by submission | Jun 13, 2014 | Story |
Author : Aaron Koelker
The old man looked over his shoulder at me. His clothes, hands, and face were just as greasy as any of the parts within the dinosaur engine compartment beneath him. His arms were black with it up to the rolled sleeves clinging at his elbows.
“What is it, kid?”
My iHUD told me the man had slightly elevated arterial tension, heart rate, testosterone levels and activity in the left brain hemisphere; along with a minimal decrease in cortisol levels. He was mildly irritated. He also took note of the pause as I read the data streaming down my peripherals.
“Cut out that damn Trekkie stuff,” he said. “You know what I told you.”
The testosterone feed fluttered a bit.
“With all respect, sir,” I answered, “why are you so against it?”
“I don’t need a machine stitched into my face to know whether or not you’re bored.” He ducked his head back under the hood of the old beater. “Finish checking the rest of those spark plugs I gave you yesterday.”
“They’re too old. Just buy some new ones.”
The old man turned round again. “I’m sorry, did they force you into this internship? Because I sure as hell don’t need you here back talking me. In fact, I don’t really need you for much of anything. You’re supposed to be here to learn.”
I was tired of the old man constantly belittling me from his high horse of nostalgia and old age. “You’re just afraid of change,” I said. “And things you don’t understand.”
The old man took a rag from his back pocket and unsuccessfully tried to clean his hands. “Don’t pretend you know how any of that stuff works, kid.”
“Of course I know.”
“Then please share,” he said, unconvinced. He dropped the rag over the grill of the car and leaned against the fender, arms crossed.
“Scanners in the eye take a reading of the various chemicals in the body. Heart rate, brain activity; basic bodily functions…”
“You’re telling me what it does, not how it does it. I can tell you my eyes see the sky and tell my head it’s blue, too.”
“That’s different.”
The feed said my heart rate had increased by twelve percent.
He barked a laugh. “How? The problem with the world today is that we have all this fancy technology yet no one knows how it actually works. They know what it does and how to use it, but they have to rely on others to actually innovate. To fix it, to build it. And those people have to rely on yet more people to handle all the other things, because even they have only mastered one trade. Everyone just consumes these days. No one learns. No one can take care of themselves.”
My cortisol plummeted.
“And I suppose you’re the exception.”
“No, but I’m sure as hell more self-reliant than your sorry generation. I actually know how a combustive engine works. I can hunt my own food and properly dress it. I know the difference between a blackbird’s song and a blue jay’s and I can make a dovetail joint. I can temper a piece of iron and knit myself a shirt if it ever need be. And I can tell when a kid is embarrassed without some chip built in Taiwan.”
The feed alerted me of an adrenaline increase, as well as an isolated dilation of the blood vessels across my face. My metabolic processes slowed by twenty-two percent and my pupil diameter had increased by thirty-seven.
I quit that lousy “History of Mechanics” internship the next day.
by submission | Jun 12, 2014 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
It was a typical night in the emergency department. I’d assigned a couple of medmechs to use the tissue menders on a pair of Loraxels who’d gotten into a bar fight with a Sniddan. The brawlers had apparently forgotten that Snidd Prime has three times the gravity of Loraxel and Sniddans have a correspondingly robust musculature. The psych screener was talking to a female Qooret who was depressed and suicidal because she missed the one-day mating season of her species and the next wasn’t due for almost 200 standard years. An Esmalt had checked himself in for a simple viral infection of his spiracles. He was a “frequent flyer” who always thought he was dying.
An ambulance ship called to say they were inbound with an alien with which they were totally unfamiliar. By the time the ambulance landed, the patient had been working with the ambulance’s translation computer for over an hour, speaking the words in his language of images the computer displayed. A very rudimentary translation matrix was now available.
I looked up his species. Human. Not much in the database. Warm-blooded vertebrates from GGC 17883/3. Their star didn’t even have a name in the stellar catalog, just a number. They only recently developed interstellar flight capability. Why do the bumpkins always wait until I’m on duty to come in?
“Hello. I’m Dr. Brij’krel. It looks like you’ve got some radiation poisoning. The paramedmechs uploaded your genome, labs, and diagnostic imaging scans on the flight here and I think our pharmacy can synthesize a nanoceutical that should repair the damage.”
The alien listened to the computer translate what I’d said. It looked around, confused. Then it nodded its head, a gesture of affirmation, I assumed.
“Where am I?” it asked.
“This is the Smyrnok Emergency Medical Station. We’re in orbit around the second planet of the Kippriana star system.”
“Tau Ceti,” said the alien. The computer, having nothing to offer by way of translation, repeated the words.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That is what we call this star. Tau Ceti.”
