by submission | May 28, 2013 | Story |
Author : Ray Daley
The Misthkthos had been on Earth over a year when I talked to my first one. They’d come in peace, landed in a quiet region and strolled out of their ship into the night to check out our planet.
Easy enough to spot them as aliens you’d think? Then you’d be thinking wrong because they look just like me and you. Admittedly with subtle differences but you could have sex with one of them and never know it. Don’t worry, no chance of them getting you pregnant or leaving you with a nasty alien STD. Our blood chemistry differed slightly.
But that slight difference was enough to mean we couldn’t catch their diseases and they couldn’t catch ours.
So how did I spot him?
Sitting at a table in the truck stop diner wearing a faded red plaid shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He looked like every other wanna-be cowboy in the joint.
“Mind if I sit here?” I asked, gesturing to the empty seats opposite him.
“Help yourself, free country or at least that’s what they say.” He had the twang of the accent and the world-weary cynicism down to a tee.
I started eating my burger and fries. “Damn good food here.” I said.
“Ain’t that the truth,” he replied “I always stop in here when I’m in these parts.”
He hadn’t blinked, his poker face was near perfect. His one mistake, the subtle tell that gave him away.
I figured I’d see if I was right.
I lowered my voice. “Hello Space Boy.”
He said nothing. He took another gulp of his coffee with his right hand.
“Tell me I’m wrong then.” I said quietly.
Again he said nothing.
I fixed him with a gaze. “I could repeat it, only louder if you want? Or you can tell me I’m wrong?”
He put his coffee cup down onto the table and looked me right in the eyes. “What was it?”
“What gave you away, you mean?” I said.
“Yeah. I thought I had this whole routine perfected. No-one ever noticed before.” he said.
I glanced toward at his left hand. “Pass me the salt.”
He was probably unaware he’d been fiddling with the salt cellar from the moment I’d walked in and almost certainly from the second he’d taken his seat.
His people had a glut of many of things on their planet. Salt however was in very short supply. They’d seen our oceans full of the stuff and made their way across the stars to trade with us. But as they’d learnt our many languages from TV and radio transmissions they thought they had a good idea how visiting aliens were received.
IE:- very badly and with deadly force.
So they’d chosen to hide amongst us until the time to trade was right.
“Damn. Was it that obvious?” he asked me nervously.
“Only if you know what to look for. And I did.” I replied.
“So what’s it going to cost me to keep you quiet? You know we hate violence. I’ve got plenty of great technology I can trade?” he asked me.
I smiled at him. “I guess that ship of yours is pretty well hidden?”
He nodded.
“Good,” I replied “then you can give me a lift home. I’ve been stuck here ever since I crashed in Roswell a few decades back. I promise I won’t tell if you don’t?”
He smiled at me. “When do you want to leave?” he asked.
I looked over to the counter and called to our waitress. “Miss, can I have this to go please? I think I just got a ride home.”
by Duncan Shields | May 27, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I’m with the XIA. The Xenomorph Intelligence Agency. I’m undercover. This is a soft war; more of an intelligence-gathering mission to discover weak points and destabilization technique hypotheses in case they’re needed.
It’s the pin-striped skin that’s hard on the eyes. What works as camouflage on their world stands out on ours. They’re roughly humanoid in appearance. That makes it a little easier to accept them. Some of our teenagers have been getting full-body tattoos to look like them. Idiots.
The aliens from Karnasis have sixty tiny, bright pink eyes spaced around their heads like seeds on a strawberry. That creeps me out, both the lack of pupils and the 360-degree vision. Somewhere between insectile and mammalian and I can’t decide which. And the eyes are spaced randomly, differing from Karnian to Karnian like Rorschach blots, like a paintbrush-flick of glittering pink nail polish. It’s part of how they recognize each other. They have thick, furred hides like zebras.
The other disturbing thing is that they’re a very direct race with no sense of downtime or relaxation. Their evolutionary path seems to have lasted about ten thousand years compared to our millions. If this keeps up they’ll ‘pass’ us on the evolutionary race track sometime in the next few centuries. We’ve made friends with them because of this.
They have no art. That’s also disturbing to me.
They have five-partner sexual relationships that we’re still trying to figure out. There are encyclopedias about the ‘non-mating versus viably fertile’ hookups between their five sexes that contribute to social strata and byzantine caste system etiquette. There seems to be no enjoyment in what they get up to sexually, though. It’s instinct-driven but not in the same lust-crazy way ours is.
There are some long-term strategies in my department for dealing with the eventuality that there might be a battle between our races. Recently, however there has been a new social trend popping up with them that gives us hope.
The Karnians are fascinated by the concept of ‘fun’. Laughter and playing are totally insane activities to them. They want to understand these things and they’re impressionable. Like logical, curious children. It’s the younger ones that are picking it up fastest. It’s a fad that is sweeping through their adolescents. They have ‘earth parties’ where the whole point is to ‘enjoy’ time without doing anything.
