by submission | Jun 7, 2010 | Story
Author : Richard “Zig” Zagorski
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
Another hour had passed … one of how many Gerald could no longer tell. He’d lost count long ago, or at least he thought it was long ago; time was meaningless here. Each hour melted into the next, and a human can only count so high. He wasn’t even sure if he slept at all or if he was constantly aware of the marking of each hour’s passage.
In the pre-voyage information session, all of the passengers making the long trip to the new colony were briefed on how the slumber pods functioned. Each person would climb into his or her assigned pod, which would then be sealed. A sleeping gas would permeate the enclosure. After the inhabitant was asleep, the pod would fill with viscous stasis fluid, which would be refreshed every hour. The passengers would spend the 200-year voyage asleep and unaware of the passage of time, to be revived once the ship arrived in orbit around the second planet of the Morgan system. Their new home.
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
One more hour had passed.
For whatever reason, Gerald was not asleep and unaware in stasis – not completely anyway. The only sense that functioned was his hearing. He felt nothing against his skin, he saw nothing …he wasn’t even sure if his eyes were open. And with his nasal passages filled with stasis fluid, he smelled nothing at all. But he could hear the slushing of the stasis fluid being refreshed periodically, as it would do each passing hour of the 200-year voyage.
How many hours, how many days had passed … there was no way to know.
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
Another hour …
Were any of the other colonists awake and aware? Or was he the only one?
Why was he awake? He’d never heard any reports of malfunctioning stasis pods.
It was horrifying.
Time just stretched great distances, both forward and back.
With the lack of external stimuli, his mind had drifted into fantasy … every fantasy life he’d ever thought up, he re-created. When he ran out of material for that, he relived his entire life in his mind … and relived it again … and again … and again …
Now he had nothing to focus his mind upon. Just noting the passing of each hour, but unsure how many still lie ahead of him.
Once the ship got to the new colony, who would he be? Would any of himself still exist after two centuries of complete solitude and sensory deprivation? Would he be sane? Would he be able to recognize the difference? Would he care?
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
Another hour …
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
Another …
Sloosh, slosh … Sloosh, slosh …
——————–
by submission | Jun 6, 2010 | Story
Author : Charity Bradford
Time moved toward a decision that would affect millions of lives. They needed more information and there was only one way to gather it. Someone must be chosen to be their eyes and ears. A human counterpart would process the emotions. Then the decision.
They watched the earth as a whole for a thousand years, and then focused on individual lives for another hundred. The chosen one waited patiently as his leaders decided on a human female. After watching the female for weeks, they recognized the signs of her pain even though they did not comprehend the sensation or meaning of it. She packed her bags and started to drive. She was utterly alone…and perfect.
A deer in the headlights, swerving, rolling, hanging upside down with tears running down her cheeks, and a melancholy love ballad crackling on the radio. This is how they met her in the flesh. Humans were so fragile. They cut. They made improvements, implanted the sensor relay connecting her to the chosen one, wiped her memory and returned her to the earth. A new start. A last chance to understand. When she woke in the hospital, she remembered nothing, not even her name, and they began to watch through her eyes.
Everyone watched the visual and audio feed, but only the chosen one received all the sensory data. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. For the first time in his twenty three hundred years he felt something. The cold metallic edge of fear and a blanket of gray wretchedness began to cover him as it slid through the relay. He tried to shrug off the heaviness, but it only settled lower into his chest. The darkness formed itself into a ball and slipped between his clenched lips. The sound of sorrow shattered the silence of millennia. All eyes turned toward him with the same question swimming in their fathomless depths. How?
Thin fingers wrapped around an elongated neck, probing for understanding. Vocal chords unused for generations awakened at the first stirrings of emotion. One small moan and they throbbed with new pain, delighted to be needed again.
“I did not think, or take action to cause the sound. It happened in response to” there were no words in their vocabulary to describe the sensations, “what I feel.”
The relay works, but vocalization is unexpected. Keele, the expedition leader continued to study the chosen one.
The emotions are strong, heavy. I do not understand how humans can function with them. Even his mind voice quivered as the emotions continued to fill him.
