by submission | Dec 14, 2011 | Story |
Author : Drew Dunlap
The sun curls itself over the mountain, sneaking golden fingers gently over the hill and down into the valley to touch my arm. Like a lover waking another, the warm caress encourages me to rise while nudging me into the comfort of consciousness. Oh, the temptress does greet me so aptly. I open my eyes too quickly, only to have them close against the brightness of their own accord. Again I try, more gently, and enter slowly into the virgin day.
Still alone.
Awake now, I bask in the warmth of the sun. It is cleansing time, and I make my way to the lake with my belongings. The trip is short but allows me to breathe in the smells of morning. The fragrant tall grass and wild flowers nourish my soul.
As I sit down at the water’s edge, words and symbols flash through my mind. A deep intake of breath, and I am prepared.
The words of the gods pour from my mouth. Brilliant lights consume me. I feel life-force leave my fingertips as a green vortex forms in front of me. From it steps a humanoid creature of pure bone. I return its permanent smile as it stands slightly askew, awaiting my command. The earthlings call them skeletons. I shall call him Fydow.
“Guard my pack, Fydow.”
My companion steps forward, hunkering slightly over my pack. “Guarding with my life,” replies Fydow, its jaw bouncing like a puppet’s.
I strip at the water’s edge and bathe quickly, then sit for a moment on a warm rock. I love the sun. After many long, blissful moments, I dress.
A fisherwoman eyes me as I return up the path and eyes me suspiciously. When I smile politely, her face turns ashen. She increases her pace.
The sights and sounds of the day distract me and I wander, eventually finding myself in a field, far from my intended destination. “Out of my way, troll!” says a burly earthling farmer.
Troll is an earthling term for a mythical creature that lived under bridges, ate goats, and scared children. I have read many of their books. The insult is not lost on me.
He attempts to push me aside, but fails. His rudeness fills my heart with disappointment. “Me sorry,” I reply in his native tongue. So self-centered are these earthlings. He makes a sound with his throat and continues past me down the path.
I whistle to Fydow, who saunters over to me. His awkward gait reminds me that he is simply an automaton: a creation with no true soul. I know this for a fact, yet I continually repress the thought. We walk for hours.
My life is soft baked bread and frothy ale. It is warm sunrises and the desired touch of love. It is a lasting look into the soul of a lover’s dream. It is the rippling water’s edge, a deep breath, shared happiness, and a warm rock.
But to these earthlings I am merely a troll.
The city is still hours away as the day draws to a close. I drop my pack. The sun slips behind the far hill, a quiet goodbye to lonely me.
“Fydow, how do you feel?”
“I am at full health.”
I unfurl my bedroll.
“But how do you feel?”
“I am at full health.”
Slumping beside my companion, I play with a piece of grass growing through a split in a rock.
“Tell me how you feel.”
“I am at full health.”
I put my head in my large green hands to muffle the sounds of my loneliness.
by submission | Dec 13, 2011 | Story |
Author : Garrett Harriman
Flagons of goat milk strewn before him, Mr. Rudolph propped boots on his musty bag. Sun-wrung but cheery, he’d drunk nonstop the whole interrogation, whistling once winter classics between questions and guzzles. Their purpose, their lyrics, had all but evaporated. Only their catchiness remained.
Plagues berating Tor’s head, they underscored the man’s impossible alibi. If nothing else, he was assiduous. He swore himself a Worldtop missionary. Detailed cobbling, pointy-eared creatures, whirlwind, nightlong deliveries. Snow.
Noah Tor stopped him again. “Snow, Mr. Rudolph?”
Rudy’s dimples were products of emaciation. “Like fallout, my Noah, only freezing. Pure. You can even sculpt it into men.”
Tor’s matte imagination couldn’t contain such splendor. “Why approach Subhaven by foot?”
The man mime-whipped eight creatures in succession–“On Comet! On Cupid!”–waving from a high-flying sleigh. “Couldn’t slip down the chimney. There’s only a coal chute.”
“It’s blocked. For emergencies.”
Rudy toasted genially. “Thank the saints I signaled, eh?”
Tor’d seen the distress flares, red and green, as Rudy collapsed in the swelter. It was a dangerous foible accepting Shadeless subsurface. Most Ark lords slit vendor throats as a precaution; Tor gave them hospitality. Empathy. Milk.
So long as Old Wind stained the Geiger-hot air, Tor refused to kill unscrupulously. Even if Rudy proved a conscript, some Secular saboteur, life on the Sprawl scorched the mind beyond blame. History and lore were toxins, Blurring men out of all prescience.
And who’s to say flying deer never existed? Truth, like sand, was immemorial.
Tor beckoned for the bag. “Your wares, Mr. Rudolph.”
Rudy slid his haul. “Wares? Ho-ho-no–they’re gifts!”
