by J.R. Blackwell | Oct 1, 2007 | Story
Author : J.R.Blackwell, Staff Writer
She was violet and tangerine, like an earth sunset. The row of eyes on her face glowed with a bioluminescent blue light. To Susan the Ferai seemed to look alike, but Rain stood out. Susan couldn’t remember who started conversation, but it wasn’t long before Rain stopped by her holding cell at least once daily, pausing on her rounds, looping her weapon over her giant shoulders.
“How are you, Earth woman?”
“Glad to see you, Sunset lady.” Susan had to explain sunsets. With three bright lights in the sky, two of them actual suns, one of them a planet on fire (which is a different thing) the sun never goes completely out on this planet, which makes for interesting patterns in the sky, but not sunsets, not the fade to black and a night of stars for the Ferai.
“I brought you some food. They don’t feed the humans enough here.” Rain handed over some of the cold hard biscuit like squares that the Ferai machines spit out for human food. It was supposed to provide all the nutrition a human needed but after two months of the stuff, it was getting old.
“Thanks.” Susan leaned on the bars. “I wish there was a way I could thank you. When this war is over, maybe I can send you some things from Earth.”
“Earth sounds like an interesting planet, sometimes in dark, sometimes light, it must feel like you are always spinning.”
“Not really, but it is a great place. Maybe you can visit someday.”
“I think Earth people hate the Ferai.”
“We’re just afraid, and a little territorial. This will blow over.”
“I hope so. But I worry that the Council will want to invade Earth because of the intrusion into our space.”
“Oh God, I hope that doesn’t happen.”
“Me too.” Rain shrugged her giant shoulders. “Do you want to go for a walk? Out of the compound, I mean.”
“Could I do that?”
“Sure. I mean, I’ll be with you, an armed guard. You’re not going to try to escape, will you?”
“No, not in the middle of this desert. There isn’t anywhere I could go.”
“Is that the only reason you wouldn’t leave?”
Susan looked at Rain “Maybe I have other reasons.”
“Come with me.” Rain opened the door to Susan’s cell and lead her down the hall and out the front door, handing what looked like a ruby to the guard at the gate.
“Have your fun and then have the prisoner back in one rotation, you hear me?”
“There’s going to be fun?” whispered Susan. What would sex with an alien be like?
Rain dragged her along outside of the compound. “Come on, we need to move quick.”
“Where are we going?” Susan hurried after Rain “Where are you taking me?”
“Susan, I love you. I cannot see you imprisoned any longer, and I don’t know how long this war will last. I have contacted the humans, they are sending a small ship to pick you up.”
“Wait, Rain! What about you? What will happen when you don’t bring me back?”
“They will relieve me of my duties and I will be shipped back home, where I will be used for breeding, instead of military duty.”
“Rain, you’ve worked hard to be a warrior, why are you giving it up?”
“Because I love you Susan. I love you. Please do not fight me, I’ve already made this choice. We could never be connected the way we both want, I don’t even know if it’s possible, physically, to do so. It is best that we part, and that if I cannot give you of myself, that I give you this.”
“Rain.”
“Just go. And don’t ever look back.”
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by submission | Sep 29, 2007 | Story
Author : Andy Bolt
I am hopeful and afraid. I am hateful and compassionate. I am selfish and embarrassed. I’m Garret Garvy, an emotive Botch.
We were a small number of neurological guinea pigs for Johns Hopkins a few years back, participating in the Mechanical Smile Project, an experiment in emotion control. Not in the vague, uncontrolled way of the old prescription medications, but in a real, conscious, push-this-button-and-feel-that-way style of emotion control. It was a combination of heavy hormone stimulants and post-hypnotic suggestion, and it would have been revolutionary. You literally would never have had to be sad again. With the push of a bio-button, your life could have been non-stop ecstasy. It was the end of human suffering as we knew it, according to Meghan Wells, the frenzy-eyed young grad student who injected me with a bluish substance before asking me to count backwards from one hundred.
It didn’t work.
What it did was link, accidentally but inextricably, several of my neurochemical and hormonal processes. Virtually all of my emotions now come paired with another, and several of them aren’t all that compatible. Love and depression, for example.
I am standing in my self-cleaning kitchen, staring aimlessly into space, a plate of uneaten mush behind me. Happiness comes with panic, so I don’t eat anything with a pleasing taste anymore. I used to be pretty chunky. I’m twenty pounds underweight now. As I lean absently against my Stero-sink, my spine grate against porcelain. My polycotton smart shirt rubs against by elbows, and I concentrate on the sensation. It’s so neutral, neither pleasant nor painful. I have come to appreciate neutrality. Apathy comes paired with rage, so I have to care, but in a minimalist, nonspecific sort of way. It’s not as hard as it sounds.
It’s roughest on my fiancée. Mela shuffles into the kitchen, looking like a half-cooked slab of meat that has been left out for a few days. Her eyes are pink and barely opened, and the rest of her has taken on a faint grayish color. A few hundred reddish hairs are rebelling from her head, striking off in their own directions without regard for the collective will. She wears a purple bathrobe that is almost more hole than clothing. A jagged tear near her neck exposes the swell of her left breast. Sexual desire comes paired with grief. Not worth it.
