by Desmond Hussey | Apr 11, 2014 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
“The Vulturi Zoological reserve is home to the most dangerous collection of species within the galaxy…”
The dull-as-Arcosian-Slug-Art tour-guide is a spastic, Mark-VII resembling a stick-figure assembled from recycled gas cylinders, aluminum coils and rubber bands. Whoever programmed it should be boiled in their own gastric juices. It’s yammered non-stop since we left the Deep Space High School three hours ago, droning an incessant litany of factoids as it jerks up and down the aisle of the 0-g passenger hold.
I try to tune it out and simply stare morosely at the scene slowly enlarging beyond my portal as we near the tiny, blue-green moon; our final (thankfully) destination on this tour through the Vulturi system. The lush satellite is dwarfed by its host, a milky-white gas giant, marbled with vibrant orange and yellow stripes, which swirl in intricate eddies around its equator.
As we blaze though the upper stratosphere, every passenger clinging desperately to their crash belts, Mark-VII, suctioned to the forward bulkhead, recites a shopping list of redundant data pertaining to atmospheric pressures, gravity ratios and mineral compositions of the moon.
Once we’re within the lower atmosphere the outer heat-shielded hull is jettisoned and suddenly, we’re all suspended mid-air, strapped to our respective seats and linked to each other via spidery struts and cables.
“The entire crew compartment is encased in a high-impact, transparent orb providing a nearly 360 degree panoramic view,” Mark-VII commences to outline the procedure in excruciating detail. He then points out our odds of survival should we find ourselves beyond the protection of the shuttle craft.
“… If you look left you will see the first specimen on our tour; the Giant Gorger rescued from its home world before its sun went nova. Known for its terrifying speed and ravenous appetite…”
The maroon dragon is a thing of beauty as it wings majestically through azure skies. I snap a few pictures for the kids back home before it dives into the clouds below.
Soon our sky-bus-bubble soars over a lush savanna, teeming with diverse wildlife. A herd of bounding, fluffy monopods is pursued by, what appears to be, dun-coloured blurs, slithering through the grass at dizzying speeds.
“…The Torthian Grass Snake only stops moving when it has gorged upon a sizable prey, in this case…”
One of the monopods bursts into a mist of blood and fur. What remains is a bulging, coiling mass of reptile beginning its long, digestive bask in the hot afternoon sun.
Hours later, we are hovering over an adobe dwelling. Two semi-clothed bipeds stand outside looking up at us, forlornly. Mark-VII informs us that these are the infamous Homo-Sapiens of Earth.
“…These tool users will kill not only for food – often enslaving and breeding their prey in foul conditions before slaughtering them – but will also kill for pleasure, territory, resources, abstract concepts and bizarre religious motives unknown in any other parts of the galaxy. Their misuse of primitive technology was particularly destructive, responsible for the mass extinction of many species and the poisoning of their home planet’s air, land and water.
“This is the only remaining pair in existence, bred in captivity after the survivors of their home world were rescued by Vulturi Zoologists. Alone, or in small groups, they are relatively harmless, but if left to breed unchecked, they are capable of global devastation within a hundred generations. Easily one of the most dangerous species in the galaxy.”
Boring. I snap a few pictures anyway before we bank east.
“And if you look to your right…”
by Julian Miles | Apr 10, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Where are you?”
“Same continent.”
“That’s a relief. I was so worried when the news said you’d been cornered in Rio.”
So was I. It was only after fleeing I found it had only been media hype, not a snatch team.
“Doctor Flowers says we need another sample.”
A chill ran down my spine. She said ‘doctor’, not ‘professor’. That meant she was under observation, duress, or both.
“Tell him I’ll contact him tomorrow afternoon.”
“Will you have time to visit?”
Not good. That was a ‘do not come near this town’ warning.
“I’ll see what I can do. Love you, Tara.”
“Love you to. Bye.”
I called MI6 as soon as she hung up. I identified myself with the agreed code for day and date, then got them to send an armed MI5 rescue team to our home. The home I had never seen.
Four years ago I had been stood at the altar, Tara’s hand in mine, when something blew the vicar’s head apart. The slaughter at my wedding was the culmination of two years of international frenzy over my unique ‘condition’. I fled from the venue alone, over the bodies of the small army that had been allocated to defend me.
I worked at the New Calder Hall reactor. I was there the day that its ‘revolutionary innovation in reactor cooling’ failed, bequeathing Britain with Chernobyl-on-Cumbria.
Tara was my specialist during treatment. To everyone’s surprise, I showed no ill effects whatsoever. Tara received several awards for the work she did that led to the identification of ‘blue cells’. She says that her engagement ring is the only one she treasures.
My body had been exposed to quantities of radiation almost guaranteed to cause cancer. Whether my mutated white cells were a freak result or a pre-existing condition will never be known. But the results are clear: people who get a shot of my ‘blue cells’ have their cancerous cells destroyed. No-one has yet managed to replicate blue cell serum. I am the golden goose that bleeds the cure for cancer.
