by submission | Jan 13, 2009 | Story
Author : Waldo van der Waal
It was raining outside. It was always fucking raining outside. Fat, acidic drops that stripped the city of its colour, and its inhabitants of their lives. Everybody walked hunched over, hunkered down inside their dark coats. And it smelled like… It smelled like death. The water running down the streets carried with it the pungent smells of the excrement of four million people. It washed away their shattered dreams and their cheap imitations of grandeur.
He was lying on his back, looking out through the window near his bed. Rivulets of water ran down the window pane, like veins that carried the clear wetness of death harmlessly past him in a constant stream. In the distance a holo advertised a discount hoiliday to Greece, its images flickering through the rain like lightning. Its sound drowned out by a train, passing behind his apartment.
His mouth was dry, and his arm was numb. He turned his head to see what was wrong with his arm, and saw a girl sleeping with her head on his bicep. Dark-haired, pretty. Dragon tattoos all over her face, but still pretty. And naked. She was sleeping peacefully, her breasts rising and falling in a slow rhythm.
A new sound drew his attention back to the window. It was the fuzz, landing one of their bastard ships in the street outside his apartment. For a second or two, red and blue lights flashed into his apartment, lighting up the place. The light fell on the ancient refrigirator, reflected off his broken holo tube. It cast eerie shadows across the pizza boxes, the overflowing ashtrays and the beer bottles. Red. Blue. And then it disappeared. Somewhere, some poor citizen was about to get hauled to the blocks for a friendly chat with the government. And he wouldn’t come back.
There were some shouts from a couple of flats down the hall. The girl stirred slightly and turned over. He glanced at her, but almost immediately turned back to the window. “Visit Santorini,” said the voice from the holo – he could hear it now, the train had gone – “It is the island of your dreams. The entire trips is only twelve thousand units, including transfers, teleports, accommodation, all meals and a welcome drink on arrival.”
“Twelve thousand units… That’s a lot of money”, he thought. He blinked slowly, reached for his cigarettes with his free hand, and managed to light one without setting the bed on fire. The tip glowed bright red as he took a deep drag. He held the smoke in his lungs for a couple of seconds, then he slowly exhaled in a steady stream that hung near the window before dissipating into the rest of his apartment.
Twelve thousand units. But only one trip. He killed the cigarette in the ashtray on the window sill, leant forward slightly and pulled a silver metal box closer. He opened it, pulled out a hypo and stuck it into his neck. The pain lingered for a moment, but then disappeared together with his apartment, the girl, the police, the holo and the rain. His head lolled to the side, his open eyes staring out past a future that held no appeal.
“Twelve thousand units”, he thought as he sank deeper into his dreamworld. “What a fucking waste of money…”
by Duncan Shields | Jan 12, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I’m no stranger to visits from my future selves.
The first time I showed up to myself, I was only nineteen. I was in the backyard, smoking a cigarette with my hand cupped so that my parents wouldn’t see.
An older version of me stepped out of the bushes. He was wearing a suit but it was dingy and the elbows were frayed. He had some stubble and a wet, red look to his eyes. I could smell whiskey and desperation.
He told me that he was a future version of myself. I had no trouble believing it. There was a kinship there that went beyond the features of his face or the fact that it felt like I was looking at a reflection of myself that wasn’t flipped around like in a mirror. There was almost a magical flow of energy between the two of us, atoms calling to atoms, a recognition of the same time-space footprint being near.
He told me who was going to win the football game tomorrow. He told me to write it down. I went inside and took out a notebook and did what he said.
I took it to heart and bet big on it. I made two hundred dollars. Big money for me at the time.
Years later, I’ve had hundreds of visits. I have six large estates around the world and I am the seventeenth richest man in the world. I write every visit from a future self in the notebook with the exact time notated as well. This is the notebook, my future selves say, that will allow me to come back and create this present. When the secret of time travel is discovered, they say, I will use this notebook as a bible and influence myself to this rich state of affairs, thereby avoiding a paradox.
What didn’t make sense to me, though, was that the versions of me that kept coming back to give me tips got progressively more well-dressed and wore more jewelry. I found that odd since I, myself, don’t really like wearing rings. Also, if my future selves were changing according to the riches that I was making, why was the first one to come back dressed so poorly?
