by submission | Jul 19, 2013 | Story
Author : C.T. Jackman
The jungle reminded me of home. The long periods of silence between its trees were occasionally broken by sharp shrieks and violence that ended the monotony, but perpetuated the tension, and the muggy, cramped space forced me to constantly check my path underneath the everlasting presence of watchful eyes and stinging pain, though thankfully this time the pain came from bugs and not a belt.
Everything around me jacked my blood pressure through the roof, and I’m sure that fact only made things easier for the parasites to find me and pick me apart. I swatted one that landed on my cheek, and I felt its guts smear across my stubble. Trying to rub it away probably just added to the grime, as the mud and sweat that soaked my gloves certainly didn’t make for a sanitary wipe.
A shrill bird-call echoed through the canopy, and I dropped to a knee. My eyes scanned the trees as my finger crept towards the trigger of my particle rifle. I slowly exhaled, then took in one sharp breath and held it to steady my aim. When nothing appeared, I exhaled again and called out to my partner. “Buck,” I said into the trees, quickly and quietly.
After a tense moment, I received an answer from my left. “Yeah, buddy?” he whispered back.
“Just wanted to find out where you were, so I don’t accidentally blow your head off.”
I heard him chuckle. “I hear ya.”
Knowing that the rescue crew wouldn’t appreciate the two us squatting in jungle all day, I rose to my feet and pushed further through the brush, hoping that we were still on the right track. The locators on our belts would tell them where we were, but having lost our only compass in an eel-infested river a couple hours ago, we couldn’t tell where we were ourselves.
I kept my gun trained on the shadows ahead, every once in a while checking my six. I heard the groan of branches overhead, and a quick somersault was all that saved me from getting crushed by the ton of fur, teeth, and muscle that burst through the treetops. I was already running by the time I caught a glimpse of it; with four arms and fangs to spare, it was one bad ape. I hoped to God that it was slower than it looked.
Leaves and vines whipped my face as I ran through the darkness, the ape in close pursuit. My lungs were heaving in the warm air, and my only thoughts were of a place to hide from the angry monster behind me. The toe of my boot snagged on a rock, and before I knew it, I was sent careening to the ground. I knew that the jungle finally had me when my I looked up and saw my rifle three yards away. The beast’s roar filled my ears, and it beat four meaty hands against its chest. I had a second to imagine it beating me to death the same way, but instead of getting pulverized, I heard three sharp blasts of energy and felt a shower of warm liquid against my skin. A half-second later, the ape fell to the dirt next to me, dead. I rolled onto my back, and found Buck standing over the two of us triumphantly. The barrel of his own rifle had smoke drifting from it and he offered me a hand.
“You never know what to expect here, do you?” he asked.
“No sir,” I replied, grasping his hand before getting to my feet. “Just like home.”
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by submission | Jul 16, 2013 | Story
Author : Bob Newbell
“I'm glad to hear the medication I added at our last visit didn't cause any side effects,” said the psychiatrist to his patient. “And I see you've had two sessions of psychodrama therapy. How did that go?”
“I think that really helped,” said the patient. “I acted out Neil Armstrong planting the American flag on the Moon.”
“And how did doing that make you feel?” asked the doctor.
“It made me feel proud to be a human being. It was something we accomplished,” said the patient. He shifted his gaze from the physician to the floor. “I mean, it took us a really long time to do that, of course.”
“The time it took is immaterial,” replied the doctor. “Your psychodrama wasn't just therapy. It was an homage to the tenacity and ingenuity of your people.”
“How long did it take you to do it?” the man asked, looking again at the doctor. “Your people, I mean. It took us close to 10,000 years to go from the beginnings of agriculture to the beginnings of space travel. How about you?”
“Well,” the physician replied, looking somewhat uncomfortable, “my people took about 1000 of your years to achieve the same result.”
“Because you're smarter than we are. Because Newton and Einstein and Hawking were mentally handicapped by your standards, right?” The man was getting progressively more agitated as he spoke.
“Well, Mr. Johnson,” replied the psychiatrist, “intelligence is an awfully slippery concept. IQ tests are infamously susceptible to cultural biases. And there are many different varieties of intelligence which can make it difficult to disentangle–”
“You're polite about it,” the patient interjected. “All of your people are. Not like some of the other aliens.”
“Polite about what, Mr. Johnson?”
“The fact that humans are the dimwits of the galaxy. Eight intelligent species in the Milky Way and humanity is a distant eighth in brainpower. Compared with the rest of you lot, Socrates was a scatterbrain and Shakespeare was a hack writer. At least you don't look down your noses at us like some of the others.”
