by submission | Jul 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Todd Hammrich
I never thought I’d live to see The End. In fact, the way I figured it, no one should see The End, I mean, that’s why it’s called The End, there is nothing after that, and certainly no one to see it. And yet, here I was. Floating gently in the shuttle. Watching the Earth float by in the view port. And I had seen it happen.
Being an astronaut was every young boys dream, and I had always been a dreamer. I trained and worked my way through courses, evaluations and simulators until my dream came true. There was much to do in space. There was quite a bit of it and we were trained to take it all.
My first mission was to help in construction of a small research station and I’ll never forget the excitement I felt at the prospect of being launched into space. The day of the launch passed like a dream. The final checkup with the doctors, the meeting with the mission director and the small medicine bottle given to me before take-off, all of it was a blur. The pill was standard procedure in case of malfunction or serious accident and every astronaut gladly accepted the small dose of reality for a bit of their dream. After four days in space I returned successful and my career was off.
As World War III broke out my missions became even more critical. Whoever could conquer space would win the day, as the War for Earth would effectively end. On my third war mission, a communications satellite repair, I witnessed it. The End. It happened without warning. I was in the shuttle while my partners worked on the satellite when the missile struck. I don’t know whether they knew we were there, or if they even cared, but the satellite was destroyed. The shuttle drifted away, atmospheric containment lost in several areas. Luckily the command area was sealed off and pressure contained. I was still alive.
Out the view port I watched it unfold like a horror story or nightmare. My dream had saved me, but the non-dreamers below were doomed. Streaks of fire filled the globe from horizon to horizon. Missiles streaked from every country in the world. One by one the cities darkened until there was no light left.
I had enough air to see it all. No one answered the radio. Maybe no one was left. I saw the world die. I saw The End. There was no more lights on that large barren rock below. It didn’t matter anymore though. I smiled as I watched the world. An empty pill bottle floated gently beside me. Maybe it hadn’t been The End, either way, mine was coming soon.
In the beginning God said Let There Be Light. We came forth unto the world and were not satisfied. We looked outward to space and we tried to take it. Man was not satisfied with what he was given and Man said Let There Be Darkness and we were no more.
The End.
by submission | Jul 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Stephen Graham Jones
It came like a Buick from the sky but it was on fire or close enough, hot anyway, blistering white and maybe even velour in places, its rocket engine disturbing the neighborhood at a molecular level, at an emotional level, the individual blades of grass in the lawns rubbernecking it in small imitation of the men, who have the beer and the cigarettes and the vocabulary of denial.
‘Looked like a big silver cigar.’
‘With tinted windows. Shaved doorhandles.’
‘Didn’t know they could go so low.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘Do they . . . sleep in it, you think?’
‘Sleep?’
‘It seems they would have to.’
‘I don’t think they have motel arrangements, if that’s what you mean.’
‘They’re not like us.’
‘No, they’re not.’
‘Maybe we’re wrong, though. Maybe it was something else.’
‘Trust me, it wasn’t, isn’t. You saw it yourself.’
‘Maybe it was lost, then.’
‘You don’t come here by accident. Not twice in one week.’
‘You’ve seen it before?’
‘You were gone last Tuesday, right? Around nine?’
Witness a reluctant nod, a man sagging into his life.
‘Don’t punish yourself. I’d have rather been out too.’
‘If I were a turtle, the inside of my shell would be a visual landscape I’d be romantically involved with.’
‘If I were a lemming I’d be running for the sea.’
‘Yep.’
But why? Because not five minutes ago their wives were standing around the corner, their elbows cupped in their hands as if cold, and they’d been standing like that long enough that they’d begun to actually feel cold, so that when it cruised through their neighborhood like a great silver cigar from the sky it seemed as if the light it bathed them in was warming, vital, necessary enough that they didn’t hesitate to climb into the sterile interior of another world, out of their own.
‘I didn’t think it would be like this,’ one said.
‘I know . . . velour?’
‘Abduction, I mean.’
‘Missing time. Time I won’t be able to account for.’
‘When you go this fast, time slows down.’
‘Where do you think we’re going?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I’m going to go ahead and put my clothes on inside out, I think . . . ’
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself.’
‘Of course. Thank you. This is all so new.’
‘Maybe that’s not even how it’s done anymore.’
‘We probably won’t even remember this.’
