by Duncan Shields | Jun 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I blinked twice to fast-forward the counter-person to the ticket purchase but nothing happened. She still stood there behind the counter, asking me again if I had packed my bags myself. I blinked again. Nothing. I sighed. They were using real people.
That’s how much of a backwater dive this planet was. I couldn’t wait to leave. Real people? That wasn’t even retro anymore. It was almost slave labor.
“Yes, I packed my bags myself.” I answered.
“Passport, please.” She said.
I mentally shunted my passport over to her computer. I didn’t get the okay in my peripheral vision. Her system must be slow. We looked at each other with an expectant pause.
“Sir?” she asked, hand out. She was growing impatient.
Oh no, I thought. Seriously? Totally analogue. She was expecting actual physical paper printed in some sort of booklet. I had read about it. It might have been in the package I received for my Earth tour but I must have assumed it was a receipt or something.
“I don’t have it.” I said, lamely.
“Well, sir, you won’t be able to leave the spaceport without it.” She replied smugly. I got the feeling that every time this happened, she chalked a point to herself and the other luddites who believed in an old way of operation. Ignorant tourists like me must make their days a happy place.
Some planets had themselves a belief that cranial implant software was evil and led to a lack of privacy. I could see where they were coming from in some ways. I mean, that’s why I was here. I wanted an offline vacation package.
“Take a seat over there, please.” She said, pointing to a bench with six other pale men sitting on it. Bewildered and lost, they stared at their dead feeds for information. There was a public terminal inset into the wall with ‘email’ that would let me access the UniNet but it would take days for my peers to respond to my requests in that way.
It was going to be a long wait.
Stupid backwater planet. I’m never coming back here.
by submission | Jun 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Brian McDermott
“What’s the market?”
“68.23 bid for a hundred thousand.” Joh said.
The price of Iridium was rising. And out here in the farthest sector, a place the whole galaxy said was populated by floogbags and rim-holes, my little collective was one of the only sanctioned metals traders on our back-orbit exchange.
The planet Gestaglon had Iridium coming out their yim-flangs. In most systems, Iridium was as valuable as a hooloon fart. But on Caldux, they used it in everything. When those two planets went to war, Caldux stopped buying. The price of Iridium fell like it was caught in a gravitational vortex.
Then last week everything changed. Gestaglon and Caldux began negotiating a treaty. The financial universe was suddenly interested in Iridium and I had a cootch ton of new clients.
“Goldy’s on my comm. He want’s to know what to do?” Joh shouted.
“Tell every client to keep buying.” I said. “This fargminx will be a two bagger in five minutes.”
Everyone and their pleasure-bot knew Iridium would double as soon as the treaty was signed. We were beaming the live holo of the signing ceremony to the center of our trading floor. The Calduxian Gov’nors looked like a bunch of yug lickers in their colored helm-jacks while the Gestaglian Politmongers stood scratching their bilge-sticks. They were already blathering about new beginnings and peaceful coexistence. Our whole trading floor was watching. None of us could tell you what Iridium looked like, but today it was the most important hootch in our universe.
“83.54 for five hundred thousand. If we’re buying on the house account, now’s the time!”
“Not yet” I said.
We watched the ministers on the holo present the treaty.
“92.32 for two hundred million! I’m gonna buy!”
“Not yet” I said more forcefully.
On the holo, the Calduxians were just about to sign the treaty.
“Why the floog are we waiting?” Joh blurted “ We got Goldy bidding 103.43 for a billion!”
As calmly as I could, I leaned over to Joh and said, “Sell it to him.”
Joh looked stupefied. “WHAT? You want to SELL? Naked short?”
“Yep. From the house account.”
“Sell to Goldy…our own client?” He shot back. “It’s unethical and suicidal! When the treaty is signed the price will…”
“It already doubled!” I screamed. “Sell or I’ll shove a fargminx up your rim-hole!”
The whole room watched Joh hit sell. No one inhaled. No one exhaled. Then every eye shot straight to the holo. And our tiny, back-orbit, rim-hole company was short 1 billion units of Iridium.
It only took another thirty seconds. When the Calduxians signed the treaty, the Gestaglians were offended for some far sector, floogbag reason. Just as I guessed. Those bungsackers hated each other for eons. Blasters were drawn, chaos exploded, and our holo went blank.
Joh turned to his screen. “All trading suspended in Iridium!”
