by submission | Dec 25, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Lieutenant Jvora shuffled down the corridor considerably slower than his four legs normally carried him. He was not looking forward to his meeting with Commander Skal. Jvora entered the commander’s office and raised a pincer in salute. Skal returned the gesture.
“Lieutenant, any word on the Lindell simulacrum?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Jvora. “We’ve gotten several reports back from the probes we sent to the Lindell system. And I believe we’ve pieced together what happened.”
Skal gestured to Jvora to continue.
“The simulacrum,” said Jvora, “successfully landed on Lindell III. It reconfigured itself into the likeness of the native intelligent species and established a base of operations in the planet’s north polar region. It then deployed billions of nanoprobes.”
“So,” interrupted Skal, “the simulacrum got at least as far as the initial reconnaissance and threat assessment protocol.”
“Yes, sir. It could have told you whether any given sentient on the planet was asleep or awake, if asked. But immediately thereafter the simulacrum appears to have sustained damage to its primary neuroprocessor. We suspect a virus native to Lindell III was the culprit.”
“So, the simulacrum became inoperable at that point?”
Jvora replied nervously, “No, sir. It began…rendering moral judgements against the natives.”
“What?! Moral judgements?”
“Yes, sir. Somehow its threat assessment wetware became corrupted. Instead of determining which natives might pose a threat to our colonization of the planet, it instead began categorizing them into good and bad subpopulations.”
“You mean to tell me that an advanced scout simulacrum has been just sitting in an arctic wasteland on Lindell III making abstract and meaningless moral assessments of that world’s population?”
Jvora had to fight the urge to withdraw completely into his exoskeleton and seal it shut. “Not exactly, Commander. The simulacrum has also been…making toys.”
Skal stared at his subordinate for what seemed like an eternity. “Making…toys?”
“Sir, the wetware mutation set off a metacognitive cascade failure. The matter compiler that was sent along with the simulacrum that would have been used to replicate weapons, vehicles, and other supplies the colonization force might have needed on arrival was instead repurposed to manufacture and distribute toys to those whom the simulacrum deemed morally worthy. These latter appear to be predominantly the young of the planet’s dominant species.”
Skal cradled his head in his pincers. “You’re telling me the simulacrum has spent all this time on Lindell III not preparing the–” Skal looked at the datapad for the demonym of the planet’s inhabitants “–the humans for their world to be colonized, but has instead been giving presents to children it judges to be good?”
“I’m afraid so, sir,” said Jvora. “It’s been doing this for so long that an entire mythology has arisen around the simulacrum’s persona. It has become part of the planet’s culture.”
Skal clambered down from his platform and paced the room. “Lieutenant, we have no choice but to abort any attempt at colonizing Lindell III. Moreover, we have to make sure no other simulacra have been similarly compromised. Perhaps it was a microbial pathogen unique to that world, but we can’t afford to take any chances. We’ll need to dispatch recon probes to check on all simulacra that were assigned to that part of the galaxy. See to it, Jvora.”
“Yes, sir,” said the Lieutenant. “I’ll make a list of all the simulacra we need to investigate.”
“Do so. And Jvora?”
“Sir?”
“Check that list twice!”
by Duncan Shields | Dec 24, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The thing about sleeping in zero g is that I have a lot of dreams about being in my mother’s womb except that in my dreams, my mother is sleeping in zero g as well. That’s impossible because my mother never went to space. She was sixty before the alien diplomats came down to Earth, one in every major city and no two aliens the same. Glittering ships that defied all reason touching down like inverted chandeliers before discharging creatures trained to field questions in English through their translators. The one in my home down of Phoenix Arizona was a tall insect that looked like a violet, leafless tree that walked around on crab-leg roots with a tight line of softly-glowing blue eyes down its trunk.
I was twenty-five years old at the time but still, when I saw that creature, I felt like a six-year-old who knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. Your calling can come at any time, I guess.
I wake up smiling at the memory and uncurl, the light slowly branding up to daylight in my quarters. I turn on the gravity and look out the window. Through the porthole, I can see a cadmium cue-ball planet with scudding blue clouds and a double meridian of shadow from its two suns. It’s beautiful. I’ll be briefed about its name in a second but for now I just drink in the view and once again swim deep in the wonder and pride I have at my job.
