Go out with a Bang

by submission | Mar 2, 2008 | Story

Author : Christopher Kueffner

“I thought you didn’t smoke,” she asked.

“I did, and I quit,” he replied through a bluish cloud, “but it seems an appropriate time to pick up the habit again.”

“Really,” she drew the word out as if stretching it like taffy. “That could very well be the most ridiculous statement I’ve ever heard from you, and that’s saying something.” She got out of the bed and walked over to the kitchenette. She filled a glass with water and drank it, unworried by her nakedness.

The man, also naked, took another drag from his cigarette. “A cigarette after sex is nice.” He contemplated the little pillar of ash at its end. “I’ve found something.”

“Oh?” She absently picked a feather from the bed off of her right breast.

“Yup.”

“What?”

“An asteroid.”

“Oh, come on,” she sniffed. “Ever since that asteroid missed us a couple of years ago, everybody’s talking about asteroids.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and handed him the glass. He sipped, looked fondly at her body and handed the glass back to her.

“Well, I found one, nevertheless.” He stubbed out the cigarette in a saucer on the nightstand. He leaned over and kissed her side where the waistband of pants would normally be. He kissed his way up her ribcage.

“What was it called, Aprophis or something?” she asked.

“Apophis was the one that just barely missed us in 2029,” he stopped kissing her body and lay back. “This one is not Apophis; it’s a different one.”

“What, is it going to hit us or something?”

“Well, yes.” He drew another cigarette out of the pack.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not.” He lit the cigarette and dragged deeply on it.

She put the water glass on the nightstand and rested her hand on his chest. “What will it do? They said that last one, Aprophis, I mean Apophis, would have wiped out a big city.”

“Yes, but life on Earth would have continued. This one gives every appearance of being bigger, denser and faster.”

“I thought they were looking out for these things,” she furrowed her brow, “I thought they had all these asteroids charted out.”

“There’s an awful lot of space out there, and an awful lot of stuff flying around. The prevailing theory around the office is that this is a charted asteroid, but it got close enough to another one for its orbit to change.”

“Around the office!” she blurted incredulously, “You mean other people know about this?”

“Yes. We’ve all checked and rechecked the data. The Director has been informed, too.”

“So the government knows, too,” she got up and grabbed the robe from its hook on the bathroom door. She wrapped it around her body and held it close as if it were woven of asteroid-proof cotton. She looked at him again. “You’re not bullshitting me, are you?” Her tone had acquired a bewildered, accusatory edge.

“No,” he shook his head and sat up.

“Well, what are they doing about it?”

“I’m not sure anything can be done. There wouldn’t be much point, other than to cause mass hysteria.”

“You mean they can’t shove it out of the way or dig some shelters underground?” She paced and gestured sharply with her hands.

“Not in six hours, no.” He put out the cigarette. “Would you take that robe off and come here?”

Survivor of Olympus Mons

by submission | Feb 24, 2008 | Story

Author : Neil Griffith

Allan sighed and took a deep breath.

“I’m from the Olympus Mons colony, I was a kid when it happened.”

‘It’ didn’t require any explanation, all the worlds knew of Olympus Mons. With over 3000 people tragically killed, it was the greatest disaster ever to happen to humanity off of the surface of the Earth. The event was the Titanic of its era, it even had a classic twist of the folly of man, building a colony in the base of a giant mountain, said to be indestructible by an infamous quote from the colony’s founder. “Whatever disaster may beset the face of Mars, people may seek shelter at Olympus. No home is safer than the home of the Gods.” The largest habitat ever built at the time, no one attempted to equal its scale for a decade.

Because of the thousands of hours of surviving electronic footage, Olympus Mons was also one of the greatest documented disasters of all time. Despite that fact there remained one mystery, as much as was known about the events immediately following the disaster, very little was known of the actual cause. Many conflicting tales of what caused the east side of the mountain to collapse onto the superstructure of the colony cropped up over the years. The Mars government said there was an earthquake from rare tectonic stress causing a landslide. The survivors, however, always gave a very different tale.

“Did you want to talk about it?” asked the attractive woman Allan had just met.

Allan smiled and swirled his drink a little. He was used to this.

“It was an accident,” said Allan.

“How do you know?” asked the woman.

“My family remained inside the colony for almost an hour after it happened,” said Allan, “We were in a part of the structure furthest away from the collapse. My father took his EVAC suit and climbed into the wreckage in the upper part of the superstructure to rescue people. But if someone wasn’t wearing an EVAC suit when all the outer walls get ripped open, there wouldn’t be anyone alive to find.”

“Did your father find what caused it to happen?” asked the woman.

Allan shook his head yes and said, “Him and about a dozen others looking for survivors stood right in front of it. There was a drill rig still standing there, right at the highest point they reached in the mountainside above where the land broke away. He said you could easily see where a giant sheet of rock must have split from where they were drilling and it caused a landslide right into the superstructure. The guy operating the rig must have been standing on the rock when it broke away and rode it all the way down.”

The intriguing charm slightly faded from the woman’s eyes and she had the typical look of shock and bewilderment Allan had known too well, then she asked why she never read about the real cause.

