by submission | Jul 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Sheldon Kent
Stepping out into the street, Stan looked up and closed his eyes as he felt the warm rays of the sun fall upon his face. It’s not as hot here as it is back on Earth, but he liked it that way. It had been nine months since he first arrived on Coson, and it was beginning to feel like home. Though the gravity made his body feel slightly heavier.
However, people on Coson were still prejudiced, they didn’t like his kind. He thought, perhaps, that coming to a different planet would change the way people perceived him. To his dismay, he was wrong. But they weren’t half as bad as the people on Earth.
He played with the name tag that he had been given, glancing briefly at the barcode on the back of his left hand, both of which told people that he was a ‘clone’, a worker, someone’s servant sent to fulfil a task. The thought of it brought a lump to his throat, people could be so hurtful, even if it was simply by the way they looked at him. Little did they know that the barcode and the chip in his brain, limiting his lifespan, would be removed granting him full independence, should his trip to Coson prove a success.
Making his way home to his apartment, he decided to stop for some coffee, a celebratory drink that he had promised himself when he had completed his work. The coffee on Coson, it was said, tasted like no other. The locals had been producing their own coffee beans for at least a hundred years now, and was one of the most sought after beverages in the universe.
It took him a while to drink it. He savoured every moment, as this was his first step on the road to independence, he was going to make it last. He sat outside in the sun, watching people as they passed by, dreaming of what he might do once he was a free man.
He arrived home a little later than usual, taking time to let the feeling of freedom fill him up, till he was almost bursting with excitement. Opening his door, he was welcomed by a man sitting in his chair, he recognized the face straight away.
“Sir, what are you doing here? I was about to send the last piece of my research to you tonight,” said Stan, trying not to sound too alarmed after having been faced with an unexpected visitor in his home.
“It’s ok,” said the man, “I have been more than happy with your work, you have done a marvellous job.”
“Then what do I owe the pleasure, sir?”
“Well, here’s the thing, I was expecting you to be home two hours ago, so that I could spend some more time with you.”
“More time?” said Stan, he did not like the sound of that. He could feel his heart beating through his chest.
“Yes, see, the thing is, I have run out of money, I can’t afford to grant your independence,” said the man, without the slightest tone of regret, “You have exactly two minutes to live.”
Panic filled Stan’s body as he walked towards the window of his apartment. Lost for words he stared out into the city, knowing that this would be the last thing that he would see.
A sharp pain tore through his body, and then he slumped onto the floor.
The man, not caring for the body, took some time to look out of the window, then left.
by submission | Jul 14, 2012 | Story |
Author : Regina Clarke
“Look. Here’s the deal. It’s a no-brainer. I do all the hard work. All you have to do is wait for my signal and then press this button to start the accelerator.”
The old man listening had a worried expression on his face. “What if nothing happens?”
“How long have we known each other?”
“I don’t know. A couple of years, I guess.”
“Have I ever led you wrong before?
The old man twisted his hands together. “I guess not. But we haven’t really done anything together before, not that I can recall.”
“Only because you hesitated, didn’t want to take a chance. You were just afraid all the time, right? Like you are now?”
“I’m cautious, that’s what I am. My wife always said so. It’s a good way to be. Law-abiding and I mind my own business. Only now, with her gone…” The old man ran his hand over his thinning hair and stared for a while at the brown spots that covered the skin on his hands.
“You don’t have to say it. I know,” came the soothing voice of the man next to him, whose pallor held the look of the dead.
“What do you get out of this?” the old man asked.
“Satisfaction. Oh, not just because I see you in a happier place. After all, I’m a businessman, not a charity, right? But it doesn’t end there, no pun intended.”
“What’s that mean? You want me to pay you more, is that what you mean?” Agitation filled the old man’s eyes. “I don’t have any. You’ve got all the money I had left.”
“No! You’re fine. All paid up. What I was just trying to say was about that satisfaction thing. It’s not just about the money. I feel—what’s the word—fulfilled. Know what I mean?”
“I guess.”
“So, ready to start?”
