by submission | Mar 29, 2009 | Story
Author : Claire Webber
“Excuse me, miss?” he said, raising a finger to get the stewardess’ attention.
“Yes, how can I help you?” she said with a smile. Her accent was faint, and a single curl poked out of her modest hijab printed with the airline’s logo.
“I’d like a copy of the New York Press.”
“$2.50, please.”
He reached under his seat to get his briefcase. Good lord, they just remolded these 787’s and there still wasn’t any leg room, he thought to himself.
Rifling through his wallet, he smiled apologetically. His TransAmerican Airlines credit card was hidden in there, somewhere.
The stewardess held out the swipe machine, polite smile still plastered on her face.
He found the red and blue plastic card and ran it through the slot. The machine printed a receipt. She handed it and a folded copy of the newspaper to him.
“Enjoy your flight,” she pleasantly said before continuing to push her cart down the cramped aisle.
“Yeah, if it ever takes off,” he muttered under his breath. The people sharing his row had opted out of coffee and were dozing already.
He skimmed over the front page. It was filled with the usual troubles in the Middle East, the latest factory worker strike, another drug cartel kidnapping the latest mayor of Phoenix, Arizona.
When he opened the paper to the second page, though, his face fell.
The picture may have been in black and white, but he could picture the bright green of the grass, the red of the provincial roofs, and the crisp blue of the Tuscan sky. There was too much sky.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa had finally collapsed.
He wasn’t surprised. The unstable subsoil, the earthquakes in the past few years, but still…
His mind drifted back to college, planning to backpack through Italy and France. He had postcards taped all around his dorm of all the monuments he wanted to see. The cathedral at Chartes, Montmarte, the Sistine Chapel, little snap shots of history etched into his naïve collegiate mind. But the postcard hanging above his bed was the Leaning Tower. He didn’t know why, never knew why, but that was where he always pictured himself when he daydreamed.
Internships, business school, marriage- there just was never enough time. He was always too busy.
A crackle on the intercom snapped him out of his reverie.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we apologize for your inconvenience. Free moving particles in the thermosphere are preventing our departure from Los Angeles. Please expect arrival time in New York to be pushed back to 9:20.”
He looked down at his watch.
8:15, it flashed on and off at him.
He was going to be late to work. This commute was killing him.
There just was never enough time.
by submission | Mar 28, 2009 | Story
Author : John Logan
The metal clasps dug into my arms as they strapped me to the chair. I spat on one of the guards and called into question the loyalty of his wife. He raised his hand to strike but the other guard stopped him with a simple movement of the eyes.
“Let me up,” I shouted. “Just one arm free, I’ll take you both on.”
The guard who wanted to hit me sneered and spoke, “Gonna beat me up, are ya? Just like you did to that little boy they found in a box?”
I lost it then. It sickens me to admit it, but I began to whimper. “Please…let me go. I’ll be good. I promise,” I said.
The guard laughed then I felt a tingling at the back of my neck as the other plugged me in.
#
A stark whiteness surrounded me, the soothing tones of the sea whispered in my ear. A holographic terminal appeared before me, glowing in strips of cyan. Then a female voice, unmistakably synthetic, spoke.
“Initiate sequence,” she said with little emotion. “Welcome Mr. Brown. Are you comfortable?”
I leant back and the terminal flipped with me. I heard a seagull. It cried in the distance as the waves came crashing against the shore. “Yes, I am. Thank you.”
She spoke again. Each word was annunciated deliberately as though allowing time to access a vocabulary database hidden away somewhere. “You have four of nine categories remaining.”
The sea continued to churn. “Continue,” I said.
“Please choose from; Strangulation, Shotgun, Train, Dismemberment.” The cyan lights on the terminal shifted above my head. Each selection displayed with a number.
I lifted a finger and hovered over number 9. Dismemberment. I always left that until last. I just didn’t have the courage to take it until it was the only option left.
“Train,” I said and tapped the terminal. The cyan light flashed for several heartbeats then a blanket of darkness fell over it.
