by submission | Jan 10, 2007 | Story |
Author : Benjamin Fischer
“Begging,†and the cop practically spat the word, “is not allowed in Silver City.â€
Nelson grinned and shook his plastic cup. It jingled, filled with a motley collection of transit tokens, poker chips, and low-end credit vouchers.
The cop growled at him.
“If you’re saying it’s illegal, I’m saying you’re wrong,†Nelson replied.
They were standing in the broad triangular promenade between the monorail station, the newly obsolete spaceport and the quarantine houses that guarded the entrance to Silver City proper. A sparsely forested park lay at the center of the public space, a place to lay down and rest for those who had time to kill while waiting for the next train to the Golden Crater, the city of Copernicus, or points more exotic.
The Silver City cop had caught Nelson making a circuit amongst those weary travelers.
“Where’s your sense of civic pride?†she asked him.
“Why should I have civic pride for a city that won’t let me in?†Nelson countered.
The frown on the cop’s face invited more words.
“Sure, I can get scrubbed and shaved, exfoliated and flushed out. But I happen to like my lice and the little beasties in my large intestine. Maybe they’re my damn pets, or maybe I don’t like being told what to do. This is Luna, God bless it, and no man can tell me what to do here!â€
By this time Nelson was gesturing wildly, his eyes glancing around for an absent applause.
The cop sighed.
“Do you need food? Shelter?†she asked. “There’s plenty both at the port, if you’re willing to work.â€
“Any man who surrenders his liberty for temporary security deserves neither!†Nelson shouted.
“I’ve heard that one before,†the cop said.
“You should have! It’s only the creed that all good Lunies live by!†said Nelson.
“I can think of a hundred thousand good Lunies who don’t want you begging on their doorstep,†the cop replied.
“And so you’ll do what?†asked Nelson. “Muscle me out of the city? Or out of an airlock? Your so-called civic pride won’t allow that. Or will it?â€
The cop shrugged. She stepped away, muttering to herself and speaking through a throat mike.
Nelson smiled and resumed his rounds.
“How’s it going, how’s it going?†he would ask. “Spare credit? Spare credit?â€
Some ignored him, a few yelled at him, many gave just out of the sheer brash novelty of a panhandler here, on Luna.
But the next day there were a half dozen panhandlers in the promenade, all of them suspiciously clean cut and antiseptic.
Nelson told jokes, got louder, and hung out directly at the doors of the monorail station.
The day beyond that the other beggars told better jokes, played musical instruments, and several were already camped out at the station doors before he woke.
On the third day Nelson cashed his tokens and took the train to Copernicus.
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by submission | Jan 4, 2007 | Story |
Author : Jeff Deignan
As I floated, I thought to myself, “Poems end this way.â€
It was easy enough, in the beginning. People expected thieves to use lasers, the sonic tech, or even small atomics for holdups, and security would check for that sort of thing. Security would not, however, expect a black powder pistol in a carry-on bag or a saber hidden in some ultra-thin crutches. Always use what no one expects, the old man had told me. Of course, I didn’t tell anyone the weapon wasn’t a laser, just made sure that the officers guarding the hold knew it was a weapon.
They let me in without too much trouble; where was I going to go, really? The escape pods had trackers, the ship itself was likely being recorded five ways to Sunday, and out in deep space who would catch you?
Ah, but Leila was waiting for me, and that they could not know. Saber at a man’s throat and pistol in another’s face, I smiled. “You two,†indicating the remaining guards, “get those into the airlock, and be quick about it.â€
“What is this,†a man said as he hauled one of the two-tonne containers through the lock, “amateur piracy?†Most thieves, pirates, and otherwise operated in groups, allowing for massive takeovers and battles. I was alone, but for Leila, and she always came through.
