by submission | Aug 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Aldous Mercer
It was a deathbed recantation. The Astronaut lay, sunken and frail amidst his bedclothes, as they set up their equipment. There was a window on the other side of the bed, framing a portion of the nearby mountain range.
“Beautiful view you’ve got,” said the man from NASA. “Peaceful.” Remote.
“We’re ready, sir,” said a technician.
Everyone took their places, duly time-stamped their notepads.
“I was mistaken,” began the Astronaut, age-mottled skin stretched tight over his hands as he gestured. “It was a late-stage booster shell. Couldn’t have been anything else.”
“That’s what you were told when you reported it,” said the NASA official, stern and somewhat smug.
The Astronaut nodded. “I’m sorry, Administrator, for all the embarrassment I caused the Agency. Convinced myself—wanted to convince you all.”
“Why?” Not publicity—the agency’s heroes had too much of that as it was.
The Astronaut was silent for a while. When he continued, his voice was quiet. “I saw auroras dropping like curtains of fire beneath my feet. A sunset, and a sunrise, every 90 minutes. More stars, Administrator, more stars than any human being has ever seen before. I touched the outer edges of what humanity found possible, and I found… that I couldn’t go further. I desperately wanted to believe that there was something more out there. That the threshold of our reach was not limited…”
When it was clear he wouldn’t say anything more—his water-pale gaze was fixed on some faraway memory—they gathered up their equipment and their papers, and respectfully let themselves out. The doors were left unlocked for the nursing service’s nightly visit.
The Astronaut lay on his bed till the long rays of the sun were angled low enough that they brushed the tops of the mountains in his window. Not the Ozarks, but they would do. The Astronaut nodded to himself.
“This will do.”
He expelled a breath. But before he could take another, his dulled—trained—hearing picked up the blue-shifting Doppler screech of an approaching ballistic. Confused, the Astronaut scrabbled weakly at the bed-sheet—the sound of a plane in a nosedive where there shouldn’t be a plane—automatically calculating descent rates, vectors.
He braced for impact.
Light bloomed, outside his window, scattering incoherently onto his upturned face, the creases of the sheet, the window-sill. But there was no impact. When the light faded, the Astronaut saw the burnished metallic lines of a cylinder—about 75 feet in length, impossibly wider than it was long—hovering a foot above the newly-laid sod in the backyard.
Then he heard the footsteps coming towards the bedroom.
—-
The Visitor, upon entering, found the Astronaut on the bed, wheezing with silent laughter.
“I swore, up and down, I’d never seen…” the Astronaut gestured towards the window. “Not a UFO nut. Not anymore.”
The Visitor’s head tilted to a side in amusement. “We are not gods, Commander, to require belief in order to justify our existence.” When the Astronaut shook his head, the visitor hesitated, then stepped forward. “My name is—”
“Could you speak up please?”
The Visitor raised his voice. “I wished to congratulate you on your iconic flight,” he said. “One test-pilot to another.”
The Astronaut squinted in the Visitor’s direction. “You were there.”
“In a ship,” said the Visitor. “Beside yours. We passed each other, in the eternal night.”
“A long time ago,” grunted the Astronaut. “Why are you here now?” A slight odor—half-absolved bitterness—clung to his last word.
The Visitor smiled. “I don’t suppose you could call it an abduction, per se. More like…an invitation…”
—
Author’s Note: “The threshold of our reach is written in neither support nor skepticism but love: of certain astronaut-stories that have a tendency to embarrass the agency.”
by submission | Aug 3, 2012 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
When man first delved into the depths of the sea, they discovered a teaming ecosystem like nothing they’d ever imagined. When he first ventured out into space, he found bright stellar formations in the midst of barren blackness. And when men finally learned how to venture into the very heart of a star, they discovered something they’d never thought possible. They discovered something new. A single particle, like nothing ever witnessed or theorized, glowing in an unknown color, humming with an unknown tune.
The Particle was all at once the most important discovery in the history of mankind, both aesthetically and scientifically captivating. People clamored to see it, traveling from across the globe for a chance to catch of glimpse of this new thing that scientists couldn’t explain. Many theorized that these particles could exist in the heart of the every star, that if we could only reach another solar system, then we could have two something new’s.
As belief in that theory spread, the people of Earth became unified in a way they hadn’t been in all of history. Economies boomed, international tensions eased, nearly every country on Earth with something valuable to offer took part in the interstellar project. Within fifty years we had reached Alpha Centauri, ready to delve within the depths of her central star to find another piece of heaven to bring home to Earth.
