by submission | Jan 3, 2013 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
No one ever comes into manhood dreaming they’d one day go off to war. Sure, some boys sign up voluntarily, in peacetime and besides, with good notions like “defending one’s country” and “promoting democracy.” But those are just words. No one ever really goes to war of their own volition, knowing and understanding exactly the kind of hell they’re walking into. I didn’t. I got my draft papers and just went off to Nam without another word. One tour of duty was all they were asking for, and I wasn’t so unpatriotic as to let someone else go in my place. Only the cowards ran to Canada anyhow. Except now I wish I had been a coward. I guess that’s just how war changes you.
I remember a private in my platoon, thought he was going to be some kind of damn war hero. He’d volunteered. He was excited. He was a goddamned idiot.
“You just wait til we get to that open field on the northern border,” he used to say. “That’s where it’s going to happen. I’m going to be a hero, you just wait and see.”
We laughed, but we could all see that this boy was different. Every engagement, he’d go in with eyes like a child playing a game of baseball. He just looked into the jungle, smiled, and fired into the trees like he knew exactly where the enemy was hidden. Sometimes he’d get lucky. Other times he’d hit nothing but bark and leaves. In every case, that smile stayed on his face, like the war just wasn’t real to him, like it wouldn’t matter if any of us lived or died. It would have given us all the willies if the boy weren’t so likable in all other respects, idiot though he was.
Most days while we marched this private would entertain us by reciting his favorite science fiction stories, famous ones according to him, though most were unfamiliar to the rest of us. He’d talk about the flying machines that were coming down the pipeline, about the bigger and badder bombs the government was making, about space and time travel and all the rest. He’d cite authors like Crichton, Scott Card, Axelrod and Kachelries. I’d never heard of a damn one, but he talked about them like they were saints.
“Just you wait and see,” he said. “They’re going to be huge!”
We all just chuckled and thanked our stars that at least he wasn’t a damned coward.
But eventually, as it always does, the war got the best of even him. We were just off the northern border when the enemy came upon us out in the open. We were surrounded on three sides, outnumbered and outgunned. Poor boy just froze up, took a bullet right to the chest, and went down in the first five minutes. I don’t think he ever fired a single shot. After our retreat, I found him among the wounded, dying and unattended. The medics had already marked him for death.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” the boy said as I knelt beside him. “They said I would be a hero. They said the technology was flawless. I’d be him. I’d live his life. God, this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Despite my desire to look away, I stayed with the private while he muttered on. War made fools of us all, and I wouldn’t shame him by leaving his side. It’s not like I had anywhere else to be.
“Infinite universes,” he said again, a small drop of blood running down his chin. “Infinite possibilities. They said it was flawless. They said…”
But he said no more. He was gone.
War is hell. Even the most confident and foolhardy among us eventually fall under its weight. If we don’t falter in life, it creeps up on us, breaking our spirits in death. That poor private’s face, which had for so long held that expression of stupid, youthful exuberance, now only showed the cold, hard reality of disappointment.
by featured writer | Jan 2, 2013 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, featured writer
When the Quantum Drive was invented in 2023 the world was transformed; not all at once, mind you, but by degrees.
Initially, it was just the career explorers who ventured into the vast and unknown regions of space in their state-of-the-art Quantum shuttles on missions to map the new cosmic frontier. The intrepid cosmonauts were soon followed by wealthy thrill seekers in supped-up models of the Quantum rocket car. These bored rocket jocks quickly tired of the routine and rapidly growing congestion of the local super-highways within our Solar System and took to venturing further and further into space looking for high-octane adventure and exotic conquests. Most never returned.
Due to the effects of time dilation, it was a while before any reports came back to Earth regarding what was being discovered in the depths of the cosmos by these first pioneers. But, sure enough, within a few years news of diverse, hospitable planets and moons started trickling in, sparking an exodus that resembled a swarm of rats abandoning a sinking ship.
Earth’s population thinned out pretty fast after that. Once it was established that the galaxy was teeming with easily accessible profit opportunities, nearly every industry practically stumbled over each other in a frenzy to take advantage of them. Real Estate and mining moguls, colonial expansionists in their trans-galactic Winnebago’s, corporations, and war mongers all dropped Earth like the hollowed, profitless husk it had become. Even environmentalists and religious factions left to defend or convert new worlds. As far as all these groups were concerned, Earth was a used up commodity. But out there, beyond our solar system, the dream of an ever expanding economy still lived and everybody wanted their piece of the pie.
Well, not everybody.
