by Duncan Shields | Jul 7, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Aside from the “more-arms-than-us” thing and the blue colour of their skin, they weren’t as alien as they could have been. They didn’t look like insects or floating blobs, for instance.
At first contact, we all conceitedly thought it just chance that they looked somewhat human. I mean, we’re great, right? Why shouldn’t our form be on other planets as well? Sheer self-centered assumption.
The aliens were bred in tanks in giant arkships.
Remember the hype over the last fifteen years or so about rednecks being kidnapped by aliens and experimented on? All those anal probes and skin samples and implants and all that?
Well, it all happened. It was all true.
The aliens went from planet to planet and kidnapped intelligent life. They studied the inhabitants, bred their own genes into dominant splices and grew the results to maturity.
All of these blue-skinned creatures with black eyes, wide mouths and too many arms were grown from a half-human base.
The aliens’ “true” shape on their homeworld was like a cross between a centipede and an octopus and they were used to an atmosphere that would corrode a human in seconds. They needed our genes to survive here.
And to be ‘compatible’ with us.
Half a million aliens were put down in each capital city. They knew English, Mandarin, and were fluent in the language of the city into which they were dropped. They had food and clothing to last them six months.
Males and Females. There was an exactly equal number of each sex. For a full week, nothing happened. There was an uneasy peace.
But humans are humans. There were attacks on the aliens. A worldwide panic started to build. It looked like a mass genocide was about to take place but immediately, their leader talked to us. I say ‘talked’ but it was more of a telepathic shout that brought every human to a quivering standstill.
The leader of the aliens made us an offer that we couldn’t refuse: let them breed with us and become part of our society or face certain extinction.
He made an example of Paris.
We took the offer.
That was over a decade ago.
There are nearly a billion children now with eyes that have no whites. Their skin has a bluish cast and they have smaller sets of arms poking out at random around their ribcage.
They are polite. They study. They word hard. They are creative.
Their race has shared their knowledge with us.
The entire planet is now on a schedule of the aliens’ devising. We are overcrowded but we’ve been assured that we will be a space-faring race within the decade. This is a plan that has worked hundreds of times before, they say.
There is an even split between us who are repulsed by what they see as invaders and people that have welcomed them and volunteered for marriage and babies.
Religion is taking a beating and a lot of politicians seem to be pretty depressed. The aliens have let us keep our elections and our money-based economy but there’s a general feeling on Earth that we’re children eating at the adult’s table.
Children that have been allowed to keep their toys so that they’ll be quiet.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 6, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Tucker went through the drills with the rest of the squad in a state of meditative indifference. It took focused effort to keep his mech and chem systems in check while still performing well enough to earn one of the dozen seats on the Mars shuttle. These freelance lifts were rare, and he couldn’t miss this opportunity.
What little attention he could spare he directed to monitoring the other’s level of performance. He deliberately maintained a slightly-better-than-middle spot in the ten kilometer run and obstacle course. He kept that position as they commando-crawled five hundred meters through a muddy creek bed while a machine-gunner fired a steady stream of live rounds over their heads, the gun’s belt drive screaming above the clatter of shell casings piling up at her feet.
Several of the men curled up fetal under fire, disqualifying themselves involuntarily, and Tucker downgraded his speed accordingly.
It wouldn’t take a genius to recognize his Special Ops rigging if he slipped here, and that would bring a rapid and painful end to Tucker’s unauthorized excursion.
Pulling himself out of the muck, Tucker loped the last hundred meters downhill to the gun range, joining the dozen or so already there. Several sported bloody stripes across their backs where they’d been grazed by the gunfire.
Tucker wiped the mud from his hands on the back of his pants, before unracking and loading an M4 Carbine and stepping into an empty slot on the range. There were only two perfect shoots ahead of him that he could see, and he squeezed off an evenly spaced volley of shells at his target, carefully distributing them across the red of the bulls-eye, and deliberately putting one just outside the bull, kissing the colour.
Making safe the weapon, he re-racked it and followed the others along a short trail and into another clearing. Here a handful of uniformed men stood reading incoming performance data on hand held pads while they waited for the stragglers to filter in.