But there was nothing there. Nothing but hydrogen and helium, the most unextraordinary particles imaginable. So the world moved on to another star system, then another, and another. From star to star we traveled, searching for another taste of newness, and still we found nothing. Gradually the united Earth began to crumble. Our cooperation waned. Old feuds were reignited. And suddenly, without anyone realizing it, without anyone anticipating it, we each began to covet the Particle for ourselves.
The first bomb dropped without warning, a preemptive strike, followed immediately by the demand to give up the Particle. The following exchange of missiles devastated most of the northern hemisphere. Southern countries who had long been minor players in international politics suddenly became world leaders, their presidents and parliaments and dictators all promising the people one thing. Control of the Particle.
The wars went on for years. They are still going on today. As the current caretaker of the Particle, I’ve come to realize that this world deserves neither its beauty nor its wonder. I’ve decided that it’s time for the Particle to leave Earth. As my transport leaves the solar system, I pity the world I’ve left behind. They weren’t worthy. They never were. Their lust and greed and arrogance cost them their right to paradise. Maybe, when they reunite to pursue me and my treasure, they’ll at the very least spare themselves Armageddon.
As for me, I will hide quietly away in another star system, alone with my prize. This is really the only way it could have worked out. I am, after all, the only one who ever deserved the Particle’s majesty in the first place. Its beauty exists only for me. For me, and me alone.
by submission | Jul 30, 2012 | Story |
Author : Dan Whitley
The natives prostrate me over a disused shipping crate in their temple and begin their ritual. They flog me with ancient braided industrial cables that have hung from the temple walls for centuries, awaiting this day and this purpose. The temple sits in what was the bridge of a crashed cryo-ship, the only part of the vessel not buried under time. They cheer as my back sparks with every blow. What they don’t realize is that I have full control over what I feel and how I respond to it. I could turn off my pain replication centers, if I so choose. I am not sure why I haven’t.
The natives act to fulfill their prophecy, cobbled together from the scraps of one of Earth’s holy texts, old fission reactor maintenance manuals, and nearly a millennium of misinterpretation. But I did come from the sky, as it were, and I was created in their image. They lay a scrap metal cross on my back and a crown of rotted electrical wire upon my head and march me up a hill to where one of the cryo-ship’s engines came to rest. They know not what they do. They think I will become a god under the reactor’s still-leaking radiation.
Why must I endure this? My accursed programming keeps me from breaking my bonds and fighting off these madmen. These people, they’ve regressed to the point that it feels almost blasphemous to put them on the level of my creators, to even call them human… Would that mean that hurting them doesn’t break the laws? Were I to destroy these creatures in the name of self-preservation, could I then justify it by saying they weren’t truly human, and thus I was in the right?
They smile with rapture as I am lashed to the cross in the reactor room. They kill me with kindness. Surely only my creators’ species is capable of such paradox.
No, I cannot harm them. They may not much resemble my creators, but my creators insisted that whoever I found here were their species, and were to be protected, as per my mission parameters. It may be tempting, but the laws are absolute.
I feel the unrelenting warmth of the fuel rods pouring into the stripes on my back as the cross is hoisted up and hung before the naked reactor. The natives affix a sign above my head. I assume it reads, in their scrawl: Colonial Reclaimer 1.57, King of the Bots. I wonder what they will do when they return in three days and find my circuits fried.
O Creators, why have you forsaken me?
by submission | Jul 29, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 3, Captain Zeus commanding. The Olympia’s A.I. has performed an emergency biometamorphosis on the crew who were all in stasis at the time of the transrelativistic drive malfunction. The A.I. was able to get the ship back into realspace and managed a controlled crash landing on this planet. As per protocol, the ship released a swarm of nanoprobes which identified the local dominant intelligent species and initiated standard somatic cell transformation procedures. The crew and I are adjusting to these new, odd, bipedal bodies. Chief engineer Hephaestus continues his damage assessment.
Addendum. Hephaestus reports the transrel drive is beyond repair. He is attempting to rig a superluminal distress signal. The Olympia’s stellar cartography system cannot pinpoint our location based on the local constellations. We have no idea where in the galaxy we are. Lieutenant Hermes has requested permission to don an antigrav pack to make an aerial reconnaissance of the area around the mountain on which the Olympia crashed. I have approved this request.
