by Clint Wilson | May 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The Nube curled up between Jim and Judy on the sofa in Necromancer’s small lounge. It purred like a large cat but looked more like some kind of monkey dog with blue fur. The woman stroked their companion lovingly. Jim looked at his wife with hateful eyes. If it weren’t for The Nube one of them would have certainly killed the other by now.
“So what happens next week Judy?”
She looked up from the blue creature and her gaze went instantly from motherly and loving to cold and calculating. “Why, I thought you knew dearest.” Her eyes narrowed. “We finally return to Earth and then I never have to look at your disgusting face again for as long as I live!”
“Oh I’m looking forward to it as much as you are my love!” He put a sarcastic emphasis on the last word, knowing full well that no such thing had existed between them for five or more years now. “But I was talking about him!”
She looked down, and The Nube looked back up at her with the pure love that his yellow eyes always conveyed. It was true. The animal was as much his as hers. They had rescued him from enslavement together, from a distressed Manzian pirate ship almost two years ago now.
“Fine, you can have partial custody. He can visit you from time to time.”
“Visit me? I’m going back to Toronto. How is he going to visit me from Aukland? Or at least I assume that’s where you’re headed back to.”
“Oh come now, it’s only a three hour shuttle ride. Plus, they sell space pets out of Mexico. Maybe they even have another Nube. You could get your own!” As soon as she said it she regretted it. He glared hard at her with smouldering eyes. It would of course never be the same. He was their Nube, their special friend. He kept them company while they went about the daily drudgery of running an interstellar surveying ship amongst their growing hatred of one another. But most importantly, the poor thing loved them both like parents. This wasn’t going to be easy.
One-hundred and seventy hours later Necromancer dropped down through the clouds, her stabilizer jets popping and farting as the ten year mission finally drew to a close.
Together they sat in the small astro-quarantine chamber at the Johannesburg Launch Port. Neither had spoken for some time when suddenly The Nube jumped down from the bench and looked up at them both.
Judy smiled, “He wants to tell us something.”
Jim let out a half hearted laugh. “Oh yeah?”
The Nube’s attempts at communication were always amusing, as he grunted and used his hand-paws to mime gibberish in the air. But unknown to either human, today’s communication would be neither amusing nor cute.
Suddenly they both slammed back into upright seated positions. Both saw flashes of blinding light and then felt sharp probes pierce their brains. Inside their heads The Nube spoke with echoing authority.
“I know you plan to separate. But this will not happen. You killed my parents. You are now mine. There will be no divorce. Together we shall travel to Aukland as Toronto’s climate does not suit my species as well as your habitat does Mother. Now forget this nonsense, we’re about to be released from the chamber.”
As the trio was greeted by a group of scientists in the reception area, the newly returned humans simultaneously wore big smiles with otherwise blank expressions. In unison they asked, “Which way to the Aukland shuttle?”
by Julian Miles | May 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’m covered in blood and squishy bits that slide and splat on the floor. In that, I look the same as the entire boarding bay. Even the shipsuits are reduced to ribbons, and I can’t recognise a bodypart or weapon component anywhere.
She stands there, not a mark on her and hands on hips. The look on her face is a cross between amusement and bemusement.
“Can’t say I’ve met one of your kind before.” She smiles.
“Likewise.” I don’t.
There are many forms of psionics. Telekinesis is the most common, and personal nullification the rarest. Of the telekinetics, area-effect micromanipulation is the absolute pinnacle. It is also terrifying. The people who practice it, instead of taking a chemical inhibitor, are of a very ‘special’ mindset. People call them ‘shredders’ and regard them as mythical space-terrors.
Having full-spectrum personal psionic nullification in an always-on, unconscious implementation state will save you life and keep your thoughts private. It will not save what your clothes. I am naked and quaking, ankle deep in a blood-soaked pile of shredded kit.
She pulls a gun that seems too large for her hand: “You’ve just inherited a whole space-pirate scow. Or we get to see if you can nullify a flechette spray.”
Easy answer: I turn and squelch back through the puree of my crewmates, flicking chunks of them off me. Getting back into our decontamination lock, I have to stop the cleansing showers twice to scrape pirate mulch from the drains.