For three seconds on that tiny trading floor you coulda heard a wolabat break wind. Then it was pandemonium. Everyone was cheering. Guys were hugging androids. Androids were hugging lamps. I popped the bottle of Dom I’d been saving, shocked I hadn’t whizzed my pantaloons.
“Iridium will be back to 20 tomorrow. And the whole galaxy will be snarked. At us.” Joh said looking like a man who got kicked in the hoohoo while winning the lottery.
“And we’ll cover our short position and be rich.” I replied, “Besides what’d they expect? Out here, we’re all just a bunch of floogbags and rim-holes.”
by Julian Miles | Jun 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
He’s sitting in the car waving without a clue as to what’s about to happen. Below me, the repository window opens and a man who only wants to make a point by scaring the most powerful man in the world is about to make history.
I manifest the wormhole with a wide entry funnel because he’s not a great shot. The bullet enters the funnel just off-centre. It whips down the hyperdimensional tube, momentarily everywhen and nowhere. For years to come, veterans passing this place will duck as they hear a bullet going by. My concentration slips and the suction from the wormhole pulls his head backwards after the bullet hits. That’s going to get me a reprimand, but does handle the one event aspect our projectionists couldn’t explain.
Time to be elsewhere before the grey on the grassy knoll realises he’s been pre-empted. Affairs route me automatically while an indirect delivers my brief into mind.
Herr Hitler is raving again, his high-pitched diatribe audible over the U-boat’s engines as it flees for Argentina. Herr Muller is trying to calm him down while Herr Brunner is making love to Fraulein Braun in the aft torpedo room. The vessel is stuffed with art, gold and enough war criminals to make Weisenthal sing hosannas. The entire crew are all hardened Schwarze Sonne. Given the amount of stuff on board, making this vanish with everything is going to take some ingenuity. Scuttling it as planned will not work. Too many bits of crap to crop up at inopportune moments.
I run a direct to my disc, high above me. It routes my suggestion uptime and passes permission back within moments. No delays for decision making when you can monkey with time. I push the disc into a stable high orbit and have it charge and push a locus attractor through an in-system warp. Now for the wet bit.
The water ahead and just abeam of the sub is cold, dark and crushing. I manifest the wormhole as soon as the shock of the water registers. I feel unconsciousness pull at me as U-3531 vanishes into the tunnel along with some surprised fish and several million gallons of Atlantic. With the last of my will I iris the tube closed. Three hundred thousand kilometres above Sol, a U-boat appears in a brief cloud of steam before starting a searing fall.
Time to be elsewhere before I drown.
I appear somewhere dusty and hot. Orientation yields New Mexico but no brief. I’m just starting to dry out when a direct initiates.
“Ten, we have a problem.”
“Really? Do tell.”
“We’re not omnipotent. To prove it, Eleven has just frisbee’d a grey dropship. Made a mess of him but ruined them. Need you to fetch him and finish any survivors.”
“You don’t sound too upset. Has he unravelled another unknown event aspect?”
A chuckle comes over the feed: “He’s way ahead of you now. This one is a whole unprojected event. You’re fifteen clicks outside Roswell in June forty-seven. You have carte noir to completely mayhem the event. As a consolation prize, One says that you can take the gloves off and just have fun.”
Somedays I love my job.
by Clint Wilson | Jun 14, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
We had endured the slum for generations now. I came from a long line of survivors. Here behind the tattered patchwork fence of our family compound we had fought off countless invaders. But we wouldn’t have to worry about such things anymore. It was almost time.
And the moment couldn’t arrive any sooner as government food drops had been recently cut back even further. Folks were getting desperate.
When father had originally set up shop all those years ago here next to the maglev track with all of its noise and vibration people had thought him crazy. But there had been a method to his madness.
Everyone finally gathered in the courtyard… relatives and close friends, the people I had known all my life. We held hands as father recited a quick ceremonial prayer. I looked over as labor bots rolled the rusty hanger doors aside. It was the first time they had been open in decades. Father turned to the dozens of people in his extended family and shouted, “All aboard!”
The sun shone on the nose of the space freighter with its dusty cockpit windows. It was clearly aimed at the massive steel ramp erected next to the maglev track. It all seemed so unlikely. How could this possibly work?
