by submission | Sep 8, 2013 | Story |
Author : Connor Yeck
Employee entry, Kennedy Space Center:
I don’t know if the other guys do this, but I like keeping records so I’m typing some things on my own terminal while we wait. Is personal stuff allowed? The rockets are past the point of alteration anyway, so there isn’t much to do.
Hoping my first project goes smoothly.
I guess it’s ironic or something to say that, as we’re trying to crash our hardware into the moon. But if we’re lucky, LCROSS* will give us a look at how much water is up there, and the impacts will throw up a cloud or maybe something even better to analyze. It’s hard trying to explain to my parents why this isn’t a waste of tax-money.
*LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite—we just know what it does, the details of acronyms tend to be forgotten around here)
We’re at the one minute mark, no one’s talking. It’s just like the movies.
There’s the first hit. Someone claps and we watch the figures. Second hit. Everyone’s cheering. It’ll be a while before we know anything, but the hardware made it, that’s all that matters.
I’m typing this in the evening.
It was a good day at the office, and we’re heading out for the night to celebrate. Further results will be checked tomorrow. There might’ve been bigger impacts than we thought, and are tracking an object heading out from the moon that could be a crater fragment. Should burn up. Still can’t believe I work here.
It’s morning. No one came in today, but I’m alive, which is good.
I think most of the cities are gone now. I’m sure we would’ve retaliated the same way, if a rocket had come through the roof of our world and landed in our president’s bed. The Lunars (some like the name Moonies (ugh)), are very scientific from what we can tell, and are sending a good deal of our own planet into the air for study.
Final note: mission success, results show water on moon.
by submission | Sep 7, 2013 | Story |
Author : Nils Holst
It had been five years since Theo had seen another human being, much less saluted one.
“Captain Theodore Holmes of Alpha Company, Third Colonial Marine Battalion?” asked the man with the holopad. He didn’t look up as he scrolled through the UNSS Sargazzio’s personnel list.
“Yes sir,” croaked Theo. The Sargazzio’s voice recognition software had failed over a year ago, he hadn’t spoken in months.
“Where’s your commanding officer?”
“I’m the only soldier aboard this ship sir. The rest of my battalion died on Ignis Magna.”
The man frowned and clicked off his holopad. He looked a bit soft around the middle. Too much time behind a desk.
“There were over eight hundred men listed on that manifest. You’re the only one left?”
“Yes sir,” said Theo. “Seven soldiers made it to the dropship, but I was the only one the Sargazzio’s autodocs could save.”
“You, ah… seem to be taking this pretty well captain.”
“It took the Sargazzio five years to get back here sir, I’ve come to terms with a few things. When will I be redeployed?”
The man shook his head and beckoned for Theo to follow him.
“I am Martin Ortega, or Admiral Ortega I suppose, if you insist on titles. I was promoted from postmaster to high admiral this morning for the express purpose of welcoming you back home. We don’t have much of a need for admirals these days, but we figured you’d appreciate the gesture.”
The space station was deserted, silent save for their footfalls echoing through the corridor. The sound had nearly driven Theo mad on his long flight home.
Ortega paused in front of a viewport, looking out at the massive hull of the Sargazzio. The pinnacle of military engineering when she was commissioned over eighty years ago, the ship had sixteen twin-mounted flak cannons, eight large-coil railguns, a suite of countermeasure lasers, four Grindlewald drives capable of sustained .9c, and enough life support for a full mechanized battalion. She had gone out accompanied by much pomp and circumstance, stuffed with soldiers and armed to the airlocks. She had come back a battered hulk, an ancient behemoth limping into dock on quarter power with holes the size of watermelons punched through her hull.
“The war is over,” Ortega said. “The treaty was signed the year before you landed on Ignis Magna, but even at near-light speeds most planets didn’t get stand-down orders for another couple years. The riots started when they declassified the casualty lists. Billions dead for no reason. The Colonial Defense Force was dismantled, the arms cartels overthrown. We’ve been at peace ever since. For decades we’ve kept this station operational, waiting as the warships trickled in. Waiting for you.”
“Me?”
“Your battalion was the last. After we’re done here the station will be demolished and the Sargazzio slagged. The world has moved on, the war is ancient history.”
Ortega turned away from the viewport and walked toward the receiving room.
“What happens now?”