#
My heart hammered as I ran along the platform. I glimpsed him there, in the shadows, a knife glinting in one hand and a wicked grin on his face. Air rushed down the tunnel and I heard the sound of an approaching shuttle train. We were alone. He leapt at me, the knife poised to cut my throat. I slashed at his face and felt my nails sink into and tear the flesh. He cried out in anger and pushed me towards the vibrating tracks. I slipped and fell from the platform, my ankle snapped from the impact but that initial pain was drowned out as the train hurtled into me, pulping my soft flesh and grinding my bones against the ground.
#
I gasped and spluttered, gulping at the air. It was a wonder there was any left for the guards.
“I’ve had enough,” I cried. “Don’t do it anymore.” Sweat dripped from my brow and stung my eyes. They removed the straps. The metal bands around my wrists, magnetized with 5 g modules, automatically clamped against the harness on my chest. Roughly, they lifted me to my feet and I shuffled forward. “I beg you. Don’t put me back in the chair.”
“Too late to plead,” growled the guard. “We’ll see you tomorrow, same time same place.”
I tried to think of some retort but couldn’t. The scars on my face itched. They always did after the Train.
by submission | Mar 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Ken McGrath
The car pulled to a stop overlooking the city.
“There it is kids. Dublin, where your old Dad grew up? What do you think?”
“It doesn’t look like the postcard Dad,” Amy said, looking up momentarily from her computer game and at least showing some sort of interest. Her sister just grunted in response, not even raising her head.
“Ah kids, c’mon, get out the car and have a look, why don’t you?” Their Dad sounded exasperated, yet happy. He wound down the window and leaned out, breathing in the fresh air. “It’s not everyday you get to come and see someplace like this.”
It was years since he’d been back here and a lot had changed. Amy paused her game and opened the backdoor, stepping out onto the thick, lush grass that grew on the roadside. Walking slowly so that the dew wet her shoes as much as possible she followed her Dad to the fence which overlooked the valley.
“It wasn’t always like this you know? It used to be a big, bustling city with traffic and people, noise and jobs and rubbish and everything else. Just like that picture postcard I gave you. Before the water rose, that was. Before the water came and reclaimed it all.” A hint of sadness crept into his voice as he spoke, the memories bubbling up through his mind.
Amy fumbled around in the front pocket of her dress and pulled out an old crumpled and dog-eared postcard. It showed an aerial view of the city she was looking at, not from the exact spot they were standing at, her and her Dad, but similar and it showed a city at night. Not one which was sleeping, but one which was very much alive. It was all lights glowing, like hundreds… no thousands, of stars, as if God himself had turned the night sky upside down for the photograph. ‘Behind each of those lights is a story,’ she remembered her Dad saying many, many nights when tucking her in to bed.
The girl tried to imagine the scene in front of her now, as it would have been when the photo was taken, but it was hard to do. The sea had risen, back before she was born, so her Dad had told her. The people who lived there had fled, not believing what was happening, but it didn’t matter if they believed in it or not because it was happening. The Earth was healing itself, ridding itself of the pestilence that had picked at it. Had hurt it for so long. He’d run to the north with their mother to escape the rising waves and they’d made a new life there. A simpler life was how he put it.
But he had still wanted to bring his daughters here today, to show them the past and what had once been. To show them the present and what was now.
Suddenly a voice tore through the perfect quiet stillness. “Daaad,” Amy’s sister called from the car, dragging out her words, which meant she wanted something. “C’mere.”
“Sure thing honey,” he shouted back. “You coming?” he asked Amy.
“I think I’ll stay here a few more minutes if that’s okay,” she said, then turned back towards the drowned city, holding up her postcard, as if comparing the two. “I like the view.”
by submission | Mar 26, 2009 | Story
Author : Matthew Forish
It was cold. Of course it was cold. Now though, I could feel the cold.
Feeling returned to my body, and a faint light was starting to filter in through my closed eyelids. I was waking up. Thoughts filled my mind. I was shivering, hungry, thirsty and quite stiff. A hum vibrated through the soft plastic beneath my bare flesh.
I opened my eyes, which took some time to adjust to the light. As my vision cleared, I felt a click and saw the transparent lid of my cryo-tube lifting upward. Warm air rushed in. I stopped shivering. I heard the sounds of movement all around me; I heard gruff voices not far away, coughs and groans, shuffling plastic.
Sitting up, I saw dozens of other men doing the same, looking as groggy as I felt. I heard one young man asking for a few more minutes of sleep. I laughed at that – we had slept for nearly ten years.