It’s a little creepy. They’re adopting all of the affectations of having a good time without actually having a good time. Their laughs sound recorded. Their teenage rebellions seem empty. They’re starting to have orgies but all they’re doing is robotically parroting the actions of porn films. It should be hot but it’s like watching mannequins get it on. Creepy and soulless. I can’t tell if ‘fun’ is there.
Most of our recreational drugs don’t work with them but we’re trying to synthesize ones that do. I’m helping with that research as well. Every party I go to, I bring something new.
If this trend catches on, it could slow down their whole society to our speed. By teaching them to relax and have fun, we could quadruple the time it would take them to surpass us in terms of developing higher intelligence and cognitive skills. Lucky we caught them when we did.
Hopefully, all we’ll have to do is party with them for a few generations to stick a pole through their evolutionary wheel spokes.
I’m going to one of their parties now. I’m bringing some Absinthe and the Kama Sutra.
I’ll see what kind of trouble I can get into.
by submission | May 26, 2013 | Story |
Author : Robin de Graaf
Bartleby pushed open the heavy pub door. A bell jangled and a handful of pub patrons gave him a quick look-see. Realizing that they had no idea who he was, they quickly returned to their pints. Bartleby looked around, until he saw who he was looking for. He took off his hat and walked towards one of many tables.
“Good evening, John, glad you could make it.” He said, taking off his heavy coat. The man sitting at the table smiled and raised his glass.
“Anything for a friend. Please, sit.”
The man signaled one of the servers for two more glasses of gin.
“I’m sorry to have called upon you at such short notice,” Bartleby said, “but as you know, my life has been rather more… exciting than is customary lately.” He swallowed slowly.
“Are you referring to your courtship of Elizabeth?”
“Among other things. You know I’ve been seeing her for quite some time. And it’s been going quite well.”
The server came up to the table with two glasses perched on a heavy platter. “Two gin for the gentlemen,” he said with a nod.
“Thank you.” Bartleby said and grabbed a glass, draining it in one gulp.
“Bring me another, would you?”
“Certainly,” the server said with a friendly smile.
“Bartleby, I don’t mean to rush you, but what’s gotten you so spooked?” John said, leaning over a little.
Bartleby fidgeted with the empty glass, seemingly uneasy. He didn’t actually speak until his second gin had arrived, which he sipped rather than drained.
“Like I said, things seemed to be going well between Elizabeth and myself, but things have taken an… unexpected turn.”
“How do you mean..?” John asked.
“Last week we went to the theater, to see The Family Reunion, and in general, it was a fine night. After the play, she had agreed to accompany me for a drink at mine, if I promised to have her home before midnight.”
John grinned and nodded approvingly.
“Please don’t. Wait until you’ve heard the entire story.” Bartleby said, looking at John with a stern look.
“I apologize. Do continue…”
“So we arrive at mine, and as you know, I’m something of an inventor. In my spare time, at least. Having mentioned this to her before, she took the opportunity to ask whether she could see my current project.”
John laughed, “THAT thing? Waste of time, my friend, I’ve told you before and I’ll gladly repeat it!”
“Perhaps you won’t. We had been joking back and forth the entire evening, so when she said that she was going to be the first person to use it, I thought nothing of it. I should have.”
“She… Turned it on?” John said, sounding much less jovial than he’d sounded before.
Bartleby rummaged through his coat pocket and pulled out a photograph.
“I’ve been looking for proof, any evidence, for an entire week. Today, I finally found it.”
He handed the photograph to John, who studied it carefully. It was a picture of a group of women, dressed in Victorian fashion, smiling contentedly at the camera. One of the women in the picture made John look a little closer.
“Is that Elizabeth?” he asked.
“It is. Turn it over. Read the back.”
As he did, he noticed, in beautiful handwriting, that it said ‘1839, the girls in Green Park, London.’
A silence fell as John tried to collect his thoughts.
“This must be a fake. This isn’t possible.” He said eventually.
“It isn’t. That photograph was taken exactly 100 years ago.”
by submission | May 25, 2013 | Story |
Author : Kiel Finger
He stabbed his knife into the hardpack soil.
It didn’t go in very deep; in fact it barely stood upright. Maybe an inch or two into the ground, tilted to the left. Not as dramatic as he would have liked, but the meaning behind the act was clear.
It was an old symbol, developed aboard one of the many ships that brought them to this world. They’d meet in the agri-levels, the offended party planting a blade into the fertile soil, showing they wished to air their grievances peacefully.
His grandmother had shown him. She had been one of the last who remembered living aboard the fleet. She would tell him of the vastness of the habitat zones, the false sun and the gentle, recycled breeze.
He hoped she’d be proud of him now, confronting a woman who saw fit to take their land.
