by Patricia Stewart | Sep 30, 2010 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
It was a significant indiscretion to say the least. To have become emotionally involved in your science project was bad enough, but to have affected its outcome was unforgivable. In fact, it was a breach of conduct worthy of expulsion. Now, Mi’tera was faced with another dilemma, what to do about it.
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It had been an ambitious senior project, recalled Mi’tera; to study this very unusual corporeal life from. They were so different than Etheropeans, she thought, as she gazed at the tiny spaceship that she lovingly cradled. There were more than 400 “beings” living precariously within the little hollow metal vessel. They were so young, so vulnerable. For the last semester she had traveled through space with them as they “explored” the universe. How cute, she had thought. They think that they are so special, so unique. Boldly going wherever they wanted; only to repeatedly stumble into situations that they were not ready to handle. At first, Mi’tera only interacted in small ways: containing a plasma leak, strengthening a bulkhead, boosting the power output. Mi’tera considered this acceptable behavior back then, because the humans never suspected an outside influence; “luck favors the fortunate” they had boasted. Even later, when her unethical involvement became more emboldened, the naïve humans attributed the “miracles” to their crafty chief engineer. Even the fortuitous outcomes of her most egregious interventions were credited to the ingenuity of their dashing young captain. They never suspected they had a guardian watching over them.
However, Mi’tera knew that what she was doing was very wrong. She knew that she had to let nature take its course. Non-interference was a requirement for school projects involving observational science. But she couldn’t help herself. The humans were like helpless paidia, and her instincts were to protect them. As her charge left orbit after completing another successful mission, she could sense the humans moving within their tiny self-contained micro-environment. And when she concentrated, she could even read their thoughts, know their dreams, and feel their passion. Even now, they were totally unaware that she was deflecting an intense gamma ray burst that would have destroyed their frail molecular structures. Dammit, she vowed to herself, this will be the last time that she’d interfere on their behalf. After this one last time, she swore, they’ll be on your own. As they streaked together through space, she continued to hug the ship, occasionally vaporizing a rogue asteroid if it drifted too close to their flight path.
by submission | Sep 29, 2010 | Story
Author : Thomas Desrochers
A distress beacon blinked softly in the night, the quiet red light weakly calling out “help me, help me.”
Around it pale white snow swirled through the air, gently eddying around the dark shape of the crashed cargo hauler, lazily working to cover it up. Nearby the downed craft the snow had nearly covered up a smaller shape, a body. As the burial neared completion the wind nudged something out of the sprawled lump’s hand.
It was a holographic projector, and the short fall had awoken it.
The ghostly image of a man sprang to life, tinged blue by the old machine. His features were kind, and his build was average. One of his hands was clumped over a bloody wound on his stomach.
“Annie,” he coughed. “I’m sorry I haven’t made it – won’t make it back. I know I told you that I would be safe, and that I would come home to you alright.” He paused as more wet coughing racked his body. “There was a storm coming, and I didn’t want to get caught in orbit for the next cycle, because I had something I wanted to ask you.”
The man paused, swaying, then fell to his knees. His face would have been bone white if not for the ever-present blue tinge. “Annie, I -” he paused to cough several times “-I wanted to know if you would marry me. You make me the happiest man around right now, and to call you my wife would be the best thing since the day I met you.”
He smiled ruefully as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
“I guess the old adage is true. Curiosity killed the spacer. Now I’ll never know for sure.” He swayed jerkily for a moment. “I’m getting tired now. I’m sorry, love. I really am. I love you so, so much. You made me so… So happy.”
After a moment more the man fell forward, softly crunching into the snow. He lay there beside himself a few moments more, then flickered and died.
The night was quiet again, and the snow soon swallowed the body.
The distress beacon blinked softly in the alien night. “Goodbye,” it said. “Goodbye, goodbye.”
by submission | Sep 28, 2010 | Story
Author : Glenn Blakeslee
After The Fall Carlos was at loose ends and alone, so he hot-wired Daniel’s old Chevy, siphoned gas from abandoned cars and drove north. He hadn’t seen Daniel for a while and was sure he was dead. He saw people from the freeway but didn’t stop.
He drove the pass and the long incline to the high desert. There were cars along the way, some with dead people still in their seats and some not, and he took gas where he found it. The country was sere and without life but he found the way without trouble, remembering fishing trips with Papa long ago.
The country gradually changed and the air became cooler as the road ran alongside the mountains still with snow, the manzanita giving way to fir and bristlecone pine. He stopped at isolated gas stations and finding them abandoned helped himself to food still on the shelves. Once he found a store full of jerky and he took it without guilt. Further north there were no people, none at all.
Daniel’s Chevy stopped running as late shadows from granite peaks fell across the valley. Carlos looked under the hood, found dark oil running along the motor, dripping to the ground. He didn’t know about fixing cars so he took his pack from the seat and Daniel’s gun from under the seat and began walking north.
At dusk Carlos followed a road lined with trees up the slope to the mountains, thinking he’d find water. The road ended where it couldn’t climb higher, blocked by ridges and gullies, and there he found a building, big like a church, built of stone with a high white tower, fronted by a pond choked with weeds. He called but no one answered.
