by submission | Jun 28, 2014 | Story |
Author : J M Walker
he had no idea if she would have this opportunity again. Every second counted. Only moments were left of her two hour time allotment. Her opportunity to advance earth’s technology, and most likely her career, depended on how much information she could gather in these last few moments. She suddenly felt dizzy, her blood sugar was dropping. “Not now!” her mind screamed in panic. She felt in the pocket of her lab coat once again for the piece of hard candy she usually kept there for emergencies. She had used the candy during a meeting yesterday and had forgotten to replace it. She expected to come up with the penny that had found its way there but to her surprise she found a peppermint. Setting the mystery aside, she shoved the candy into her mouth and went back to her notes.
A bell chimed. Dr Richardson sighed and stepped to the personnel lift.
As the lift doors closed the starship vanished leaving stark white walls, floor and ceiling.
The doors swished open a moment later. A janitor with a push broom entered the room.
“Are you okay love?” he asked the voluptuous, scantily dress woman that was handcuffed to an examination table in the center of the room. “Why did they bring you here? What are they doing to you?” This was the fifth day he had found her here and he knew she wouldn’t answer, mute he guessed. He stepped to the table and took her in his arms, comforting her. He wiped the tears from her eyes and kissed her. “I’ll get you out of here, I promise,” he whispered. She excepted his advances greedily.
Half an hour later the janitor left the room, tears in his eyes at leaving her behind. Determined to find a way to get her out.
As the doors closed, the women and exam table vanished.
Dr. Sanders entered the lift. He didn’t know what he would find upstairs today. Yesterday he found the money he needed to pay his parking fine but still no answers to what the alien technology that physically resided there was. His job depended on those answers. If he didn’t find them today he was fired.
Dr. Sanders stepped off the lift. In the center of the room sat a small ornate box. This was different. He sat down cross legged before it and opened the lid. A tiny green woman, dressed in bright colors, stood up to confront him. He could see through her. She appeared almost crystalline. His mind was instantly filled with her thoughts. He knew she acted out of compassion for others, giving them the desires of their hearts and fulfilling their needs.
“Thank you for allowing me to see what is really going on here,” he told her. “I know you want to help me keep my job. Because of how kind you are I can’t let my superiors know about you. They would torture you and dissect you to figure you out. I can’t let that happen.”
“Thank you for your kind intentions toward me. Here is your reward.” His body took on the colors of a rainbow and began to dissolve.
“What is happening to me?” he asked.
“I am sending you to a place where you can become enlightened.”
“Can’t I stay with you?”
“What makes you think we’re real?”
His body finished dissolving. The box and the alien vanished.
The lift doors opened…
by Julian Miles | Jun 27, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There is a stream that runs from the foot of the dais where I meditate; shimmering and trickling along the length of the cave system before it fills the little pool under the shading overhang, which drains into the aquifer.
M’tembe smiles as I blink and look up. He hands me a gourd of fermented goat’s milk. As I sip slowly and appreciatively, he brings me up to speed on events that have occurred while I ‘Zenned’ my way through the last two weeks.
“Kinshahou killed his father; the Kinsha tribe has joined the peace. Obuwega came to see you. The spirits fell upon him and he rolled in the dirt. When he stood up, he pronounced you ‘Watela’ and placed his entire nation under the peace.”
I wish I’d seen that. A fifty-year old war chief and notorious barbarian suffering an epiphany before a skinny, white-skinned teenage girl sat in the lotus position deep within a cave deep in equatorial Africa.
My parents thought I had a glandular disorder. I spent my childhood going from specialist to specialist. I was eleven before someone thought to stop the intravenous fluids and see what happened.
If I am not under exertion, I sweat fresh water. More than that: I make it. You can feed me dry ration bars for as long as you like, I do not dehydrate. The water running from me only slows a bit. How I do this is a mystery. All sorts of new ideas were postulated. Arguments still rage, because the proof of their theories would need me to be vivisected. I doubt that they would find the answers even then. When something defies all laws and balances known to science, they don’t need to take the subject apart. They need a genius to deduce the reasons and how they were missed, or to propose a novel solution.
My genius was named Hubert Monchamps and he was brought in after their second attempt to see if I could breathe what I produced all-but drowned me. I was thirteen, having my first encounter with puberty in a place where no-one thought to treat me like a teenage girl.