‘The way this dark glass makes the neighborhood look not unlike the landscape passing by the window of a train in an old-time movie.’
‘It’s hardly real anymore, I know. God don’t I know.’
Picture the two of them as their husbands do: on-screen, at the speed of light.
‘Last night my son asked me if they’d have buglights on the moon.’
‘You’re just having pre-traumatic stress.’
‘I know, I know. Tell me again about the probing.’
‘Well, there won’t be physical evidence. So no one would believe you even if—’
‘I wouldn’t. Won’t. Not even to myself.’
‘Me neither.’
And they won’t have to, because the men with their cigarettes cupped against the wind still have their vocabulary set to denial, are talking now of atmospheric phenomena, the way street light can pool and puddle in the fingerdeep clearcoat of a chrome lowrider as it pulls away from the curb, the man at the wheel already talking to their wives in his alien tongue, the wives draping themselves over his velour bench seat, the carbon monoxide in the car’s rich exhaust lingering after they’re gone, driving the love bugs into a frenzy, one of the two men stepping forward into his life for a blinding moment, fanning the bugs up, up, into the blackness of space.
by Patricia Stewart | Jun 30, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
In the twenty fifth century, scientists were convinced that the longest single jump possible through hyperspace within the spiral arms of the Milky Way was 3.3 parsecs. This limit was the consequence of the density of dark matter and its effect on the stability of tachyon waves. When longer jumps were attempted, the tachyon waves lost their cohesion, and there was significant distortion of the meson matter when it returned to normal space-time. Such occurrences gave new meaning to the phrase, “having a bad hair day.”
Because of the hyperspace jump limit, “Way Stations” were positioned near the intersections of high density traffic corridors at roughly 2.5-3.0 parsec intervals. The largest of these Way Stations was simply called “The Oasis.” It was located 2.7 parsecs from the high velocity Terran Throughway and 5.8 parsecs from the Orion Interchange.
***
Philip Coleman rejoined his friend in the spacious Oasis lounge.
“Where have you been?” asked Manfred Sola.
“Just stretching my legs.”
“Well, now that you’re back, I just wanted to say again that you made the right decision to take a vacation after those bastards rejected your PhD dissertation. A few weeks on Orion II will do you good.”
“Oh, we won’t be going to Orion II,” replied Coleman. “That was just a ruse I used to get to The Oasis. I intend to show the review panel that my equations are flawless.”
“Show them?”
“Yeah,” Coleman replied with a chuckle. “My mathematical equations proved irrefutably that space travel must adhere to the Law of Six Degrees of Separation. Right now, Earth’s influence is limited to a sphere just under 20 parsecs in diameter. My formula dictates that Earth cannot expand any further into the galaxy until we can increase the distance of a single hyperspace jump.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nodes, of course. Within the sphere, there are dozens of uniformly spaced Way Stations. They’re called nodes in my thesis. In order to get from point A to point B within the sphere you cannot pass through more than six nodes. It’s a fundamental law of the universe. It establishes the maximum diameter of the sphere.”
“What a minute. Are you saying that if we build a Way Station three parsecs beyond the furthest one, we can’t get to it?”
“No. What I’m saying is that you can’t get to it if you need to make seven jumps. Six jumps is the absolute limit. Those dimwitted professors said my logic was flawed. They wanted empirical evidence to substantiate the analysis. Proof, in other words. As if my derivations weren’t enough!”
“If I concede your point, which I don’t, how is coming to The Oasis going to prove it?”
“It’s simple. Part of the Law of Six Degrees of Separation specifies that some nodes are more important than others. They’re called ‘Hubs.’ Because of their strategic locations, Hubs are used more often than the average node. In fact, 72% of all interstellar trips across the diameter of the sphere pass through The Oasis. Therefore, if the primary and secondary power transfer couplings on The Oasis were to be destroyed, this station could not function as a Hub. Interstellar travel would collapse because so many trips would require 7 jumps, which is not possible. Such a scenario would prove my dissertation.” Just then the station shuttered. Seconds later, the lights in the lobby flickered and went out. In the darkness, the waiting passengers began screaming. “Heeheehee,” snickered Coleman. “It’s proof they wanted, it’s proof they’ll get.”
by submission | Jun 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Kevin Jewell
I looked up from my screen and was shocked to find the trading floor quiet. When the market was open, that did not happen. Just a moment ago, the floor had been a hectic blur of waving arms and yelling voices; runners hurrying orders from pit to pit, traders screaming into phones at the the idiocy of their clients, and clients screaming out of phones at the idiocy of the world.