I smelled something fishy. I was going to ask the next future self some pointed questions. The riches had made me bold. I was poised with the notebook, ready to get some answers.
The next time a future self showed up, however, it wasn’t me. It was a woman in a red dress and a scar down one cheek. She walked with purpose, the straight back of a dancer. She marched up to me and grabbed me by my expensive collar and kneed me in the balls.
While I was writhing in agony on the marble floor, she took the notebook out of my hands, the supposed bible and key to all of my success, and threw it into the fireplace.
There was a flash of blue light and she disappeared, having never uttered a word.
Nothing changed for me. I am still the seventeenth richest man in the world. My wealth is intact. My appearance hasn’t changed.
Her appearance happened just over four years ago. There hasn’t been a visit from the future, myself or otherwise, ever since that notebook was thrown into the fireplace.
I wonder who she was. I turn the puzzle pieces over in my mind and I can’t make sense of it. I feel left out and oddly alarmed most days, like this could all disappear in an instant.
by submission | Jan 11, 2009 | Story
Author : Carter Lee
My world is motionless.
I remember making cuts in my forearm, back near the beginning. The skin would separate, but blood wouldn’t flow. As soon as I looked away from the almost invisible incision, it would disappear.
I remember cutting off a finger, once.
It isn’t cold here, or warm. The sun always shines overhead, and floats as motionless as the air.
Sometimes, I notice that I forget to breathe.
This could be Hell. If I could find my body, I could believe I died long ago. But I appear to be whole, and healthy.
It would be easier if I were alone. But the house I live in is surrounded by the city I live in, and the city I live in is filled with people. I think the city is filled with people. The city is filled with an endless variety of statuary, that I seem to remember once being mobile, being alive. Being something other than motionless, impervious, unresponsive.
I don’t know if time is passing now. I don’t know if time passes when, unable to remain in one place, I wander out into the city I live in. Does time pass as I study the tableaux created, here in my city of stillness?
Close to the house I live in, there is a woman, her arm outstretched, touching the cheek of the man in front of her. Just barely touching his cheek. She could be reaching out to caress, to remove something unclean from him, to make contact with this man through the primal sensation of touch. Her face, however, is twisted, with frozen tears on her pale cheeks, and the man bends away from her hand. He is captured, one arm slightly raised, his hand holding a hat, in a belated effort to protect himself from her hand. Her hand, which is barely, only slightly, touching his cheek.
There is a man who has a bullet exiting his chest; there is a young girl who has, without noticing, dropped her ice-cream; there is a woman suspended in mid-air, the first shock of the car’s impact crossing her features. There are more.
There are perfectly captured scenes of love and hate, in the city I live in. Pictures of acts of kindness, and malice, of good, and of evil. Each rendered in heart-capturing detail. It might be that, in the infinite variety of these displays, in the incredibly diverse palette in which they are tinted, I have found some proof of god. How else could such things exist?
The beauty that surrounds me is at least as much proof for a devil, though. Who else could devise a torture as exquisite, as horrible, as this? What more perfectly created torment could there be, than to be imprisoned, alone, amongst such a multitude? To be with and separated from, surrounded by but invisible to, everything and everyone?
I remember throwing myself off of a building. Several times. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
I sit. I listen.
There is nothing to hear.
by submission | Jan 10, 2009 | Story
Author : Jason Kocemba
The time train was late.
His great(x5) Grandfather’s birth certificate felt massive in his pocket, a nano-singularity. Did that flimsy piece of paper (wood based!) really cause him to lean to the left? They had caught up and were closing in and the train was late.
He spent time wondering what might have happened if things had been done differently. Was he wasting time trying to change what had happened, trying to make things right? Time had been used wrongly, he had been used wrongly, his whole family had been used wrongly.
He lifted his wrist watch. He watched the second-hand do another seven ticks until it showed eleven pm precisely. The temporal display showed agitations in the ether.
He heard them behind him, in the crowd. Their ancient dialect was barely recognisable as words, more like a continuous audible stream of nonsense syllables.
The station wall clock was two minutes faster than his watch. The colon between the digits winked out and came back on, winked out, came back on. His eyes moved to his watch. Tick. The second-hand jerked on. Tick. His eyes moved to the wall clock. The colon winked out. Tick.
