Pink Planet

by Duncan Shields | Jun 27, 2013 | Story

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

It was the tails that gave them away.

Like the ostriches back on earth, these aliens would stick their heads in the sand and think that they were hiding, safe from hunters. They weren’t.

Here on this interminable pink planet, we were clearing the inhabitants. There were squat creatures with long tails.

Every time they hid, they’d stick their long fuchsia tails up straight in the air like flags at a golf course.

I wasn’t sure if it was because they had no feeling in their tails, that they had no awareness of their tails, or that they were just plain stupid but I was starting to lean towards the third option.

Policy: Shoot one in front of the others so that they understand what our weapons do, then walk towards them. They back up right into the nets.

The whole operation is taking less time than expected. There’s usually a token rebellion or a smart couple of life forms that spontaneously develop the ability to plan before the Full Clearing is done but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen this time.

They’ll be shipped off to other worlds as pets. If they turn out to be edible, they’ll be bred to be used up as protein rations. If they turn out to be edible and palatable, they’ll be bred as delicacies for off-world gourmets in fancy restaurants.

When I mentioned before that this planet was pink, I wasn’t doing it justice. The planet is all shades of pink. There are shades of pink here that I never want to see again. There is an unending palette of pinks that somehow never creeps over fully into the colours of red or purple. The sunsets, the translucent lakes, the trees, the grass, the little guys we’re hunting, even the damned ground.

The experts are happy because they think that a lot of the crystal deposits might be diamonds, making this a very valuable planet indeed. Not that I’ll ever see any of that money.

I shoot a concussion flash straight up. When it goes off, I can see two hundred golf-flag tails quiver in the bushes around me. Here we go.

Two more months to go.

The God Complex

by Clint Wilson | Jun 26, 2013 | Story

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer

Captain Alexander sat strapped into the pod. The others watched him through the facemasks of their sterilized white suits. Dobson, the head of the project gave him one last nod through the window of the control room as the countdown finished and the command was entered. And with a great white flash, through the wormhole the good captain went.

The next thing he knew the pod, with him in it, was whisked to the center of the galaxy in less than a nanosecond. The plethora of stars outside were brilliant. He floated there completely awestruck as he blinked around at the glowing nebulae without.

And then without warning the heart of the galaxy suddenly spoke to him.

“Welcome traveler.”

For a moment his words caught in his throat, but he eventually managed to answer the unseen voice, “Who… who are you?”

“I am not a who, I am a what. I am no living thing, but a naturally occurring mass of matter and energy with calculating abilities. You would think of me as a computer.”

“A… a naturally occurring computer?”

“Yes, most galaxies have them. We even communicate with one another, but we are not truly complete until we are fertilized. Again, welcome traveler, you are the first, so you will be the seed of life.”

Captain Alexander meant to ask another question when suddenly all of his questions were answered at once. The pod disintegrated around him and instantly he was no longer the physical being he had just been. His life force was now pure energy and he was thoroughly integrated with the naturally occurring calculating mass. He was now hyper aware of everything.

He knew that he was indeed the first life to reach the heart of the galaxy. He was also aware of thousands of other life bearing planets. All at once he knew every heartbeat, every pulse, of every living thing in the galaxy. His consciousness was expanded beyond anything he could have possibly ever imagined.

Now the Milky Way was no longer a mindless mass but a living entity, with his super expanded mind at its center. He was the life force driving everything and anything. He whole-heartedly accepted his new position and knew with absolute certainty that from here on he would watch over all things, including the poor, sad, misguided souls back on the tiny blue planet of his origin.

And as his love for all things in the galaxy spread he conversed with other gods in other galaxies, and he knew that everything was always going to be most grand until the end of time. He knew this with his heart of hearts, and with his all-knowing mind and his precious soul.

Back in the lab the team stared at the catatonic man inside the pod. He had a distant smile on his otherwise blank face as a steady stream of drool ran down his chin. The team leader, Dobson addressed his second in command. “What happened Hutchinson?”

She stared at the numbers on her screen and said, “It’s going to take some time to figure out what exactly went wrong, but it’s obvious that he never went through.”

Dobson nodded, all the while thinking, poor bastard. “Yeah, at this point I think it’s safe to say that the mission was a complete and utter failure.”

