by Duncan Shields | Dec 24, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The thing about sleeping in zero g is that I have a lot of dreams about being in my mother’s womb except that in my dreams, my mother is sleeping in zero g as well. That’s impossible because my mother never went to space. She was sixty before the alien diplomats came down to Earth, one in every major city and no two aliens the same. Glittering ships that defied all reason touching down like inverted chandeliers before discharging creatures trained to field questions in English through their translators. The one in my home down of Phoenix Arizona was a tall insect that looked like a violet, leafless tree that walked around on crab-leg roots with a tight line of softly-glowing blue eyes down its trunk.
I was twenty-five years old at the time but still, when I saw that creature, I felt like a six-year-old who knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. Your calling can come at any time, I guess.
I wake up smiling at the memory and uncurl, the light slowly branding up to daylight in my quarters. I turn on the gravity and look out the window. Through the porthole, I can see a cadmium cue-ball planet with scudding blue clouds and a double meridian of shadow from its two suns. It’s beautiful. I’ll be briefed about its name in a second but for now I just drink in the view and once again swim deep in the wonder and pride I have at my job.
And then I look in the mirror.
I had alopecia when I was thirteen which means my body hair grows in patches now. I also have a dark wine birthmark that splashes across half of my face and most of my right arm. One of my eyes has too much eyelid and is higher than the other while my wide, thick lips hang like deflated inner tubes over the ragged jut of my huge, uneven teeth. My chin pushes forth like the prow of a ship. My nose is more like a beak and would probably come down to nearly touch my shelf of a chin if it hadn’t been broken in a youthful bicycle accident. It’s like a shark fin shaped into a child’s drawing of a lightning bolt in the middle of my face.
My point is that by human standards, I’m ugly. Hideously ugly. Almost comically ugly.
And the aliens don’t care. Because of that, I smile again like I do every day here. I don’t care if I ever see Earth again.
I take a morning sip from the protein udder on the wall and zip up into my jumpsuit. As I leave my quarters and join the flow of traffic to the main hall, I bump into a krinotaur. I think it’s beautiful. It flows past me like a wave settling next to the shore.
Maybe it took the job for the same reason I did. Maybe its eye cluster is too bulbous. Maybe its leg-stalks are too short. Maybe its communication mandibles have a noticeable stutter or lisp equivalent that’s erased by the translators.
I would have no idea.
Everyone’s earned the right to be here. We’re diplomats and we’re intelligent representatives. I know that the other life forms have tests and training just as stringent as my own that brought them here. We’re good at what we do; useful to our homeworlds.
I head to the briefing room to learn about the white planet below us and what city I’ll be assigned to welcome them into the galactic council.
by submission | Dec 18, 2013 | Story |
Author : Aaron Koelker
The first note, neatly folded into squares, appeared a short ways off the park path where I enjoyed my evening walks. Had I not spotted the strange rippling effect, like a vertical pane of crystal clear water broken by a gentle leaf cast down from the tree of time, I would’ve never seen it. I wouldn’t have hunched my shoulders against the autumn chill and left the path; have never known she would exist. I picked it from the grass and unfolded it with cold fingers, frosted breath screening the neat handwriting.
To anyone who finds this, kindly write your name and the date in the space below. Then return this message to the EXACT spot you found it, or as best you can. It is very important to us, and will be much appreciated.
I thought it a joke at first, or some student’s social experiment. Did they assume I’d have a pen? I did, though. I had written out a check to my psychiatrist earlier that night.
Walter Kinsley. 11/29/2013.
I folded the note back into the same little squares in which I’d found it and lay it back on the grass, more or less where it had been. Then I returned to the path and waited a moment, wondering if whoever had put it there would run to retrieve it.
Instead the ripple returned, though now directly before me and leaving little doubt as to its existence, and the note vanished. I was bewildered, suddenly exhausted, and decided I would need to see my psychiatrist again sooner rather than later.
The next evening, while walking the same route at roughly the same time, I found the second note much like the first. I snatched it up and found the same handwriting; the same message. Below that was an addition.
If this is Walter, then hello again! And thanks for your help!
I replied.
Who are you?
The next night I found a third note, though this time I waited an hour for it, alone and shivering.
My name is Claire…
She told me she was from the future, at a time when dozens of private parties raced to produce reliable time travel, the goal being to send a human there and back in one piece. She told me that the notes really helped the project; eliminated bugs, honed the data, perfected the art.
And thus began our strange relationship, with hundreds of messages to follow, growing progressively longer until it was several papers folded together appearing each night. I went along, all the while surprised at how calmly I handled it. Quite unlike me.
When we ran out of professional topics, we shared our interests. I said I liked 90’s rock. She liked the Oldies. Turned out they were the same. We shared our lives, our hopes, our dreams. At first for the sake of science, of course, but I couldn’t help falling for her. Hard. I figured she liked me too, since the notes continued even after she told me that phase of the project had ended.
