by J. Loseth | Mar 9, 2006 | Story |
Terina fumbled in her pocket for her pill box, a present from her mother. If you had to live with such an unfortunate disease, Mama had told her bluntly, you might as well have something nice and unobtrusive to hide the necessary medication. Terina had needed a pill then, too, letting her six-year-old bangs hide the shame in her eyes. Thirty years later, she no longer had the benefit of the curtain of hair, but the enameled pill box was a good focus for her gaze. Terina popped out one of the small blue spheres and tucked it under her tongue, letting her body dissolve the medicine as she tried to pay attention to the feed in front of her.
Bodies. Dead bodies, everywhere, laid out across a bloody plain that nearly made Terina sick when she had to look at it. She swallowed bile and willed the pill to dissolve faster, sneaking a glance at her fellow commanding officers, all arrayed around the readout in stolid contemplation.
“Looks like the blast points were precise,†one of the men observed, pointing out charred circles on the readout with his stylus. “They maximized human casualties rather than structural damage.â€
“That makes sense,†a blue-eyed woman replied. “That’s one of the few plants that isn’t automated. Without its workers, production will be halved at best. They did their research.†She shook her head in detached admiration. “Intelligent terrorists.â€
“Lieutenant Carreas?†the colonel asked, turning to Terina for her opinion. She jumped a little before she got a hold of herself.
“We’ll have to write to the families,†she said softly, then immediately regretted it when six pairs of incredulous eyes turned towards her. Terina shrank back and crunched the pill between her teeth; anything to get it to dissolve faster and restore her composure.
“Let’s focus on the situation at hand, Carreas,†the colonel suggested, and his disapproval was clear. Terina swallowed the pill. She could finally feel the medication beginning to take effect, detaching her from the weakness of outdated emotional reaction.
“Yes, sir.†Straightening, Terina examined the readouts again, this time more easily able to ignore the mangled bodies at the crime scene. “This looks like Redox residue,†she said at last, circling a blackened piece of ground with her own stylus in order to enlarge it. “It must have been the Xiang rebels. No other group has access to that kind of technology.†The rest of the lieutenants nodded and murmured their agreement. Terina knew that all of them thought her more than a little flighty due to her condition, but they still showed a grudging respect for her skills as an analyst and tactician, provided she remembered to take her medication.
“Good work, Carreas.†The colonel nodded sharply and turned his gaze to the blue-eyed woman. “Lieutenant Holmes, you will lead the dispatch team. Flush out the rebels; if they’re Xiang, they should still be in the area. Make sure they’re caught promptly. We can’t afford any more production delays.†The woman saluted smartly and turned to go, with the rest of the commanding officers following a step afterwards, as soon as the colonel gave the signal of dismissal. Terina hung behind.
As the rest of the lieutenants filed out of the briefing room, Terina traced the images on the screen with her finger, swallowing a lump in her throat. She knew she wasn’t supposed to think about the families. She wasn’t supposed to feel any of this. She wasn’t supposed to feel anything at all.
Turning quickly, Terina hurried to catch up with the rest of the group before she was missed. The slight blur of her vision was something she had learned to accept. Once the medication took full effect, it would be gone.
by Jared Axelrod | Mar 8, 2006 | Story
On Saturn’s ring plasma knives were illegal and as such, costly. Tangerine remembered Big Slab used to wear one around his neck, but she had never seen him use it. But this was Earth, and Earth was said to be civilized, unlike those settlements on Saturn’s rings. Which meant that when these girls from Tangerine’s school brought out knives and threatened to cut her, they were plasma, not steel.
“Here’s how it lays out, Ringer,”said the tall girl, clearly the leader. Her holographic nails illuminated the delicate controls on her knife handle. “We don’t like you, and we don’t need your kind at this school. So we’re gonna do you a favor, and give you a reason to go on back to your smelly little rings.”
Tangerine’s mother had insisted on the move. She didn’t think Big Slab and the other members of The Titans were proper role-models for a young girl. Tangerine had tried to explain to her that you couldn’t be safer than the protégé of the leader of the toughest gang in the ‘rings, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it.
“Saturn swallows its children whole,” she would say, shaking her head. And that would be the end of it. “Saturn swallows its children whole.”
So instead of the warm tutelage of Big Slab, Sally Gone, Dingo and all the rest, Tangerine was in the parking lot of a convenience store of civilized Earth with five girls discussing how many pieces they were going to slice her up.
“Don’t you worry too much about it, Ringer. Tell you what, if you don’t struggle, we may even leave you that pretty face of yours.” The tall girl kept adjusting the magnetic field of her knife, making the blade longer or shorter or wider or thinner. Playing with it.
Tangerine remembered Big Slab talking about those who treat weapons as toys. She remembered what he said about how to deal with those people. For the first time since leaving Saturn’s rings, Tangerine smiled.
“I really like your nails,” Tangerine said. “All that light. They must make finding your boyfriend’s tiny penis really easy.”
The tall girl came in quickly. Tangerine dodged the strike with ease, and caught the girls wrist. In one fluid motion, she turned off the knife, and depressed one of the control dials so hard it snapped. Tangerine pushed the girl away, closed her eyes and placed her arms in front of her face.
