by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Andy knew he was a relic. He used to violently object when it was suggested that he was past his prime, but after a while the reality was too apparent to ignore.
It had been years, maybe decades since he’d been able to find factory fresh parts. Most of his equipment now was made up from bits scavenged and scrounged, then adapted as best he could.
Sometimes there would be an accident in the construction projects, and if he was lucky, and quick, he could tear off whole limbs or liberate power cells before the maintenance crews arrived to chase him away.
Most of these parts were too new, but some could be modified to fit, the rest traded away.
Andy found himself wandering through a section of the city that he remembered as it had been, vibrant and alive, but as he trudged down the streets and through the alleys, he found the roads in disrepair and littered with rubble and refuse. The once tall and gleaming buildings that reached skyward were now bent and broken, some leaning across the street on a neighbor, as if seeking comfort from the overwhelming decay.
This part of the city too, it seemed, had outlived its usefulness, now just awaiting its turn to be torn down and born again.
His head turned skyward, marveling at the battered structures holding each other aloft, Andy didn’t notice the road had given away before him until his weight had shifted too far over the empty space to recover.
Safety systems gone out of alignment and a battered gyroscopic guidance system struggled to orient him for a favorable landing, but Andy hit hard, scrambling circuits already oxidized to the point of being barely functional.
For a while, Andy was still, his world dark.
When he regained motor control, Andy pulled himself roughly and unsteadily upright. He was aware that he’d fallen, but could not recall the events preceding it. Around him he could make out the rough structure of a transit tunnel. Metal rails reached off in either direction in triplicate, no longer shiny from use but rather tarnished and pitted with age. Andy knew how they felt.
Andy picked a direction at random, and had trudged for some time before the tunnel opened up into a larger cavern on one side. In the middle, a pile of refuse burned surrounded by a cluster of shadowy figures who scattered into the darkness as he approached.
“Derelict maintenance droids, ” Andy muttered to himself, then loudly at the retreating figures, “if you were working for me I’d have your parts.”
Andy pulled himself up on the platform, then trundled to the fire, carefully stamping it out.
As he stood surveying the scene, he noticed one of the droids had not left, but rather was lying in a heap on the ground. Andy nudged its head with the toe of one large foot.
Nothing.
Excited, Andy pulled the droid into the middle of the platform where he had room to work. The droid was relatively small, but no doubt useful. As carefully as his tools would allow, Andy set to work disassembling the wiry unit.
Hydraulic fluid spilled everywhere, it’s plumbing obviously ruptured internally having no doubt resulted in overheating or loss of motor control.
Andy marveled at the delicacy of the inner workings of the unit, but was frustrated and confused that there didn’t seem to be a single part compatible with his own chassis.
Arriving back at the head, he examined the dent his foot had left in the casing. It was at this point that his headlights fell full on the droids eyes.
Andy paused, awestruck by the workmanship of these white and colored orbs staring back at him. They truly would be beautiful, Andy thought, if they weren’t so vacant.
by submission | Dec 17, 2009 | Story
Author : Ruth Imeson
Edward Smithfield knew better than to hide.
The heavy oak door to his lodgings rattled in its frame. The handle spun. Exquisite brass gears, cogs and counterweights shifted. The door swung open. Vapour entered the room, but the man it shielded dallied at the threshold. London’s fog had found an entry point on the eve of the hanging; for at dawn a hapless fool would swing in Edward’s rightful place.
Edward did not flinch – something always came to protect the gateway and, sometimes, him.
The stranger was silver and black with crimson motion. His suit was bespoke Savile Row. His frock coat bore a red sheen and a top hat was tucked under one arm. His nails were tapered iron and his knuckles hissed. Steam escaped from every joint.
“You will help me,” the man rasped.
“Sir…?”
“You will open the time door.”
Edward’s eyes widened. “Sir, I cannot.”
“I am glad.”
“That I refuse?”
“That you do not insult me with pretence,” the stranger smiled with the sound of shearing metal. “You must do as I say. You must open the door.”
The man stepped into the room. Steam leaked through his joints. Edward called on his keepers. For this was no man. Its hair was full of monsters bound in chains and bent with iron; a medusa for the 1890s.
Where were the guardians? They were supposed to protect the conduit; that was the deal.
