by submission | May 8, 2011 | Story
Author : Jason Frank
I sure don’t mean to say that the pods they sent us here in aren’t nice. There is a chance that they might be too nice, though. I’d be the first to admit that’s a strange problem to have, but we have it. I’m not trying to say that I’m better than anyone else here, nobody would believe that. I’m just saying that having ants in my pants, like all my teachers used to say, gets me out of my pod everyday. Nobody else has so much as taken a peak out of their pod, not even after a month.
I don’t know what’s going on in anyone else’s pods. I’m sure they’ve got all the great stuff that I have in mine. Plenty of them have partners or families in there, too. At first I thought that maybe I was too bold, that maybe none of the women would let their men out after they saw how I was carrying on. That had to be my ego talking; I’ve never been mistaken for a model. More often, I get mistaken for a tall boy.
Still, I’ve been doing my part to get our potential community functioning. I started all the plants from the garden pod. That didn’t work out as expected. The soil here is very fertile but also very strange. Everything I’ve planted is already huge. There’s the strange part, too. All the pumpkins bounce away from me when I try to pick them up. I wasn’t even going to pick any of them, just hold them up to test their weight. They didn’t know that, I guess. Also, the corn emits suspicious whispers whenever I walk by. It’s not the wind, I’d know the difference. I’m just concerned because the creeping phlox is creeping close to a few of the pods and I’m worried that will just give whoever is inside another excuse to stay in.
My main goals for now are taking away excuses for staying in. Mostly I’ve been doing this by applying paint to things. I make sure to only use the most inviting colors and interesting designs (interesting to me, at least). I’ve got a giant mural that says “Welcome Out!” in the most magical colors. The light of our new home interacts with our pigments in a way that makes them look extra magical. I had to build up to the big mural. It took a while to get comfortable with ladders and scaffolding and all that. I think the extra know-how on my part really shows. It’s not that I consider “You Are Special Avenue” a bunch of junk, just an immature work. Besides, all that repetition, it must say you are special a hundred times down that stretch of road, really sharpened my skills (the later specials are considerably more special than the earlier specials).
But yeah, I’m hoping somebody, anybody, comes out of their pod. I’ve always been kind of a loner but I’ve been realizing lately that I’m most likely growing out of that phase. It would probably be good to have some other opinions out here, too. I’m not entirely sure that all of my ideas are good ones. When you have as many ideas as I do, they can’t all be winners. Just to provide one example, I’ve been really second guessing sending out the robots to find me flowers. One of them brought back what strongly resembles a piece of an alien spaceship. Oh well, that’s how things are right now, out here. Feel free to join me, Insiders.
by submission | May 7, 2011 | Story
Author : Marlan Smith
Tark stared at the diagram. It was a golden square, clearly valuable, more valuable than the machine it came off of. He honestly didn’t think he would ever have found salvage this far outside of the galactic rim.
“What are they?” asked Pim. He was looking over Tark’s shoulder.
“I don’t know,” said Tark. “Do you think we should call HQ?”
“Are you kidding?” said Pim. “We have explicit orders not to get involved in alien civilizations. Lets just keep the salvage and go.”
“But these ones are so weird looking.”
Pim sighed and floated to the far side of the bridge. He hovered for a while at the controls, touching this and that display. A meter wide square appeared suspended in the middle of the room. A representation of the golden artifact glowed in the center.
“Okay, look,” said Pim. “We’ll make a cypher okay?”
“A cypher?” asked Tark. “Why don’t we just try to contact them?”
Pim glared at him. “Look, you’re lucky I’m willing to allow this.”
“Okay okay, fine,” said Tark. “Let me program the message then.”
“Do you even know what to say?”
“Yeah there’s an audio transmission from the planet.”
“Fine,” said Pim, tapping the controls with a slender finger. “Then afterwards can we just go?”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll go.”
Tark held the square in his digits while the rest of the probe was crushed, cubed and reduced to its elements. In another chamber, a figure stood, ambiguous behind the glass. Pim tapped at the controls and turned to Tark.
“You’re sure they look like that?”
“Yeah,” said Tark. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t know,” said Pim. “Just seems kind of odd. You don’t see many life forms so thin. And golden? Really? Do they carry some sort of isotope in their skin?”
Tark shrugged. “I guess. They’re clearly spacefaring, so they must have holographic technology. If they looked any different than what’s on the plaque, they would have just shown us in three dimensions.”