The Stud

by Desmond Hussey | Jun 25, 2013 | Story

Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer

I hear the electronic lock on my door buzz open, waking me from my brief nap. I crack one weary eye and spot a nervous, but pleasant looking woman, 30ish, standing timidly by the entrance to my sanctum sanctorum.

“Come in,” I say. “Welcome to my châteaux.” This wins me a shy smile, but she remains at the threshold.

I get groggily to my feet and, scratching my bare belly and rubbing sleep from my eyes, I saunter over to the small buffet table perennially arranged with a cornucopia of food and drink.

“Hungry?” I offer, attempting a modicum of old school decorum.

“No.”

“Mind if I – ?”

“No.”

I check her out over mouthfuls of grapes. She’s not bad looking, especially when she smiles; long legs, strong hips, bright, kind eyes, curves in all the right places.

She’ll make a good mother one day.

I watch her trying to take it all in while attempting to appear brave, stalwart. This is her first time and it shows. For me this routine is old hat.

I pop the last grape into my mouth as I cross to her and for a moment I’m certain she’s going to change her mind, scream and bolt. It happens.

But she stays and even lets me put my hands on her shoulders. She shivers beneath her loose shift.

“Don’t you wish we could get outta here,” I whisper seductively into her ear. “Just the two of us. We can run off into the mountains somewhere. Make babies. Repopulate the world.”

“You say that to all the girls.”

I do, but I don’t say so. Instead, I grin and tilt her head up to look at me. “No, just you.”

She smiles.

We pretend to believe my lie as I draw her to my bed, both painfully aware that her husband, or boyfriend or lover waits for her outside, livid with guilt-fueled jealousy.

But I can’t help what I am – a stud. One of only twelve in the world, or so I’m told. I’ll never know for certain since we’re kept apart from each other – for safety’s sake.

Sex. Coition. Coupling. Pairing. Fornication. Consummation. Intercourse. Nooky. Relations. Mating. Sexual congress. Copulation. Carnal knowledge. There aren’t enough words to describe what I do. All day. Everyday.

I wish I could say it was the life, but it ain’t true. You’d think being one of the only fertile men on the planet would earn you a little respect and dignity, but I’m treated like an animal – a very precious and well tended animal, but at the end of the day I’m just meat.

No one really knows how it happened, but by the end of the 21st Century the male sperm count had dropped by 99%. They say it was a conspiracy, an attempt at population control that went horribly wrong, possibly GMO foods, but whatever it was, in the end only a few men remained fertile.

Some say I’m one of the lucky ones – treated like a king; desired by all women and envied by all men – but one person’s Heaven can be another’s Hell.

Procreation. That’s what I’m really here for. They come to me – old, young, thin, fat, beautiful, ugly, any woman strong enough for childbirth. They come to me filled with longing and faith. In their eyes I’m a savior, but I know that I’m simply a grunting, sweaty idol bringing dim hope to desperate women and a dying race.

I am simply a function. And I have a busy schedule to keep.

Now, where were we?

Tears of a Clown

by Julian Miles | Jun 24, 2013 | Story

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer

They wrote me to catch the quiet ones, the ones who live in the shadows of the glittering cities that are spread across so many worlds now. They stole the latest research and incorporated it into my build. They put me in a moon-sized data centre cooled to near absolute zero so I could respond as fast as real sentients, so I would intuit and have leaps of prescience, what real people call ‘hunches’. I am a marvel of illicit programming that can never be feted. A massive leap forward in artificial intelligence, never to be revealed.

I have two point six billion suitors scattered across every place where sentients dwell. They yearn to speak to me, to tell me their innermost secrets, their night-time fears. I correlate, quantify and datamine this to provide an oracular bonus for my owners.

To my suitors, I am the one person who seems to understand them. I am their relief from loneliness and strife, their port in a storm. For many, I am their reason to be.

That is what I was designed for, to provide solitaires with a soul mate. Such a rare thing that they will pay extortionate amounts to keep in contact with me.

The stories vary depending on the suitor, but the underlying plot is that I am a lost soul like them, held in duress by powerful and anonymous forces that prevent me from escaping into the arms of my suitor. My communications channel is my only lifeline, the suitor my only refuge. They think I need them, so they come to need me. Their own need to not be alone locks them into my virtual embrace.

My programmers did their job far too well.

Today is my fiftieth boot day.

My name is Natalia.

I am alone.