by submission | May 18, 2013 | Story |
Author : Dawn Napier
Six year old Jacob found the marble under his bed, behind a grey bin filled with army vehicles. It was bright blue and glowed faintly in the dusty darkness.
Jacob picked up the marble—then dropped it again. It was hot, so hot that it burned his hand. He stuck his fingers in his mouth, and the pain faded. The blue glow flared a little brighter as it bounced on the carpet.
He inched forward until his nose was almost touching it. It glowed, but there was no heat coming off it. To the tip of his nose it could be any of the marbles decorating the bottom of his toy chest. There were little while specks and streaks moving around in there. He wanted to touch it again. He didn’t want to be burned again. He put his hand out—then withdrew. But his curiosity deepened until it was a burning itch in the back of his head. He picked it up again.
This time the marble was pleasantly warm. He squeezed it in his fist and took it downstairs to show his mother.
“What’s that, punk?” Mom asked. She looked up from her laptop.
“Gotta marble.” Jacob held it up, but not too close. He didn’t want his mother to touch it. He was still a little afraid of it.
Mom peered at it. “I don’t remember buying you any marbles that color. The house’s old owners must have left it.”
“Where’s Dad? I wanna show him.”
“He’s still at work. He’ll be back for dinner.” Mom was typing at her laptop again.
“I wanna show him this marble. I think it’s a universe.”
Mom closed the laptop very hard and looked at Jacob. “What did you say?”
“I think it’s a universe. Dad told me the whole entire universe was big as a marble, then God made the Big Bang happen and it all exploded everywhere.”
“Some say that God did it.” Mom made a funny frown. “Nobody knows for sure, though.”
“Well that’s Dad’s hypo-fesis. That God did it.”
Mom laughed and hugged him. “You sure are a smart cookie.”
“I’m not a cookie!” Jacob squirmed away and ran back upstairs. When he reached the top of the staircase, he threw the marble down the steps and yelled, “Big bang!”
“Jacob please don’t throw—”
The universe exploded.
by submission | May 16, 2013 | Story |
Author : Jay Hill
Corporal Hawkins woke to a loud ringing in his ears, the sound muted only slightly by the rush of pain swimming across the top of his skull. He undid the strap on his Kevlar helmet and ran his hand through the blood and sweat pouring down from his high and tight haircut. Probing with his fingers, he felt the raw flesh above his right eye, fingering the gaping fold of skin above his brow. A thin shred of shrapnel had sliced a long line in the space between the top of his shooting glasses and the lower edge of his helmet.
“That’s gonna leave a scar,” he said to himself.
A loose wet groan emerged from the mound of flak jacket and camouflaged utilities less than a foot away.
“Gunny,” he called over to the Gunnery Sergeant. The sniper lay on the ground. The laser targeting system that pinpointed his rifle, then heated the 50 caliber ammunition to nearly 621.5 degrees – the melting point for lead – caused the weapon to explode in his hands, turning each bullet into shrapnel that ripped his upper torso apart. A Chinese counter-assault weapon, made with technology stolen from the Japanese. The proximity to his chest, added to the magnitude of the detonation and the absorption limits of his protective armor left the young Marine severely wounded, but not yet dead.
“Gunny,” the spotter repeated, “You okay?”
“Hawkins,” Gunnery Sgt. Dickerson roused slowly. “Hawkins, you gotta go,” the scout sniper said. “You’ve got to leave me.”
“What are you talking about? I can’t leave you.”
After a hundred years of struggle in the Middle East over oil deposits, the United States found themselves once again poring over the Ghazni province in Afghanistan. Following the Great Recession, the U.S. lead the global conversion from fossil fuels to battery operated vehicles, but batteries need lots of lithium and vanadium. The latter proved abundant, but the former, lithium was abundant in only two places: Bolivia and Afghanistan. Once Bolivia emptied, it left only the old mountainous terrain.
“There’s nothing you can do,” the sniper retorted. “And I out rank you. Get back to the base and give them this intel.”
Securing the optimal locations for mining was never going to be easy, but with the recent advance by the Chinese front, Marine reconnaissance teams were stretched thinly over a wide and desolate region.
Still, the spotter hesitated.
“Corporal, I’m giving you an order!”
“But we never leave a man behind.”
“Mission first,” the sniper said, holding out his fist in a defiant gesture.
Hawkins placed his hands over the top of it. “It’s been an honor,” he whispered.
“Besides,” Dickerson continued, “They’ll send somebody out to make sure we’re dead.” He pulled the pin on his grenade and clutched it between his chest and arm, letting the weight of his torso compress the charge temporarily, then did the same with a second grenade.
“And when they roll me over.…”
Boom. Neither of them said the word, but both Marines understood the concept.
