by submission | Mar 18, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
The theory of fiction is similar to the theory of gravity in that it’s the best explanation for what we observe as reality. The average person knows that gravity is not a wishy-washy “theory” but rather an immutable force that must be reckoned with. Who among us has not felt the pain of a heavy object dropped on their toes or witnessed the anguish of a senior who has fallen and cannot get up? Gravity is happening all around us every day!
You never read “The Theory of Fiction,” did you Brenda? I self-published that treatise before you were born, after it had been rejected by every scientific journal to which I submitted it. And if there were not already enough proof back then, my explanation of the relationship between fiction and fact has been confirmed many times over the years. To make a long story short, fiction and fact are one in the same, merely separated by time and space and branes. Branes. Short for membranes. If I had only thought to call them membranes. I went with “balloons.” They laughed me out of graduate school.
Etu Brenda? No, no, it’s all right. Go ahead and have a laugh. Those peer reviewers, my caregivers here at the institution, my own family. All against me. Against reality. But denying the theory of gravity does not protect one from bird poop or meteors dropping from the sky, nor does denying the theory of fiction plug the leaky branes separating parallel universes. An infinite number of universes, invisibly pressing against one another, bringing fiction in one near fact in another. You might say, fiction inevitably catches up to fact.
How can I explain this to you in words you can comprehend and in the short time allotted for your visit? Ok, ok. Think of it as another kind of gravity. If a work of fiction in our universe has sufficient “mass,” and if our journey through space and time brings it in close proximity to a corresponding fact of sufficient mass in another universe, then the two are strongly attracted. They move towards each other, faster and faster, until they simultaneously pop that balloon, blowing their branes out, you might say, in glorious collision. At that instant, fiction and fact become one across two universes.
Take, for example, Morgan Robertson’s fictional “Titan,” about an 800 foot ocean liner, supposedly unsinkable, which went down in the North Atlantic one night in April after being struck by an iceberg on the starboard side. That fiction was written 14 years before the sinking of the Titanic — which it described in minute detail, right down to the gross tonnage, the speed it was steaming, and the high death toll because of the lack of enough lifeboats — made it a fact. And don’t get me started on Jules Verne or H.G Wells. Stories about submarines diving deep below the sea and space ships taking astronauts to the Moon. Science fiction until it became fact. And… and those reports yesterday about metal cylinders landing in England and people being burned up by some sort of laser ray, and then the communication blackout. What do you think about that?
You don’t think about that? Yes, banana bread is my favorite. Yes, it smells great. Thank your mom. And Brenda. When you get home, clear out some space in the basement. I think the family may have to take shelter there from a coming storm.
by submission | Mar 15, 2015 | Story |
Author : Emily Stupar
I’m falling and I’m not sure when it started, or when it’s going to end. Although, I do have some theories.
Maybe I’m falling because I’m fulfilling a lifelong wish to go skydiving. There’s a bot instructor strapped to my back and all I can think is that I may as well have jumped out of a plane with a floppy disk in my hand for all the good it’ll do me.
Or maybe I’m a space explorer and I’m not falling but floating. Everyone is counting on me to get this sample so we’ll know if there’s any competition out there in the stars, or if it’s just us humans and whatever mindless bits of metal we scrap together.
Maybe I was driving down the Pacific Coast Highway and then I heard on the radio about that police officer who was slaughtered by a bot in his own home. Killed by his own property. And then I was so shocked by the sound of a human being siding with the tin can that I accidentally drove off into the ocean.
Maybe I jumped off the roof after finding my spouse with the android who was fixing our plumbing.
Or maybe it’s something a bit more metaphorical and I’m falling from grace. I’m falling out of favor with nature. Maybe I’m falling because the familiar ground has dropped out from beneath my feet one piece at a time, but so slowly that I just woke up one day and suddenly I didn’t recognize my own home anymore.
Maybe Mother Nature wasn’t my mother at all; she’s my landlady and she’s not happy that I’ve drifted so far from the terms of my lease. I’ve been evicted for allowing humans to push past the limit of what is good and natural, and now I’m falling headfirst onto the pavement.
Or maybe I know a secret about all these heaps of wires and electrical signals that are worming their way into every aspect of our lives. I see the true consequences of letting man think he is God, or letting a man-made machine think it could live. Maybe I know a vulnerable place and I have the materials to force the world to stop and see the truth. Maybe I’m falling because I strapped a bomb to my back and, next to all that delicate machinery, I launched myself into the air. For humanity.
