by submission | Aug 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey
“Hello darkness, my old friend.
I’ve come to talk with you again.
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain,
Still remains,
Within the sound of silence.”
– Simon and Garfunkel
I awake from dreams about a person I once knew. Was it me? Opening my “eyes”, the brilliance of a new day assaults my senses, but it’s not the light of home. I’m 7,600 light years from my birthplace and it’s not one sun but two which dazzles my vision. I’m looking at Eta Carinae, a binary solar system possessing the largest known sun in the Milky Way galaxy, EC-A; a hundred solar masses and five hundred times brighter than Sol.
Blinking, I switch filters, shifting into the cooler ultraviolet range. This is as natural to me now as squinting once was. My brain, (the only real thing I’ve left that I can call my own), communicates via a synthetic nervous system to sensory units capable of 360 degree vision and can peer deep into all spectrums of light.
My “ears” hear radio waves like they once heard sound. When I first left Earth, I thrilled at the illusion of traveling back in time as I moved through (slightly Doppler shifted) radio signals broadcast since the dawn of radio. It was comforting to relive those transmissions from bygone ages of wars, musical genres and radio plays, but I never felt more alone than the moment I crossed the threshold of Earth’s first broadcast. What a strange form of resurrection it is, hearing Hienrich Hertze a thousand years after his death, a billion miles from home. When his historic oscillations cut silent, replaced by the cold, alien, inscrutable frequencies of space, I knew that I was truly alone. It took ages to comprehend the seemingly random and chaotic signals filling the void. But now, I understand the language of space as easily as a conversation in a crowded room. The rotations of suns are heartbeats to me now, pulsars, like the ticking of clocks. When I listen carefully, I can even hear the faint music of creation.
Moving through the Homunculus Nebula, twin billowing clouds of celestial dust blown from EC-A in one of its false supernova’s, my “tongue” begins to taste the bitter tang of iron and nickel, my “nose” detects the sweet aroma of oxygen and hydrogen. I compare the sensation to the sharp effervescence of a deep, red wine aged in oak barrels. Don’t ask me why.
A million units of data are unconsciously recorded and categorized as I’m caught in the gravity well of the massive binary system. It’s stored within my “memory”, remotely accessible by my Earth bound research team even should I “die” out here. I only wish I could remember more of my own memories… before the transplant. Only in the long dream, as I travel the vast gulfs of space to my destinations can I glimpse fragments of my terrestrial life, but it’s like gazing into a shaken snow globe full of shadows. The doctors told me this was to protect me from madness. I have no idea if they’re right, but I have an ache, an inexplicable emptiness I yearn to fill.
I feel gravity’s grip as I carefully maneuver my sleek, mirrored, oblong “body” into a trajectory which will make the best use of the extremely high gravity, one that will sling me like a catapult further on my journey, deeper into the unknown and closer to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream…
by Clint Wilson | Aug 14, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
“Well let’s see now Mr. Williams, you have your battery charged for over 100,000 hours of usage, plus the suit’s solar absorbers are in good order. Your spots will provide ample light should you land somewhere where it’s night. Of course on your right forearm is your matter analysis spectrometer so you can tell what things will be poisonous or edible. Your medi-pack is fully stocked and of course functional.”
“And my suicide pill?”
The little man in the white lab suit patted the prisoner’s breast pocket. “Don’t you worry young man, we wouldn’t let you go without that. Just because you’re a mass murderer, we’re not inhumane!”
“I told you I’m innocent.”
“Sure Mr. Williams, of course you are.” With a nod toward the two huge guards the test subject was escorted toward and then shoved roughly into the chamber. There was a hiss of steam as the heavy door bolts slid into place.
Suddenly Williams was terrified. “Wait, don’t do it yet… I’ve changed my mind!”
The little man laughed, as did the giant guards. “Changed your mind? You want lethal injection instead of becoming a hero to your race? Please Mr. Williams. The contract is signed, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”
Williams’s shoulders slumped in resignation. “So, how long will I be able to talk to you?”
“After you land the wormhole starts to close almost immediately. We probably have less than a minute, so I need you to describe everything to me as quickly as possible.”
“Then that’ll be it? I’m on my own after that?”
“Yes Mr. Williams. You’ll be free to live your life however you must, wherever in the universe you are.”
Inside the chamber the prisoner was breathing hard and sweating bullets.
The little man typed in a command at his console and there was a hum as the fractal probe began to pick through the trillions of miniscule holes in the froth of the space-time continuum. The program was quick, finding hundreds of distant planets every second, casting aside rejected discoveries as it went.
Too hot, too cold, too much gravity, no magnetic field, inadequate atmosphere, and on it went. Suddenly there was a soft chime. The analysis came up on the display. “Ah it looks like we have our winner; quite nice indeed. Goodbye and good luck Mr. Williams.” He typed in the launch code.
Williams realized that his eyes had been closed. Suddenly he felt a cool breeze on his face and so he hazarded a small glance. In a second his eyes were wide open and his mouth was hanging agape.
