by Patricia Stewart | Nov 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The Prometheus Station was an engineering marvel. Orbiting the Earth in a low altitude sun synchronous polar orbit, it did the impossible. Its six mammoth hyperspace siphons sucked more than a Zettajoule of energy directly from the sun’s core, converted it to columnar microwaves, and transmitting it to thousands of receiving stations on the Earth’s surface. This station, and its twin orbiting 180 degrees behind her, provided Earth with all the energy its ten billion inhabitants craved.
As Hellen Sappho relieved her alpha shift counterpart at the Prometheus Station’s Command and Control console, she glanced at the calendar wall clock on the inboard bulkhead. It read Sunday, March 20, 06:00. She then turned to the large viewport and watched the Earth as it rotated serenely some 500 miles below. The daylight terminator was slowly traversing the Rocky Mountains in the western half of the United States. In a few minutes, she noted, the sun would be rising over her hometown of Eagle City, Utah.
Sappho’s peaceful repose was interrupted by the ear piercing variable whine of the emergency klaxon. With catlike reflexes refined by years of intense training, she quickly assessed the nature of the impending threat. The proximity sensors had detected an incoming object, and it was on a collision course. Sappho diverted all available power to the station’s deflectors, but she could see it wouldn’t be enough. Quickly, she closed all of the decompression bulkheads, and activated the emergency distress signal. Seconds later, a fifty foot meteoroid slammed into the habitation section, ripping a gaping hole, and instantly killing dozens of her friends and colleagues. The shock wave raced through the station, testing the very limits of its structural integrity. Sparks erupted from her console, as the shock wave knocked her to the deck. Sappho tasted blood as she climbed back into her chair. She opened a comm link. “C&C to Engineering. Status? Engineering, report.” No reply, not even static. “Control to Power Conversion. Report.” Again, silence. That’s when she looked out the viewport, and realized the real terror that the asteroid had unleashed.
The targeting arrays were misaligned, and the safeties had failed to shut down the hyperspace siphons. As Sappho watched, hundreds of intense microwave beams scorched swaths of hellfire on the surface of the Earth as it rotated beneath the Station. Forests burned and oceans boiled. Millions of people were being roasted alive, and billions more would join them if Sappho couldn’t shut down the siphons. Trapped in the Control Section, she feverishly tried every protocol in the manual, and many more that were not. Nothing she did could stop the station from sucking energy from the sun’s core. As the hours passed, her frustration grew, and the Station continued to transmit death rays upon the helpless souls below.
More than half the Earth had been destroyed when she conceived a new plan that was born in desperation; unsure of the consequences, she fussed the conduits that transferred the power from the siphons to the transmitting array. Without the array to release the unimaginable power being siphoned from the sun, the Prometheus Station reached a critical point where it exploded with such intensity that it ruptured the very fabric of space-time. For a brief instant, yesterday, today, and tomorrow merged into a fog of chaos. Slowly, as the continuum repaired itself, the river of time began to flow again…
As Hellen Sappho relieved her alpha shift counterpart at the Prometheus Station’s Command and Control console, she glanced at the calendar wall clock on the inboard bulkhead. It read Sunday, March 20, 06:00.
by submission | Nov 1, 2012 | Story |
Author : James Bambury
V pricked the side of the universe and giggled as it contracted and spun about in circles.
“Did you see that?” V poked another universe. It collapsed into a space-time singularity and V laughed again. “That one had more of a fizz. Make some more.”
“Are you going to burst them?” X asked.
“Yes.”
“What about letting one go for a little longer, just to see what would happen?”
“I am almost certain it wouldn’t be as exciting as watching them blow up.”
“Well, I want to see. Will you leave this next one alone? Just for a change?”
“I guess.”
X lit up another universe. It flared outwards in a bubble of quark-gluon plasma that was just coalescing into a soup of particles when V stabbed it. It sputtered and collapsed.
“Come on.” X said.
“You can always make more,” said V. “I’ll leave the next one alone, I promise.”
X sighed and sparked a new universe. It flared into being and floated between them.
“This one is nice.” said V.
“You stand back.” said X.
“I mean it. This one seems a bit different.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“No, seriously. You’ve done something interesting with the gravity in this one. There’s just the right textures of galaxies and dark matter in there. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was sentience in there. Remember the last time that happened?”
“I was drunk and lonely. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“There’s going to be a whole lot of planets in this one.”
“As if you care about any planet that’s not being engulfed in its own star.”
“I care far more about things than you think. Now, let’s grab some lunch and see how this plays out.”
“Fine.” X stood up, turned away and heard the familiar pop of a universe collapsing on itself.
“After you said all that you had to just–” X glared. V scrunched the universe into a Planck sized ball and flicked it at X.
“I just had to see your look,” said V, “but also, have you actually thought about cold death if there was sentience around to experience it? I think I’m being the nice one here.”
