by submission | Apr 26, 2016 | Story |
Author : Farah Rahman
Intelligence on the ground was that insurgents from the Afghan border were hours away from seizing control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal with the help of North Korea.
So NATO drops the bomb on Waziristan and Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, a woman gives birth in the mountains. A blinding white light bathes the land as they carry her deep into a network of caves and put her down to rest.
‘PUSH!’ shouts the midwife,
‘NO’ she screams, fighting the wave after wave of pain.
‘PUSH! Your sister is coming! It’s not too late!’
Her lips turn grey and she stops moving so they have to go in for the baby. Black rain splashes the boy’s soft, creased face and someone in a radiation suit wraps him in silver sheets and runs, deeper and deeper into the caves, until a dot of light on the other side of the mountain becomes an opening. Pebbles and rocks cascade as the figure with the child skids downhill to a plateaux where there is a vessel covered in grey, black and white camouflage. The side door is open and another figure in a suit hurries down the ladder.
‘Quick! Hand me the child!’
Rain thickens as the child is raised up.
There is sweat, panic and a flurry of hands clipping seat belts shut. The boy grows quiet as his aunt removes her mask and reveals hazel eyes, light brown skin and tangled hair caked in dust. The child lies in her arms, curled up with his knees to his chest and his right fist in his mouth. She takes his hand away gently and replaces it with a bottle. She holds him so close it is as if she is trying to absorb him through her skin.
“Allaho sha allaho zama jana allaho (Sleep my love.)
allaho sha allaho zama jana allaho
(Sleep my love.)
khobe de dershi pa lailo (May you rest with the blessing of God…)
lale lalo lale lalo lale lalo” …as sleep falls over your limbs.)
She will carry this and other songs to their new home, which has been christened ‘Al Habib’ – ‘new hope’. It will be over fifteen years before the moon with its underground quarters can be purchased entirely from the North Koreans, but in space they will have less enemies and the costs have been reasonable.
‘I’m sorry about your sister’, says the nurse, as he hurredly checks and rechecks the life signs of the crew on his moniter. He is trilingual in Korean, English, Arabic and Farsi, as are all of the Project pioneers. The boy’s aunt shakes her head in silence, tears spilling onto her lap. She kisses the boy’s brow as they break through the atmosphere and the whole ship vibrates
‘We’re lucky that he’s stable and he’s lucky he has you. Hold on to that for now and sip some water. You’ll need to drink A LOT for the journey, especially if this is your first time.’
Aisha nods and presses her lips around a straw connected to the fresh water supply attached to her seat. Naseem’s eyes close as he nuzzles into his aunt’s chest and falls asleep. She leans in and barely whispers into one feather-soft ear:
‘You will grow up to know peace. You will grow up to know beauty. I promise.’
by Stephen R. Smith | Apr 21, 2016 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Lewis unzipped the duffle bag on the table so the stacks of paper bills were visible.
“Space suits are expensive,” Sweet had told him, “and you not bring back.”
Sweet eyed the contents of the bag from a distance. “It’s all there? I don’t have to count?”
Lewis shook his head ‘no’, and waited.
“Come, you need suit.” Sweet beckoned with big hairy arms and disappeared through the vertical strips of once-clear plastic hanging in the doorway.
Lewis followed. The corrugated steel shed he’d arrived at seemed to be built into the side of a hill, and the plastic-covered door gave way to a long dark passage, which itself opened up onto a massive concrete cylinder that reached deep into the ground and rose above him to the darkening evening sky.
“Missile silo, abandoned, but perfect place for big space gun, no?” Sweet stood proudly on the lip of the old launch tube. “Come, we go down, then you go up, yes? Quick, we need to shoot soon to hit cluster.”
Lewis followed the beefy man around an expanded metal walkway, bolted to the inside wall of the silo, to where a makeshift elevator had been attached to the concrete wall. He braced himself as they descended into the darkness below.
At the bottom the tunnel opened up into an almost warehouse sized building. There were shipping pallets stacked with boxes, some wrapped in plastic and most covered in dust. A row of rough terrain vehicles sat against the far wall, though how they got there, or whether they could be driven out wasn’t immediately apparent. Overhead large bulbous lights flooded the space in pockets of warm yellow and overlapping shadows.
“Your suit,” Sweet pointed to an orange and white space suit on a nearby table, “leave your boots and jacket, put on suit, I help with helmet and gloves”.
It took Lewis nearly fifteen minutes to struggle into the suit while Sweet busied himself with what looked like a large model rocket nearby, twice as tall as the man himself and held upright by a pair of vice-like attachments on a forklift. On the side of the tube was painted ‘CCCP’ in large red letters, with a smily face added below in apparent freehand.