“Mr. Williams!” The voice was crackling in his earpiece. “What do you see?”
He answered dreamily. “Tell me again why you can’t find this place a second time?”
“We don’t have time for that. Please, tell me what you see!”
“Not until you tell me why no one else will ever come here.”
“Oh for god sake… because wormholes are countless and always on the move. Trying to find you after this would be like trying to find a microscopic needle in a cosmic haystack. Now tell me what you see!”
Again he answered dreamily. “I’m glad nobody else will ever come here… we’d just ruin this place.”
“Mr. Williams… we’re almost out of time!”
“Wrong. I’ve got all the time in this world.”
He tore out the earpiece and began to walk toward the greenest mountains he’d ever seen. He wanted to drink from the azure pools beneath those mile high waterfalls. Above him a pink and red ringed planet hung between two warm yellow suns.
by Duncan Shields | Aug 13, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
“During the mission, your memories are yours. After the mission, they belong to the military.”
The sergeant had droned on at the beginning of this op. It was a standard briefing. I remember seven similar briefings followed by months of blank space in my head. Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a soldier.
We were on a stealth run in Tehran. The radioactive crucible that used to be Qom was a warning shot but they hadn’t listened. Or rather, they hadn’t aimed their warheads away from the east coast of the states.
Our non-reflective gear made us into shadows on the night floor, oil on the city streets while the scared civilians stayed locked inside their houses, praying. We made our way to what our intel told us was the squawk box. It was our job to slit the throats of the button-pushers in the underground missile lobby quietly.
It was real wet work. Proper analogue. None of this remote-control warfare. I was happy to be a part of it.
Because of the memory wipes, none of us knew if we’d worked with anyone on the team before. I knew some of the other players from enjoying each other’s company here and there on R&R and from declassified training but for all I knew, we’d either never been on a mission together before or we’d saved each other’s lives a bunch of times in past missions. It took a special kind of mind to roll with that.
The speakers above us blared the prayer. That meant it was 4:28 in the morning. There was rustling from all of the shuttered apartments around us as people woke, knelt and prayed. I felt powerful, knowing that I was an instrument of what they were afraid of.
We edged up near the fence of our target building. It was a broadcast station set up to look like a corner store. Using the prayer as cover, the six of us slid bonelessly up the wall and through the windows. A ganked keycard allowed us to bypass the keypad into the stairwell and ghost down the stairs to the sub basement.
The sweating, nervous men were looking at the radar screens for any form of airspace incursion. The feeling of tension in the room made me smile.
I looked left and right at our team and nodded.
Thirty seconds later, we were the only living things in the room and no alarm had been raised.
The army had been kind to me. It had augmented my entire body and gave me special abilities. I’d seen parts of the world I’d always wanted to see in between missions. And the memory wipes meant I never had any lasting psychological damage from the horrors I inflicted on people or war crimes I witnessed. It was a pretty sweet deal. Plus no interrogation could work on what I couldn’t remember.
We put the looper into the computer system and the encrypted signal seamlessly slotted in, continuing to let our target know that everything was okay on this end. All intel correct. All systems green.
I pushed the squirt on my arm to tell beta team that we were a go. Then everything went black.
…
I wake up in the barracks. It’s a beautiful day outside. I check the calendar. I’m missing six days. I hope the operation went well. The news is saying that the nuclear standoff is over. I hope I had something to do with it.
by submission | Aug 12, 2012 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey
Dr. Chow Ming Fu and his cat Schrödinger are the only inhabitants of the titanic supercollider surrounding Canis Majoris like a ring. With a diameter of over 4.5 billion kilometers, the supercollider harnesses the gravity of the massive sun, spinning quantum particles to velocities approaching 99.999% light speed. It’s here that Dr. Fu hopes to unlock the secrets of faster than light travel.
Tinkering with a hypercoil, Dr. Fu hums thoughtfully to himself, while Schrödinger, a tiger stripped, orange tomcat lounges on a nearby consol. A small, diode bejeweled collar adorns his neck.
Making routine passes of the labratory is a Robo-Vac. Contained within its super dense Diurelium casing is a miniature Black Hole, devouring dust, bits of discarded waste and cat hair, dutifully maintaining hermetic cleanliness within the station.
“Pass me the laser coupler, please.” The doctor asks, head buried in condenser wires.
“Certainly, Doktor.” Schrödinger replies. The collar’s microphone translates the feline’s vocal purrs with a faint Austrian accent. With a twitch of an eye, the coupler lifts out of the tool box, levitates gently through the air and rests lightly in the palm of Dr. Fu’s outstretched hand.
“Are you certain that flooding the Boson Stabilizer with Tachyons will work, Doktor?” The cat begins casually cleaning its paw.
“I’ve no idea what’ll happen, to be honest, Schrödinger. No idea at all. There. That should do it.” Dr. Fu extracts his oversized head from the mass of cables. Multi-optics goggles bulge absurdly over his eyes. “We’ve been unable to stabilize enough Bosons to do anything productive for over five hundred years. They are so short lived and difficult to preserve. My theory is that the Tachyons, which are moving backwards through space/time, will –“
“- will extend the life of the Bosons by slowing the temporal flow within the stabilizer.”