“Sten, Rourke, Burke and Trillo, you’re in Red Quad. Clean up, suit up and be on the apron at sixteen hundred.” The shortest of the uniformed men barked the orders.
“Abrahms, Booker, Suez and Styne, Blue Quad. Clean and suited, on the apron. Sixteen hundred.”
“Jope, Minerez, Minsk and Parker, Green Quad. Clean, suited, sixteen hundred.
For a moment Tucker felt panic well up, and nearly lost his grip. Parker had finished behind him in all the exercises, but must have impressed on the range. As Parker elbowed his way through the crowd, Tucker sidled up and, unnoticed, drove two rigid fingers into the base of his spine as he passed. The movement was so swift and the contact so brief that the man barely noticed. It wasn’t until he’d taken another dozen steps through the crowd that his legs folded up neatly beneath him, and he dropped silently to the dirt.
There was quick discussion amongst the uniforms as a medic made his way through the confused crowd to the fallen man.
“Tucker, take Parkers place in Green, looks like this is your lucky day.”
Tucker knew that it was Parker who’d gotten the lucky break. He still had to kill the rest of them once they cleared orbit and that was unlikely to be as painless.
The thought of imminent violence brought the chem bubbling to the surface, and he pushed it back down. Not here, not now. He’d stay near comatose through liftoff, but before the zero hour there’d be no reason left to hide, and they’d have nowhere to run.
by submission | Jul 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Todd Hammrich
I never thought I’d live to see The End. In fact, the way I figured it, no one should see The End, I mean, that’s why it’s called The End, there is nothing after that, and certainly no one to see it. And yet, here I was. Floating gently in the shuttle. Watching the Earth float by in the view port. And I had seen it happen.
Being an astronaut was every young boys dream, and I had always been a dreamer. I trained and worked my way through courses, evaluations and simulators until my dream came true. There was much to do in space. There was quite a bit of it and we were trained to take it all.
My first mission was to help in construction of a small research station and I’ll never forget the excitement I felt at the prospect of being launched into space. The day of the launch passed like a dream. The final checkup with the doctors, the meeting with the mission director and the small medicine bottle given to me before take-off, all of it was a blur. The pill was standard procedure in case of malfunction or serious accident and every astronaut gladly accepted the small dose of reality for a bit of their dream. After four days in space I returned successful and my career was off.
As World War III broke out my missions became even more critical. Whoever could conquer space would win the day, as the War for Earth would effectively end. On my third war mission, a communications satellite repair, I witnessed it. The End. It happened without warning. I was in the shuttle while my partners worked on the satellite when the missile struck. I don’t know whether they knew we were there, or if they even cared, but the satellite was destroyed. The shuttle drifted away, atmospheric containment lost in several areas. Luckily the command area was sealed off and pressure contained. I was still alive.
Out the view port I watched it unfold like a horror story or nightmare. My dream had saved me, but the non-dreamers below were doomed. Streaks of fire filled the globe from horizon to horizon. Missiles streaked from every country in the world. One by one the cities darkened until there was no light left.
I had enough air to see it all. No one answered the radio. Maybe no one was left. I saw the world die. I saw The End. There was no more lights on that large barren rock below. It didn’t matter anymore though. I smiled as I watched the world. An empty pill bottle floated gently beside me. Maybe it hadn’t been The End, either way, mine was coming soon.
In the beginning God said Let There Be Light. We came forth unto the world and were not satisfied. We looked outward to space and we tried to take it. Man was not satisfied with what he was given and Man said Let There Be Darkness and we were no more.
The End.
by submission | Jul 4, 2009 | Story
Author : Lillian Cohen-Moore
I died for this country. Then..
…I came back.
Mock me all you want. Say, no, what I mean to say is, “I would have died for this country.”
Or, “I nearly died for this country.”
You weren’t there, were you? With the grit in your eyes and the suns streaming down on you. The sand eating away at the tanks. Filling our uniforms with dirt. You didn’t see how empty the deserts seemed, except for the automata of war. You weren’t there when the night talked to us.