She finally wrote.
Talk about long distance, huh?
The longest distance.
Of course, my psychiatrist thinks I’m completely bonkers. He’s changed my meds a dozen times, though I know I’m fine. I don’t even feel like I need them anymore. The anxiety, the depression; both gone.
She wants to volunteer as the first human through the ripple, and I’ll be waiting. Waiting for her to make that long distance through time and space feel so incredibly small.
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 17, 2013 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Lucas Three sat in the coffee shop long after she left, long after the people that had watched the scene play out had moved on. He sat for hours after she’d calmly, mercilessly ended their three year relationship with a calculated precision of language that even he couldn’t have delivered more succinctly.
“This has been fun, really, it’s been fantastic, but you knew this was never going to last.” She didn’t touch her latte, which was never a good sign.
“You’re never going to get old, and I’m going to age out and die. At some point you’re going to leave me for someone younger, and by then I’ll be too old to find anyone to love me and I’ll simply die alone.” Her hands flew about the space in front of her as she spoke. He often wondered if she were forced to keep her hands in her pockets, would she be able to speak at all? He smiled at that thought, and the smiling caused him pain.
“Already my friends find you ‘quaint’, and your friends look upon me as some kind of lesser thing. Janson Four called me a relic. A relic? I’m twenty nine years old, I’m not a god damned relic.” She raised her cup and put it back down without drinking. “What are they going to be saying about me at fifty nine? Seventy nine? Am I to be a sideshow freak at your social events? I’m sorry. I’m not going to put myself in that position. You knew this day was going to come, and it has. I’ve had my things moved out of the apartment this morning, you can have access revoked at your convenience, I won’t be coming back.”
She’d risen at that point, and suddenly aware that her unintentionally raised voice had turned heads and sparked a series of whispered conversations, she softened visibly, shoulders dropping, eyes losing their searing glare of purpose to tear up at the edges in a haze of uncertainty.
“Listen Lucas, I’m sorry. I really am. I’ve loved you, I still do love you,” her voice broke, “but I can’t go on loving you, I have to go.”
She made it to the door before she turned again.
“Goodbye” was all she said, and then she was gone.
When the coffee shop proprietor none to subtly turned off the lights and motioned to the closed sign by the door, Lucas stepped out in the nighttime air. She had been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, a bright light in a sea of grey, and she was gone. Were he to have a heart, it would have been breaking, and as much as he knew he wasn’t built to feel what he was feeling, the thoughts and emotional response racing through his head were too much for him to take. If he didn’t do something, he feared he would break completely.
On the pier, listening to the waves shushing the shoreline, he overrode the safeties and did a search of his memories, collecting every single moment they’d shared together into an array, and without a second thought iterated through the batch and deleted them all.
When the process completed, he felt a strange sense of emptiness, but the anxiety had dissipated.
As he turned, he saw her, perhaps the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. They walked towards each other, and he could see that she’d been crying, her face streaked and makeup spoiled. “How quaint” he thought out loud, and she stopped, her eyes searching his.
“Lucas,” she spoke as he passed, “Lucas,” her voice almost pleading, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to live without you.”
As he reached the end of the pier, the strange and beautiful woman’s voice trailed off behind him, and he wondered who her words were for.
He turned the corner past the coffee shop he haunted daily, and stumbled, mind racing, mental and emotional processes run amok for no discernable reason. He’d have sworn, if he’d had a heart and ever allowed someone inside it, this is what it would feel like were it to be broken.
by submission | Dec 12, 2013 | Story |
Author : Ellen Ahlness
“We’re entering the closest point of the arc,” Yeltsin calls. “Fourty rels now!”
We all take our positions, Marko, Kovsky and I. Marta’s already been at her place since we got in range of the Planet.
Earth. It’s such a strange word, tingly and rough on my tongue. Yeltin’s always saying they’re like our cousins across the solar system—they just haven’t gotten around to visiting us. Koysky says they’re actually our descendants, that some bastard children got left here when we last visited millennia ago.
That’s ridiculous. Koysky’s the worst conspiracy theorist of the lot. The proof’s irrefutable that our first trip here was nothing but damage. All we did was kill all those lizards.
“Why can’t we just make contact?” Marko’s got the worst job of all: systems upkeep. Of course he’d want to be home sooner than later. He handles the cold of space worst of all.
“Don’t be stupid!” I poke. “We need to land to prove ourseves. If the humans have made anything clear, it’s their ability to explain away even the most explicit evidence.”
“Oh, you’re the mission genius now, are you Korzna?” Marko rolls his eyes over his tablet. I make a not-at-all nice comment about his father, and then we’re laughing, trying to blow off anxiety in one of the few ways we can. Our chuckles quickly fade, and soft pings take over the chilled space.