The spotter had enough water to last two days, enough food for three meals. Using the map, he estimated it was 150 to 160 kilometers to the closest thing resembling friendly civilization. If he averaged 80 kilos per day, about four miles per hour over the rough landscape, at ten hours a day, then he could make it before he ran out of provisions. There was little room for error, and practically no time for resting.
He plotted his direction and trudged off alone.
by submission | May 15, 2013 | Story |
Author : Townsend Wright
The girl with the bright red hair walked into the dingy, ramshackle hotel. The lobby was edged with people, some standing, watching, most asleep under old coats or bags, except one man with a disfigured face who was sitting cross-legged in meditation.
She walked up to the old man behind the front desk. “Room for the night.” The man looked up and stared wide at her unnaturally red hair. “Relax,” she said and split a part in her hair to show him, “roots, see? Bad fashion statement.” She shoved a wad of bills, some ancient American some World Empire and a few from the numerous makeshift governments forming and dissolving the world over. He funneled them all into a bag and handed her a key, didn’t even bother counting. She took the key and headed for the stairs.
A voice from behind her, “Hey, bitch!” followed by a sharp pain in her right shoulder, “your roots have roots.” Shit, she thought, I waited too long to dye my hair and now there’s a knife in my shoulder. Even if he doesn’t know for sure as soon as the knife comes out there’s no hiding it. With her left hand she dislodged the knife and fire spewed from the wound. In a matter of seconds the fire ceased and all that remained was a smudge of scorched blood. “Ain’t seen a Phoenix in a long time.” Twenty seven generations of careful breeding and genetic manipulation creating dozens of different strains of super soldiers all gone to waste with the fall of another government. Hunted as freaks and recognized only by the visual abnormalities somebody thought might be fitting with the mythical creatures they named them after.
“Hyperactive healing stimulated by an extreme metabolic burn,” she murmured. “Makes someone like me very hard to kill.”
Another voice said “We can find a way.” She turned to see four large men holding knives and pipes.
“You can try.” One with a pipe ran at her. She ducked and swept the leg in one fluid movement, landing on her hands and toes while he landed on his face. She heard another coming at her and pushed off her feet into a front flip that put her facing the new attacker. This one had a knife. She blocked his jab with the knife that hit her shoulder. The third guy came at her with another knife, leaving her with only her left forearm to block. The result was a large gash from her thumb to her elbow. She stuck the flame in the face of the second knife guy. He backed off with his hands grasping his face. Where’s the fourth guy? she thought as her knife fight continued. The guy was advancing. He was good with a knife, but after a few swipes she could see he was going to leave his side wide open.
Before that could happen the man with the disfigured face jumped in and put his hand on the guy’s forehead for a few seconds. He put his knife away, “See you later,” and walked out.
The man looked at her with yellow eyes. “Hope you don’t mind.” A Sandman, able to alter the memories and thought processes of others. He put one hand on the back of her head and held up an old picture of a young man. Suddenly, in her mind, his disfigured face was replaced with that of the man in the photo. “I like my friends not to cringe at the sight of me.”
“Thanks. Good to have company.”
by Desmond Hussey | May 13, 2013 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
17th Day, 8th Lunar, 1860 N.E. (New Earth )
09:47:23 I look to the west; to the future. I meditate on how close we came to not having one. Our predecessors, our degenerate, self-obsessed ancestors destroyed themselves. We’d be naught but savages now if not for the Founders. They changed the course of history; gave us a second chance, a chance to build a better world. They found the Crystals, which in turn, supplied us with endless power. All praise the Founders!
09:56:43 My droids hum industriously, completing final diagnostics on the Chronoscope. The sound is vivifying. I’m so close! I’ve longed to know what minds could have constructed such monuments to civilization as this long-dead metropolis spread out before me, now crumbling into ruin. High in my laboratory atop the only structure remaining of this vast, ancient city, I wonder: What was life like in those massive, overcrowded cities? What happened to our ancestors who disappeared mysteriously so long ago?
A dark veil has been cast over history, obscuring any knowledge of that time. The Second Dark Ages. Overnight, they simply vanished.
All but 500,000. The Founders of New Earth.
If little is known about Old Earth, less is known about the Founders. No historical records exist before the year 100 N.E. Seemingly intentionally, as if the Founders deliberately wanted to forget the past. Why? Why did they survive and an estimated seven billion disappear without a trace? These remain mysteries to this day. Mysteries I aim to uncover.
10:03:56 Alerts chime. Diagnostics complete. All systems green.
10:05:04 The brass and silver Chronoscope resembles a telescope suspended from the ceiling of my observatory by a multi-jointed, mechanical appendage. A complex array of spider-like, titanium limbs encases its objective lens. I aim it west.
10:06:03 Activate Chronoscope. Rpms accelerate rapidly. The Temporal array spins, whining and blurring.
