by submission | Dec 12, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
Peterson peered out through the energy bubble surrounding him and surveyed the place he had arrived in. It was strange, this place, totally unlike his own dimension. The light was different. It cast a halo of yellow around everything, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, he saw the scientists looking in on him. They were human, like he was. It was yet another surprise of many surprises.
He listened as the scientists talked.
“I don’t understand it,” said Professor Furia. “This man….” He turned and pointed at the man behind the glass “…should not be here.”
Professor Simpson nodded and walked to the glass case. “Have we finally opened the portal into another dimension?” he asked.
Furia replied, “I think so.”
Then, he turned and regarded Peterson.
Their experiment had been virtually fruitless till now. They had sent several short ionic bursts into a radioactive isotope. A strange reaction had occurred; but, beyond that….nothing.
Till now.
After a particularly powerful burst into the isotope, Peterson appeared in the isolation chamber. Everyone was dumbfounded. Little did they know that Peterson had been working in his dimension to fix the mess they made. Each time they exploded an isotope, they opened a breach in his universe. Their latest experiment had opened a slit wide enough for Peterson to come through, and he did. He surrounded himself with a stasis barrier to hold in his own anti-matter and stepped into the opening.
Now, he peered at the scientists causing all the destruction. Furia and Simpson did not understand that they had breached an anti-matter universe from within a matter universe. They did not see the disintegration of planets, the screaming of millions as they sizzled out of existence.
“He shouldn’t be here,” Furia said. Then, he pursed his chin to his face. “You don’t think….?”
Simpson nodded. He turned to Peterson. “Do you understand me?” he asked.
Peterson nodded back.
“How is that possible?” asked Furia. Then, he saw the small device attached to Peterson’s chest. He pointed at it. “Is that thing translating for you?”
Peterson nodded again.
“Amazing!” Simpson said. “We don’t have anything like it over here.”
The two matter scientists looked at each other. Their only thought was that, if they could get that device, they would be able to fund their research with it for the rest of their lives.
“Why are you here?” asked Furia.
For a moment, Peterson did not answer. Then, he said: “To stop you.”
“Stop us?” asked Simpson.
“Yes. What you’re doing is destroying my universe.”
“We didn’t mean to,” said Furia. “We just need to know.”
“Know what?” asked Peterson. “That there are other universes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there are….and you’re destroying one.”
He touched something in his palm.
“What’s that?” asked Furia.
“I’m sorry,” Peterson said. “But I have to seal the breach. Forgive me.”
He looked the two scientists in the eyes as he flicked the switch that broke the stasis barrier between the matter and anti-matter universes.
As the three scientists sizzled, then imploded, the breach between the universes was sealed, and both universes were safe again….for awhile.
by submission | Dec 11, 2014 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
I know, I know, a blog is not the most effective way to warn humanity about an extraterrestrial threat, but I can’t get the mainstream media to take me seriously. I can’t even get supermarket tabloids to answer my phone calls and emails. Photos of UFOs or ETs would get their attention, but I don’t have any. I just have alien voices in my head, and they’re apparently not newsworthy. Too many other people are walking around talking to themselves, like me. Which is my point, actually. I used to avoid such people, but now I seek them out to compare stories, and I’ve found that a lot of them are possessed by aliens. Remember that movie about a guy who gets hold of some special sunglasses that allow him to see aliens disguised as humans? Well, that’s me! Except I don’t need the sunglasses. And the aliens aren’t disguised as humans. They’re communicating with humans. Telepathically.
“Possessed” is not exactly the right word to describe this. It’s not like those movies about demons taking control of people. It’s more like a Vulcan mind meld. But not a one-time link. An ongoing conversation. Like that movie about a guy who communicates telepathically with a girl’s brain in a jar. That was a comedy, but this is serious. Really. Yeah, I can see why nobody pays attention to my warnings. Look, forget all that movie stuff. Let me boil it all down to a simple message: DO NOT TRY TO COMMUNICATE WITH ALIENS TELEPATHICALLY. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about doing it.
Well, OK, I think it’s safe to read this one-page blog, but only to get the message about NOT doing that other thing, so that you can prevent the aliens from getting into your mind the way they got into mine. Long story short, last summer my girlfriend and I were sitting on the porch swing at my parents cabin just looking up at the stars, and we saw a light moving across the sky. I said it was a UFO. She said it was an airplane. I leaned forward and thought, hey, you up there, if you’re an ET give me a sign. It stopped. I fell out of the swing, and when I looked up again I couldn’t pick out that light from amongst all the stars. But they had picked out my mind from amongst 7 billion humans. That’s how they got in. I invited them.
