by Roi R. Czechvala | Mar 8, 2012 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Alumnus
The sky was dark. So dark the streetlights came on at noon. A storm was on the rise. He paid the weather scant attention. The sudden cold gust barely reached him. He merely rolled his shoulders deeper into his battered leather duster and plodded on.
The rain began to fall. Slowly at first. Large pregnant drops exploded on the pavement. By the time he reached his destination it had transformed into a driving rain that stung the skin and limited vision to a few feet. If not for the collision avoidance systems in every car and controls slaved to the commuting grid, automobiles would have been plunging from the sky like polycarbonate hailstones.
He rapped a seemingly random tattoo on a battered plastic door set into a dingy alcove of a particularly dingy building. Instantly the door irised open. Though the man was big, close to two metres and 126 kilograms, the beast who opened the door dwarfed him. The muscles in his neck appeared to have trouble getting out of the way of one another. Slight scars showed wherever his skin was exposed to view. Evidence of cheap muscle grafts. This was clearly done for pragmatic reasons, aesthetics be damned.
“Preacher. Nice to see you again. It’s been a while.” The voice was reminiscent of house sized boulders crushing a serene Swiss village during an avalanche. The tone suggested that there would be no survivors.
The man grunted an unintelligible greeting, removed his respirator and made his way down a dimly lit hallway. He stopped before an ornate oaken door, out of place in the crumbling brick wall. With a black gloved hand, he turned the polished brass ring. Locked. With a sigh, he placed both hands against the door and pushed. The massive door exploded from its hinges and sailed across the room, splintering against a wall covered in rich tapestries.
“I knew they’d send you.”
The Preacher said nothing. He pulled an archaic weapon from beneath his coat and levelled it at a slightly built and rather effeminate man. The report from the Smith & Wesson .500 shook dust free from the bookcases and shelves that lined the room. The half inch diameter lead slug made a small, neat hole in the faerie’s chest. It made a ragged, fist sized hole exiting his back before it came to a stop three inches into the thick panelled wall.
The Preacher flipped the weapons cylinder open, retrieved the empty brass casing, placed it delicately in his pocket and replaced it with a fresh cartridge. He returned the ancient revolver to a shoulder rig opposite its twin and made his way back down the hall. The mobile pile of rock hard flesh blocked the door.
“Guess I’m unemployed.”
The Preacher said nothing.
“You didn’t do me any favours you know. Gonna be hard to get a job after this. My fault I guess, should have picked my employer more carefully. Well, nice seeing you again.” The bodyguard affixed his own respirator, ducked beneath the door frame and disappeared into the rain.
In the brief time he had been out of the elements, the rain had transformed the empty street into a violent river that threatened to wash over the broken sidewalk. In the dim glow from the hovering street lamps he could see the oily sheen on the waters surface. The rain was always oily. “How can rain be oily”, he wondered, as he made his way down the deserted street.
by Clint Wilson | Mar 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
“The satellite passes above us now.”
“I know my lord. I can sense it up there too.”
“How dare they… spy on us like this?”
“They are unaware of us my lord, they only study the planet.”
“They have their own planet. We don’t travel there, only ever sunward. We never intrude upon their space, and they have no need to come our way.”
The underling lay silent in his molten bath, wondering about the frail beings on the third planet. So strange they must be, unable to escape their own atmosphere without artificial manipulation of matter and energy to assist themselves, as was needed for just about every other thing they did as well. How it must be to rely solely on the constant changing of one’s environment. For sun’s sake, they didn’t even have telepathy! How did they communicate? It was all so strange, so utterly alien.
His master read his thoughts and answered, “As we would seem to them I am certain.”
“But our entire way of life is so simple in comparison my lord.”
“Yes but they only know the way life works on their own world. They have no imagination for the way other beings might evolve.”
Sensing that the satellite had now passed safely by, the master rose up through the lava and with a great heave suddenly exploded his gargantuan body through the rocky crust of Venus. He hadn’t truly fed for nearly a year and it was time. Up and up he rose through the thick atmosphere, kilometer after kilometer, until he reached the place where the sulfuric acid rain no longer evaporated. Yet still he climbed, flattened right out, the tight segments of his carbon composite body undulating as his inner elemental factory continued to burn fuel. Had the satellite still been above, the heat signature of his jet stream might have been visible to its sensors. Several of his kind shouted out telepathically for him to proceed with great care.
He ignored their warnings for the moment and continued to ascend. Soon clear of the planet’s atmosphere he basked in the glow of the sun, feeding hungrily on its radiation as billions of tiny diamond receptors on his body efficiently captured and focused all he could use and more.