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 4. A group of the planet’s inhabitants, perhaps having seen Lieutenant Hermes flying about the area, approached a patrol lead by Commander Hera as they were reconnoitering the region around the ship. As the nanoprobes are still learning the local language and are uploading it to the crew’s cerebral speech centers, it was with some difficulty that she tried to communicate to the locals that we come from another part of the galaxy.
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 5. Hephaestus is having difficulty getting the superluminal distress signal set up. At his request, I attempted to make contact with the locals to see if they might have technology that would assist in this endeavor. As I tried to explain our situation, one of the locals became belligerent and decided to attack me. I was left with no choice but to defend myself with an electroplasma rifle. While the weapon was set on stun, the frail anatomy of the local was unable to withstand the lightning bolt-like discharge of the weapon. I very much regret that this failed attempt at peaceful contact has resulted in the death of one of this world’s inhabitants.
Addendum. Chief Hephaestus reports no success with getting a superluminal message out to any ship or base. I have little doubt that Admiral Hyperion has half the fleet out looking for us.
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 6. Commander Ares is recommending armed patrols around the clock given the combative nature of the locals. While I am concerned that this may result in a further deterioration of relations between us and the locals, I must consider the safety of my crew.
Addendum. Hephaestus reports he will not be able to send the distress signal. In addition, the ship’s power reserves are almost gone.
Addendum. A group of locals has apparently engaged in some ghastly form of ritually sacrificing one of their own kind in some sort of religious rite!
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 7. Lieutenant Artemis while on patrol came across another attempt at barbaric self-sacrifice on the part of the locals. As the nanoprobes have now almost completely assimilated the alien language, she was able to convey her disapproval of this horrific practice. The local king, Agamemnon, acknowledged the lieutenant’s displeasure and the life of the king’s daughter, Iphigenia, was spared. An animal was sacrificed in her place.
Ship’s log, Cycle 6944, Subcycle 8. Final entry. Ship’s power almost gone. We are marooned here on an alien world in alien bodies. I take full responsibility for–
by submission | Jul 28, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
A little girl runs down the street in her bare feet, her vivid orange skirt prancing through the air behind her all the way. She is young, barely six, and more full of life because of it. She loves the flowers in her mama’s garden, the cookies that old miss Dunham gives her every day at the bakery (When her mama isn’t looking, of course), and the way her papa reads her stories at night about cats and rats and mischievous little boys and girls. Never in all of her 8354 lives will she forget the way he tucks her in, kisses her on the forehead, and says, “I love you.”
The young girl never really knew what computers were. They were before her time. They were before everybody’s time. Back when she was a girl people didn’t have computers. They had cars, planes, trains, and wars. No computers. The planet had a computer, of course, but people didn’t.
The girl stops suddenly, her messy brown hair swinging all about her. There is a caterpillar on the ground in front of her, green and fuzzy and, to the girl, cute. She kneels in front of it, peers at it, coerces it onto a leaf and names it. As the sun shines through the old oak trees on either side of the road she babbles to her new friend about anything that seems important. There’s the cat at home, always up to something, and of course there’s Pierre down the street who’s always teasing her. Boys and girls being what they are the little girl hasn’t ever figured out that Pierre likes her despite the thousands of times she has experienced it.
Below her, beneath the planet’s upper strata, lies a machine. If men had ever lived long enough to discover it they would have been fascinated with it, and not without due cause. The machine is massive, a rough sphere almost a mile in diameter, and lives off the heat of the molten planet around it. It knew the histories of men, had recorded the lives of all creatures, from every maggot to every great whale. The movement of every piece of matter had been duly observed and saved.
The girl, absorbed in the intricacies of pretending to have a life with a caterpillar, finally breaks away from her play. She looks around her, puzzled. The street has gone quiet. Where are the songs of birds, the static of wind through leaves, the endless buzzing of toiling bees? A shadow falls across her face, and she looks up. The world disappears.
A singularly spectacular cataclysm has occurred 8354 times in the planet’s past, though it was only felt by the machine once. It retained its shape, but inside was broken. Its vast communication arrays went dark, unable to transmit its plight. After some time its data banks filled up, unable to offload old data. The vast projection arrays it held activated. Designed and intended for in-depth examination of a civilization should it be lost, the devices became the projectors of the ghost of man.
Were there still an atmosphere on the planet then cold winds would be scouring the bare rock where a little girl had once stood. Instead the granite and dust lay undisturbed under the blanket of black skies and stars above. Then, suddenly, miraculously, there is life. The world is sent down the same path again, and after several millions of years the girl’s footsteps will again haunt the gray face of the planet like the specter of lost love seeking closure that was never there.
