by submission | Oct 30, 2011 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Bea stared through the 10 mm thick window at the metallic mining equipment covering the gray landscape. One more plate to wipe then she’d be able to read and escape this. She’d be in a colorful world filled with fascinating sights and enchanting friends.
“Dammit, I hate this place,” she muttered. She swept her gaze around the kitchen area. Had her husband heard? He must be outside securing one more plate on the roof. She caught her breath as she stifled a laugh. “How long has it been since I’ve seen one drop of rain? How long have we been here? Forever?”
“Lonely?” The quiet question came from behind her.
“Oh, James. You weren’t supposed to hear that.” Bea turned to wrap her arms around her husband’s waist.
“I never should have married you, Bea. This is no place for a woman. You were happy with your family…, friends…, parties…, travels.”
She wanted to say that this godforsaken rock was no place for a man either. Instead, she drew him closer and rested her head on his chest.
A motion outside caught her attention.
“It’s the supply shuttle! Maybe they’ve brought more library chips!” She pulled away from James’ arms, running to retrieve the case holding the old chips.
“Bea.” His voice seemed to stick in his throat. “It’s not the supply ship.” He drew her over to the window.
Bea’s eyes widened at the sight of the approaching white suited androids. Their measured steps inevitably brought them to the outside airlock door. She didn’t see them enter and close it, but her heart knew. Soon they would be inside.
“James! Hide me!”
She pressed against him.
“There’s no place to hide.” Tears crowded his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
Bea ran through the room, from one wall to another and then back, like a mouse searching for a hole. Meanwhile, metallic appendages pounded the door.
“No!” she screamed.
James opened the door and let the androids into their santuary, their home.
She beat his back with one small, tight fist. “No!” Then she sunk onto the floor, still clutching the case in her other hand.
One android blocked off James from interfering while the other android herded Bea into the tiny room in back.
“James! Don’t let him touch me!”
James stared at the floor. “I can’t stop them. I’m so sorry. I wish I could. Damn that supply ship.” His head swayed with each word. He wiped tears and cursed beneath his breath.
“No! Get away!” Bea’s voice echoed through the cubicle. “But, I’ve never seen the Martian Vaults, or the Baths of Otics, or…” Her voice died away.
The android emerged into the main cubicle and turned to James. He held the case of chips. “Rules cannot be broken. There is a waiting line.”
“But the supply ship didn’t come on time.” James said. “We couldn’t trade for other chips. We haven’t seen a ship in months. Have pity.”
“Rules cannot be broken.” With that, the two androids left James standing alone.
Bea staggered out from their sleeping pod. The chip insertion socket was gone from the tiny cavity in her temple. A small drop of blood intermingled with a tear down her cheek.
“No more worlds to view,” she murmured.
Bea turned and scanned the tiny colorless cubicle. “Ever.”
James moved to Bea.
She whispered.
James leaned toward her.
“They never let you borrow another chip when…” She touched the empty cavity with a finger. “Never.”
“We’ll still have each other,” James said.
He drew her in close.
Bea felt nothing, enclosed her endless gray world.
by submission | Oct 29, 2011 | Story |
Author : David Nutt
It took all of Jimmy J’s concentration to lock out the invading minds trying to pry the secrets from him. The first attack was dealt with easily, the Thulian from the belt. It was straight forward frontal lobe probing. Brute force, horribly off balance, easily turned aside. The Thulian dropped out immediately.
The second attack was from Danni, a humanoid like him. Typical. She tried to appeal to his libido. Vague images of passionate encounters but he ignored them. She switched to homo erotic vignettes thinking that maybe he swung that way, but it was to no avail. In the process he did discover she had a weakness for older men. Jimmy tunneled into her unconscious and planted a few spicy sequences of his own and she folded like a wet cardboard box.
The next attack came from the ancient. Ancient what he wasn’t quite sure. Old, powerful, and subtle was all he could read. Jimmy thought he was done for but while old, powerful, and subtle spoke of the unknown creature trying to overwhelm his mind it was no match for the creatures inexperience in this arena, and the Ancient’s own doubt was what sent him (her? it?) cowering from Jimmy’s mind.
The last attack came from an old nemesis. Kazanti. Jimmy smiled. Kazanti was so augmented with implants it was hard to tell where organic being ended and nanotechnology began. The rumor was Kazanti was in some kind of accident and the emergency procedures to save his life altered his personality so much that it was as if the old, pre-accident Kazanti never existed.
That’s where Jimmy caught a glimpse for an attack; between rumor and reality. Another’s perception meant nothing to Kazanti, but his self perception was everything. It was a quick glimpse; a small child-like creature on some kind of recreational equipment. Large mammalian eyes, soft fur, delicate primate like hands; hands that reminded Jimmy of the lemur he saw in the zoo when he was seven. His big sister was still alive then and he could almost feel the warmth of her hand in his as they looked—
Jimmy threw up his defenses, drew down his ego shields and unleashed a panicked id response. Childish and violent to be sure, but the surprise caught Kazinti in a vulnerable spot and while Jimmy was thrashing Kazanti lost his grip and had to retreat leaving Jimmy with the secret still locked inside his head.
