by Patricia Stewart | Sep 1, 2013 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
It had been four days since the ship’s doctor had quarantined the galley and shut down the deck’s gravity plates, and Captain Carson was becoming concerned. Not about the unwanted patient that was hold up there, but about his ship, its crew, and his now unachievable delivery schedule. Determined to regain control of his ship, the captain floated into the ad hock sickbay to confront his chief medical officer. “Mary, how much longer is this going to take? I have a schedule to maintain. I can’t afford to spend a week drifting around interstellar space because of that damn stowaway.” He pointed to the large gelatinous lifeform strapped down to a stainless steel food preparation station in the center of the room.
“Who let you in here?” snapped Dr. Breckinridge. “And put a mask on.” The medical staff suddenly began to scramble around the patient. Clearly, the captain realized, something significant was happening. Just then, a pinkish fog erupted form the undulating red blob. The captain instinctively began to gag as the vile smelling fog entered his throat. “As you can see, Captain,” protested the doctor, “we’re pretty busy right now. Please wait outside. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
A half hour later, the doctor and her staff drifted into the main corridor where the captain was not-so-patiently waiting. As the last medical technician exited the galley, he shut the hatch, and began entering codes into an adjacent control panel.
“Well Doctor, I’m through mincing words. Now that it’s over, when can I jettison your patients out the air lock?”
“Not so fast, Cliff. We have to gradually reduce the temperature in the galley to minus 270K, so the vapors can condense in the correct sequence. Then the liquid will need to accrete, polymerize, and crosslink. After that, we need to pull a vacuum…”
“I don’t want the details, Doctor. I want a day, and a time!”
“Fine, if you insist. The day after tomorrow, around 1400. But really, Cliff, what is your problem? Don’t you care about the sanctity of life?”
“Not when it comes to Etheronians. But unfortunately, I can’t do whatever I want. Regulations force me to shut down my reactors and provide assistance, which I have, by the way. I just don’t understand why the world needs to come to a stop just because an Etheronian hitches a ride on a starship. By the way, did you figure out how that damn thing got onto my ship in the first place?”
The doctor smiled. “Ship’s captains have been asking themselves that question for centuries. No one seems to know. It just happens. You should be savoring the moment? The rest of the crew isn’t spittin’ comets, like you.”
“Well, maybe the crew likes eating Q-rations. I don’t.” The captain pirouetted and pulled himself toward the turbolift. A few minutes later, the captain walked onto the bridge. It was comforting, he realized, to feel the pull of artificial gravity again. He strided to the command chair and sat down. That’s when he noticed that the entire bridge crew was staring at him.
“Well?” asked Lieutenant Faunce at Opps.
“They will be gone in two days, Lieutenant. Then things can get back to normal.”
Lieutenant Faunce put her hands on her hips and scowled through murderous, squinting eyes. “You know, sir, that’s not what I wanted to know.”
“Oh, very well, Lieutenant, it’s a girl.”
by submission | Aug 29, 2013 | Story |
Author : Lindsey McLeod
“Good afternoon!” The teller chirped happily as Nagano sat down at the first available desk. “Welcome to FilmScape! What may I help you with today?”
“I’d like to cancel my account,” he said, sliding his card across the counter.
The robot picked up the card. “You are a valued customer, sir!” it piped happily. “We will do whatever it takes to retain you, sir!”
“Yes but you see,” Nagano said, “I don’t actually use my subscription anymore.”
The robot turned to the machine on the counter beside it, and inserted what could loosely be called a finger.
“You last used your account 412 days ago, sir!” it burbled. “How may FilmScape improve your service?”
“I don’t want you to improve it,” Nagano said patiently. “I don’t use it. You can’t improve on something that isn’t actually being used.”
The robot processed this statement. “You are a valued customer, ” it said eventually.
“I want,” Nagano said, as calmly as he could manage, “To Cancel. My Subscription. Please.”
The robot tilted its head slightly. “Did you not enjoy your subscription, sir? You rated many of our services very highly.”
“Well, yes,” Nagano said, “but the thing is, I’m not using them anymore, am I?” He realised he was crushing his cigaretto packet in his fist.
The robot narrowed its eyes. “Are you switching to another provider?”
“What?”
“It’s another provider, isn’t it?” the robot barked. “Networld or Cinefare or one of those other -” it actually seemed to sneer, “-peasant quality film services. Admit it!”
“No!” Nagano said desperately. “It’s just – I’ve got to a point in my life – I’m so busy all the time, with work… Look, I just don’t have time. It’s not you, it’s me. Honestly.”
“I see,” the robot said. The disapproval in its tone could have carved a glacier in the Mountain of Shame. “You might have thought about that before you took out such a long subscription. FilmScape was under the impression you wanted a stable contract for security and comfort.”
“I did, at the time,” Nagano said weakly. “But things change. People cha- I mean, er, things change,” he corrected hastily.