X waited for V to leave, then tried to remember what had happened with the gravity on the last universe. X lit a tiny universe and hid it under his seat.
He would catch up with V and start another argument. That would give the stars time to burn. Then he’d send back his main course, spill a drink, do anything to buy some more time while the universe would become pockmarked with evaporating black holes. With a little luck, X would see cold death when they got back from lunch.
by submission | Oct 30, 2012 | Story |
Author : Daniel
“Mother unit, what happens to humans when they die?” The mother unit, 523 as she was usually called, stopped in her work for a second and thought about what her offspring unit had said.
“Is 43 thinking of 1001?” She asked the question lightly, hoping not to upset the young unit.
“Yes…and other things.” He responded
“Well, there are many ideas where we go when we die. If we believe in what the ancients say, we will go to a massive kingdom where we all can live happily for all eternity.” She smiled warmly at her offspring unit, who she called 43 with deepest affection. She removed a packaged meat ration from her freeze unit and flopped it into the heat sink.
“Mother unit, since 43 started school last year, 43 has been under the impression that religion no longer applies to the modern world. The teacher unit, 45-9008-72847-282, said that…”
523 sighed and tuned him out. This was only way to handle him sometimes. He just didn’t understand.. She looked around at her son, 6 feet tall, darkened skin, bald, with a strong jaw like his father unit. She smiled warmly at him. So alive and handsome he was. “Well, what does 43 think?”
He looked quizzically at her. “That’s the problem. 43 don’t know. 43 thought mother unit might. 43 has read nearly every book in the book lending unit, however there is no answer what happens to the corpses 43 sees on the ground everywhere.”
She smiled again. So curious. Like his father unit. Ah, 1001. He had been curious too. She had been content to let things do what they did. Her waste disappeared in the cycle unit. Her rations appeared in her ration unit dispenser. Her work orders appeared on the wall unit. It was all so automatic and made sense. She flipped the meat patties in the heat unit sink. “Well, there are 96 billion humans in the world. 523 guesses there would be a few humans dying quite often. 523 thinks humanity is sending people out in, oh what are they called, geo-globes? Those things are amazing. 523 heard they can maintain humans for generations and generations.” She pressed on a patty and sniffed happily at the sizzle. “As for the people here, well…523 doesn’t know. 523 figured there was a pick up unit that removed the dead. What they do with them? How can 523 know? At least 523 doesn’t have to touch them.”
43 glared at her. “43 wonders about you, 523.” His rudeness in saying her name shocked her into listening to him. “523 doesn’t question anything. Today, when 43 went to education assessment, 43 saw 5 dead bodies yet, when 43 returned, they were gone. What happened to them?”
523 groaned. “523 doesn’t know. 523 has seen mass funerals. There’s a large oven with many ashes inside it. It’s the usual custom now. It was for 523’s mother. Not a lot of space for graveyards.”
43 frowned and looked at her. “Well…perhaps that’s it then.” He turned and walked out of the door of the living unit space. 523 smiled knowingly. She knew he would never feel fully satisfied until he exhausted every avenue of research. She removed the meat patty from the heat sink and took a bite. She chewed for a minute and swallowed, savoring the sweet aroma and flavor of the patty. She smiled. She had not eaten meat since her mother unit had died 4 years ago. She had forgotten how good it was.
by submission | Oct 29, 2012 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey
Sodium lamps paint the night phlorescent orange, reflecting off the oily, wet pavement. Vermin, human and rodent, litter the streets.
I took a wrong turn somewhere and find myself navigating the wretched slums of humanity’s cast offs looking for familiar territory. I glance over my shoulder and catch sight of a man – a dead ringer for Santa Clause without the jolly red suit – puke into his hands.
In the blink of an eye, he spews his dinner through the cracks of his fingers, barely managing to capture his false dentures expelled by the torrent of, what appears to be, curdled milk and beef-n-barley soup. With a quick flick of his wrist he sheds the heavier chunks from his false teeth, then jabs them back into his filthy maw. He doesn’t even break his stride. I look away, disgusted.
I turn a corner and nearly trip over another piece of street trash. Another native. Another waste of space.
“They’re hee-eer,” he hisses through lips crusty with scabs.
I pick up my pace.
A cab drives by, ignoring my frantic hailing.
When I turn around, a man stares at me from a shadow. Sickly orange light barely highlights the edges of his baseball cap and long coat.
“How many of us are left? That’s what I want to know.” His voice is strained. Tense.
I turn right and keep moving. He follows. “They’ve been raping us,” he spits. “And poisoning us and stealing from us, killing us – for thousands of years!”
Oh great. A talker. I’m about to become a sounding board for another conspiracy theory.
“I been thinking,” he growls. “I been thinking and I been watching. Keeping track of how many of us are left. Everyday there’s fewer.”
He becomes animated, loud and sarcastic. “‘What?’ you ask. ‘What of the burgeoning population? What of the billions of people you see everywhere, everyday?’” His voice lowers to a furtive whisper. “Let me tell you something.”
