by Clint Wilson | May 22, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Henry became suddenly aware. Aware that he was sitting upright in a comfortable chair, wearing comfortable clothes made from warm white fabric that he did not recognize. All around him was whiteness, save for a wide bay window across the room that looked out into pure blackness. He looked to his left and saw a man standing there, also dressed in white. The man’s head was shaved, his face stony yet friendly. He smiled warmly.
Henry suddenly remembered that he could talk and found his own voice welcome but only distantly familiar, as if though he hadn’t heard it in a very long time. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the future Henry.”
“The future?” He blinked, considering it. “For real?”
“For real.”
For the moment he asked nothing else, finding it bothersome that his mind was having so much trouble processing such a seemingly small bit of information. Then he managed, “How far? I mean, what year is this?”
“We now use a different calendar than you are used to, but translated it’s the year 4970.”
Again, nothing but a simple number, a date. Why was it so hard to fathom what it meant?
“How did I get here?”
The bald man squatted down beside his chair, still smiling. He put a reassuring hand on Henry’s forearm. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
The last thing he remembered? He tried desperately to think. Then with a sudden wave, “A heart attack! I had a heart attack. They were working on me in the ambulance. Then… then, well then I guess…” He paused unsure. “I guess they must have… saved me?” A sudden quivering in his voice revealed his own doubt.
The bald man patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry Henry. They didn’t save you.” He raised a grey eyebrow and shook his head, never losing that friendly, reassuring look. “I’m afraid you died that day.”
Henry Hamilton shuddered in the comfortable chair. He looked back to the bay window and out into the blackness. Suddenly a small light zipped by, followed by two others. “What was that? Out there? Is that… space?”
“Yes, those ships are transporting people to other stations. There is a lot of traffic here in Jupiter orbit.”
Suddenly the bewildered man remembered that he had legs. He sprang from the chair and sprinted across to the window. There he pressed his face against the clear glass and gasped aloud as he gazed upon the twisting lighted tendrils of the space station that stretched off for kilometers in many directions. And all the while below, the mighty pink and red behemoth planet glowed so massive and close he was afraid that if he reached out he would touch it.
He spun back to the white room and the patient, smiling man. “Why? Why now? I never asked to be frozen. Did I?”
“Relax Henry. You haven’t been in stasis or cryo-sleep.”
“Then what? What?” He was beginning to feel like a caged animal in the room.
The bald man suddenly shone a small light into his eyes and Henry instantly calmed down. Then the friendly stranger walked him back to his chair and helped him to sit.
“Now just relax and listen while I tell you all about mankind’s wonderful mission to regenerate everybody through the genome reestablishment plan.”
“Who’s everybody,” Henry asked dreamily. That flash of light had done something to him. He felt wonderful.
“Why, everybody who has ever lived and died of course. We’ve finally done it Henry. We’ve finally found immortality and nobody is going to get left behind!”
by submission | May 20, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
Father Leibowitz gingerly placed the surplus sacrament back in the tabernacle. He turned to his congregation and sighed. It was a congregation of one: an old Jewish man named Schell.
Leibowitz pursed his lips. He and Schell had been the only ones at any mass for more than a year now. He quietly said his final prayers and went through the final movements, concluding service by sitting down with the wizened and hoary old man in a back row of pews. For some time they both sat in silent contemplation.
After a while Schell, ninety-eight years old and twenty years Leibowitz’s senior, started to talk. “You know, when the rabbi died and the synagogue closed I didn’t know what to do with myself. For a long while I stayed in my apartment, thinking and wasting way. Then, one day, I realized that I still have a place I may go to think and contemplate and talk to God.” He chuckled. “For all I care you are simply one of Judaism’s children. We are family.”
“Catholics are Judaism’s children?” The father chuckled. “You crazy old man.”
“I may be crazy, yet here I am. In times of trouble family must band together, don’t you agree?”
Leibowitz smiled a weary, tired smile. “I believe, Schell, that the times of trouble have passed. This is simply the end.”
The old Jew looked around at the aged, cracking walls of Saint Peter’s Basilica. The massive glass windows were dim because of the building’s position at the bottom of the New Rome Sprawl. Above them were kilometers of towers, roadways, tram-ways, walkways, and on and on and on in the perpetual twilight of the sub-city. The only light was cast by hidden diodes within the building, and ever these were failing. Shadows were rampant in this empty place. It was too quiet for even death to bother stalking the halls.
“You may have a point,” he conceded. “Yet I see no horsemen.”
The priest scoffed. “Apathy and desolation are surer heralds of the end than any cataclysm could ever hope to be.”