A smile crept on to Jimmy’s face as the others withdrew, leaving Jimmy alone and unscathed. At peace, he knew the others could not touch him, that they did not know what he knew already; that he had won. Jimmy opened his mind to all his attackers the split second before he spoke so they would know the horrible truth as their physical senses caught up with their minds:
“Read ’em and weep boys and girls! Straight flush.”
by submission | Oct 28, 2011 | Story |
Author : Tim Rouse
It’s been eight years. I suppose it had to happen sometime.
They’ve been here longer than that, of course. Just shy of a century, they say. But eight years ago they revealed themselves, thousands of people enslaved, with aliens in their bodies, and suddenly they wanted the rest of us to welcome in an alien guest.
And people lined up for the opportunity. Maybe it was something in the water, but I drank that water and I never wanted an alien put inside me. I suppose when they saw some of the people the aliens already had (the president, hell, they had the president) they didn’t think it was worth fighting no more.
‘Course, lots of us did fight. Didn’t matter, for the most part- one of them inside the camp was all it took to open the gates, so to speak. And once they were in, it didn’t matter how hard you fought or how fast you ran, you ended up in the back of a van headed for Processing.
That’s where everyone ended up. Processing. Didn’t matter if you’d fought to the last man or if you’d welcomed them with open arms, there were only two ways out of that place. Death for the fat, the terminally ill, or whatever- we still don’t know, to tell the truth. My guess? They were just thinning us out. Maybe they didn’t need eight billion bodies, or maybe they just wanted to make sure Earth survived once they took over.
Maybe it was the lucky ones they killed. The rest got taken. One of their grubs down your gullet, and two days later they’re sat in your stomach, latched onto your spine, and it’s them running your brain now. They claim it’s like motherhood, but I always figured they were more like zombies.
A few of us got away. Not many- one in ten thousand, maybe? Probably less. Might be more overseas, where there were less people- Russia, perhaps, or Madagascar. Round here, most live in the hills, on old farms or in caves.
And then there’s us. Domestic terrorists, they call us. Freedom fighters, we call ourselves. Bombings, vandalism, straight-up execution sometimes. We’ll do anything to rid this planet of these monsters.
But sometimes… sometimes you stop, just when the crowbar should be smashing into the skull of a pretty teenager, just as the cold dead eyes of the alien inside betray, just for a moment, a flicker of fear, of humanity long since smothered.
It’s been eight years. I suppose it had to happen sometime. You stop, once too often, and the police
are onto you, and it’s no mercy, the aliens don’t know the meaning of the word.
So there we are. Two of us are already dead. The rest are battered, beaten, on the ground. The police aren’t paying much attention any more, busy with the growing crowd. But there’s no way we could get away now, unless…
I look over at Owen. Sure enough, he’s already got his slim wrists out of the cuffs.
“Go on!” hisses Cassie, a girl I thought I loved, once. Whatever happens to me tonight, I’m fairly sure I’ll never feel love again.
Owen looks unhappy. “I can’t leave you all… to them…”
I cut him off. “Just go, Owen. The fight must go on!”
Resigned, he nods, rises, and darts across the street.
As he walks up the road, mingling with the passers-by, I can’t help but think.
They look so like us.
by submission | Oct 27, 2011 | Story |
Author : Damien Krsteski
“One more and you’re done,” the bartender informs me. I nod, then take a large sip from the bottle.
Due to the nature of their work, bartenders tend to know certain things about people. Fortunately, the multiversal collapse that would lead me to her is a concept he’d never grasp. See, I have a secret to tell. I’ve lived and seen plenty, as much as all the people who have ever walked on this Earth put together. Probably even more so. I noticed it first in my early childhood. What a strange thing for a kid, to be able to leap back and forth. Sideways too. Well, if you think about it, every leap is a leap sideways. To be quite candid, it’s sort of difficult to explain even now. My family considered me sick, asocial. Never tried to disprove them, really. I ran away at the tender age of thirteen and never went back.
So here I am, me and the bearded bartender, half-bent from the alcohol, waiting. Just as I am about to pay my tab and leave, she enters.
Of course, I recognize her. I’ve seen her an infinite-fold times before. Elegant as always, immaculately dressed. That’s her, right there in the doorway. She enters with a bald, toothy guy. He’s talking his head off but she seems bored as hell, and I pick up the cue to intervene. I get up, try not to stagger, and walk over to her.
“Mind if I buy you a drink?” I ask, totally unsure of myself, knees shaking.
“Sure,” She’s beaming. Beautiful black hair waving, breaking right above her shoulders.