Before long, only the infirm, the very old, the very young, the poor, the weak and the astrophobes were left behind, as well as those of us who simply didn’t give a damn about exporting humanity’s particular brand of schizophrenic perversion throughout the galaxy. Earth was our home and we were perfectly content to be left alone.
When Earth’s economy inevitably collapsed, nobody really cared much. We simply ceased all non-essential mining operations. We stopped producing needless and inferior commodities. We no longer endorsed land ownership; borders disappeared overnight. Politics became localized and diverse. Those of us who once went despairingly unheeded finally found a voice in our respective communities. Most of us became farmers, the rest, craftspeople and artisans. No one was a wage slave. A functioning technocracy, a byproduct of the scientific renaissance that sparked the Quantum Drive, provided ample, renewable power for our limited industries and humble requirements. War became a thing of the past. The desire to dominate and control left with all the hot-headed yahoos in their quest for greater glories. Those of us left behind found out pretty quickly how to get along with each other.
We, the inheritors of Earth realized that we had been granted a rare opportunity. With the ambitious, power-hungry, alpha personalities gone, the modest, obscure and lowly remnants of humanity were able to rebuild a relative utopia from the rusted, plastic clogged junkyard of our home world.
Thanks to the time dilation of quantum space travel it was a long, long time before anyone decided to check up on us. But yesterday we received a message from deep space. A ship was on its way. The Prodigal Child was returning. We could only hope that our brothers and sisters from the stars had learned the wisdom of humility we had so carefully cultivated here at home.
by submission | Dec 30, 2012 | Story |
Author : James McGrath
“One of us is going to have to make a move, y’know?”
I did know, but that didn’t make it any easier. We’d been in a stalemate for three minutes; our pistols pointed at them and theirs at us. However, the advantage lay with them, as while the two damned space-pirates were clearly enjoying themselves, Marissa, my pilot, and I looked uneasy.
Regret swelled inside of me as I thought of how I had followed the pirates here, but I knew it would lead to the fission core. This object could re-power my antique spacecraft for decades and it was only a few feet from me. If these brigands took it, it could be years before I found another. That would be too late; the ship would be drained by then. I had to act now.
The clamour of a ship exiting light-speed behind me forced me to turn. Colossal in size, it loomed overhead, bearing the emblem of the Space Federation Forces.
“We’ve been tracked!” howled the pirate Captain, his face distorted in fear.
A platform lowered from the keel of the ship and it took little time for two officers to emerge. They stepped towards us, rifles in hand.
“Captain Zhang, you are under arrest for numerous crimes against the Federation,” stated the female force member, “Civilian, please retreat from the wreckage, that core belongs to us.”
Panic gripped me. There was no way Marissa and I could survive a fire-fight while sandwiched between our two opponents. We were going to lose the core! However, by good fortune, Zhang chose this moment to get diplomatic.
“You two!” he screamed, sending searing hot plasma flying past me and into the chest of the subordinate officer, “Don’t let them take me or my crew, and you can have the core!”
Marissa flung herself behind some wreckage to our right to avoid the fire, while I went left.
“Get back to the ship; tell the crew – we get the core!” I yelled to her as I fired a round at the SF reinforcements now leaving their ship, “They’ll go after the pirates, so pick me up then!”
As a volley of fire flew past my position, I couldn’t help but fixate on the fission core that lay a mere metre from my feet. The neon pink hue captivated me as I thought of how some of the crashed ship’s crew must have salvaged it from their mangled vessel. They must have perished with no way to escape this barren planet, but their loss could mean I could continue being a pilot.
There was a whirring above me, and air buffeted my body as Red Jizo came for her cargo. The Federation Forces fired upon her, but only from the ground, worried that using their ship’s weapons could end up hitting the wreckage below. Jizo’s skin was tough, and held firm as a claw was released from the base. For once, it being an old cargo ship was coming in handy.
Just as I thought fortune had smiled upon me, Zhang broke into a filthy grin.
“The core is almost inside your ship, boy!” he bellowed over to me, “And as you can see the SFF are coming close in an attempt to stop your retreat. That thing will cause some explosion! I’m sorry, but their captain has been a thorn in my side for too long, and you should have never trusted a pirate!”