Tara and I decided to make blue cell serum available to the world on a critical need basis. An anonymous billionaire provided funding, as well as starting a research project to artificially produce blue cell serum. It was in its early stages when the first attack occurred. Someone had decided that the value of controlling the only source of the blue cells was worth murdering Tara’s colleagues wholesale.
A year later, the body count had risen to a point where I called a stop to the procession of body guards and safe houses. Our wedding was the last event to be heavily guarded, as the protocols for me becoming a fugitive had been agreed. The wedding showed just how far they would go.
As to who ‘they’ are, it seems that it is a consortium of powerful and greedy people. They want to market the serum made from my blood. It would become something available only to the wealthiest, with a black market for placebos worth even more.
Tara and I will not have that, and we are supported by people at all levels and seemingly everywhere. I cannot count the times that I have evaded a snatch team solely because a stranger intervened.
One day, I will exchange vows with Tara. One day, I will walk into our home. One day, when the researchers at the fortified and hidden laboratory work out how to refine blue cell serum.
Until then, I run.
by Clint Wilson | Apr 9, 2014 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
All six of my previous brothers had gotten past this point with little difficulty. The smoldering remains of my crashed lander blended in nicely with the gray hillside behind me. My atmospheric and biofunction readings continued to flash in my view screen as other red-lettered warnings popped in and out.
Here was the first one I was waiting for. “Motion detected nine-point-five quadrant.” I already knew that this was the troll that had decapitated clone one. I ducked and twisted just like my five other successful brothers had done before me, and felt the wind blast inside my helmet as the slicing plasma sword narrowly missed my head. Before it could turn around and regroup, it was neutralized into a pile of burnt carbon-encrusted ooze.
I pushed forward, up a rocky trail past fissures that spewed toxic gasses, glad for my breathing apparatus, and made ready for my second deadly challenge. Clone two had been sniped from behind a rock high above. Clone three had ducked but had still been pegged off in retreat. After that, my remaining three brothers and I had all successfully managed to dive into a nearby gully each in our own turn. And like my departed replicas, I too managed to cut around and creep up behind my assailant, slitting its throat with my plasma knife. I continued onward and upward.
The rockslide that had taken the life of clone four was an easy sidestep for those of us remaining. I moved up the safe, secondary ridge toward the tower. I knew there were a few one-eyed muck-mongers hiding behind black stumps above, but just like the other two of my remaining brothers; I dispatched them to their makers with little difficulty.
Approaching the gate of the stronghold I faced the killer of clone five knowing full well that there were no guarantees. Just because clone six had defeated this giant in a previous battle didn’t mean that I would. For all the maker cared, we could all start back at square one. But it was our religion. I prayed to it and believed it to my core.
The goliath stumbled toward me, its massive spiked club raised high. I sprung off to the right, mindful of the loose stepping-stone that had almost foiled six, and rolled away to safety as the club came crashing down into the dirt. By the time the hulking killdroid had spun around I managed to release the heavy launcher from my cloak and hoisted it upward, its butt-end nestled firmly against my shoulder. There was an explosion as I tapped the trigger, and when my eyes reopened I was on my back, looking up, as smoke billowed from the now headless collapsing form of the killdroid.
I scrambled to one side and avoided the tons of crashing steel. Then as I stood and faced the tower, the dust cleared. All I needed to do was follow six’s path up and over the wall. It was almost as if I were merely floating along in a dream now. I needed only to follow his footsteps. And this held true until I got to the spot along the top of the wall where the polymer arrow had pierced his heart. I dove off the wall a second before the shot arrived, and crashed down into the brush below.
I stood up and stepped out of the shrubbery. I heard a thump, and looked down just in time to see the grenade roll up to my boot. Damn it! Eight would have to learn from my mistake.
by submission | Apr 8, 2014 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
I scared myself again. But only briefly.
Bored with routine, my mind zoned out. Wandering like a hungry dog. Dragging extraordinary notions to hell and back with me at the centre of it all. The snap-to was always a break in that routine and this morning it was when the door forgot who I was.
My working day started at the office. Not the morning shower or bus ride but that sand etched security glass door that led into the open plan tenancy. Everything before that moment was mine to ponder.
Thirty seconds before arriving at that door I zoned, my body mindlessly zombied past the carved monolith guarding our street-front, itself a party popper palimpsest of social commentary. Up the groaning federation stairs and across the worn half landing, landmarked by the fading odour of dead wall rat.
On autopilot, my body went through this daily routine, while within, my mind, as free as a three year old, dallied a thought stream that frightened me to the core. The fear that I never actually worked here.
Upstairs, face brick walls held the sand etched glass door hostage. Like every other day, I transmitted the door’s passcode early, to time it’s opening with my approach, only to slam face-first into the glass. Through gaps in the etching, my workmates turned towards me. Within a daydream of public humiliation, I snapped-to, humiliated. The transition was seamless.
