by submission | Jan 9, 2011 | Story
Author : James C.G. Shirk
CANINE STUDIES INSTITUTE HQ
(Abr. Final Project Report)
Status: One survivor Breed: Retriever (mixed)
Name: Pita Sex: Male
Age: 5 Weeks Pathology: Infected w/CCDV
Prognosis: Terminal within two weeks.
End of Report
Submitted by: Dr. Anthony Tolson, Director CSI, Mars Colony proper. Date: 10/22/2145
“What do we do now?” Dr. Hillary Kurtz asked. Her gloved hands, sticking through the enclosure’s side port access, trembled as the puppy suckled the bottle of enriched milk.
“There’s nothing left to do,” I replied. Anger clawed at my gut, begging for release. “Damn it! We did everything to protect them from the virus. We spent years in research; we formulated every conceivable anti-viral; we put them in controlled enclosures to prevent disease-carrying contact, and when all that didn’t work, we moved the last surviving dogs here to be clear of any earthly pathogens…and for what! The whole attempt has been an abject failure. My failure.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Kurtz said, putting aside the bottle and wiping mucus from Pita’s eyes. “Species have gone extinct before, hundreds of thousands of them. Viruses adapt, sometimes beyond our ability to contain them. The virulent ones can get buried in the species DNA. There’s nothing we can do about that.”
I nodded. “But nothing like that has ever happened to a creature so close to man,” I said, “and to have failed–. It’s just too much.”
“Sometimes God’s plan is unfathomable,” Kurtz said hopefully. She was a devout believer; I, not so much.
“If so, He must be mad at man,” I replied, perhaps a little too curtly.
She turned her attention back to feeding the puppy. “Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Religion and science don’t mix well,” I said. “Perhaps all our technical achievements displeased your God, and it was his hand that took the one thing from man that is irreplaceable in order to teach us a lesson.”
“You’re an idiot,” she grumbled.
Pita stopped nursing at the bottle and burped contentedly. The recorders surrounding him gathered data, analyzing everything, including the presence of the virus in his system.
Not that it mattered now.
I pushed back the enclosure’s protective covering and reached inside with my bare hands; no need for precautions any more. I petted his head and scratched his milk-filled, pink belly. His blue puppy-eyes glazed over at my touch, and he licked appreciatively at my fingers. “Mankind will be less without them,” I moaned.
An alarm went off behind me. I rushed to the monitoring console to examine the readouts. Something had happened to Pita, something extraordinary.
“What is it?” Kurtz yelled over the din.
I slammed the monitor button, killing the noise. “I don’t believe it! The virus is dying. At this rate, it will be completely out of his system in minutes.”
“How can that be?” Kurtz said.
I shook my head, wondering. Why so late? Why did this happen when there was just one animal left? And then it struck me.
Viruses mutate.
God’s hand? Man’s hand? My hand? Pita just received the first unprotected contact from a human in years. Some insignificant thing on my fingers found its way into Pita’s system when he licked me. That had to be it! Irony upon irony. The disease had only endured, because we denied dogs the one thing they ever wanted from us. Human contact.
“What now?” Kurtz asked for the second time today.
I smiled. “We clone.”
by Patricia Stewart | Jan 4, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Exactly what do you expect is going to happen, Dr. Erwin?” asked Captain Podolsky as he stared out the aft viewport.
“Well, Captain, if Schrodinger’s unpublished theorem is correct, when I create a quantum bubble around that asteroid, it should cease to exist in our universe.”
“I’m not a scientist Doctor, but doesn’t that violate a law of physics?”
“Several, Captain. But in science, laws evolve, or are rewritten. So, shall we revise science as we currently know it?”
But before Dr. Erwin could activate the Quantum Bubble Generator, the emergency claxon sounded. “Bridge to Captain, long range sensors are picking up a Deneobian attack force closing in on our position.”
Damn, thought Podolsky. He had tried to convince Central Command that it was better to test the device with a battle ready escort, but they had elected to conduct the experiment with a low profile. “Under the scanners,” they had said. Well, that’s plasma out the exhaust. “Unfortunately, Doctor, it looks like the war may delay your date with the scientific legislature. Lieutenant, set a course for the delta sector, maximum warp. Let me know it they attempt to pursue us. Maybe their appearance was just a coincidence.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” After a tense minute of silence, they got their answer. “No luck, Captain. They’ve altered course and are following us. And sir, they must have improved their warp drive, because they are gaining, fast. I estimate that they’ll overtake us in twenty minutes.”
“Understood, Lieutenant. I’m on my way to the bridge.” Then he addressed Erwin, “We’re only a frigate, Doctor. We’re no match for a Deneobian attack force. Command thought a lone ship would go unnoticed, but I suspect that their spies have found out about your experiment. If we can’t outrun them, I’ll have to initiate the autodestruct. I can’t let them get the bubble generator, or the scientists that built it.” He started to leave, and then abruptly stopped. “Doctor, is there any way your device could make their ships cease to exist?”