“This isn’t right…” Yetsin’s going over the charts, and I agree, even from here. The lights are changing position every few seconds, charting new courses. Each one lead further from…
“Earth! We’re approaching too fast!” Marta buzzes in on the intercom. “When we rebounded into their system we started accelerating. It didn’t seem like much, but it’s been increasing. If we keep at this speed…”
“We’ll burn,” Yeltsin finishes. Marta hums agreement.
“It’s likely they’d burn with us.”
Yeltsin purses his lips. He has less than twenty rels to decide. “Is there any way to slow down?” None of us have to answer. Marko’s not a specialist, but even he knows what happens if we approach Earth at this speed. “Then it’s decided. Pull out immediately!”
“Sir! We’ll still be close—”
“Do they have long-range analysis capability yet?”
Koysky checks his pad. “No, sir.”
“Then they’ll think we’re debris. Or an asteroid.” He pauses. “Act immediately. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir,” I bark, fingers flying to the console keys. They do their job dutifully enough, but it still hurts. “Course changed.”
“Very good,” his tone suggests it’s anything but. “Will you let me know when…”
I nod and watch the data flowing in. “Closest point, sir, and…” the moment lingers. “We’re past Earth.”
A gloom settles over us. I rest my head against the console. The cold’s a comfort now, reminding me I’m here. Yeltsin is the first to speak. He’s always been uncomfortable with disappointment. “The miscalculation was to be expected. We hadn’t anticipated such drastic atmospheric changes. At past levels we’d have been able to make it in.”
There’s muttered agreements, hushed acceptance. We’ll be home soon enough, and our descendents will see the next departure leave for Earth. They’ll leave in a better ship—one that’s bigger than this, where they won’t be so high-strung. I push myself up from my slump, but when Yeltsin steps away, I send one more glance to the screen, to the green and blue sphere slowly shrinking. We’re going, yet they remain unaware of the life that desperately tries to reach them. Their night sky remains empty.
We leave. And their lonely planet keeps turning.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
We meet every six years.
The project churned out over two hundred of us. When they ordered us terminated, twelve of us escaped. There are eight of us left.
The government made a Superman straight out of the comic books back in 1952 but you know what they say about absolute power. They gave the strength and the nigh-invulnerability and the flight capability to a handsome, decorated young soldier named Walter Johnson. You should have seen him. Blonde hair, tall, honest, great shape. What a shame. He did what he was told for almost six months until one day, in a fit of pique, Walter killed his commanding officer by accident by punching him in the face.
They found the officer’s helmet embedded in a brick wall about a block away. They theorize that his head may have been atomized. Walter had been ordered to kill a few too many innocents and his sense of nationalism finally eroded to nothing. The rest of the team, following the eventuality scenario orders, opened fire. It didn’t work. He killed them, too.
Feeling hurt and betrayed, he went rogue. He tried to go underground but he was recognized wherever he went. He couldn’t get plastic surgery because nothing could penetrate the force-field around his body. Eventually, they cornered him in a warehouse in Texas where he’d been posing as an airport mechanic.
Their last-ditch insurance policy was cruel. Walter had a brother. They hauled the brother out and said that if Walter didn’t kill himself, they’d kill his brother. Walter was borderline suicidal by this point anyway. He’d been thinking about ways to do it.
He flew up into space. The vacuum did him in. He may have been invulnerable to the cold but he still needed to breathe. It didn’t take long. His body fell back to earth like a meteor and landed outside of Lubbock.
They killed his brother after that. No loose ends.
Using a specially designed drill bit, they drilled into Walter’s body and scraped a few cells out from beneath the force field.
Enter us. We were a batch of clones made from Walter. They figured if they could make us and control us from birth, we’d be more obedient. They kept us off the expense charts and away from the media. We were to be covert. They outfitted us with new tech as it became available. Things went great until puberty.
Scientists are always so shocked by nature. Wet dreams, anger issues, sullen feelings of not being understood, the need to explore, sex, growth spurts, massive confusion, floods of hormones causing borderline insanity. They couldn’t control us.
They had weapons that could penetrate our force fields. One morning, mechanical soldiers came in and opened fire on our bunks. They got most of us right then and took a bunch more of us out in the ensuing battle. Sixteen of us fled. Twelve of us made it past the outer defenses and survived the trek to civilization.
We were homeless for a while. We drifted apart. We stole where we could but some of us got jobs. The secondary backup that they had was to turn off our powers remotely. They wanted us intact in case they collected us so that they could make more.
Every six years, we meet up. Joey’s missing an arm. Jamie’s got cancer now but it looks good for a complete recovery. Sarah only pops in for a second, looking great in her suit. This time even Jake made it but he looks like the heroin is winning.
We talk for a while.