“You’re discharged,” Martin said. “Let me be the first to congratulate you on surviving the Long War, now described as the biggest fuckup in human history. You’ll be in the media spotlight for a while, journalists and network commentators wanting to talk to the last returning soldier. But after a couple weeks you’ll be old news, and everyone will forget. You’ll see – things have changed. You may have only aged ten years, but the world you knew fell by the wayside decades ago.”
Silence filled the room.
“Did we win?”
“Does it matter?”
by submission | Sep 6, 2013 | Story |
Author : Amanda Schoen
I was at work when the chat program pinged. We weren’t supposed to take personal calls so I ignored it. Two seconds later it pinged again. And again. Oh hell. One conversation couldn’t hurt.
My sister’s handle popped up. <Mel, I have some bad news. Dad passed away.>
It was the sort of thing that warranted a phone call, so the words could dissipate in the ether. Instead they lingered in fuzzy black print on the screen.
Had he been sick? I didn’t know. It’d been eons since I called home.
Well. That was something.
I logged into my personal server and sent every picture I had. <When’s the service? I’d like to be there.>
The screen said my sister was typing. It took ages. I expected directions to the funeral home, the date of the ceremony. But when the screen blinked, her reply was short. <That’d be nice.>
She logged off without another word.
Well…people coped with grief in different ways. Maybe she just needed space. There’d be an obituary. Something in the paper that would have the details. I opened the browser and kept a tab open to the local paper.
It seemed disrespectful to just go back to work. Maybe I should hit a bar. Or call my sister back. There were probably things to do before the service…
But I couldn’t tear myself away from the computer. My sister might need space, but I just threw myself into work. There was something comforting about coalescing data. I’d been doing this for…I don’t know how long. A while. It’d become rote.
I took regular breaks to check if Dad’s obituary had made the paper yet. Nothing. So I sent a chat request to my sister until she responded.
<No, himself.> It was free to go in and get the scan, to store a copy of your memories on a hard drive. Accessing them later, now that got tricky. Most folks agreed to work for the storage company. Contract basis. Who wouldn’t do a year of labor—or ten, or a hundred—if it meant immortality?
And there were laws. You weren’t a piece of software; you had rights. You got email. The Internet. All the commercials showed happy families chatting away with their loved ones on their laptops. Some even set a place for the computer at the dinner table. What more could you want?
<Why?> It made no sense. You made your backup before you died. You didn’t even need to know how it’d happened, no memories of agonizing pain to haunt you. Most people spent their time plugged in anyway. They just carried on. Forever.
She paused. <It’s late. I should go.>
She logged off, leaving me to reread our stilted words, longing for a program that could parse them for deeper meaning.
Somewhere along the seventeenth time I checked the paper, the obituary popped up. It was short and sparse, each word measured against the cost of printing it:
Jean Phelps passed away at the age of eighty-six.
That wasn’t right. He’d just celebrated his seventieth birthday. We set the smoke detector off because I’d lit seventy little candles on the cake.
I read on:
He is survived by his wife Marie Phelps-Sanchez and his youngest daughter, Stephanie. His eldest daughter, Melanie, passed away sixteen years ago. He will be missed.
by Patricia Stewart | Sep 1, 2013 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
It had been four days since the ship’s doctor had quarantined the galley and shut down the deck’s gravity plates, and Captain Carson was becoming concerned. Not about the unwanted patient that was hold up there, but about his ship, its crew, and his now unachievable delivery schedule. Determined to regain control of his ship, the captain floated into the ad hock sickbay to confront his chief medical officer. “Mary, how much longer is this going to take? I have a schedule to maintain. I can’t afford to spend a week drifting around interstellar space because of that damn stowaway.” He pointed to the large gelatinous lifeform strapped down to a stainless steel food preparation station in the center of the room.
“Who let you in here?” snapped Dr. Breckinridge. “And put a mask on.” The medical staff suddenly began to scramble around the patient. Clearly, the captain realized, something significant was happening. Just then, a pinkish fog erupted form the undulating red blob. The captain instinctively began to gag as the vile smelling fog entered his throat. “As you can see, Captain,” protested the doctor, “we’re pretty busy right now. Please wait outside. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
A half hour later, the doctor and her staff drifted into the main corridor where the captain was not-so-patiently waiting. As the last medical technician exited the galley, he shut the hatch, and began entering codes into an adjacent control panel.
“Well Doctor, I’m through mincing words. Now that it’s over, when can I jettison your patients out the air lock?”