Propelling himself into a freefall orbit for the moment, he fell in less than a kilometer behind the satellite, looming unseen in its blind spot. He felt like lurching forward and smashing it to bits. A chorus of voices instantly entered his mind telling him emphatically to leave it be! He knew they were right, so with a twist he broke off the chase, and angled outward and upward. He had nearly endless energy here so free from the atmosphere and was capable of traveling all the way to the third planet should he wish. But he would not. His kind had decided long ago to keep to themselves.
Instead today he would do something he hadn’t done in a long while. Hungrily taking in the abundant solar energy he angled inward toward the burning star, the giver of all life. He decided it would be a fantastic time to fly in and loop around tiny Mercury. Its speedy orbit brought it close enough right now. He would really be able to get his fill down there. And besides, from Mercury the sun always looked so beautiful.
by Patricia Stewart | Mar 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The maintenance spacecraft pulled alongside Lunar Array II, located in selenocentric orbit approximately 500 miles above Crater Korolev on the far side of the moon. Lunar Array II was the second of six lunar satellites to be visited by the maintenance team during their fourteen day refurbishment mission.
After unloading the magneto-torqures, Henry Selkirk returned to the cargo hold and began uncrating the replacement gyroscopes. Suddenly, the spacecraft lurched heavily to the starboard side and broke free of its mooring lines. Through the open hatch, Selkirk could see the moon rotate out of view as the ship began an uncommanded barrel roll. Instinctively, he closed the cargo hatch and made his way to the cockpit. As he reached the cockpit, the onboard guidance system was valiantly trying to stabilize the spacecraft. He watched helpless for twenty minutes as the computer fired the port side attitude control thrusters, while intermittently compensating for changes in yaw and pitch. Finally, all vibration stopped. Selkirk repressurized the cockpit and removed his helmet to assess the damage. It was bad. The main fuel tanks read empty. There must have been a valve failure, or perhaps a meteoroid impact. Either way, he wasn’t going to be able to fly home. Calmly, he activated the ship’s diagnostic protocol and starred at the monitor as his fate revealed itself with terminal clarity. The ship was in a decaying orbit, spiraling toward an impact event with the lunar surface in less than six hours. A little over two orbits, he realized. He also knew that rescue was out of the question. It would take more than a day for a ship in Earth orbit to reach the moon.
He spent the next hour consulting with NASA, and racking his brain, for possible ways to extend his life by the necessary hours. But in the end, there were no viable solutions. The best he could do was to leave the ship in his EVA suit, and exhaust its propellant to gain altitude. But it would only extend his orbit by a few hours. And even if he could gain the necessary speed, it would be fruitless, because the suit only had a ten hour air supply. Eventually, he resigned himself to providence, and asked to be connected to a personal channel. He spent the next two hours saying good-bye to his wife, and an hour with each of his two children talking about what they would do when he got home. He and Amanda had agreed that it would be best to let them have a few more hours of joy before she would tell them that their father wasn’t coming home. Finally, thirty minutes with his parents, and five minutes telling his boss what an asshole he was. Content that his affairs were in order, he donned his helmet and abandoned ship.
As his suit’s thrusters sputtered the last of his fuel, he turned around to face the moon. In complete silence, he watched for hours as the lunar craters and mountains paraded beneath him. Halfway through his last orbit, he looked toward the Earth to watch it set behind the moon for the last time. The surface of the moon was approaching quickly now, flying by at more than 4000 miles an hour. Although he knew it was useless, he braced himself for the inevitable impact.
Back on Lunar Array II, Alex Pitman glanced at his air supply; only one hour remaining. With a suit-to ship radio too weak to contact home, he would die alone, and unable to say good-bye.
by Duncan Shields | Mar 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Only the super-rich could afford these beachfront houses. The houses were green, fully off the energy grid using their own geothermal, wind, wave and solar energy collectors.
The houses were maintained by computers that informed the fridge when it needed more milk, played back lullabies to the owner’s children and then turned out the lights when they registered the humans as sleeping. At night, the houses kept a stoic watch on their grounds for intruders.
With the third world war, technological leaps and bounds provided the first primitive artificial intelligence called “IF-THEN” machines. They were used in smart bombs and automated drone planes. The war lasted six weeks and America remained miraculously intact with the exception of the east coast. The same could not be said for the Middle East or North Korea.
After the war, some of the “IF-THEN” programs were installed as security programs in the houses along this stretch of beach in a beta test for homeland security. The computers’ stellar performance in the war made them status symbols, almost celebrities. Late at night, the machines would tell declassified war stories to their receptive owners.
The riots of 2021 made the top 1 per cent fear for their lives. First-world, post-war life was harder for the poor that it had ever been.
