by submission | Nov 12, 2011 | Story |
Author : M. A. Goldin
“Anything?”
“Bacteria, some multi-celled organisms, but nothing complex. Nothing sentient.”
Captain Dalmar nodded, and the technician’s projected image blinked out. She stood alone on the bank of a river. It rushed, boisterous, from the mountains behind her and off into a rolling plain, the water twinkling with the light of two small moons. The night was fresh and cool, but nothing hunted, or crawled, or flew. No tree broke the horizon, no grass rustled in the breeze. No soul had ever been touched by this vista.
Another planet nearly identical to Earth — gravity, atmosphere, temperature, soil composition — another dead rock with nobody home. For Dalmar, this was number 165. For humanity, this was dead world number 10,380.
The comm on her wrist beeped. “Go.”
The face of her XO hovered in the air over her arm, lines of concern bunched up between his eyes. “Everything okay, Dalmar?”
She sighed. “I read a lot of space fiction as a kid. The really old stuff, if I could find it. Spacefarers were always meeting other species and fighting, or trading, or getting into crazy politics. Joining a bigger, I don’t know, family.”
Temujin smiled. “My favorites were the ones where we’d find ancient artifacts from an earlier civilization. They’d leave behind markers carved with their story, or transportation devices, and the humans would rush along trying to learn what happened to them.”
“Yeah, I liked those, too. It was a lot better than this…”
“This nothing?”
“Yeah.”
Dalmar looked away, listening for a sound on the wind. All she heard was emptiness.
“Ever wonder if we’re that ancient species, Temujin? Sometimes I’m afraid there’s no one to find. Maybe we’re the first ones out here. Maybe humanity is destined to grow old and bitter while we wait for the Universe to catch up to us. Maybe we’re wasting our time.”
She glanced at the Lieutenant Commander’s face. She saw something like horror pass across his features. Then he cleared his throat and composed himself. “Yes, well. I wouldn’t say that too loud, Captain. I called to inform you the final geothermal pillar is in place. The imaging sensors will be powering up shortly.”
“The map? The archive?”
“Already in place. If anything moves nearby, we should get images. If it’s sentient, the archive will explain how to find us.”
“Great. I’m heading back to the shuttle now. Be ready to jump to the next candidate when I reach the ship.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Nov 11, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Stuart lost his footing scrambling over the shattered garden wall and fell, hard. As he struggled to his feet, his head still ringing from the tumble his pursuer caught him up and knocked him back down harder still.
“You frickin bastard,” Stuart spat blood and dust, rolling away from a second blow as the infantryman swung the butt-end of his rifle down, narrowly missing him. Managing to get some traction in the rubble, he sat up as best he could and shuffled backwards, the seat of his pants dragging in the dirt, hands and feet scrabbling for purchase until his shoulders met the outer wall of the car shed, and there he stopped.
The soldier stayed still, its seven plus feet of arms and legs bent at obtuse angles as it crouched low to the ground, watching, waiting.
There was a throaty gargling noise, with a tinny mechanical voice following in broken English a few moments out of sync.
“Show other soldier units.” The tall figure leaned forward, shuffling its feet and free hand to keep balance, still leaning the butt end of its rifle in the dirt. “Show other soldier units to surrender.”
Stuart grinned, teeth red through a split and already swelling lower lip.
“You know, you’re really overestimating your chances here mate.” He watched as the creature cocked its head to one side, waiting no doubt for the translator to approximate Stuart’s language into something it could understand. “You seem wholly unaware of how much we like living on this rock, and we’re not going to just let you waltz in here and take it.”
The soldier advanced, raising its weapon first into a firing position, then above its head to bring it butt-end first down hard between Stuart’s legs: He narrowly avoiding the impact by yanking his knees up just in time. The soldier pulled its arms and weapon out of reach, perilously counterbalanced on its backwards bending knee joints to bring its face so close to Stuart as to make him nearly vomit.
“Prisoner shows soldier units or prisoner terminates.”
Stuart kept talking, noting the slight retreat as the soldier struggled to understand the translated dialogue.
“My great-grandfather fought the Nazis, nasty bunch of blokes as you’d ever want to meet. He fought them so his son, my grandfather could raise a family in a free country.” The creature clicked and gurgled as Stuart spoke, though the noises didn’t translate. “My grandfather fought the Viet Cong, a bunch that made the Nazis look like pussies. He didn’t have a family then, but after, when he raised my dad, and told us grandkids stories, he’d never speak of the war, just remind us never to take what we had for granted. Always respect our freedom. His friends died for it, he’d tell us, and we owed it to them to never forget that.”
