by submission | Sep 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Shannon Peil
The Daughter looked sullenly around the council, at the hopeful eyes of politicians, bureaucrats, magistrates, and men of wealth, and their chosen suitors, knelt before her. She nodded to the back of the room, and they began to filter out slowly, risking glances over their shoulders at the four boys on their knees before Her in total reverence.
“And close the door.” Her eyes scrunched up in resentment as she heard the door latch.
Her name was Zee. The very Last.
When the men had left the boys with her, she returned to her seat, floating feet above the prostrate supplicants with their eyes on the floor. Beads of anticipating sweat had begun to form on their perfectly manicured brows. The boys were beautiful. She knew they had the most aesthetically pleasing features, healthiest immune systems, strongest bodies, and highest IQ’s that the last batch of humanity could offer.
“Stand.” She had never once said the word, ‘please.’ When the boys rose to their feet, she imagined having them for a lifetime of servitude. But, She knew, even if she produced a good amount of offspring – and God willing, that they were healthy, it was next to impossible that one would be a Female before Zee reached menopause.
“And why are you here?”
The boys looked nervously at one another and continued staring at the floor just below Her feet. She was enjoying this. Leaning forward, she raised the cutest boy’s chin with a long fingernail. He gulped deeply and shook when their eyes made contact. Males always swooned over the Last.
“Do not make me repeat myself.” Her words dripped with disdain but she held his eyes as he blinked rapidly and framed his answer. The silence was broken by his inevitable reply, the one she expected all along.
“Because, Daughter.. -” He scrambled for his thoughts and barely collected them in time, “because you are to be humanity’s new Mother. You are the Last and our only hope as a species. The four of us have been selected,” he glanced to each of the silent boys beside him, “to try to give you another Daughter.”
Zee sighed and traced her fingernail back off his strong chin and stood, whirling her robes as she kicked her chair across the room. Watching it float gracefully towards one of the long windows overlooking the city, she turned back to them. She commanded the boys to stand as the window impacted and shattered, glass sprinkling the city below.
“And why – why on Terra would I want that?” They looked quizzical, they always did. The males never understood why this wasn’t all She wanted. They kept quiet, but kept their dumbfounded looks. Finally, Zee continued.
“Why would I want to do this?” Her harsh exterior was visibly fading, replaced with sorrow, a dull resentment for the years leading up to this, knowing her fate from the moment she was old enough to speak. One of the boys cleared his throat, and she turned to look at him. His eyes met hers and he understood her pain.
“Miss Zee. Your duty is that of a Mother. Like Terra itself, it sacrifices its all for its children. To allow them to grow, to continue their cycle. If mankind were to die out…” He trailed off and once again allowed his gaze to hit the floor.
“If mankind were to die out,” she continued for him, “then Terra would be able to continue her cycle.” And with that, she stepped through the broken window, and slid silently downwards towards the city.
by submission | Sep 26, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Odhner
I’m weightless, then suddenly formless like the universe before God spoke to it.
I’m behind my desk, staring at a black screen. There are three bananas on the desk and no peels in the trash, so it’s probably a Wednesday morning. The desk is one at SureTech and I’m wearing a wedding ring, so it’s between May of 2004 and July of 2010. Everyone is standing up and looking around, surprised by the sudden power outage. I check the phone, but it’s dead so I just sit back and wait. I have all the time in the world.
“Tom?” It’s one of my coworkers. I haven’t spoken to him since he died of lung cancer two years ago. He looks healthy – so it’s probably not later than 2009. For a second I have trouble speaking for some reason, but then the words tumble out.
“Yeah Josh? What’s up?” I’m pleased with how casual I sound, but now I’m thinking that I should have sounded concerned. Healthy or not, Josh looks scared. Maybe he just found out about the cancer? Did he even tell me about it before it was obvious?
“Tom… does your cell phone work?” I pull it out knowing that it won’t, but I make a show of checking. Josh just nods.
“I need to step out. Maybe get a drink. I can’t get anything done with the power out anyway.”
I’m at the bar across the street, and I don’t remember going there. The feeling of disorientation passes and I realize that Josh is talking to me. He has an empty glass in front of him and is holding one that’s mostly melting ice.
“I… it was the strangest thing. Right when the power went out… I don’t know, I guess it was a kind of hallucination or something, but I… it’s like all of these memories. It has me confused, I remember my… it was just that I must have nodded off or something. It was a dream, but so vivid and so detailed. It was the next three years of my life, right up to my funeral.” I’m fidgeting with a cocktail napkin, trying not to react, trying to remember to breathe. This isn’t happening.
Josh and I are both back at my desk. I’m still holding the cocktail napkin, though I don’t remember coming back from the bar. I shouldn’t be blacking out. The power is still out, which is strange because it should only last fifteen minutes at the most. In the grand scheme of things that’s less important than Josh having displaced memories. He wasn’t there, he didn’t come back. He wasn’t even alive, and you can’t remember your own funeral in any case. Josh is still talking; I’ve missed part of what he said.
“So… are you coming?” We must have just gotten back, but he wants to go somewhere? I nod and stand up, and we both walk out of the suite and down the stairs into the lobby. Josh throws what looks like a full pack of cigarettes into the trash can as we walk past it.
