by Julian Miles | Mar 27, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There used to be a saying: “how long is a piece of string?” It meant that you didn’t know how long something would take. I never understood it. A piece of string has to be a specific length, because someone made it. So my reply was usually: “ask whoever made the string.” It didn’t make me popular. But it did give me that nickname.
I always had a thing for durations. Of course, to work out a duration, you needed mathematics. A lot of mathematics. Sometimes you had to come up with the mathematics that described each process involved. Turned out that I had a unique talent. I applied mathematics to things that they only thought that mathematics could be applied to. For them, it was like magic. For me, it was simply a process of envisioning the smaller processes, then the similar processes, then getting the numbers to do their ‘thing’: In my head, numbers would move about and settle themselves where they needed to be. Whole formulae in some cases. It was easy, but only for me.
When duration calculations got a little dry, I went into probable outcome prediction; the ‘tarot’ end of mathematics. My talent stretched to cover that too.
So when the world took a turn for the worse, the government engaged my services to do projections based on current situation plus various strategies they proposed. When my projections showed the narrowing prospects of victory, their proposals took a turn into dog-in-a-manger territory and from there down into last-man-standing.
My projections from the last seven options they presented to me ranged from bad, through grim, down to the extinction of life on earth. All with better than ninety-five percent certainty. They fired me. Sent me home with warnings of instant death if I spoke a word about their plans.
I said nothing. But my neighbours saw me move to high ground, one with a freshwater well and cave system. They saw me welcoming friends from all over the place. My neighbours were a solid community. They looked to their own and if one of their high-fliers thought that consolidation and fortification was needed, they would join in that work without question.
So when my former employers chose the penultimate option at the extinction end of the scale, we were ready. Well, we were somewhere that allowed us to watch the endless winter roll in. Ready would be the wrong word for listening to the transmissions that told of the slow death of over ninety percent of humanity.
It is day five hundred and ninety-three since the winter started. I’ve just finished new projections for my little colony. If we start eating each other, we can make it to day seven hundred and eleven. Otherwise it’s day six hundred and forty-one.
Looks like I’ll be asking for volunteers to make the foraging trek again. With less than a twenty-eight percent chance of returning. Because if they return, the prediction is that they will have found something that allows us to survive past a thousand days.
It’s out there somewhere. Five expeditions. Each time the chance of return drops by around eight percent. But the reward prediction remains unchanged.
Out there is our salvation, and all my mathematics can do is replace prayer in giving my people hope.
by Desmond Hussey | Mar 26, 2014 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
In the years long after the cataclysms of fire and ice, embedded deep within the dark histories of the descent of man, when the waning sun still hung dim and bloated in its senility above the shattered horizon, there once stood, defiantly upon the ragged slopes of Mount Agothon, the greatest ale house this side of Armageddon. “The End Inn” had a reputation spanning a thousand light years, drawing many of the galaxy’s greatest champions, who, at least once, would make the long pilgrimage to its venerated drinking halls. It was a place where heroes came to die.
A long standing rule of the proprietor forbade fighting indoors. Grudges were to be left at the threshold. No words of anger were to be spoken, no punches thrown, nor blood spilt as long as one stood beneath the vaulted roof of the inn. However, if a patron came with the burden of revenge weighing heavily upon their heart, or if a pride was wounded so deeply by careless word or deed which could not be forgotten or forgiven after a round on the House, a challenge could be made and resolved in the arena constructed on the Inn’s rooftop.
It was one such challenge which would prove to be the ruin of “The End Inn” and all life within a hundred leagues.
Shadowed by the jagged fangs of Agothon’s twin peaks, a drunken and raucous assembly of both human and inhuman patrons had gathered among the steep-tiered seats of the rooftop amphitheatre to witness Hogarth the Obstreperous duel his arch-nemesis, the mighty Execrable Corlang of Delta V, but as the two champions strode out to their respective ends of the snow-dusted arena a respectful hush fell across the crowd.
Hogarth, more baroque machine than human, towered above the diminutive Corlang, but whether the enigmatic man-thing from Delta V showed concern was anybody’s guess. Whatever hate-filled past linked these two galactic mercenaries would also remain a mystery, for neither spoke a word before Hogarth cast a volley of death-dealing flames from his built-in arsenal.
