by Duncan Shields | Apr 2, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
“Wow, you’re so small,” said the pink humanoid creature looking at me. It had created eyes for itself and a very primitive nervous system to replicate as many human senses as it could. It had used me as a model but standing here looking at it was nothing like looking into a mirror.
When the creature looked back behind itself at the pink ocean, it used its brand new vocal cords to start screaming.
The pink ocean on the surface of Steinaway-9 was glutted with life according to our sensors but all recon missions had confirmed that the ocean was empty. Nothing was swimming in the pink fluid. It wasn’t until we got down to the microscopic level that we found that it was full of dendrites and what looked like neurons with more receptors that usual.
Our science team captain, Dr. Renoir, mentioned that it might just be one giant life form. The planet had a population of one and we were looking at it.
There were a few islands scattered around and I was part of the away team that shuttled down to the surface to take samples and attempt communication.
Touch was all it took. There was nothing infectious in the pink soup and I’d been sterilized. I took off my glove and put my hand in the water.
I shook hands with a world.
A giant child-like peaceful mind said hello to me. I felt it shuffling through my mind. All of my secrets were catalogued. All of my memories were examined. My training was picked up, looked at, and mulled over. My life and by extension my experience of the human race was completely devoured and extrapolated upon.
I jerked my hand out of the water and stumbled back.
The other members of the away team came up to steady me and see if I was okay.
“Yes. Yes. I’m fine.” I answered. I knew a serious debriefing was going to be necessary.
Near the shore, the water turned frothy. Vanessa took out her weapon and pointed it at the disturbance. I told her to stand down to but keep the weapon drawn.
Like a candle melting in reverse, I saw a human body boil up out of the ocean and assemble itself out of pink slime. When it was finished, it opened its pink eyes and took a step out of the water onto the beach. It took its first breath, looked at me, and smiled.
That was thirty seconds ago. Now it was screaming.
For the first time in the history of the planet, there was a population of two.
The mind I had encountered was an innocent mind and I could tell this experience was terrifying. A sense of otherness, a sense of division, a sense of us and them, the concept of loneliness, the concept of privacy, the concept of being many organisms, and a terrifying sense of being small came crashing down on this poor creature all at once. It was like being left at kindergarten for the first time but on a universal scale.
The ocean trembled. A large wave rose up and came crashing down on the creature, dragging it out to sea. It flailed and dissolved, re-absorbed into its home.
All around us, the ocean started to ripple. I saw a shockwave of unrest spread out from our island as the information from that being’s experience was transmitted to the entire creature.
“Let’s get out of here.” I said to my away team.
We sprinted for our shuttle.
by submission | Apr 1, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Lieutenant Thev’s cephalon bioluminesced a faint yellow. Clearly, he was nervous. “You do realize, Thev, that this is the most carefully planned celestial engineering project in galactic history?” Thev turned his cephalon to face Project Director Grojjun. The gesture was out of politeness and not necessity. The position and field of vision of Thev’s eyes allowed him to see Grojjun standing behind him, but it was respectful to observe certain protocols.
“Sorry, sir,” said Thev. “It’s just, well, there won’t be any second chances. This is it. This is the ancestral home of all sentient life in the galaxy.” Thev turned his cephalon back to the large viewscreen that comprised most of one wall of the bridge of the ship. “This is Earth.”
Grojjun looked at the aging planet their ship was orbiting. But he was more concerned with the aging star that lay eight light-minutes in the distance. The Sun was nearly eight billion years old. It was larger and redder than it had been when Earth was the sole repository of intelligent life. As the human race had propagated itself throughout the galaxy and biologically re-engineered itself into thousands of exotic forms capable of thriving on millions of worlds, the Sun had continued its long, slow march through the main stellar sequence and was now becoming a red giant. Sol was becoming decrepit. And the human race and its progeny couldn’t stand the idea that their ancient homeworld would be reduced to a cinder if they stood by and did nothing.
“Earth has faced destruction countless times in her history,” Grojjun reminded the lieutenant. “Asteroids, volcanoes, ice ages. As recently as 10 million years ago a minor adjustment to the Moon’s orbit had to be made.” Thev’s cephalon maintained its yellow hue. “But, Director,” said Thev, “what we’re about to do. No one has ever attempted anything on this scale. The complexity of the calculations. The sheer amount of power and the utter precision with which that power must be controlled. I can’t help but worry.”
