by Clint Wilson | Feb 28, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The survival group, pulled from Earth by the alien craft mere hours before the cataclysmic solar event scrubbed the planet clean of all life, were still in absolute shock.
Some seven hundred refugees, huddled together in the large hold, listened as the alien with the round grey head spoke to them. “We have been monitoring your evolution for millennia via worm-cam. We can show you recorded images of any point in your history.” He motioned to a large wall, which suddenly blurred into a view screen.
The crowd murmured in awe as footage of prehistoric people hunting, gathering, creating fire and tools, was displayed before them for some time.
Then they were treated to actual images of great historical figures of their race. Gilgamesh, a fierce barbarian, as was Attila The Hun, Cleopatra, actually quite beautiful despite the rumors, and the great Julius Caesar! Folks whispered that he was taller and slenderer than any of them had imagined.
On and on the mesmerizing real life images went, until one man jumped up and shouted, “What about Jesus? I want to see Jesus!”
A few others scoffed at this crazy person with his ancient ideals. One woman snickered, “Who cares? Even if he existed he was only a man.”
The grey-headed alien cut them off. “Here he is if you should so desire.” The entire crowd skeptics alike shushed and stared at the black-haired, brown-skinned man walking across the desert in his flapping robes. The alien continued, “It’s true he was a human male, but we admit to tampering with him.” The people stared in sudden disbelief. “His message was really quite simple, implanted by us. But your kind were too savage to enact his ideals. Even those who claimed to follow him were mostly flawed.”
“I was not,” said the man who had originally jumped up. “I followed his ideals.”
“Yes, for the most part you did Tom Douglas. And that is why you are here.”
The man registered surprise. “You know my name?”
“Of course we do. Just like we know Mohamed Hassan over there who spent his life trying to follow the ideals of the prophet with whom he shares a given name, also influenced by us, and again misread by most who claimed to follow him.”
The Middle Eastern man looked back at Tom Douglas and said, “Good for you brother. Peace and tolerance is the only true path.”
Then a black teenage girl chimed in, “I’m not religious at all. So what do you make of that?”
The grey tilted his head lovingly. “It matters not Marsha Wilson that you followed a religion or not. Tell me Miss, to how many animals have you been cruel?”
“Why, none of course!”
“And how many times have you lied to achieve gain, monetarily or otherwise, over another person?”
“Well, none really ever… I guess.”
“I could go on but I think everyone here is getting the idea.” The seven hundred men, women and children looked at one another nodding slowly, many with tears in their eyes. For they all knew “generally” good folks who were not amongst them.
The grey went on. “There was only room for this many, and we had to act quickly. So here you are. And for those of you who still practice religion, now might be a time to thank your deity for giving you the sense to be true to the universe throughout your lives. Without this good sense there would be no hope for the human race… and we would have left you all to burn in the global apocalypse.”
by Julian Miles | Feb 27, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Helph mi.”
John’s my next door neighbour. He’s growing into a fine specimen of xenorchis caucasia. By the look of the scalar development that has absorbed his ears, his head will blossom in about a week. His body is mottled cream and purple, with his extremities shading to a beautiful jade green where they sink into the soil and the wood panelling of his house.
His wife took the kids and fled when he first mottled up. I hear that she’s the beautiful xenorchis negrosa on the Longbridge roundabout. Don’t know what happened to the kids, but infection of both parents gives a ninety percent chance of the children becoming xenomycotina, the fungi that are essential for these xenorchids to germinate.
As for John, I can’t do anything. The religious and legal status of the florated is still a hotly debated topic amongst the few of us who remain Homo sapiens.
Two years ago, we picked up a formation of six vessels as they passed Pluto, travelling faster than anything we had previously seen. By the time the information flashed around the warning systems of the world, they had entered our atmosphere. The world braced itself for momentous events, but all the vessels did was split up in the upper atmosphere and circumnavigate the globe a dozen times before departing rapidly, leaving nothing but a web of intricate contrails that faded before they left the solar system.
It was three months before we realised what they had done. We presume they were doing what they always do, a fast pass to allow them to unload millions of litres of water containing hundreds of millions of spores into the upper atmosphere. The reasons for said remain a mystery.
The spores made their way to earth through precipitation and on the outer skin of anything that passed through the upper atmosphere. Global distribution meant that containment was impossible. It also meant that the predictions of anarchy in the event of a global pandemic were largely circumvented by everybody blossoming at once. Any creature is a viable host. Adaptation seems to depend purely on mass. Elephants, whales and the few other examples of megafauna are moving masses of growth with the underlying creature apparently adapting to its newly symbiotic existence. However, smaller creatures are consumed entirely. Anything under forty kilos is reduced to one of the many subspecies of germination supporting fungi, anything over becomes a species of xenorchid. There are as many species as there are hosts and the only protection is the amount of certain minerals in the host body. Survivors ingest dangerous quantities of potassium, iron, zinc, copper, manganese and molybdenum in a daily regimen that is adjusted on a near-weekly basis as further research results come in. Those results also tell us that most flora on earth are now toxic to humans; an unfortunate side-effect, we presume.