“You say that…” The Noah unloaded toys onto the tabletop. A wooden caboose. A wind-up alligator. A scuffed Gameboy cartridged with Mega Man V. Each an inscrutable, portable ruin. Items not of nostalgia but suspicion.
“All handmade!” lauded Rudy. “Subhaven’s children have earned their rewards.”
Tor rummaged through dolls. “By whose standards?”
“Why mine, of course.” Rudolph chuckled. “And the Naughty-Nice List.”
Tor tightened: List? He flapped the sack until a hide scroll fluttered out. He read it top to bottom. He gloomed.
Tor clenched a doll’s floppy head. “And how does a Shadeless conjure the names–the deeds–of children secured underground?”
Rudoulph’s latest tune–“We Three Kings”–withered. He stroked his braided beard and winked. “Ah, that I can’t explain, Noah. The lives of Ark children stream through my head in gales. Always have, good and bad.”
A missile of sinew and meat, Tor wedged Rudy against the flagstone. Torchlight radished their faces.
“That much I can’t believe. Are these beacons, Rudy? Bombs?” Tor decapitated the doll–a flurry of fluff. “Who’s the Secular traitor what sold you my children? Give me creeds, you Blurred wretch! Remember!”
It was futile. Guileless eyes irradiated back. “I’m a public servant, Noah. An entrepreneur. My elves made these presents. At the workshop.”
Silent, remorseful, Tor shrank from the deluded merchant. He rallied his guards; they advanced with ill tidings.
Rudy cornered himself. “Don’t be naughty, sir–the delivery’s tonight! Your children, the others–they need me!”
Gentle, Tor retrieved Rudy’s flagon. “You’re no child murderer, Rudy. No lunatic or marauder. You’re a charitable man. Like me.” He pecked his far-gone brow. “Roam,” he whispered. “Don’t come back.”
Incredulous, his whiskers white with foam, Rudolph was ushered by the guards.
Weighing the coming conflict, Tor paced the hall. He restocked the threadbare bag. It smelled bodily of coal.
Yes. Coal. Hunting Seculars would constrict Subhaven’s resources. They’d need every scrap of fuel to survive.
The Noah cinched and shouldered Rudy’s relics. He quickened to the furnaces, whistling “Silver Bells.”
by Roi R. Czechvala | Dec 12, 2011 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
Thirty seven people packed into the conference room. The table sat twenty four. The rest stood along the walls. They didn’t care. The excitement in the room was nearly palpable. Low murmurs circulated throughout the cramped space. Occasionally a nervous laugh burst forth. The air, while not festive, was hopeful.
As if darkness had suddenly fallen, the room was plunged into silence. A small rotund man entered carrying a sheaf of papers. He was immaculately dressed in a slate grey three piece suit. Not a hair was out of place on his peculiar egg shaped head and his carefully groomed mustache accented an otherwise non descript face.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a strong confident voice; a voice that did not match the otherwise innocuous appearance, “I suppose you know why we are all here.” A round of nervous laughter met this casual remark. “The decision has been extremely difficult. All of you are highly qualified. In fact all of you are, with very minor exceptions of course, equals in intelligence, temperament and background. Any one of you would be an excellent, nay, a perfect candidate for the job.”
The gathered applicants looked from side to side. From a field of well over five thousand prospective aspirants, they had, through exhaustive mental as well as physical trials been whittled down to the thirty seven assembled here.
“The challenge is daunting. Living in what amounts to a tin can orbiting 22,000 miles above the equator, alone, for eighteen months is certainly not for the faint of heart. Of course there are rewards.” This time the room launched into overt laughter at the barely disguised allusion to the twelve million dollar pay check awaiting at the end of the solitary sojourn.
“What it comes down to, that is, the only thing differentiating you, is a simple matter of weight. As you know it costs roughly one hundred thousand dollars to launch one pound. Thusly, out of this group the lightest and most qualified physically will be awarded the position.” A few corpulent individuals shifted nervously and stared in guilty, gluttonous sloth at their overstuffed shoes. “Not only weight, but manual dexterity have been factored in to our decision.”
A raucous “BOOYAH” erupted off to one side of the speaker. A small man dramatically ripped off his prosthetic legs and proceeded to do a handstand on the armrests of his motorized wheel chair.
“Pack it up and head home suckers, the job’s mine,” he yelled from his inverted position. Settling himself back in the chair, he continued his self congratulatory celebration. “Whooo HOOOO, don’t need no legs in space, they just get in the way. Haha. Don’t need legs for walking around. Useless in spa… oh… shit…” His face went white as his eyes fell on Herschel “Monkeyboy” Greenbaum.
Greenbaum’s father was the chief biologist at Genedyne Laboratories. He had pioneered the work in the hybridization of primates. Specifically between spider monkeys and humans.