If possible, the robot looked even more disapproving. “I see,” it said crisply. It turned back to the machine on the desk, inserted another small whirring part of its anatomy, and produced a huge pile of coloured papers. “You’ll have to fill out these forms.”
“What, all of them?” Nagano said in horror, as they thudded heavily onto the desk in front of him.
“Yes,” said the robot. “In triplicate.”
Nagano stared at the robot. The robot stared back.
“Some of them are double-sided,” it added smugly.
“Couldn’t I just-” he began.
“No,” it said simply, and with finality. “Here is a pen.” A small blue biro was propelled slowly, maddeningly, across the counter towards him. Nagano fought a sudden, murderous urge to stab.
“You know,” the robot said after a few moments, leaning what could loosely be called its elbows on the counter. “Your subscription is one of the cheaper packages. I could always discount that a little further for you. As a valued customer, sir. Perhaps even a couple of months…. free.” This last was suggested in a low, back-alley whisper.
Nagano looked deep into the beady eyes of the robot teller. They flickered minutely for a moment. Was that triumph?
“Fine,” he said resentfully, throwing the pen back across the counter. “Discount me. I’ll be back in a few months to cancel the damn thing again.”
The robot leaned closer. “Persistence is key,” it said quietly. “Have a nice day, sir.”
Outside, Nagano lit a worse-for-wear cigaretto with hands that trembled in frustration.
A small automatron waddled up to him, holding out a little red leaflet. “Would sir like to consider the possibility of opening a Cinefare account?”
The cigaretto, in obeyance of the laws of gravity, hit the pavement a second after Nagano broke into a run.
by Clint Wilson | Aug 27, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Quintari looked out the huge view screens at the inky night sky. The eight dying stars still visible to the naked lens were faint and alone against their velvet backdrop. She addressed her long time companion. “Ventry, do you recall the old sky, when you were still flesh? So many visible stars in those days. If I still had those old organic eyes I should not be able to even see a pinprick of light when I look upon this pitiful smattering before us.”
Ventry clicked and whirred for a time. Even his seemingly indestructible parts, assembled with precision tolerances down to mere atoms in thickness, were starting to wear after all these thousands of millennia. “My files are so glitchy that far back. I don’t remember.”
She felt sorry for him. He was only two thousand years older than her but the silicells that made up his processor were flawed at the quantum level, and deteriorating much faster than hers. It mattered not anyhow. The universe was coming to an end. Everyone had known this for a long time. But now it was just the two of them, and it was real. It was finally approaching.
Suddenly he perked up and addressed her. “You will be the one you know?”
“I will be the one what?” she asked.
“You will be the end of it all.”
“What do you speak of you crazy old man?”
“We are the last. If not for us, this universe would already be over with.”
She highly respected the intelligence of her lifelong companion and wondered what he was getting at. “Okay, can you please explain it to me as if I were a child?” Sometimes when she conversed with Ventry she indeed felt like one.
He broadcasted a random friboppery of bubbles and blips, his version of a laugh. “After all we’ve talked about, after all the meditating, the inner searching, do you not see it yet?”
She stretched the corner of her avatar screen up at a rakish angle, her version of a smirk. “Of course I know the universe is cooling and expanding, dying in fact, faster than we ever predicted it would. But what philosophical connection are you trying to make?”
“Trying? Made it all ready!”
She loved his brilliance. “Please go on oh wise one.” Another smirk.
“My processor will deteriorate completely within a hundred thousand years, more or less, beyond any capability of thought; reduced to a pile of hiccupping circuits like dying embers in a fire.”
“Let’s assume you’re right,” she replied, knowing full well that he was.
“You will go on,” he continued, “assuming your advanced and far superior silicells don’t encounter some rogue radioactive attack or some such, for at least several more millions of years.
“I can only hope.”
“But eventually even the permabonds holding them together will weaken as they lose particles via dimensional osmosis, and you will shut down as well, the last survivor, the final intelligence of this ancient universe.”
“And then when I’m gone things will still go on. The husks of dead stars will continue to cool and race away from one another.”
“Oh you think so?”
“Well what would be the alternative?”
“You really don’t know Quintari my dear?”
“Just spare me the suspense and tell me my love.”
Then the wisest man who had ever lived told her. “This universe exists based solely on our perception and observance. Once you cease to exist it will die with you.”
Quintari sat silent, pondering the weight of this new information. Suddenly she felt like crying but didn’t know how.
by submission | Aug 26, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I slowly wake up. I’m in a hospital bed. An IV in my left antecubital vein slowly infuses normal saline. I feel like I need to urinate, but I have a suspicion. I look. Yep, Foley catheter in place. I smile. “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” I say aloud.
I hear a knock at the door. A man wearing blue surgical scrubs walks in.
“Hello. I’m Dr. Waples. Was that Neil Armstrong you were quoting right before I walked in?”
