by submission | Apr 12, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Dr. José Zhang gently rotated an 800 credit bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. The price of champagne had skyrocketed in the last several weeks in anticipation of the completion of Project Hermes. Zhang’s colleague, Dr. Ian Bartlett, looked at the champagne with a skeptical eye. “You know there’s a good chance this isn’t going to work, José? I mean, there was no practical way to do any real field test. Nothing works right the first time, you know?”
Zhang smiled and said, “‘Your royal Highness, members of the Academy, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is with great honor I accept the Nobel Prize in Physics for the first successful space fold drive engine test in history. But with all due humility I must point out that without the constant naysaying and discouragement of my fellow scientist here, this project would have been completed a lot sooner.’ What do you think?”
Bartlett tried to suppress a smile and failed. He inspected the champagne. “Alright, if this works, we celebrate. If it fails, we drown our sorrows. We’re covered either way.”
Bartlett took a seat beside Zhang in the mission control room and watched the two countdowns on the screen. The first countdown indicated the time for activation of the space fold drive. The number was already T-plus seven minutes. The drive had already turned on seven minutes ago. The second countdown was at T-minus sixty seconds. The latter countdown denoted the time for telemetry to reach mission control from the ship which was eight light-minutes from Earth.
The Hermes ship’s space fold engine had two major components. One half of the engine, Hermes I, was in the ship in orbit around the Sun. The other half, Hermes II, was 26 trillion miles away in orbit around Alpha Centauri B. It had taken most of 100 years for the robotic vessel containing half the drive to traverse over four light-years using a conventional ion drive propulsion system. Once there, it sent back a laser pulse confirming it had arrived and was intact. Traveling at the speed of light, the signal took just over four years to reach Earth. A command signal was then sent back to the probe in response instructing it to activate its half of the engine at a certain date and time, specifically, today at precisely 1600 hours Coordinated Universal Time.
The plan was for both components of the space fold engine to activate at the exact same moment. If the theory was correct, as long as the vessels were at least 3.827 light-years apart, at the precise instant of simultaneous activation, a fold in the fabric of space would occur for exactly one Planck time unit, roughly 10 to the negative 43 seconds. In that infinitesimal span of time, the two vessels would swap places.
Zhang picked up the champagne bottle, removed the foil from the cork, and started untwisting the restraint wire. He wanted to pop the cork just after the space fold maneuver took place.
“Ten…nine…eight…,” the mission control crowd chanted in unison. Zhang looked at Bartlett, the latter’s brow furrowed with worry. “Pessimist,” Zhang said with a smile as he worked on the champagne bottle’s cork.
“Zero!”
Mission control was suddenly filled with screams not of joy but of horror. The space fold had worked. The Hermes II ship was now in Earth’s solar system, as was Alpha Centauri B! The new orange-yellow sun looked like an angry cyclopean eye. Zhang’s hands started to tremble uncontrollably. The cork popped.
by Julian Miles | Apr 11, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’m splayed in the waterlogged grass, covered in mud and blood as the screams stop behind me. The white rabbit lied to us; I knew we should have stomped its furry ass. That damn Jabberwock has way too many sharp bits, the attitude of a wounded wolverine and a script stolen from every psycho film of the last decade or so.
We partied hard when the Employment Opt-Out Bill became law. A British idea that fitted the American way of life so much better. You signed on the dotted line, got yourself sterilised and from then on you got a few bucks a week from the state. Everything else you had to handle yourself. For a lot of people it was an improvement.
Leisure parks sprang up. They had food and booze outlets so we could hang out there. Hell, some people never went home. The whole thing got twisted when the media got involved, letting the workers relax by watching the Opt-Outs dice with death. They got round the salary clauses by only giving money as rewards.
Themed parks were the next step. You could try your luck at handling situations from your favourite movies: Horror became a craze. A real chance of dying but the rewards were worth it.
“Biillleeee. Oh, Biillleeee.”
That meant that the rest of my group of Alices were sleeping with the Queen of Hearts. Should have known that ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was not going to be an afternoon’s hallucinatory fun when it was filed under ‘Survival Horror’. Oh well, we were legless and up for it. A thousand bucks for everyone who walks out, plus fifty bucks an hour for staying in the game. Which actually meant staying alive. Should have realised that as well, but we were too drunk to care.
The wall of the cottage explodes outwards and the spiky, winged lizard-thing strides out. I gather my feet under me and scuttle toward Janine’s backpack, hung on a branch before we entered. I hear the frustrated roar and thank my guardian angel for the fact that the creature has to pause for ad breaks.