The tall girl charged again, raising her knife high above her head, her hologramed thumb switching it back on. But fell to her knees immediately when her knife exploded in her hand, the ignited plasma expanding outward without the magnetic field Tangerine had broken. The rest of the girl-gang temporarily blinded, Tangerine wasted no time hauling the tall girl up by her hair.
“I’m a daughter of Saturn,” Tangerine whispered in the tall girl’s ear. “I think you know what that means, now.” Tangerine let go of the tall girl’s hair, and watched as she crumpled on the asphalt.
Tangerine adjusted her school uniform, and calmly walked out of the parking lot, back into civilized Earth
by Kathy Kachelries | Mar 7, 2006 | Story
“It’s a transition period,†Meryl says, but everyone knows that once you’re in, it’s nearly impossible to get out. It’s a matter of logistics, really. We’re a three-person, which means that each of us gets about five waking hours per day. Take travel time into account, and we each have four hours to work, assuming that we never eat. That’s barely enough to pay maintenance, let alone save up for a new place.
Meryl was forty-seven when she moved into the body. Kate and I think it was some sort of cancer, because she’s always cluttering up the rules list with health-nut commandments like “don’t eat artificial sweetener†and “don’t sit near the smoking section.†Kate was hit by a bus when she was twenty four, and my body died of a good old-fashioned heart attack at the ripe age of seventy three.
We’ve been sharing the body for three years, which has been more than enough time to get on each other’s nerves. Kate’s always dressing us in terrible fad fashions, and once when Meryl stepped in she found a silver hoop in our navel. Meryl writes ad copy for an herbal health supplement line, and I swear, she’s going to give us carpal tunnel with all of that typing.
When one person’s in the body, the rest of us sit around in the lobby, which really isn’t a lobby at all. We can’t see out, since only the person in control can use the senses. Sometimes we tell jokes, or talk about our lives before the body. Usually, though, we gossip about whoever’s in the cockpit. It’s just girl talk, though. No bad blood.
The only time we’re all in the lobby together is the weekly meeting, Tuesday night after we’ve left the body to sleep. It lasts about an hour, before we get tired as well, and we use that time to talk about group expenses and time management. This week, we resolved to eat more tofu (Meryl’s still upset about our failed attempt at vegetarianism), get our hair highlighted (but nothing too extreme, we warned Kate) and buy lottery tickets. It’s up to almost $400 million this week, which would be enough to buy us each a supermodel. A girl’s gotta have some space to herself, and it doesn’t hurt anyone if that space was in a swimsuit magazine.
by J.R. Blackwell | Mar 6, 2006 | Story |
She let him make love to her. He smelled like new cars and cologne, he moved with a measured rhythm. Her mouth tasted like mint toothpaste. She looked over his shoulder through the white light of the window. She was sweating into her sheets, her breath silent, and her lips thin and tight.
She let him make love to her. Her husband was gone with a girl that he met through the Internet, a girl with pictures of her little waist and little breasts up for abandoned wives to see.
She let him make love to her, and when it was over, she switched him off. His eyes turned from liquid to glass. She forced his eyelids closed, feeling the mechanical tension resist as she clicked them into place.
by B. York | Mar 5, 2006 | Story |
Traditions are hard to break but the ones that mean something never go away. Today is just any other day for Marci except that today she walks to the store to get her groceries. Marci America is sweating after the first few steps of her journey to the store. She feels hungry because the vitamin booster won’t be regularly injected into her spine, and she feels tired because the anti-atrophying agent isn’t going to work for the next thirty days.
The streets of Union Crater, Mars are filled with people who hadn’t seen the grey skies in exactly a year’s time. People just like Marci are trying to remember how to walk more than ten feet in an hour, they are trying to recall how it is to be alive.
Some like Harold Dixon have been training for these days for months. He walks with a steady pace and even daringly lifts his arm to take a sip of Hydro-Oxy from a bottle. It’s people like Marci that really bring out the spirit of the Days of Remembrance. The ones that almost don’t make it are the ones who show everyone else watching what it means to truly understand these days.
Marci is fourteen meters down the street and she can feel her body wanting to give in. She tries to remember that it’s not her body giving in but her mind that wants to break down. If she falls she knows it isn’t the end. Those who fall on the way to do their daily activities are swept up by their neighbors and helped along every step of the way.
Mars dust is disturbed between buildings that have not been disturbed for an entire year. Some children who are naturally vibrant can spot marks they made the previous year and laugh at the lethargy of their progenitors. The red sand is marred with footprints on the way to work, school, and shopping. Upon entering the doors of these establishments there is a solemn silence at the deactivated teleportation consoles next to the entranceways.
By now middle-aged Marci is finding her strength again. She can walk with ease and ignores the stress of bones and muscle. Her eyes focus to the light outdoors, the sun they call Solaris that burns the eyes of everyone who dares to step beyond the threshold of their homes. Marci’s mind is challenged and it prevails. In her lucidity she remembers why they do such things for these few weeks and why it is important to always remember.
Union Crater is a good city with good values. There may be crime and there may be troubles of the family but everyone stops to stare at the grey tower on their walks towards their duties. A sign before the tower is dim without the power inside, letters spelling out in the dust: “Union Crater Power Matrixâ€. Marci is biting into an apple grown from dirt, not replication. She tastes the sweetness of a year of effort and she remembers to take nothing for granted.
