by submission | May 23, 2011 | Story
Author : Colin O’Boyle
Edgar Miller was a convict. Currently, he was an escaped convict, and that was the way he intended to stay. He’d broken out of prison through a series of well-laid plans, noticed opportunities and a bit of luck, not to mention violence.
“I said, ‘Give me the money!’” Edgar waved the gun in the storeowner’s face. The man, a balding African-American gentleman, was quaking in his boots, and from the smell, had peed his pants. That, plus the smell of the sweat on the man’s shiny palate were starting to irritate Edgar, so he decided to give off a warning shot to convince him that he was serious. He did so, the shot thunderously loud in the enclosed space, and the storeowner gave up hope that someone was going to stop this madman.
With pudgy fingers, he emptied the drawer of the cash register into Edgar’s canvas bag. Edgar, not wearing a mask of any sort, considered killing the man, but the lack of security camera gave him pause. As he ran out of the store and took off down the highway, he told himself it was because people in stressful situations don’t make good eye-witnesses.
The actual reason, however, was somewhat different.
“Ladies and gentleman,” said Dr. Johnson from his podium to the roomful of reporters, “I’d like to thank you for coming out to the cave today.” He gestured to what was behind him, a device that could only be called a pod. It was roughly the size of a couch, but was shaped like a transparent egg. Metal arms cradled it, and strands of colored wires emerged from its sides. Resting securely within this metal contraption, on a bed of gel and foam, lay Edgar Miller.
“We call it the cave after a famous thought experiment by the Greek philosopher, Plato. In this thought experiment, people were born and raised in a cave and forced to sit and face a single wall. On the wall, a light would be projected, and the people…essentially the wardens, would make shadows on the wall. Now—” Dr. Johnson pushed his glasses back up his nose, “—the people in this cave, since they had never been anywhere else, would see these shadows and, for them, that would be the world. We here at the Virtual Correctional Institution are a bit more technologically advanced.”
Dr. Johnson gestured toward the pod. “Mr. Miller is aware that he was placed in prison. He remembers everything in his life up until that moment. After that, however, things get a bit tricky. Mr. Miller was selected for our project as he was considered by the psychological staff that evaluated him as an incorrigible criminal, and that the best one could hope for was for him to be contained.” Dr. Johnson smiled. “We thought we could do a little bit better than that. In the cave, we control every aspect of our subject’s lives, far more so than any normal prison. Thus, when a subject makes a good choice, he can be rewarded and, eventually, be introduced back into society a rehabilitated man.” Dr. Johnson paused, allowing this to sink in a little, before saying, “Now we’ll adjourn to the atrium where I’ll take any questions you might have.”
As the room cleared, a journalist happened to look upwards as he walked out of the doors to the atrium. Above the doors to “Plato’s Cave,” was a quote by the Institute’s founder:
“The perfect prison is one in which the prisoner thinks he’s free.”
by submission | May 22, 2011 | Story
Author : Justin Short
The world’s largest man will tell you like he has told half a dozen others: you are not experiencing time travel. Just relax. Of course, he’ll feed his face on a double bucket of chicken as he explains it, but that part isn’t vital to understanding.
“This so-called time travel,” he laughs. “Like, picture the guy here last month. Begged me to let him in on the secret. Man was dying to get back to the 1960s and go to Woodstock. Couldn’t help him.”
Impossible. Just a romantic pipe dream. Traveling this way is as farfetched as world peace, as unlikely as a dog not eating its own puke. So sorry, hippie wannabe. Sorry, world.
The bucket is low. No problem, the man just pulls out a five-gallon water tank filled with twice-baked potatoes. Your feet burn with anxiety; why, after all, are you here? You beg him to get to the point. And with potatoes shooting down his throat like whipped cream, he does so.
“Now, first thing: we’ve never actually met. And this part may surprise you, but this is the first time you’ve ever stepped foot in this room.”
You try to argue. You’ve been here before. Every detail is familiar – that’s a fact. And it’s not some kiddie notion like déjà vu.
“I could use a glass of water,” he croaks, turning red from his tray of biscuits. “But I repeat: this is nothing so juvenile as temporal manipulation. Not even a vivid flashback. Thing is, pal, you can recall the future. Even predict it sometimes. And that feels funny when you try to deny the fact. I know.”