I for my part held no doubt though, because I was the gunner. I had been practicing all my life. I could lasso a bird at half a kilometer with one eye closed. This would be easy for me.
The industrial transport engine block was already loaded into the starboard zip launch. I took careful aim at the maglev track and pulled the dual triggers. There was a dusty recoil and the thousand-kilo hunk of scrap sailed upward to its apex, and thumped down perfectly onto the huge track high above. Less than a minute later we heard the train.
There was no doubt that the automated system would follow protocol. Sure enough we watched the distant vehicle slow to a halt. We could not perceive the train’s custodial bots as they disembarked to retrieve the engine block. But we watched the shape grow in the sky as the hunk of metal careened back toward the compound. It made a good-sized crater as it crashed to the ground near our main gate.
“She’s on the move boy, get ready!” shouted father’s voice into my earpiece. I did not hesitate or falter, moving over to the portside zip launch seat. Two kilometers of coiled carbon rope attached to a Targathian grappling hook awaited my command.
I had to concentrate as all around me the derelict freighter’s long unused engines roared to life. Through the scope I saw the glimmer of the quickly debarking sonic train, and launched my projectile. There were long and painful seconds before the grappling hook burrowed itself deeply into its target. Then we all cringed and waited.
There was a whip, whip, whip, as the last of the coils unfurled, then a mighty twang as the nearly indestructible rope became taut.
We all felt it in our guts as the ship lurched forward with a metallic scream. In a second we were racing up the long ramp, hot sparks accompanying our progress, and then in another instant we were airborne.
My last official duty of the launch was to make sure that once we passed the speeding train far below I detached the carbon rope. I executed this flawlessly. Soon after I would be able to relax for a spell, and dream of a wonderful new home on a far away world.
by submission | Jun 12, 2012 | Story |
Author : Josie Gowler
The fever breaks at five in the morning, suddenly. It’s like the air right after a thunderstorm. I sit up. Much too quickly. The greyish room swims for a few moments and I clutch the sides of the bed. Feet on the floor. The cold creeping up through my soles helps. I have this sensation of deja vu. The sheets are soft under my hands. There’s a nice view of a garden from the window; the sun is just starting to rise on a decent-looking day. God only knows where I am, though.
A stocky bloke in a white coat, mask and goggles comes in. He’s got a round and kindly face but he’s holding a clipboard so it must be serious. “How are you feeling?” he asks.
I can’t decide exactly what I feel like, maybe a mixture of newborn kitten and blast furnace interior. I want to tell him that, but something else is bugging me. “Were you watching me?” I ask.
“Samantha,” he says, ignoring my question. “Louise. Angela.”
I shrug. None of the names mean a thing to me. Scratching at my arm, I glance down and notice an injection hole. “What did you…” I begin.
The world spins again and the next thing is my (or Samantha’s or whoever’s) head is down the toilet. I grimace at the sour taste in my mouth, but at least my brain’s starting to clear now.
I don’t have the energy to make it back to the bedroom.
# # # # #
Midday. Damn. I clamber to my feet. I’m freezing. Fancy dozing off on the bathroom floor. Like I’ve got bugger all else to do. I swig down a glass of water and return to the bedroom. I slide into the chair next to the desk. The front page of the notepad in front of me shows a date – three days ago according to my watch – and a formula.
‘Three days. Confusion/amnesia. Whiff of paranoia’, I write. I know I just need to get some initial thoughts down at this stage before the feeling fades. I’ll refine the text later and merge it with the doc’s views. Then will come toxicology reports, proposals for a wider sample group and lastly the pre-manufacture field testing. The generals want to know what their merchandise is like. I like to think it’s part of their shoot-to-wound policy, but I suspect they just want to skip the regulatory hassle of justifying testing it on someone other than its creator. Three days seems about right to overrun an enemy stronghold. I might have hit on my next first-rater in the maximum inconvenience bio-weapons field.
I’m ravenous. Time to get that coward of a doctor back in to do the blood arrays and run the quarantine tests so I can hit the canteen. I want to catch up with my fellow lab rats: I could do with a gossip. And see whether anyone’s had a disaster this time. Well, it’s not like we’re underpaid for this crap. I smile as I push the call button. There’s probably some poor sod out there on a pittance, being injected with the last virus I made so the enemy’s virologists can test cures. It’s my job to make sure they stay one step behind of my blockbuster drugs.
So that’s it, then. Until next time.
