by featured writer | Oct 12, 2009 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Featured Writer
When the last Earthmen landed on the Martian surface, they would have sworn they were suffering from some form of mass hallucination or hysteria. Perhaps the ship had taken a hit from a micro meteor and the crew was succumbing to asphyxiation induced delusions, but all appeared to be having the same dream. It was as if they had walked into a Ray Bradbury story. Wherever they looked they saw lush verdant hills and valleys forested with exceedingly tall, thin trees of deep blue and green.
Joe Webster, the team’s medical specialist, cracked his helmet and drew a deep breath. “Well, the air is thin but okay. It’s kind of like being in the Rockies .” His voice was weak in the lean atmosphere. The rest removed their helmets.
“Hey, uh…Captain? This looks more like Iowa than Mars,” systems analyst Ray Rowe remarked. The four men looked around in wonder and awe rather than shock or surprise. “Did we somehow make a mistake?”
“No mistake. That’s Earth there,” Lt. Metz replied pointing upward to the twilight sky. “Captain. What do you think?”
“Well, whatever is going on here, I think we are about to get some answers,” Captain Drexler remarked, looking off into the distance.
The other three followed his gaze as a procession of brilliantly robed figures approached them. The people, creatures, Martians, whatever the hell, drew to a halt before the delegation from Earth. They were tall, something over two meters, with large ears, and nostrils much like a seals that opened and shut with each breath. They had blond hair with gleaming violet streaks. Apart from these differences, they looked remarkably human.
The two groups regarded one another for a few moments. The humans with confusion, the Martians with quiet contemplation. Finally one Martian, resplendent in flowing blue and red robes of a shimmering material spoke up.
“Welcome men of Earth. Long have we awaited this day. You come on a very auspicious occasion. And, I might add, a very lucky time for you.. Come, the feast awaits.” The voice boomed even in the rareified air.
Without another word the “Welcoming Committee” turned and left. In shocked silence the men followed.
The mixed group entered a crowded hall constructed of iridescent stone and were seated around a grand banquet table of the same material. The table itself was laden with deliciously tempting dishes.
Captain Drexler turned to his host at his left. “Excuse me…er…”
“Call me Bob.”
“Okay, um…Bob. From Earth observations and the photographs from our probes we assumed Mars to be…,”
“A lifeless, desolate, desert planet,” the Martian asked.
“Well, yes.”
“We can deceive your instruments, but not your natural senses. Mars is as you see it. Now please, eat. I am sure that will you find the food is not only edible, but quite palatable as well.”
The men followed the example of their gracious host and dove into the feast sans utensils. To their delight they found the food to be beyond anything they had ever tasted before, as if all their lives they had had only water and were given a vintage wine for the first time.
As they ate, their host stood and raised his hand to silence the assembled crowd. “Fellow astronomers, cosmologists, and our special guests. Tonight is an historic occasion in our field, for tonight marks the destruction of Earth.”
The four Earthmen choked on their meals. “WHAT,” they exclaimed as one, showering the table with partially chewed food.
“Oh yes,” their host said, turning to his guests, “Earth must be destroyed. It’s obstructing our view of Venus.”
by Duncan Shields | Oct 8, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The old man was a genius but kept it to himself. He lived in an old house outside of the city. He didn’t have friends. He kept himself busy with hobbies. His latest project had been a frustrating one.
The problem was material. By his calculations, he would have needed a dish over six miles in diameter. Tin or lead-lined steel would have been best.
He didn’t have the money to afford that much metal, let alone get a grant from city council to build something so huge that close to the city. He was stuck.
Until he thought smaller instead of bigger. He bought an old television picture tube and a faulty electron microscope from the university that they were going to throw out anyway. He bought thirty magnets from the hardware store, salted them, and aligned them all in a very unique and specific way on a chunk of stolen chain-link fence. By pulsing the electrons from the busted television through those magnets with the electron microscope turned on to observe them to make them collapse, he created a tachyon spray gun.
With it, he could mark a radius of five miles around his house with an invisible web of time-retarding, mostly-stable tachyon nets with its focus ending in the middle of his basement.
Totally harmless to the normal population.
To time travelers, it might as well have been a brick wall.
The first traveler arrived five minutes after the old man turned the time-net on.