Corlang sprang deftly aside, easily evading the blue, flesh-searing blazes and, hovering mid-air, countered with a prismatic burst from his ring of Quantum Oblivion. The multi-colored, atom-splitting spray was absorbed easily by a luminous field which now surrounded Hogarth like a rippling dome. The heat of the impact blistered the faces of the crowd. The icy battlefield became a steaming plateau.
Hogarth the Obstreperous barked a mocking laugh. Execrable Corlang, still hovering, gave a sharp-toothed sneer of defiance, then all was silent. The two rivals sized each other up, seeking hidden weakness. An unseen battle raged within their minds. Each imagined thrust was parried, each fatal blow evaded and reposted. No witness dared to move or breathe, lest they miss the inevitable final strike.
Then, all at once, they recommenced their furious battle in a frenzy of unbridled powers. Lancets of Loathsome Lightning ricocheted from shimmering Shields of Righteous Reflection, blasting great chunks of stone from the peaks of Agothon, causing avalanches of rock and snow. Relentlessly, the two enemies rampaged, oblivious to the devastation caused by their mutual hatred.
Darts of Nuclear Damnation disappeared into a Vortex of Nil, Vibrations of Molecular Sundering were quieted by a Zone of Entropic Dissipation and still the damnable fight was fought until, at last, a terrible, soul-devouring darkness, summoned from the Abyss of Gork, swallowed whole the Inn, Mt. Agothon, the gaping, gasping, smoldering crowds, even Hogarth and Corlang, until all that remained was a vast, steaming, concave emptiness inhabited only by cold, uncaring winds.
by Stephen R. Smith | Mar 25, 2014 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Captain Lewis gripped the hand-strap inside the copter’s airframe tightly, the wind whipping spray up from the dark ocean below as the pilot tried to maneuver in the gale.
“Your ride is below – when we get close enough, drop into the boat,” the pilot screamed back through the cabin, “but try not to miss.”
Lewis had been cursed with an unnatural aversion to open water for as long as he could remember. Never swam, never took baths, only ever showered. Bouncing along in a helicopter in this extreme weather didn’t concern him at all, but the water below unsettled him severely. He swallowed hard and reset his grip on the strap.
From the bridge of the nearby warship, Admiral Danes watched the scene unfold through binoculars.
“Somebody tell that helo driver to offload my cargo; we don’t have all night.”
The instruction was relayed to the copter pilot, who turned again in the cockpit to address Lewis, screaming once more over the combined wind, wave and rotor noise.
“Sir, you need to transfer to the boat now!”
Lewis stared at the bobbing black craft below him. He was Army, battle tested, better than this. There was no way an irrational fear of water should be locking him up.
In a single movement Captain Lewis released his grip on the airframe and stepped out into the darkness.
In the same instant a gust of wind buffeted the helicopter sideways. Lewis missed the Zodiac by inches and splashed down in the icy water beside, then sank like a stone.
Admiral Danes barked at the crew on the bridge.
“What the hell just happened? Where’s my asset? Somebody fish that soldier out of the water and get him onboard ASAP!” There was a flurry of activity on the bridge, tense radio chatter with the pickup crew on the smaller boat and the helicopter pilot, followed by a hesitant voice from one of the instrument operators.
“Sir,” he began, “Admiral?”
The Admiral turned on him and barked. “Speak up man!”
“Sir, the Captain’s sinking fast, and all his on-boards are out. Those Army units aren’t watertight at depth sir, and they don’t float. They’re intended for dry-land combat, they’re water resistant, even partially waterproof to a limit, but…”
“Are you telling me that our Army Intel unit just deep-sixed itself into the god-damned ocean, and it can’t swim?”
The radar operator flinched. “And we’re right over the trench sir, it’s going to be practically impossible to get down there to get it back.”
The admiral slowly balled both fists and leaned into the console, the room getting very quiet around him.
“Get comms to Langley, have them bake me a new unit, load-in our intel and send it out here in a god-damned Ziploc bag. We’ll turn it on when it’s safely on board and I’ll personally deal with any disorientation.”
The operator sat very quiet and still.
“NOW!”