Off in a far corner a rusting maintenance bot fought back against the barbarian hordes of decrepitude brought on by time, a broken joint occasionally shrieking as only metal can. Dust swirled about in the shadows.
The priest coughed. “For us, at least, it is the end.”
“I’m sure there will always be those like us, tucked away in the corners of the world.”
“As if keeping some dark secret.”
“Like all humans do.” Schell checked his ancient brass watch. “It’s getting late, father. Would you care to join me at dinner this evening? It is Christmas Eve, after all.”
“I suppose you must be celebrating something Hannukah related as well,” said Leibowitz.
“Of course. Traditions aside, I don’t see what we can’t celebrate our own ways in each other’s company.”
Leibowitz mulled this over. “True enough.” He stood up, his joints cracking and protesting. Once he was upright he helped Schell up, and the two left the Basilica for the under city night. They walked with no fear because the local superstitions were more powerful than the fear of God ever was. They were regarded with curiosity, an oddity in a modern, noisy world. The old Jew, immortal and frail, and the tall, proud, and withering Leibowitz, the last priest and technical Pope of the Catholic Faith.
Back in the Basilica machinery screamed and dust settled unto dust as it always had and always would.
by Julian Miles | May 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Let me get this straight; The slum kids were tagging you with paintballs of bioluminescent gel, so you took the decision to lift our forces into orbit and firestorm the planet?”
“Yes sir.”
Major MacLachlan looked up from the miniscule desk in his tiny office aboard EMFS Bad Moon at the soldier who filled the rest of the free space. He leant back as he activated the disciplinary recorder and the officer defence system before continuing: “Why did you commit such an atrocity?”
“It was not an atrocity. It was the only reasonable response, sir.”
“Really, Strike-Lancer Peters? I am all ears and so is the recorder. Take us through the reasons why we are currently orbiting the biggest crematorium in history.”
“The children of Hesta had taken to ‘counting coup’ on occupying forces. This was tolerated even when they switched from paint to biolumins, despite the latter compromised our cloaking, making us vulnerable to insurgent snipers.”
“Agreed.”
“Since the United Planets intervention, we have been ordered to strictly obey their directives and rules of engagement.”
“Again, agreed.”
“Under ROE, I cannot take direct action unless fired upon by insurgents with weapons of Class C or better. I cannot respond to threats less than that without issuing three verbal warnings. However, being painted by four or more biolumin blooms is recognised in UP directive ninety-four as giving an eighty percent chance of fatality from first hit, thus preventing me from proper response by being dead.”
Major MacLachlan smiled and gestured for Peters to continue.
“As such, under UP directive one-fourteen, quadruple biolumin bloom is a pervasive threat to my health. Out of one hundred men deployed at my base, seventy-eight had received at least four biolumin hits. Therefore the level of danger is calculated to be epidemic according to UP directive two-ten. As epidemic danger is an indirect threat, it has to be met by containment rather than direct action. I queried orbital for statistics and was informed that at the moment I received my sixth biolumin bloom, sixty-eight point four percent of our forces worldwide were painted in a similar way. This meant that a clear epidemic threat was spread across three continents. UP directive sixty-three defines a pandemic as being an epidemic that has spread across two continental landmasses or more. When that information was revealed to me, it became clear as to the only response possible to save our forces from this deadly threat. I requested that all records and information be crystallised for UP scrutiny, then issued a Class B pandemic withdrawal alert in accordance with UP protocols. After that had been actioned, and in record time may I add, I consulted with UP delegate A.I. Hiroshi twenty-oh-one as to the correct way to address a threat of this nature. It responded that such a pandemic was obviously beyond remedial measures and as such should either be left to burn itself out or sterilising measures had to be applied. As UP directive eleven states that occupied territory cannot be abandoned for more than four hours, the burn-out option was obviously contrary to ROE, so I ordered a Type Six wipe, sir.”
Major MacLachlan sat and stared at the ceiling before responding: “Are you telling me that you have committed a war crime by adhering to United Planets protocols?”
“Question, sir: How can it be a crime when the body that regulates warfare mandated my decision by their own rules?”
Major MacLachlan looked directly into the untroubled, guileless blue eyes.
“That is a question they will be debating for decades to come, I suspect. Dismissed.”
by submission | May 13, 2012 | Story |
Author : Mary Ann Back
Dr. Klatua wasn’t dead – yet. But ten minutes into my session, the only thing keeping me from killing him was the Heja Root I’d smoked earlier in space dock. He was a typical Martian, four-foot-ten, reptilian green with scales here and tentacles there. His voice was shrill and warbled like an Aldarian Loon.