“Exactly!”
“Are you worried that a build up of Bosons might neutralize the Higgs Field Matrix, Doktor?”
“Nonsense!”
“Right then. What are we waiting for?”
Dr. Fu launches into a complicated sequence of calculations and calibrations, activating the supercollider and accelerating quantum particles along their sixteen quintillion kilometer journey around the sun to truly astronomical speeds. Schrödinger carefully monitors the flow of Tachyons while eating a tin of Nep-tuna (TM).
The Robo-Vac vibrates discreetly in the corner.
“It’s working!” Dr. Fu chortles happily. “The reservoir is filling with captured Bosons. They aren’t decaying at all!”
“Doktor, The Higgs Field Matrix is in chaotic flux. Perhaps we should stop.”
“Nonsense!”
There is a hollow thunk behind them as the Robo-Vac and it’s Black Hole “falls” into the Boson Reservoir, beginning an instantaneous and irreversible chain reaction. Cat and man simultaneously rotate their heads, peering awestruck into the new gaping hole in the wall. A red light begins blinking on the consol. Schrödinger is the first to react.
“I’m getting strange readings from Big Dog. It’s rapidly losing mass.”
“Did you say, ‘losing mass’?”
“Yes, Doktor.”
They look at each other, gobsmaked, as claxons scream. They feel the sudden absence of gravity.
“Doktor?”
“Yes?”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yes.”
“Ooop –“
Underlying the entire Universe like an intricate rug is the Higgs Boson Field, providing mass for particles, without which there would be no particle interactions, no matter, no life, just pure, impotent energy. As the microscopic Black Hole collapses into the unnatural accumulation of Bosons trapped in their temporal prison, the proverbial rug is pulled. Faster than the speed of light, the Higgs Boson Field collapses, removing mass from all of creation, instantly disintegrating the entirety of material existence.
Luckily, nature abhors a vacuum.
by submission | Aug 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Kevin Crisp
The judge gave Rick several choices, of which the young men’s wilderness therapy program on an uncolonized but certified habitable world seemed the most palatable. He learned to pitch an atmosphere tent, tie a tourniquet and find cover from acid rain. He was light years away from his pregnant ex-girlfriend and any means to procure nervous system stimulants.
Rick stuck a forked stick in a hole in the ground until he felt a soft resistance and twisted it. It tangled firmly in the fur of a plump, rat-like thing, which he pulled squawking out of its burrow. He hit it on the head with a convenient rock, deftly skinned and gutted it, packed it in mud and lay it on the coals to bake until the flesh was tender and free of parasites.
Shawn, his assigned “buddy”, sat down on the rock beside him. “OK, your turn, the doc’s on the screen for you.”
Rick trudged between several tents and campfires to the therapy tent and sat in the folding chair in front of the over-sized two-way video monitor that made the tent feel cramped and claustrophobic. The jitter in the image and the echo in the sound reminded Rick just how much space separated him from his therapist.
“Ricky, my man! How ya’ doing?” the young doc said with overbearing enthusiasm. “How ya’ settling in?”
“Well, I feel more like a kid at summer camp than a juvenile delinquent undergoing state-mandated therapy.”
There was a pause during which the image was frozen. “And how’s your buddy working out?”
“Shawn? He’s okay. He snores. Say, doc, what’s the plan here?”
Pause. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, when do we get started with the therapy business? It’s been three weeks already, and we still haven’t–”
“I know, and you’ve already come a long ways! You’re learning to be self-sufficient, and you’re building confidence and making healthy friendships–”
“But shouldn’t I be lying on a couch and talking about my cold mother and my relationship problems and my anti-social acting out?”
Pause. “Absolutely! Talking is very important. What’s on your mind?”
“I — I don’t know. Shouldn’t you ask questions or something? I mean, that’s what all the other shrinks did.”
Pause. “And did that help?”
“No, but–”
Outside the tent, the camp rocked as a sonic boom split the air. Rick was familiar enough with the sound at this point to know that a supply rocket had just broken through the atmosphere and was streaking across the alien sky in a blazing arc of fire. Outside the tent, the other boys were hastily digging out their field glasses and compasses and estimating where the next week’s supplies would land.
“Sounds like we’re breaking camp again, doc.”
Pause. “Is that rocket landing already? Seems early; sorry we got cut short. We’ll touch base next week. I wanna hear all about that mother of yours, okay?”
Rick walked back over to the campfire and checked his dinner. “Looks like two days marches due east,” Shawn said watching the rocket.
“They really keep us on the move, don’t they?” Rick dragged the mud-caked rat-like thing off the coals with a stick, and began chipping away the baked mud with a knife. The meat looked tender and moist, but the smell was characteristically sour. “Shawn, are you getting better here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you feeling — I don’t know — less depressed, angry, whatever since you got here?”
“Yeah, I think so. Don’t you?”
“Think things’ll be any different back at home?” The rat-like thing tasted better than it smelled.