Grojjun was about to make another attempt to reassure Thev when a message flashed across the lieutenant’s control panel. “Sir,” said Thev, “all orbital and ground stations report ready. It’s time.” Grojjun looked not at the Earth or the Moon, but at the Sun. “Goodbye, old friend,” Grojunn said as he pressed the flashing green holographic button on the control panel.
There was no flash of light, no tremor, no feeling of movement. There was nothing at all to suggest that the fabric of spacetime had just been torn asunder on a scale without precedent in four billion years of recorded galactic history. To an outside observer, the Earth and Moon would appear to have simply vanished without a trace.
On the viewscreen, Grojjun and Thev saw what appeared to be the Sun suddenly shift a few degrees to the left and simultaneously change from reddish-orange to yellow-white in color. “Director!” Thev exclaimed. “It worked! We’re 43.3 light-years from our previous position. The Earth and Moon came through the wormhole perfectly intact. We’re in a stable orbit around 58 Eridani!”
Grojjun looked at Earth’s new parent star. It was almost the identical twin of old Sol except that it was billions of years younger. Thev breathed a sigh of relief as his cephalon faded from yellow back to a sedate and happy dark green.
by submission | Mar 31, 2012 | Story |
Author : William Mason
“They used to have something called friends.”
“What?” asked the boy,
The machine beeped a few times, and resumed with its synthesized voice, “Friends are people whose company you enjoyed; people who are an extension of you.”
“Friends.” repeated the boy, his voice bouncing off the glass walls of the Institute.
“Friends were one step below family. Are you familiar with the word family?”
“Yes” the boy replied with eyes that lit up “I remember that word from last were! I took some recall pills, I remember I had a …”
The screen on the front of the machine changed colour, an interrogative gesture. The boy strained to remember the word.
“A father, yes I remember!”
The machine returned to its colourless screen.
“I had a father, and a mo…mo…a Mother!”
“Very good,” said the machine,
“I remember them” continued the boy “I saw their faces, they had masks on, and the green smoke all around, and then… I was on a moving channel”
“Yes you were born when you came out of the other end” said the machine.
The boy raised his eyebrows, trying to remember something “Tell me more about friends.”
“A friend is someone whom you spend time with for the sake of enjoyment, a friend is someone with whom you have shared interests or shared activities”
“Are you my friend?” asked the boy,
“No,” said the machine, “I am your teacher”
“Can a teacher be a friend?”
“No” repeated the machine,
A man in a lab suit entered the glass enclosure, and the boy looked back.
“Class is over” the man said softly,
The boy jumped up and ran out with haste.
“I’ve been observing the lessons,” said the man, “He is progressing quickly.”
“Of course he is” said the machine, “soon he will be able to make friends with the other subjects.”
by submission | Mar 30, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Four minutes. That’s how much longer I have to be human. Or, if things don’t go as planned, to be alive. I could have elected to be anesthetized for the procedure. If I had and anything went wrong, I’d never know it. I’d simply never wake up. But I chose to remain conscious for the transformation. Death will be almost instantaneous if this doesn’t work. And if it does work, I want to be wide awake and remember the moment when I became…something else.
How long has it been since anyone underwent a totally novel transformation? It must be nearly 300 Earth years. Yes, that sounds about right: around the year 2700. The first settlers on Venus. That was a particularly difficult one. Surface temperatures over 460°C and an atmospheric pressure almost 100 times that of Earth. It took the bioengineers even longer to transform people to live on Venus than it took them to adapt a human subspecies for life in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Not every world is a Mars or a Titan that will let you get by with only a moderate amount of biological transfiguration. Even the people who live on Luna still look vaguely like humans from Earth. The extremophile worlds just don’t tolerate much evolutionary baggage.
Just over two minutes. They told me the neural scanners will continue operating right up to the end. Theoretically, I shouldn’t notice any “interruption” of my consciousness. From my perspective, one moment I’ll be here in the ship and the next I’ll be out there, neither the spacecraft nor my original body surviving the transformation.
