by submission | Jan 6, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
One unusual woman carved through me—cutting rivers in my desert landscape. I met Rebecca during my second career—writing, which was stalled. My haunt, when hunting ideas and caffeine, was a spartan coffee shop near San Antonio. The Walk-in Bistro had a counter from a previous hair salon. Its four chairs and two tables were mismatched and scarred. That was it. No variety; just black java. Servers brought cups along with sugar dispensers to the shaky tables.
So why go there regularly? It was simply her. She made coffee sublime, even when served a bit cold. I was a chump for redheads, especially with green eyes. Rebecca was coy at first, keeping her petite frame away as I held tight to my table for hours. She finally asked about my continuous typing on my tablet. We talked frequently and she finally joined me twice for dinner. Nothing came of it. Still, she would listen to ramblings about life in the Navy and the ports-of-call I’d visited, as if I was Columbus before Isabella. The time came to move ahead to something more interesting and lasting, even for a semi-retired adventurer.
“Rebecca, I’ve been coming here for over five months. You know about me, but I know little about you, yet I feel like I’ve known you…okay, it’s hokey, but forever.” I stared into her as she endured the other chair at the tiny table. It melted me to see her tilt her head, but she did not smile this time. Her frown surprised me.
“Donnie, you are truly interesting…and if I had more time…but, I simply don’t. Didn’t you ever wonder about the shop’s name?”
She had me, stunned and ready to stuff. What did the name of this hovel have to do with us? “No. I don’t get it. I thought we were hitting it off. It’s the age thing, huh?”
“Hardly. You are so young, but that is not the issue at hand. I’m simply on the way out. We’re only allowed to hold a body for six months. Someone else will enter her when I close her eyes. That’s what walk-ins do. The limit to our time travel is six months. This is my last day. You have shared wonders of your life with me and places I simply couldn’t visit on this trip. It’s a fascinating time to be on Earth…so many possibilities. We work in places where we can hear many stories of travails of the hungry, suffering, fragile…and you are all so fragile now.”
My coffee stuck in my throat. I was so young? I nearly coughed it up. She wasn’t joking. A writer can tell…at least a good one. I panicked, not sure if the caffeine or shock was rocking my chest. She touched my shirt and it calmed. It was warmth unfamiliar to me. She smiled broadly and looked at me with complete content. She rose and walked past the counter into the back room. I quickly followed but couldn’t find her.
Two days after that I heard about her attempted suicide. I found the hospital but their rules blocked me. I haunted the recovery area, but I never saw her again. I never went back to the shop. I couldn’t. My writing picked up after that and I moved away. I started selling my salty military stories after a surprise break from a publisher in San Francisco. She raved about my tales, but then left the publishing house after a few months; still, I was on my way…and wondering.
by Julian Miles | Jan 5, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The mists swirl about our feet and the cold blues of brushed steel surfaces surround us. There is distant hubbub, like a monster stirring in its lair – which is an accurate analogy.
The Major’s eyes open and focus on mine. She sits up: “War?”
“War.” I nod agreement and feel my tacticals run cold. From the glint in her eyes, she’s feeling it too.
They used to go to war with rules. Hundreds of them. Had whole committees of impartial referees to decide what you could and couldn’t do. It took centuries to shake that stupid, selfish habit. War should be terrifying. War should be abhorrent. War should be the final step in a long chain of failures to find a peaceful solution.
But when war becomes the only recourse, it should be done with unmitigated savagery, surgical precision and no restraints. Because when a war is fought, you are trying to make it the last one. You are praying that your descendants never have to go through what you’re going through. No man or woman should have to take weapons in hand to do mortal combat in the pursuit of peace, simply because other people failed to find another way. Naturally, every entity/nation has cadres that are always prepared, but they are just that: an elite few, separate from a society they cannot fit into and could not understand.
When the fighting starts, you make it brutal, you make it atrocious. So that when non-cadre look upon the remains, they are resolved to never permit it again. If you have done your job properly, the losing side will never resurge – because there is no losing side. The only memorial will be the cluster of silo graves that stand in mute testimony to another utter failure of civilisation.
Territories will be realigned. Populations will be transferred. Peace will resume in the appalled aftermath, reminded once again of the necessity for sanity to endure.