“Gloves first,” Sweet returned his attention to Lewis, attaching the gloves and engaging the twist lock mechanism at their cuffs. “Follow and listen.” He led Lewis, ambling awkwardly in the ill fitting suit to the forklift and it’s rocket payload. “You climb in here, we pressurize can then load you in launch tube.” He pointed off into the darkness, back in the direction they came. “You watch oxygen here,” he tapped a gauge on the suit’s sleeve, “I fire booster and it shoots you into orbit, then you push here, and here,” he grabbed at a pair of handles inside on either side of the door, pushing them away from each other, “and out you go, yes?”
Lewis studied the helmet in his hands. “Once I’m in orbit, your people will be waiting for me?”
“Yes, my people are waiting for you.” He grinned, and grasping Lewis by the shoulders shook him heartily. “You will have plenty of company.”
The launch vehicle was a squeeze, but Sweet explained the thickness and the tiled nose cone would deflect the heat, and the formed interior was as comfortable as was possible with this kind of delivery system.
“Not first class, but quick and nobody find you. Good, yes?”
Lewis nodded, then tried to relax as the door closed and he and the rocket were trundled across the floor and loaded into the launch tube which, Lewis realized, was probably also bolted onto the silo wall.
The launch itself was brutal, Lewis slipping in and out of consciousness several times before the crushing weight of Earth’s gravity abated and the craft settled into what had to be its final orbit.
Lewis waited. An hour? Hours? He’d lost track of time, and could barely make out the glowing needle on his oxygen, now showing nearly half empty.
He put his hands on the two handles, hesitated, and pushed.
The cabin depressurized instantly, tearing the door off into the vacuum of space.
The Earth was spread out blue below him, and scattered around him, dozens perhaps in a tight cluster were familiar looking cylinders, some still closed, some, like his with the door missing and a familiar orange and white suited figure inside.
Sweet sat in his silo below, poured himself another vodka and raised his glass.
“Moy narod”, he said, “my people”.
by submission | Apr 20, 2016 | Story |
Author : John Carroll
I wade deeper into the syrupy present as the drug saturates my blood. It is a hallucinogen. The deck party envelopes me like a parrot’s wings. The air becomes delicious. Through the interactive viewscreen of this observation deck that extends outward from our glittering orbital city, Jupiter can be seen hanging in space like a bloated satyr lounging grotesquely on a black hammock. I devour genetically modified lobster imported from Europa’s vast subsurface ocean. Deafening music rattles my sternum.
The music becomes dissonant and arhythmic. For hundreds of seconds, the impetus of our dance still jerks our limbs through space, and then the parrot’s wings cease their fluttering. This is not arhythmic music. An alarm is shrieking.
The city’s supercomputer overrides my personal computer and throws a video message in front of my eyes. Even when I close them, the vid plays against the wet blackness of my eyelids.
On Europa, Jupiter’s prison moon, prisoners harvest the bounty of the underocean and send that harvest to our glittering city. Enormous, terrifyingly powerful drilling lasers carve access tunnels through Europa’s surface. The prisoners in Faust District have commandeered their drilling laser. I am watching all of this happen in real time through Faust District’s camera feed. The laser is pointed skyward. Slain guards lie entombed in their own visored interdiction suits. A blinding pillar of energy leaps from the laser’s maw, slicing through Europa’s artificial atmosphere and out into space.
I have to turn off my computer completely to stop the video. I have never turned off my computer before. The loss of its whisper is like a blow to the stomach. I turn it back on and the video has stopped. The parrot shrieks and beats its wings with hurricane force. I retch. I whirl and run to the viewscreen. My numb hands swipe ineffectively at the complex interface like wooden planks. After hundreds of seconds I get the view I want. It is the view from the starboard side of the city. The side facing Europa. I see the laser beam bearing down upon us like a golden snake. In seconds we will be vaporized at the speed of death. In seconds I will be ready to die.
I wink my left eye twice and the supercomputer inside me sinks its tendrils deep into my brain, releasing a host of chemicals. The machinations of my mind accelerate to inhuman speeds. My perception of time slows to a crawl. From the sea of blissful smiles surrounding me, I can tell that many of my fellow partygoers have chosen this option as well.
I experience another one hundred years of life in four seconds as I stand before the viewscreen and wait for the laser. The hallucinogen courses through my veins for the rest of my life. For a while I watch my own vaporization with fascination. The laser devours me atom by atom at a glacial pace. It doesn’t hurt to lose one atom at a time. Eventually I retreat inside my computer and spend all of my time in the Net. I interact with other computer-enabled citizens who managed to activate slow-time with a few seconds to spare. We create a virtual city identical to our own and construct virtual avatars thrice as beautiful as our real bodies within the Net and live out the remainder of our lives there. Then, four seconds later, one hundred years later, the laser consumes us. We all die with a smirk.
by Julian Miles | Apr 18, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Mark waited just inside the shadows of the alley. Outside, people bustled past with their heads down. Nobody made eye contact with passers-by. Lens readers and the urban legends about malware being zipped into your headware by opti-flash kept everyone down. The real threat of eye-poppers seemed to be less terrifying. Mark often thought about that. To be brutally blinded scared most people less than having their data raped.
