by Stephen R. Smith | May 13, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Queen Louise XVI’s afternoon reading was interrupted by the message ‘Governess LaPointe requests audience’ scrolling across the page of text which hung in space before her.
“Granted,” she spoke aloud, waving the texts into the ether.
The comfortable silence was shattered by the staccato barrage of heel on stone as a woman swept through the doors of the Great Hall, past the Imperial Guard, and past the Royal Family; sixteen pairs of twins in dresses and curls sitting at chess boards, or on couches reading or talking quietly.
She covered the length of the room in quick, steady strides, stopping barely a meter from her Queen and dropping to one knee, her eyes downcast. “Your Majesty,” her voice dripped of something foul; condescension? contempt?
“Rise,” the Queen commanded. “Speak.”
The Governess stood, eying the Queen. “Your Majesty, there has been unauthorized access of the library data, of the forbidden tomes.” She paused, glancing sideways as Clara and Cloë straightened as one, suddenly interested.
The Queen folded her hands. “And that concerns you how?” Accusation, that was the tone.
“The data in question details the time before the Whyjean Complex, the Time of Men.” The Governess straightened. “I believe that you know of these intrusions, that they are made on your command.”
The Queen smiled cooly. “And what interest have I in the Time of Men?”
LaPointe smiled, thin lipped and cruel. “You desire a male of your own, not a eunuch but a breeding male. I have proof of your deceit, and when I present my proof to the Council of Creation, they will surely have your throne.”
“Fascinating.” The Queen gazed about the room; Alice and Alexandra lost in a game, Trinity and Tari napping, Salena and Sami reading together. “Why accuse me here, why not go straight to council?”
The Governess folded her arms. “I’m giving you a chance to confess, to banish yourself quietly.”
“And leave you to succeed me? You’re very sure of yourself.” The Queen drew her finger along an elaborate carved cross set into the arm of her throne. “Would you swear to the Holy Mother on the existence of this proof?”  The Queen released the cross from it’s mooring and held it out to the Governess, who grasped it white knuckled as she spoke, eyes locked on the Queen’s. “I swear, on the Holy Mother…”
The Queen pulled back on the cross, leaving the Governess holding the thin tapered dagger that had been concealed inside.
“Guards, she’s come to kill me!” The Queen yelled, stirring the Imperial Guard to action.
“What? No, no, I didn’t…” the Governess stepped back, raising her hands, the shining dagger catching the light as the Guard flanked the Queen, weapons discharging in unison, the woman thrown backwards to the floor.
The Queen raised her hand, and the Guard held fast as she moved to the fallen Governess, kneeled at her side and cupping the dying woman’s face in her hands, turned her towards her startled children.
“I don’t intend to breed a man,” she hissed in her ear. “Look at them, Cloë and Clara, Clarence. Alice and Alexandra, Alexander. Sixteen perfect princesses, sixteen perfect princes. Plumped and primped, curled hair and dresses, hidden in plain sight to one day redefine this matriarchy and restore the monarchy.”
She placed a finger on quivering lips, watched the horror in her eyes as life left her.
Rising, she addressed the Guard. “She was stricken with a plague of madness. Cremate her, incinerate her quarters. Let there be no trace of her disease.”
Disease, she thought, they were desperate for genetic disorder.
by submission | May 12, 2008 | Story
Author : Dee Harding
Samsara has worn his locks for 15 years, shining and strong. He has adapted to them by sleeping sideways and letting them learn to clean themselves. Each tangled cluster of keratine farms its own rot, the rain, and the detritus of everyday life. Stray protein quietly becoming fuel for a million miniscule workers, all sculpting their environment in long sheathes and spirals. When the city smog is bad all that can be seen of Samsara beyond his mask are the crawling oil-slick dreadlocks, unbound. Throughout his culture’s history, hair has been alive with the symbolism of wind, water and fire. It has not taken so very long for those abstracts to become material, but his mane remains ritual before anything else.
