by submission | Jan 8, 2010 | Story
Author : Richard “Zig” Zagorski
Harmonia, in low orbit, drifted over the red planet just as she had done for over a year now. Her electronic ears constantly straining to hear the voices of her children down below. It had been too long since she had heard from some of them.
“No mother should outlive her children,” she thought to herself.
Three years ago, Harmonia left Earth atop a blazing rocket. For two years, she traveled through space toward Mars. The entire time protecting her precious cargo: Harmonia’s nine daughters. Nine rovers meant to land on the red planet, each named for one of the Muses. She kept all of them safe from the vacuum of space – from cosmic rays and the extremes of temperature. The probes slept peacefully the entire voyage, only beginning to awaken after Harmonia settled into her orbit.
Once in orbit, Harmonia checked each probe to make sure they were ready; then she seeded the red planet with her precious children.
From the start, it was emotional. Letting her children leave her embrace … the sadness was intense. It intensified further when no signal ever came from Melpomene. Her keepers back on Earth were of the opinion that the poor rover’s chutes never opened.
The rest of her children made their landings successfully and shortly were sending back data. Harmonia knew great pride in the work her children would do over the following months. However, with that pride there came a growing sadness as, one by one, her children went silent.
A few months after landing, Clio had a problem with her solar array and slowly went quieter and quieter as the strength of her signal diminished.
Next was Polyhymnia. She’d gotten too close to the edge of a crater and went over as the precipice crumbled beneath her treads. After tumbling down no word was ever heard from her again.
Terpsichore, being untrue to her namesake, the muse of dance, managed to get stuck while moving between two rocks. The rocks blocked any direct sunlight from falling upon her solar panels. She also slowly went silent.
Erato got trapped in a sandpit and was gradually buried, never to be heard from again.
Poor, dear Calliope managed to snag one tread and for the past few months had gone in circles crying for help. Help that Harmonia couldn’t provide her with.
Euterpe, since landing, had been silent. She would simply advance three meters forward, then retrace her steps, then begin again. The same three meters … over and over and over endlessly. No acknowledgment of receiving commands. Just back and forth, month after month.
Thalia was a great success scientifically, finding further evidence of water on the red planet. However, not very long after, she was caught in a sandstorm, which must have covered her solar array. Since then, no word or even carrier signal were heard from her.
Urania, the muse of astronomy, fittingly was the last daughter to still function at peak level. Making her lonely sojourn across the red planet at the commands relayed to her from Earth by Harmonia. Sending back valuable data. For now she lived, but Harmonia knew what was to come. In time, Urania would also die and Harmonia would be left behind. A lonely mother who had watched as her children died one by one.
“No mother should outlive her children,” Harmonia thought to herself …
by submission | Jan 7, 2010 | Story
Author : Daniel Titus
Allan stood alone on the observation deck. He had been there for hours, looking down at the planet below. It was a breathtaking view, the clouds, the sea, the land, but the physical features were ultimately unimportant. What was important were all the people. Millions of them, each with a life of their own that was about to change forever. It was the stuff headaches were made of.
“They’ll be here soon.”
It was finally out in the open. Chuck had a tendency to be blunt like that, but in this case it seemed appropriate. He needed it too. It was the kind of thing you needed someone else to see, and none of the others had the knack for that kind of foresight.
“The real question is how bad it’s going to be,” Allan said. He shook his head. “We thought The Crisis was the last we’d see of this stuff, but now… war. I never thought I’d live to see it.”
“You’re of course familiar with Alexander Hawthorne?” Chuck asked.
“Yeah,” Allan said. “Probably the most underrated figure in all of history.”
“Then you know about his vision,” Chuck said. “And you know about history. Hawthorne saw the pattern of destruction woven throughout the ages, The Crisis was only part of that. He thought he had the chance to stop it, but the belief that civilization can break the cycle is ultimately flawed. Spreading out into space just added more variables to the equation, it didn’t solve it, and there will always be unknown elements interacting in ways that even an old A.I. can’t predict.”
“So are you saying he was wrong?”
“Not at all. The fact that he managed to bring about an age of peace and prosperity that lasted over 500 years speaks to that. His greatest success however is that the human race will never go extinct, at least not in any reasonable time frame. That is the main difference. No matter how many people die, civilization will continue unabated, maybe not as we currently know it, but even if all ties are broken between the worlds each will continue independently. That’s what makes Alexander a true visionary though, isn’t it? The man who saved humanity from itself.”
Allan’s morose expression softened a little. “You know Chuck, you seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions about the safety of the human race. How can you possibly have any idea what kind of troubles we’re going to have to face?”
“I’m not saying I have an idea,” Chuck said, sounding a little annoyed. “What I DO know is, that whatever problems there are to be had I will do my best to protect as many people as possible.”
