by submission | Feb 17, 2010 | Story
Author : Q. B. Fox
The members of Juliet Patrol, 29 Group, Royal Engineers hunkered down in a squat two-story, stone building balanced on the hillside. Lt. Harry Banford watched through the unglazed window as a UN superiority denial aircraft painted a con-trail far, far overhead.
At the sound of a distance whine, Banford dropped back into cover, barely ahead of the muffled, distant whump that shook plaster from the ceiling and blew in dirt through the empty casements.
After a moment’s silence, and not for the first time that day, the soldiers of Juliet Patrol relaxed their braced shoulders, then blinked and coughed in the bright, moted sunbeams.
Private Darren Hastey, first time in theatre and green as a cabbage, uncurled on the floor and cringed under head-shaking gaze of his fellows. “I wish they wouldn’t do that,” he grumbled.
“Don’t be an idiot, Hastey,” spat Sgt. “Handy Andy” Andrews. “If our planes stop knocking out their bomber drones then this whole hillside will be flatter than your girlfriend’s chest and faster than it takes you to disappoint her. Am I clear, private?”
“Yes, sir,” Hastey sang back, as brightly as he could muster, then immediately winced at his mistake.
“And don’t call me ‘sir’, you idiot,” Andrews growled, “I work for a living.” He paused and then, turning to Banford, he apologised “No offense, sir,”
“None taken, Sergeant,” the Lieutenant smiled.
Then everything was quiet, except for occasional distant small arms fire and the clicks of Lt. Banford’s keypad as he rechecked the mission details.
“Why here, do you suppose, sir?” Sgt. Andrews asked unexpectedly.
“Erm, well,” Banford, considering the details on the screen in front of him, “this hillside obviously faces the target, and these buildings provide…”
“No, sir,” Andrews interrupted, “why do they all come to fight over Jerusalem.”
“Ah, yes, I see what you mean.” his officer reconsidered. “The Jews and the Romans, the Romans and the Persians, the Crusades, the Ottomans, the British, the Israelis and Palestinians….”
“And now the aliens,” Andrews concluded grimly. “Even they think it’s special to their religion.”
“And now the xenomorphs,” Banford corrected. “I don’t know why.”
And then after he’d thought for a moment, “There’s a syndrome named after this place; it’s one of only three geographically located syndromes; Jerusalem, Florence and Paris.”
“What about Stockholm syndrome, sir?” Hastey interrupted.
“Be quiet, you idiot,” his sergeant snapped, “An educated man is talking.”
“Yes, si.. Sergeant,” Hastey responded meekly.
“But Jerusalem syndrome is unique even among these unusual conditions,” the young officer continued as if he’d not been interrupted, “Some people who come here just become obsessed, become unhinged; believers and unbelievers alike get a glimpse of God.”
“I heard that reality is thinner here,” Hastey said nervously into the pause, “that we really are closer to…”
But before he could finish, or Andrews could rebuke him, Private Collins, pushing his headset further into his ear with two fingers, spoke clearly and precisely over the top of them. “Sir, we are go; repeat: we are go.”
Juliet Patrol sprang to their feet and raced down the stairs. With practiced professionalism they deployed the array, and after a moment to check the alignment, Banford squeezed the firing trigger. A hoop of air shimmered, as molecules rammed into each other, delivering a near invisible punch to the target; on the ridgeline across the valley the xenomorph transmitter disintegrated.
Like all snipers, they should have redeployed after firing, but nobody moved. They just stared. Very slowly, like wallpaper peeling off damp plaster, the sky, just where their target had been, was tearing open.
by Duncan Shields | Feb 16, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
It’s a reasoning process. There are seconds left. The cold leather of the chair is warming up beneath my manacled wrists. The restraints are tight on my arms. I’m wide awake and dreaming.
I can’t decide if it’s a syringe or a snake that they’re drawing back out of my arm. I can feel the pitter patter of little feet running through my veins, getting progressively softer as they hit the smaller tributaries. My body is a giant vibrating footstep tied to a chair.
Laboratory nine. People don’t come back from this lab. I have opinions. This is where they put people with opinions. You should hear the way the sergeants pronounce that word. It’s right up there with communism, hippie, and free will. Venom drips from their lips.