The door remained closed. No salient tone. No sliding swish. I retransmitted the code, ran a diagnostic on my implant and then shouldered the door. Nothing.
Staring at my paper covered desk through the glass, I scratched the hairy bulge of my scalp implant dumbfounded. Fearful faces glared through the glass. Someone was yelling on the phone. No one recognised me. No one dared approach the door. I signalled for Jane the office manager to let me in. Seeing her confused face, I checked my sanity only to birth the notion that my imagination had in fact become reality.
A crash downstairs preceded heavy footfalls.Turning, I saw Jim, the security guard, lurch, puffing, into the lobby.
“Hey Jim! How’s it going? Can you help me, the door isn’t….”
Before I could finish, Jim had slammed me against the security door.
“You are not authorised to be here Sir”
Hot sprays of breath pulsed the back of my neck.
“Jim it’s me Dave! I work here. I lent you my music library yester……”
“Remain calm Sir. The police are enroute”
To Dave, I was a stranger and to the police who frog marched me out of the building, I was another lost soul.
At police headquarters mayhem reigned. The unstaffed charge desk meant that no one was interested in our identity. Not a good sign. Each cell held a dozen dazed citizens, each one sharing similar stories.
By midday, the sweating cell walls bulged from overcrowding and wheezed air thick with emotion. Like a football crowd, cellmates mentally journeyed from confusion through anger, finally settling on acceptance.
Late afternoon, a two tone warning sounded. A crowd of despair shushed, starving for the truth. A pre-recorded announcement rattled from a tinny cell speaker.
“Last night at 3:45am, a caching error within Central MEMbank deleted your identity from all implants and hardware infrastructure. Once backup have reinstated transient life data, you will be remembered by your family and friends. On behalf of the MEMbank, I apologise for the confusion”
For a moment I pondered the possibilities of being no one and scared myself again.
by Desmond Hussey | Apr 7, 2014 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
The air is rent with screams, alien klaxons and a violent thundering that threatens to crush Kaam with raw acoustic power. All is dizzying confusion, a chaotic kaleidoscope of hauntingly familiar images, intertwined with deep inscrutable wells of emotion, all imbued with significance now lost to her. Searing light and smoke sting her eyes… Noxious smells burn her nostrils and lungs… Flashes of faces filled with concern, love, fear… A baby screams. Voices call out to her.
***
Kaam has the same dream once a year. Each summer, just before the nine shimmering Dawn-Runners race across the blanket of night like a Wulv pack on the hunt, she wakes from the dream, sweating and shivering, her heart filled with an ache, an emptiness. Tonight is no different.
Kaam’s night terror disturbs Maa-Kel’s slumber, but only briefly. Her adopted mother drapes a thickly-furred forepaw over her shoulder, nuzzles a whiskered muzzle into her neck and licks her cheek gently with a moist purple tongue before drifting back to sleep. Briefly, Kaam basks drowsily in the warm security of her downey nest listening to the comforting rumble of the sleeping pack, bedded down in a huddle within their shared cave. Maa-Kel’s fur is redolent of sweet, gallu-grass and Kaam can easily single out Haaman, Graan-Ka and Goom nearby by their distinctive male odours.
The voices call.
With nimble care, Kaam scrambles stealthily over the sleeping mass and creeps outside into the jungle. Away from the pack’s warmth she begins to shiver in the cool pre-dawn air. She lacks the Wulv’s thick, blue fur and has only near invisible fuzz covering most of her body, except her head, from which cascades thick, golden hair, longer than any Wulv’s, hanging in intricate braids down to her knees. Kaam has only two legs and two arms, unlike a Wulv, who has four, leanly muscled legs for running and jumping and two, small dextrous arms and hands for manipulating tools. But, though Kaam is slower and can’t jump as high, she is strong and lithe. Her fingers are more clever and she can climb much better than any of them. Tonight, she clambers easily up and over the ivy-blanketed, hexagonal pillar stones, which rise like millions of flat-topped, rock-crystal columns, forming steep stairs to the ridge over-looking their jungle valley.
They call.
Squatting on a towering pillar, Kaam watches the bright Dawn-Runners tumble across the morning sky as image/feelings from her dream, likewise tumble through her mind. Maa-Kel once told her about their arrival. At first, there was only one large Runner, round like a Maku fruit, but after blooming into a fiery flower it became the nine. A day later, the pack had found her; an infant, unharmed and alone in a mysterious, broken sky-egg. They called her, Kaam – The Fallen Bird.
Kaam’s dream-people all look like her. Was she a Dawn-Runner, a fallen bird come from some other place? Or was she cast away? Would her people ever return for her?
She fills her lungs, tilts back her head and howls a mournful serenade as the receding constellation slips beyond the horizon. Her song is quickly joined by her pack and echoes throughout the valley. Soon, neighbouring packs add their voices to the woeful dirge.
Every year she hears them call and every year she sings back to them, but her song never seems to reach the deaf ears of the Dawn-Runners.
Maybe next year they will answer. Maybe next year.
