by Roi R. Czechvala | Mar 14, 2011 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
They had been walking for weeks. They could easily pick their destination at night, or rather avoid a destination from the bluish glow low on the horizon that signalled a radioactive crater where a city once lived.
They were hungry, very hungry. The two men were perched atop a barren ridge overlooking a small town in a valley below. One of the men glassed the town through the Leopold scope mounted atop his H&K 91.
“Bill, what do you see,” Ronald Jenkins asked in a whisper.
“Nothing, the town’s abandoned. I don’t see anything moving, no cars, no people… What the hell?” Bill Gaines dropped the rifle and retrieved his binos for a better look.
“What is it? What do you see?”
“The circus is in town.”
They made their way down the ridge. After a hike that left them both exhausted and famished, they stood before a red and white striped circus tent that had been erected in what was presumably the town square.
“Creepy, ain’t it,” opined Ron, “where’s the sound of people, children laughing, animals?”
Bill scowled. “Let’s see if there’s anything to eat.”
Inside the tent, though the animals were long gone, the smell lingered upon the air. Little food was to be found. Popcorn lay crushed in the footprints of quickly departing patrons. Here and there lay the rotting remains of candied apples.
“Not much here, I guess they took whatever… did you here something,” Bill asked cocking his head to one side. “It sounds like…”
“Someone crying,” Ron finished.
Towards the far end of the tent, in the direction of the mysterious sound, a flap hung partially open revealing a smaller space within. “Let’s go,” Bill whispered, slipping the safety of his rifle off.
In a small addition to the big top, they found a man, a clown actually, sobbing uncontrollably. His heavy tears had caused his makeup to run terribly, giving the two the unrelenting combined feelings of revulsion, disgust, pity and a need to defecate that only a clown can engender in a human.
“By the ghost of Emmett Kelly… AN AUDIENCE,” the clown exclaimed jumping up and embracing the men, leaving red and white smears on their ragged clothing.
“Get off,” Ron growled, shoving the pathetic jester to the ground.
“I’m so sorry, it’s just that I haven’t seen another person in weeks. I’m so lonely.”
“What happened to the rest of the freaks,” Bill asked, trying to shake off the clown as it desperately attempted to attach itself to his leg.
“They left Sir, they left as soon as the bombs began falling.”
“Why didn’t you go with them,” Ron asked, kicking the clown in the stomach in an attempt to dislodge it from his companions leg.
“Ooooofff! They wouldn’t let me on the bus Sir. They hated Chancre they did Sir.”
“Wait, Chancre the Clown?”
“That’s me Sir.” He honked his nose twice for emphasis.
“C’mon Bill, let’s get out of here.”
“Please Sir, take Chancre with you.”
“Get the fuck off my leg or so help me I’ll kill you.”
“That’s just what they said Sir.”
The rifles report was deafening within the canvas confines of the small enclosure.
Later that evening, Ron and Bill had made camp and were eating a short distance outside the little town.
“Give me another piece, will you Ron?”
Ron cut a strip of meat from the joint spitted over the cheery fire and handed it to him on the point of his knife. As Bill chewed thoughtfully, he asked, “Hey Ron, does this taste funny to you?”
by submission | Mar 13, 2011 | Story
Author : David Bastin
“Why,” asked the Captain, “have the engines all stopped?”
The Chief Engineer grinned. “You never were a man to ask an easy question?” he said.
The Captain raised his hand and repeated himself.
“Why, he asked, “have the engines all stopped?”
The Chief Engineer chewed thoughtfully on his thumb. “Forces,” he observed, “vary as the square of the distance between them and light is a constant ….”
The Captain raised his hand again.
“Why, exactly” he asked, “have the engines stopped?”
***
“Similars,” said the engineer, “pull apart.” He cupped one hand and swirled the index finger of the other one around it.
“Tensions,” he said, “translate into angular momentum and things shrink.”
“And we know,” he said, “ that implosions go exponential at the Omega Barrier.” He spread his arms wide.
“Poles,” he explained, “go to unity, and at the geomorphic horizon, space-time inverts ….”
He punched one hand with the bunched fist of the other.