She ditches the asshole and sits by my side at the bar. Bartender Mike serves us both beers. We drink in silence, smiling at each other.
Thing is, I know what happens next. She doesn’t.
“I have a confession to make,” I say.
She widens her eyes, anticipating. There must have been a billion guys who’ve told her the same thing before. You’re the most perfect creature I’ve ever seen, she thinks I’ll say. I’ve never seen such beautiful eyes before. She’s almost sure of what I’m about to say. I ponder all possiblities and decide to tell her the truth this time.
“Listen Lisa,” For a brief moment she wonders how I know her name, then decides to go with the flow. “Believe it or not, I’ve practiced this for ages. We have met before, I’ve done this many times before.” She’s almost ready to get up and go back to Mr. Baldy. “Both of us live in a different instance of our universe, everyone does, but the funny thing is, ours overlap at this exact moment. At this instant, where we meet. I have yet to understand why, but what I know for sure is we belong together. Take my hand, and let go. Trust me, and our probability equations will collapse together into one.”
As I speak I become aware of how fast the words rush out of my mouth. She eyes me suspiciously, like I’m the homeless weirdo from the street corner.
“I think you’ve had too much to drink,” she says, gets up, pats me sympathetically on the shoulder and goes over to wrap her arms around the asshole on the next table.
“But you don’t understand,” I holler out as reality starts dissolving, “we’ve spent a lifetime together already.”
Everything becomes dark.
“And it was perfect,” I whisper into empty space.
Out of nowhere, pieces of the nothingness emerge and rearrange themselves into a bar scene. Bartender Mike tells me something, but the words reach me garbled, devoid of meaning. I’m sitting at the bar, finishing my last beer. Just as I am about to pay my tab and leave, she enters.
I take a deep breath and brace myself for what is to come, my heart trembling with the hope that this might be the time our realities finally converge. I muster courage and walk over to talk her into it.
by submission | Oct 26, 2011 | Story |
Author : g.a.harry
Such heat. Wave upon wave. Through air thick as tapioca. Brutal oppressive. Under the awning, the shade makes it worse. Adding weight, piling on heavy. A bead of sweat starts to form on his forehead. Welling up till gravity pulls it down the side of his head to dangle itching on his chin.
The waitress brings him a glass of frozen tea. Leaves boiled, sifted, separated, the run-off poured into a glass and put into the freezer over night. He watches it melt. The water in the air condensing, making a little puddle, darkening the wood of the table. The wait is unbearable. When enough has melted he slurps at it greedily. The ecstasy of cool. He bites into the ice, impatient.
The next table over, a man, lank skinny, sits, tapping a finger on the table, mumbling some kind of devil voodoo through the solid air. The words come soft, unintelligible. Edges dulled by the soupy breeze. His leg jiggles. The fear of god in his eyes. They flick wildly around. Paranoia written all over his face, a terror of everything.
The waitress comes over, carrying his drink on a small, round, cork-bottomed tray. As she sets the drink on the table, his eyes widen with fear. His hands are at his head. Scratching, pulling,
“Get ’em off me!”
He stands up, jerks vertical, the table tipping. The menu flickers, goes out. The glass of tea smashes, the ashtray dumps ash and butts all over the stone. The people around him stand up, backing away, afraid. It might be catching, borne from his stinking mouth on the moist air, to infest their blood, bring the madness down on them.
Falling to the ground, writhing screaming. Kicking. His skin, torn by glass beneath him, wet from the expanding puddle of melting tea, begins to bleed. Slowly at first, until he is a flailing red mass of lank hair sticky sweet tea.
When the van arrives, medics spill out wearing latex gloves, medical facemasks, he is picked up bodily. Dragged screaming onto a stretcher. They shoot him full of something. Finally he subsides, the animal violence dulled to an occasional twitch. He is put in the velo and taken away.
The matron, thin emaciated, emerges from the cafe pushing a mop and bucket. She struggles to get the small castors over the uneven stone. Her tiny arms, withered thin, look like they might snap under the strain. She grunts, breathing heavily.
As she slowly sweeps the mop across the flags, diluting the bloody tea, spreading it out more evenly, she sings to herself. A song from her childhood, maybe, that her mother used to sing. The melody a memory of happiness, a youth now long gone. Words from an old language spoken to the tune of three little notes.
She notices him watching her, gives him a friendly smile. He can see the shape of her skull through the sagging skin of her face. Watery grey eyes, a hint of jaundice yellow around the iris. She replaces the mop in the bucket, coming over,
“I am sorry. He is a lonely man. He got lost some time ago never managed to make his way back.”
She leans over, taps the menu in the table,
“Order anything you like.”
He looks down at the table. Everything heavy. Meat potatoes rice. He orders the gazpacho.
She smiles, returning to the mop bucket and struggles it back inside. The patrons return to their tables and are reabsorbed by the air. They appear gelatinous, thick custard statues, moving slowly. Sipping their cold, sweet tea.