Anything but the divide. Those that take the twisting path serve the economy’s invisible hand. Although the knotted braids are an efficient manifold for Samsara’s microbial hive they weigh him down with meaning. They bind him to his place within the kingdom and decades of financial debt still to be paid. His scalp harbours his craft, his industry and his caste, all impossible to hide. Those of the Breed spend half their lives physically unconstrained but in monetary bondage before they cultivate the 9 foot long archipelago that marks a master of the art. A sage so skilled as to be rooted to the spot and cared for by concubines, physically encumbered but spiritually free.
In some ways, even now, it is difficult to determine where each compound filament of Samsara’s hair ends. They thread through their own strands of infection into the pheremonal plumage of kingdom socialites and prostitutes, the telluric ephemera of engineers and navigators, the chemical sequencing of medics and pushers alike. Even bald, Samsara is telepresent. Which is good, considering, but no real consolation. Stone burns into his knees in the mid-day heat, ankles bound, and the crowd is silent. No-one will approach but the perfect men with swarming skin. Samsara can send nothing past their gracious smiles and he weeps. No fear has been greater than this moment, every nerve is wracked with grief. They walk closer now, and closer. People like Samsara creep up against every boundary, breaking laws that have yet to evolve, but every loop-hole curls in on itself in time. He is caught dead centre in the web of New Delhi, broken, while around him bronzed razors flash in the sun.
by submission | May 11, 2008 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
They turned Valerie off this morning.
Nothing flashy, nothing officially announced. Two grey-suited daemons came in, picked up her sprite and walked out with it. When I went to the dorms to investigate, her room was blank, no sign that she had ever been here.
I know the drill. They’ll say there was some irregularity in her payments and she was being moved from virtual to storage until it was sorted out. Which is crap. What they mean is that the company directors owed someone a favor or were made a better offer on her runtime. In a few weeks they’ll say how much they regret the misconception and that Valerie will be back with us as soon as a space opens. Which they never do.
Valerie, myself, and most of the other residents are lifers, legacies. We paid on insurance policies for decades so that when the inevitable happened our digital consciousnesses would continue in post-life communities. This was back before they understood how expensive the runtime would be. Legally, they have to maintain us here because our policies have been grandfathered in. In practice they want nothing more than for us to vanish and leave the lucrative virtual environment to paying minds with runtime trusts.
So every now and then, they do this, just to get rid of one of us, just to keep the others scared.
They used to call it murder, back when we were alive.
by submission | May 10, 2008 | Story
Author : Jacinta A. Meyers
Lieutenant General Macy McMurphey Delane dreamt of meeting his nemesis.
It was a bit of an obsession. He imagined that, across the star-clustered chasm of drifting space dust, on the far edge of the galaxy, there was another command center probably very much like his own.
Yes, there must be super computers with flickering lights and perpetual output of military strategies, logistics, altered tactics. Readouts of enemy locations and dispositions. A busy body of staff revolving around one central station hub.
Perhaps that man would be a bit hefty too, a bit round in the middle. Maybe he liked his authentic steaks cooked medium-rare and tried not to think of the lost ships and their crews drifting in tangled debris as he injected himself with rest serum at the conclusion of each day. His hobbies might include collecting ancient relics or constructing model spaceships. Or when he wasn’t dispatching orders to the front, perhaps he was compiling a catalogue of specimens of rare rock from explored planets.
Surely, this man had a family, too — a wife, two sons who had followed their father into the military tradition. Yes, yes. He probably prided himself on his impeccable uniform but wore his collars slightly loose. His hair might be thinning a little on the top. Perhaps he sported a mustache or perfectly trimmed beard. Yes, yes. And the more he thought about it, the more Delane saw an inferior mirror of himself in the coldly calculated moves of the enemy’s forces.
Delane decided he should like to meet that other general. After the war was through, of course, when the terms ensured peace. A holiday would be in order then. Delane would parade his laurels as he went, would make appearances at certain destinations popular among the politically elite. Perhaps take a short little trip behind the former lines, let the local populace look upon the man who had defeated their very best. Yes, it seemed like a very good plan indeed.