“Bibi, Earth women have a hard time adjusting to marriage here on Mars. What you’re feeling is completely normal. Embrace those feelings. Own them.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me right. I said my husband, Ashat, wants another wife; two wives – at the same time.”
“That is his right as a Martian – Mormon hybrid, Bibi.”
“But he’s invoked Rune-Pfar!”
“And how does that make you feel?”
“Like I could end up dead!” A bronze figurine of Mensuc, the Martian goddess of war, mocked me from the coffee table.
“It’s true, Rune-Pfar is dangerous but Ashat has given you no choice. Accept your fate, Bibi, whatever it may be. With acceptance comes peace. ”
“Seriously? I’m paying you $250 an hour and the best you’ve got is ‘it sucks to be you?’
“Such a willful and impertinent creature you are! You have never assimilated into our culture. Human nature clouds your judgment and blinds you to the truth. You pay me for counsel and so I have given. I can do no more. Leave me.”
“Assimilate this, Moron!” I grabbed the figurine of Mensuc, hurled it through the air, and nailed him in his nardroids. Oddly, I felt better.
He cupped himself with a tentacle, glared at me through the tears welling in all four of his eyes, and scrawled ANGER DISPLACEMENT in bold letters across my chart.
“I see that!” I said, snatching the figurine on my way out of his office.
Halfway back to space dock, the distant thwack of a slamming door and a quavering curse reached my ears.
“Die Earth bitch!”
So much for psychobabble.
*
My star runner was a Condor XL, cerulean blue, and fully loaded with holographic G.P.S., antimatter hyper-drive, and fine Corinthian leather. It was one of a kind, like me. From Earth, also like me. Not so long ago, Ashat found us irresistible. We sat frozen in space dock, waiting for me to stop crying. Damned tears.
I glanced at the figurine riding shotgun in my jump seat. I wasn’t sure why I’d stolen it. The real Mensuc was a hard core bad ass, strong, and certain – everything I needed to be. And she’d have smacked the crap out of me if she saw me crying. Maybe that’s why I brought it along. I needed a good smack now and then.
I lit a spliff of Heja Root and inhaled so deeply it swirled inside my soul. Screw Rune-Pfar and screw Ashat. If my destiny held danger, it would be a danger of my own choosing – and not the whim of a Martian hybrid who knew nothing of love.
I nudged the Condor into open space and gradually set her free. Mars and Ashat disappeared into the black abyss of the wake I left behind. A boundless blanket of stars stretched before me like a lighted path to freedom. At the end of that path lay the Novarian Frontier. It seemed as good a destination as any. I slipped the Condor into hyper-drive.
Mensuc and I had worlds to conquer.
by submission | May 12, 2012 | Story |
Author : Josie Gowler
Twenty years of war. The couple sitting in front of me are younger than I was when I became Captain. Officiating wedding ceremonies is one of the supposedly pleasanter responsibilities of my job on this starship. But how can I do that with a clear conscience, knowing what I know? It’s more purgatory than perk to me. Usually it’s funerals that I conduct.
“Are you sure?” I ask them. The question carries with it the weight of three deceased siblings, two dead parents and a tetraplegic husband.
They gaze, devoted, into each others’ eyes. Untouched by tragedy, so pure, so unscarred. “We’re very much in love,” she says.
Like that makes any difference. Did I ever, ever believe that life was that simple? I do remember believing that the war would be over quickly; I even rolled my eyes when the Admiral told us to expect it to last a couple of years. How hard can it be, I thought, to gain the right to live how we choose in our own corner of the universe? Big place, after all, lots of room to share. I frown. “Love doesn’t protect you against a smart bomb.” The words come out of my mouth as soon as my brain has formed them. But I don’t regret saying them, not because I’m Captain and I can say what I like, but because it’s something that they need to think about. Then again, if the girl replies with ‘better to have loved and lost…’ I’m just going to have to slap her.
“We’ve talked about that,” the fiancé says, with a firmness that surprises me, and him, by the look on his face. It’s the first time he’s spoken. “Love isn’t limited to now. It’s not affected by space and time. One of us may die – one of us will die – but there’ll still be love.”
There’s a long pause while we all absorb what he said. It’s even silenced his intended bride. I scratch at the thick scar running down my jawline. Well said, kid. Love and pragmatism. I sigh. Give them their ceremony, their ten minutes of happiness. Before I have to make the hard decisions. Before I have to send the husband or the wife off to die in some hopeless battle half a galaxy away.
Eventually, I nod.
Hope. Someone has to have it.