“Unfortunately, Captain, no. At least, not while they’re in hyperspace. The quantum bubble wouldn’t be stable. However, if you engaged them in normal space, I could give it a shot.”
“Sorry, Doctor. I can’t take that chance.” Again, he turned to leave.
“Captain,” called out Erwin, “if you have to go the autodestruct route, can you give us a minute’s notice? We may come up with something.”
Podolsky nodded, and left.
***
Eighteen minutes later, the captain called down to engineering. “Doctor, they’re right on our tails, and help is more than an hour away. If you got a trick up your sleeve, now would be a good time.”
Erwin and his team had spent the last fifteen minutes reprogramming the Quantum Bubble Generator. “We think so, Captain. It seems the hyperspace equation may have more than one solution after all. Please maintain our current course,” he replied as he activated the generator. As the frigate streaked through hyperspace, a star sized elongated cloud of antimatter gas formed in its wake. Seconds later, the Deneobian fleet plowed through the rarified cloud of antimatter only to explode in rapid succession a heartbeat later. The science team erupted into cheers, and Dr. Erwin simply smiled. Some laws, he thought, were meant to be broken.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Jan 3, 2011 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
“With the launch of Grimace 4, the MacDonaldCorp orbital facility will be completed on time and ready to begin dishing out delicious meals at competitive prices to our brave astronauts as well as the astronauts and cosmonauts of all nations.
We go now live, to Sharon Davit at MacDonaldCorp’s CapCom in Houston, Texas to speak to MacDonaldCorp spokesperson, Ronald MacDonald himself.”
“Thank you Terry. I have with me Mr. Ronald MacDonald, spokesclown for the MacDonaldCorp’s orbital restaurant and hotel and President of the United States. Mr. MacDonald…”
“Please Sharon, call me Ronald.”
“Okay … Ronald. Tell me. What does this mean to the corporate growth of space?”
“Well Sharon, we just want to deliver a delicious and familiar taste of home to space farers of all nations.”
“Any plans beyond the restaurant and hotel, Ronald?”
“’House’, Sharon. Not ‘hotel’, ‘House’. No, we don’t want the Moon… Yet. Waka waka, waka.”
“Thank you, Ronald. Back to you Terry.”
“Tragedy is connected with the completion of this, the latest and undoubtedly greatest, achievement of corporate manned spaceflight. Famed Science Fiction writer and winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards for his visionary work, Roi R. Czechvala, died by his own hand early this morning at his home in Corpus Christi, Texas.
According to his full time nurse, Dorothy Fontana, the infirmed writer was heard to mumble, ‘I’m Lovin’ It’, before producing a large calibre revolver where after he ended his life. Mr Czechvala was 114 years old last September. According to those closest to him he died “still pretty pissed off that that jet pack they promised him in the early seventies never materialized.”
In related news, strange sounds appear to be emanating from the graves of such men of science as Doctors Stephen Hawking and Isaac Asimov, as well as Science Fiction luminaries Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Phillip K. Dick, and S. R. Smith.
With us in the studio is the director of the MacNASA Parapsychology Centre in Bowling Green Kentucky, George J. Kreskin III. Mr. Kreskin, what can you tell us about these bizarre phenomena?”
“First of all Terry, thank you for having me. I need to point out that this is not a new phenomenon. It was first noticed after the launch of Big Kroc 1 which successfully placed the restaurant module into a LEO or Low Earth Orbit. The intensity of the sound emanating from these graves was noted by a marked increase in frequency after the launch of Hamburglar 2, carrying the playground component of the habitat or rather, the ‘MacSpace Station’”.
Today, the noise again shifted tremendously and is clearly audible to those standing even several feet away from the graves of these lauded men, with the launch of Grimace 4.”
“Dr. Kreskin, can you tell our audience what is making these strange noises.”
“Terry, it’s too early to tell. Right now we are seeking court orders to exhume the bodies of these esteemed men. All I can tell you is that the sound is a sort of whizzing noise as if something were being spun at a tremendous rate.”
by submission | Dec 31, 2010 | Story
Author : Jason Frank
We weren’t supposed to take our suits off, not ever. We were supposed to find the survey team that disappeared. We found out what happened to them, all right, and then we took our suits off, just like they did. I’m writing this with my suit off (I had to put my gloves back on because this keypad was made with suited fingers in mind).
When we got here, we didn’t find the other team, just their suits. We did find some incredible things running around, however. They were at the extreme end of alien anatomy but were no less beautiful for it. They weren’t aggressive or dangerous; we didn’t think they killed the team. We chased dead ends for a week before we realized they were the team. They didn’t disappear, they just stopped reporting in.