The old man took a deep breath and gave a quick smile to his companion. “Yes, I am. It’s what I want. I’ll wait for your signal. Thank you. For caring about me.”
“It’s what I do, and what…like I said…fulfills me. I’m leaving now. You stay here. Soon as you see the flash we talked about, press the button.”
“It’ll start right away? I’ll see my Mary again?”
“You got it. On the instant.”
“How will it feel?”
“Just what I told you. You won’t feel a thing. Then you’ll see what I promised. Everything will change, believe me.”
The old man stood straighter and smiled again. “I’m ready.”
His companion left the warehouse, closing the heavy metal doors behind him. Moments later a massive flash filled the space. The old man was startled but managed to press the button on the wall in front of him.
Nothing happened. He pressed the button a few more times and then walked over to the large set of doors and with some effort pulled them open. Everything was the same, parking lot, blue sky, cars on the highway. Where was Mary?
“You know, they all ask that—different names but the same idea. I’m sorry. We’re set up for ages forty to fifty. You’re seventy-five. We’re a bit cheaper than the seventy to eighty group. I’m afraid he’s sent you to the wrong place. He always does that. Your Mary is in a different dimension.”
The old man spun around. A young woman with curly auburn hair spoke in a soft voice.
“He took my money! I paid him the full price! He promised me!”
“Yes, he always does that.”
by submission | Jul 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
He thought that maybe he should be angry. After all, everything he had ever known was falling apart and there was nothing he could do about it. His hands shook with the energy of the blow-by self-consuming passion of intense anger, and his eyes were clouding up with tears. It really wasn’t fair.
Samuel screamed, shouted at the sky, shook his fists at the God he’d never believed in. Where was the bastard now, when everybody needed him more than ever? Gone, it seemed, to some other planet down the road where some other fledgling race needed their pot stirred and their morals directed.
Maybe this was God’s way of punishing man for overstepping his boundaries and assuming the role of creator when he was only the apprentice, like a parent who forces a child to figure out his own mess.
In the valley below Change writhed.
The news reports said it was an accident, an experiment in physics gone awry, changing the fundamental workings of space and time itself. As near as the scientists could tell there were no neutrons in the expanding haze. There were no electrons or protons, either. Really, there were no recognizable particles of any kind.
And it was growing, too, extending tendrils into real space like some sort of giant, horrifying, laws-of-the-Universe defying amoeba. Samuel watched one expand into the air above the zone of occurrence like some lance of the burning workings of the unknown, touching the air and turning it into something else. It was simultaneously too bright and too dark to see.
Samuel thought that he should be angry, but he wasn’t. He was tired. The world around him was falling apart and there was nothing that he could do about it, but hadn’t life always been that way?
The air had a cold November chill to it, and the leaves had all left for the winter. Everything seemed sharp, too in focus to be seen. Samuel sat back down in his lawn chair at the top of a hill over looking the End (Or was it the Beginning?) and picked up his bottle liquor. As he drank the warmth spread out through his stomach and into the deep and hard-to-reach places of his body and mind.
Surely there must be a way out of this, he thought, though for the life of him he couldn’t think of one. Perhaps if the same experiment that had gone wrong were repeated… But that was an impossibility now. The equipment was gone, the knowledge too. What else was there?
Most certainly there would be an end. That thought, at least, comforted Samuel in a way nothing else could. The black and bright nothings of something new lapped at the foot of the hill he was sitting on. Soon, while everybody else lived on running in circles from something that inevitably would always be front of them, Samuel’s life would be much more peaceful.
He gazed up, again, at the long fingers that extended further than he could see toward the cold reaches of space. There had always been a lingering question at the back of his mind his entire life: Was mankind’s dream of reaching the stars a joke? Was it the grandiose dream of a megalomaniac young race? He looked the the growing certainty before him. He looked at the shapeless hand stretched out toward Heaven, God, and Hell, and he knew.
Man had reached the stars and would grow out among the alien world and sights of space long after He was gone.
Samuel smiled.