It’s dark in the tiled room except for the light over my chair. My muscles vibrate faster and faster until they hit a state of constant striation. Being cognizant, I realize that this must be what a seizure is. I’ve never had one before but I saw a friend have an epileptic fit when I was a child.
We were playing in a field. It was a hot day. This was before the occupation, of course, before the clicking mandibles hissing out a whisper that was the closest they could come to English. The messages from the sky. The examples. Prague, Toronto and for some reason Adelaide made into legend as a warning shot. I remember the hissing language from aliens. They looked like a cross between spiders and crucifixes.
I remember they lit up the atmosphere of the Earth to prove their power, to scare the primitives. The ozone layer had flashed like a dance club.
Me and my friend David in that summer field had looked up. The strobe light of the entire sky had set my friend to moaning. His joints froze and he fell back like a broken toy. An animal keening had squeezed out of him. It sounded like a kettle reaching a boil.
It wasn’t a good sound. I can hear it echoing around me now in the laboratory and I realize that it’s coming from me.
Soon, I know that if I don’t give in to the suggestions that are coursing through my veins, I’ll die. No one has come back from this room. No one has given in.
It’s almost comforting to know that there are still humans who will fight to the death on these tables, resisting the attempt to shape their allegiance until they’re switched off permanently. I feel honoured to join them.
I can feel the lights within my mind turning out one by one as the chemicals give up coercion and switch to destruction.
I am candles on a birthday cake being blown out.
by submission | Feb 15, 2010 | Story
Author : K. Pittman
Sometime before midday’s full blaze, Susan threw down her skein and stopped walking. Georgia broke pace steps later and trod back, face flattened, hat shadowing her glare.
“What.”
“I want milk. I’m tired of water.” Susan half-turned and looked from whence they’d walked.
“There’s no more milk. Those jackasses pinched our stashed powders before trying to rape and/or rob us, remember? It got ruined in the fight.”
Susan’s hands moved towards where pockets would have been, finding: many canvas belt pouches, some part full, all cinched tight: a sun-warm firearm, holstered, secured: pack ladders and buckles, floating taut on taut webbing – she folded her arms underneath her breasts, drew a deep breath, exhaled deliberately. Dropped her arms and swiveled towards Georgia-
Whose weapon was in her hand, its burnished muzzle trained on her. “Do you want to die?” Georgia’s look was unwavering, and exhausted.
“I…I don’t understand.”
“Exactly.” Georgia took a few steps forward, wrist steady. “Pick up the water.”
“What are you doing?”
“This,” said Georgia, wrapping her free hand onto the gun and centering it onto Susan’s head, “is an object lesson. Your first and your last.”
Susan stepped back into a defensive stance, staring past the gun, into hat’s cast umbra, locking eyes with Georgia. “Stop pointing that gun at me.”
Georgia’s eyes locked back. “Pick up the damned water.” The gun never drooped.
Minutes passed.
Finally, Susan knelt, costive, to the scrub, arms bent out and away, and picked up her skein, gradually attaching it to her belt. She looked down, to secure it fast, and heard Georgia’s heels turning in the sand, her steps away regular and fast. Susan scrambled to catch up, and wordlessly fell into formation two steps behind, two steps to the left, her footfalls in a ragged echo of Georgia’s rhythm.
Georgia spoke out of the side of her mouth. “Next cache is in 12 klicks, near water, and Ray’s old trading outpost. A bullet or two’ll get us new powders. Maybe a short stay. Might be some sort of small civ near, within a days travel maybe. Maybe. You can opt out there if you like.” Susan’s abstruse stare looked past her shoulder. “Fine. When we get there, we’ll hit the flask, and you can bitch me out, but I don’t wanna hear anything until then. I just saved your fucking life.”
“But-”
“You’re my only…my last fucking friend, Susan. I’m not letting you chump out of this one. There’s no fucking safety net. There’s no exit,” and silence and steps and silence and the sun across the sky on a long hot afternoon.
by submission | Feb 14, 2010 | Story
Author : Nick Gonzales
“You heard they finally nailed teleportation?”
“No.”
“Yeah, just yesterday.”
“For real?”
“Fo rizzle.”
I turn to look at Billiam, his eyes lit up expectantly as he leans towards me across the table. His face is twisted into his characteristic grin of childlike excitement. An off-putting grin, but not without some charm. You’d think he had just told me we had finally put another man on the moon.