Here it comes.
“There is no population crisis.”
I knew it.
“At least not for humans. You wanna know something? Little known fact. The actual human population hasn’t changed since the Dark Ages. ‘How?’ you ask. I’ll tell you. People think an alien invasion is coming, right? Ha! Wrong. It’s already here. The whole global conquest thing happened, like forty thousand years ago. All those corporate cube farmers and sheeple are just human shaped shells. Just meat. Beasts to be ridden by their alien masters. History is a fucking fiction, man! Take a good look around. How many people do you really know?”
He stops walking to emphasize his question. “How many people do you REALLY know?” He jogs to catch up, keeping pace with me again. He’s getting manic.
“What for? The what for is – they’re milking every resource this planet has.” He fiercely ticks off fingers. “Oil. Trees. Precious metals. Water. Salt. Yeah, sea salt. Weird, right? This takes time. Even ET’s gotta sleep. You know the sickest part? They’ve convinced us, somewhere along the way, to help them pick our own bones clean for them. They’re just waiting. Waiting for us to get everything harvested, processed, organized, centralized, economized. Then they’re gonna swoop in and beam it all up, Scotty. Poof. Everything. Gone.” He gestures vaguely toward space. “Leaving us here to rot on broken pavement.”
He stops.
“I try telling people. They don’t believe me. Nobody believes me.” He yells as I walk away, “But I think you might.”
I do.
I’m not worried. We’ll be gone soon.
by Patricia Stewart | Oct 24, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Status, Mr. Ortega?” was Captain Edgington’s terse request to his first officer.
“Not good, sir,” replied Commander Ortega. “It appears that Chief Engineer Koshiba had ordered all of his senior engineers into the engine room in his effort to prevent the warp core breach. Although they were able to shut down the reactor, the subsequent radiation burst killed everyone in the engineering section. We are adrift with only battery power, and the computer and sub-space transmitter are irreparably offline. To make matters worse, we do not have a qualified engineer with the knowledge to safely restart the warp core.”
“How about life support,” inquired the captain?
“A few days, at most. And considering the secrecy of our mission, it’s doubtful that anyone will know where to look for us, even if they knew we were in need of assistance.”
“So, if we’re going to get out of this, we’re going to have to restart the warp core without the help of the computer or a trained engineer. Who’s the most qualified warp core expert available?”
“According to my knowledge of the surviving crew members, it’s you, sir.”
“Then we’re in big trouble. I only remember enough to know that if you don’t restart the core in a precise sequence, you end up vaporized. There has to be a better option.”
“Well, sir, there is ‘The Thinking Cap’. We happen to have one onboard. We can use it to imprint the necessary knowledge into someone’s brain. Its effects only last 24 hours, but that should be adequate to reestablish full power. Unfortunately, without the computer’s guidance, we’d have to select the modules by trial and error. We’ll be creating random short term savants until we can isolate the correct protocol on warp core maintenance.”
“Frankly,” noted the captain, “I don’t see that we have any other choice. Ask for volunteers, and have them assemble in sickbay.”
Twelve hours, and twenty volunteers later, Captain Edgington removed the skullcap from Lieutenant Treffert’s head, and asked the all-important question, “What’s the sequence for restarting the warp core?” Treffert simply stared ahead and smiled. “Well, at least he’s happy,” conceded the captain.
Treffert suddenly said, “Girl Happy, staring Elvis Presley. MGM Studios, released April 9, 1965.”
Ensign Wittmann added, “April 9, 1965 was a Friday.”
Ordnance Technician Peterson followed up with, “Sergeant Joe Friday was portrayed by Jack Webb.”
The captain sighed, “Now that’s really starting to become annoying. Please step down Mr. Treffert, and take the empty seat next to Beethoven and his air piano.”
Security officer Rollins replaced Treffert on the examination table, and said with a grin. “Don’t worry sir; twenty-one is my lucky number.”
“Let’s hope so Mr. Rollins,” replied the captain as he pulled the skull cap over Rollin’s head.
“I recommend sequence number fifteen,” offered Ortega. “Protocol C, as in Charlie.”
A half hour later Captain Edgington removed the skullcap, and asked, “What’s the sequence for restarting the warp core?”
Rollins replied, “Depolarize the intake coupler, followed by purging of the containment chamber.”
“Yes,” cheered the captain. “Mr. Ortega, take Mr. Rollins to the engine room and get started before the imprint wears off. I’ll babysit the crew.”
“Crew,” said Ensign York. “Noun. The rowers and coxswain of a racing shell. Also, a group of people who work together on a project.”
Petty officer Hawkins added, “Project Blue Book documented more than 12,618 UFO sightings.”
Nurse Mioni noted, “The square root of 12,618 is 112.32987136109433.”
“On second thought, Mr. Ortega,” said Captain Edgington, “I’ll take Rollins to the engine room. You stay here.”
