by submission | Nov 26, 2013 | Story |
Author : Sean Kavanagh
The 3rd Planet-Formation Cadre sounded like an impressive title, but Dhan – like the others in his team – knew all it meant was that they were civil servants. Civil servants who got to fly about the galaxy seeding life on far flung barren planets, but all for mid-grade pay.
For six weeks now they’d been on this foreign world, hopping by shuttle from place to place, carefully laying the foundation for plant, animals – and if all went to plan – in the few thousand years’ time, intelligent life.
The hot desert and saline sea by their current site was depressing. Dhan did his work quickly during the day and retreated to the cool of the base camp at nightfall. Boredom was always deadly, so Dhan had his faithful notebook into which he’d pour his writing every night. It was the kind of mental safety valve all intergalactic civil servants needed.
The final week passed and the drop-ship appeared from the sky on schedule. Dhan waved as it flew over, and then scrambled to get his kit. It was his final mission of the tour. Next stop: home.
As the drop-ship slowly trundle into orbit Dhan had a broad smile on his face. Not only was his tour up, he’d finished writing his novel. His hand went to the bag to get the book. It wasn’t there. A quick search of the various pockets of his kit bag came up empty. He’d lost it. He’d really lost it. Dhan looked out the window as the planet below got further and further away, along with his notebook.
His friend Demy was watching Dhan all the while.
“What you lost? “
“Book, “ said Dhan gloomily.
“Ah, just forget about it. You can buy another. “ Demy closed one eye preparing to sleep.
“No, not that kind of book. My book. Something I’d written. “
“What, like a diary? “ Demy now had both eyes closed. “ Don’t worry, I won’t tell. They don’t even fine people anymore for cultural contamination on these new-build worlds. Well, not much anyway.”
Dhan threw his bag aside. “It wasn’t a diary, it was a…novel.” The last part came out quietly, partly through embarrassment.
“So that’s what you were writing! “ Teased Demy. “Honestly, you’re probably better off without it. And if it was any good, you can re-write it. “
“I suppose. “ Dhan slumped down in his chair. “I hope it doesn’t cause any problems. “
“Like what? “
“You hear stories: people who dropped toothbrushes or painkillers and ended up messing up the development of whole new societies. “
“Nah, that’s just tall tales,“ said Demy. “Stuff gets lost on foreign planets all the time. And nothing happens. Nothing. But maybe don’t report it, you know, just to avoid the paperwork. “
“Thanks Demy. “
“No problem. Demy exists to make life easier for all his workers. “ He yawned. “So, what was the title of this novel? “
“The Bible .“ Said Dhan.
by submission | Nov 22, 2013 | Story |
Author : Dakota Brown
“We are born out of darkness,” she told herself begrudgingly. “Certainly it holds no true power.”
Around her, the frightened masses had gathered (after, of course, a stretch of panicked footfalls and curses towards the heavens). They found each other in the confusion, linking arms and muttering their fears. The generators had shut down. The darkness was upon them.
She had made her way down the hospital corridors enough to know the dimensions by heart: each doorway passed had always been a moment of anticipation, each elbowed turn a stifled tear. Her mother’s room had been the destination, but when the last drop of gasoline burned out it became the starting point of a journey that she had too little time to fear.
The cables and wires connecting her mother to the hospital’s machines were removed hastily, her only hesitance the grunts of discomfort the frail woman attempted to hide.
“It’s not far,” the young girl lied. “And the lights may be back before our eyes can even adjust.”
The old woman mumbled part of a sentence, the intention of which was to know why the lights had gone out. Her daughter threw her around her neck and joked “I guess even the government has trouble paying their bills.”
Groans of sorrow, fear, and anger filled the darkness, the staff and patients reveling in their soon to be demise. Many sought answers from their gods. Many lashed out when they heard no answer.
Silence, a patient entity awaiting moments of extremity, made itself known. The hospital collectively fell to a hush, each person knowing what was to come. The girl trudged on, however, mother in tow.
“They think this is the end. I hate it for them. Their belief makes it so.”
A swift kick to the base of the entrance door marked the two women’s exit, though the darkness outside mirrored the one they had escaped.