I really can’t say for sure, but, as far as I know, I’m the only one whose falling. My entire race has lost their minds, opening their naïve hearts to the whispers of manipulative demons, and I’m not sure I have the stomach to watch. I’ve been falling ever since I realized I was the one who needed to save humans from themselves.
I’m falling and I just hope everyone is braced for my impact.
by submission | Mar 11, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Consciousness returned slowly to Inderak and Wynep. Memory took a little longer but in short order the events that lead up to the present flashed back into recall: The malfunction with the hyperdrive. The failed attempt to enter orbit around the moon of the third planet in the alien star system. The violent turbulence as the ship entered the third planet’s atmosphere. And then…now.
“Are you alright?” Inderak asked.
“I’m not sure,” replied Wynep weakly. “What’s on top of me?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? I can’t stand up. I thought I was pinned underneath debris.” Wynep was lying face down on the deck of the bridge.
“Before we crashed, sensors indicated this planet has three times the gravity of homeworld.” Inderak was on his back. He pushed back against the deck with all four of his arms. He barely moved off the deck plate.
“Computer, status?” said Wynep. “Computer, respond!” The ship’s computer remained silent.
Inderak saw a straw-colored liquid dripping from various points in the overhead of the compartment. “There’s neural fluid leaking from the processor chamber,” he said. “The computer’s injured, possibly dead.”
“Then we’re probably not broadcasting a hyperwave beacon. No one knows where we are.”
Wynep managed to push herself up about a centimeter for a few seconds, long enough to turn her head so she faced Inderak. She saw that her wings were plastered to the deck, not that they’d be of any use in this gravity. “It feels like we’re moving.”
“We are. The ship is floating in an ocean of dihydrogen monoxide. Most of the planet’s surface is covered by it.”
“Well, of course it is,” said Wynep bitterly. “The Divinities wouldn’t settle for landing us on a world with three times normal gravity. We have to land in a sea of poison, too. I assume the atmosphere has no chlorine?”
“The air is mostly nitrogen and oxygen.”
Wynep uttered a series of curses that left no Divinity unblasphemed.
“The planet’s inhabited,” said Inderak. “Scanners showed numerous cities and there were at least several hundred artificial satellites in orbit.”
“The moon we were hoping to orbit was barren,” countered Wynep. “There was no sign of civilization on it. If the locals haven’t even colonized their own moon then they must be pretty primitive. I doubt they’d be of much help, even assuming they’re non-hostile.”
“You’re probably right,” conceded Inderak.
They were silent for a while. Breathing was difficult in the oppressive pull of gravity and talking made it worse.
“Maybe Navigation Command was still tracking us before we dropped out of hyperspace?” Wynep speculated.
“We’re probably done for even if they know exactly where we are,” Inderak responded matter-of-factly. “NavCom couldn’t send people down here. They’d be as incapacitated as we are. They’d have to send robots. And then what? Blast off the surface? Can you imagine the escape velocity for this planet? The acceleration would almost certainly kill us. They might rig up a space elevator, but that’s never been done on a planet with this much gravity. It would take Divinity knows how long to overcome the engineering problems, assuming they could be overcome at all. There’s only one thing Navigation Command could do to help us.”
“What’s that?”
“Blast us from orbit. Put us out of our misery. If there’s a NavCom ship on the way here, it’s mission isn’t rescue. It’s euthanasia.”
by submission | Mar 8, 2015 | Story |
Author : Connor Harbison
The sand got everywhere.
Lieutenant Sawyer cursed her luck. Others from her Academy class had postings all over the galaxy, on exotic planets and flashy space stations. Only she was stuck here on this assignment.
Aurelia IV was her home for the foreseeable future. Its nickname was ‘The Beach’, but no beach Sawyer had ever visited hosted Aurelia’s killer sandstorms, boiling temperatures, and obstinate insurgents.
Aurelia’s colonial government had been overthrown in a bloody coup. Now the Sawyer and the other marines had reestablished order in a few large cities, but the outlying areas remained unsecured. Countless patrols through rural towns and villages did nothing to improve their situation, though each mission did seem to require a blood toll from the marines passing through.