“And that,” he declared, “is where and when it happened!!”
The two men studied each other.
***
“Why,” asked the Captain, “have the engines all stopped?”
The Chief Engineer spoke with sure and certain confidence.
“Because,” he said, “something broke!”
by submission | Mar 12, 2011 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
It was the last day of the forty third reign of the Enduring Prophet, and all was right with the world.
The prophet was now bed-bound, and it was widely expected that soon his spirit would leave behind this mortal form, and appear incarnate in his successor: a boy groomed from childhood to take on the mantle and the spirit of the Enduring Prophet.
At least, that was how the monks told it. The worldly city-folk smiled at such stories when they heard them. Their ancestors had believed in continual reincarnation, but these days most people accepted that the actual procedure was that when the monks saw the Prophet was getting on in years, they selected a boy, tutored him to become their figurehead, and continued their own rule by proxy. It was a neat enough system, and the monks tended to rule wisely. Over the years, the concepts of reincarnation and divinity had become a pleasant story, truly believed only by peasants and children.
Shortly before noon, the Enduring Prophet sent for the boy. Today, the child’s name was Kai Lo, a name that would be taken from him if and when he took the mantle. The Prophet needed no name. The boy was solemn, old before his time with the burden of responsibility. He knew what was coming.
Before he entered the Prophet’s chambers, a monk stopped Kai Lo and spoke to him. Wen Chan had looked after the boy for the five years since he had been brought to the monastery, had become almost a father to him, and his tone was gentle and grave.
“Kai Lo,” he said, “Do you know what is asked of you today?”
“I do.”
“And you will do as you have been asked?”
The boy nodded. Wen Chan paused for a moment, and when he continued the words were less ceremonial.
“Should you not wish this, if you are not ready for the burden, it can be taken from you.”
For a moment, his eyes seemed to plead with the boy. Kai Lo shook his head.
“It is my destiny.”
Wen Chan said no more, simply led the boy into the room. The hum of machinery grew louder as the door opened.
An hour later, the monks lowered the flags around the monastery entrance. The crowd gathered before the gates knew what this meant. The funeral and coronation would take place this evening.
In his bedchamber, the boy no longer known as Kai Lo heard the sound of the crowd outside. It had been a long time since his hearing had been this acute. There was a fresh pleasure in these first few days after the transfer, where everything felt new. After a while, it became normal again, but for a few short days he felt capable of anything.
The boy hadn’t struggled, hadn’t resisted when the technicians placed him in the machine. His pious sense of duty had lasted until the transfer had taken place, when something akin to shock had passed across the face of a boy suddenly trapped in a dying old man.
Sometimes, the prophet felt remorse for the life that he ended, the body he stole, but it was just how things were. His people needed a leader, and there were some prices you had to pay.
He stepped towards his balcony, basking for the first time in the roar of the crowd.
It was the first day of the forty fourth reign of the Enduring Prophet, and all was right with the world.
by submission | Mar 11, 2011 | Story
Author : Erik Goranson
Jane and Ellis floated parallel to one another across the vast canvas of space, eyeing the marble-like planets that slowly crept past them. Their skin reflected the starlight with a dull orange sheen. Ellis had called it ‘planet gazing,’ an activity he apparently thought suitable for a date.
“Do you see that one below us?” Ellis said, pointing to a round blue mass.
Jane shrugged.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he asked. “I’ll bet it’s beautiful on the surface, too. Like the way the dust begins to spiral when a star is forming.”
“Something like that,” Jane said. She didn’t understand his excitement. Planets were nothing interesting. They were just stars without the fire; black holes without the absence of color; asteroids with an atmosphere. They were just specks of light that littered the sky. The only remotely interesting thing she knew about planets was that the gas in their atmosphere were extremely lethal. Big whoop, she thought. Floating, atmospheric rocks of death. Ellis sure knew how to impress a girl.
“I’ve read about how gravity works differently down there,” Ellis said. “You wouldn’t be weightless anymore. You’d have to rely on your muscles to get around. You’d have to pry yourself off the ground and,” he paused, thinking. “walk. That’s what it was called. ‘Walking.'”