We spent days debating our next move. Did they take their suits off because they were changing, or did they change because they took their suits off? Hector settled the debate by taking his suit off (he was always a bit of a romantic). He started changing right away. We wanted to document it, get some objective proof, but he was against that, firmly against that. He said it was an invasion of his privacy. Then he said it didn’t hurt, that it felt great. Then he didn’t say anything and flew way with the same rippling layers of flamboyant flesh that the other team had embraced.
After that, it was like dominoes. One by one everyone took their suits off. One by one everyone became one of those shimmering, impossible beings. I kept my suit on. I kept filing boring, misleading reports. The responses from base were stilted, stern. They were suspicious of me. They probably assumed that I had lost it, that I was one of those people that goes on a mission and wipes out her whole team over some strongly held yet deeply frightening misconceptions about the nature of reality.
The communiqués from base got so bad that I realized I was boned no matter what happened. I figured I should just take my suit off. Everyone else seemed to be having a great old time flying around and sometimes engaging in complicated maneuvers I assumed to be copulation of some sort.
Then, I did it. I took my suit off (when in Rome… right?). I took my suit off and, embarrassingly enough, shouted “I am ready to transcend!” I was more than a little drunk (I hid some whiskey in my suit before takeoff). The booze made tired so I laid down for a minute to relax. I thought I’d wake up all changed. I didn’t.
Hours passed, days passed and nothing happened. I didn’t change. I didn’t start to change. I felt the same. Why not me? My feelings became as complex as the physical shapes of my former colleagues. Was it some deficiency of the imagination? I have always been a practical person. Do I lack some gene tied to evolution, some physical ability to become more than I am?
I’m going to go hide someplace and think things through. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you are on the team sent to find my team. Well, I just made your job a lot easier. Why don’t you return the favor by leaving me be (I don’t want to be a science project). If, however, you have your suit off and nothing’s happening, come out and find me. Your unchanged personness will lead you right to me, I’m sure of that.
by submission | Dec 29, 2010 | Story
Author : Martin Berka
Krinna Lorens blinked as she woke up. She felt extremely refreshed, and was wide awake in about 15 seconds – sleeping was healthy. The lid of the bed slid aside, and the date appeared in front of her, hovering in mid-air. With a start, she studied the purple-tinted numbers again. Yes? Yes! She’d been waiting so long – those five years had felt like an eternity, no matter what she’d told herself – and it was time. A quick glance at his last message confirmed it – she had until mid-afternoon.
Sending the display away with a thought, Krinna sat up and climbed out, carefully. She dressed simply, ate (purely out of nostalgia), and spent several hours checking the news and downloading updates. Yes, it took a long time, but she wanted to be completely clued-in when she saw him again.
After triple-checking that she was ready, the 32-year-old surveyed the tiny apartment. It had served her decently for the last five years. Sure, it was slightly larger than a jail cell (though considerably better-equipped), but without Jeff around, it fit her living style. She’d always been the more practical of the two. Agreeing that her fiance should go on the trip was perhaps her only lapse, but the opportunity had seemed so rare, and the financial benefits, substantial.
Without a backward glance, Krinna stepped out the door, which locked behind her. The antique elevator took her up 14 floors, to what was once known as “ground level.” Being a cross between the real sky and ground areas, it was kept open and reserved for foot traffic. The street-like area was full of aliens, though she could tell that many of them were theoretically human, somewhere beneath all the modifications. She couldn’t blame them, since she had gotten the bare minimum herself, in the last few years. The rapid trend changes still tended to catch her off-guard, but one of the newly-downloaded patches kicked-in, and she confidently made her way through the crowd.
The transit center was nearby, and she waited several minutes before a one of the space elevator cages returned to the ground, using the opportunity to check the Expected Arrival Time on the public network. She reached the spaceport with a half-hour remaining.
The incoming ship was obsolete, launched as part of a third-contact wave of knowledge exchanges, to a star system some 15 light years distant. Despite relying on once-amazing advances in propulsion, it had taken just over 32 millenniums to arrive at its destination (and after alien improvements, nearly 20 to return) with its small crew of robots and 95 stasis-bound humans sent for their artistic, scientific, and technical abilities – including Jeff. He would spend about five conscious years away, and they had agreed to wait for each other. While he flew off and spent five years on the alien world (waking a few times during the voyage to reply to her messages), Krinna spread the same time evenly across fifty thousand. The routine quickly became familiar – awake every few centuries, explore the new world order, and try to fit in for a several months. The people she met during these “visits” were very helpful, though over time, they increasingly questioned why anyone would wait for the future, when the present was so wonderful.
But the present had included Jeff’s absence, until now. The ship docked, and he returned to a changed world, immediately heading in Krinna’s direction.