And then I look in the mirror.
I had alopecia when I was thirteen which means my body hair grows in patches now. I also have a dark wine birthmark that splashes across half of my face and most of my right arm. One of my eyes has too much eyelid and is higher than the other while my wide, thick lips hang like deflated inner tubes over the ragged jut of my huge, uneven teeth. My chin pushes forth like the prow of a ship. My nose is more like a beak and would probably come down to nearly touch my shelf of a chin if it hadn’t been broken in a youthful bicycle accident. It’s like a shark fin shaped into a child’s drawing of a lightning bolt in the middle of my face.
My point is that by human standards, I’m ugly. Hideously ugly. Almost comically ugly.
And the aliens don’t care. Because of that, I smile again like I do every day here. I don’t care if I ever see Earth again.
I take a morning sip from the protein udder on the wall and zip up into my jumpsuit. As I leave my quarters and join the flow of traffic to the main hall, I bump into a krinotaur. I think it’s beautiful. It flows past me like a wave settling next to the shore.
Maybe it took the job for the same reason I did. Maybe its eye cluster is too bulbous. Maybe its leg-stalks are too short. Maybe its communication mandibles have a noticeable stutter or lisp equivalent that’s erased by the translators.
I would have no idea.
Everyone’s earned the right to be here. We’re diplomats and we’re intelligent representatives. I know that the other life forms have tests and training just as stringent as my own that brought them here. We’re good at what we do; useful to our homeworlds.
I head to the briefing room to learn about the white planet below us and what city I’ll be assigned to welcome them into the galactic council.
by Clint Wilson | Dec 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
“Xachnore you shouldn’t play with that it’s dangerous!”
“Not to worry Tzhamlaa. I’ve got it pointed into the light matter zone. Nothing lives there.”
“And just how do you know that Mr. smarty sheath? There are some academics who would disagree with you. Who gives you the right to decide if life resides in other dimensions or not?”
“Come now Tzhamlaa, aren’t you the slightest bit curious to see if it will work?”
“No Xachnore, I am not.”
“But it’s a bicarbonite reverse quark splitting ray with an extra turbo vacuum splicer! There’s nothing like it!”
She was still unimpressed and so she swirled away, taking all of her undulating teeth-whiskers with her and, with a harrumph, jelly-morphed through the wall and out into the mainstream.
Xachnore shrugged his eight shoulders and bubbled, “Ah, who needs her? I’ll have all the fun to myself.” And with that he released the micro switches in quick sequence, and unleashed a plume of vacuum as big as the three ribbon-moons combined. “Yes!” he yelled. “It works!”
September 24th, 2022: As the world goes about its business, eight billion people, eating, shopping, driving, sleeping, bathing, loving, dying, simultaneously experience a split instant of the brightest white light anyone has ever imagined, as our galaxy implodes with a pop and disappears forever. The resulting shockwave cuts Andromeda in half.
by submission | Dec 18, 2013 | Story |
Author : Aaron Koelker
The first note, neatly folded into squares, appeared a short ways off the park path where I enjoyed my evening walks. Had I not spotted the strange rippling effect, like a vertical pane of crystal clear water broken by a gentle leaf cast down from the tree of time, I would’ve never seen it. I wouldn’t have hunched my shoulders against the autumn chill and left the path; have never known she would exist. I picked it from the grass and unfolded it with cold fingers, frosted breath screening the neat handwriting.
To anyone who finds this, kindly write your name and the date in the space below. Then return this message to the EXACT spot you found it, or as best you can. It is very important to us, and will be much appreciated.
I thought it a joke at first, or some student’s social experiment. Did they assume I’d have a pen? I did, though. I had written out a check to my psychiatrist earlier that night.
Walter Kinsley. 11/29/2013.
I folded the note back into the same little squares in which I’d found it and lay it back on the grass, more or less where it had been. Then I returned to the path and waited a moment, wondering if whoever had put it there would run to retrieve it.