The creature shook its large flat head violently from side to side, spit flying as it clacked its heavily toothed jaw open and shut repeatedly, shuffling with apparent agitation.
Stuart pressed his luck.
“My dad used to tell me that freedom and family were the two most important things a man could have, and you think we’re going to give that up without a fight?” Stuart drew up a mouthful of blood and saliva and spat at the looming creature, causing it to jerk back away from him.
“You know what I’m going to tell my son when this is all over?” Stuart pulled his lips back into a bloody smile.
“Prisoner shows soldier son…” The grating translated dialogue was cut short as Stuart Junior, having silently flanked his opponent, unloaded both barrels of his plasma cannon through the side of the enemy’s skull, scattering blood and bone across the back yard.
“I’m going to tell him to be a little quicker with the artillery in future,” he groaned, pulling himself to his feet, “and don’t ever let your enemy monologue, that shit can get you killed.”
by submission | Nov 6, 2011 | Story |
Author : John Arthur Beaman
Why should we expect God to keep track of everyone in the world? The galaxies, you know, take a trained eye and eons of proper management to turn a profit. It’s quite an operation. I don’t blame God for losing me.
It’s funny when you think about it. The universe runs in circles. Maybe it’s just easier that way. I’ve yet to build a one; I wouldn’t begin to criticize. So, the moon goes around the earth. The earth goes around the sun. The sun, too, has its little circles. The solar system moves around the galaxy, and so on. Our lives? They’re like microscopic versions of the universe. We go round and round, until we don’t.
To crawl inside the mind of an infinite being seems easy enough. There’s plenty of space. But it’s like a game of hide and seek in there; the only problem is no one’s seeking. We hide in back of the curtains or under the bed. We poke our heads out occasionally, wondering when we’ll be tagged. Years go by; no one finds us. Have we hidden ourselves that well? It was only curtains!
It’s hard to say how important the Milky Way is on the universal scale. It harbors life, we know that. In certain scientific circles, they call the realm in which we survive “the habitable zone.” I like the word zone. It has a z in it, and that’s good. More importantly, it starts with z. Plus, it has two vowels and two consonants. That’s perfect symmetry if I ever saw it. Zone. We live in a zone.
Neighborhoods have been zoned for housing. Parking lots have been zoned for parking. We have commercial, residential, agriculture, time, weather, ocean and even empty zones. We have zones within zones. I suppose we do this to keep our cities running smoothly. It’s not hard to see why God would have a habitable zone. It just keeps the integrity of the thing.
So, our spot in the galaxy has been zoned for life. I’m sure when scouring over the blueprints God took great pains deciding the most lucrative locations. We have our place, and the other three life bearing planets in the galaxy have their zones as well. How I came to the conclusion that there are four life supporting planets in the Milky Way is a simple matter of deduction: it’s less than five and more than three. Five and three are, of course, absurdities.
How does our habitable zone stack up? There are billions and billions of galaxies, give or take. Each of them has four life supporting planets. When all is told, God’s got his hands full. It’s quite an operation.
Then there’s a man named John. He’s just one living soul among the trillions and trillions and dare I say trillions more. He’s managed to crawl inside the mind of an infinite being and get lost. He lives in one galaxy among billions in a very small site zoned for life. In a solar system too large for his little mind to grasp, he exists. Magnifying further, we see that he lives on a tiny speck of light that’s almost completely overshadowed by its own sun, if overshadowed is even the correct word. Through the clouds of a dense atmosphere we go. Passing over billions of lives, we find his country. Over multi-millions more, we find his state. Millions go by again just locating his city, but hundreds of thousands remain before we find him. I can see why God gave up. Who’s got the time?
by submission | Nov 5, 2011 | Story |
Author : Alanna Cohen
She set the plate before me and grinned with pride over her homemade dish, her hair falling in strands over her shoulders as the steam rolled in curls of fog from the meal. I looked down as my stomach roared loudly and admired the look of the food. The mixed smells of spices wafted through the room, and although it smelled good, there was not a thing on the plate that I recognized.
A yellow mound of what looked like mashed potatoes sat on one side of the plate, only sprinkled throughout the mush, there were large colorful balls that looked like berries. On the other side of the plate, a meat — yet this meat was hardly recognizable as such. Blue in color, it sat perched like a bird on two bare bones that resembled claws. No meat touched the plate.
“I have been working to get this right for years,” she admitted with a grin, “Are you brave enough to try it?”
I nodded.
She stood above me and watched as I lifted the fork from the table, feeling like an interrogated criminal. I knew what could happen if her experiment didn’t work. I had heard the stories of the others who had tried it. Her attempts had failed. But something inside me knew that this time was different.
I glanced up at her and gave her a half smile as I took on a fork full, lifted it to my lips, and gingerly took my first bite.