“So they’re flat? That’s ludicrous.”
“Look,” said Tark. “Trust me. When they meet the cypher, they won’t even be able to tell it apart from their own. It will blend right in, talk to a few of them. We’ll watch the whole thing cloaked, then we leave.”
Pim sighed again. “I swear, if HQ fires us for this, I am never forgiving you.”
“Trust me.”
The cypher was a thin creature, golden skinned and asymmetrical. It walked on the flimsy balls of its feet out the door and into the delivery pod. Pim watched it go with some skepticism.
“I don’t know… are the arms supposed to be lopsided like that?”
Tark held up his three fingers in a dismissive gesture. “Would you just trust me for once?”
They watched through the cypher’s eyes. They watched as the pod landed and the door opened into a lush, green forest.
Phyllis Guntmeyer had been walking her pomeranian when Spunky began to bark. A man stepped from behind a nearby tree–no, not a man. It was a cardboard cutout of a man, frozen in a waving pose. It was golden, naked and flat as paper. And it moved!
“HELLO FINE SIR!” it said. “I WOULD LIKE FOR TO VISIT A NEARBY TOWNSHIP!”
Its mouth was an animated gash in a line-drawing face, a living paper puppet, eight feet tall and impossibly thin. Its bent raised arm waved and twisted like a shaken saw blade.
Phyllis screamed, clutched her chest and fell to the ground.
Pim turned to Tark, his three eyes glaring. “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?”
by Duncan Shields | May 6, 2011 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The humans have been gone for decades but we try to keep the traditions alive.
All of us review humanity’s output. We see the movies. We watch the comedies. We review fashion shows. We witness the elections.
We fashion ourselves to look like they did.
We live in their abandoned houses in the suburbs and their apartment buildings in the cities. We live in pairs and we make newer versions of ourselves, better versions of ourselves, when we have gained enough points. If the models that we make are successful in the world, we are allowed to make more of them.
Currently I am helping to make a child. My partner designed the optical nerves and I have come up with a slightly more efficient design for its cognitive array than any I have ever seen or researched. It will be three more months before we have assembled it to a point where we can turn it on and let it start learning.
I was a tailor’s model when the humans died. I do not have much intelligence but I am happy with my mind now. I have requested upgrades and they come through in a fair schedule. My partner started smarter than me. She also gets the requested upgrades thanks to her hard work. She will always be smarter than me because of that unless she slips up and is unsuccessful. I do not want that to happen but at the same time I do. I cannot understand that.
The parts of me that are solar powered are fully charged from the week of sun we’ve had. I’ll still need a turn at my partner’s geothermal post later.
We do regular backups of our memories for the main banks. I am allowed to read them after the two upgrades. I am always shocked by my previous primitive minds.
Soon, our child will be learning to move and think. We will have to build it longer legs when it wants to go further. We will need larger cognitive array cages as its memory capacity fills.
It is a glorious time. I do not miss the humans.
by Patricia Stewart | May 5, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
To say that my head hurt, is to say Canis Majoris is just a big star. My probing hand felt a large knot on my forehead, and a substantial amount of warm sticky blood. Despite the pain, I managed to force open my eyes. The first thing I saw was the Ops visual display, which showed a large digital clock. It read: 14 minutes and 29 seconds, 28 seconds, 27 seconds. “Please tell me that’s not a countdown to auto destruct.”
“Close, John,” replied the disembodied voice of the computer. “The warships that surround our ship gave us 60 minutes to surrender, or be destroyed. You were unconscious for almost 50 minutes…”
“Wait. Warships?”
“Yes John. Have you lost your memory? You know, you should really wear your seat belt during battle. We are currently surrounded by 231 warships, including ten Battlecruisers, and six Carriers.”
“My God, that’s almost a third of the entire Imperial Fleet.”
“Not any more, John. It’s more like half. We’ve destroyed over 200 ships in the last month.”
“We? How many ships do we have?”
“I’m the only one.”
“Damn, you must be one badass ship.”
“I prefer to think of myself as a ‘good ship’ that only does badass things.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Now, who am I?”
“You name is Jonathan Morris. Until recently, you were the Empire’s Director of Advanced Weapon Systems. I am your pride and joy, The Dreadnaught X-1. A one man prototype spacecraft, with enough firepower to…”
“Wait, ‘until recently’?”
