indigenous intelligent life was considered a nuisance; to be disposed of as quickly as possible, in order to minimize interference with ground-based operations.
Since a dangerous alien species roaming the galaxy had serious survival implications, the scientists attempted to determine if the ship had been abandoned recently, or 100,000,000 years ago (perhaps indicating that the Alnitakians were now extinct). Unfortunately, a detailed analysis of the celestial positions recorded in the ship’s star charts revealed that the ship had been abandoned only a few decades earlier. In addition, the star charts also disclosed that the Alnitak sphere of expansion had a diameter of approximately 50 light years, and was expanding at a rate that would reach the Earth in about 200 years. This gave the scientists hope that there was time to prepare for the inevitable invasion.
The first order of business was to analyze the alien ship’s technology, in an attempt to advance Earth’s scientific knowledgebase, and to look for weaknesses in the Alnitakian’s defense capabilities. During an operation to remove access panels in the ship’s cockpit, a maintenance technician accidentally activated a switch on the instrument console. Seconds later, an alien voice was emanating from the ship’s speakers. The Brain was patched in to provide a translation. “Calling Fighter IDSG 2951413, your emergency distress signal was received. You are currently in an unexplored sector, but we are able to determine your coordinates. We are dispatching a rescue ship and fighter escort. Maintain your position. Help is on the way. ETA, six days.”
by submission | Aug 8, 2009 | Story
Author : Richard Watt
Isaac blinks and tries it again. There is an apple on the table in front of him, and another on the shelf to his left. He reaches out with his left hand and picks the fruit up. It has the texture and heft of an ordinary green apple. Isaac lays it down beside the red one in front of him. He hesitates as he does so, although he knows, has deduced by empirical observation – which he is rather good at – what will happen.
It happens again. He blinks once more, then takes the green apple away. There is one red apple in front of him. He wonders what will happen if the green apple is cut in half, but he has had no access to any implements since he arrived, by means which he does not yet fully comprehend, in this place.
There is a stranger seated across from him, but Isaac does not meet his gaze. He has devoted his life to observing and deducing, but he is genuinely disturbed by what he has seen here. The fact that his companion appears to find it mildly amusing has put Isaac in a foul mood, and he can no longer contain himself.
“This is impossible! Sir, I demand to know by what trickery you make these abominations appear!”
The other man, who has not even so much as introduced himself, smiles at Isaac, which causes the old man to sigh intemperately.
“There is no trickery, Isaac. This is the natural order of things. Simple mathematics. You have one object, and you add another to it, then there are five objects. Take one away, and there will be one left. How it is, and how it must be.”
Isaac is irritated enough not to notice that he has, once again, been addressed inappropriately. His mind is on another path now.
“Is this Hell, sir? Is this my punishment for whatever transgressions I am deemed to have committed? If so, I demand my judgement! I demand to be heard, and to face the wrath of my creator in person. Not to be trifled with by some insipid underling. Sir, you mock me, and I will not tolerate it!”
“It amuses me, Isaac, that so many of the ones we retrieve from your dimension talk in these terms – although not, if I may say so, always in such eloquent language. If it pleases you to consider this some kind of judgement upon your character, then we will accommodate that. In truth, it is your mind, rather than your character which has alerted us to you. We feel certain that your thorough understanding of the mathematical principles of your limited subset of the – ah, I must apologise; as far as we can discern, your language has no word for it; let us call it the universe – will help us in our studies. Given time, we feel sure you will come to relish the challenge.”
Isaac does what he often does when he feels discomfited; he harrumphs loudly, which seems only to provoke more amusement. The other man stands and leaves the room. Isaac glares after him.
Outside, in a space which Isaac might have recognised as some kind of corridor, the other man passes his case notes over to his supervisor.
“I think he will come round; he’s certainly the most promising one we’ve had yet. No sign of mental instability at all. In fact, he’s mostly just irritable.”
The supervisor smiles thinly. “You did remember to tell him not to eat the apple, didn’t you?”
by submission | Jul 31, 2009 | Story
Author : Helstrom
Paydirt rolled deftly away from the asteroid we’d hid her behind and launched a volley across the Wayfarer’s bow. Some junior officer now had the task of rushing the captain out of his cabin. It was exactly those few minutes we used to put all the dominoes in place. By the time anyone qualified was in the big chair, the whole match would already be falling on him like a house of cards. Checkmate!