I have to admit I did not expect the explosive decompression, but had been prepared for it. The Scyllic membrane that I wore instead of a flimsy helmet (a helmet which at that point would have shattered and left me sans atmosphere) easily compensated for the pressure, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t cause a migraine. Granted, the pain could have come from the bomb that had gone off, the shrapnel, or from flying out of the now quite open airlock at a speed I still don’t want to contemplate. Regardless, I floated and thought about poetry as I saw the carnage.
Leila had been hit, badly- my ship, my good and beautiful ship being slaughtered in front of my eyes by patrol craft. Somehow they’d gotten past the cloaks and gimmicks and were killing her straight off.
All I could do was scream, and arm the packages I’d left onboard.
They weren’t the only ones with explosives, curse their souls.
Ah, Leila. It’s been hours since then, and the tethers caught me as planned. I think I’ll walk your corridors one last time, dear, before I fade. You were a good ship, and the best pilot even before we jacked you into the ship.
Well, love, I guess we walked into legend on this one. They’ll never find these ships at the rate we’re going, not unless they expand the territories twenty systems in the next year.
Good night, dear. Could you sing that one again? Yes, Alfred Noyes’ poem, that’s the one. “And he lay in his blood in the highway, with a bunch of lace at this throat.â€
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by submission | Dec 27, 2006 | Story |
Author : J. S. Kachelries
I am very, very sorry. What else can I say? If it means anything, at least I will die before you. I probably only have a few hours left…just enough time to tell you what happened, and to ask for your forgiveness.
I am (actually, was) a graduate student of the Department of Theoretical Physics at Cambridge. My Ph.D. thesis involved achieving absolute zero in the laboratory. Others scientists have gotten close. My colleges at the Helsinki University of Technology got down to 0.000000001 K. But my technique was a quantum leap beyond theirs. I could suspend all atomic motion. The electrons, protons, and neutrons would be instantly locked into place. No motion, no temperature. I had already prepared my Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
I was completely certain that my technique would work. What I wasn’t sure about was what would become of my my 1 gram target of osmium. My gut told me nothing would happen. I’d just have 1 gram of very cold metal. But, like any great scientist, I had to consider all possibilities. There was a slim chance that the electrons could collapse into the protons, giving me 1 gram of neutronium, i.e., a mini-neutron star. Since a neutron has more mass than one proton plus one electron, I’d have to supply additional energy. You know, the e=mc2 stuff. Then, when I ended my experiment, the neutronium (being unstable), would revert back to protons and electrons, and I’d have to dissipate the energy. Nothing I couldn’t handle. So, this morning, I performed the experiment.
At the critical moment in the experiment, something catastrophic happened. I had overlooked the obvious. I had not considered the effect my experiment would have on the elementary particles (quarks and leptons) and I had assumed neutrons were the ultimate termination point. When absolute zero was achieved, my osmium collapsed past neutronium into a singularity. With nothing to contain the singularity, gravity caused it to drop toward the center of the Earth. In the second it took to descended through the lab bench and the floor, sucking in everything in its path, it exposed me to a lethal dose of X-rays and gamma rays. In freefall, with nothing of consequence to slow it down, the singularity will reach the core in a few minutes. It will shoot past, stop somewhere near the upper end of the southern mantle, and return through the core again, continuing the cycle for hours. Eventually, it will settle down at the precise center of the Earth. Then, over the next few days, it will devour the core, the mantle, the crust, and the atmosphere. The Earth will shrink from its current 8,000 mile diameter to an infinitesimal speck. The astronauts in the space station may live to see it, but you won’t. The earthquakes, the tsunamis, the volcanoes, and the radiation will end your innocent lives long before the conclusion of this tragedy.
But, as I said, I am very, very sorry.
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by J.R. Blackwell | Dec 20, 2006 | Story |
Author : J.R.Blackwell, Staff Writer
The recruiter says that you are a dumbass. He tells you he wouldn’t put you in the infantry for the eighteen worlds, because you would get someone shot. Later you learn this is the worst insult he could give. The recruiter tells you that you would never make it as a pilot, because you haven’t got the head for numbers. Your test scores are low enough that they can’t place you anywhere based on skill. The only thing you can do, he tells you, the man who will decide your fate as a human, is get the genetic restructuring and become a psychic. A councilor.