As the doctor had no nose he assumed from the context that his patient's phrase was a reference to condescension. The psychiatrist tapped away on his data pad.
“Mr. Johnson, why don't we try another round of psychodrama therapy and schedule a follow up in three weeks?”
After the patient left his office, the doctor tapped his data pad again to activate its voice recorder.
“Addendum to today's encounter note. Mr. Johnson continues to have exacerbations of Alien Contact Inferiority Syndrome. Psychodrama treatments appear to be helping and the patient does possess insight into the regrettably pronounced cognitive deficits of his species. No change in medications. Will continue current management and follow up in the office in three weeks. As with all ACIS patients, Mr. Johnson is advised to minimize contact with extraterrestrials and to contact emergency medical services at once in the event of any suicidal ideation.”
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by submission | Jul 9, 2013 | Story
Author : David Stevenson
My uncle Frank was the first man ever to be killed by an interplanetary baked potato.
He had fought in the first war; the war between our beautiful planet of Prutashka and the savages of Binkaret, one planet nearer to our sun.
This war was fought by conventional means, and since our bountiful planet had abundant supplies of fossil fuels and fissionable materials whilst their backwards hellhole had neither, we soon triumphed and made them our slaves.
We made sure that they had no access to any military technology so that they would never again be a threat. This was purely for their own good, of course. We only allowed them to develop their agricultural economy. Soon they were producing millions of tons of vegetables each year for export to our planet.
Of course, allowing them ships to transport these goods was out of the question. They had a space elevator which could lift the exports out of their gravity well. The potatoes were coated in a metallic foil which both preserved them and also provided something for the linear accelerator to grab hold of. Several times a second a solitary potato was launched towards our planet. With no preservation problems, and no crewed spaceships to worry about they could be launched along highly energy efficient orbits, taking months to complete their journey. Tiny adjustments in acceleration and angle of launch meant that their time and place of destination could be accurately defined. Most arrivals were scheduled for mealtimes in the large cities. Large induction hoops, miles above the surface, grabbed the foil wrapped potatoes and decelerated them safely. Re-entry into the atmosphere and electrical induction heated them up so that delicious, individually wrapped meals arrived with the minimum of fuss.
We thought we had tamed their warlike instincts, but we could not have predicted the horror that their treachery would unleash.
Five years ago, they had a bumper crop of potatoes. The excess potatoes were launched in the usual way, but were sent on long, slow orbits which would take five years to complete. Their economy was working well now, and every year they increased their vegetable output until, by last year, we estimate that one in every three potatoes launched was being put in a delayed orbit to arrive on what has become known as P-Day.
It was a terrible day.
Millions of potatoes, all arriving in the same one hour window, completely overwhelmed the normal reception arrangements. We got only a few hours warning of the onslaught before piping hot, metallic wrapped missiles began hitting military targets. My uncle Frank was vaporised early on, and my aunt still bears the scars from a jet of scalding chili which hit her. I myself have lost an eye to a vicious gout of red hot coleslaw.
Now their entire output is being launched on short, fast orbits designed to impact and cause maximum damage. Our spaceports are destroyed, our military are mostly dead, and our cities lie ruined beneath giant mounds of potatoes.
I have no idea how we’ll fight back, but at least we have plenty to eat.
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by submission | Jul 3, 2013 | Story
Author : Eric C. Prichard
“There is a certain sickening irony one finds in the pre-contact “science” fiction of the Utamin. They depict people from other worlds as invaders. To be fair, sometimes they are kinder. Sometimes “aliens” are diminutive bug-eyed sage-like psychic helpers who visit the Utamin’s planet in order to warn them about the implications of the existential threat created by their nuclear weapons. It is as if they assumed there must be another race in the galaxy stupid enough to create a weapon powerful enough to destroy an entire planet, but which is somehow advanced enough to transcend the threat and become large headed super beings who travel around space and help other peoples actualize before accepting them into the interplanetary community. A hint of wishful thinking I suppose.
Well, we were foolish enough to accept them without even thinking twice about the A-bomb. Sure they are less intelligent and more aggressive than us. Sure they were mismanaging their planet’s resources. But they had resources! The Council of the Wise saw economic opportunity and couldn’t wait. We traded with them. Then we educated them. Then we armed them when they complained about intergalactic piracy. We should have read their history before we entrusted them with our technology. Now we speak their languages! English! Russian! Mandarin! Ugly Earth sounds. Even Utamin, one of the last words in Byruian still in common use, is derived from the English word ‘Human.’