Hubert arrived as part of some deal made with the fringe science groups and internet lobbies. He took one look and had his thirteen year-old daughter rushed to the facility. Eta was blind but could echolocate. Through her, I found out that a spate of freak child mutations had occurred around the time of my birth. Eta was probably the only one with any semblance of a life as her brilliant father had worked out early what was going on, then taught his daughter to lie to everyone except her close family.
It took Hubert and Eta ten days to work out how to steal me. Through my extensive non-fictional reading I told them where I needed to go. To my surprise, they agreed.
Hubert’s last words were: “Vanish. Become a mythical being or goddess in a place where so-called civilisation has not insinuated itself too much. In you, I see the potential for more good than any since the mythical prophets.” He smiled: “But please make sure your followers do not become bigots.”
My name is Elizabeth Shannon. The tribes call me Elzbeshanou. My peace – the water peace – has ended wars fought for generations. It has destroyed the myths of female inferiority. There is a network of wise men and women now. Missionaries provide schools. I provide counsel. My blessing came from somewhere closer than heaven, and the Earth sorely needs our reverence.
by submission | Jun 26, 2014 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Sarah sighed.
She walked past the shelter’s only window—a 6-inch square with 6-inch thick glass. She focused on the gray metallic wall in front of her, refusing to even glance at the window with its hazy view of volcanic rock.
A 2-inch by 3-inch photo on a small, pink paper heart hung in solitary seclusion. She could close her eyes and see it. A grinning geologist encased in astronaut garb held his helmet in one hand and hoisted a piece of large obsidian covered with moss in the other. His eyes crinkled at the photographer with both celebration and love.
Sarah’s eyes blurred as she looked inward to see the scene.
Sam was on the team of scientists working to grow vegetation on the barren planet. This was vital for the community’s life. Their rations would run out before another supply ship would arrive.
Sam and his team had tried various schemes to encourage plant growth in the limited oxygen atmosphere. They drilled holes into the rocks, planting seeds in various types of crushed lava and growth mediums. They tried direct sun and indirect sun with no success even in the oxygenated lab.
But finally the day came when Sam went out into the abyss and brought back the moss covered rock. Eureka! Sarah snapped the photo with a long outdated camera. The soft-focused Sam stood in perpetual happiness. Sarah found paper, mounted the photo, and christened it with a kiss. Then she kissed Sam, again and again. They would be able to wait the years needed for the supply ship, together with their hoped-for children.
Sarah sighed.
The day came that Sam and his team didn’t return with produce from their greenhouse laboratory. When the scientists hadn’t returned the next day, Sarah armed herself with rationed oxygen-supplement, bags of dried food, and containers of shelter-produced water. She placed them in the pack attached to her atmosphere suit. Sarah exchanged looks of hope and despair with the others. The children played demon-dragon, laughing until one noticed his mother crying. Then all went silent.
Sarah stepped out of the double airlock onto the rocky ground. It was morning. The red sun shone bleakly, rising above the extinct volcano before her, washing the gray sky with streaks of scarlet.
The weight of the pack became progressively unbearable, as she struggled to climb the volcano’s rugged slope. Her eyes squeezed shut with effort.
Finally she felt the rock shift downward to the lab with its vegetation experiment so vital to their survival. As she climbed down the slope, she prayed that Sam and the others would be safe.
The laboratory lay before her.
She ran to the door, pushed the airlock button, entered.
The airlock closed behind her without a sound.
Her hand shook as she pressed the second airlock button. The door silently whizzed open.
She stepped inside.
A large rock lay under a ragged hole in the ceiling. The red sun cast shadows on the motionless bodies below. Their suits hung on the wall.
Sarah ran to Sam, scooping him up in her arms, cradling him and rocking him like her lost child. “Sam.” His limp arms dangled while his eyes stared up at nothing.
She forced herself to look away from her husband to the brown, shriveling vegetables, and then to the thirty scattered bodies.
Sarah sighed.
The broken families waited.
They had the right to know.
Their numbers had been cut in half; fewer people to feed with the remaining rations until the supply ship came.
They would survive.
But at what cost?
Sarah sighed.
by submission | Jun 25, 2014 | Story |
Author : Bryan Pastor
“You can’t kill me.”
Two men stood facing each other in a glass walled penthouse. Beyond the glass a neon jungle stretched in every direction.
“I mean, you can shoot this body, rob it of its life, but you can’t actually kill me. Time won’t allow that.” He wagged his finger to accentuate the point.
The men were rough approximations of each other, dirty blonde hair, thin muscular builds. They obviously shared some DNA. The man who had spoken stood behind a cluttered desk, sorting through papers. The one he spoke to stood a dozen steps away, aiming a handgun at his chest.