“Ah.”
“I am Lieutenant Lee Chang of the Asian Coalition Aerospace Force. From the planet Earth.”
I nodded my head in acknowledgement, an awkward gesture, and reviewed the patient’s vital signs. Having no idea what constituted normal vascular pressure and temperature for its species, I simply input an order for a medmech to administer the radiation sickness treatment.
“I wish to speak to someone in charge,” the alien said. “I am a representative of the Asian Coalition and of the peoples and governments of Earth.”
My skin momentarily turned blue as I heard the translation. I quickly composed myself and it reverted to burnt orange. I felt sure the alien wouldn’t recognize my outward display of annoyance. Why do the rubes of the galaxy always want to turn an emergency department visit into a first contact encounter? Reminds me of that patient I saw in med school who tried to establish formal diplomatic relations for her homeworld with me while I was taking her pulse.
“The nanomachines have very nearly repaired the damage. I’ll have a medmech take care of your discharge shortly.”
“Dr. Brij’krel,” the computer said after translating what I’d told the alien, “the Loraxel patient in bed nine wants to leave against medical advice.”
My skin turned blue again and I didn’t care if it stayed that way. I started shuffling on tired tentacles toward bed nine.
“It is imperative I speak to a government representative!” said the human. “This is an historic meeting!”
“Discharge that patient,” I told a medmech.
by Duncan Shields | Jun 11, 2014 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The ship had stopped in between Earth and the moon, twinkling like a massive cathedral made of glass and crystal. No shockwave or energy point. It was just suddenly there.
Our Earth defenses reacted immediately. The defenses of the asteroid belt and Mars rendezvoused with us around the alien craft.
We surrounded it, pointed weapons at it, and screamed orders at it to stay still and be calm. It didn’t react. It was hard to tell if it was following our orders, if it was truly dead in the water, or if it had even heard us at all.
The world was watching and the space defense forces of three solar governments were bristling with fear in a pinpointed sphere of death around it.
I was sent to take a look.
I had no need to storm an airlock because there were vast open portals in the sides of the ship. I thumbed my jets on my suit forward, nosing my way cautiously into the interior of the ship.
The ship appeared to only exist when light was hitting it. The hull and interior were only visible when the light of the sun or my suit’s flashlights played across it. Anything not being illuminated was transparent to the point of not existing.
The ship was half here and half not here. What I could see of the ship looked like ice or clear glass but when I reached out to touch it, my finger slid off of it. Completely frictionless.
According to our sensors, it didn’t have any mass. Obviously impossible yet here I was.
Movement caught my eye and I snapped my weapon up.
I saw the crew.
Odd, transparent, segmented snake-like creatures that flowered into an ornate nest of tentacles halfway up. They had the same properties as the ship itself, completely disappearing when in shadow. It was hard to tell if they were manufactured out of the same material as the ship or if they were merely in the same state of existence.
One thing was for sure; they were reacting to an emergency. I couldn’t detect any visible damage but the creatures were running around in what looked like panic even though they were ignoring me completely.
My headlamps were bringing the chaos into sharp relief. I wasn’t even sure if they could see me. They made no effort to avoid me yet somehow they never collided with me.
This looked like a cockpit of some kind but from what I could see through the translucent walls, the same activity was taking place in similar rooms. I couldn’t detect a central engine or chain of command.
Experimenting, I turned off my head lights and spun slowly to look behind me.
Lit by the sun from behind, my long shadow was a perfect me-shaped hole in the floor with only the depths of space staring back at me. I nudged down towards it and dipped a toe into the hole.
And my toe went through the floor.
I recoiled. “I’m leaving the ship!” I said into my comm. I couldn’t help thinking about drifting through a wall only to have the light change its angle when I was halfway through and trap me there.
Another part of me did not want to be aboard when the aliens fixed the problem.
I needed to leave. The ship didn’t appear to be a threat. It was just stranded.
I left the ship and angled back to my waiting defense craft to debrief.
I was going to recommend leaving it alone.
by Clint Wilson | Jun 10, 2014 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
“Commander Marshall, do you read me?” There was nothing but static. The two belt patrol cops raced over the surface of the massive asteroid in their rock-battered cruiser. The rookie Chang said, “We’re coming up on the camp sir.”
They crested a short rise and dove down into a great crater. Two kilometers away, near the center, stood Mineshaft Ninety-Three. The small collection of metal buildings and equipment showed no signs of life.
Captain Marquez said, “Try again.”
His subordinate continued, “Commander Marshall, this is Belt Patrol Seven-Seven. We are responding to a distress call from your location. Do you read me?”