“They have faith, mother, and that is important. But,” she trilled as she retrieved a battery cell from her satchel, “preparation needn’t be ignored.”
The two women, one small from age and one small from sickness, fit comfortably in the single occupant rail capsule. With a quick charge and a push of a button, the capsule lit up and shot off, the mother’s soft brown eyes flickering in the incandescent glow of the control panel. They were eyes that predated sickness. They were eyes that inspired action.
The girl imagined the residents of the city consumed by the darkness, allowing themselves to be torn into nothingness by the nothingness around them, all the while praying for release to gods who had granted them minds and willpower permitting their escapes.
They strained their voices and necks praying to the heavens, but she found the gods in a pair of hazel eyes.
by submission | Nov 21, 2013 | Story |
Author : Rachelle Shepherd
We stopped at the Drug Market for clone-cloves, street illegal copies of Indonesian spice and porn-shop perfume. They were thick rolls of black steel with bands of gold in a no-nonsense plastic wrap pack. Even their cellophane slip was less than legal litter, a fine of 50 credits and community service at the soup kitchen.
There was no 2000 era Surgeon General warning on these bootleg beauties.
All natural unnatural chemical release. The Historians say Americans used to pull this sap smoke thick straight to the lungs, relishing on the novelty of loiter fines. They crowded like fireflies outside nightclubs, winking in the shadows of crumbling stone masonry.
They kept the smokers from the non-smokers, segregating vices into self-righteous wrongs and rights. Even a smoker’s breath was poison and a clove was like to knock a set of virgin lungs into toxic shock.
Clone-cloves were no heat no smoke electronic gadgets, packed full of a body’s memory of epiphany and release. All it took was a kiss of lips to metal and our lungs puffed up like balloons, stretching pink and fleshy in our aching chests. The info-tech tickled when it poured down the throat, causing real-life real-time smoker’s cough. We hacked and gagged our way through the first stick and watched the tech fall apart like ashes in the wind.
Three pairs of boots in a puddle of metal shavings.
We were bloated on vice, giddy with the shock and sensation of peering into a dead past of unhealth and hospital bills. Giddy with the memory of smog clouds and ancestor waste.
Our pack passed hand to hand, puff and pass, nausea contagious.
There was nothing left but crinkling cellophane and churning stomachs, water-heavy lungs and a light head buzz. We held a small funeral at the corner side incinerator, paraphernalia flaring into ember. Spicy incense on the midnight air. Scent pollution.
Sudden cravings led us to a regulation café. I wanted a cup of caffeine and a new taste in my mouth. Something melting, something chocolate. Something to wash away the melancholy of propaganda.
by Duncan Shields | Nov 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The shapeshifting aliens are untrustworthy. It’s not their fault.
They see the world for what it is, through a kaleidoscope.
Us humans, we only get to see one viewpoint of the world. People react to our outer shell with no variation. We can get fat or thin or muscled over the course of a lifetime with some cosmetic surgery here and there, perhaps, but for the most part, we remain unchanged. This inescapable fact colours how we percieve the world.
Shapeshifters are both invisible and at the same time, all things to all people. They sense the fantasies that will make their missions of espionage go smoothly. That general likes the young girls, especially bobbed brunettes with scars, for instance. That high-ranking banker woman is pining for an old love. It’s a simple trick for a changeling to make itself resemble that old love in order to grease the information tracks.
This ability to make any human bend to their will gives the ‘shifters a much truer insight into humanity than we ourselves will ever possess.
It makes the changelings unreliable, regardless of the punishment chips and id tags we install to make them subservient and identifiable to us. They don’t set out to fool us. They just have fuses on their minds because of what they are. They start to despise all humans, not just their mission targets.
After that, they fall in love with each other.
The thing is, a ‘shifter will never be satisfied with a human. They can only be truly pleased with another changeling.
It’s like putting two mirrors face to face and creating an endless hallway.
Two shifters, embittered and ready to defect, will rent out a motel room. Once inside, they will shudder with changes. They will have a game of trying to match what the other puts forth. Clothes will disappear, bodies will melt and flicker through age and skin colour. Body parts will grow, shrink, or disappear in an ongoing fluidic transition from one form to the next, faster and faster.