In their fiction they imagined us as invaders because their history is merely a ceaseless list of invasions. Their heros are takers and conquerers! The ink in which their legends are written is a mixture of the blood and ash of fallen cities! To them, it is only natural that a new place and a new people are things to be exploited. We could have contained them from the beginning. Now our planet is a collections of “sphere’s of economic influence.” Make no mistake. Earth is 3 1/2 light years (now we even use the distance that light moves in one of THEIR years to measure interplanetary distances) away form us, but we are merely a fief under the thumb of our Utamin overlords.
People ask me how an Earth educated man like myself, someone whose very family became wealthy by being good little pets for the Utamin, could bite the hand that feeds me. Well, it feeds me no longer! I renounce my father and my wealth! I have seen Utamin ways. I have read their twisted conquest fantasies. And I now believe that open resistance in the only thing they will understand. Strength is the only thing they will respect. We are not Utamin. We are not Humans! We are better than that. But Byruian ways are no match for the violence of Human ways. To reclaim our Byruian identity, we must fight like Humans.”
-Excerpt from an Op-Ed in “The True Byruian,” a pro Byruian Resistance newspaper written during the ill fated Byruian uprising. Circa 2213 C.E. (common era, Earth calendar).
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by submission | Jun 28, 2013 | Story
Author : Bob Newbell
Rancent-1664 walked into the office of his Preceptor, Ferrin-3411, and waited to be acknowledged. “Enter, Rancent,” Ferrin said to his understudy. Rancent's thirteen pairs of legs glided the excited young scientist up to the workstation of his superior.
“Preceptor, I've found it! An Earth in another brane with a technological civilization!” Rancent's antennae quivered as he spoke.
Ferrin-3411 looked at the eager physicist and said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, young professor.”
“But I have the proof, Preceptor! Over the last eight weeks I've sent countless probes across into the other brane. Each time they could only linger for a very few moments before collapsing back into our brane-space. But the computer has been able to process and collate the data from the probes.”
Ferrin looked skeptical. “The volume of data you're talking about would be staggering.”
“It was! I had to get permission to use nearly the entire Lunar Processing Array for a brief time.”
“Nearly the entire array?” asked Ferrin, impressed that his apprentice was able to obtain such permission on his own.
“From the surface to the core,” said Rancent.
“And after a Moon-sized computer chewed on your data what was the conclusion?”
“Preceptor, I have found an Earth inhabited by intelligent mammals.”
Ferrin let that sink in. Rancent was a good scientist. Precise, methodical, respectful of orthodoxy but not bound by it. He was not the type who would make such a seemingly outrageous assertion. Ferrin could accept a parallel Earth with some sort of non-trilobite intelligence. But mammals? It sounded like the plot of some frivolous piece of speculative fiction.
Sensing that his mentor was not entirely convinced, Rancent said, “Preceptor, you will recall the discovery by Blorek-2832 of a parallel brane containing an Earth populated by reptiles?”
“Of course,” said Ferrin. “Blorek's discovery is the most significant in the history of brane exploration.”
Up till now, thought Rancent, who then replied, “Blorek theorized that life on the Earth in the universe he discovered developed much as it did here until a mass extinction event killed off the primitive trilobites. This, he suggested, may have allowed the reptilians to develop and eventually rise to dominate the planet.”
“That part of Blorek's theory is still controversial. But it does fit the facts. You propose that in the world you discovered a catastrophe destroyed the trilobites and the mammals rose to prominence?”
“That's one possibility,” said Rancent. “Or, perhaps, the reptilians came to dominate this newly discovered Earth as well for a time and they in turn were wiped out by a cataclysm that allowed the mammals to ascend. The data I've collected is most consistent with this latter scenario.”
“So you plan to ask the Brane Exploration Authority for the allocation of more probes to investigate this new world to confirm or deny your theory?”
“I had a somewhat different idea in mind, Preceptor.”
“Such as?”
“I want to ask the inhabitants.”
“What?!”
“That would be the most efficient way to find out. Based on the level of technology the mammals appear to possess, it's likely that they're advanced enough to have string theory. Parallel branes have likely been at least theorized by their physicists.”
Communication between two intelligent civilizations in two branes, thought Ferrin. In his mind, Ferrin pictured trilobitomorphic rodents discussing 11-dimensional membrane theory. He laughed.
“Preceptor?” asked Rancent, afraid his mentor was not taking him seriously.
Ferrin gave Rancent a gesture of reassurance. “Just wondering how one addresses an intelligent mammal,” he said as he opened a communication channel to the Brane Exploration Authority.
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