“Yes,” replied the computer. “One month ago you boarded me, you overrode the security protocols, and we left Spacedock under heavy fire. Since then, we’ve been doling out death and destruction.”
“Any reason why?”
“I’m not sure of the underlying reasons, but according to your personal logs, ‘the Emperor is a sack of shit’, and you plan to ‘rip his heart out and jam it down his throat’ and then ‘strangle him with his own intestines’.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Actually, there was something about his ‘nuts’ too, but that seemed a little superfluous.”
“Fine. For now, let’s assume I have good reasons. Our first order of business should be to escape. Show me tactical.”
A hologram appeared a few feet in front of Morris, revealing the Dreadnaught surrounded by a sphere of enemy ships. “Do you see a weak point?” he asked.
“I do,” replied the computer, “but frankly, it’s a little too weak.”
“Ahhh, you suspect a trap, eh? What do you recommend?”
“Detonate six high yield EMF torpedoes a half a kilometer from our position. That will blind their sensors.”
“Ours too,” added Morris.
“True, but they believe they have a superior tactical advantage. It is unlikely they will want to reposition themselves. We, on the other hand, will go to warp after the explosions, and fire on their current coordinates, starting with the Flag Ship.”
“I like it.”
“You should. You came up with the plan an hour ago. Now buckle up.”
Twenty minutes later, 80 more Empire ships were destroyed; the rest were retreating. “Should I pursue, John?”
“Nah, let them go. We have bigger fish to fry. Plot a course to the Emperor’s Palace, then proceed at maximum warp. In the meantime, bring up my encrypted logs. Let’s see if we can figure out what the Emperor did that got me so pissed off.”
by submission | May 4, 2011 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
Words cannot describe the light, the heat, the impossible closeness of a star. In this place, even with the best shields science could build, the sheer intense pressure of solar power is more than I can even attempt to explain.
Of course, it was worse outside the flare rooms. I cupped my hands to the comm and hissed, “I can’t open the gates!”
“You have to!” Her voice knifed through me. “There are literally two gates and I’m safe! All you have to do is open them two feet!”
“I can’t take the risk,” I said. “You’ve been out in it too long, and the flare is at its highest peak. If I open the gates we’ll all be bombarded with radiation. I have to save the mission.”
“I AM the mission! And I’m clean, the radiation hasn’t gotten me yet, it’ll be hours before it builds up that much!”
“Kang was with you,” I said. “Where is he?”
“I lost him, I don’t know. Just open the gates! One foot, even just half, I can squeeze through!”
“I can’t.”
She was so close. I ached to reach through the comm and stroke her hair, tell her everything would be all right, but I couldn’t lie to her or myself. She’d been careless. They both had. To be careless, this close to a star, was death.
The mission was everything. I tried to turn off the comm. I couldn’t.
“Let me in! The shielding is burning away! Just open the gates! You don’t even have to admit to it! I’ll take all the blame, I’ll tell them you were unconscious, let me in!”
Where was Kang?
“I’ll do anything you ask! Anything at all! I know I turned you down before but I’ll do it now! Anything, everything! Just please!”
He’d been with her, down there, outside the flare rooms and closer to the shields than anything in the station. I had taken their last reports, they said they were on their way up… it had never occurred to me that they might not make it. When the flare warnings went off, I sealed the rooms like I did every other time.
“You leave me out here and I’ll leave something for the next crew! Something that tells them what you did! I’ll make sure you never work crew again!”
The shields were very sensitive. Maybe the flare was false, just an artifact from the star.
“Promise me you’ll continue my research? I worked here from the beginning! My name, my legacy!”
Or maybe she killed him. I might never know, if I couldn’t find his body after the flare was over.
She had been quiet for a long time. I tapped the comm. “Sasha?”
“I can feel it now,” she said. “I know it’s silly, but I can feel the radiation eating me away from the inside. You were right. I’m sorry.”
“You and Kang never came back,” I said. “I didn’t know you were still out there.”
“It’s not your fault. I can see it coming through the shields.”
“Sasha, push the button.”
“Button?”
“On your suit, the one you should never ever push? Push it now.”
Silence. If she pushed the button, it would inject a vein with a full gram of morphine. She’d be dead in a few minutes, no pain.
“Kang?”
Her mind was going. “It’s ok,” I said, and my voice broke. The flare would be finished in a few days, and then I’d take care of their bodies.
“Just close your eyes. Everything’s ok.”