Allan laughed. “Does that make you our guardian angel?” he asked.
The brow of Chuck’s avatar furrowed. “I think it’s obvious which one of us is the guardian here, and you know I don’t speak lightly.”
Allan was now fully smiling. “ I had no idea they programmed you with a romanticism subroutine.” He laughed again.
Chuck’s avatar smiled back at him.“Does anyone know what they programmed me with at this point?”
It was a good question, but at that moment in time, it fell pretty far from the top of the list of important things in Allan’s mind. He was done with his little pity party. The time for reflection had passed, at least for now. Now was the time for action.
They’ll be here soon…
by submission | Jan 6, 2010 | Story
Author : Q. B. Fox
“Ah, Mr. Dolgonosov, welcome to the Vatican,” enthused Father O’Connor.
“Please, call me Boris,” the Russian said in barely accented English, thrusting his long fingered hand deep into the priest’s pudgy grasp.
“Boris it is,” acknowledged O’Connor, beaming. “Can I just say what honour it is to have you come personally to open the new computerised catalogue.”
“Thank you,” said Boris, looking a little nervous.
“They tell me,” his genial host continued, “that we will be able to search everything, from thousand year old manuscripts to the handwritten correspondences of Pope Pius X.”
“Yes, yes,” laughed Boris, relaxing and slipping into the old sales pitch, “if you have the security clearance.” He nudged O’Conner, conspiratorially, with a bony elbow.
“But storing the data is not the clever part, nor optimising the searches. That is old technology; as Newton said: we stand on the shoulders of giants. The genius is collecting the data. The Vatican owns far more material than anyone could ever read, much less input into a computer; some in ancient languages; some of the handwriting is unreadable. Have you ever seen Pius X’s handwriting?” Boris smiled at his own joke.
O’Connor chuckled, “I’ve seen your clever gizmos in the library, but I confess I don’t have the first idea about how they work.”
“Tiny particles,” Boris continued, “are passed through the book, passed through almost parallel to the pages, like this.” Boris wiggled his fingers through the edge of an imaginary book. “We measure the mix of the particles as they emerge, then we change the angle, just a little, and repeat. We do it over and over again, until we are able to build up a picture of every page of the book.”
“It sounds very complicated,” the father confessed.
“It is,” Boris conceded, “but it’s not the whole story. I knew this wouldn’t be enough to catalogue the Vatican Library; so we added the best character recognition software ever built, using thousands of exemplars from across history. Next we added the most comprehensive translation software ever devised. It has cost me most of my personal fortune to combine all these elements.”
“But why give all this to the Vatican, Boris?” O’Connor asked. “You’re not a catholic, are you? Orthodox, maybe?”
“Jewish,” Boris acknowledged, “on my mother’s side.”
“Then why?” the priest pressed him.
“Because my whole life I have been in search of one thing.” Boris looked nervous again, but seeing O’Connor’s confusion he pushed on. “I am a fan of your countryman, Mr. James Joyce. When he was nine, in 1891, he wrote a poem, “Et Tu Healy”. His father was so proud he had the poem printed up and distributed to friends, but all copies were lost. Except perhaps the one he quite inexplicably sent to Pope.
“Since I was a teenager I have wanted to see that poem. I tried to formulate a plan to get into this library. But I soon realised that getting in wouldn’t be enough; I needed a way to search it. I’ve spent my life developing this.” He swept his gangly arm in the direction of the computer terminals they were approaching.
Boris quickly slipped into a seat and typed in the poem’s three word title. The wait of seconds seemed like hours. Then with an audible exhale, Boris stabbed his cursor at the link that suddenly appeared. He stared in silence for several seconds at the transcript, then tabbed across to the image of original; O’Connor leaned over his shoulder to catch a glimpse.
“Oh,” said Boris quietly, a little crestfallen. “It isn’t very good, is it?”
by Patricia Stewart | Jan 5, 2010 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The three scientists stood over a fully clothed skeleton. “I told Jill not to wander off by herself,” said Anthony Caroni, the mission commander. “Damn. What could have done this?”
“I don’t see any animal footprints, and there’s practically no blood,” noted Christopher Saunders, the exogeologist. “Maybe birds carried her here?”
“There aren’t any birds on Orinoco II, just plants, animals, and insects,” stated Sarah Lyman, the mission xenobiologist.
“Up until now,” retorted Saunders, “you didn’t think that there were any carnivores either.”
“Stop arguing,” snapped Caroni. “The colonists will arrive in less than three months. We need to find out what happened. Let’s gather her remains and take them back to the ship.”