But the blue dots denoting corresponding allied ships became fewer and fewer on the screens. The digital readouts offered less maneuverable options. Losses mounted while Delane scrutinized his foe’s movements and imagined personal insult there. Public outcry hit a deafening crescendo. The people and the politicians resigned themselves to defeat.
Conditions of surrender were sent through the silent vacuum of space: a single white probe (smaller than a child’s hand) carrying files in every language of man.
An answer came twenty-four standard earth hours later. The victor would maintain a distant control only, with little forced change of life on the part of the losers. Merely some intensive trading agreements were to be made in the winning side’s favor. Everyone understood without question that the war would resume in a matter of decades. It always did.
There would be a different general, then. Delane’s dint at command had failed. Setting aside his mild disappointment and arrangements for a golfing trip to the engineered fields of Venus, he thought of his wartime dreams. As his final act in the central command hub, he sent out a friendly inquiry to the enemy’s capital.
The response was surprisingly abrupt. “Oh,” it said simply, the sentence repeated blaringly, line after line, in every language of man, “we computerized central military command. It was converted to artificial intelligence years ago.”
by submission | May 9, 2008 | Story
Author : Timothy T. Murphy
A month before reaching Europa, Heather woke to an e-mail from her grandfather. Her grandfather hated e-mail, so much so that she’d been shocked when he asked her to teach him so they could talk while she was away.
He hated cameras even more, so when she opened her in-box to see a thumbnail of his face, she was stunned.
She clicked it and her grandfather’s face swam into view, eyes red and swollen.
“Heather, dear, this is your grandfather. I’m sorry to have to tell you this way, but your mother has died.â€
Even in one-sixth gravity, her gut sank like a rock.
“There’s uh… been a virus spreading about, these last few months. I think you only just missed it…â€
She knew of it. Two months after leaving Earth, everyone on her transport got into a panic over it. For three months, they all hopped around with breath masks, getting panicky anytime anyone sneezed. Heather’s dust allergy had not made her popular.
“I didn’t want to tell you until it was certain, and for a while there, it looked like the antivirals were working. Two days ago, she took a very bad turn …â€
She didn’t want to think of what that meant. She’d heard the stories. She tried not to think of her mother lying in bed, soiling herself and screaming incoherently as the virus fed on her nervous system, leaving behind mineral deposits that calcified her brain.
“Your brother and father are fine. They’ve been quarantined for weeks, but it looks like they’re not infected.†He paused to wipe his eyes, not looking at the screen. “Your mother wasn’t allowed any visitors.â€
She died alone.
Five months she’d been on a spaceship, adapting to low gravity and being shunned as the only law enforcement officer on board but for the first time, Heather felt sick and alone. Her gut wrenched into a knot and she leaned forward, pressing her face into her hands as fat tears slid free of her eyes.
“I … I know that you and your mother didn’t get along, these last few years, Sweetheart, but … Well, services are Saturday, and I know you can’t be there, Baby, so if there’s anything you’d like me to say on your behalf, well … you can let me know.â€
She knew as well as Grandpa did that any words from her at that ceremony would be seen as an insult, a spit in her mother’s face. In the Childress family, she was a pariah. “The only Childress ever to grow up to become a servant.†Only Grandpa still talked to her, and even he did so in secret.
Still, it was her mother. She wanted to say something. Her mind spun about, looking for some anchor, and landed on the only photo she’d bought with her. Pinned to her bulletin board, it had been taken twenty years ago, when Heather was just seven, and still her mother’s favorite. Her mother had broken her leg, skiing in the French Alps. Heather had signed her cast.
Almost blindly, she opened a new mail and clicked her grandfather’s address. For the subject line, she only put, “Eulogy.†For the message, “My mother taught me to endure pain. It is no help, now. I’ll always ache without her.â€
She thanked him and sent it. Later, she would send a longer mail, telling him how she felt, and trying to console him in his loss, but for now, she curled up on her cot – five months away from her mother – and cried.