Jane was skeptical. “But how would you survive the gases?”
He hesitated. “With hazmat suits?”
“We’d only need suits?”
“And a place to live, I guess. But we could send some terranauts down there and have them build some pods or something,” he said.
Jane wasn’t impressed. So planets were atmospheric rocks of death that they could live on. So what? She was starting to think Ellis was a fool with his head stuck in a childhood fantasy.
“Would that really be worth it?” she asked. “It seems like you’d be constantly working to keep the nature out. Seems like it would be a pain.”
“You really think so?” Ellis said. “I think life’d be much better down there.”
“In an environment that could kill you?”
He nodded. “It’s beautiful down there. There are mountains of rock that would trace the sky; oceans of hydrogen that would reflect the starlight. Down there, the atmosphere would affect the spectrum of light. There would be color everywhere—sunlight alone would be more magnificent down there than we’ve ever seen. And with that kind of beauty, our petty problems would disappear. We’d stop being so careless and arrogant down there. We wouldn’t fight over money and resources and religion down there. We’d be too distracted by the beauty of it all. We’d finally come together.”
Jane felt her disapproval fading. It was a wonderful vision, a world without conflict. “Maybe you’re right,” she said.
“Maybe?” Ellis asked. “Wouldn’t you be stunned by that kind of beauty?”
“Too bad it’s only a dream,” she said.
Ellis wrapped an arm around her, and to her surprise, she welcomed it.
“Just you wait,” he said. “Someday we’ll walk down there.”
by Duncan Shields | Mar 10, 2011 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Anyone or anything that enters the blue beams are sucked up into the ships and never seen or heard from again.
The ships populated the sky in one rush of deceleration all around the world. The night side of the planet suddenly gained more stars and the day side of the planet a bunch of tiny suns. Nine hundred and thirty-six of them, visible to the naked eye even after their engines had stopped firing. Dots in the sky in a geometric formation hanging a measured distance apart from each other.
The ships did nothing for weeks. The tension drove people mad. The military went to a state of readiness, sweating fingertips hovering over red buttons in sub-basements. Religious zealots called it the Rapture, spiritualists called it the Age of Aquarius, and others just kept an eye to the sky in fear.
The economy took a major hit as most people cashed in their RRSPs and withdrew their savings. Shy people finally asked that person they’d been crushing on for years out for dinner. Employees who’d been silently disgruntled for years quit their jobs. The end of days felt like it was right around the corner.
Just when the Earth had settled into a hesitant acceptance of the dots in the sky, blue beams of light from each ship stabbed down to earth.
The result was instantaneous. Nuclear missiles fired up at the alien ships from the expected countries. The missiles didn’t even explode. They were quietly stopped, disarmed, turned inert, and left to fall back to Earth. That didn’t stop us from firing every single missile we had at them. It was like some sort of death orgasm and we didn’t stop until we were spent.
We would have done ourselves more damage than them if they’d actually exploded.
The blue beams stayed on. Some of them are pointed at the ocean. Some are in remote areas of the planet where hardly anyone lives. Some of them are in metropolitan cities. They are all exactly 204.8 kilometers from each other.
It’s popular to go into the beams and ascend. Some believe it’s a portal to heaven. Some believe that it leads to a gateway to the rest of the universe. Some believe it’s death.
People have tried going up with video cameras and audio equipment but it all stops working the minute they leave the ground. Scientists are still trying to figure out how the beams work.
There are guards and fences around the perimeters of the beams in the major cities but out in the countryside they are left alone, silent blue ladders to alien mysteries. Pillars that glimmer in the daytime and seem to stab up from the earth like a searchlight during the night.
Some lovers have gone in hand in hand. Some notable celebrities have even made the trip. It’s become a tradition in some countries to throw letters to dead ancestors into the streams. Some countries have decided to start using the beams to help with their garbage problem.
They never shut off and the ships remain mute. It’s been seventeen years now. There are teenagers alive now who have never known a world without the beams.
Myself, I come down here to the park and stare at my city’s beam on the weekend. I feed the pigeons and stare at the column of light.