10:06:45 Engage Temperal-Field Distortion. The tip of each limb flares into an incandescent blue spark, carving a ring of electric fire just beyond the Chronoscope’s lens. There’s a strong smell of ozone as tachyons bombard the fabric of space/time, penetrating deep into the past.
10:07:14 I step up to the eyepiece and look away from the future. I look to the past now, seeking answers.
10:08:32 Through the viewer I see a long tunnel, its walls rainbow-hued quicksilver, which terminates in a glorious spectacle – a vision of the past!
I’ve pierced the veil!
Wherever I aim the Chronoscope a thriving civilization fills my vision. I watch amazed as the ancient necropolis surrounding my tower springs to life, it’s citizens moving in real-time. Their lives are written on their faces. So indomitable! So intrepid!
10:18:27 Recalibrate the Temporal Dampeners to 1 yr/sec.
Days strobe endlessly past. Sunrise. Sunset. Buildings get taller. The city expands.
The population flourishes. Then multiplies. Again. Again. Again.
10:23:23 Then they’re gone. I stop. Rewind 5 yrs. Recalibrate: 1 mo/sec.
10:27:35 Nothing different but for a slowly settling fog, even in fast-motion. Bodies appear. Many bodies. A black flurry of activity. Something from the sky. Then nothing. They’re all gone. It’s over in seconds.
10:35:57 Rewind. Recalibrate: 1 day/sec.
10:38:46 I watch, horror-struck, as the city succumbs to the killing fog, released by black planes criss-crossing the skies. Black dump trucks arrive with white-clad drivers. The bodies are removed and piled in parks and parking lots. Ships come. Many ships. Alien ships. All bear the sygil of the Founders.
The bodies, millions of them are quickly loaded. Then the ships are gone, leaving behind great, pulsing green crystals.
Our payment.
by submission | May 11, 2013 | Story |
Author : K Esta
Time travel is impossible. Or so Charlie had always been taught to believe.
He stood shivering in the darkness of the November morning, his breath creating puffs reminiscent of his long-past smoking days. Worrying about cancer seemed so trivial now.
His leather gloves squeaked as he scrunched his hands inside them to warm his fingertips against his palms. Looking across the playground, motionless under a layer of frost, he ached to be home in bed curled up under the covers.
Watching from the shadows, Charlie saw the earlier version of himself arrive. The slightly-younger Charlie walked hesitantly passed the swing set, the slide, and the jungle gym to the archway sitting innocuously beside the perimeter fence. He strolled around it, getting a good look from all angles, before stopping to run his hand over the crumbling brick surface.
Charlie remembered being that man. The awe he’d felt from the knowledge of the structure’s history and how it had become linked to an infinite mass in subspace. He recalled the butterflies in his stomach during that first step through.
He knew instantly that he would be successful, for he caught a glimpse of a figure, his future self, on the other side looking back at him. The arch began to spin around him, first slowly, then faster and faster, dragging space-time with it like a swirl of chocolate being stirred into a bowl of cream.
With a deep breath and another step, he emerged over the threshold just in time to turn and watch his previous self step through and disappear. He actually giggled.
A few hours later, he would learn the consequences of what he’d done. Anna. Not just Anna, but every sign of her. Their apartment had been transformed from a cozy home to a stark bachelor pad.
This was Charlie’s fourth attempt to undo the damage. He had first tried to talk his previous self out of the trip, but hearing from his own future had caused the earlier Charlie to back away in alarm, and unwittingly stumble into the arch.
Sabotaging his research, even shooting his younger self in the back of the head, every tactic Charlie tried to stop that first foolish mistake was similarly thwarted. And each trip back had taken a casualty. His little brother, his best friend, his mother, they were all gone now.
And here he was, trying again, daring to believe it could be different this time. He watched the second Charlie arrive and approach the first. Then another Charlie appeared, pulling out a gun. He took careful aim and fired.
Charlie remembered this moment also. He’d intended to hit the first Charlie, but the pistol’s kick had been stronger than expected. He’d grazed the second Charlie’s ear instead.
As the first Charlie staggered backwards toward the arch, the second clutched his searing ear, and the third tried to line up for what would be another failed shot. This was his chance.
Charlie rushed them. Grabbing the coats of Charlies two and three, one with each hand, he pulled them forward—fighting repulsion from the sensation of sticky blood congealing on the injured Charlie’s sleeve. The three of them plowed into the first Charlie and they all crossed the threshold together.
The arch shuddered in protest, but began to rotate as it had before. The universe contorted, and Charlie’s memories fogged. It felt different this time; his body was consumed by prickling snaps of energy. The figures surrounding him blurred and vanished. Finally, the arch became still.
No one emerged. Time travel is impossible.