There was a flash and there he was. Dressed in blue and with goggles. He had a bright orange plastic fin on the top of his head. He was wearing black rubber gloves and his chest had a tangle of monitors on it. His whole setup looked pretty homemade. He had what looked like a motorcycle throttle in his left hand and some sort of blender in the other.
“Sweet! It worked! Where am I?” he asked. Looking at the old man and then at his surroundings with a wide, goofy smile on his face.
“1958.” the old man lied.
“What? That doesn’t make any sense.” He looked down at one of his dials.
The old man raised his gun and shot the traveler through his left eye.
The old man turned off the time-net. He took off the traveler’s clothes and looked at the equipment strapped to his body. There had to be about six patents in the chest equipment alone. And judging by the traveler’s inexperience and naiveté, he probably wasn’t even that advanced.
The old man would rob more travelers and steal their technology. He’d leak the patents out on the market. He’d be rich.
Seeing as no temporal police had showed up at his house yet, the old man figured that he had already gotten away with the crime.
The old man smiled in the darkness of his basement.
by featured writer | Oct 6, 2009 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Featured Writer
“Goddamn it, this is the seventh time this week that this goddamn machine has stolen money from me,” Joe screamed, feebly punching the mechanical purveyor of carbonated beverages, “the goddamn thing has more of my money than I do.”
“Then stop putting your money in it. Now come on, we’ve got to go, she‘s coming back tomorrow, so we only have a little time. We have to get to the lab,” Jess scolded. They made their way down a long corridor and across the cavernous testing area to the lab proper, a corner of a warehouse walled off on two sides with green parachute material.
Pushing aside the flimsy material, Joe entered on the silent wheels of his chair, his partner and fiancé Jessica marching swiftly behind. The rest of Dr. Stewart’s grad students were already there, and jumped up as they entered.
“Good, everybody’s here. What was the doc thinking, leaving us in charge while she is away at the symposium. Well, when the cats away…” Steve Bloch remarked as he reached out to wring Joe’s hand. “Ready for a joy ride buddy?” They shared a wolfish grin.
“Alright people, let’s fire him up.” Christopher and Christine (Chris and Chris) Carlysle, fraternal twins, formerly identical twins, raced to a pair of terminals while Jess smeared saline paste over Joes skin.
“Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages,” Steve bellowed in his best ring master voice. “Allow me to present Skeletor,” with a grand flourish, he pulled a canvass from the large cloaked object dominating the small lab.
“I don’t believe it,” Jessica exclaimed. “When did you manage to finish it?”
“Joe and I spent the better part of last week on it since she’s been gone. Joe worked on biofeedback loops, and I finished this end up about an hour ago. What do you think?”
All stared in hushed silence. “It’s …beautiful.” The Chris’s whispered in unison.
Before them, in gleaming black stood Skeletor; a bio-mechanical hydraulic exo-skeleton. At nine feet tall and four wide, the skeleton was composed primarily of nano plastic woven of industrial diamond dust. A recently formulated ultra strong material commonly employed as ballistic armour and heat shielding for ship to shore spacecraft.
“Okay Joe, ready to try it on?”
“You don’t know how ready,” he said, slamming his fists down on his useless legs.
It took all four of the students to get Joe into the skeleton, the process made more difficult by the slick but necessary saline gel that covered Joe’s body. It was used to facilitate the neural mechanical interface.
A strap bristling with wires was secured to his forehead, and similar attachments were tightened around his arms and legs as he slipped his hands into thick gloves. All of these devices were lined with metal contacts similar to dull needle points to receive his mental input.
“Joe, how does it feel?” Jess asked
“The contacts are annoying but not unbearable.” He took a few tentative steps. “Balance is good, gyros are working.” He crouched down, and leapt five feet into the air. The others cheered. “Well, so far so good, let’s try a little test of strength.”
Joe raised his mechanical arms above his head, and shook them at the ceiling. “Vengeance is mine,” he screamed and sprinted to the heavy warehouse doors. He easily ripped them off their hinges and tossed them aside. He stooped below the lintel, and disappeared down the hall, howling obscenities all the way.
The remaining four stood in shocked silence.
“Shit.”
Steve, still stunned, turned to Jessica, “What is it?”