Wrapped in a robe I wander onto the silent bridge to see a ‘message received’ beacon flashing. I open it and have to smile:
FREIGHT HAULING. GOOD WORK FOR ONE MAN WITH A STARSHIP. ESPECIALLY FOR AN EX-PIRATE WHO DIDN’T CARRY A WEAPON FOR ME TO SHRED.
by featured writer | May 19, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix, Featured Writer [ bio ]
At a Calgary hockey camp, parents and players watched a goaltending 8 year old novice stop everything shot at him. Might as well have been a brick wall. Coach brought a talented 16 year old over to rapid fire a row of pucks, a 125 kph fusillade. But to the kid, they were like nerf balls, floating lazily in his field of vision, easily blocked, swatted away, or caught.
His reflexes were… unnatural, coach thought, but he was small and could be intimidated into submission. Reverting to his semi-pro days, coach dropped a puck to the ice, grabbed a stick, and skated towards the kid fast, threatening to take him out if he didn’t give way. The kid saw coach as a lumbering Neanderthal and kept his stance until the last second. Puck on its way to the five-hole between his legs and coach almost upon him, he nevertheless had plenty of time to not only deflect the puck, but to glove it, lean aside, and extend his stick to clothesline coach, who fell backwards onto the ice. The crowd collectively gasped.
Looking up, coach saw the kid’s eyes, grey with flecks of gold, gleeful behind the mask. “Again!” the kid demanded. Then remembering who he was speaking to, “Uh, again, please?”
“So far,” lectured the Caltech professor, “we have reports, worldwide, of hundreds of thousands of kids with extraordinary… no, superhuman, visual-motor reaction times — averaging 25ms, ten times faster than normal. They process visual images at 250 or more frames per second, again ten times faster than normal, with equivalent cognitive throughput.”
An Atlanta 15 year old, learner’s permit in her purse and grandmother seated next to her, flicked the turn signal of an ancient Mercury Marquis station wagon approaching a freeway off ramp. Following closely was an 18-wheeler, and from the left an SUV veered across three lanes to cut in front of her. She realized instantly that they were going to be sandwiched between the two vehicles. To the other drivers and her grandmother what happened next was a blur, but to her it was slow motion, as she experienced everything in life.
If she hit the brakes, she calculated, the semi-truck would overtake them in seconds. Speeding up would rear-end the SUV ahead and they’d still be crushed by the semi behind. A glance at the mirror showed they’d hit another truck if they swerved left. She did what she had to do to survive — jerking the wheel to the right and braking to spin the wagon 180 degrees, skidding it backwards onto the narrow shoulder and pinning the driver’s side against the guard rail, just as the passenger side was sheared off by the truck, horn blaring.
She sat silently, cars whizzing by on the freeway as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Her eyes, gray with flecks of gold, were moist as she looked across at the open space where her grandmother had been seconds before. “Sorry, Meemaw” she said.
“There must be many more than reported,” the professor continued, “tens of millions, who don’t yet realize they’re different, who think everybody sees people shuffling around like zombies, TV as slide shows, and jet planes as gliders. What do they portend for our species? I can only say they represent a major evolutionary step. Oh, and they all have gray eyes flecked in gold.”
Audience members turned to see the eyes of those around them. Laughed.
None could foresee that gray-golds would not only soon be outcompeting their kind in every walk of life, but that before the end of the century, slower humans would be eliminated altogether.
by submission | May 18, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“We’re almost ready,” said Olav to his companion, Isak. “Are the others out of range?”
“Yes, all the ships are gone,” replied Isak. “It’s just us now.”
The two of them watched UY Scuti waver on their ship’s display like a reflection in water distorted by ripples. But UY Scuti was no reflection. It was a red supergiant star with five billion times the volume of Sol. The great artificial rings that surrounded the enormous sun were far too small to be visible. But they were there, spinning around the great star faster and faster, distorting the fabric of spacetime. If UY Scuti replaced Sol, the former’s photosphere would extend beyond the orbit of Jupiter. In a few moments, the star would be compressed to the dimensions of a proton.
“Think we’ll survive?” asked Isak.
“We both made backup copies of our minds,” responded Olav matter-of-factly.
“I know. But I mean…us.”