My mouth opened in a scream of protest, as a bolt of plasma tore from the barrel of his pistol and collided with the core.
by Patricia Stewart | Dec 27, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
We first noticed it three days after we left the orbiting platform on our way to Mars. Initially, Tom and I thought it was just the years of extensive training. You know, you’re functioning so well as a team that you seem to know what the other person is thinking. But, as it turned out; we were actually reading each other’s mind. At first, it was just wisps of words. We joked about it until we started picking up entire sentences of thought. Houston put a dozen shrinks on it, and pored over NASA’s archive of astronaut medical reports. Apparently, seven of the twenty-four people that flew to the moon reported vague instances where they thought they knew what someone else was thinking. However, psychic telepathy testing after their return to Earth revealed no such ability. Doctor Elisabeth Myers, the world’s foremost expert in physical telepathy, suggested that all humans possess thought-transference ability from the days before our ancestors had speech. Although the ability still exists, it was eventually drowned out in the overall static created by billions of people transmitting simultaneously. However, once in isolation, and far removed from the overpowering mass of Earth’s population, the ability became apparent. Based on the Apollo data, and our description of the daily strengthening of our mind reading capability, Doctor Myers calculated that the individual range may be short, but the Earth-mass static would become negligible at a radius of approximately five million miles. Regardless of the situation, it was too late to abort, so we had to deal with it, and continue the mission as planned. Maybe, NASA predicted, the enhanced communication would be a good thing. Oh, how wrong they were.
The remainder of the seven month journey to Mars was pure hell. In essence, we were clinically schizophrenic. There were always two voices in our heads. Every thought occurred simultaneously in each other’s mind. The more we tried to suppress our thoughts, the louder they became. We knew all of each other’s intimate thoughts and memories. Even while we slept, our minds were one. It was a constant battle to prevent the other’s conscious from dominating, fearing that if we let down our guard, the other mind would take control. And we each knew the other was fighting the same battle, which only magnified the problem. There was only minimal relief during the six months on Mars. We took turns taking the rover to its maximum range. During those precious days, the voices were reduced to mere whispers. Looking back on it, that was probably our downfall. The marginal relief we had only made us dread the return trip to Earth even more. We knew we couldn’t survive it. But we also knew we couldn’t take any extreme action, like killing the other, because we always knew what the other was thinking. So, together, we reconciled on what needed to be done.
On the day of our scheduled lift off, we sat at the conference table. I thought “rock”, and Tom heard “rock”, and thought it too. I heard him hear me, and he heard me hear him hear me. And so it began; a telepathic feedback loop. The pain became excruciating as the duel escalated exponentially. And then, after an indeterminable amount of time, there was silence. I had won. Tom was dead. Exhausted, and bleeding from both ears, I wept. But my grief wasn’t about killing my friend; it was the realization that mankind would be forever trapped on the surface of the Earth, unable to explore the universe beyond the moon.
by submission | Dec 22, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
It seems like it was only yesterday when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. From my perspective, of course, it literally was yesterday. July 20, 1969. But it shouldn’t have happened then. It was April 18, 1966 when Alan Shepard, not Neil Armstrong, became the first man to walk on the Moon. If the perp had stopped there, I might have let it go. Correcting history is a tricky business. And it’s never, ever totally restored. You can’t step twice into the same river.
The Bureau had sent me out to investigate. This guy wasn’t hard to track. He was leaving a chronon trail any rookie could have followed. I followed him to 1992 and discovered two things. First, he’d already jumped ahead. Second, the Soviet Union had collapsed. Trite. I’m surprised he didn’t try the old Kill Hitler act or the Rome Never Fell routine. Why do I always get assigned the mundane stuff? Rodriguez and Thanasukolwit always get the good cases.
I trailed the perp to 2001. No Moon Colony. No Mars landing. The Internet, of course. Funny how society always goes into a postindustrial information economy whenever somebody derails space colonization. The Twin Towers in New York City knocked down by terrorists with thousands dead. Barrett took care of a similar altered timeline last year, except it was a bioterror attack on New York using a weaponized virus.
I finally caught up to the guy in 2012. A house in Kennesaw, Georgia. I kicked in the door and leveled my web gun at the punk. He wore jeans and a t-shirt and had a few tattoos and was playing with a smartphone. These guys always seem to “go native” in whatever alternate timeline they end up creating.
As I read him his rights, he glanced to his left, hoping I hadn’t noticed the temporal hoist on the chair. Of course, I had. He leapt for the chair. A split-second later he fell to the floor completely enmeshed in a web of contractile filaments. I went over to the chair, picked up the stolen temporal hoist, and inserted my Bureau override key into a slot on the back of the device. I placed the machine on the floor next to the perp and stepped back. The Bureau locked onto the chronon beacon and pulled the guy and the machine 4,218 years into the relative future.
Now I have to go and try to put history more or less back the way it was. I always dread restoring World War III. Nearly one billion dead. But you have to be detached and professional if you want to do this job. As I turn to leave, a newspaper on a table catches my eye. A war in Iraq? It’s a separate country? There’s no Ottoman Empire in 2012 in this timeline? I sigh. The paperwork on this one’s gonna be a bitch.
