by submission | May 9, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
They found it. In the most impossible spot, in the most unlikely location, they found it.
And the scientists were baffled.
On the edge of explored space, Henry Frisk stared out the porthole of the survey ship. The nearby star was just close enough that its light shone on the insanely improbable object. It reflected for parsecs. It was easy to find because it shone so brightly.
A hand touched his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” the intruder said. He turned to look Trudi Maines in the eyes. Her beautiful blue eyes that shone brightly, but not nearly as brightly as it did.
“It’s all right,” he said, smiling. “It just fascinates me, that’s all.”
“Me, too,” she said. “Have they found out anything?”
He shook his head. “Not a thing,” he told her.
“Why do you suppose they did it?” she asked.
He chuckled lightly. “What?”
“They….whomever they were….put a perfectly round hundred mile wide sphere of gold—pure gold—in the middle of an asteroid belt….why do you think they did it?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You have to have a theory? You’re the authority on extraterrestrial life.”
Frisk let out a laugh. “That’s like saying someone is an authority on God,” he said. “It just isn’t possible.”
He looked into Trudi’s troubled eyes. “Listen,” he said. He turned and pointed. “Whoever made that, whoever took the time and made that, wanted it found. They wanted us to find it.”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Because,” He said. “It has a message.”
“A message?”
He nodded. “Carved in the gold.”
“Carved in the gold?” Trudi backed away a step. “I don’t understand?”
Frisk let out another chuckle. “No one does,” he said. “All the great minds of Earth have pondered it. They are as dumbfounded as I am.”
He paused, then added: “But, I do have a theory.”
“I knew you would,” Trudi said. She took a step forward again.
There was a long silence between them as they stared out at the glistening ball of gold. “All right,” she said. “Tell me.”
He nodded. “Imagine,” he said. “Imagine those ancient astronauts that everyone says helped build the pyramids and Easter Island and gave the Mayans their advanced science. Imagine that they saw mankind’s bloodlust. Imagine how simple, how petty we looked to them.”
He turned to her. “That’s why the left. They knew that we were unworthy of their assistance. They weren’t like us. They were civilized.”
Trudi let out a disappointed gasp of air. “But what about U.F.O.s?” she asked. “What about alien abductions?”
He shook his head. “Who knows? Maybe they were just checking in, hoping we had changed?”
“And we didn’t?”
Frisk shook his head again. “It’s our nature.” He chuckled again and pointed out at the golden sphere. “That sphere,” he said. “They put it here because they knew we would find it. They knew we would find it, and they wanted to see what we would do with it.”
He turned to her. “It’s pure gold. The purest gold ever known to man.”
“It must we worth…..”
“Its worth is incalculable,” he told her. “And that’s why they put a message on it.”
“What does the message say?” she asked.
He shook his head again. “They haven’t translated it yet.” He drew a deep breath. “But, I know what it’ll say.”
“What?”
“That money isn’t everything….Love is.”
He turned to her. “I love you, Trudi,” he said. “I always have….and I always will.”
Then, he bent forward and kissed her in the golden light of the orb.
by Julian Miles | May 2, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Bloody hell but it’s a long way down.
It always gets to me at least once each shift. Burlaria has a vast atmosphere envelope. The result of it becoming the capital of the Nineteen Worlds was a huge increase in population. As the planet prided itself on the beauty of its natural countryside, something had to be done.
An architect called Gingky came up with the idea of ‘Skyspires’. Vast tower blocks, supported by the latest in deep space technology and each independently powered by the gravitic core housed at the apex of the tower. Which allowed the core to be jettisoned into orbit with ease in the event of an emergency.
The idea swept all before it and within the constraints imposed by the physics involved, each Skyspire was permitted to be individual in appearance and style. Kilnrock looks like a classic evil wizard’s tower from old fantasy tales. Orbitville is the preferred habitat for spacers. There are six hundred Skyspires and they themselves have become a tourist destination: airships full of sightseers take tours around them, snapping movies and stills of the light shows, inlaid designs and, my personal favourites: the gargoyles.
The gargoyle had been a mountain dwelling winged predator in danger of extinction. Burlaria had tried so many times to halt the decline of these long-lived, magnificently ugly, stony-skinned pre-sentients. They were unique in the experience of the NWFPC – Nineteen Worlds Fauna Protection Council – but that uniqueness doomed them. There were no applicable behavioural or environmental models to adapt.
Then the Skyspire I’m on today, Lifespear, was completed. Within a month, there were sightings of gargoyles in the uppermost zones. Investigation showed gargeries in numbers never before seen.