You shrug. Instinctively, you knew that. The way you visualize people a day before you meet them. Those daydreams of conversations that don’t occur for weeks. Even tried to confide in a friend once – embarrassing mistake.
Still, his response doesn’t satisfy. So why am I here?
The blob smiles, one jowl puffing out in a friendly gesture. “You forgot this part, I reckon. Too bad.”
You remember (or remember when you remembered), but not soon enough. The pistol was hidden under the pie pan. It’s leveled at your nose. The fat man gives you an only-doing-my-job shrug. “Of course I’m sorry. Nothing against you, bud. Just…you remember the future like it’s a boring memory, but so do I. And it’s my job to make sure that memory doesn’t happen.”
A flash. Dying stings worse than you recollected.
by submission | May 21, 2011 | Story
Author : Martinus Guzman
My confused senses grasped at the world about me. Skin pulsed along with a faint rhythmic metal tick of a clockwork engine. Ozone, cinder and iron burst over my tongue, tasting a room filled with energy and power. Dank corners and oiled machinery echoed in deep tones. I inhaled cold metal and pain. Eyes drank of hazy images in dry brown, blood red and steel blue. I screamed, agony reverberating on my skin, synesthesia swirled my senses into a horrendous nightmare. The angelic voice of my love whispered a word of peace and I drifted to darkness, thankfully.
Madrid was the site of our meeting, a city under the spell of science and art at the eve of the new century. I lived a lavish life of a professional student paid from my inheritance. By day, my intellect drank in the lectures from the most progressive thinkers of our age. By night, my body consumed beauty from the women of blessed city. But alas, under legal advisement, I was forced to seek employment as a tutor to defray the cost of my delicious excesses.
My ward, the darling Adeline, was a slender girl of fair complexion with eighteen years of sunlight captured in her raven hair. On our first meeting, she sat bemused through my flirtatious preamble but shone brightly when I commenced my instruction. As the day progressed, she entered a state of rapture, body thrown back upon her chaise with climax upon her lips not unlike the Saint Theresa receiving the holy ghost.
Those intelligent amber eyes were never quenched and soon I was forced to bring my maestros along to feed her desire. With Qevando, she built delicate automatons. With Caja, she sowed various animals into small magical beasts. And yet this was not enough, for as i would part for my nightly roguery, she would hold vigil with spiritualists and alchemist, gorging on all knowledge with equal excess. Yet I remained her confidant, when nightly as I swayed on the edge of the chaise from drink, she press her head against my chest to discuss the progress of her studies.
Upon notification by my jackal lawyers of my diminishing inheritance, I asked for my siren’s hand. She accepted without hesitation with but one condition. My nightly excursions would be ignored but my presence would be required to feed her intellectual needs each night. So I would return, still smelling of wine and woman, to find her within the laboratory. She would lounge seductively upon my chest, now a woman of staggering beauty, to spend hours in shared scholarly passion.
One night, as I stumbled through the streets, recent from the arms of a deflowered maiden, I was confronted by no other than my prey’s father. I remember little of what followed save for the snap of my back upon the stoop and the smell of my skin as the lamp oil caught fire.
Three days later, the whisper of my angel awoke me, “don’t worry m’love.” My head shifted downward with the whorl of gyros to spy my patchwork body of flesh and metal. Agony burst from my lips powered by the bellows in my hollow chest. A simple word of silence uttered by my love, caused my mouth to snap shut. Upon her direction, whispered in tender tones of seduction, I moved to my customary spot upon the chaise to receive her buxom body pressed against my new frame. She recounted her advances which had finally turned me into her dutiful husband.
by submission | May 20, 2011 | Story
Author : Steve Hall
The spectators watched raptly as the assault team crept through the artificial cityscape. Their experience was obvious – steady, even steps, eyes and weapons constantly scanning a full hemisphere of potential threats.
The point man held up a closed fist, and the entire squad froze in place, momentarily focused on his lithe form. After a second, he turned slightly, tapped his nose, and pointed to the center of the road. Fist still in the air, he tapped an ear, held up two fingers, and pointed to one of the small concrete buildings.
One of the spectators turned and whispered to their neighbor.