“Not so fast, Cliff. We have to gradually reduce the temperature in the galley to minus 270K, so the vapors can condense in the correct sequence. Then the liquid will need to accrete, polymerize, and crosslink. After that, we need to pull a vacuum…”
“I don’t want the details, Doctor. I want a day, and a time!”
“Fine, if you insist. The day after tomorrow, around 1400. But really, Cliff, what is your problem? Don’t you care about the sanctity of life?”
“Not when it comes to Etheronians. But unfortunately, I can’t do whatever I want. Regulations force me to shut down my reactors and provide assistance, which I have, by the way. I just don’t understand why the world needs to come to a stop just because an Etheronian hitches a ride on a starship. By the way, did you figure out how that damn thing got onto my ship in the first place?”
The doctor smiled. “Ship’s captains have been asking themselves that question for centuries. No one seems to know. It just happens. You should be savoring the moment? The rest of the crew isn’t spittin’ comets, like you.”
“Well, maybe the crew likes eating Q-rations. I don’t.” The captain pirouetted and pulled himself toward the turbolift. A few minutes later, the captain walked onto the bridge. It was comforting, he realized, to feel the pull of artificial gravity again. He strided to the command chair and sat down. That’s when he noticed that the entire bridge crew was staring at him.
“Well?” asked Lieutenant Faunce at Opps.
“They will be gone in two days, Lieutenant. Then things can get back to normal.”
Lieutenant Faunce put her hands on her hips and scowled through murderous, squinting eyes. “You know, sir, that’s not what I wanted to know.”
“Oh, very well, Lieutenant, it’s a girl.”
by submission | Aug 28, 2013 | Story |
Author : David Kavanaugh
“Your honor, counsel, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, good morning. Over the last two months, we have heard so many rambling excuses for the accused’s illegal activities, that I’m sure you’re feeling a little overwhelmed. So I want to take the final moments of this trial to step back, and look at the simple facts.
“These individuals before you did knowingly deceive the American government and steal sixty-two billion— let me repeat that— sixty-two billion dollars from the United States! Under the pretense of their so-called ‘science,’ they convinced Congress to fund a mission designed to deviate the course of the asteroid known as Hercules 113b. They claimed their federally funded satellite network indicated that the asteroid was on a collision course for planet Earth.
“Of course, we all know now that no such imminent disaster was ever actually likely. And the accused’s trickery didn’t end there. They staged a launch and released a video that showed a supposedly successful strike on 113b. The world cheered, the streets rang out with joy. We were saved! Or so we thought, until video analysis proved the footage to be phony.
“When news came of their deceit, they didn’t beg for mercy or apologize or even return the funds right away. They were— they are— proud to admit that Hercules 113b was never going to hit Earth! In fact, it was never going to pass any closer than twenty-two thousand miles. I don’t know about you, but I’m not too worried about a bit of space rock whizzing around somewhere out in the stars.
“Now, we’ve heard their excuses about threat of these Hercules asteroids, about how they needed more funding. But here’s my question: Why couldn’t these ‘scientists’ convince Congress in the first place, with the truth?
“Now, we’ve already begun the process of healing after this repulsive abuse of trust. We’ve frozen the program until new leadership can be established, and the satellites should be back up and running in a few months. But that’s not enough. We cannot let treachery of this sort go unpunished.
“It doesn’t matter how fervently they believe their methodical mumbo-jumbo. What matters is that the law is followed, and that the American people have a say in how their hard-earned dollars are spent. It’s that simple. So, on behalf the United States of America, I ask that you return a verdict of guilty as charged against the accused. Thank you.”
It took the jury less than twenty minutes to deliberate. Guilty. On all charges.
The young prosecutor’s very white smile showed as he sauntered down the courthouse stairs and jogged across the street towards the park.
Ducks were bickering over breadcrumbs. A teenage boy was trying in vain to lock lips with a teenage girl on a park bench. A girl wearing headphones and neon sneakers and little else jogged past, her breasts bouncing in rhythm with each step. The prosecutor’s grinned widened.
It truly was a beautiful day. The sun was high and hot, the sky a rich blue, broken only by a few feathery cirrus clouds.
He sighed, taking in the scenery, nearly bursting with pride at knowing that his career was finally taking off, that the world was his.
Then the sky cracked in two and the horizon rushed towards him in a wall of black.
Hercules 114, unseen as it passed by the satellites whose funding was now cut, had just reached Earth. It burst over the coast of Nova Scotia, sending ripples washing across the continents, so that the landscape glowed and danced.