The man with the gun smirked.
“What do you think you know?”
“Oh I know.” The man with the gun stated. “I did the math. Mom should be well pregnant with me by now.”
“You don’t think I would have planned for this contingency? By now you should know the whole gambit, I’ve been everywhen. Seen everything. It’s not like I didn’t see this coming. Go back to your time, things will settle themselves out.” The man behind the desk picked up a new stack of papers and began rifling through them, finished with the conversation.
Time passed. Realizing that the man with the gun was going nowhere he set the papers back down.
“Not that I care, but where did I go wrong?”
“Why is it always about you, father?” the man with the gun in his hand shook as he fought to control his anger.
Father didn’t seem to notice.
“You’re what twenty-two, three unless I changed my plans the transition should have already begun. Since it’s not all about me, what did you do?”
There was a long pause as the son fought back tears.
“That’s just it. I don’t know. You just stopped trusting me. No explanation, no warning. You just cut me off from everything.” He hissed the last words through tight lips.
“Don’t you think there is rational explanation for that?” his father spat angrily. He took three deep breaths to calm himself before speaking again. “Likely for your protection.”
“You sent Simon to see me.”
This caught father’s attention.
“Simon failed?” father asked incredulously.
“You taught me well.”
“Rubbish. This all sounds like rubbish. Come. Sit. I will pour us a drink and we can get to the bottom of this.”
“No father, it’s too late for talk.”
He pulled the trigger.
– – – –
“What have you done?” the women asked, rushing into the room.
“Mom?” he asked.
She looked down at her dead husband, then back to the man that she could only assume was her son. She asked her question again.
“What have you done?
He rushed over to her, burying this head in her shoulder, his tears flowed freely.
“We need to go mom. I’m going to take you where you can be safe.” The sobs began to subside.
She placed one hand on the back of his head for comfort. With the other she took the gun from his hand.
“Hush son.” she whispered. “I will make it all better.” She placed the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
by Duncan Shields | Jun 24, 2014 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I was a time traveler. I say ‘was’ because it’s apparent to me now that this was a one-way trip.
I realized I was a god as soon as the pain stopped.
I could hear all the other gods, shouting in my head. Billions of them ordered into groups and catalogues. Every thought that ran through my mind accordioned new sub-menus out, giving me access to the proper people. Polite queries were flooding through me like water through a dam.
I wanted to respond but it was hard to do because of all the screaming I was doing.
It was a social network in my mind. Nodes of location and profession grew and pinpointed depending on my attention. Closing my eyes did nothing.
Most countries I recognized. Some I didn’t. I shied away from the nodes labeled with the names of planets. I only recognized half of the professions. Even though I could hear everyone, I was somehow not going insane. My brain must have been augmented, too.
I looked down at my arms. Light blue with a faint tracery of new lines on the skin. I wanted to get a closer look and immediately I could see the manufactured hairs on my arm in electron microscope detail.
I started screaming again. This was not my body.
I remembered stepping out of my time machine into an alley in what was supposed to be the year 2120. Immediately, I had trouble breathing and my eyes started watering regardless of the air filter and goggles.
Then fire lit up my veins like vegas and I went down.
As soon I came in contact with the future, I was registered as a pure biological and ‘updates’ began pouring into me from the picotech floating in the air. According to the tech, I hadn’t been updated in a long time.
It was like plugging a gaming console into the ancient internet after two years of not playing it. Immediately, downloads for the OS and all of the games would pour in with a need for a restart. It took a long time.
Well, I’ve never been hooked into this network and according to its data, I was in need of a full reinstall.
I was in a coma for two weeks. Upgrade after upgrade slammed into my twitching body. I lay shuddering in the hospital while concerned medpeople monitored it all. The future ran through me like a train.
I am now connected to worldmind, overnet and airmesh. My eyes are sniper scopes and my skin is an air filter. I am blue.
I cannot go back. This future lacks the technology to regress me to my former self and the body I now possess would create thousands of patents that haven’t been invented yet if I went back.
The future is sorry. It says so. Here. In my mind. Everyone one earth apologizes and is happy to meet me. The other planets are knocking on my mental firewalls with well wishes. They all feel bad, like they sprung a trap on me. But they’ve never met a time traveler before and they want to talk.
I have five options of travel if I want to see other planets, seven if I want to leave this body here.
The blue skin around the corners of my mouth hooks up into a smile.
I think I’ll go to Mars.