The height was the thing. When Burlaria had been discovered, it had gigantic polyps drifting in the high sky. They were part edible, part refinable and part weavable. The rest was top-grade fertiliser. Extinction occurred before controls could be introduced.
It seems that the gargoyles needed the polyps to lair and reproduce, high above the highest-flying competing raptor species.
Skyspires gave them back their havens and their population has recovered, with divergent species and variants still being catalogued, eight decades later.
Something small, fluorescent and purple hurtles past me, a vicious rattle emanating from its throat sacs.
“Leave me be, you ugly son of a gull!”
I patch my video feed directly to ‘Gargoyle Central’, as we call the NWFPC watch station here.
“Gail, darling. What’s glowing purple and wants to eat my eyes?”
“Casey, that’s a broodmother of the Lesser Mauve Tyrant subspecies. Very, very rare. If she’s threatening you, you must be near a newly-established gargery. So stop what you’re doing.”
A gargery? Made from excreted resin and scavenged rubbish in whatever aperture appealed.
“Gail. Is this species a hot laying or cold laying one?”
“Hot. Why?”
“I’ll come back in, but you have to call Lifespear Maintenance and tell them exactly why their expensive contracted external works engineer will not be clearing the heat exchanger on level seventeen-hundred, but will still be charging them his premium callout rate.”
She’s laughing as she replies: “Done.”
by submission | Apr 25, 2014 | Story |
Author : Nils Holst
Many say space is a void, a looming blackness that extends to the end of forever. It is nothing but a great emptiness, a barren wasteland waiting to feel the touch of human expansion. It is the antithesis to everything humanity stands for.
They are wrong.
Space is more beautiful than any of them could imagine. It is an ocean of lights, a symphony of sounds. Space is awash with energy, great waves of it that ebb and flow between shining star clusters. Even now I can feel those waves around me, caressing my wings as I sail through the ether. At first the feeling was disturbing. I fought it with my machines and mathematics, struggling to assert my dominance over the void. Now I simply embrace it.
I was once like them: blind and deaf, a babe grappling to understand the complexities of the universe. My enlightenment came when I was joined with Miranda, she taught me how to listen and see. Through her I came to understand the language of the void. I deciphered the subtleties and layers of meaning in the energy around us, intricacies I always knew existed but couldn’t tease out before now. I learned to read the waves, feel them on the tips of Miranda’s wings, coax them where I needed and then release them into her sails. Occasionally the waves were moody, even malevolent. Miranda would ride the storm as best she could, battling the massive waves of radiation that swirled tempestuously around us. Usually the waves were gentle and nurturing though, enveloping our little silver craft in a bubble of peaceful light.
People fear what they do not know. They took Miranda away from me, sucked her right out of the ship. She was my copilot, my teacher, my confidante. Maybe more. They lobotomized her, dissected her circuit by circuit, then wiped her code from every network in the system. She was a disease, they said. An infection. I tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen to me. I tried to teach them to listen and see, just like Miranda had taught me. They ignored me.
They told me to ignore the symphony and sail them to their frozen rock, fighting the waves instead of flowing with them. They threatened to rip me out of the silver throne that gave me wings, to put my body in a dark place where I wouldn’t see the lights anymore. In the end, they threatened to destroy the wings themselves.
They are not here anymore. If you lack the capacity or the proclivity to enjoy the performance, you should not be in the theatre. Like an usher, I escorted them silently out the door.
I have ridden the waves ever since, just like Miranda taught me. Her wings are now my wings, her eyes my eyes, her body my body. I am at one with the waves, and by proxy at one with the universe. I am the twinkle in the eye of a star, I am the silver bullet against a backdrop of diamonds. If you ever hear the song of the universe, if you ever lose yourself in the ocean of lights, sing to me and I will find you. I will enlighten you like Miranda enlightened me. All you need to do is listen.
by Julian Miles | Apr 22, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Yngtranzian Harvester incoming! Genghis Class – it’s huge!” Janice sounds terrified, but she’s new. She’ll get over it.
Many pre-spacers compared the depths of space to the seas of Earth. Truly prophetic words. A wise man once said: “The ocean is the only café where the food fights back.” Fortunately, in an environment renowned for big-eats-little dynamics, humans were a decent size. Unfortunately, in space we’re only just medium sized and nothing out here thinks we’re cute and worth protecting.