Fast forward to the present. I no longer have a girlfriend. My parents think I’m nuts. I dropped out of college. Not a day has gone by that aliens have not communicated with me. When I’m not out aimlessly wandering the streets starting conversations with people who talk to themselves, I spend a lot of time in my room watching movies. The aliens watch them through me. They’re not interested in the contents of my brain anymore, having thoroughly reviewed my memories and analyzed my cognitive processes. At this stage, I function as a streaming media device.
One day we watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and I asked why they’d never abducted me. I know, I know, a stupid question. It’s like I’m always looking for trouble. Anyway, they said they don’t do that much anymore. There’s nothing left to learn about the anatomy of humans or cows or any of the other earthly creatures they have dissected. Their clinical interest is all about minds now. Or so they say. But I don’t think it’s our scientific value that keeps them connected to us. It’s our entertainment value.
by Julian Miles | Dec 10, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The lumen panels are set to ‘candlelight’ and the susurrus of the climate control system is muted to barely a whisper. The room is twilit, draped with banners from a hundred victories. In a depression on the floor, an ornamental pool has been reborn as a cushion- and pillow-lined nook for a wearied and bloody command couple to find a moments respite.
An indistinct figure with flaxen hair tilts a face of rare beauty to gaze up at the chiselled lines of a face that could have been hewn from granite – and would have seemed softer had it been so.
“How do I die?”
“It will be a thing of surprise and expectation, an act unforeseen, yet suddenly so obvious to those staggering with grief. ‘Such a bright soul could not last in the tawdry environs of today’, they will say.”
“Michael?”
“He will be as one felled by a mighty blow, but the need to be there for your armies will save him. Duty will ever be his salvation after you are gone.”
“Will I bring peace?”
“Alas, no. There will be a cessation of hostilities. A funeral so rare because of the theretofore unseen gathering of intergalactic luminaries. But then the recriminations will start and rattling sabres will counterpoint venomous rhetoric. The year granted by your death will be recalled as you bestowing a gift upon the troops, even in your passing.”
“What of my killer?”
“He – or more correctly, it – is a companion of doers and movers throughout history, a creature that feeds on the rare essences generated by true heroines and inspirational leaders. But all of that is merely entrée to the haut cuisine created by the storm of emotion over each notary’s death. Thus what started as happenstance has become modus operandi. It is the lover and killer of those who make mankind great.”
“Will it miss me?”
“Forever. Every slaying wreaks decade-long havoc upon its mind, for all that the ecstasy of gourmet fare thunders within. You will be sorely missed.”
“Can you protect me, as you have done so many times before?”
“To defend you would require the end of me.”
“I know my killer very well, don’t I?”
“You do.”
“I started with the wrong question, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“When?”
“Close your eyes.”
The molecularly-aligned edges pass through sleight fields, body armour, dermal weave and titanium-laced bone with only the slightest frissance of impact. The resonance that realigns the edges is unperturbed as the weapon describes a swift reverse question mark in her heart, sundering chambers and cleaving erythrocytes.
She feels a quiver under her breast, but knows the knife is sharper than pain: death will take her before sensory trauma registers.
by submission | Dec 9, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jedd Cole
Brontë was a sad and curious alien android. That’s how I came to know him at least. Most merely saw him as a strange man. But, first and foremost, Brontë was a didact. He did not talk except to teach, and in teaching, I think he believed he was learning. Yeah, I didn’t think it made sense at the time, either.
I first met him on the side of the road by Amelia Park where my car had stalled. He’d been walking by and I asked if he could help. We popped the hood and Brontë began explaining how the car worked to me, examining the tubes and wires and cylinders. His manner perplexed and intrigued me. I still don’t think he knew anything about car engines.
We had to get the car towed. In the meantime, Brontë took me out to dinner. He was teaching me how our table was constructed and veneered, at which point I decided to correct him. The surface was clearly made of one piece of wood, I said; not twenty-three. He seemed taken aback, but only for a few seconds. He nodded and began again, including the revision. I sat with my elbows on the table, staring at this man and his glasses that seemed to go in and out of focus as he talked.