“Nobody in space wants to read about accidents,” explained Allan, “Specifically ones caused by man. When you live in an environment where you count so desperately on people to keep you alive it always has to be a million in one fluke, God’s will, or something else’s fault, but not man. People cannot face the reality their lives are constantly at the mercy of somebody else’s incompetence. It’s too much of a horror to deal with. So blame it on the mountain, tectonic stress or some such nonsense. It has nothing to do with the arrogance of man pushing too far and reaching too high.”

To Whom It May Concern

by submission | Feb 21, 2008 | Story

Author : Jason Frank

Dear Fontilibus Corporation rescue crew, space explorers, other would be rescuers, or whom it may concern,

How are you?

Good, I hope. Whether or not you’ve found my remains,it should be clear to you that I’ve been better. If I were alive, we would be talking right now and you wouldn’t be reading this. I hope you do read this. It’s just a small little card. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes to read.

Whether or not you are from the Fontilibus Corporation, I want to take this time to detail some of my experiences with their fine product, the Xcape5000. For the most part, this product has met and exceeded my expectations. I’ll elaborate a bit before moving on to the one or two little complaints I have.

Much to my surprise, I escaped the destruction of the fleet frigate I was serving on. The same can’t be said for the rest of the crew as whatever destroyed the ship did so rather unexpectedly. I myself was napping in this pod at the time. I woke up surrounded by some very familiar looking debris. Clearly this was my ship. I’m sure it was Johnson’s arm that floated past my little window. How many hours I had spent watching that arm, the way it coyly bent while holding a drink, the quick spring of it unbending to throw that drink in someone’s face. I can’t tell you how long I’ve had to think about that arm down here.

The Xcape5000 not only got me out of that pickle, it also found me the human life supporting planetoid you are currently standing on. Two for two! I was so happy to be alive that I celebrated. I ate and ate and drank and drank and sang and sang all the songs I could remember.

This would be a good time to segue into some of the less satisfactory features of the Xcape5000.

First of all, the food supplies included in the pod weren’t completely adequate. They really should factor in the celebration factor when determining how much food they pack.

Secondly, the quick responding Fontilibus Rescue Crew, they all looked so attractive in the brochure, turned out to be not so quick to respond. The brochure guaranteed a speedy pickup and I was a bit disappointed with this.

On the bright side, those slugs you’ve noticed squirming all around turned out to be completely edible and the pregnant ones secrete some fluid that packs quite a buzz.They’re fun to toss, too. You might have passed a black rock on your way here. That’s what I use to mark my longest throw (both feet behind the pod’s tail fins). So, as you can see, I’ve had plenty to do. When my arm would get sore from tossing slugs, I would read and reread the technical manual for the Xcape5000. That’s when I found about one more brilliant feature of this fine escape pod.

It turns out that this, and all Fontilibus escape models, has a self destruct sequence. I sure was tempted to engage it when I found that out. Instead, I decided to think about it while tossing some slugs. I came up with a happy little thought that kept me warm at night and kept me going until whatever it was that I finally succumbed to. See, it was an easy matter to rig the destruct sequence to the motion sensors outside the pod. The only problem was, how do you get someone to stand close by for the five minutes it takes to arm?

Second Coming

by Duncan Shields | Feb 18, 2008 | Story

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

I’ve gone over and over that time with the shrinks here on the ground. It was a time-sensitive mission to repair satellite Oricus-11. We were on schedule and nothing was in the red. We were in the pipe, five by five and on target.

Jackie and Maria were locked in and reading the specs back as we arrowed in on the airlock. Reverse thrusters fired as Maria cushioned our lateral descent to the docking clamps. There was a light bump through the whole ship as we touched the edge of the collar.

Halfway there.

Maria raised a hand up to her hair and died that way. Her eyes just unfocused and the animal side in me knew right away that she’s been turned off like a light switch.

I looked over at Jackie and that’s the last linear-time memory I have except three other things.

One.

The hatch blew. Vacuum scoured the entire cigar tube of our ship with a greedy inhalation of breath from god’s lungs. Papers, pens, experiments, everything that wasn’t tethered or taped went fast-forward panicking out the door into the cold embrace. The air turned to crystals.

Two.

I don’t know if this was some time later or in the next second but I remember looking forward at my outstretched hand. My fingernails were brightly glowing blue. Beyond my hand was a forest. The trees and leaves were mostly red and I still can’t tell if it was Earth in the autumn or if it was summer on a different planet.

Three.

The last thing I remember is talking to a child. The child was much smarter than me and it seemed like he was intentionally using simple language to communicate with me. A little boy about seven years old with eyes glowing exactly the same blue as my fingertips had been glowing in the previous memory. We were both dressed in white and sitting in a red room.

I don’t remember what we talked about but I’ve been a lot calmer ever since.

I was found in a swamp by a couple of Louisiana fishermen. I was looking at the rot-resistant bark of a cypress and tracing the lines on the trunk with my hands. Their greeting is the first thing I remember. Turning my head to see who made that noise and then realizing that I was ankle deep in a swamp.

I still had my uniform on. It was freshly washed and felt like it was still slightly warm from the dryer. I felt freshly showered as well.

It didn’t take long for me to get taken into the basements of NASA and questioned. I’ve been here for weeks now.

I’m not sure if they’ll give me a memwipe or just cut me loose. I am surprised to feel that I am now in possession of something that they’ll never be able to take from me. I’m different inside.