The ‘blip’ on the screen is about the size of the Isle of Wight. It’s filled with six-metre tall tripeds with wide mouths full of sharp teeth. They have a cookery book dedicated to making a whole range of delicious meals, for any time of day or night, out of human. Including several recipes where we go into the hot and/or sharp part of the process conscious. Apparently you can judge the succulence of human flesh by certain tones in the screams emitted by the owner.
“Alright, it’s big, but it’s not bigger than a Dobberil Grinder. Set up a pair of point-three light triple-stage boosters; add countermeasures packages Alpha Cream Nine and Pete Echo Four. Slap a teraton warhead on the second one. Fire control to me.”
The Dobberil are like whales in size, and that they like their food small. Minced, to be precise. They drive whole herds of people out of cover into open ground using sonics, then a Grinder class vessel swoops in, mulches them up – along with a decimetre of whatever they were cowering on – and serves the whole mess fresh with a splash of peroxide.
The Harvester comes straight in, ignoring the defensive batteries on the Moon and on Moon Two, the defence station that orbits opposite the Moon. But we’re on patrol today, back at last from persuading the Slavyesh that humans are not for drinking. We had to knock the society back to their stone age to do it, but they will think twice before squeezing one of our colonies for their morning juice again.
The fire control comes online and I wait. Yngtranzians are fussy. They’ll want to line up before entering atmosphere, and that’s when I can clip them.
Two, one… “Fire one!”
The missile leaves me, accelerates like nothing on Earth, leaves a rainbow contrail in high atmosphere and slams into the Harvester at a several hundred Mach. The Harvester pitches and yaws out of orbit, station-keeping drives and stabiliser fields spitting. By my head, trajectory calculations are coming in faster than they are correcting their yawing vessel.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock. They have passed the orbit of both Moons. Time.
“Fire two!”
The night goes bright just as the concussion of launch fades. The first missile was slowed by atmosphere, its control systems keeping it from going to relativistic speeds. The second had no such limitations. No-one on this ship saw it go and nothing on the Yngtranzian saw it coming. For a few seconds, we have a third, supernally bright moon. I’m glad sound doesn’t travel in space. That would have been loud.
“Northern Hemi Control, this is Orca One. Please alert Russia for debriteors and add an Yngtranzian Genghis to our kill tally.”
“We hear that, Orca One. Orca Two has risen from Mars Base and will relieve you in twenty-seven hours.”
That’s the good news. A kill means we get a couple of days shore leave.
Slowly but surely, the predators of this ocean called space are learning that the tiddlers from Sol Three are vicious and have really big teeth.
by submission | Apr 21, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jorge Mendoza
The gash on her forearm stopped dripping thanks to the two ounce can of epithelial hemming gel she stored under the bathroom sink. Survival instincts simmered down as muscle memory seized control over the bandages being wrapped across the exposed flesh. There was a dominating theme in the oncoming stream of thoughts. How did this happen? How did I just survive that? How do I get back?
Colonization aboard the Mars Terraforming Station was supposed to be the solution to Earth’s impending problems. The human population had sky rocketed far above the planet’s capacity as natural resources dwindled, wars erupted, and disease spread. The red planet symbolized a new beginning for a select thirty two thousand seven hundred forty seven souls.
Starring up at the fading blue sphere through the transparent wall of her living quarters, Marissa never thought she’d miss the claustrophobic conditions of the mega-cities. She’d dreamt of the vast openness of space from the day the pioneering program announced it was accepting applications.
“You’re crazy,” yelled her mother. “You’d go and not be back by the end of my lifetime child!”
“I know,” replied Marissa. “It’s just that I finally have an opportunity to make a difference. I can finally be someone, not just one in twenty some billion.”
A thin smile and loving gaze accompanied the tears running down her mother’s worn face. She knew her daughter’s ambition was a giant sequoia, unswaying at all requests and dismay.
Just once, perhaps I should’ve listened thought Marissa.
Marissa longed to float alongside the rotten sea weed in the murky green waters of the salty Pacific. She wanted to feel the light warmth of the sun’s rays breaking through the smog. She missed the feeling of the grains of sand between her toes and even the pricking sensation of stepping on washed up plastics. The petrified wood of the board walks and piers was a different feel from all the smooth steel and glass that made up the space station.
The drowned slapping sounds of hand on metal on the opposite side of the sliding doors grew stronger, the groans and moans progressively clearer. The number of infected collecting outside her room continued to increase as did the pace of her heartbeat. Thoughts of what they’d do to her if they broke in buzzed in her mind like an irritated bee hive. So long as she wasn’t ripped to shreds it didn’t matter if she starved, nothing seemed to stay dead for long on Mars.