He forced the door like Daniel had shown him. Inside were displays and photographs, stuffed fish covered with dust, old stuff from long ago. In other rooms there were beds, and televisions which no longer worked. Outside he climbed stone steps to a low concrete wall.
Over the wall he found water, and in the water were thousands of fish. The concrete formed a long narrow pool and as he walked the fish followed him, boiling across the surface like a single thing, swimming over one another and submerging. The fish were dark, slick in the dying light, and they followed him.
He found bags of green crumbly pellets in a shed and he carried a handful to the pool, threw it in. The fish jumped for the pellets, flowed and gathered and followed him, and he brought more to the pool until it fell dark. He found a place in the building and slept.
Every day he fed the fish. He moved a bed into the tower and slept there. He’d never liked the taste of fish and forgot how Papa cleaned them so he ate jerky and food from the building. He watched the sun rise over the mountains and fed the fish.
One morning he heard a car. He pulled Daniel’s gun from the pack and climbed down from the tower. A man and a boy stood next to the pool, watching the fish. The man said hello. He was big with blonde hair falling to his shoulders, the boy a smaller version. They were smiling, happy to see Carlos.
“Here’s food!” the man said pointing to the fish, but Carlos knew the fish were his and he shook his head his hand on the gun at his back. The man reached into the pool the fish swarming to his hand and he pulled out a fish and swung it at the concrete, breaking its head, and so Carlos pulled out the gun and shot him and then the boy. He pulled their bodies to the bushes off the concrete.
Carlos sat on the wall of the pool in the morning sun, away from the slick of blood on the concrete, and he fed his fish.
by Duncan Shields | Sep 27, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
She set up a receiving station in her office. That receiving station was anchored at 3:45 PM, August 22nd, 2018.
As soon as she turned it on, the messages from her future self came pouring in.
Advice on theories, scores from sports games, inside knowledge on upcoming relationships and a thousand other subjects. Apparently, the future her had no respect for causality.
Reality shattered.
She set up more message depots ten weeks apart and gave them addresses.
She answered questions. She’d forward questions back to the proper message depots and an earlier self would try to find out answers and forward them back to the future.
She employed people. Her earlier selves employed people.
Every message station became a corporation. Every ten days, she set another message depot up. Her corporation would get to a deserted part of the world, set up a beacon, and turn it on. As soon as they turned it on, a building would materialize around it with an employee base that had always been there.
After August 22nd, 2018 at 3:45 PM, there were no more mysteries. Reality became as malleable as smoke in the air.
The thing that’s hard to imagine is that whenever reality changes, no one notices. It simply becomes the way it’s always been. The theory is that that we are shuffling through realities like an infinite deck of cards. We can’t tell. She either ended the universe or created the multiverse.
The only way to live here is to live here, they say. I tried making some bets on upcoming games but they never pan out. Something changes, I guess, and the score changes, so that’s that. I don’t make a fortune and then lose a fortune; I just never had a fortune. If you see what I mean.
I have to accept that what is real right now is all I’ve ever known.
I wonder if one day, someone will send a message back and successfully set the wheels in motion to assassinate her and put this world back into a place where her discovery never existed. I wonder if that’s even possible.
Not that I’d notice if it happened. This world would cease and I’d be in a world where her invention never existed. I’d never know the difference.
by submission | Sep 26, 2010 | Story
Author : T. King
His eyes fluttered open. The hatch hissed as he pushed against it and steam began to swirl around the cold metal floor. Other than a huge kink in his neck and some joint stiffness, he was feeling fine. Evans had been sleeping for a long time. Now he got to see if the experts back home had done their calculations right.
“Computer, what is our current position?”
“Hello, Mr. Evans, I hope you slept well. We will be beyond the Oort Cloud in approximately 15 minutes.”
So, they had really done it. Evans was about to be the first person to see beyond the Solar System. This mission had taken years of planning, but it all was going to pay off.
“Computer, contact base.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mr. Evans.”
“And why not?”
The computer was silent. Evans slammed his palm on the control panel.
“Why the hell not? What’s going on?”
“Perhaps I should play for you the last incoming signal from base.”
The voice of his boss filled the room. There was plenty of static (not surprising, considering how far away Evans was at this point), but Evans could just make out what his boss said.
“Evans, look. I’m really sorry to tell you this–I mean, if I’d have known, we wouldn’t have sent you obviously–but I’ve got some bad news. Right after you settled down to hibernate or whatever, things back here at home got pretty screwed up. I mean, I don’t have a lot of time to go over the details–I suppose it doesn’t really matter why, in the end–but there was a huge nuclear arms standoff. Everybody had their trigger fingers twitching at the ready and some idiot fired off their missiles, which meant we all had to, you know? Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to tell you in what little time I have left is that this will be your last message from any of us, unless by some miracle Earth isn’t a barren hellhole when this is all over. Complete your mission, Evans. That’s all you can do.”
Evans’ mouth hung open in shock. As he looked out past the edges of the Solar System to the billions of stars that lay beyond, he didn’t feel a sense of awe or wonder.
He felt alone.