Ketani, you are the chosen one. You will endure and you will decide the fate of this planet. We will enclose you for protection. Keele waved to those standing around, and Ketani felt himself being helped into a stasis room. The stark room curved around him like a womb, undulating in random patterns to sooth and comfort. The others set him gently on the floor and walked away. He tried to stand and follow them out, but the flood of emotions coming from the female weighed him down.
Please, I can not do this alone! Don’t leave me alone.
The door closed. In light of his own solitude, he began to understand the source of the female’s fear and anxiety. Once more his vocal chords vibrated with the sound of emotions too physically powerful to hold inside a thought.
by submission | Jun 5, 2010 | Story
Author : Colin Edley
Nobody likes the guy who told you so being right, especially when the three day bender you went on after the girl he said was no good meant you couldn’t drag yourself out of bed except to phone him up and ask him to cover your shift.
So here I am on the graveyard shift while the rest of humanity patted each other on the back for the same kind of stupidity that nearly saw me without a job, well happy new year one and all.
Shame we’ll never see another, it started somewhere in the south pacific. I suppose it was as good a place as any, that and its the biggest body of water on the planet. We wouldn’t have spotted it so soon if the satellites hadn’t been watching the Caroline Islands being the first place to pass into the new decade.
There have been black tides before and oil slicks, but this one was circular and reflected nothing, not even the stars or the full moon directly above it. Boats and planes went first and then Hawaii, soon the circle was getting ready to shake hands with both seaboards of the pacific. Those hands met again at GMT on the equator thirty hours later right underneath where I’m sat. The guys on luna reckon it has to be almost totally entropic, once its been there is no hot, cold, high or low just a black stain spread over the billiard ball smoothness left in its wake.
How it got to Earth I don’t know, what made it I don’t know that either, one thing I do know is that they must have been a lot like me.
The only reason anybody makes something that destroys everything it touches is if they had already got something they couldn’t get rid of any other way.
Its just about eaten through the base of the tether, so luna this skyhook is about to become a spaceship until it eats that too…
At least I can take something with me, whatever made this thing made one more mistake than I did, one they messed up bad enough in the first place they had to make it to mop up after them, two they let it get out afterwards.
by Patricia Stewart | Jun 4, 2010 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Faced with almost certain defeat, Earth Command committed 70% of its deep space fleet to a last ditch effort to conquer the Arcturian homeworld. But the Arcturians were well prepared, and Earth’s future was looking bleak as the defenders were ripping apart the attacking forces.
***
The bridge of the Starship Saratoga shook violently as an enemy torpedo plowed into its starboard bulkhead. “We’ve lost shields and weapons,” reported the tactical officer.
Reluctantly, the captain was forced to retreat, at least temporarily. “Helm, take us to the other side of the sun.” The Saratoga left formation and streaked away from the battle. And the Arcturians let her go, for now. They’d mop up the scattered remnants of Earth’s fleet when it was convenient. The captain opened the intercom, “Engineering, how long before the weapons are up? The Admiral needs every gun we can give him.”
“Sorry, Captain,” replied the chief engineer, “but he won’t be getting any of our guns. The reactor’s containment field is failing, and I cannot repair it. We only have a few minutes before the warp core explodes. We can save the crew if I jettison the core, or we can take our chances in the escape pods.”
“Based on what I’ve seen of the battle so far, Chief, I don’t think anyone will be around to rescue us, and the Arcturians don’t take prisoners.” The captain racked his brain for options, even bad ones. “Listen, Chief, I have a crazy idea. Do we still have warp drive?”
“Eye, sir, but you’re not going to get very far in 90 seconds.”
“We only need to get as far as the sun. I was thinking about creating a Corbett Prominence.”
“A Corbett Prominence? Ahhh,” replied the Chief Engineer as he realized what the captain was proposing. “Planning to go out with a flare, eh? Well, I like it. But, sir, the Corbett Prominence Theory is just that, a theory. Scientists have never been able to generate one.”