“Nisse just needs some milk,†she murmurs, shuffling past me and kneeling in front of the fridge, where she begins rifling through bottles. Nisse’s our six-month old daughter and the only reason we’re still together. Mela takes care of her, mostly. She’s a good mother. I sit behind her, on the floor, and reach up to massage her shoulders. She sighs, shuddering at my touch.
“How do you feel?†she asks without turning around. I think about it for a moment before wrapping my arms around her stomach and pulling her into my lap. Pressing my lips to her ear, I whisper,
“I’m always depressed.â€
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by submission | Sep 21, 2007 | Story
Author : Viktor Kuprin
Any starship could request a flyby. Popik received them all the time from the Customs Patrols and the Space Force when they needed to eyeball our ship. If they wanted a bribe that day, they’d come aboard Popik’s old Mod One. He would shake hands with the thug-in-charge and discretely pass some rubles or gold kopeks he’d gotten from here and there.
That’s what you had to do if you were a free trader like Popik, especially if you occasionally hauled illicit cargoes on the side like bootleg vodka or tobacco. The Americans treated tobacco like it was some kind of fission-grade plutonium. But the colonists on the Fringe Worlds gladly paid for it sight unseen.
Maybe Popik was curious to see the ship or, I suspect, he just wanted to give me a surprise. He keyed up the code for a flyby request, transmitted it, and to his surprise the reply came back giving the okay. Back then, before the wars with the Helgrammites and the others, there weren’t so many alien starships in human space. Not like now.
When he called me over the comm, I was playing with dolls in my cabin. I raced to the cramped control center, dragging my favorite teddy bear behind.
“Sit down, Vika, and watch the big televisor,” Popik said. “We’re going to see something special.”
“Is it Poppa or Momma calling? Are they coming?” I asked.
“Not this time, my heart,” Popik replied. “We’re going to see a Tsoor ship, an alien ship. We’ll fly past it in a few seconds. Watch.”
“Da, Popik.” I should have known it wasn’t my parents. Poppa was on duty aboard a warship somewhere in deep space. Momma was away, too, always working in some company office on Getamech. So, when I wasn’t in school, I got to travel with Popik and live in his asteroid domik between our trips to the stars.
A strangely-shaped orb appeared on the televisor screen and began to grow in size. Popik grinned and fired the retros, slowing our approach.
“It’s a Class-4 Tsoor starship. They call it a ‘Porpita,'” he explained.
“That’s a funny name, Popik!” I bounced and giggled, hugging my teddy bear.
The Tsoor ship was a cluster of four huge connected spheres glowing bluish green. Bars of brilliant violet light circled the globes’ equators and vertical axes. I saw no portholes, no windows, no one looking back at us. To me it looked like some giant, magical New Year’s tree ornament.
“Can we flash our lights for them, Popik?” I asked.
He shook his head. “We probably shouldn’t, my heart. The aliens might not know what to make of it.”
Then the beautiful Tsoor starship receded into the distance and was gone.
I watched and re-watched the video Popik had made of the flyby. And all these many years later, I still have that recording. Just a few seconds long, but it takes me back to those happiest of times, back to my dear grandfather.
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by submission | Sep 9, 2007 | Story
Author : Michael Varian Daly
Paln gently cupped the small green vegetable in the attachment designed for its harvesting. The steel segmented orb closed – a soft ‘snick’ – cutting the stem. Paln carefully placed the hard round vegetable among its brethren in the bin strapped to his midsection…and felt Pleasure.
“Brussels sprout,†he sub-vocalized. He knew what they were, the perfect conditions for growing them, but he would never eat one, had no concept of what a ‘brussles’ was, nor cared.
His universe contracted, focused totally upon the next small green vegetable. Cupping. ‘Snick’. Bin. Pleasure.
Internal sensors told him the bin was At Capacity, though Paln knew that already. That made him feel Satisfaction. He stopped harvesting, smelling the rich loam of the field. He could analyze the chemical components to the millionth part, but organic senses came first.
Paln was the perfect blend of the organic and the cybernetic. He looked around at his Pod Brothers, felt Connection. They were all Type 26 General Purpose Agricultural Mandriods. He was officially PLN-161697434, but the Mother/Master/Ruler who hatched his brood from the uterine replicator had called him Paln, his first moment of Pleasure.
He put the full bin on the field cart, retrieved an empty one. He was still human enough to sense the beauty of the day. The sun. The fields. The easy sloshing of the nutrient tank on his Feeder nozzle. The quiet hum of the vaporizer on his Bleeder nozzle. His Brothers harvesting. The grace of the dark skinned, yellow eyed, Mother/ Master/Ruler upon her horse, overseeing their work. The Fear/Awe of seeing her shambok, long hard leather hanging lazily from her saddle horn, the Symbol of Overseeing.