“The door is not mine to open,” Edward said, his voice faltering. But if no one was coming to help him, of whom should he be the more scared?
“I come from those who gave you this honour.”
The stranger moved closer. Redness crashed over lips and eyes of obsidian so polished as to be perfect for scrying. The nose was beaten steel riveted to bone; the eyebrows rusted filings; the mouth encrusted with oxidisation.
“You will open the door,” the creature said, “please.”
Edward smiled. No man nor woman nor incorporeal creature had ever said please before. Where was the harm in doing one good deed? It would be his first. He pulled on his goggles and his clockwork wings and followed the stranger down flights of narrow stairs and into the cellar. Edward’s furnaces quieted as the rusted man approached.
The creature laboured to the time threshold. It halted and turned to look at Edward, pointing metallic fingers at the hissing machines.
“Stoke the fires,” it rasped.
Edward hesitated. He doubted.
“This is your last service,” it said. “Then you will be free.”
So, Edward coaxed his machines from their slumber. His wings bore him from one to another, cajoling, stroking and feeding. The gateway slid open.
“Free, you say?” Edward asked.
“Yes,” the machine stepped through the doorway, “free to pay for your crimes. Free from our protection.”
“Sir, what is your meaning?”
The stranger smiled. Rust flaked where his face cracked. “Before the gaol flooded and the rust came I was a fair substitute for your flesh. I was to take your appointment with the rope, but my appearance has deteriorated somewhat. Seeing as you have been so kind as to aid my escape… Well, no doubt the authorities will come for you.”
The gate began to close. Frantically, Edward pulled levers, but the closure could not be aborted. He was on his own.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 16, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The sensor charges go off and for a second I become a percussion instrument for the Devil.
I’m wreathed in black smoke and dropping like a stone. Explosions kick me like excited children. I’m a trillion-dollar pinball of curled-up offensive weaponry plummeting towards the enemy with the wrath of god in storage.
There’s sudden silence as I pass beneath the flakfield I was designed to penetrate. The air rushes by, whistling through the feathers of shrapnel embedded in my hull.
I unball and snap open the wingspread. Screaming with delight, I pull a tight three-gee loop in defiance of the enemy and in pure celebration of life.
I look left and right through amped senses to check out limb integrity.
A quick diagnostic reveals an acceptable level of damage.
I transform from a rock into an arrow pointed down.
The last of the clouds snap past me and my ocular facets becomes a rainbow of targets flowering towards me. Incoming priorities overlaid on city blocks and towers. Starpoints with missiles in the middle are getting larger as I look at them. Contrails are forming a spiderweb in the sky with me at the center. The city below me sends its best.
It’s too complicated to take in with my primary brain so I dump a priority comp request through and feel the jabs, waking up the other two brains. My ego dissolves and I become trajectories, vectors and tracepoints.
Even my memory fades. The only time I remember this state of mind is in my dreams during testing and repairs.
The city is a dartboard and I am headed for the bullseye.
It’s with a high whine that I pulse the accelerator. Two mach-donuts of ruptured air smash out from my tailfins. Windows shatter in the top floors of the towers below me as the sonic booms hit them twice.
I pull horizontal just above the tip of the tallest tower. The missiles aimed at me adjust accordingly.
I spin, turning the exhaust streams of sixty-eight cruise missiles behind me into basket weavers. My twinjets leave a dna helix of superheated gas.
I am flying flat now with a pet arsenal of enemy ordnance at my disposal. Automated defenses are so stupid.
I take a wide left and circle back towards the tip of the building that’s worth the most points.
I crank up an old recording of Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday Mr. President as I fly straight towards the top floor.
He’s looking out the window. I couldn’t ask for more. I zoom in on his widening eyes as he takes in what’s happening. He moves in slow motion and I have entire tenths of a second to take in the picture.
I’m an angel chased by suns reflected in the glass he’s standing behind.
With a smile, I spread my wings again, wide, to brake.
I stop before nuclear fire overtakes me and I become Daedalus and Icarus rolled into one.
I’m a record cover for a second. Then I’m burning atoms.
Mission accomplished.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Dec 14, 2009 | Story
Author : Roi R, Czechvala, Staff Writer
Charred bodies littered the streets. The blackened faces frozen in the horrible rictus of death. They had been men and women once. Children. Families who had laughed, lived and loved together, reduced to carbonized grotesques of human beings.