Still nothing.
The senior officer said, “I’m taking us in for a closer look.” The cruiser skimmed along less than a meter above the rocky surface. The buildings grew larger. Still there was no sign of… suddenly a hit from a plasma cannon sent up a plume of molten rock just off their port bow! Marquez’s years of experience saved their lives as he rolled the vessel hard to starboard. Wasting no time, he hit the elevation burners and pulled the cruiser up and out of the crater as several more blasts from the plasma cannon narrowly missed their retreat.
“What was that?” cried Chang.
“ It came from the camp, just inside the mine shaft.”
“But who? What has control of the camp?”
“I don’t know but we’re going to find out.”
“But whoever it is will pick us off on the next approach for sure!”
“Leave that to me. Just get me all the data we have on Marshall and his crew.”
Commander Marshall had arrived with eight mining experts at the beginning of the last cycle. Apparently there had been strong findings on initial exploratory drilling so more equipment had been sent. Positive news continued to flow back to Mars Base, promising some of the best veins seen in years. And then suddenly the reports had stopped.
The company thought it might be a communication glitch so they dispatched the nearest patrol unit, Seven-Seven. They had only been some twenty million kilometers distant, but while on route they had received the distress signal.
Now the two cops climbed down the wall of the crater in their brown and gray camouflage pressure suits. They maintained radio silence. It took them over an hour of clambering along to cover the distance to the camp. But they remained undetected. Soon Marquez reached the first building. He popped up and hazarded a look through the airlock windows. He gasped as he spied several bloody bodies lying about. Dropping back down he signaled Chang forward. Together they continued to sneak along toward the mineshaft.
Finally they crept up to the edge and together they looked down. There he was, propped up in the suspended operator’s chair of his weapon, a converted plasma driller now pointed at the sky. He wore a clear helmet, and as he turned to the left they both caught his profile and recognized Marshall from his file.
Marquez leveled his weapon and motioned for Chang to do the same.
Abandoning radio silence the captain clicked onto the comm, “There’s no escape Marshall, we’ve got you surrounded!”
The culprit heard the command and quickly scanned above. Then he instantly spun the cannon around and dropped it down toward their position on the rim. Now he was behind his gun.
Chang shouted, “If you fire on us the shaft wall will collapse on you!”
The reply was immediate and cold, “I don’t care trooper!” And just before he engaged the trigger he shouted, “My caverns, they shine!”
by Julian Miles | Jun 9, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The era of warp drive started badly. Ships went in. Nothing came out. Then they found that ships did come out, just a gazillion miles from where they should have.
It took some very clever people to realise that there was only one ‘computer’ with the capabilities to navigate warp space: the human brain. From there, the Navigator Guilds were born and humanity was off to the stars.
The stars were unimpressed. The various races out there had been at peace, or stagnating, for a very long time. The kids from Earth were loud, pugnacious and insisted on asking embarrassing questions and demanding honest answers. We were not popular. But we had the numbers, and warp navigators who were second to none. Or more truthfully, second to one: people like me.
I had all the mental aptitudes to be a navigator. The only problem was that there were too many of me in my mind. Multiple personality disorder and warp space navigational traits were an unwelcome combination; my parents despaired.
Then a man from a ministry that doesn’t exist came and made me a job offer. At double the pay of a Grade One Navigator. Mummy and Daddy rejoiced. Me? I wasn’t so sure, but I signed up anyway.
I became a Zen Gunner.
We’re like snipers. But we shoot things a long, long way off. A lot of those things think they’re safe from anything except planet busters or assassins amongst their staff.
A mind that can navigate warp has certain unique qualities: an unshakeable knowledge of real space co-ordinates, an understanding of how to ride the tides that sweep warp space, and a warp-fold eye view of the destination at all times. That last one is the key: you can see a long way through warp space. See things unseeable by anything in real space.
If you have a lot of you in your head, one can handle the weapon that resembles a church organ (if it had been designed by Picasso), one can see the trajectory of the projectile (calling it a bullet is over-simplifying to the point of insult), one can see the target, and one can dynamically adjust the trajectory so that projectile and target meet.
I was the fifth Zen Gunner. My tutors burst out laughing when they saw that my surname was Bailey and I still don’t know why. But I do know that my ministry makes more money for Britain from one shot than the rest of Britain makes in a year.
Our latest (seventh) Zen Gunner is a girl named Zoe. We get on really well and are not unaware of the hopeful looks being exchanged amongst our managers. She and I have already decided that a family is what we want to become. We’re delaying any announcement until we work out just how much to charge them for it.