Tonight, when Paln was reclining in his cradle, the Bleeder-Feeder tubes hooked up, toxins draining, body healing, he would dream of the day, sun, fields, smells, sounds.
He would dream of Selt’s funeral. The Pod gathered at dusk. Selt’s body on the field cart. Mother/Master/Rulers down from The House, bearing torches. The yellow eyed one anointing Selt’s forehead with oil. The prayers as the black bag was…
Niniskil sat up with a start, breathless and sweaty. That chingado dream again!
She glanced around to find her Sisters, saw Rhea on one side, Tzisoc on the other, both still out cold. She quickly looked between her legs, sighed with relief. At least she had detached the bioform phallus before she passed out. It had been a serious Bacchanal. But after ten months on deep space patrol, they’d earned it.
She crawled out of bed, went to the window, looked outside.
The gorgeous vista of Sylph looked back at her as if designed to be perfect, which, of course, it was, from its core outward. Nothing, but jeweled archipelagos strung across warm azure seas without predators, skies painted with wispy clouds, all under the multicolored rings that crowned this princess of worlds.
A few yards away, just up from the white beach, a group of Sisters rested upon loungers in glistening nakedness, while a tall, lean Harlequin, a Mandroid pleasure server, offered them cold drinks.
She drew back, light suddenly like daggers in her skull.
“Ugh!†she grunted. That was definitely a Past Life dream. Too much detail…that yellow eyed Sister!
“Chingos!†she spat. What Sister wants to remember an Incarnation as a AgroDriod? But there it was. Time to see the Priestesses of Eriskegal for Regression Therapy. But not today.
She crawled back into bed. “The Wheel Turns,†she muttered, snuggling close to Rhea.
Drifting off, she thought, “Be extra nice to the servants today.â€
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by submission | Aug 30, 2007 | Story
Author : Viktor Kuprin
October 30, 1961 – Five aircraft rose into the arctic sky from the Olyena airbase, headed northeast over the Barents Sea, towards the frozen wastes of Novaya Zemlya Island. The largest plane, a roaring turboprop Bear bomber, carried Vanya. The most beautiful, a silvery Tupolev-16 loaded with cameras and recording devices, followed the Bear. Americans called the Tu-16 “Badger”. Its Russian aircrew knew it simply as “Tupol.”
Inside the Tupol’s teardrop-shaped observation domes, Instrument Operators Pakulin and Kuchevsky tended their equipment and counted the minutes.
“Did you notice Pilot-Commander Strukov?” said Pakulin.
Kuchevsky nodded. “He wasn’t quite his giddy self, was he? An improvement, if you ask me. I think he’s looking forward to meeting Vanya.”
Pakulin stared out towards the blue sky and ice-strewn sea beyond the dome’s plexiglass. “Who isn’t?”
Strukov’s voice came over the intercom. “Attention. Approaching Zone C. Make all instruments ready,” he ordered.
“Da, Comrade Commander,” both men replied. The well-practiced sequence of toggling switches and closing circuits began. Pakulin could feel his heavy SMENA cine-camera hum as its film came up to speed. Kuchevsky prepared to trigger the banks of stop-motion cameras.
The Badger tracked north over the sea, while the Bear carried Vanya inland across the Sukhoi Nos, the “Dry Nose” Peninsula. Inside other aircraft, within bunkers and fortifications, behind walls of stone and rock, thousands waited for Vanya.
“Mark! Everyone, goggles on!” Strukov shouted. Miles away, Vanya fell free from the Bear bomber. The huge plane turned back toward the sea in a dash to safety. From Vanya’s flanks emerged a 54,000-square-foot parachute, to slow the descent enough so that the Bear would not be sacrificed.
Strukov counted down: “Pyat. ChetÃreh. Tree. Dva. Odeen. NOL!”
Thirteen-thousand feet above the icy, stony plain, the largest thermonuclear device in the history of the world exploded. Four-thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima, the triple-layer fission-fusion-fusion reaction created a fireball over four miles in diameter. The flash of white light was visible 1600 miles away.
For Pakulin and Kuchevsky, for all aboard the Badger, it was the light from hell that would not stop. The entire horizon was a blinding wall of white heat.
The shock wave threw Pakulin forward, his oxygen mask smashing against the plexiglass dome. Spitting blood, vision blurred, he heard Kuchevsky screaming and felt the man’s hands slapping.
“Fire! I’m burning! Help me!”
The acintic glare of electricity arced from the floor. Pukulin instinctively kicked at the loose cables, his boots pushing them apart. He yanked a fire-extinguisher off the cabin wall, aiming its white spray at the wires and Kuchevsky’s still-smoking pant legs.
Kuchevsky sobbed, pointing toward the mushroom cloud risen seven times higher than Mount Everest.
“Look! They’ve killed the world!”
And yet, despite the nuclear scars inflicted by Vanya, remembered afterwards as the “Tsar Bomba,” life on Earth carried on.
But as the world healed, the bomb’s powerful X-ray pulse raced across the depths of space. Forty-six years later, in the star system called 26 Draconis, someone took notice.
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