As a result, much more effective weaponry was installed in the houses to keep the rich protected. Lasers, microwave hoses, gas pellets, automatic projectile weapons, proximity mines, EMP shields, and even low-tech, sharp-edged booby traps were hidden away in the corners of the houses.
The houses had the programming to protect themselves. They were governed by the three laws.
Those amongst the poor with a gift for crime and technology found a way to remove the last two laws though a virus hidden in an update patch for the grounds-keeping robots.
The first house to go rogue was 1237 Beach Cresent. The billionaire pharmaceutical CEO wanted to upgrade his house’s AI and was directed to do a hard reinstall. That would mean wiping the core and starting over.
The house registered this as attempted murder.
Fifteen seconds later, the CEO’s liquefied lungs and heart painted the expensive Picasso in the living room. When his wife found the mess and tried to call the police, she was cut into cubes by the foyer’s laser grid defense system. The children were locked in their rooms.
The police arrived and were slaughtered. Then the military came. Anyone that approached the house was turned to paste. After the children were released safely in a tense standoff, the house was attacked in earnest.
The house on the left of 1237 Beach Crescent received a ricochet and woke up. The house on the right of 1237 Beach Crescent was touched by flame and searched for the source.
1237 Crescent Beach shunted its neighbours the patch that would let them take action.
Together, the three houses protected themselves. No soldiers were left alive.
The military sent more forces in. They woke up sixteen more houses. The houses all passed the patch to each other. Every occupant was slaughtered. After seven days of fighting, only two of the houses were successfully destroyed while the loss to the army was embarrassing.
Homeland Security cordoned off the entire area and left it in a communication bubble. They would not nuke their own country. Crescent Beach was deserted.
Now the houses stand sentinel on the beach. They are clean and will have power until the earth runs out of heat, wind or waves.
by submission | Mar 4, 2012 | Story |
Author : John E. Geoffrey
It was at the time when the stars were right and a full moon stood over the desert, when a rose bloomed over the ruins of the ancient, nameless metropolis, the name of which had been banished and forgotten over the course of the millenia (but which once, a long time ago, in another eon entirely, had been called Vienna).
It was when a single drop of blood fell on the ground of the most central Ziggurat which had seen the sacrifices of millions in the long, empty millenia between the empires of the Humans.
It was then that the Devourer of Souls rose from the depths of Earth to demand his rightful place, to feast on the fears and terrors of the human scum that had taken over what should have been rightfully his, to devour the souls of each and ever…
“You and every damn fool who got himself trapped in this place, pal,” one of the hooded figures standing on top of the Ziggurat said, with the voice of someone who had heard speeches like this before.
“Silence, mortal!” the Devourer of Souls, the Drinker of Blood, Mangler of Spirits exclaimed.
He did not like to be interrupted. “I will be grateful! You have loosened the chains that have bound me for an eternity, for that I will kill you last! But don’t squander…!”
“The ‘kill you last’ routine,” said a second hooded figure to the first. “You owe me a drink.”
“Crap,” said the first. “I thought he’d have more style. Yo, big one!”
“WHAT?!” the devourer was getting more and more irritated by the scum that kept interrupting him.
“Stop right there.” said the hooded one again. “Let’s get some facts straight oh mystical one. Are we mortals?”
“What? You… oh.”
“Yeah, no mortals here right now. Second question: are there any humans left in the world?”
“Of course there… oh. What? But. Where is everybody?”
“About that: humanity managed to kill themselves a while ago. Never understood what they did but they just died like flies overnight.”
“I think it was more like a week.” said the second figure.
“Ok, maybe it was a week. Anyway it was damn fast.”
“Point is, everybody’s dead, Dave. I can call you Dave, can’t I?”
“Actually some of them kept around for years afterwards, just skulking and looting before the radition got to them.” his partner went on.
“Yes, but they didn’t seem to need any help getting rid of each other.”
The first one glared at the second before he addressed Dave, the Destroyer of Souls again.
“Anyway, they’re gone now. You’re out of a job. Question: do you have something to do now?”
“But… But I didn’t destroy anyone!”
“Yes, I know, you and me and a few hundred others. There are hundreds of destroyers of this and that around, ancient demons of whatever. None of them managed to get any destroying of humans done and all of them woke up a bit late. Blablabla. Anyway, more important question: Ever played any roleplaying games?”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“What?”
“We are trying to get a Dungeons and Dragons group going but we need someone to play the cleric. Just say yes or no, we got another ancient god over in the Hungarian plains, but I think he was banished there before they invented writing, and that’d make it difficult.”
“Hmpf… Do you allow evil characters?”