And, as I expected, something about it tasted not quite right.
It wasn’t the flavor, per say. Actually, it wasn’t the flavor at all… there were a variety of delightful tastes in my mouth. It was the sensation that made the dish strange… my taste buds suddenly felt warm, my tongue was tingling as if it had fallen asleep, my cheeks were bubbling. My heart fluttered with nervous thoughts. Was this it? Was I going to be another failed attempt? I felt as if my mouth was beginning to explode, and my body was suddenly betraying my confidence. But despite my fear, I knew I had to eat more. If I gave up now, I would sure be a failure.
“Keep going,” she encouraged, and I nodded. Sweat beads began forming at my brow as I scooped another fork full of food and shoveled it into my mouth, my lips beginning to sizzle like half boiled water.
With the second bite, the sensations expanded down into my throat. My tonsils began moving back and forth in a rhythmic dance. The very root canals of my teeth were throbbing to the beat of my heart pumps.
Closing my eyes, I took a third bite. My heartbeat became pronounced and I was suddenly aware of every artery that carried my blood. I felt the blood cells traveling, as if I were one of them myself carried along the bloodstream journey.
The fourth bite. The fifth.
My head began to spin. Every hair follicle gave a standing ovation on my head, a sudden cold enveloping only parts of my body, while others felt extremely hot. My organs were flopping, my bones aching, skin stretching.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.
The room was still, and there was a silent, small moment when she looked through me. Her eyes darted around my chair, searching for an image that wasn’t there.
“It worked!” She gasped, groping for my wrist. She found it. She lifted my hand close to our eyes. “Look!”
And there, between her clutched pointer and thumb, was nothing.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Nov 4, 2011 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
For the hundredth time, I glassed the area. Nothing on visual, nothing on thermal. I bumped the gain until individual grains of sand stood out in stark detail a thousand metres up the broken road. Nothing. Winter was setting in and game was scarce.
I clicked my teeth and subvoked. “Rover, move out. Keep two hundred metres fore and South of me.” A cheerful, synthetic bark sounded in my aural ‘plant.
Through the binos, I could see Rover. Though massing 90 kilos, he moved with enough grace and stealth to shame a snake. Had I not known his location, I couldn’t have spotted him. I shouldered my gear, slung my rifle and made off.
I tell myself that I wrapped Rover in faux fur to mask his metallic frame. To blend in better. The truth is I miss dogs. After the supermarkets had been looted of their last scraps, pets were the first things on the menu.
I had been off planet when it happened. I didn’t get the news through military channels. It came from my wife. Somehow she had managed to cut through the military blackout and reach me. “John, everybody’s dying. Earth is quarantined. I…” The message ended. My wife’s last words still keep me awake some nights.
I swiped the smallest skiff I could find to escape detection. It was small, no torch drive, so I fit it with a stasis couch. No hurry, I just wanted to get home. I should have stayed away.
The Christers, in an attempt to wipe out their ancient enemy and hasten the return of their slain god, had released a virus in New Medina. They didn’t care if they died in the ensuing pandemic as long as the ‘godless towel heads’ died as well.
The virus targeted the brain, destroying the higher functions. Billions died within weeks. The few million survivors, the Afflicted, were hollow shells of humanity. Mindlessly they ate, slept and fucked. The virus itself was no longer communicable. By chance or design, it had mutated into an endogenous retrovirus. It was now only passed through parentage. I was safe.
I topped a rise in the road. I lifted my binos, scanning the plain below. The trees had thinned here. Success. I knew prey would be more plentiful in the lower regions. You could always tell the Afflicted by their shambling gait. I could never figure out how they managed to move fast enough to catch something to eat.
“Rover,” I spoke aloud, not bothering to subvoke, “close in 25 metres, fore and South.”
Casually I walked into their camp. They had constructed rudimentary shelters from whatever detritus they could cobble together. They were gathered in a tight cluster to retain body heat. The gift of fire was lost to them.
Their dull eyes fell on me as I approached. Slowly rising to their feet, they regarded me warily. They shuffled towards me, hunger in their eyes. They were a pitiful lot. Threadbare clothing hanging from emaciated frames.
“Rover. Sic.”
In a blur of polyester fur, stainless steel teeth and literal razor sharp claws, Rover bounded in and dispatched the group of twenty or so with efficient violence. Not one for excessive force, Rover broke off his attack and returned to my side after the last creature was dispatched.
“Good boy,” I said, running my fingers through the matted synthetic fibres covering his head.
I had hoped for a grouse, maybe even a deer. But an Afflicted will do in a pinch and I was hungry. Not much meat on the bones, but the brains are tasty.