Brontë told me about seven previous girlfriends, of which I soon became the eighth. He’d proposed to each of them, he explained, teaching them about what matrimony meant in various cultures. They’d all turned him down immediately.
I pretty much kept quiet in the beginning. Our relationship was unilateral. Brontë showed no affection, and neither did I. Call me crazy, but was intent on observing him as we meandered around town, how he stopped people on the street to teach them about the effects of littering on the habits of gray housecats, the reason for life according to the Hopi, why the capital of some European country changed three times in the fourteenth century, et cetera ad nauseum.
I tabulated our conversations over the four weeks that I was with him, and concluded that 94.3 percent of his claims were absolutely false. The only times he was right were after others interrupted and corrected him.
We broke up when he proposed to me.
But I didn’t stop observing Brontë. He eventually became a fixture of the city; everyone knew who he was and avoided him if at all possible. No one listened and no one looked into his strange glasses and no one became his ninth girlfriend.
With binoculars, I watched him sit in the window of his apartment, which had always been empty, looking out at the world that shunned him. He started walking the streets without speaking, looking straight ahead, running into street signs and garbage cans and slow-moving cars. He never ate. He never slept.
One day, he walked to the edge of town and just kept going. He wandered into the Sonora desert all alone, following no road. I soon lost him among the mountains and arroyos, saguaros and pines.
I heard recently that his body was found by an Air Force drone, his ten thousand pieces scattered at the bottom of a dry river bed a hundred miles north of here, my suspicions confirmed. Before they could recover the rusty corpse, the local paper reported the second UFO sighting in about a year, and then Brontë was gone. According to my reckoning, the last UFO sighting had been roughly eight girlfriends ago.
by Clint Wilson | Dec 8, 2014 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The starship dropped down into the clear atmosphere of the water planet. Inside the belly bay, six surf pods awaited their launch. Each one was five meters long, known as “longboards” by current popular culture. And inside of each one of them, there eagerly awaited an anxious human enthusiast.
Connor stood rigid on the inner control board, a replica of a twentieth century longboard, once used to ride the comparatively minuscule waves of Earth. Now its general look and function were mainly for nostalgia, but the manipulations inputed by a rider’s legs, along with measurements of arms, head and torso balance, transmitted via suit sensors, would help to control the entire pod atop the massive waves of Nokium IV.
The tourism company’s vessel lowered to within three meters of a very calm azure sea. The belly bay doors opened, a klaxon sounded, and the six pods splashed into the water together. The long-haired bare-chested ship’s pilot wished them, “bodacious luck,” and immediately maneuvered the craft up and away. A few moments later he shouted into their ear pieces, “Incoming!”
Bobbing in the beautiful waters, all six pods slowly turned toward the eastern horizon, and in the distance they saw it. The fifteen hundred meter wave was still many kilometres away, but they all started engaging their forward thrusters at maximum propulsion. This was the thing that Connor had been waiting for all of his life, had spent his entire savings on, the ultimate wave. He called out to his five friends on the comm link. “Ready boys and girls? This is it! This is the big one!”
Retorts of, “Woo hoo!” and, “Yeehaw!” abounded. Then Connor keyed the musical track inside all of their helmets and the clicky clacky reverb of Mosrite guitars became apparent as the rhythmic stylings of “The Ventures” accompanied their approach to the nearly mile high wave.
Before they knew it it was upon them. And then they began to climb, and climb, and then climb some more. The powerful electric motors of the pods were pushed to their limits as the six surfers reached the crest of the wave. And then in perfect synchronization they all turned around, and began to ride the massive unstoppable behemoth.
Connor shouted with glee, “Here we go gang!” while the roar of billions of tonnes of surging water accompanied by the snazzy melodies and thumping drumbeat of “Walk Don’t Run” assaulted their ears. And they all surfed and surfed along together for many dozens of kilometres, as the monstrous wave carried them forward beneath a glorious cloudless pale blue sky. Eventually they all slipped from the roiling crest, down into the pipeline, with endless millions of litres of translucent turquoise water curling above their heads. Until at long last the massive monster slowly lost momentum and finally deposited them back down onto the planetary ocean’s calm surface, to once again bob safely beneath the warm white sun of Nokium.
And as the tourism ship returned to pick them up, cheers and congratulations could be heard all over the comm link. It had after all been indeed the most bodacious, righteous, and gnarliest of days!