***
The geology lab was turned into a makeshift morgue. Caroni and Lyman began to study the remains, but Saunders was heading out the hatch carrying a frozen ham and a phaser pistol. “Look,” he said, “I’m not a pathologist, but I’ve killed a few mountain lions in my time. You guys do what you can here; I’m going to set a trap.”
The Commander started to stop Saunders, but Lyman held up a hand and whispered, “Let him go. He’s too upset to help us here.”
After an hour of studying Jill’s remains, they were no closer to solving the mystery of her death than they were when they first found her body. “I can’t find any damage to her bones,” complained Lyman. “No teeth marks, claw marks, fractures, nothing. It was like Jill fell into a vat of acid. But it can’t be chemical; we found a dozen dead flies in her clothes that weren’t dissolved. Maybe Chris is having better luck. Give him a call.”
“I’m not having any luck either,” reported Saunders. “A couple of animals came by to smell the ham, but they walked off. I’ll be heading back soon. There’s a nasty storm cloud coming in from the east, and I need to get rain gear if I’m going to stay out here much longer.”
“Roger that,” replied Caroni. “You know Sarah,” he added as a thought struck him, “I never saw flies that didn’t lay eggs in a corpse. Maybe her flesh was consumed by maggots?”
“I didn’t see any maggots,” she stated, “but I’m about to examine the flies now.” Holding one of the flies with tweezers, she examined it under a binocular microscope. She was shocked to discover that the mouth contained two rows of tightly packed, serrated, interlocking teeth. The individual teeth appeared markedly triangular, similar to the teeth of a Piranha. “Oh my God,” she screamed. “The flies are carnivorous. Get Chris back, quickly.”
“Crap,” realized Caroni. “Our weather comes from the west, not the east.” Still holding the walkie-talkie, he ran to the hatch. “Chris, return to the ship, now. That dark cloud isn’t a storm; it’s a swarm of killer flies.”
“Repeat,” asked Saunders who couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “Ouch,” he exclaimed a second later as he felt a sting on his forearm. He swatted at an insect, only to discover a rivulet of blood streaming down his arm. He was bitten twice more before he began to run back to the ship.
Caroni watched helplessly as Saunders came into view, only to be engulfed by a black cloud of death. Saunders fell, screaming and writhing. He fired his phaser in vain. Seconds later, he was motionless. Caroni slammed the hatch shut. “Quick, Sarah” he yelled, “shut all the portholes.”
As he turned from the hatch, he heard Sarah’s voice from the lab, “Ouch. Oh, damn.”
by Roi R. Czechvala | Jan 4, 2010 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
The drop from orbit was as uneventful as they ever are, and if they’re not you usually don’t live long enough for it to bother you. Grounding was pretty hard though.
After I gathered my senses I saw that somebody’s leg had snapped off and was lying right in front of me. That’s gonna suck for somebody I thought to myself, then I noticed the bright green and blue ident tags. It was mine. Shit.
The rear door of the troop boat fell, and I managed to hustle out and form up with as much agility as I could muster. I wondered if I’d get any down time to re-grow it. Yeah right. My attention was diverted when our CO called us to attention.
“Listen up maggots, you are the sorriest bunch of pupae that I have ever seen, but I guess I’m stuck with you.” We beamed with reflected pride. This was the best outfit in the entire division and she knew it. It had been since before I hatched. This was the CO’s way of showing us her respect.
“It isn’t going to be easy. The enemy is well trained, and skilled in all forms of combat. But they are extremely vulnerable. A carapace blast we would hardly feel boils away their bodies in an instant. You have your orders, fall out.”
It was nest to nest combat. Why couldn’t the aliens live underground like normal people. My friend “Stench”, she had a thing for fermented dung, disgusting, was my battle buddy. She was a good three segments longer than I, so I had no fears, no matter what we went up against.
For the most part it was a routine mop up. I lost another foreleg, but nothing major happened until we came upon that one dwelling.
In the more civilized space below the above ground construction, we came across one of the creatures with a brood of it’s young clustered about. Instantly Stench and I laid waste to the young while it yanked at it’s head growth, and hurled unintelligible noise at us. Within seconds they were all dead, little more than bubbling puddles of tasty looking goo. The adult creature, apparently a female, lay in a heap shuddering violently yet silently.
Stench flipped it over and deftly slashed open it’s thorax with her pincer. Her midsection bloomed like a moist red flower. In the centre of the blossom was an incomplete version of the adult form.
My mind ran to my own hatchlings. How would I feel if a thousand or so were brutally murdered?
“Hey,” I asked Stench, “do you really think what we are doing here is right? I mean, what have they ever…,”
“Don’t worry about it buddy,” Stench interrupted, stroking my antennae with hers releasing calming pheromones, “God is on Our side.”