Instead the ripple returned, though now directly before me and leaving little doubt as to its existence, and the note vanished. I was bewildered, suddenly exhausted, and decided I would need to see my psychiatrist again sooner rather than later.
The next evening, while walking the same route at roughly the same time, I found the second note much like the first. I snatched it up and found the same handwriting; the same message. Below that was an addition.
If this is Walter, then hello again! And thanks for your help!
I replied.
Who are you?
The next night I found a third note, though this time I waited an hour for it, alone and shivering.
My name is Claire…
She told me she was from the future, at a time when dozens of private parties raced to produce reliable time travel, the goal being to send a human there and back in one piece. She told me that the notes really helped the project; eliminated bugs, honed the data, perfected the art.
And thus began our strange relationship, with hundreds of messages to follow, growing progressively longer until it was several papers folded together appearing each night. I went along, all the while surprised at how calmly I handled it. Quite unlike me.
When we ran out of professional topics, we shared our interests. I said I liked 90’s rock. She liked the Oldies. Turned out they were the same. We shared our lives, our hopes, our dreams. At first for the sake of science, of course, but I couldn’t help falling for her. Hard. I figured she liked me too, since the notes continued even after she told me that phase of the project had ended.
She finally wrote.
Talk about long distance, huh?
The longest distance.
Of course, my psychiatrist thinks I’m completely bonkers. He’s changed my meds a dozen times, though I know I’m fine. I don’t even feel like I need them anymore. The anxiety, the depression; both gone.
She wants to volunteer as the first human through the ripple, and I’ll be waiting. Waiting for her to make that long distance through time and space feel so incredibly small.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 16, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Yes, the aliens were invasive. Savagely invasive. But how could we blame them? We were a treasure trove to them.
The aliens had no name of their own, you see. As a warrior race, they let the planets they invaded name them. As they took planet after planet and civilization after civilization, they collected names. They were up to one hundred and sixty four.
Unpronounceable names screaming forth from terrified beaks, mental picture collages from psychic races, bursts of scent from pheromone speakers, they were all collected in their databank.
If a planet had no sentience, the aliens moved on. Slaughtering animals that could not name them held no interest.
And this is why Earth was like a rainbow of temptation to them.
With over 6900 languages on Earth, the aliens could increase their name count (and thereby their reputation) by factors of ten. And that didn’t even include slang or scientific definitions.
They took their time, making sure to take at least one speaker of each language to record their names for posterity while they laid waste to us.
It was fascinating for us to find out that the way we split and diverged our languages was unique. Most alien civilizations leaned towards a common language but we didn’t. What a strange thing to find out on the eve of our doom.
They didn’t destroy the forests or the oceans. They only targeted the cities and the towns.
As a reward for our staggering bounty of names, they left enough of us to start another stable gene base with the promise that they would be back in another ten thousand years to do it all over again after we’d evolved and split and developed new languages.
There are a hundred thousand of us now. They picked us all up and dropped us in Indonesia where it’s hot most of the time. We’ve started having as many babies as possible and doing our utmost to survive and keep each other safe.
Earth is reclaiming the ruined cities. The stink of human death is dissipating on the wind. In time the animals will multiply faster than we can eat them and the oceans will fill back up with fish.
Although this is the worst chapter of human history, or maybe even the end of it as we have no way to record our findings now other than scratching on bark or painting on cave walls, it sometimes feels as if we are in a new Eden.
I am thirty-two years old. I am on a beach in this hot country. The sun is going down. I can smell the boar our party killed cooking on the dinner fire. Sixty-three women are having babies in the next few months. We are by necessity polygamous to increase diversity for strength. We have no shame at nudity and we must not tolerate jealousy.
We’ve painted pictures of the aliens on any available surface as a warning to future generations. We are struggling to maintain one language among us but we are from all over the world. It’s hard. But we’re trying harder than humanity has ever tried to speak one language to each other so we can all understand. We are one tribe now.
I cannot bring myself to thank the aliens. My own family and all of my friends were killed. I am the only person from my city left alive.
But sometimes in moments like this sunset, I feel something like gratitude in my chest and it makes me feel conflicted inside.
I turn away from the sunset and go to eat.