It took Jack first, out into the ravine of water we couldn’t drink, and left him lifeless.
It devoured Trina’s screams as much as it devoured her flesh from her mid-section, leaving her staring up into nothing after she died. Her last memory embedded in her eyes–vitreous fluid showing us a cloud. Something. A shape.
Artifacts, they say. Too much adrenaline. Too much fear. Blurring the picture in her eyes. Unusable in court or for investigative purposes. They said it must have been an animal.
It took others. So many others. Till it took me.
It didn’t come again, after it took me.
I came back. I got discharged. Honorable. Combat duty conducted with bravery, they told me. I took stupid risks, because risks don’t mean anything to me anymore. I just needed some way to cover it all up, to get out.
I know the truth. I saw its face, under the moon, under the refracted light of too many suns on a planet that shouldn’t have mattered. I know it’s what is native to that planet. That place.
I think. Maybe fear. That it’s what I’m becoming.
I felt my blood gurgle out into the sand dunes, as it kissed my wounds, sticky sweet, hot and cold, steaming, saliva-and-blood. Flesh and flesh.
They call me a hero. When they talk… I swallow saliva. I feel it feel my mouth, and I swallow it. I stay away,now. From everyone. Women and man alike. Anyone who approaches me. Till you. You wanted a story.
I’ll tell you a story.
I felt my heart stop, the night I died for my country.
Tonight, you’ll die for me.
by submission | Jul 3, 2009 | Story
Author : David Bradshaw
I always believed that magic was simply what science had yet to explain or tame. When Ashford’s empty frame crashed to the ground, the wild forces at work became far more significant.
“It’s going to be one of mankind’s defining moments!” Ashford ranted in the bunker’s cafeteria earlier that day, “And I’m going to be in the middle of it…” He trailed off, wistfully.
Since we got clearance to run a human trial, he’d been like this, cycling between raving and muttering. Ashford was supposed to be the world’s first living human to undergo transportation.
Ingram snapped at him, “Don’t be a show off. Sit down and eat something.”
“Hell no. Anything in my stomach will just be more for the machine to chug. Besides, I’ve been too jittery to eat much today, too excited,” said Ashford. He kept good spirit, I had to give him that.
I excused myself to get to work preparing the apparatus for the afternoon’s test. The hours disintegrated into minutes, then seconds, and blew away.
Eventually various personnel from the labs trickled in, huddled around the camera for a good view. Despite not being known to the press or public, this was going to be a popular show.
When the whole team assembled, Ashford stepped forward to address his audience.
“This is test 5.1, the first living, human transportation. As you can see behind me, two tanks are positioned side-by-side. I, Dr. Joseph Ashford, will enter the chamber on the left and be transported to the chamber on the right. I assure you,” he said with a grin, “this is not a trick or a joke.”
Ingram could hardly contain a groan. Ashford was just a natural showman, or at least too charismatic for just a scientist.
He stepped into the chamber and gazed confidently upon his fans. The bright white lights on the equipment became stage lighting. The door sealed behind him, a red curtain descending.
All eyes were on the video feed. I began counting down. In my head, a calming habit of mine, I thought the numbers in Latin: Decem, novem, octo, septem, sex, quinque, quattor, tres, duo, unus.
As I stabbed the button deep into the terminal, a thought appeared at the forefront of my mind, “Magic is what science cannot yet explain. We’re standing on the edge of something magic cannot explain.”
In the first chamber, Ashford went to dust. In the second, dust went to bone, to flesh, to skin, to hair, and to a body. It lamely collapsed against the cool metal. As the door automatically pulled open, Ashford’s sepulcher gave birth to his limp corpse.
A dozen scientists in the room, we all started talking. Rushed yet hushed chatter. A skittering cacophony flying across every surface like a cockroach. Ingram checked the thing’s pulse and, finding none, let its arm drop to the ground, unceremoniously.
I looked down at the button I pressed that initiated the sequence that teleported Ashford. I doubted that anything could pull me away from the image of what was let. Guilt couldn’t drive out the horror.
A small voice in the crowd of sound and fury pierced every other word uttered, “Did we… Get his soul?”