Marine Gunnery Sergeant Stouffer laid down his collider rifle and for the first time since he was a child ,he wept. His tears formed neat craters on the ash covered pavement. Pulling himself together, and in a voice perhaps too harsh to cover his shame, he barked his orders.
“Awright Marines, saddle up. This is our house, and we have some cleaning to do. We have a gift for the slopes that did this.” He picked up his rifle and held it aloft. He was answered with a deafening “OOORAHHH” as the men scrambled to the lifters and strapped in.
Seven drop ships lifted into the dim twilight of Europa’s sky and merged with the carrier in geosynch orbit above. Within minutes the ship held position over Chien Kai, the outer most settlement of the Asiatic Alliance.
The population of the outpost consisted primarily of scientists and their families, with a small military contingent mainly for internal security. Aside from the Tesla Field containing the colony’s atmosphere and providing protection from the lethal Jovian radiation, the complex was defenceless.
Seven sleek flat black drop ships descended like avenging angels around the dome of the T-field. The complex had been built years before the war began. For safety’s sake the field generator was outside the field. Directly beside the spot where the lead ship had grounded.
The entire population spilled out of the warren of buildings and bunkers. They watched as the ships disgorged 210 Marines. Collider rifles in hand, singularity grenades hanging from their web gear. Their small arms were incapable of harming the near impregnable T-field.
They didn’t have to.
The men and women watched in confusion at first, then in horror as the realization of the unfolding events became clear. The marines, clad in black armoured battle suits formed a semi-circle around the generator. Inside the protective shimmering barrier the inhabitants watched.
Stouffer swaggered up, barely a yard separating him from the citizens of Chien Kai. Citizens no more but prisoners awaiting execution. They watched him, a wide grin splitting his face. Some sobbed openly, pulling at their hair. The small group of soldiers screamed and waved their weapons in impotent rage, but most wept silently, clinging to loved ones, stoically awaiting their fate.
A marine broke ranks and grabbed Stouffer’s shoulder. Tears streaming down his face. “Gunny, do we really have to do this? So many have already died. We’re the only ones out here. What good will it do?”
Gunny Stouffer’s grin widened, then quickly broke and fell as he thought back to the discovery of his own family less than an hour before. “You’re right,” he keyed his helmet mike to the company freq, “Everybody back to your ships.” As one the men snapped to and beat a hasty retreat to their lifters. “Not you corporal, you stay here.”
Before he vaporized the generator and watched as the faintly glowing womb of the Tesla field failed; before he gloated as five hundred people suffocated, their eyes bulging from their sockets; he raised his rifle and burned down the young corporal where he stood.
“Pussy.”
by submission | Dec 13, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Ersinghaus
He gave away his parts at the proper time.
Downtown he saw a man without a foot, so he gave the man his foot. A friend told him that the box full of left shoes he put on the sidewalk was a good idea.
He gave his right arm to a construction company for they were in need of day labor and his right arm had always been his best.
“You’re fading in front of me,” his girl friend said. “We should discuss the benefits of travel through France.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve heard about a town in Alaska in serious need of ears.”
He loved the train. He remembered the hammer of the mechanicals under the soles of his feet. But these were newer, faster trains. He disembarked somewhere in the middle of the country where the children asked, “How far can you kick with your robotic foot?” and “Those look like ear buds.”
“Because they are, you little shits,” he said. “And I’ll show you just how far I can kick. Come to me when you’re in serious need of livers.”
They needed eyes in Florida, testicles in Texas, whole shoulders in a small village in Queensland, legs here, fingers there. This neediness kept him busy. “You’re fading and fading fast,” his girl friend said. “You’re a machine and I sleep cold beside metal in the winter. We should seriously consider a cruise.”
“Some other time,” he said. “There’re dangerous places in space. Common flesh is unwilling. And my processors roast in this gravity. The sea air’d glue me to the shell.”
“Call me when you can,” she told him as they closed the hatch to the shuttle set for deep space.
Inside, the techs slipped him into a slot, watched as his file appeared on screen, mounted him into the communication and guidance system, then departed.
After take off, over the Com, he said. “I feel cool and calm and robust brothers and sisters. I fear losing nothing. I’m speeding through and can see the angels. Tell them to believe me: you won’t miss blood flow.”