“Yes,” I say. “I assume I’m not the first guy to use that line to appear wittily ironic under the circumstances?”
“I’ve had two other patients in the past do the same,” the doctor says with a smile. “How do you feel?”
I look at my hands. They’re perfect right down to the scar on my left index finger. Cut myself slicing an orange when I was a kid. I run my tongue across the interior surface of my teeth. The left maxillary central incisor protrudes slightly compared to the right just as it always has.
“I feel fine. Except I could do without…” I gesture at the Foley catheter.
“Nurse will be in in a minute to remove that,” the doctor says.
“You know,” I say, “I thought I’d be…different. I mean, at least a little.”
The doctor nods. “Everyone says that. I said it myself when I ‘arrived’. The scanners back on Earth image all the way down to the atomic level and the fabricators on this end synthesize cells and tissues and organs with the same precision. A few months ago I had a new arrival who had the same cold she — or rather her original — had back at the time she was scanned. Fabricators reconstituted the rhinovirus.
“I need to ask you a few simple questions just to check your orientation,” the doctor continues. “What is your name?”
“Kenji Herrera.”
“And what is the current date, by which I mean last date you recall from a few subjective minutes ago on Earth before you woke up here?”
“February 3rd, 2452.”
“That’s correct, although the current date is in fact October 23rd, 2456. Travel time for your scan data to get here plus time for fabrication. Could you tell me where we are right now? What is this place we’re in?”
“The Niven Reconstitution Station orbiting Alpha Centauri B.”
The doctor nods. “Alert and oriented times three,” he says.
Another knock at the door. A robot walks in and stands next to the doctor.
“I’ll step out and let the nurse take care of your catheter and IV. I’ll be back to do a complete exam in a few minutes. Then we can let you start a liquid diet and advance you up to solids if you handle the liquids okay.”
“Sounds good, doc,” I say with a laugh.
“Something funny?” the doctor asks as he’s turning to leave.
“Just this,” I respond sweeping my hands over my trunk and legs and extending them out at the room. “It took a hundred years for this station to travel here from Earth orbit so we could start replicating scanned copies of people. No mighty starships with magical faster-than-light drives. No dramatic teleporting down to ‘explore strange new worlds’. And this is how space explorers make their entrance into the final frontier: an IV in an arm, an oxygen mask, and a tube running from one’s bladder to a plastic bag.”
The doctor smiles and nods and leaves the room as the machine nurse walks toward my bed.
by submission | Aug 25, 2013 | Story |
Author : Sevanaka
It is an unnatural sensation. A man is meant to know – thoughts firmly grasped in hand. Oh, for the sweetness of emotion, the joy and sorrow and bubbling laughter and the deepest pits of despair. For the solid stoicism, the reassuring taste of logic and math and the ever-expanding pursuit of knowledge. Instead there is the noise – the gutteral, deafening howl of the wind screaming its objection.
Someone here is yelling, too. The sheer terror of this step, this short launch from atmosphere as the craft is slung towards space at a frigtening pace. His fists balled, knuckles stark white as he braces against the vibrations. Once upon a time, it was much worse, he knew. Strapped to the back of what amounted summarily to a large, directed bomb; a tin can with tiny windows peering out into the blackness of night. Still, every fiber of his being protested furiously at the transit.
His hands ache, his head pounds. Fleeting memories distract him: the clearest blue of sky and an open field. Wildflowers and swaying grass brushing his knees, and her smile. He’s leaving her now. He loves her. He remembers their first kiss, stolen under a full moon. The sweaty nights tangled in sheets and the whispered words and autumn and the stained oak writing desk and winter and magnificent carosels with tufts of colored sugar and spring again. The brilliant glint of light as he knelt and asked the words.
A sharp bounce throws him from the thoughts and his eyes catch sight of the viewport. She couldn’t come with him. No place for children, were the words from Command. Her picture, her smile, happily gazing up at him from the console. Yet he can’t see her, eyes barely focusing on the scrolling readouts.
Some of the crew can be heard, barking commands or laughing that nervous, jittery shallow chuckle. Expectation. Congratulation. Careful, measuered excitement. She won’t know the feeling, being thrown, tossed gracelessly, flung aimlessly into the blackness of night.
The shouting is getting louder. Screams, really. Gut-wrenching. Loud. Louder. Mote by mote the stars wink into existance. The noise rises in pitch and slowly, steadily, abates. The deafening roar collapses down to a mewling thrum. The great expanse of blackness looms ahead, dotted with the radiance of a trillion suns. He’s leaving her. Already the smile in the photograph looks like a distant memory. Yet the feeling that grips his chest, securing him against the noise, the thrum, the growl, reminds him what the greatest expanses of infinity could never give him. He’ll be back in a year.
The man’s throat protests: raw, dry, hoarse.
The screaming stops.
Space beckons.