In my new form (again, theoretically) I should be virtually ageless. If that’s true, maybe I’ll live long enough to see the human race, in all its various forms, finally achieve the age-old dream of traveling to the stars. It’s hard to believe that after a thousand years of spaceflight, we’ve still never succeeded in reaching even the nearest star system. Multigeneration ships, suspended animation craft, near-light-speed vessels, countless schemes to create wormholes and space-warp corridors. And yet no one who has ever tried to cross the gulf between the stars has ever signaled back that they made it. But surely humanity won’t be confined to one solar system forever. One day mankind will leave the cradle and take its place among–
Transformation! It worked! My personality and memory are intact, preserved in a network of magnetically-woven plasma. I am vast. How could that infinitesimal creature I was a moment ago have ever been me? I can…”see” isn’t the right word. I can perceive the last remnants of the spaceship that brought me here vaporizing. And here’s a 500 kilometer wide spicule jetting alongside me at 20 kilometers per second, but to me it feels like a pleasant breeze. Now, I have to modulate the local EM field to emit a radio signal to let them know we’ve succeeded. After three centuries of stagnation, humanity has slipped the bonds of planets and moons and comets. Mankind has finally colonized the Sun!
by submission | Mar 29, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
Tara giggled and leaned over the railing of the walkway, peering down the cyclopean shaft. “You know,” she told Camus, “I bet that if you were to fall down this you would fall forever and ever and never even stop.” She trilled out a laugh again and kicked a can off the edge.
“Hey, silly,” Camus rasped in his failing synthetic voice, “Stop that. For all you know there might be somebody down there. How happy would you be if you had a can traveling some ludicrous speed hit you on the head?”
The young woman paused and considered this. She frowned and bit her lip. “I suppose I wouldn’t like that a whole lot.”
It was sad, Camus thought to himself, how Tara had the mind of a child and would always have the mind of a child. She couldn’t help it, of course. Nobody can help how they’re born.
It was sad.
“Right,” he affirmed. “You’d be pretty mad, I’d imagine.” He shoved his pry bar in the access hatch’s lock and pushed all his weight against it. It gave out with the shrieking typical of unhappy metal. “OK. I’ll go first, and then you follow me. Stay close, alright?”
“Yes, Cammy,” Tara chirped. “And be very very quiet so that the monsters don’t find us.”
“Right. Good girl.” Camus’s bad shoulder creaked and groaned as he crawled into the lightless access shaft. It was fairly roomy, he decided. For a coffin, at least. He kept crawling, listening intently to make sure that Tara was behind him and nobody else was ahead of him. If the map he’d found was right the shaft would go by some old store rooms. Hopefully they had food. He just had to find the right one, M778. He counted the rooms that went by under his hands and knees, feeling out the numerals: M772, M774, M776.
There it was. 778. And it was unlocked. Small miracles were better than no miracles, Camus thought to himself.
He undid the two bolts and eased the door down, revealing more black space.
“Cover your eyes, love,” Camus whispered back to Tara.
“Alright,” came the reply.
Camus switched on his headlamp. He played the dim beam across the walls, the floor, the mostly empty crates strewn about. It didn’t look promising, but it was worth a look. Camus eased himself down into the room and then helped Tara down. The two began to look through the refuse, searching for something edible.
“Cammy.”
Camus picked up a box. It was too light to hold anything, and he tossed it aside. “Yes?”
“Where are mommy and daddy?”
Camus paused a moment. “Mommy and daddy went into the sky, dear.”
“What’s the sky?”
“Above ground. They went above ground.”
“Oh,” Tara said. “Why?”
“Because they had to escape the monsters.”
“Oh,” Tara said. “OK.”
Camus picked up another box. He saw the wire attached to it too late. There was a snap and a foot long steel bolt smacked into Camus’s chest.
“Oh,” he said, grabbing his chest. Oil leaked between his fingers. Camus swore. Hydraulic fluid was rarer than food in this place.
“Come on, Tara,” he rasped. “Let’s leave. Before the monsters come.”
“OK Cammy,” she chirped. She held his rusting hand. “Are we going home?”
“Yes, love. We’re going to go home.”
“Can we braid my hair when we get back?”
“Of course.”