“Drop the birds, Jerry!” I shouted at the coxswain, “It’s time to show these fools they’ve met their match!”
“It’s Jeff, sir,” Came the tired reply, “Launching your squadron.”
I gripped the controls of my fighter as she was flung from the Paydirt’s rotating section. Going from artificial gravity to free-fall sure got the adrenalin going in a rush! The boosters kicked in and I pulled her into a tight bank towards the Wayfarer. We had her cornered against the vast expanse of interplanetary space – there would be no escape.
“Tumbling Dice! Are you with me?”
“On your lead, sir. Ready when you are.”
I switched to the hailing channel: “Wayfarer! This is Zack Daring of the Tumbling Dice – you’re up the river without a chance here, prepare to be boarded and pillaged! Surrender now and no-one needs to get hurt much.”
“Tumbling Dice, this is Wayfarer,” – sounded like the captain, guess he liked to get up early – “We are unarmed and well insured. We are ready to surrender all valuables and cargo in exchange for the safety of our ship, passengers, and crew.”
“Huh! I’d expected more fight out of you. Very well – pack everything nicely and jettison it out your port cargo bay. And don’t even think about opening fire… We’ve got you pinned down like a jumpy cat!”
“Uh… Repeat, Tumbling Dice, we are unarmed. Please stand by to receive our valuables out the port cargo bay in fifteen minutes.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I’d never get any work done! Make it ten.”
“Ah… Affirmative… Tumbling Dice, we will comply in ten minutes.”
I allowed myself a wide grin as I craned my head around to survey the little masterpiece unfolding against the backdrop of Jupiter’s swirling crescent. Paydirt was slowly circling Wayfarer, brandishing wicked broadside guns against the cruise liner’s pristine panorama decks. Behind me, in a tight V formation, were my other fighters, each armed with high-powered lasers and nuclear missiles easily capable of ripping apart a ship ten times the Wayfarer’s size – but radioactive loot was hard to sell these days!
It took the passengers seven minutes flat to dump all their valuables into the cargo hold and have them flushed out into space. The retrieval boat picked them up and reported a pretty penny aboard.
“Wayfarer! We have taken our loot and we’ll be on our way. I’m not surprised you didn’t put up more of a fight, you’ve got as much spine as a sloth!”
Josh or Jack or whatever the hell his name was chimed in: “Sir, sloths are vertebrates. They have spines.”
“I know, John – but take that away and all you have left is a lot of… Fur. Now let’s get the hell out of here and mosey along!”
So, there was no fight today, but we caught a good booty jumping a defenseless ship – hell, I was a pirate, and with a name like Zack Daring, what else was I going to be?
by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Tanya rested her head on the table sideways, watching the needle slip through the flesh in the crook of her elbow. Dr. Tetler attached a line and hung a clear bag on the I.V. stand beside her.
“We’ll let the saline run for a minute before we proceed.” The Doctor smiled at her, a practiced expression he failed to make convincing.
Tanya looked to the ceiling as a cooling sensation crawled up her arm. She was tired; not being able to sleep well on the streets, she looked forward to the promised bed and regular meals, even for a little while.
“Alright, we’ll begin now. You may feel a burning sensation, which is normal.” The Doctor’s voice faded into the background as she watched him hang another bag, this one with a distinctive orange and black striped logo on it. “This should start binding fairly quickly.”
It wasn’t a burning sensation so much as liquid fire racing into her body. Flames coursed through her, from her arm into her chest where she was sure it would erupt as a molten volcano out of her pounding heart. Her mouth stretched wide, screaming until her voice was so hoarse all she could do was growl, air pulled and pushed through vocal chords she knew must be burnt black as coal.
The pain crescendoed, spiking in her toes and fingers, an exquisite throbbing that echoed the pounding of her heart. She flexed hard against the strapping that held her, her head bouncing against the table, the entire frame shaking as a tray of instruments clattered to the floor.
The Doctor moved hesitantly towards the door, spellbound by the spectacle before him.
Once the bag drained completely, the fire subsided. She breathed, pain and fatigue falling away, replaced by a sense of euphoria. Opening her eyes and finding the light almost unbearably bright, she narrowed them to slits. She could hear her own heart drumming, blood coursing through her newly tuned body. She breathed deeper, felt the oxygen flood her bloodstream.