My frantic hands tear the pack open and find the smokes and lighter on top. Then her clean T-shirt for the winner’s podium. My hand closes on a big bottle. I pull it out and twist the cap as the roaring ceases behind me. I rip the T-shirt frantically, becoming aware of a hungry stare from behind. Don’t ask me how, I’m too busy soaking a chunk of cheap cotton in Everclear. God bless Janny, her preference for strong booze and her willingness to screw anything to get the good stuff. I ram the soaked cloth into the neck of the bottle and spin round, flicking the lighter.
Ugly and spiky is a few feet off, taking its time. Good enough. I light the rag and scream at the Jabberwock. It screams right back and I let it have a litre of one-ninety proof in the mouth.
The whoosh as it goes up is followed by the thump of the bottle giving up the ghost. I feel pieces of glass cut me as I fall backwards, but it’s nothing compared to what’s happening to the flame-headed thing in front of me. God, it smells worse barbequed than it does when it’s breathing on you.
I roll over and see spotlights wobbling through the trees towards me. I’ve done it. Eleven hundred bucks for two hours and six dead friends. A bargain.
by Duncan Shields | Apr 10, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The grey ghost of no-longer-used subway tunnels echoed with heavy footsteps. Eyes the colour of brake lights swept the halls for any signs of intelligent life. The civilization that lived here was long gone.
The metal creature walking through the tunnel had to reconfigure to fit inside. It walked softly on seventeen legs. It had no name for itself. It was an extension of the star dwellers that fell through this atmosphere and found a richness of data to fill memory banks. The only thing better than a living civilization is a dead civilization, thought the creature. With a dead civilization one can take one’s time.
Not just cataloguing, not just recording. Cross-referencing. Extrapolating. That’s what the creature was doing. At its core was a neutronium half-dwarf star tightly wound around a pinprick of a black hole. The creature had thousands of this planets’s orbits to investigate the fallen buildings. It was left behind along with several others to record. One per continent.
It looked as if the indigenous life had tried to divorce itself from its origins on this planet. Structures that were at odds with their surroundings yet made from them. Rock cut into pieces and then stacked into square shapes to provide shelter. Everything changed. Everything translated.
Whatever destroyed them didn’t destroy the plant life and the insects or even the mammals. In the wake of whatever cataclysm claimed them, the natural order of this planet surged back.
Green moss covered everything on the surface. From space, the planet was two colours. Blue oceans and green continents. The creature has taken aerial surveillance of all of it before moving down to the surface.
Here, underground, in the old tunnels that must have been used for transportation, the life remains untouched like a tomb. Whatever functioning electrical conduits the creature walks close to light up like spirits at a séance. Video cameras, control panels, track-light switches, and security lights all glow and spark as the creature walks past.
Still no bodies indicating intelligent life. By the creature’s estimation, nothing recorded so far could have built this civilization. It’s found scattered bipedal life down here in the dark amongst the skittering, screeching quadrupeds, like they all gathered here at the end, as if there was a chance of safety underground. These bipedals have only the most rudimentary physical upgrades and none of the intelligence enhancers other races needed to create complex societal systems. They could not have built these buildings, vehicles or tunnels. They have no language. They only scream and hide when they see the creature.
The creature will walk and record and presume for millennia until its memory banks fill and it needs to head back into space and rendezvous with its central library. There is no rush. There is silence here broken only by dripping water and wind blowing through cracks.
It wants to find the creators. It wants to find the ones responsible.
So far nothing.
by Clint Wilson | Apr 9, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The grand patriarch, Thoxphall The 19th stood in his familiar spot, perched on the cliff’s edge overlooking the thousands of members of his kingdom. Off to the side the tight cluster of his offspring served as advisors while they stood in line as heirs apparent. His speech reached everyone in the throng equally and without mechanical assistance as their way of communication was instant and required no sound to travel across inefficient air.
“After the science advisory’s close attention to incoming intelligent signals from an apparent planet in the dimmest star system of the constellation, Brixphall’s Trunk, we have been able to convert the images into thought patterns and it has now been verified that their populous is under constant attack from a horrific infestation of mobile beings.”
Murmurs of alarm spread instantly through the kingdom.
“Can they reach us here?” asked a citizen.
“It does not appear that they can.”
A sigh of relief came through the masses, but then the patriarch added, “For now that is. Some of our top minds think they may be evolving quickly.”
