by Duncan Shields | Oct 6, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
We failed at time travel.
We created an engine that would theoretically propel the automated craft forward in time. It started properly when we turned it on but instead of snapping the craft forward in time, it folded four years of time back into the craft. The ship rusted and weakened right in front of us, giving a little shudder as four years of time ran through it like a train.
That’s as far as the experiment got. Nothing we tried could make something actually go forward in time. But we could age things.
The experiments that were done on people brought the military back to a whole new dark age. The Nazis would have recognized the gleam in the eyes of the scientists that were given political dissidents and random homeless people to play with.
We couldn’t make it go in reverse. We tried but in only created a reality-feedback loop that drove the subjects insane.
What was fascinating was what happened when we pressed fast forward on people. They’d go from twenty-six to thirty right in front of our eyes and when they opened their eyes, they’d have four more years of memory. Memories of the life that would have happened if we hadn’t tied them to the chair and hooked them up to the temporal engine.
We sent people further and further forward, interviewing them when they opened their eyes. We aged one person 70 years. He ‘came back’ with a new heart, new hips, and partial brain implants. He remembered another world war, ten presidents, and two emperors.
The only real problem we encountered is that no two people that we sent forward came back with similar memories. That was still under investigation. We couldn’t get accurate future predictions if no two subjects agreed.
Plus the process was irreversible. For a while, our black ops sub-basements churned out seniors by the dozen every day until we realized it was fruitless.
Never let it be said that the military will let anything go to waste, however.
We invented a temprowave weapon. It was a focused beam of the time-propellant collapsed waveform. It aged whatever it hit and it aged it as long as contact was maintained.
We only used it in one battle. I’m a veteran of that battle. I have scars of sixty-year-old skin that criss-cross my thirty-year-old chest. I wonder if the cells in that skin have another thirty years of memory. Timebeam scars.
My left hand has liver spots. I have a patch of grey hair. Shrapnel from a time bomb.
If we turned the beam on to focus on someone for a long time, their heart would age and die.
It was too unwieldy in the end, though. Bullets did the job quicker.
The ‘time guns’ are in a basement with the other failed experiments. I go down and look at them sometimes, nestled in amongst the other failed weapons deemed too complex or esoteric for battle, wondering what I would see if I sent my own mind into the future.
by submission | Oct 2, 2010 | Story
Author : Jacqueline Rochow
We assumed that they were aliens. I mean, when something nonhuman approaches you from space and opens communication, it’s a freakin’ alien, right? Stands to reason.
They set up a station on the moon and opened communications. They were friendly. They wanted to trade tech, which was great for us. A little suspicious, I reckon, since what do we have to offer a species with freaking interstellar space travel? But they say you should never look a gift horse in the mouth, at least until after you’re out of sight of the guy who thought he was giving you the horse in a fair trade, so we were happy when they came down (with permission) to check out our planet.
They wanted human ambassadors for their moon station. Fine, we said. It’s not like there was a lack of volunteers. Sure, we were confused when they wanted all sorts of people from various walks of life, but I guess it makes sense to get a snapshot of all cultures when you’re dealing with an entirely different form of life. Whatever. I’m a freaking plumber and I’m in space, what are the chances of that?
So after a while they invited us to other bases, and we drifted further away from the earth. Some kids were born in space; they’ve never seen their planet. And when enough of us had established stable systems away from Earth, they struck.
And the Earth’s surface was made of fire and floods and hurricanes.
Naturally we weren’t happy about this, but those lizard-faced bastards explained, calmly, reasonably, that it was time for the Mother Planet’s rebirth. We asked what the hell that was supposed to mean. That was when they felt it appropriate to dispel the whole ‘they’re aliens’ notion and explain that they were, in fact, dinosaurs.
According to their religion, the Earth, their so-called Mother Planet, was supposed to go through many cycles to produce intelligent life. Because intelligent life was competitive and it was difficult to house more than one really intelligent species on a single planet, a single intelligent species would gain prominence and move on, the unnecessary planetside baggage would be wiped out, and the cycle would begin again. So smiling, under the guise of aliens coming to trade, they tempted us out into space to build new colonies, and then they burned ground zero behind us.
They didn’t seem to understand why we had a problem with this.
Freakin’ aliens. At least… no, you know what, I think they do count as aliens. I think that if you abandon a planet for millions of years you can’t call it your planet any more. Although I have to wonder why they’ve changed so little in that time; I mean, in that time frame we went from rat-things to bipedal supersmart primates, so why do they still look like actors wearing reptilian rubber suits? Or maybe they never used to look like that; in fact, why do they look so similar to us at all? Downright suspicious if you ask me.
And that, kiddo, is why you don’t have grandparents, and why your mummy sometimes stares wistfully off into space and sobs. She’s thinking of her old home, which you will never be able to see. Now scram, I’m trying to install pipes here.
by submission | Oct 1, 2010 | Story
Author : Steven Odhner
“I’m sorry, Dave. The effects are likely permanent.”
Roger looks properly sympathetic as he gives me the news, clutching my chart like a shield and wrinkling his forehead. I’m distracted, not by the bad news but by a green stain on his lab coat that I’m trying to identify. Lunch, medicine, or something else? Dave nods at nothing in particular, glances around the ward awkwardly and takes a step back.
“Well… I’ll leave you to… process all of this. I, uh. I’ll be around if you need me.” Presumably Roger has mistaken my silence for shock or something. If he had been Kathy she would have sat down on the bed next to me and offered a shoulder to cry on. If he had been Jake he would have suggested we sneak out and go to the bar.
I know, because he’s been both of them before.