Flexing again, she felt a new and keen awareness of every muscle fiber, every ounce of available strength.
Another heart beat nearby, accelerated by a fear so strong she could smell it.
Tanya turned again, noticing the needle still protruding from her arm and reached across to pull it out, freeing one arm and tearing the restraint from the table in the process without apparent effort. As the needle dropped, she pulled herself fetal, the other restraining straps giving way like damp paper. Rolling sideways off the table she landed in a low crouch, knees fully bent, arms easy at her side; a coil spring aching to discharge.
Tetler reached behind him without looking, brailing the table top for the tranquilizers he knew should be within easy reach.
Tanya could smell betrayal.
The Doctor’s hand closed on an auto-injector as Tanya exploded from her crouch. Legs extending fully, she launched at him, arms forward, hands extending like blades. The force of the impact drove him backwards into the door, hypo spraying harmlessly into space as her fingertips penetrated his chest just beneath the collar bone and curled into his ribcage. Falling backwards, she pulled him, screaming, on top of her and as they fell, she twisted one hundred and eighty degrees at the waist, throwing him to the floor and landing on top of him.
His fear flooded her senses, the smell of a taste she found irresistible. She silenced his screaming, tearing out his throat with her teeth.
“Funny,” she thought, as his blood soaked her gown, the chorded muscle of her body rippling bare through the open back, “I don’t feel the slightest bit tired anymore.”
by submission | Jul 21, 2009 | Story
Author : Adam Zabell
Commander Deborah Sagmeiser began the ‘big reveal’ of Project Beta. This briefing used to be a formality which celebrated the human race. She looked across the table at a bespectacled middle-aged man, brought into the fold against her better judgement, and wondered how much room for celebration was left.
“Time and space travel,” she explained, “use identical but polarized technology. Like those elementary school cartoons showing self-propagating, transverse oscillating waves of electric and magnetic fields, the physical laws of interstellar travel are twinned with intrachronological transfer.” First Physicist Nikolayev’s eyes grew wide as his scientific intuition processed the implications. His previous assignment had been Project Coeus, whose hyperspatial engineering had drilled Chang’s Five Theorems into his soul.
Commander Sagmeiser tapped a display screen to reveal the Sixth Theorem. “Outside of Project Beta, FP Nikolayev, this collection of variables and constants are an expensive and ruthlessly guarded secret. Within, the past several centuries have seen it used to great effect.”
“It is a reasonable approximation to say there are two timelines measuring the existence of humanity. They branched five hundred years ago, subjective, because Project Beta achieved what nature could not. For two dozen generations, a fleet of C5T ships explored a sterile universe. Discovering rocky planets in every astronomical ecosphere, none of which could manage more than a kind of proto-life. Collections of nucleic and amino and betain acids, barely self-replicating, a light broth in salty water. Psychosocial analysis showed our species on an inevitable descent to suicide because of cosmic loneliness.”
“Within that context,” the Commander continued, “Project Beta developed the C6T technology. Eighty objective-years ago, we finished our prototype ship and went back some four billion years to fertilize the most promising worlds. We returned at intervals to cultivate a spectrum of cultures a bit slower and poorer than ours in preparation for when the C5T survey ships were scheduled to arrive. Five hundred sub-years ago, that was the Fluvuluvians. Twenty years ago, the G’trn.”
Commander Sagmeiser paused, savoring the last moments of Nikolayev’s innocence. “There was much debate within our Sociological Unit about how we should balance exobio aggression; in the end we settled for enmity from every fourth species. The inevitable wars would cost millions of lives and billions of dollars, but our racial ennui had stopped before it started.”
“Having created in our own image, we made certain none of those races would independently develop time travel. Usually a simple matter of giving some desperate alien physicist the first Five Theorems, we short-circuited any natural discovery on every foreign world. Let one of those seedlings peek behind the curtain of history, and the consequences would be disastrous. It’s why Project Beta is always and forever exclusively human, why joining our family is always a one-way trip.”
“We’ve successfully managed time, our most precious resource, for millennia with only modest intrusion. That all changed last week; the C5T ship Yoolis Night has discovered a race we never seeded.”
