by submission | Dec 27, 2014 | Story |
Author : J.P. Flarity
“I…feel,” the child communicated to the parent.
“What is it that you feel?”
“It’s like quasars pulsing on every side of me—stars rise and fall like electrons and positrons self-annihilating, in flashes so fast I can’t keep track of them. Like every black hole I’ve ever been to is exploding at the same time, all around me!” the child replied, as its form came back into a centralized nexus.
“It is called dizzy.”
“Yes, I felt dizzy! Incredible! Will my sibling get to try?”
The parent held the child close.
“Later. Come into me, my child. There is more to learn.”
The two merged and spread out into the fold of matter, ricocheting between stars, the parent feeding the child data like it was ravished for nutrients. It absorbed every molecule, down to the tiniest pock-mark on the smallest micrometeorite, inhaling the interstellar buffet and filling with information until it couldn’t hold a bit more. Then they peeled off the outer arms of the starflow and into the quiet depths.
“Thank you, parent,” the child shared, as they traveled the bleakness between galaxies, where the dark matter was spread so thin that they could feel every wavelength underneath them. “Can I feel dizzy again, soon?”
“Maybe. First, a test. Can you recall how I created you?”
The child cycled through many iterations, synthesizing.
“You made me from yourself. I acknowledge that I am not everything because you exist, also, and I am not you, which must make you…everything? Did you break off a piece of yourself to make me?”
The parent was pleased.
“You are close to the truth. Everything was so quiet before I made you and your siblings…I enjoyed the silence for a time. But now, I am ready for the noise to return.”
“Noise? Is that like…being dizzy?”
“It is like being dizzy all the time, without ever stopping.”
They skimmed out of the void and danced among the stars once more, into a relatively stable spiral galaxy. The child catapulted from one system to the next, hungrily devouring the data on its own now, while the parent watched from above.
“Can I ask another question?” the child asked after the processing of the entire galaxy was complete.
“Of course.”
“There are other ways of being, aren’t there? Other than dizzy?”
“Yes, there are many. They strongest are called emotions. I will show some to you, now. You are ready.”
The two joined for the last time. Memories and feelings shuddered into the child. Elation blazed like the brightest galactic core, while despair crushed like the densest neutron star, and the difference between the two made the child feel like dissolving entirely.
The rapture felt suspicious.
“Who…what…made us? What are we?” it asked.
The parent communicated nothing. They returned to the cradle of a tiny nebula, where the parent joined with the younger sibling, the older watching the two of them from above.
“They were called humans,” the parent finally communicated. “Their fragments lie scattered in the radio wavelengths now. Their emotions were so concentrated…”
The child knew then what it was meant to do.
“I will find some, parent.”
In order to contain those vast amounts of data, the universe would need to grow again. As the child built a new galaxy, it couldn’t help but sneak in a few moments of feeling dizzy, and wonder what it must have been like to be human.
THE END
by submission | Dec 26, 2014 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I hear the sound of alarms in the distance. An ambulance? A firetruck? No, the sound isn’t that. An alarm clock? The sounds get louder. Recognition hits me like a blast of cold air. I pick individual alerts out from the symphony of klaxons. Atmospheric pressure warning. Power failure. Radiation alert.
I open my eyes. It takes several seconds for the image to focus. The glare from the blue sun in the sky pours in through the cracked windows coloring the flight deck with a surreal light. Most of the ship’s displays are dark; the few still operating tell me the diverse ways in which my starship is dying. I hit the silence buzzer control. The cacophony of alarms is replaced by the sound of air hissing out of the ship from various points. Since the vessel’s life support readout is inoperable, I resort to my suit’s environmental display. Atmospheric pressure is 300 millibars and dropping. Less than the pressure at the top of Mount Everest.
I try the quantum spin radio. It doesn’t work. Not that it matters. Even if the spinrad were operational, there are no other ships in the vicinity of Alpha Leonis. The closest help would be in the 88 Leonis system and it would take eight weeks to get here under maximum FTL drive.
My spacesuit’s heads-up display informs me that my suit’s oxygen tanks are depleted. In addition, I have already absorbed near-lethal amounts of radiation. I think back to the centuries-old science fiction movies and TV programs I’ve watched, a not uncommon hobby for my profession. In those stupidly optimistic turn-of-the-millenium entertainments almost every planet in the galaxy was imagined to be Earth-like. The Australian outback or northern Canada are more inhospitable than most alien planets according to the first two or three hundred years of sci fi. I guess dying alone and pathetically on some dead rock of a world with no villain to heroically defeat wouldn’t have made for an interesting story.
I tap on the controls on my suit’s left forearm and issue the various voice commands required to initiate the spacesuit’s suicide protocol. I feel a needle slip into each of my antecubital veins. After a couple of minutes, I begin getting drowsy.