The representative was a head taller than him, garbed in the traditional loose fitting blouse and pants of the Admiralty.
The Admiralty Commission rarely tried to extend their reach out to the western plains, but here was a representative, starring Tull in the face, demanding he show her something called an “Official Land Claim Agreement” or else the Admiralty would claim the land itself and forcibly move him.
“Miss Kine, I don’t know what this document is you’re talking about, but my family has lived here since my grandmother’s folks stepped off the fleet. And no one has…”
Representative Kine cut him off.
“Tull, I know the old ways, but a knife in the dirt won’t stop us from taking your acreage. Either you prove to us you legally claimed this land at some point, or it is ours, by right, according to The Fleet Compact.”
There was a long silence. Tull could see his show of the old ways had completely failed. He’d hoped Miss Kine had been raised in some outlying area, where these sorts of things were still taught and practiced. But it was clear to him now she was indeed Capital woman. She knew only of knife talk through history lessons. He knew now he needed something flashier.
Tull casually squatted down and retrieved the old, dull knife from the ground. He moved it to his left hand, but did not sheath it. He hoped she noticed.
“Miss Kine, you said you’re familiar with the old ways, right?” Tull said neutrally.
“Yes Mr. Tull. I’ve studied much of the late Fleet to early post-Fleet cultures.”
“Then maybe you know one of the practices of the people from the ship Arata Akebono? It was a ritual used only when two parties could not agree on property ownership. After all other options had been exhausted, the first party to spill their own blood upon the disputed property would be instantly granted ownership.”
“Yes, well, I hope you don’t think that such an act….”
It was Tull’s turn to interrupt the representative. He raised the knife and quickly drew it across his right palm, horizontally. It cut nearly to the bone despite it’s dullness. Blood poured out of the wound, streaming down his arm and began falling to the ground in large droplets. Kine wasn’t able to hide the look of shock that spread across her face.
Tull smiled inwardly, despite the pain. This was what he had needed; enough of a show of bravado and fearlessness to horrify a Capital-dweller.
He hoped that when she now returned to the Admiralty, she’d tell of crazed western plainsmen, backwards and angry. Not worth the effort of displacing.
Please, he thought, let it be enough.
by submission | May 24, 2013 | Story |
Author : Joseph Pascale
My ears were assaulted by a variety of sounds as I entered the 21st Century-style café. The most alarming was the grinding sound that could have come from a malfunctioning robot, but was actually emitting from large copper contraptions. I was also unaccustomed to the period music and the actors working behind the counter, shouting orders such as, “Decaf mocha latte!”
“Welcome to Café Literarti, may I take your order?” one of the actresses said to me as I peered at the handwritten menu.
“Um, I think I will go with a standard coffee.”
“I’d be happy to make that by hand for you just as soon as you verify your age,” she said, her affixed smile unwavering.
I flicked my wrist over her micronner to prove I was old enough to purchase the drug.
“Perfect. Will that be all?”
I nodded, sending the payment.
She pretended to use a cash machine and when she pressed a button it beeped. “Please wait over there while we hand-make your order.”
“Wow, this seems like real paper,” I thought as I took my steaming hot beverage and found an empty table. It was small and wobbly. “Did the tables really used to be like this?” As I moved a chair, it scraped up against the tile floor, and once seated, I found it to be hard and uncomfortable. “People couldn’t have stayed in these for long, could they?” I thought. “Well, I wanted to be in the appropriate atmosphere. Maybe it’s working.”
Taking the slightest sip of coffee, my tongue told me it was tasty, but still too hot to enjoy. Accessing my Libraria Ultima, I found the beginning of the first novel I intended to read. It was the debut work of an author from the 21st Century who I’d never heard of before an acquaintance mentioned him yesterday. As I began to read, I found his writing style simplistic, but engaging. The smell of my coffee tempted my eyes away from the words and I took a few more sips. It was beginning to cool down. I was midway through his third novel when the coffee was cool enough to swallow in gulps. After I read all of the fiction, I began to make my way through the blogs, diaries and letters. The coffee on the bottom of my cup was lukewarm by the time I got through the final message he had ever sent, and I held strange emotions about what I had just read.
Peering down at my empty cup, I decided against staying for another coffee and took the cup back toward the counter. I tried to hand it to one of the actors, but was pointed in the direction of a “garbage” container. I laughed as I dropped my cup into the cylinder. “This place must be pretty authentic,” I thought as I made my way toward the front door. The recently read fiction returned to my thoughts due to my confusion over one of the motifs. Crammed among the stacks of books in his room, the author treated literature as if each book were a window in a city of unstable skyscrapers, and he was the window-washer tasked with the impossible job of cleaning them all. Not only did he lack an easy way to scale the buildings, but the city was so vast that he hadn’t yet managed to clean all of the first-floor books. I suppose that was how a reader felt living in an age before they began to augment humans.
I left the café, but the thoughts stayed with me.