The locals always unnerved Sawyer when she marched through their homes. They’d stare at her and the other marines with dark, sunken eyes. The eyes told one story; submission. These were not insurgents. Those “freedom fighters” lived in caves out in the desert, not in the towns.
There was one villager, in one nameless cluster of mud huts, who Sawyer couldn’t get out of her mind. A boy, or a man really, with startlingly blue eyes. Through the visor of her power armor those eyes jumped out at Sawyer. There was fire in those eyes.
Sawyer spotted those eyes half concealed in the shade of an alleyway during the next sweep of the village. She broke from the column to investigate.
Down the alley and around a corner, through the back streets of the village the boy with the blue eyes was always just out of reach. Finally he ducked into a hut and she followed him.
Even their bedrooms were sandy, Sawyer noted with disdain. When this assignment was over she never wanted to see sand again. The blue eyes hung there in the gloom, boring into her.
Those eyes proved more adept at getting past power armor than any insurgent’s IED. Soon Sawyer was stepping out of her shell, feeling truly vulnerable for the first time in months. The eyes appeared to glow in the dim hut interior. As they approached Sawyer could swear the two bright blue orbs grew, until they dominated her vision.
Sawyer let out a small gasp at his thrust. Then there was warmth. Wetness. She smelled iron, and tasted it too. As Sawyer’s vision faded, the last thing she saw was those two bright blue eyes, shining in triumph.
by submission | Mar 5, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I raise my hand and wave to get Scott’s attention as he walks into the restaurant. He comes over and joins me in the booth. He gestures at my drink.
“Is that whiskey? Never seen you drink anything stronger than red wine. Something up?”
“Yeah. Remember a couple of weeks back when you, me, Angela, and Kim had dinner? You mentioned you’d grown up in Warren, Michigan on a street called ‘Loretta Drive’ and Angela corrected you and said it was ‘Loretta Avenue’?”
“I remember,” says Scott. “I got out my phone and googled it. Angela was right. It was ‘Avenue,’ not ‘Drive’.”
“But you’d been so certain. I mean, it’s where you grew up. How could you have been wrong about something that basic?”
“I don’t know. But I was. Look, Tim, what’s this about?”
I finish my drink. The waiter takes a drink order from Scott and I order another drink for myself.
“I’ve been noticing some similar things since we got back,” I say. “Subtle things. A picture of me as a teenager wearing a shirt I have no recall of ever having. The water faucet on the back of my house being about a foot to the left of where I remember it. That sort of thing.”
The waiter brings our drinks. Scott consumes half of his with one swallow.
“So what are you suggesting?” Scott asks. “Do you think traveling through hyperspace did something to our memories? They checked us out really thoroughly after we got back and gave us both a clean bill of health. They even did full-body medical scans on both of us.”
“You’ve seen the surgical scar Kim has where she had her gallbladder out?”
“Yeah, when she wears a bikini. Not that I was checking out your wife or anything,” Scott says with a smile.
“The scar’s gone. She says she’s never had gallbladder surgery.”
Scott finishes his drink with a gulp and stares at me.
“Scott, this morning I spent two-and-a-half hours in a meeting with the administrator of NASA and a bunch of higher-ups trying to explain some discrepancies. Among other things, they wanted to know how the software for the ship got upgraded to a version that they’re just now completing.”
“What?! Tim, how is all this possible? We thrusted out to the orbit of Mars, completed a hyperspace jump one light-year away, stayed in the Oort Cloud for 30 minutes while the jump engines charged back up, then jumped back to Mars’ orbit. And we came right back to Earth.”
“Scott, the prevailing theory at NASA is that we’re from a parallel universe. This universe and the one we came from are nearly identical, but not exactly. So the street you grew up on and the clothes I had as a teenager and the women we married…”
“Okay, do the geniuses at NASA have a plan to get us back where we belong? Do we jump again? Are our counterparts from this universe in the world we’re supposed to be in?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple. They think that every trip through hyperspace lands you in an alternate universe. We landed in a different world when were came out in the Oort Cloud. And in yet another world when we jumped back. They think it’s statistically impossible to ever jump to the same world twice.”
“So we’re trapped?”
“Yeah. And it also means you can’t use FTL to explore the universe. Not the same universe, anyway.”
The waiter returns. “Would you like any more Zack Daniel’s whiskey?” he asks.