A door whooshed open at the far end of the chamber, and a uniformed man entered, a member of the command crew.
“Good morning gentlemen,” he said, “We’ve arrived at our destination, and we’re currently in orbit around the planet. You will find fresh clothing at your assigned refresher unit. Get dressed and proceed to the commissary for the Mandatory Replenishment Meal.”
A few men groaned at that statement – I guess that they had travelled via cryo-sleep before and already knew about the “Mandatory Replenishment Meal”. I took a quick sonic shower and donned my new utility coveralls, then discovered the reason for their complaint. The M.R.M. was rich in vitamins, calories and everything we needed after a long cryo-sleep, but was greatly lacking in flavor.
As I ate, I looked around the commissary. There were about three hundred of us, both men and women, which represented the first of ten waves of sleepers. Of course, the vast majority were young like me, barely out of our teens.
Young people make the best colonists. We don’t leave much behind, especially the single ones like myself. We have more years in us to help build up the colony’s infrastructure. We’re more likely to start families. Many hands make light work, as they say. There’s lots of work to do starting up a new colony.
I struck up a conversation with the pretty young woman seated across from me. She sounded as excited as I was about the opportunities ahead. It would be hard work, but it was better than living like sardines back on Old Earth or one of the orbital habs. Her enthusiastic chatter helped me endure the M.R.M.
As we were herded out of the commissary toward the shuttle bay, I walked beside the young woman, who had introduced herself as Oriana. I managed to secure a pair of seats for us at the front of the shuttle’s passenger cabin, near the forward viewport.
I felt a lurch as the shuttle left its bay. Startled, Oriana nervously reached out to take my hand. I smiled. The viewport filled with stars and the night-side of the planet below. We descended rapidly, the sleek shuttle cutting through the clouds. I could see the dim outlines of mountains speeding past far below.
The horizon took on a reddish hue, slowly brightening into a full sunrise. I gazed in awe at the unspoiled beauty of the woodlands revealed in the growing light. I looked over at Oriana and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. I knew the future – our future – was as bright as this new dawn.
by Duncan Shields | Mar 25, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Blue. That’s the colour I remember the most in that operating theater. It was the last honest colour I would ever see.
I had them installed as part of my training. It was something I had a choice over. I regret that decision now but it was a one-way trip. They can’t make ‘real’ eyes yet. They said that it would be an improvement. Part of my job as a statistical field and stress analyzer meant that I needed to see in wavelengths that other people could not.
I can crank the infra-red and see in radio if I want. I can see the echoes from positron waves in the short spectrum. Sound splashes across my field of vision in a synaesthetic wash. Gravity waves warble like a heat haze through everything when I’m planetside.
That operating room had blue ceramic tiles in large squares on the ceiling with white grouting. The bright surgery light got brighter as I lost consciousness and the doctors leaned in.
It’s a treasured memory as time goes by. For some reason, the faces of my friends and parents in a ‘real light’ spectrum are memories that are fading. It’s that blue ceiling that stays constant and unchanging in its intensity.
Someone says my name and it brings me back to reality, to the bar that I’m in right now. It’s after work and I’m drinking with a co-worker named Jocelyn.
She comes up to me, black hole in the middle of her face and black pits for eyes. Her red cheeks fade to yellow near her ears. Her cold black hair hangs loosely down on either side of her blue ears. The gaping black-toothed maw of her mouth opens at me in what I can now tell is a smile.
I switch to the radio and I can see the green lines of her personal tech implants going off in pulses like monochromatic neon signs. They trace circuits through her limbs to each other. I shuffle through four different colours of x-rays, lighting up her bones like neon tubes. I can see the exhalations of each word she utters wafting like clouds of pink smoke puffing out from her mouth. I light up the iron in her blood. I can see a small tumour starting in her right breast. I’ll tell her about it in the morning. I don’t want to ruin the night.
I can see her in so many ways. I can tell that she likes me because her heart rate is visible to me. There is no hiding the way her body reacts when I’m close to her. I almost feel psychic with this new sight.
I can see her in every single way except for the way a normal human does. I can feel the depression welling up in my soul again. I take another drink and struggle to actually pay attention to what Jocelyn is saying to me. Best to be polite.
Damn my eyes. Damn my second sight.