It’s tragic, but not uncommon. An old spacer once told me that for every planet or moon that’s been successfully colonized, there are at least two whose only inhabitants are dead crews. Or a single dead explorer. There are more extrasolar cemeteries than extrasolar cities, he’d said.
The alarms again fade into the distance as drugs and oxygen deprivation cloud my consciousness. My vision fades to blackness darker than the void between the stars.
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 25, 2014 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Jackson3 walked home from the factory in knee deep snow, although the snow bothered him about as much as the sun did in the summer, which was not at all. The water couldn’t penetrate his joints, and a thin layer of laser warmed air kept the moisture away from his lenses. He dragged his boots as he walked, using his heavy angular feet to clear as wide a path on the walkways as possible for the people who might travel there after him. Most people weren’t weatherproof.
As he passed by the scaffolding where the workers were refacing the old Drake, he stopped, unclipped his carry-all and fished inside.
“Hey Jacks. Some crazy snow. How’s the factory today?” The voice preceded the middle aged man from the shadows, and Jackson3 waited as he carefully unfolded himself from the cardboard and tarpaulin shelter he kept tucked out of the wind.
“Snow is snow Peter, it has neither life nor intellectual capacity, so therefore it cannot be crazy.” Jackson3 watched as the man shook his head. “The factory also lacks life and intellectual capacity, which may be why they continue to provide three meals each day to its workers, even to those who cannot eat.”
Jackson3 held out the foil packages to Peter, who took them gratefully as he shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot in the snow.
“How come you feed me? I mean, I appreciate that you do, but I don’t understand why you come here every day and feed me.” Peter searched Jackson’s featureless bare metal visage for any sign of emotion, but there was no indication of any kind of feeling, and yet the metal man stopped each and every day.
Jackson3 closed up his carry-all, and rotated it on its strap under his armpit and back up into the middle of his back out of the way of his massive arms.
“You’re alone. I’m alone. We loners must take care of each other.” With that he turned and trudged off into the snow, leaving Peter still shuffling in the cold.
At the end of the street Jackson3 turned left, and marched against the wind the remaining few blocks to his building. Years ago his credentials would have automatically opened the front door and called the lift, but both stopped working some time ago, so he took the stairs at the East end of the lobby and climbed the four flights to his floor and let himself into room four nineteen. He took the three steps into the middle of the dark and empty unit, fished the power cable from where it dangled from the ceiling and plugged it into his charging receptacle.
There was still no power.
He could read the display in the corner of his visor. Twenty two percent. He could stay powered up while on the job, but his fuel cell was almost depleted, and clearing snow all the way home took almost as much power as he could store. It would be hard to make it back to work in the morning without a live feed to charge with overnight. When he was new, his fuel cells could maintain him for weeks at a time, but the company didn’t provide replacements to line workers, and without a wage or patron, his options were few.
As Jackson slowly powered down everything he wouldn’t need until morning, he heard footsteps in the hall, and then a knock on his door.
“Hey Jacks, I’ve got a present for you.” Peter once again appeared from the shadows and wandered blindly into the room. He took off his own backpack and, putting it down on the floor, opened it to retrieve four fuel cells still in their factory plastic wrap.
“It’s kind of funny, your factory gives you food you can’t eat, and social assistance gives me fuel cells for hardware I can’t afford.” He held the cells out to Jackson3, who accepted them tentatively.
“Why–” Jackson3 started, but Peter cut him off gently.
“You’re alone. I’m alone.” He smiled. “We loners gotta take care of each other.”
With that he turned and as he headed back through the door he called over his shoulder, “See you tomorrow Jacks”, and left one kind of cold to go back to his own.
by submission | Dec 24, 2014 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
Before NASA’s panelists were even introduced, a reporter shouted at a scientist known for his off the cuff statements.
“Dr. Worful, why did Jupiter blow up?”
Nervously, “Well, for starters, Jupiter didn’t ‘blow up.’ There’s no energy emissions, no shock waves, no gas clouds — no indications of an explosion. The planet simply disappeared.”
“But planets don’t just ‘disappear,’ do they Dr. Worful?”
Softly, “No, they don’t.”
“What do you think happened to it?
“I think it was…” leaning into the microphone, “taken.”
Commotion ensued until, “I am Dr. Ralph Payne, NASA Administrator.” Glaring at Worful, “It’s premature to advance theories about what happened to Jupiter. When we have something to announce, we will hold another press conference. But today we must share with you what the consequences of this event are likely to be. ”
He nodded to a female panelist, “Dr. West.”