Today, Billiam’s hair is fluorescent green, with streaks of pink, symmetrically arranged into eight spikes. Mine is the same color, but I did mine in the sink.
“No, I mean, like, for _real_?”
“Of course for real. Teleported a small little mouse all the way from New York to Atlantis,” he beams.
I can actually feel my hopes fall.
“What do you mean ‘of course’?” I sigh. “Atlantis?”
“What? What’s wrong with Atlantis?”
A female white Bengal tiger slowly trots by the table, followed by a small pack of screaming children. The smallest, a girl of probably about four years, dives forward and grabs the rare cat by its tail until it pauses, allowing her to jump astride it in a practiced motion. Kicking her heels into its side wildly, the girl hoots as the cat resumes its walk. A quick check of Wikipedia informs me that the Panthera tigris is an apex predator and obligate carnivore, native to East and South Asia. I don’t believe San Diego is located within either region… but it gets hard to tell sometimes.
The sky darkens momentarily as a dragon flies overhead. Or maybe it was a plane.
“Hey, Robin.” Billiam calls me back to the conversation.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said what’s wrong with Atlantis?”
“Um, Atlantis isn’t a real place…”
I’m 65% sure that Billiam is a hologram.
Officially, there are no sentient holographic images yet. Officially. But the problem with an obligatory collective conscious web is the lack of filterization. The Resonance is beyond this sort of control. The holos were introduced at least a year ago.
Billiam scoffs and falls back into his grin. “What do you mean not a real place? Didn’t we go there last year for Spring Break?”
“Well, yeah.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Come on, man. We all know Atlantis is no more real than that tiger. The island nation belonging to Poseidon that sunk into the ocean eleven thousand years ago. The Atlantic Ocean, I might add.”
“Quoting Wikipedia again?”
“Paraphrasing. Please.”
“You know, I don’t get you sometimes. So much reliance on the Resonance, and yet you doubt it so.”
My problem is not with the holos. I’ve been to Atlantis, that digital paradise twelve miles off the coast of California, with its attractive native population, perfect weather, and exotic architecture.
But is anyone building anything real anymore? What is the benefit in building something when it can all be programmed into the collective consciousness? Are there any real hairstylists anymore? Actual pet shops?
It is easy to become paranoid, growing up in a society raised on science fiction. But this isn’t the Matrix. The world is still real so far, I was alive before the Resonance was activated.
But I wonder what all of the physical scientists are doing now that computer science has taken over the world? What does it even mean when you teleport a living creature to a place that doesn’t exist?
I have been to Atlantis, I realize with a start. What does that mean?
“You there, Robin?”
I’m 65% sure that Billiam is a hologram.
And what is the benefit in being human in this digital age?
by submission | Feb 13, 2010 | Story
Author : Michael Merriam
“We never had much,” she said. “The freighter was our life. Now it’s all lost, ripped apart by a neutron star.”
I sat next to her. I couldn’t answer. My mind was dazzled, my eyes locked on her naked body stretched out on the bed we shared. She reached out her arms, and I fell into her embrace.
My lips on her neck, I stroked the flat of her stomach, reached beyond with one hand until she pulled me onto and into her body.
I was a silly child. She had over two decades on me, my lovely, melancholy lover.
Later — days or weeks later — we sat on the rocks overlooking the dead lighthouse, long abandoned, nature carving it up.
“Do you think the stars will give back what they have taken, at the end?”
“I don’t know.”
And I didn’t. I still don’t.
She was a beautiful burning demon, all alabaster skin and black hair. She seemed an artist’s creation, unreal, ethereal. In that moment she frightened me.
“I think they will.” She turned, leaned on me. I place an arm around her, held her tightly.
Soft sobs and crashing surf were all.
#
Autumn.
A cool breeze blew off the sea as I watched the crowd gather like ghouls and vultures. The white and red van, its ugly blinking eye atop, sat parked with doors open wide. I didn’t need to go down. I knew.
I didn’t travel to Mars Station to see her casket fired into the sun, as was her right as a navigator. I didn’t want to watch it blaze in the an instant before evaporating or deal with dour strangers and weeping women, black shrouded, staring, whispering, asking questions I wouldn’t answer.
I would remember my lover for her laughter, her sweat-covered skin after sex, her gentleness in all things.
“Do you think the stars will give back what they have taken, at the end?”
“I don’t know.”
I still don’t.