As to what happens next, we have no idea. Eighty percent of Earth’s fauna are infected, including ninety-three percent of humanity. We don’t know if any of the resulting xenorchids are edible. Which raises a whole new ethical dilemma. Should we eat what were people if they are the only safe food? Will we be vulnerable to infection from ingested material?
Unfortunately we are agreed on the fact that we will have to confront these issues and a host of others we haven’t fully realised yet. This is not about winning. It’s about surviving.
by submission | Feb 25, 2013 | Story |
Author : Jonathan Pigno
There were weapons stashed in the Frigidaire. Alien toys. Things Elaine kept nestled under her dress for safekeeping when company arrived.
But her house-guests didn’t know it.
They remained unsuspecting and silent as she leaned in to reach for the cola bottles.
“So tell me again why you’ve come to Boise, gentleman?”
The suits looked up from their plates and stared at the middle-aged housewife. She was as inconspicuous as any Midwestern beauty queen – chestnut hair curled ever so gently over the base her shoulders, sparkling green eyes that matched the lawn outside.
Her polka dot dress looked like something off the newsstands. A perfect cover for Wink magazine. Things that drove the jukebox crowd wild.
Inside the oven, a pie was cooking. The strangers wondered if the recipe was secret, something only she had knowledge of and concealed ever so well.
But that was exactly what they had come looking for.
They gazed at the woman once more. Something told them she was an atom bomb. A nuclear explosion waiting to blow. But the fallout wasn’t caustic. It was historic.
The mystery men shook it off.
She smiled, placing the beverages onto the linoleum tabletop. She pulled out a seat and reclined next to them.
Both visitors looked at one another.
“We came to talk about your husband, miss. There has been investigations lately by the local law enforcement concerning the lights that were seen over this community. Our division has given us clearance to search the house for government property.”
She uncrossed her legs and straightened herself in the chair.
“My husband is a senior ranking official in the United States military, gentleman. His business is most certainly not mine…”
She pushed her bra up, narrowing her eyes and pursing her mouth. The red lipstick glistened. Her male guests soaked in the sight of her cleavage. The woman breathed in.
Underneath the table, Elaine heard a click.
“You fella’s are looking for the hard way, now am I correct?”
She clenched the holster tucked inside her black garter. She could feel the nose of the weapon against the darkened nylon stretched over her thighs.
The trio traded stares. That’s when the oven timer went off.
Elaine drew her gun and fired. It was a liberating bliss, a revolutionary kind of spark. She saw it in the smoking crater where her former guests smoldered.
Things were changing in Boise.
The housewife stood up and brushed soot off her clothing. Walking over to the window, she lit a cigarette and smiled into the dusk. She wanted to disprove it all, the misconceptions of who she was.
“I’m packing heat like Friedan’s publishing books.”
Elaine heard the screen door out back.
“Since when you get home?”
Her husband trotted over, still in uniform, and kissed the side of her face.
“I took the spaceship for a spin. Ran some tests at the hangar.”
Distracted, he turned to the pile of ash where his breakfast nook used to sit.
“They said the commies might show up.”
He paused.
Elaine was always different. The killing wasn’t the problem. She’d become a new woman. Right around the time he’d trusted her with weapons even he didn’t comprehend.
“So…how those ray guns work out?”
A distinct cocktail of fear and envy brewed in the room. The couple lingered in stillness.
She knew what needed to be said.
Some moments couldn’t be understood knowingly. They had to be explained.
Elaine opened the oven door and stared at the finished pie.
“Well. Let’s just say…you fucking men will never understand. Not for a long time.”
by submission | Feb 24, 2013 | Story |
Author : David Barber
The pale young woman had a tap in her wrist. The time-traveller asked for a glass and we watched her fill it with blood.
“Bring her salt water.”
“Salt.. like sea water?”
“If you have that.”
There were isotonic sports drinks somewhere in the back, but I didn’t turn away quick enough. He raised the glass and I saw his throat throb as he drank.
I’d shut the Chronos Tavern during the riots. My wife said I shouldn’t open today. In fact she’d said it was pig-headed and reckless.
She worked at the Canaveral Timeport before all the trouble. She’s been stuck at home a while now, looking for jobs, and she’s been kind of short-tempered. Lot of anger about time travel these days.
Perhaps you have to be married to understand how I ended up in the Chronos, giving the place a furious mopping, when the time-travellers came in.
“I smell your worry,” The morlock bared brutal teeth. “But you are safe.”
I asked the pale woman if she wanted another drink but she didn’t even lift her eyes.
“Is it your scientists causing this trouble?”