“He caught the mine in the road and the ambushers in the blind. Not bad, George”
The soldiers split around the mine, three taking the left side, three taking the right, while the last fire team went in the rear of the indicated building. They emerged noiselessly from the front a moment later, as the spectators’ displays changed to indicate the quietly eliminated threat.
The neighbor turned to his companion.
“General, they could do this all day, so we’re going to give them a little surprise, see them a little more dynamically.”
Gunfire erupted from the target building ahead, sweeping across the team and knocking one man down with a simulated leg wound. The team medic grabbed him and pulled him into a sheltered corner, returning fire and dressing the wound at the same time. A mass of fire erupted from the team, efficiently recording kill after kill on the displays until finally the scene fell silent and still.
The team reassembled next to the target, the injured man supporting himself on a packable crutch while his weapon continued to protect the rear of the group. Most of the team burst into the building to finish the operation, leaving a fire team outside for security.
“General, look up on the hill.”
Two kilometers away from the artificial town, well out of small arms range, a helicopter shell rose on a hydraulic lift. Simulated rotor noise swept across the field of engagement, followed by the bark of heavy weapons fire. Seconds later, another such emplacement blossomed from another hill behind the team, capturing them in a crossfire.
“George, it’s not a great demonstration if your guys get killed.”
“General, just watch.”
One of the soldiers on the security detail stepped partially out of his sheltered position, an impossibly massive weapon in his arms. A solid stream of heavy tracers briefly connected the soldier to the helicopter before it erupted in flames. Seconds later the other helicopter fell silent as well, torn apart by the same withering hail of fire.
“All right George, I’ve seen enough. Let’s look at the close-ups.”
The General picked up a helmet from the display table, modified to accommodate the point man’s bat-like ears.
“How long does it take?”
“Six months for the mods, anywhere from six months to two years to become fully operational”
“And how long until they catch up?”
“We think five years for the Russians, perhaps four for the Chinese. They don’t have some of the considerations that we do, so it could be sooner.”
The General stared at the close-up videos, a medic administering first aid with two extra eyes and two extra hands while still maintaining fire on the enemy, a machinegunner toting a fifty-cal in two huge arms while a massive tail turns him into his own tripod. Inhuman, perhaps, but American. And effective.
“George. Start production.”
“Yes ma’am.”
by submission | May 19, 2011 | Story
Author : Nic Swaner
Scents from inside the suit intertwined their intentions with the sights of tangled and tessellated hair illumed by firefly LED’s, spiking my circulation with memories and murmurs of dopamine.
I took her by the gaze; she steered her sight away from mine. I led her through a glance that involved no scuffling of hands.
She was one of two wayward strangers passing in the cosmos; two separate glances met as objects in motion tending to motion. People aren’t the same however.
Drifter was the term we were known as, people cast off of vessels and ships, mostly by accident, condemned to trudge about the universe until starvation kicked in or their oxygen-starved filters were finally incapable of operating. My unplanned departure from the mysteriously flaming vessel, Surveyor, had left me careening towards the scorching of the sun.
The communications spoon-fed me the same spitting static and ever constant resonant hum of electromagnetism. Hers must be damaged. Which wasn’t all that uncommon. The micrometeoroids fed on us like gnats, their holes sealed up with a layer of gel immediately on impact. Just how the suit design was intended to operate.
We didn’t need communications; her expression was that of one knowing and who admitted and was committed to their fate. I was still terrified of the thought. I hate the sun.
The days on most civilizations were spent brewing a rivalry with the native sun, to see if the star had survived another night without my swelling and underwhelming opposition. It is like a race, the sun laps me while I lapse, as tiredly and resignedly I rest. Parting glares and glances at dusk are commonly shared and misinterpreted between us in streaks of blighted crimson, cyan, and maroon.
Ahead of her I know she only sees the citronella-stained pale mauve and navy of the hemming of unraveling nebulae, and she is acquiescent of this fact and resigned to be reigned by stars.
We are a momentary retrograde of celestial bodies, then she has passed by. I can no longer block out the sun with my thumb at arm’s length. I know that it would cover her figure from the nebulae.
The adrenaline rush begins to lessen and the cortisol continues to burgeon like embalming lighter fluid in my veins and vagus nerve. The ever-present resonant hum chanted cicada-like rites over the buzz of static. I stared down the sun as I marched toward self-evident immolation.