It’s serve in the military, or slave in the mines, and though you don’t like the idea of changing your genetic code, you know you don’t want to be in those dark mines, so close to the core that you sweat out your life under artificial light. The recruiter gives you that choice, smelling like tobacco and piss, a bus out back to take you to the military and a truck with metal doors waiting for anyone who can’t find a place. You take the bus.
The genetic restructuring has you vomiting in a hospital for a week. The doctors laugh as you spit up blood and chunks of meat from your insides. Get it all out, they say, everything human must go. Laughter, but it’s distant, hollow. Maybe that little grey piece came from your liver; maybe that red slice is a shaving off your heart. At some point, you start to hear voices, bouncing around people, things they tell others without talking, words they tell themselves. A doctor hears her mother telling her she is a whore. A patient sings a pop tune to himself over and over.
Shave your head. Take a post on a military transport. Everyone hates councilors, reading minds, prying, looking for hints of treachery or deviance. They short sheet your bed, spit in your food, and dump your things out onto the floor. You know who did it, you know because you can feel their guilt like warm winds, but you can’t say a word. You tell on them and the captain would spit on you herself, and the rest of them would never forgive you. You are locked in a metal can with people who hate you, spinning through space.
Out in this silence, surrounded by cold, you reach out beyond the glass and plastic ship to the silent falling cold. There in the falling dark, you reach out to the thoughts of planets, hear the thrumming song of their replies.
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by submission | Dec 15, 2006 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields
The helmet amplifies my own breathing and makes me feel uncomfortably confined. It’s like when you can hear yourself chewing and it sounds so noisy because of the bone conduction going on with the sound but outside of your head its fine. Except with me I can hear my own breathing coming through the speakers in my earpieces. All I can see through the faceplate is infinite space salted with Christmas-light stars. This is my first space walk.
Something interesting happens to the human mind when it’s confronted with this level of distance. Visually, there is no up or down and below your feet is an unknowable distance of nothing. The tallest building you’ve ever dared yourself to look over the edge of is nothing compared to this. Your brain tries to get a hold on it. It either gives up altogether or the monkey starts screaming and you go crazy. Right now I’m not sure which way it’s going to go. Am I going to blind myself by projectile vomiting against the glass? Am I going to claw at the catches on my helmet just to make it stop? My breathing is getting loud and ragged in my ears. My vital signs are rising.
Control senses it.
“You alright?†comes down the speakers.
I breathe back and manage a squeak. I feel like screaming but I can’t. I know I’m starting to lose it. Any second now the line is going to go tight, they’ll reel me in, and I’ll get shipped dirtside to a desk job or a training facility and my days in space will be done if I don’t get it together.
“McGavin! You alright?†comes down the tube again.
And just like that, like someone shooting out the part of my brain that’s not evolved, I don’t care. It’s like the monkey blew a fuse and just went dark. I look at the stars and they’re just stars. I look down and see my feet dangling and below them is just space. I’m fine. I can feel my little heart blink and start to slow down, relieved.
“Roger. I’m fine.†I say.
The instructor can hear it in my voice that I have it under control and I’ll be fine. He’s done this hundreds of times. He knows the signs.
“Copy. Five more minutes then we’ll pull you in. Enjoy it.†He says.
I start to hum a little tune that I heard a couple of weeks ago. I’m still humming it later in my bunk, going over the high fiving of my fellow successes and our uneasy shunning of the people who panicked and are going back to Earth tonight. I wonder for a while what the switch was in me and how it really didn’t seem like a conscious decision. I wonder if survival is different for some people, like we evolved from different apes. Some people panic, scream and run while some people just turn off and sublimate.
I drift off feeling mysteriously strong but not personally responsible.
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