Alarm ran through the throng once more.
“How long then?” one shouted.
“How dangerous are they?” chimed another.
The patriarch did his best to sooth the worried crowd, knowing full well that what was coming next would do exactly the opposite. “Please remain calm. The greatest minds from all of the world’s kingdoms assure us we are safe for quite some time.”
But by law the elders had to share what they had learned with each and every citizen. “Please be warned however, some of these images are disturbing.”
Suddenly a scene was broadcast throughout the entire gathering, each and every one of them receiving a crystal clear picture in their own mind.
The view was alien and nothing short of spectacular, showing a clearing in the middle of some grand green kingdom on another world, with rows of majestic looking citizens standing tall and proud all around.
But then the strange and small peach colored mobile beings with their odd black and red checkered body coverings were doing something strange. They approached a towering elegant alien of stupendous beauty and then to everyone’s horror, they did the unthinkable. Showing callous disregard for life they used a buzzing mechanical device, by extension of their horrible waving flapping limbs, to slice right through the base of the poor unfortunate being’s trunk. A hush fell over the throng as they collectively watched the freshly cut alien come crashing to the ground with finality.
This was then followed by much more of the same. Tree after glorious tree continuously slaughtered by the creatures without a single thought.
A grove near the cliff base said in unison. “We must do something!”
A lone sapling who stood off from the throng, fighting for moisture at the base of a sandy dune near the kingdom’s border responded sadly, “Yes but what can we possibly do against such a threat as this?”
As the broadcast was ceased the patriarch spoke again, “For now we should remain calm and try to be grateful that we are safe where we stand, and that for the moment nothing threatens branch, trunk or root of our people.”
The crowd seemed to accept this with wariness as they all continued to think of the devastation that was now taking place on that faraway world, where those poor defenseless beings were being slaughtered horrifically, their bodies greedily cut up and consumed by the horrible mobile threat.
by submission | Apr 8, 2012 | Story |
Author : Greg Lowry
Waving his antennae in amused confusion, the Commander responded, “That is a preposterous demand. I don’t know where you strange, primitive humans got that ship, but my task force has you outnumbered both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our scientists have determined it will take at least a century for you to develop wormhole travel on your own. You’re even farther from developing anything like our energy beams for offense. In fact, you’re still using ion propulsion and lasers.” He rubbed his mid-leg segments together in derisive chortles. “You are our lawful prey and we will do what we want with your kind.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong”, the strange biped on his communicator’s screen replied, the corners of his eating orifice turning downward and the fibrous growths above his visual sensing organs bunching in the center. “You may control this area outside our solar system right now—probably until we do develop that wormhole system you have, but you will not do what you want with us. You have caused enough slaughter among our people and we will no longer allow it. I repeat. Surrender your task force to me, now.?
The Commander paused a moment in thought, his amusement sliding into annoyance. Surely this unnatural biped couldn’t be serious. It didn’t matter where his people had bought or stolen their ship—there was no way it could attack his task force and survive. The puny kilometer-wide sphere couldn’t house a wormhole drive, power generators, and serious weaponry. He allowed his antennae to straighten in severity. “There is no way your tiny ship can house a wormhole drive and enough weaponry to matter. I fail to see why I should do anything but destroy you.”
“Commander, I already told you that we haven’t developed a wormhole drive, yet. Your species had better examine its assumptions about us. You have only one of our minutes left before we attack. What is your decision?” The human asked.
“What do you mean, you have no wormhole drive? Then how did you get out here, beyond your solar system?” His amusement was returning. These humans might say anything. It was going to be entertaining until their destruction, after all. “The heliopause and bow shock around your solar system are impossible to survive and the thrust to push through the gravity waves is inconceivable. You would have to be able to be able to create nearly indestructible armor and generate nearly infinite power.” He rubbed his mid-leg segments together, chortling, again.
“Well,” said the human on the screen as the counter at its top ticked to zero, “you should have researched our species a bit more. While we haven’t figured out your wormhole drive, we’re pretty close on both of those.”
The Commander’s amusement metamorphosed into shock as his instruments detected immense energy readings and then overloaded as a blast of coherent electromagnetic energy bridged the distance between the human sphere and one of his own ships, burning through its armor and vaporizing it in milliseconds. Automated weaponry fired on the human ship immediately, but the powerful energy beams didn’t affect it at all. A sense of confusion and fear lashed the Commander’s brain—he hoped his species would be ready when the humans developed the wormhole drive—and then, to him, it no longer mattered.