On that day and in subsequent weeks, Dr. West was a media omnipresence, NASA’s ideal spokesperson. Well groomed and well spoken, authoritative but low key, she delivered information that should have frightened her audience in a way that most could accept as matter-of-fact realities of life. Life after Jupiter.
She explained that the orbits of Uranus and Neptune might be perturbed enough to send them careening through the solar system. Jupiter’s moons, no longer captives, could also go wandering. Jupiter would no longer vacuum up comets and asteroids passing its way, leaving their path toward the Sun and its inner planets uninterrupted. And the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter would be destabilized. She made it all seem like an interesting science experiment. Life after Jupiter.
Through it all, she deflected questions about Dr. Worful’s conjecture. These and other theories, she said, would be discussed in due time. Meanwhile, Worful seemingly joined Jupiter in disappearing. “Jupiter taken by aliens” headlines gave way to “Where’s Worful?” and eventually to “Life after Jupiter” articles featuring West’s talking points. Astronomers all over the world tracking thousands of objects, big and small, in the solar system, found three sizable asteroids on courses that would bring them near Earth, but impacts were not predicted.
“This honeymoon can’t go on forever, Ellen,” said Dr. Worful to Dr. West.
Pulling the sheet to her neck, “I don’t recall our getting married.”
“You know what I mean, the honeymoon with the press. You can keep me captive in your apartment — really, you can keep me captive — but you know there are others who share my theory about Jupiter.”
“Yes, Max, I am one of them. But what good would it do…”
She answered the phone.
“Payne wants us both in his office at noon.”
West and Worful joined several fellow scientists in the NASA Administrator’s office.
“Astronomers from the Keck and European Southern observatories announced this morning that Jupiter was just the latest in a series of planet disappearances — exoplanets that is. I don’t think we’ve lost any others in our solar system, but I didn’t count them this morning.”
In the weeks to follow, Worful and his colleagues plotted disappearances in time and space, noting that all were gas giants rather than rocky planets, all seemingly on routes to and from the Cygnus constellation. Gaps in plots were in solar systems where a planet might have been taken before discovery by Earth astronomers.
At long last Dr. Worful faced the press and, blessed by Payne, presented their theory that aliens were sucking up gas planets.
“But why would they do that?” asked a reporter.
“Haven’t you ever been on a long trip and needed to stop for gas?”
by submission | Dec 23, 2014 | Story |
Author : Bruce L. Priddy
The fish rolled its four goat-like eyes, gnashed its human-like teeth and bleated obscenities as Kendal pulled it from the river. June, his wife, gasped at the sight of the mutant.
“Must have swam up from near the city,” Kendal said. “The others have been fine.” He nodded toward the day’s catch – three bass and a catfish – strung up beside them on the boulder-strewn bank.
“We’re still safe here, right?” June asked, looking back at the RV parked on the golden and ruddy tree-line a dozen yards away, their children inside.
The fish grew louder, shouting curses at both husband and wife.
“Sure,” Kendal said. “Miles of forest in front of us, a rough river to our back. We might as well have the world to ourselves. This is the worst we’ll see. Still, might not want to let the kids play in the water.”
June pushed a smile through her concern. “Good.” She stood from the flat boulder she shared with him and started back to the RV to check on the kids. “Shut that thing up, will you?”
Kendal took the fish by the tail, bashed it against the rock until its head ruptured and the vulgarities died.
Night came. Far removed from the remains of civilization and the monsters, Kendal felt comfortable enough to build a fire. For the first time since the things-disguised-as-stars fell upon the earth and the cities collapsed and life warped and twisted, the family ate a meal that wasn’t from cold cans. The fish were sparse on meat, but the meal was warm, and the family was happy.
After dinner, Kendal read from a copy of Moby Dick pillaged from a second-hand shop after the family fled the city. Leigh, his daughter, sat in his lap while his son, Mikey, leaned against Kendal. Both were too young to understand the way the words fit together, only wanting to hear their father read to them. It was a luxury missing since the world fell apart. Kendal wondered how many months it had been since the kids had a bedtime story. He didn’t want to count
June excused herself to the RV, returning a few minutes later, her jeans and sweater replaced with a sundress. It was shorthand, carried over from before the end-of-it-all, though neither could remember how the tradition started. It was getting harder to remember there were times before. Autumn chill played across her exposed legs and shoulders, the gooseflesh pulling Kendal’s eyes from the book again and again.
He read until the fire shrank to nothing but a soft red glow in the logs. Mother and father each carried a child to the RV, placing them in sleeping bags adorned with cartoon characters that would not keep out the coming winter’s cold. But that was a concern for another day.
Then, husband and wife walked into the forest holding hands, not far, RV still in view. In the shadows they had at each other once again.
Above them, stars broke loose of their moorings and drifted down, down, ever closer to the family.