He didn’t feel a thing.
by submission | Jul 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : D. Ahren Bell
Just watching him play brings a tranquil satisfaction. You hear about the joys of fatherhood, but its impossible to truly understand until you have a child of your own. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. The love, the trust, the warmth shared between father and son is a bond beyond compare.
I love the way Simon looks up at me with my eyes, happiness radiating from his smile. Everyday is a new joy. He is always learning, surprising me with his intelligence at every corner. I can take credit for very little of his achievements. Almost everything that he learns is learned on his own.
I love his cute little nose, cute little teeth, cute little toes. It’s so wonderful to see all of those little features, minutiae of my own.
Truly. The reason he looks so much like me is because he is me. My friends gave me a hard time about it; my mother and father were nearly furious. They all told me it was selfish, that I should find a mate and produce a child in the old fashion way. My sister hounded me, reminding me of the millions of children around the world in foster care while I felt the need to make a copy of myself.
But I wasn’t the one to make that decision; it was my other love, Simon’s mother. She insisted that I make a clone of myself. She wanted a little Simon. She didn’t think any changes in my genome were necessary for perfection.
I queried Siri, “What time is little Simon’s pediatrician appointment today?”
Her body-less voice came back as it always does, calm and a little flat, “Little Simon’s appointment is at 9:30.”
“Thank you Siri. I love you.”
The voice rang through the speakers throughout the apartment. “I love you too, Simon.”
by Patricia Stewart | Jul 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Jill and John relaxed in the cockpit, as their ship streaked toward the asteroid belt for their long awaited weekend getaway at the Ceres Lowgrav Resort and Spa. Although Jill was looking forward to being pampered for a few days, she was also in a reflective mood. This thing with John was working out rather well, she mused. Sure, he had been a self-centered jerk in the beginning, but he had come along rather nicely over the past year. That’s when it dawned on her, and without thinking, she simply blurted it out, “Do you know that this is the one year anniversary of our first date?” Instantly, she regretted it. She glanced sideways to gauge John’s reaction.
“What’s that? One year, you say? Hmmm.” Then dead silence. John’s brow furrowed.
Jill thought: Oh God, I’m such an idiot. John wasn’t ready for that. Look at him. He’s worried that I’m moving too fast. I’ll bet he’s thinking that I’m expecting a marriage proposal or something. What am I going to do now?
John thought: One year ago. God, that’s about the last time I had the ship in for service. And now, here I am, heading off on a billion mile trek. Who goes off on a trip like this without having the matter-antimatter balance checked? If the injectors diverge by more than point one percent, the whole ship could explode. Damn, I’m such a moron.
Jill thought: Oh no! Now he’s getting mad. I can see it in his expression. I’ve totally blown it. He’s probably going to put me off on Mars. And I wouldn’t blame him. He could have anybody he wanted. But stupid ol’ me had to get too pushy. And just when things were going so well.
John thought: I didn’t even check the oxygen tanks in the escape pod. What was I thinking? I could get us both killed.
Jill said, “I’m so sorry, John.”
“What? Oh, no Jill. It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
Jill thought: Uh oh. I’ve heard that line before. He’s getting ready to break it off. He was probably planning to do it on Ceres all along. I just sped up his little plan, that’s all. What a creep! How could I have possibly thought that he was mister right?
John thought: Whoa, what just happened? How did she know I was thinking? Oh God, I hope I didn’t think something out loud again? Damn, I need to be more careful. If I accidently call her by her younger sister’s name at the wrong time…
“I hate you,” Jill cried as she ran back to the cabin area.
John thought: Shit. Did I just say her sister’s name out loud?
“Computer,” asked John, “were you monitoring the flight deck audio? Did I say something to make Jill angry?”
“Beats me,” replied the computer, “I’m not sure that exchange fit any definition of a conversation.”
“I didn’t think so either. But clearly, I pissed her off. I need to go back and apologize.”
“For what, specifically?” inquired the computer.
John shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll come up with something. Take over the controls. If I play my cards right, there may be make-up sex in my future.” John headed aft, with a bit of a bounce in his step.
Computer thought: Wow, so this species represents the crowning achievement of Earth’s natural selection process. Evidently, evolution has a sense of humor.