“He’s going after the Coke machine.”
by submission | Oct 4, 2009 | Story
Author : John Eric Vona
I don’t listen to all that propaganda from Earth Authority. I’m not some mindless rocket rider, I can think for myself. Government announcements about the “barely human filth” living off-world are just filth themselves. They’re no less human; doesn’t matter what gravity you grow up in.
Of course, ten hours in a Gravely MDP-19 will change your mind about a lot of things. The 19s barely have enough room for a rockjock to climb inside, no wings or atmo ability, just a big pod. Engine on the back two feet from where you sit, guns mounted on the flanks and a thick glass dome that curves around the front from your feet to your head. Most new legs never get their wings because they can’t deal with the vertigo-inducing view.
Problem is, you’re only supposed to be in the thing for a few hours tops. Sure, they’ve got all the plumbing set up so you can empty your bladder out, but that’s it. Can’t eat, can’t shit, can’t scratch two thirds of your body. That’s what they get for outsourcing the production to Mars. You’re only supposed to be in there long enough for a close range fight, and I guess that’s what Com was expecting. I’ve got nothing against the Callys, but the EA had been drumming support up at home to put down any signs of rebellion that might stop ore shipments. I don’t think you can blame a person for wanting what they’re due but the authority had everyone on Earth hollering about the greedy, subhuman garbage living off world.
Long story short, we fly half way across the system to Callisto to find a small fleet of ships put together by a new coalition of Jupiter’s moons. Admiral calls all stop and deploys us rockjocks to protect the fleet but the colonists don’t do squat. They sit there in low orbit waiting for us to attack. With no rush to be in another fight, I’m fine with that for the first two hours. After ten, I’m a little pissed that they went through all the trouble to put together a fleet and then don’t attack us. Between being cramped and hungry, my wingman, Max, is worried the MDP-19’s dome doesn’t protect against heavy doses of radiation (Com chucked a few nukes at the rebels but they were so far away they had plenty of time to shoot them down so they detonated some between the fleets to try and scare the cowards).
“It’s just glass, Joe,” Max lamented.
“Bullet proof glass.”
“I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t sit here any more.”
“Quit acting like a leg.”
“Why are we out here if the Colonists aren’t attacking?”
I didn’t have an answer for him. I didn’t blame the colonists for not wanting to fight over an ugly rock like Callisto, but they made us come all the way out here. “They’ll recall us soon.”
They did too. About forty minutes later Com recalled the MDPs and charged into low orbit. The colonists tore us up good as we tried to get past them, lost more than a few ships, but our gunners were cutting loose too and once we got through Com dropped a nuke on Callisto city and threatened to hit Keplersville (former second most populous city on the moon), if the rebels didn’t surrender immediately. They did. I watched the whole thing from the hanger deck and went to tell Max the good news but found that a missile had ripped into the dining hall where he was eating to settle his nerves.
by submission | Oct 3, 2009 | Story
Author : Natalie Metzger
The Company had come for her sooner than she had expected.
It had only been five hours since she had liberated the compound from the Company’s labs. It had been an inside job, planned out months in advance. She knew that they would find out eventually. She only hoped it would be long enough for her to get lost in the world; to disappear from their thousands of eyes and ears.
Always watching.
Always listening.
She was already on a boat when she saw the announcement on one of the ship’s passing news ticker board. There had been an explosion at her apartment building. It said authorities reported that a gas line had violently ruptured, destroying her building and a good chunk of the surrounding buildings in a massive fireball.
She knew that wasn’t an accident or even a strange coincidence. She had seen firsthand the results of anyone who upset the Company. Hell, she had even whipped up a microbial brew or two for use in dealing with enemies of the Company. That last thought made her skin crawl.
If she was lucky, the Company would think that she had been dealt with. That would give her at least a day before their forensic scientists discovered that none of her remains were in the rubble of her former apartment. They would find the charred remnants of the compound’s container though.
24 hours. That would be plenty of time.
She could already feel initial effects of the company serum she had injected into herself twelve hours ago.
As she looked out over the water, waiting for her transformation to begin, she smiled a small bitter smile. Her flesh and blood was the last of the Company’s prize compound. Soon she would disappear from the world completely.
She didn’t down look as her fingers started to fade.
Five minutes later a red dress drifted onto the dark blue surface of the ocean, floating for a moment before slipping into the obsidian depths.