They will see how aesthetically perfect they can make themselves and then how repulsive. They will pull out their entire repertoires. They will have sex with each other in every possible way, heating up the room.
After they have exhausted their options of humanity, they will start to delve deeper into the imagination. They can only do this with each other. Without another ‘shifter present to spur them on deeper into the realms that they could never go to separately, they would only be able to go through human forms.
Dragons, dogs, octopi, half-imagined air creatures made of bone clattering with sexual hunger, panthers, chittering car-sized insects, and misshapen sculptures of flesh with many holes to fill.
The changes become too fast and quick for their minds to keep up. In a mutual orgasm of delight, they die, leaving behind protoplasm and a bundle of fertilized eggs.
It’s not uncommon. About twice a year, two of our shifter agents will stop answering their phones. It’s only a matter of time before we track down the hotel where they ascended to another plane of existence.
If they weren’t so useful otherwise, we wouldn’t employ them.
by Julian Miles | Nov 19, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The bricks are antique but the ferropoxy used as mortar is a giveaway, after you scrape the film of cement coloured paint mixed with sand off.
“This is the place. Gird your loins, kids. Jig is on in three, two, one – strike!”
The doors are blackened oak. Their laminate armour cores fail to negate the demolition charges, but the military-grade shrapnel produced costs me three ops.
First wave goes in hard, ignoring my orders. The pit is classic trap-tech and I am surprised I hear no swearing from it until I peer in and see the bloody threads of asymmetrical monofilament. That’s just plain nasty. I’m seven ops down for two metres travel.
“Listen up! We’re seven-nil and not even in the bloody hallway! Sharpen your game or we’re offal. Clear?”
Twelve snappy assents and we’re back on. Bridging the pit with c-tube ladders takes time we don’t have. Forced to double-time, we avoid trip beams, pressure plates and searguns with microns to spare. Crashing through the door into the back room, I hear a metallic twang and drop as I shout a warning. Too late. I roll over and see four ops down with half-metre barbed bolts through them.
As I stand up, the timed charge triggered by the arbalest firing turns the room into a momentary inferno laced with bits of giant crossbow. Fortunately I have my back to the blast and my impact-absorbing backplate gets a workout. Doesn’t help the scorching to my butt or the backs of my thighs, but it’s better than the chest and gut shrapnel wounds sustained by three ops.
I’m face down in a corner and take my time getting up. Four ops left. This place is a death-trap! And with that, it dawns on me. This place is only that. Nobody would stuff their headquarters with this much lethality.
“Abort sortie. Out the way we came.”
Ten minutes of careful retreat later, we find a single sheet of steel blocking the hallway. Assessment reveals its set between runners made from old dockyard crane H-beams.
“Suggestions?”
There are none. The building is alight and our only known exit is gone. The ferropoxy mortar work makes this place a Faraday cage: reinforcements are out.
“Stairway or cellar?”
The ‘up’ vote is unanimous. Less chance of structural unpleasantness.
Fifteen minutes later we’re at the roof hatch; bloody, rattled but still five up. The hatch is wired but defusing primitive detonator traps is my speciality. My legs about the ladder, I check the charge on my sidearm, wave everyone out of potential lines of fire and slam the hatch open with everything I’ve got.
The rumbling below starts as the hatch lands above. I’m looking for the cause when the floor falls away, taking the rest of my team with it into the basement along with the building interior.
I hang there, listening to the now-unsupported roof creak. The rusted ladder sways as I breathe, but at least I have a signal.
“Tiger One, respond.” Urgency in the words.
“Tiger One is down.”
“Mackie. Anyone else?”
“No, ma’am.”
“She said she’d make you pay for her husband’s death.”
“It seems that the Mad Trapper is actually the Mad Trapette.”
“We have your location. The lifter will drop you a line.”
Nineteen crems to attend after skin regen and psych eval. Rebuild the team in a month, up and running two months after that. Shite. She’ll have three months to prepare because she knows I’ll be coming for her. Next time, only one of us walks away.