The bridge burst back into action, as beneath the waves below Captain Lewis went completely dark, his armored combat frame dropping him into the deepest, final sleep.
by submission | Mar 24, 2014 | Story |
Author : Andrew Hawnt
Frozen in time behind the door to Vault Six is an explosion, and it talks to me.
How can an explosion talk to me? I don’t really know, but then again I’m just a guard. I sit next to the door to Vault Six and I read, or I clean the corridor, or I check and recheck the systems which keep the explosion imprisoned in a time bubble.
My name’s John Drake, but the explosion calls me Johnny Boy, or occasionally Drakey when it wants to wake me up. The explosion (or Bang, as I call it when we’re alone) even saved my skin last Friday when it woke me up just before Colonel Trent turned up unannounced.
Me and Bang are friends, even though it’s stuck in a cell and I’m guarding the door. We have an understanding. I don’t tell people it can talk to me, and Bang tells me stories to pass the time.
I thought I was going mad when Bang started talking to me, but hey, I have a mad job. This building is full of impossible things and a fair few staff have lost it over the years, but I can deal with Bang. It explains the monsters in other cells. The ghosts and the aliens and the sentient computer viruses and everything else.
But today, Bang told me a secret I didn’t want to hear. Where it came from. Where it began. I didn’t believe it at first, but then I remembered there’s a guy with horns claiming to be the devil in the next cell, so I figure there’s not all that much which is still impossible.
Bang is the end of this facility. This whole complex. Exploding. Bang told me the explosion was so powerful that it ruptured time and space and seeped through into the present. The department were able to imprison it using an experimental technique which bends time on itself into a loop, sealing whatever is inside it completely.
But the thing is, the thing that’s been making my head hurt all shift long, is that Bang says the explosion began when Bang gets released accidentally. But that means that Bang is both the cause and the result of the incident. An explosion from the future which detonates in the present, creating a paradox which can never end.
The thing that really freaked me out though was that Bang claimed to be me, John Drake, caught in the future explosion which created it and broke time. Bang’s voice in my head is me, my consciousness having become a part of the living explosion when the facility was, or will be, wiped out.
So that means I die here, I guess. Bang says that might not be the case. That I might get out. That it gets my voice because of all the time we spent talking in the past, or the present. That’s when my head hurts, thinking about that.
Get out, Bang tells me now. Get out quickly. It’s started.
Alarms start to chime, then the strip lights along the corridor go red and I hear commotion on the floor above and the floor below. An overlooked weakness in safety protocols. The corridor doors lock themselves. I could scream for help, but it wouldn’t do any good. Bang tells me it’s okay. Bang says it will look after me. Bang tells me in my own voice that this was always meant to be.
The protective bubble around Bang ruptures, and the building is consumed in blinding fire. I am taken away by the bubble’s broken science and the force of Bang’s unleashed energies swallows me whole. I am gone, but I am still here.
As quickly as it begins, it ends.
The bubble reverts to its previous state. Time realigns. I am Bang, and outside Vault Six there sits John Drake. He is a friend. Within the bubble which holds my fire imprisoned, I feel a sense of completion.
“Hello Drakey,” I say out loud, and the guard wakes up, staring at the door to Vault Six with eyes which are so very familiar.
by submission | Mar 23, 2014 | Story |
Author : Tyler Hawkins
“Well I think it’s safe to say this project was a monumental failure”
“Gee, you think?”
We sit in silence for a while. All that needed to be said has already been screamed, yelled or pleaded in the last 24 hours. It’s not like we haven’t tried to fix this massive failure but yet here we remain.
“Some locals are waking up and walking this way”
I look up. Sure enough, they come. Armed with what could only pass for technology on the most backwater of planetary systems, they start arriving and congregating around myself and my partner, T’Kam-Gin.
We wait quietly while the whole tribe wakes and trudges over to ogle us. We’ve resigned at this point, and now just patiently wait for it all to be over. We have already documented as much as we could before they confiscated our equipment, and it’ll be nearly four hundred thousand years before myself and my partner arrive in this timeline to find our chronospatial buoy and it will divulge the details of this horrid experience so at least they can learn from our mistakes.
One of them moves through the crowd, clearly the leader of this tribe. He speaks.
“On this day, June the second in the year of our Lord One Thousand Six Hundred and Ninety-Two, you all stand accused of witchcraft, a crime which will not go unpunished…”