“Scientists?” My foolish grin faded. Predators don’t need to make jokes. “No, nothing like that.”
After time travellers arrived, the notion had escaped that lives were like films you could fast-forward to see how they end. Choices were inevitable. Or irrelevant. The idea just wouldn’t flush away. Emptiness, unrest and dismay hung in the air like carrion crow.
The blood-stained glass still stood empty on the bar when the three men walked in.
“Sorry guys, we’re closed.” The Timeport was always off-limits to the public.
“Those two look like customers to me,” said the tall one.
“Just friends.”
“Look like travellers,” he insisted.
We all needed to stay calm, to keep talking. He held a Saturday-night special against his leg.
“I want to know who invited their sort here. From the future.”
The morlock was blindingly fast. I heard an arm-bone crack before the gun fired into the floor. The morlock stood frozen over the whimpering man while the other two backed outside.
“They threatened,” he explained. I realised he was giving them a head start. Then with a terrible cry he was gone, and the door banged shut.
The woman still sat at the bar.
“You should get down here with me.”
She made no move, and shamed, I went to see to the man. He was cradling his arm and moaning.
“Never touch the prey,” she warned with the voice of a child. I stalled with indecision.
“They do not share, there would be violence.”
“Are you his wife?”
“His eloi. Hide if you ever see one without an eloi.”
Brief shrieks came from outside. I almost picked up the gun.
“He is considered very enlightened. Other morlocks are more… aggressive in their feeding. I am fortunate.”
My wife would say I was being sensible. I hadn’t realised I was a such a coward.
“He did not treat you like prey,” she called, as I eased the door open. “But if you interfere…”
Under a streetlight, the men lay amongst their own entrails.
“Your age is an Eden,” said the morlock. “Still, best to go now.”
“What…”
“Yes, send her out.”
I whispered to her that our laws would protect her, but she only asked if I wanted her blood.
“Then what use am I?”
I dialled an ambulance, then threw the glass away. Beginning to tremble, I called home.
My wife answered and I didn’t let her get a word in. I had a lot of things to apologise for.
by submission | Feb 22, 2013 | Story |
Author : Matthew Wells
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Aden’s chains struck the floor like bursts from a lazy pulsar. The voices from the other side of the clear partition, chaotic and full of rage, were strangely mute. He saw the crowd without really seeing it, and he knew only the sounds of his chains.
Upon some unseen signal, the inflamed gathering reluctantly took a seat while he was fixed to a steel chair.
As he looked, two faces in the front row stood out. He knew the family. They had testified at his trial. Thru a fluke, they were the only ones to have directly survived the disaster. Today, a young man with black hair sat between them.
Members of the gathering, a small selection of families of victims, took turns lashing threats and oaths, rebukes and rancor into the microphone.
To be fair, while the accident was a devastating catastrophe—a colossal failure, it was wholly unintentional. He had set fire to a star. The Deep-well Boson Cascade, his experimental magnum opus, had burned a solar system to ash.
After the poisonous words ebbed, he was given the chance to speak. Instead, he hung his head and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” came the soft reply.
Aden looked up, surprised to see the young man with black hair standing at the microphone. The crowd behind him watched dourly. His father looked baffled. The young man observed Aden without malice.
“You survived the blast too, didn’t you?” Aden said.
“Yes. My name is Bo,” he said softly. “I know you didn’t mean to do it.” No one challenged the young man. As the only survivors, his family held a unique status among the families of the victims.
“No, I didn’t. But, it was my fault.” The entire project board was indicted and the corporation assets seized, but he naturally took the fall. And, he embraced it.
Bo looked down at his shoes, then up again at the prisoner. “May what happens next be a reminder. Though, I believe this guilt is too much for one man.” There was a meaningful pause, then, “I forgive you.”
An angry murmur arose in the room as Bo returned to his seat. His father looked anxiously about the livid faces; his mother had gone white.
Aden’s heart had paused for a full second following those words. Emotion washed through him. Forgiveness had seemed unimaginable. Yet, here it was.
The chair began to swivel and the wall behind him opened. A stiff, ocean breeze shook the plank as it extended over fitful waters a thousand feet below. The sea was red under the coral sun. He wobbled involuntarily. The wall closed behind him, but they would be watching, millions of them, as they had twice before over the past decade.
His breath held and his heart quickened. He sensed the moment was now. In the brightness of full day, a brilliant flash filled the sky—his star, annihilated all over again. His arms pulled against the chains, his neck strained until he vomited over the rocks below.
It was some time before his pulse slowed and those imagined cries grew quieter. In silence, he gazed upon the shining suns. He would be left on the plank for days while the light faded. But, it no longer mattered. Near the pain, a renewed sense of purpose began to grow. What would it take to build a memorial the size of a star? Over the next seven decades, as he was taken from world to world to relive this event again and again, he would find a way.