In that commotion lay the power of the market. Each piece of new information updated the market’s forecast for the future. When the market was open, the board continuously clicked, the changing prices summing the expectations of the world.
But right now the board sat still, the prices frozen.
Everyone stared at a television screen on the wall. It showed the NASA channel. I had seen the landing of the last shuttle on that screen. I had seen the cable of the first space elevator connect to the base station in Brazil on that screen. I had even been watching that screen the very moment the manned Mars mission crashed into Olympus Mons and met a fiery death.
But none of those events, momentous though they were, had silenced the room. Traders celebrated mankind’s achievement on the space cable with hoots of acclaim and Interflux had traded up. We made the sign of the cross for the death and destruction of the Mars disaster with one hand and traded down Mars Dynamic with the other. Each event was just another data point, information digested and reflected in the market’s expectations for the future.
But this time, the information was not being digested.
The television screen displayed a space-suited astronaut facing away from the camera, flag in hand. In the background, one could see the grey landscape of Ganymede. Over her head, Jupiter loomed, a large dull reddish marble hung by no thread, impossibly large and close. Over her shoulder, a landing vehicle stood, dust from its recent arrival billowing from beneath its many oddly intricate landing struts.
The landing vehicle on the screen was similar to those spacecraft I’d seen before in functional form, but different in color, curves, and detail. A subtitle appeared across the bottom of the screen, perhaps courtesy of a sharp producer at the NASA production room well-read in the science fiction genre. The subtitle read “First Contact.”
That had caught the attention of the trading room. And at this moment, just as the door slowly swung open on the new arrival, we held our breath as one. This moment contained information that created no expectations. The room was silent.
When the market was open, that did not happen – except this once.
by submission | Jun 24, 2009 | Story
Author : Todd Hammrich
Martin’s Crawler moved along the outside of the web like a giant spider lightly dancing among the thin strings of light that made up its surface. A breach had been made in sector EZ-109 and he was moving with all speed for repairs. The Crawler was a small ship, less than a hundred meters long with multi-jointed legs made for pulling it along the web like a ballet dancer tiptoeing across the void of space.
Then Net itself was the greatest marvel of human engineering and was the cornerstone of the new world spanning government that had unified the various factions of mankind. The concept was similar to that of a Dyson Sphere, encapsulating the sun in a network of fibers broadcasting their photon capturing energy fields. The trillions of miles of cables and field projectors were tuned to capture only about ten percent of the suns energy, but even that amount numbered in the billion billions of megawatts. Unfortunately, the absorption also decreased the suns luminosity by an equivalent amount.
As Martin approached the disrupted field he was taken aback by the beauty he beheld, for as long as the web had lasted, perhaps the last 300 years, and as long as he had Crawling it, he had never before seen such intense light. It was like a ray of happiness shooting forth from the muted background of the functioning field areas. The intense light funneling through the opening, barely a thousand meters across was shining directly towards the distantly orbiting Earth. Standing in the forward viewing area of the Crawler, Martin saw the beam, like a giant finger, reaching out to touch the home world.
Staring, transfixed by the hole, he didn’t catch the beeping, flashing signal buttons on his control board for several minutes. Messages were coming in from his Crawler base asking for an update on the repairs. He cleared his head and got to work. The Crawler moved forward to the broken threads that negated the field and, like the spider extruded and patched in new threads to make the pattern whole again. When the repairs were finished the field activated and the light, brighter than had been seen for three hundred years slowly faded away, leaving the dull colorless light that was all that escaped the web’s draining energy.
Back at Crawler base EZ the signal came in that the patch had been successfully applied and the field was again functioning. The base commander nodded in satisfaction and again began to scan the reports from the hundreds of other crawlers in his quadrant. In thousands of other bases other commanders did the same for their crawlers. The net, surrounding the entire sun, must be kept whole, to supply Earth with its power, and to keep the people obedient.
On Earth, the people of a small city, going about their daily duties noticed the sunbeam playing down their main avenue. For a brief moment, all the restrictions of society and all their myriad worries seemed to melt away. For the first time in their lives, the people smiled. Children played in the warm light and people laughed at the wonders of the world. Then the light faded away to the grayness that had filled their lives since birth. They looked back down and continued about their business.