His puzzling was interrupted by his target wandering into view. The man moved with the furtiveness of a long-time resident in the low-end, but Mark knew how to tail a paranoid, because he was one.
For twenty minutes they wound their way through the low markets and the shanties of the London that the tourists never saw. They avoided groups of people engaged in whatever business caused their hostile stares and ignored the struggles in the darkness off the main drag, because to be curious was to be drawn in to an uncertain fate.
Eventually, the man darted through the awning that hung down into the water, the flash of light from within sudden and gone nearly fast enough to make you think it had been a passing aircar. Mark stopped to check his GingGam Ten. It had been his sidekick and protector for too long for him to take it for granted.
Looking both ways and then up, he darted for the awning, the blades on his gauntlet slicing it away as he moved quickly within, gun levelled. The rent-a-thug sitting by the door to the premises took one look at the size of the piece and rabbited out into the night. Mark grinned. Cheap protection was always a waste of credit. Without pause, he kicked in the door of the shop and charged in.
His target was standing with his back to the door, peering at a screen held by a fat woman in a colourful kaftan. Both straightened as Mark stormed in and he saw the matte-black case open with wires running from within to the display.
“That’s all I need, people. Unplug and hand it over.”
The target came round fast, spinning while drawing from a shoulder rig. The GingGam fired, the ‘boom’ deafening in the confined space. A crater appeared in target’s forehead and the fat woman got sprayed in bits of skull and brains.
Mark knelt to retrieve the late target’s Ruger Automag without moving his aim from the fat woman. Standing slowly, he pocketed the gun and smiled: “The gun’s good for me, you can have what’s left. Except the case.”
The woman pulled the wires from the case and snapped it shut, then slid it down the counter to him.
“It’s useless without a reader, gunboy.”
Mark nodded. “I know. And I ain’t no gunboy.” He shot her in the face, reached over and grabbed the scrip behind the counter, took the target’s wallet and picked up the case. Stepping over the bodies, he exited through the back of the shop as faces started to peer in through the shop windows. The place would be stripped bare before the plod arrived. He was free ‘n’ clear. Again.
by submission | Apr 12, 2016 | Story |
Author : Charlie Sandefer
The elderly scientist took a nervous breath before he stepped into the machine. He typed in May 23, 2016 and flipped the switch on the center console. The machine began to shake violently. His frail frame was slammed against his seat. He tightened every muscle in his body, fighting against the G forces. He felt his consciousness begin to fade away, but before his vision was swallowed by darkness, he thought of his son. He also remembered the crash. At the time of the accident, the old man was checking his phone. It was his own fault that he didn’t notice the sedan pulling out in front of him. He walked away, but his son didn’t. The death of his only child wracked the man with grief and guilt, but he was on a mission to bring him back.
The scientist awoke lying flat on a concrete surface. He jumped to his feet, trying to make sense of his surroundings. He realized he was in the basement of his own home. He tiptoed up the stairs to investigate whether or not his device was successful. He cracked the door to his room and under the covers of the bed was his former self. The scientist celebrated silently, elated that his machine had actually sent him ten years into the past. He looked at the alarm clock next to the bed. It read 5:30 am. In two hours the accident would occur and his son would be killed, he had to work fast.
He racked his brain for a solution to prevent the crash. Then it came to him, he was texting while driving, which caused the collision. If he destroyed his phone, he could prevent the accident. His smartphone was sitting on the bedside table. He snatched it and ran outside. The large rock he found in the backyard smashed the phone into several pieces.
His plan worked perfectly. The father left the house without his phone that morning. After the car pulled out of the driveway, the elderly scientist came out of hiding, a smile on his face. The grin faded, though, when the car turned right instead of left. To find out where the automobile was headed, the old man hot wired the neighbor’s car and sped after it. He was finally able to get the vehicle back in his line of sight. It signaled to turn into the electronics store, but before it could complete its turn, a large pickup truck ran the red light. The old man’s jaw dropped as he watched the car get crushed like a tin can.
He ran towards the totaled vehicle and clawed at the twisted metal, desperately trying to free himself and his son from the car. The damaged gas tank ruptured and caught fire. All hope of saving the two victims was lost when the bodies were enveloped in flame. Tears filled the man’s eyes as he stepped back from the wreckage.
Before he could come to terms with what just happened, his fingers began to tingle. The flesh on his hands started to flake off and the bones turned to dust. The scientist started to scream when he realized that his mistake was also fatal to his older self.
If his younger self died, the older version would never have existed. The universe had discovered its discrepancy and corrected it. The man gulped down as much air as possible and let out one final howl before he was stricken from the record of space and time.