“There’s a good chance we won’t,” said Olav. “No one’s ever tried to punch a hole out of our D-brane and into another dimension.”
“Assuming our universe is a very large D-brane extended over three spatial dimensions,” remarked Isak. “If that’s the case and all material objects are just open strings bound to this D-brane and gravity is the result of closed strings exerting their force from ‘outside’ our universe…”
“We’ll know either way soon enough,” said Olav.
The ship’s computer started moving the vessel closer to the imploding star.
“I hope opening a hyperspace tunnel out of our brane-space doesn’t do any harm,” said Isak.
“The government approved this. Even if it did cause something catastrophic, in the long run the race would benefit from it,” said Olav.
“Well, that’s taking optimism a bit far,” replied Isak.
“But it’s true. Look at history. Back in 2758, when Eta Carinae went supernova, the gamma ray burst destroyed Earth’s ozone layer. Muon radiation killed almost everything and ultraviolet radiation killed what was left. But the humans in underground colonies on Earth’s Moon and Mars and inside hollowed-out asteroids survived. The survivors were a select population: Intelligent, highly motivated, physically and emotionally tough. It was from this adventurous stock that the human population was restored.”
Isak looked at his companion in disbelief. “It was the worst mass extinction event in history!”
“Oh, certainly it was a horrific nightmare. But without it, mankind would have remained confined to one solar system.”
“Next you’ll be telling me the Plague of Tau Ceti IV was a great leap forward.”
“It was. After the plague, legislation blocking experiments in transhumanism was relaxed and later repealed. The transhuman meta-race wouldn’t exist across the Milky Way if the Tau Ceti plague hadn’t happened. I know it seems grotesque that that’s how progress is made, but–”
Olav was interrupted by the sound of alarms. UY Scuti seemed to suddenly iris down like the image on an ancient television set that had been switched off. The ship lurched forward at high speed toward the narrow tunnel that was opening.
“I sincerely hope this doesn’t turn out to be one of your great moments in the history of progress,” said Isak as the small ship disappeared into higher dimensions.”
by submission | May 15, 2015 | Story |
Author : Michael Ryder
I see fear in your eyes as the door to the gravity chamber shuts tight.
Not fear for yourself. You accepted your assignment long ago.
No, I see fear for me. Fear of what I will become without you.
We cannot hear each other through the chamber’s heavy door. But through the small glass porthole, I can see your brown hair, generous lips and mocha skin. Your beautiful brown eyes holding mine, willing our love to thwart the warp of space and time.
A spasm of grief rips through me, but I force it away from my face. Your last memory of this thread will not be me crumbling before you. I will be strong until you return. If you return.
Your mouth moves. “I love you,” your lips say.
I keep my eyes on you, willing myself to stay focused. “I won’t forget you.”
“You will. But I’ll find you.” You mouth something else, which I don’t understand, not at first. You say it again.
“Make sure you don’t end up an asshole, okay?”
The grin breaks through. “I promise.”
The chamber pulses once, and —
I blink and shake my head, like I’m coming out of a daze. I realize I’m in the gravity chamber’s control room, standing in front of the chamber’s heavy door. A glance at the sensors tells me the chamber was just used. I type the command code into the keypad and step back as the heavy door swings open.
The chamber, as expected, is empty.
I blink away a sudden rush of tears. I feel I’ve lost something.
The emotional upheaval is alarming. When time agents use the gravity chamber to slip out of a thread, they are obligated to leave the thread in the condition they found it. Their motto, like the doctors of old, is “do no harm.”
Unexplained feelings indicate a mission error. Something gone wrong. I would have to report in right away.
The door to the control room opens and an ensign steps in.
“Commander,” he says with a salute.
“Yes?”
“A visitor has arrived on the shuttle and requests permission to see you immediately.”
A woman enters the control room. My breath quickens, and not just because she’s stunning.
I’ve never seen this stranger before. Never seen her brown hair, mocha skin, generous lips and beautiful eyes. And yet I know I have seen her before. And will again. And again. And again.
“Leave us, Ensign,” I manage to say.
The door closes. My eyes tear up. I reach out and pull this stranger into my arms.
And I hear you gasp when I whisper your name.