I pick up my rifle after sliding both machetes into their scabbards. Checking my charge levels, I exit the tent and go to join my unit. After the warbotics finish their tasks, we must be ready to carry the battle into the enemy before they can recover.
Our cadre will have engaged theirs as ruination fell from the skies. We got the drop on them, so they will fight like the damned. Maintaining the layered pressure of attack is the only element of strategic mastery that counts: the real-time accumulation and analysis of countless tactical outcomes to guide this implacable, nation-crushing offensive.
They call us Terminators – an ironic reference to legendary monsters that sought to overthrow mankind. We are what dead cadre members become: cybernetic agents of slaughter, cryohibernated in the hope that we will never be needed again.
This is only the third time I have been awakened in five hundred years. Mankind is – finally – getting better at peace.
by submission | Jan 4, 2015 | Story |
Author : David Botticello
We only discovered them by mistake.
Waiting out in space, watching, listening. Deliberating.
We had this exploration drone, for a comet. It was supposed to land, take samples, send back pictures and analysis—you know the deal. The physics of the thing was astounding; firing what was essentially a ballistic camera off into space with only small maneuvering thrusters, trying to hit a chunk of rock and ice hurtling through space. It was almost comical, when it bounced off. Hubris you might say, that we thought we could accomplish such a feat. Space Command had given it fifty-fifty odds.
Well, it bounced. All that money, time, effort, skipping off the surface, back into space. And so we figured, might as well leave the cameras running, right?
And then three and a half months later, while going over the images in some lab late at night, my buddy says, “huh, that’s odd.”
That was how we discovered the Vorinii. They had it all perfectly timed, tapped into even our most secure networks, moving their ship around so that none of our satellites would ever see them—if everything had gone according to plan, that is. Damned deliberating aliens. Just waiting there. Watching us. But they hadn’t expected us to fail. No, I don’t even think they understood failure in those days. They just didn’t get the concept. Everything they do is a resounding success. Some people say they’re just that much smarter than we are. Others say they are a particularly lucky species, or that we’re an unusually unlucky one. Or that they plan so much they just rule out all the bad options. This priest from my bowling league thinks they have some sort of cosmic authority that conforms the universe to their desires, makes everything they do come out well. I’ve half a mind to believe him. But whatever the situation, however it goes, for some reason the Vorinii just, kinda, succeed.
And that’s why they were so interested in us—a kind of morbid fascination, when you think about it. We fail. Sometimes dismally, but other times, there’s a bit of comedy, or even glory to it.
Well they landed, made contact, explored, flew away, came back. The whole deal. They even took news of this odd new race called Humans to the stars.
Twenty-five years in the planning. Ten years of travel. Hundreds of thousands of manpower-hours. Resources from across the world, some of them near-irreplaceable.
So that’s our first introduction to the universe, I guess. We fail spectacularly.
by submission | Jan 3, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
The first one I saw was at the auto repair. My neighbor, Al, recommended Hans, who fixed a problem even the dealer couldn’t find and did it in one afternoon for only fifty bucks.
“I hope the guy’s still in business,” Al said. “I told him he needs to charge more. Offered him a hundred, but he wouldn’t take it.”
“You’re a lousy bargainer,” I said. I’m a kidder, you know. “You’re supposed to offer less and then agree on something in between.”
“Nah, I was glad to find an honest mechanic who knows what he’s doing. Oh, I almost forgot about his dog. Wait’ll you see that cute little mutt. I asked him where to get one, but he said it just wandered into his shop.”
Apparently Hans was counting on volume to make up for his low prices, because his shop was full of cars. Only one mechanic darted from vehicle to vehicle. I flagged him down, explained the symptoms, and he said he could fix it in a couple of hours for fifty dollars.
Oh yeah, the dog. It was snuggled on his chest in one of those baby carriers. All I could see was its head, a ball of white fur with two black dots that looked up at him or towards me as we conversed.
Hans was busy, so I tagged along for a few minutes while he worked to ask some questions.
“Is that a German accent, Hans?”
“Ya, German.”
“Cute little mutt ya got there. What kind of dog is it?”
He said something that seemed to be all consonants, like “frbllxtmph.”