11:01
Was he doing the right thing? He wiped his sweaty palm on his shirt. He hated waiting, after so much wasted time it felt wrong. But it was all relative anyway, right?
He resisted the temptation to pace. He stood, bright shiny shoes three inches apart, grey slacks pressed into a knife edge, his shirt tucked half in and half out of his waistband.
His hand wiped itself on the shirt again. His eyes ticked to his watch, the flashing colon, the tracks, and back to the watch. He resisted the urge to shuffle his feet. The voices moved closer, and the nano-singularity in his pocket seemed to be gaining mass.
11:02
He felt the wet patches under his arms, he felt sweat run down his back to soak into his trousers. He wiped his already damp sleeve across his brow, and caught sight of his watch as it moved past his eyes. More seconds wasted and the temporal agitations had become distortions.
His eyes ticked to the tracks. Was it coming? Another bead of sweat ran down his back, another second ticked by in this era.
Someone stood behind him. He heard a familiar voice talk softly in a dialect he understood. He felt a hand press down on his left shoulder. He knew he would soon fall under all that combined mass.
“Stop running now,” the voice said. Other voices spoke; he did not understand them.
“I have to go back, Constable,” he said, feeling a deep bass rumble through his feet.
“You cannot,” the Constable said.
11:03
“The time line will re-assert itself, all paradox will be erased,” he said. He knew if he turned around and looked at the Constable he would be looking into his own face, his own eyes. “You will be erased.”
“Can you be sure?” said the Constable, who was also him. “Perhaps it is you who will be erased, perhaps both of us.”
“It is wrong,” he said as the train pulled in to the station. His whole body vibrated to that bass rumble.
With a clap, air rushed in to fill the space where he had been.
The Constable lowered his arm: “Damn, just in time,” he said, and disappeared.
by submission | Jan 9, 2009 | Story
Author : Matthew Forish
I stood there fighting back tears, her hand held in mine, separated only by the rubber surgical gloves I was wearing. They were a perfect match for the rubber smock that covered the rest of my body, and the rubber cover over my hair. That was all for my protection, the rubber acting as a buffer to prevent static contamination. The plastic mask I wore ostensibly for her protection. Even the weakest bacteria or virus could be deadly to her with all of her defenses shutting themselves down. Now though, it just seemed superfluous.
She smiled weakly up at me, her tired eyes looking up into mine. She was trying to be reassuring. It didn’t work. I knew she didn’t have much time left, that victims of this particular strain didn’t last more than a few days, depending on their mental fortitude.
I remember back a few months ago, when the news first broke – a whole new kind of virus. It had started out small, just little bugs here and there, easily treatable, minor symptoms, nothing to worry about. People would find themselves forgetting important things, or sharing just a little too much information, or subtly altering their behaviors. It was all much worse now, how quickly the viruses had progressed.
There was really nobody specific to blame. We all should have known better, should have seen this coming.
We didn’t though. I mean, who would have thought? Certainly not the scientists who developed the technology that was the underlying cause of all this. They were just pushing the boundaries of knowledge, trying to make the world a better place. Who could have guessed it would have ended up like this?
In the beginning, only important scientists and military researchers had access to it. Soon it started trickling down to the bigger corporations. All that power at your fingertips, a dream come true for many. Revolutionary new technology was the result – things that we never dared dream of before were now a reality. Our world was heading toward a utopia.
By the time they became commercially available, any ethical controversy had already been laid to rest. Society had accepted the idea, and was ready to lay down their money for this new advancement. The things were quickly integrated into all kinds of products, making all our little tools and toys better, faster, easier to use.
We should have known. Some unscrupulous people are always going to exploit new technology. That’s what happened of course. We built computers whose functions almost perfectly mimicked the human brain, and the hackers started writing viruses that would attack them.
Did they know the bloody things would cross over to us? Did they know their maliciously coded creations would infect people through any simple static shock, that it could be transferred over the phone, through the internet, and from electronics to people and back? Did they realize that code designed to shut down computer systems would cause the human body to shut itself down as well? Did they even care?
The monitor signaled a flatline, and I sank to my knees in despair. My head bowed low and I closed my eyes, feeling the tears streaming down my face. She was gone.