I shuffle down the hall (flip-flops only, nothing with laces in case someone decides to do something drastic) and lean on the window at the end. I can see the lab building from here; feel the warm rays of the device reaching out to me. It’s like ripples on a pond, expanding outwards from the big splash. The metal meshwork embedded in the safety glass presses against my skin, making a pattern of red indentations. I push off of it and stand upright, careful not to let my feet slide too close to the wall. There’s a door next to me and I take the handle in hand – it’s locked, of course, but I need support for this next part…
Dangling by the know, I lean through the wall – high above the sidewalk I reach back through and unlock the door from the other side. I pull myself back and open it – the alarm sounds as I step through, but four out of five times the orderlies won’t find me before I reach the street so I remain calm. The exit is facing the lab, unfortunately, so as I step through my feet sink into the liquid earth. Some interns walk past halfway between me and the lab, laughing about something, but they don’t notice my stumbling, half-swimming sprint.
Finally I reach the corner and step around onto solid ground. I’ve lost both flip-flops, probably somewhere in the manicured lawn. I suppose I could make metal shoes and gloves at some point, armor myself against the effects of the device like an astronaut going on a space walk and head ever closer to the lab. Not that it would do any good. The device is destroyed, its ripples only felt by me.
Instead I turn towards home and…
“David? We’ve run every test we can.” It’s Kathy this time. She’s looking at my chart even though she’s probably memorized it. This was the shortest yet, maybe ten minutes. Hardly worth sneaking out at all.
“I’m afraid that the effects are probably permanent. The… the dementia and disorientation will never go away.”
There has to be a pattern to it. Why the little things change, why it lasts longer some times than others. Unless I’m actually crazy, but that’s a dead end anyway. Kathy sits next to me on the bed and drapes an arm around my shoulders. I think she’s wearing different perfume than before.
“It’s okay, David. We’ll figure this out. Somehow.”
Well, time for plan ‘B’. Let’s see her reaction to something impossible. I take her hand and point to the hallway. “Will you take a walk with me? I want to show you a magic trick.”
by Patricia Stewart | Sep 30, 2010 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
It was a significant indiscretion to say the least. To have become emotionally involved in your science project was bad enough, but to have affected its outcome was unforgivable. In fact, it was a breach of conduct worthy of expulsion. Now, Mi’tera was faced with another dilemma, what to do about it.
****
It had been an ambitious senior project, recalled Mi’tera; to study this very unusual corporeal life from. They were so different than Etheropeans, she thought, as she gazed at the tiny spaceship that she lovingly cradled. There were more than 400 “beings” living precariously within the little hollow metal vessel. They were so young, so vulnerable. For the last semester she had traveled through space with them as they “explored” the universe. How cute, she had thought. They think that they are so special, so unique. Boldly going wherever they wanted; only to repeatedly stumble into situations that they were not ready to handle. At first, Mi’tera only interacted in small ways: containing a plasma leak, strengthening a bulkhead, boosting the power output. Mi’tera considered this acceptable behavior back then, because the humans never suspected an outside influence; “luck favors the fortunate” they had boasted. Even later, when her unethical involvement became more emboldened, the naïve humans attributed the “miracles” to their crafty chief engineer. Even the fortuitous outcomes of her most egregious interventions were credited to the ingenuity of their dashing young captain. They never suspected they had a guardian watching over them.
However, Mi’tera knew that what she was doing was very wrong. She knew that she had to let nature take its course. Non-interference was a requirement for school projects involving observational science. But she couldn’t help herself. The humans were like helpless paidia, and her instincts were to protect them. As her charge left orbit after completing another successful mission, she could sense the humans moving within their tiny self-contained micro-environment. And when she concentrated, she could even read their thoughts, know their dreams, and feel their passion. Even now, they were totally unaware that she was deflecting an intense gamma ray burst that would have destroyed their frail molecular structures. Dammit, she vowed to herself, this will be the last time that she’d interfere on their behalf. After this one last time, she swore, they’ll be on your own. As they streaked together through space, she continued to hug the ship, occasionally vaporizing a rogue asteroid if it drifted too close to their flight path.
by Duncan Shields | Sep 27, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
She set up a receiving station in her office. That receiving station was anchored at 3:45 PM, August 22nd, 2018.
As soon as she turned it on, the messages from her future self came pouring in.
Advice on theories, scores from sports games, inside knowledge on upcoming relationships and a thousand other subjects. Apparently, the future her had no respect for causality.
Reality shattered.
She set up more message depots ten weeks apart and gave them addresses.
She answered questions. She’d forward questions back to the proper message depots and an earlier self would try to find out answers and forward them back to the future.
She employed people. Her earlier selves employed people.
Every message station became a corporation. Every ten days, she set another message depot up. Her corporation would get to a deserted part of the world, set up a beacon, and turn it on. As soon as they turned it on, a building would materialize around it with an employee base that had always been there.
After August 22nd, 2018 at 3:45 PM, there were no more mysteries. Reality became as malleable as smoke in the air.
The thing that’s hard to imagine is that whenever reality changes, no one notices. It simply becomes the way it’s always been. The theory is that that we are shuffling through realities like an infinite deck of cards. We can’t tell. She either ended the universe or created the multiverse.
The only way to live here is to live here, they say. I tried making some bets on upcoming games but they never pan out. Something changes, I guess, and the score changes, so that’s that. I don’t make a fortune and then lose a fortune; I just never had a fortune. If you see what I mean.
I have to accept that what is real right now is all I’ve ever known.
I wonder if one day, someone will send a message back and successfully set the wheels in motion to assassinate her and put this world back into a place where her discovery never existed. I wonder if that’s even possible.
Not that I’d notice if it happened. This world would cease and I’d be in a world where her invention never existed. I’d never know the difference.
