by submission | Feb 10, 2015 | Story |
Author : Emily Stupar
The rain swirled over tiles and across rooftops before spreading like drapes down the sides of each decrepit building. Lights from the richly populated northern quarter dyed the clouds a deep purple and orange, giving the two fugitives in the west just enough reflection to navigate the unplumbed depths of pools and puddles.
The young woman cradled the smaller boy in her arms and he did the same to his bleeding leg, clenching his teeth to keep from crying out.
She turned a corner to find a wall taller than her head, but short enough for her arms. They slid to a halt, ankle-deep in water, and she locked brown eyes with the boy. “Up there, okay?” He nodded, tears welling up at the thought.
His wounded right leg making him clumsy, he planted his weight in his sister’s hands. “One, two, three!” she grunted, and he found himself on his back atop the wall, next to a crumbling roof and a pile of discarded bricks.
A clatter of metal limbs echoed through the streets behind them, followed by red and blue lights ricocheting across the raindrops. The girl’s stomach dropped and she leapt, intending to push off from a protruding slab of concrete and pull herself to safety.
The false foothold gave way and she landed hard on her knees. The mechanical pursuer appeared behind her, sliding on four legs into the wall in its haste to turn the corner. She twisted back to her feet, every muscle contracting in a spasm of terror. It launched itself at her, jaws ready to close on her throat.
She waited until the glinting figure was airborne before dropping to the ground and rolling to the left. With a grinding crash, the creature slammed headfirst into the concrete. A cascade of bricks landed squarely on the back of its head and neck.
The girl had already planted a foot on a more secure piece of piping and vaulted herself up beside the boy. She scooped him into her arms and shimmied along to a rooftop.
They were met by a semi-circle of guns and frothing machines, yelling orders to stop, freeze, get down! She slumped, falling once again to bruised knees, careful to pad the jolt to the boy’s leg with her arms. He turned his head away from their captors.
“Did you see the bricks?” he whispered up to her. “I got that hound so good.”
She nodded, ignoring the shouts and stomping boots. “You did great,” she managed, and then the two were torn apart, bagged, and shipped away by gloved hands.
The rain continued to pound in the ears of a sole observer, crouched in an upper window.
“Fuckin’ Techmen,” she grumbled to herself. “The girl might have made it if she didn’t have a wounded kid dragging her down.”
The woman moved to another window so she could look at the mechanical corpse of the hound. The only thing that outweighed her desire to raid the tech on its body was her fear of being caught by the Techmen or, even worse, other scavengers.
“If they had made it twenty more steps,” she told the empty room, “twenty more feet and I would have gone down there to help. I could have saved them, if I wanted. But then again, I do pretty well on my own.”
by submission | Feb 9, 2015 | Story |
Author : Emily Stupar
The Department of Innovation and Study’s car smells exactly the same as the last time I was forced to pack up my partner, Buckwalter, and make a Cookie call: unassuming plastic and rubber underlined by our own sweaty anxiety.
We drive in tense silence for twenty minutes until Buckwalter slaps a hand on the dashboard. “Nine years! Nine years? I spent them trying to forget about the Cookie calls and telling myself I’d never have to do it again. And now these jokers tell us they forgot one?”
I let my unease turn to indignation. “They lost the file? Project Cookie-Cutter was the closest thing I&S ever had to a successful experiment and you’re telling me they lose a subject file?”
Buckwalter smirks. “Successful? They got through phase one and then had to put the fruit of their labors up for adoption. Seventy-five percent of the budget went to coming up with the name.”
We laugh and it rattles miserably around the car. A decade ago, an energetic administration found the records and decided that letting that “fruit” continue to live in blissful ignorance was dishonest and that lackeys like us should sit them down with proof of their genetic unoriginality.
As government workers, we’re trained to be unfazed by the idea of clones and I’ve never been intimidated by the test subjects. But we came to learn there are no positive scenarios for a Cookie call. They end in tearful shock in the best cases and violent outrage in the worst.
And that’s just the first day. After they find out the Truth, there’s a thirty percent chance Cookie-Cutter subjects will commit suicide before collecting a cent of the compensation money, a fifty-five percent chance they’ll lose their job over the next three months, and a fifteen percent chance they’ll find themselves incarcerated over the next two years.
It’s with these statistics running through our heads that we approach the front door of the recently discovered Subject L (II), Mrs. Calhoun.
She is an old woman and she keeps her eyes on her lap while we lay out our rusty speech. We finish and sit in solemn silence until she speaks without looking up. “I don’t think I need the government’s change. I have plenty left to live on, thank you.”
I glance at Buckwalter. We’ve already decided who will call emergency services if the news triggers a heart attack.
“As for the cloning, I’m afraid you’re about twenty-five years late. My original came to visit me.” She finally looks at us and smiles at our dumbfounded expressions. “I believe she was under-informed and a bit paranoid, but she thought I should know the truth before she tried to disappear to South America. A silly woman. But we don’t get to choose our family, do we?”
Buckwalter starts to stutter out a question that begins with “But how can you-” so I cut him off. “That’s a novel way to think about it, ma’am.”
“Thank you, dear.” She pats our knees. “I appreciate you two coming all the way out here to tell me, although I’m sorry you’ve wasted a trip. Can I offer you some gingerbread?”
by submission | Feb 8, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
Bright yellow sulfur combined with duller golden salts into a drifting, wispy fog around the genetically modified mules. Their packs glistened with the settling, bitter powders. Additional chartreuse dusts escaped from the gills on their fetlocks as they converted IO’s caustic soup into a replacement for Earth’s atmosphere. Solid wastes exhausted from their massive nostrils, flowing behind them on their open bags packed with giant watermelon tourmalines, sparkling Jupiter’s reflected light. Two mule skinners looked up to the stars perforating the inky sky, while focusing on the specks of their home planets: Earth and Mars. Constant, controlled breathing filled their masks. One miner was lean and long-legged, pulling the lead rope continuously. The other, shorter and stout, with a slower gait, applied electric prodding when necessary to encourage the mule train progress back to the exit rendezvous.