“Well, Chief, they’ve never tried to do it with a Galaxy Class Starship. Helm, put the sun directly between us and the Arcturian homeworld.” The captain rose from his command chair as the Saratoga made a gentle arc to align itself with the sun. “Gentlemen,” he said, “Let’s see if we can cook some Arcturian butt. Maximum warp, Lieutenant.”
The Saratoga leapt into warp drive. The engines became deafening trumpet blasts as the ship’s velocity raced upward. The Saratoga entered the Chromosphere at warp 7.5, and was accelerating past warp 9 when it entered the photosphere. Seconds later, it vaporized, just as it was entering the sun’s core. However, the warp bubble maintained its integrity for a few additional seconds as it burst out the far side of the sun. In the wake of the collapsing bubble, an enormous solar prominence erupted from the surface, its arc extending millions of miles into space. Then, the super prominence snapped, releasing a quintillion tons of plasma in a conical plum headed toward the Arcturian homeworld at nearly the speed of light.
Ten minutes later, the coronal mass ejection impacted the planet, bathing the sunlit side with a lethal dose of ultrahard radiation that instantly exterminated every living thing it its path. Although the Arcturians on the night side of the planet escaped the onslaught of radiation, they helplessly clutched their throats as the fiery plasma blasted their atmosphere into space.
by submission | Jun 3, 2010 | Story
Author : Q. B. Fox
The music for News Night faded from the surround-sound speakers. Robert waggled an outstretched finger towards the sensor on the TV and, on the second attempt, dragged the window containing the security camera feed to one side.
“Tonight,” the interviewer intoned, “we are speaking to the controversial Home Office Minister, John Simmons about recent legislation…”
Robert let his mind wander, watching the three figures, hoodies obscuring their faces, who stood in view of the camera that overlooked the front gate.
“But Mr. Simmons,” the interviewer sneered, “the Prisoners’ Rights Group is up in arms about this.”
“This is not about prisoners, is it?” countered the Minister. “The very name of the organisation shows that they are out of touch, both with our policy and public opinion.”
Robert was distracted again: one of the men at the front gate pointed directly into the camera, then at the control panel for the gate; he was saying something to his companions, but the security system did not carry audio.
Robert turned his attention back to the Minister.
“There is no longer room in our country’s prisons to hold every person convicted of a crime. Nor do the police have time to protect every scumbag, mugger or rapist…”
“Please, Minister, can we restrain the emotive language,” the interviewer interjected.
“This is an old solution to an old problem.” the Minister stated, calming himself. “Placing repeat criminals outside the protection of the law allows the public to protect themselves, the police to do their job and the treasury to save taxpayers’ money.”
“And they can no longer claim benefits or access health care?” the interviewer queried.
“Did you know that 80% of attacks on nurses are carried out by known offenders?” The Minister thumped his fist on the desk for emphasis.
Robert looked around the room, at the top of the range 110” television, at the Rembrandt sketch in the gold leaf frame and at the latest auto-barista. Then he looked back at the camera feed: one of the men was stabbing a finger at the screen of his mobile. Did he imagine that another, half in shadow, was cocking a gun?
On the TV, the interview continued.
“A citizen’s status is visible on any console,” the Minister justified. “There is no reason innocent people should become involved.”
Unconsciously Robert checked his own status in the bottom left of the display.
“Still green and clean,” he mumbled to himself.
“And how do you respond to accusations that this is a criminals’ charter;” the interviewer asked, “that it allows career criminals to target those already convicted without any fear of reprisal.”
“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” the Minister said emphatically. “Would you rather they targeted law abiding citizens?”
Outside, Robert noted, a man was now hunched over the gate’s control console, hands moving in quick, precise motions.
On the TV the interviewer was now holding up a copy of the Times, showing today’s headline: “CRIME BOSS CALLAGHAN TO BE SENTENCED”. Even though he’d been waiting for this, Robert was no longer listening; in the bottom left hand corner of the screen his status had changed from green to red.
Then the power cut, the TV was silent and everything was illuminated by the soft, red glow of the emergency lights.
Robert Callaghan stood, lifted the pump action shotgun from the table and cocked it.
But the whole time he stared at the now-blank screen, stared at where a single yellow word had been, block capitals on the red background of his status box. That word had been OUTLAW.