“That first part sounds a little like ‘fur ball.'”
“Ya, frbll.”
“Why do you keep it strapped to your chest?”
“We are, how do you say, inseparable.”
My wife arrived and tried to pet the dog, but Hans recoiled and the dog’s eyes retracted deep into its fur. As we left the shop, its eyeballs seemed to extend to follow us, almost as if they were on stalks.
When I returned to pick up the car, sure enough, it was fixed and he only charged me fifty dollars.
I didn’t haggle about the price, but I said, mischievously, “Merci, mon ami. You did say you’re from France, right?”
“Oui, France,” he said, handing me the keys.
Well that wasn’t the response I expected. The dog’s eyes narrowed as if it was glaring at me.
“And your little dog, did you say it’s a shit-zu?” I mispronounced it purposely.
“Oui, shit-zu.”
I couldn’t get a rise out of that guy.
A few days later, I saw Al taking out the garbage, and I noticed he had one of those baby carriers on his chest. “Is that one of your grandkids?” I shouted.
“Yeah, grandkids” he said.
I came closer and realized it was a frbll. “You can’t kid a kidder,” I said. You bought that from Hans, right?”
The thing glared at me with those beady little eyes and then looked up at Al.
“Yeah, Hans.”
But when I drove past the auto repair, I saw that Hans still had his frbll attached. In weeks to follow, they popped up on people all over town. Yesterday on the TV news from Des Moines the guy and gal both had frblls strapped to their chests.
Then the lightbulb went off in my head. I said to Marge, “Boy, whoever makes those baby carriers is raking in the dough, huh?”
by Duncan Shields | Jan 2, 2015 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I create gods.
So far I’ve created sixtyeight.
If one puts an allpowerful deity in the middle of a primitive society, one can get a lot accomplished. It’s essentially a victimless crime except for the centuries of religious squabbles that can follow on some planets. And the slavery. And the persecution of the losing sects. But I digress.
Honder is the latest. Nine feet tall, golden skinned, shining eyes and a long beard. His mouthbeaks are glossy and his lowlimbs are tremorless. Appearance wise, he is the ideal for his race. Not only does he have a body in peak condition, he has the wisdom of a universal library tapped into his cranium. Every situation has happened, they say. With the library in his mind acting as a teleprompter, all answers are his to give. He is philosopher, cajoler, and truth teller. A puppet master doing the impossible as proof of a divine entity.
Quantum space storage folders and nanocomp mattermakers tucked up each of his four sleeves make miracles possible with a thought. Loaves, fishes, cures, plagues, and even local weather patterns are all his to give and change in order to manipulate his followers.
All of it, his appearance and his implants, is on loan from me. And the loan comes with strings.
I tell Honder from the comlink that it’s time to set the populace to work mining the minerals.
In this scenario, I’ve decided to have him tell the populace that he’s my little brother. I’ve had local Upgrades play as my son or daughter before as well. Whatever works. He knows the truth. That is, that I’m an alien and that this ‘magic’ is just all tech beyond his primitive understanding. That this is a partnership and we’re duping his people. He’s still filled with awe and drunk on the power, though. They always are.
The populace gets to work mining. I should have my quota before too long.
But as usually happens, the local Upgrade starts believing in his own myths and wants to rebel. Honder says “You have gone too far. The conditions in the mines are not good. You are damaging my people.”
I look at my databanks. My mineral quota will be filled in one year.
“Just one more year, Honder. Remember, if you cooperate, you get to keep the gear and do whatever you want with it.” I say
“No.” says Honder. “I will fight you.”
“How?” I ask with a chuckle. This is textbook scenario 3. I press the ‘rescind’ button, reducing Honder’s gear to fancy bracelets and ending his connection to the library. He’ll have to tell the people the first thing that comes into his mind now. And he’s not smart.
Honder reels in fear. “Give me the god power back.” He says meekly.
“Only if you comply.” I say, steel in my voice.
“Honder will comply. Honder happy to comply. Honder want power back.” already his IQ is spiraling down the ladder to the local norm.
I reinstate his power. I should have my mineral banks full on schedule.
Poor Honder. It’s the created messiah I feel the worst for, not the slaves.