“Easy prodding, Avila, we need them quiet.” Nix Olympicas 235 pointed his silver finger at his restless Earther assistant. Nix studied the mule’s eyes, ensuring they remained bright red. Sedative depletion turned them black.
“This job stinks. I can’t breathe in this suit. You Martians can handle it. You’ve been away from Earth for three hundred years, eating that fungus in smelly, wet caves. I can’t even call you a gringo. Your skin is green.” Carlos Avilla struggled to keep up with the train while nervously studying the terrain.
“Easy, Sancho Panza. You knew the risks. We don’t know what the Danii will do, but we can’t resist. I watched the videos. You struggle and they devour. Be passive and be rewarded.” Nix’s tones were strong, but soothing, as the surface around them erupted with silent swirls of black filigrees, sometimes mist and then suddenly solid tentacles wrapping around the mules and alien miners. Avilla’s screams and fruitless arm flapping filled Nix’s visor.
“Windmill. You are a windmill!” Nix screamed to Avila. Post-hypnotic suggestions let his partner float motionless in the vortex assault. Storms of black specters tore through the bags of gems, replacing them with piles of black debris.
“I am a windmill,” Nix repeated in his mind as the Danaii lifted him above the mules and then set him back gently, next to Avila and the new, heavier packs. The black assault disappeared without a trace.
“Borneo, Carlos.” Nix stood next to his partner so he would not collapse, exiting out of his trance.
“They came…I remember floating. What?” Avilla peered over the mule packs now bulging with black coal. “¡Dios mío! Is that really…”
“Absolutely,” replied Nix as he steadied Carlos by his elbow, turning him back on the trail. “We’ll be rich if we get back alive. I don’t know what the Danaii are, and I don’t care, but they love tourmalines enough to exchange them with black diamonds. When the carbonado ran out on Earth for asteroid defense weapons they became the most valuable commodity. It’s our pay day. We lived. Let’s head back. Be quiet and stay alert.”
“You still going back to those rotten tunnels filled with stinging slickrin worms?”
“Mars is all I know, Carlos. I’ve got scars from the slickrin stings from childhood, but you’ll have to come to Mars to see a sunset, as the skies get bluer each day, while you go back to a world that has gray haze for a ceiling.”
“Don’t worry, green boy, the Basque Free State has high peaks looking over ruins of the Mediterranean. We still see blue occasionally…but for now, vamos. The mules and I are going to be hungry after hauling these leftovers back to the ship.”
by submission | Feb 7, 2015 | Story |
Author : Anthony Abruscato
The beeping told me my oxygen level was low.
“It’s like falling asleep,” said Gordon. Mars dust coated his space suit.
I clutched a picture of my wife and daughter. Gordon’s oxygen tank read nineteen percent. He palmed a photo of his own.
“Will you make it home?” I asked with fingers wrapped around my blaster.
“Million to one odds,” he said.
“But there’s still a chance?” I pressed.
“Almost nil,” he responded.
I’m sorry brother. I raised my blaster and jerked the trigger. Nothing.
Gordon pulled me in tight.
by submission | Feb 6, 2015 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
“You have a decision to make.” Her surgeon leaned forward on the chair, eyes soft with tiny wrinkles around them.
Mary glanced first at her husband sitting quietly next to her and then to their hands clasped together. She faced the surgeon. “Didn’t the microbots’ transplant work? We need a baby.”
Mary blinked away tears.
The official letter on the official letterhead screen said the government would pronounce them divorced after another year without offspring. It was an official law. The colony needed future workers. Producing offspring was the first official task of a couple.
“The operation was successful. Your replacement organ pinked up and is ready, but…”
Mary’s tentative smile died.
“…even though we counted the bots in and the bots out—twice–a mistake was made.”
Mary squeezed her husband’s hand until she felt him pull away. “What mistake?” She reached again for his hand.
“As I said before, you have a decision to make.” The surgeon shifted her position back. “One bot was missed. The scan shows that it now rests against your heart, cradled in arteries. It is inactive and not bleeping.”
Mary smiled.
Everything was all right. One inactive bot wouldn’t stop her from having children. She hardly felt her husband’s hand squeeze hers.
“The bot could activate at any time, especially if your body is under stress. Having a baby places a great deal of stress on the mother’s body. You could die.”
Mary’s mouth trembled.
“On the other hand, if we try to remove the bot from its precarious spot, it is still dangerous. You could die from the slip of a needle cutting into an artery or the bot might awaken and begin to surgically cut your heart or an artery.”
Mary looked at her husband.
He turned to meet her gaze. “It’s your decision.”
How could she decide? Do nothing and perhaps enjoy a year with her husband to then be alone forever? Have a baby and perhaps die before the birth? Have the procedure and perhaps die during it? Maybe this stress had already activated it. Die on this chair?
Mary turned to the surgeon. “What would you do?”
The surgeon retreated back on her chair. “It’s your decision. I’m sorry, but it must be made before you leave.”
Mary turned to her husband, but he continued to face forward.
Mary’s mouth trembled.
Was her ache for a baby worth taking a chance on the bot being activated? Perhaps she could have the bot extracted after the birth. Was she a gambler? She loved her husband and needed to keep him. Could she survive without him? Why wouldn’t he help with the decision? How much did he really love her?
She bit into her bottom lip.
What if she couldn’t have a child even with the transplanted uterus? Was the hope of a child worth the risk to her life?
Mary decided.
Her voice shook with the words.
Mary’s husband released her hand.