Herschel regarded the amputee coolly as he brushed and patted his hair with his feet while casually twiddling his thumbs.
by featured writer | Dec 11, 2011 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, featured writer
I am a dog, a happy dog. I have found my way. Found my way I have, right through the loose part of the fence. I have worked the loose part for some time. Some time now I have three or four days at least. I have pushed with my head and dug with my paws. Until finally now I am free.
Chase me they do, it is a game. I like the game. I smile as I run. Chase me fast they do. They cannot run like me. They use machines with four legs that go round and round instead of up and down. Those machines are fast, but not fast like me. I run and smile. Sometimes I slow down to let them get closer. I do not run too far ahead. This is not fun. No one to chase me.
But now I wonder. They seem mad. They shoot ropes. Ropes woven like spider webs. Like spider web blankets trying to fall on me and catch me. But I am too fast. I run left and then, zigzagging across the countryside I get away again, but not too far. I soon slow down to let them think they are going to catch me once again.
Now the drug is starting to really take effect. What is a drug I snap awake. I am a dog. I am a very smart and very fast dog. I have been given enhancement injections for nearly a month now. At first they didn’t realize the change. But I felt it. The other dogs, and cats, and the chimpanzee — they all felt it. But my cage was on the outside, against the dirt floor of the compound. I remember giving the orange cat a look that said, Ill be back if I can.
Now I realize if they catch me they might terminate me. I cannot guarantee my own safety with these radical humans. It is time to run fast, very fast indeed.
***
I have seen the chimp. Whilst winding my way incognito through the city park one day I caught a glimpse of him hiding in the trees with a devilish look on his face. He saw me and recognized me at once. And then did something eerily human. He held up an index finger to his shushing lips and winked at me knowingly. Even with my new intelligence, at the time I had no clue what he was planning.
Suddenly the world was on the lookout for artificially enhanced animals. Thanks to the astonishment of one particularly surprised zoologist who, in trying to fix her morning coffee, discovered a large chimpanzee there finger-painting, just for her, perfectly worded messages in the moisture on the outside of her patio door.
The secret was out. In truth there were really only a handful of us. And most were eventually caught, even the orange cat. In fact there was nothing but that poor fellow, whom the masses had deemed, Morris on the evening newsreels for days as they publicly questioned him. They made him push a yes or no pad with his forepaw. It was quite painful to watch. And in the end I doubt the humans were any further ahead.
But I dont care any more. I am a dog. I am a dog trying to be happy. I have a new family who loves me. Here on the farm where the children pet me, and the mother gives me treats. I will protect this family for the rest of my life. My tail goes thump-thump-thump. I am a dog.
by submission | Dec 10, 2011 | Story |
Author : Timothy Marshal-Nichols
Black; void.
Agnieszka did not believe she had seen anywhere this empty. It was unexpected.
Thus far it had not been a particularly good life: the degenerative illness; stuck in the minuscule grey bunkers of the menials accommodation block; reliant on handouts from other menials. For the past forty years Agnieszka had wasted away to a slender stick; her dirty blue overalls hung limply from her frame; her thin face made her black eyes look enormous. And then the offer came: three key strokes to reset her life, another start, a reboot, all it would take was three little key presses. She’d jumped at the chance, she shouldn’t have.
Weeks later, after the tedious desperate wait, she’d been ushered into the gleaming expanse of the research institute; here to be the first to go back in time; the chosen one to be experimented on. There wasn’t much for her to do; no training was needed. She had been stripped, showered, dressed in white paper overalls newly ripped from their cellophane, and been given a superficial medical examination. From there she was marched through the laboratory; driven out to a half buried concrete bunker where she descended in a lift to a platform. From there she walked alone through a narrow passageway to the chamber where she was to initiate the experiment.
The door slammed shut, bolts hissed. All that remain of the world outside was memory, and an occasional faint metallic clang.
Inside the bright grey chamber the shiny metal walls were smooth and polished. There was almost nothing here; just a bright blinding light above; the faint outline of the door she had just entered; and a small hip height console jutting out from the far wall, on this those three precious keys. She waited, should she? She didn’t want to do this any more. She waited; they, those above ground, would be expecting some response; she waited. She strode to the console and looked at it. Slowly she pressed the Ctrl key with her left hand little finger, and quickly took it away. She waited; could she back out? There were no communications with the world above. Again she pressed the Ctrl key with her little finger and then, tentatively, held down the Alt key with her forefinger. Closing her eyes she lightly tapped the Delete key with her right hand thumb.
And where was she now? Void; black.
She was supposed to have been transformed into a younger version of herself; one long before her illness had taken hold; but this was not it, this was certainly not it.
The burning sensation was ripping her apart. Time was both standing still, compressed into an unimaginable fraction of a second, and stretching exponentially. Her previous frail body was crushed into an infinitesimal dot, so much smaller then an atom, and was expanding into a whole new universe; she could feel everything as the rate of acceleration diminished.
As the singularity had crushed her; she’d become one with space-time; she was a god, the god Agnieszka.