“Let’s just hit the bar across the street,” Josh says, and my stomach is a bottomless pit. We haven’t gone to the bar yet. My fist tightens around the napkin that shouldn’t be there and I pray that I’ve just lost my mind, that the consciousness transfer failed and I’m in a coma somewhere.
God forgive me, I’ve broken something.
by submission | Sep 25, 2009 | Story
Author : William Tracy
She loved the Coin-Operated Boy.
None of the men in her life would really love her. Yes, they were strong, and handsome, and promised wealth and luxury. They were also full of hate, and lies.
The Coin-Operated Boy was none of these things. He was quiet, and had an almost effeminate sort of beauty. He promised her nothing, gave her nothing, but never hated, never lied. Her coins would go clink-clink, and the cogs inside him would go tick-tick-tick, that was all.
The men came and went at their own whims. They wanted attention when she was busy, and were busy when she wanted attention. They forgot her birthday, and she forgot theirs. They forgot that her favorite flower was a red, red rose.
The Coin-Operated Boy was always there. She could leave him for months. Every time when she came back, he was still waiting for her with a smile on his face. She only had to put in her coins, clink-clink, and he would love her.
He never asked her any questions. He never scolded her. He was never jealous, and he never hated. The springs and levers inside him just went tick-tick-tick.
She would ask him if he loved her. Every time, the Coin-Operated Boy would go tick-tick-tick, and then he would answer yes.
His love was deeper than the shining ocean. His love was brighter than the burning sun. His love was more beautiful than the pale moon.
She would ask the Coin-Operated Boy how he could love her with his clockwork heart that went tick-tick-tick.
He loved her more ways than there were stars in the dark sky. He loved her more ways than there were flowers in the green hills and cool valleys.
Always, she would put in her coins, clink-clink, and always the gears in his heart would go tick-tick-tick.
Her lover came back.
He had black, black hair that shone when the light was right. He had bronze skin that glistened with sweat, and deep eyes that shone like the ocean. He had long sideburns that framed his face like a picture. He had a dusting of stubble on his sharp chin. He wore a slick vest that wrapped over rolling muscles. He had a voice that was like poetry.
He loved her, had never stopped loving her. He was sorry he had left her, so sorry. He wanted her to come with him, to come back with him to live with his family.
He brought her a red, red rose.
She took his hand, and looked into his eyes, and she saw her face reflected in them. They kissed, and the passion ran hot and wild in her veins.
The Coin-Operated Boy looked at them, and tilted his head to one side as though he had never seen this before. His mechanical soul of gears and springs and chains and levers went tick-tick-tick. Then, the Coin-Operated Boy asked a question.
“Do you love me?”
by Patricia Stewart | Sep 21, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Three aliens floated a few dozen meters beyond the ship’s forward observation viewport. They were formless blobs approximately two meter in diameter. The center creature was glowing a faint orange-red, with numerous concentric yellow circles forming and disappearing every few seconds. The two outside creatures displayed counter rotating fluorescent red spirals on predominately blue bodies. “They’re obviously trying to communicate with us,” concluded the science officer. “I’ve been studying them for hours, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what they’re trying to say.”
“They appear to be semitransparent,” the captain observed.
The science officer grimaced.
“You have something to report, Lieutenant?” probed the captain.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I was holding off on speculation until I had a better understanding of the physics. It appears, sir, uh, that the aliens are composed of… damn… stationary photons.”
Despite the apparent absurdity of the statement, the captain managed to maintain his professional demeanor. “You’ve got my attention, Lieutenant. Feel free to speculate. Off the record, of course.”
“Aye, sir. Thank you. As you know, in our universe all electromagnetic radiation moves at the speed of light. The instant a photon comes into existence, its traveling at the speed of light. Never faster, never slower. However, our sensors indicate that those creatures are composed of photons that are not moving relative to us, which according to quantum chromodynamics, is impossible. They appear to have a cohesive structure composed of light ‘particles,’ rather than condensed matter. It’s like their wave-particle duality is all particle and no wave.”
“How is that possible?”
“If I were to guess, sir, I’d say that they exist on a separate membrane where the fundamental relationships between elementary particles are reversed. In other words, photons move slowly, and matter must move at 300,000,000 meters per second.”
“Fascinating,” replied the captain. “I was thinking, what if… Now what’s going on?” The brightness of the creatures suddenly intensified, and their color patters began to reverse and pulsate. “Boy, they certainly seem to be pretty animated about something. Do you think they’re threatening us?”
“Unsure, sir. Look, they’re backing away.” Suddenly, the interior of the ship began to glow a bright red, which quickly changed to orange, then yellow, green, blue, and finally violet. Nausea overtook the crew, and one by one, they collapsed to the deck and lost consciousness. When they finally came to, the view outside the observation port had changed dramatically. More than half the sky was occupied by a giant spiral galaxy. “Damn,” the science officer muttered. “That’s Andromeda. It’s supposed to be 2.5 million light years away. It’s probably only a few hundred thousand now. I guess those guys were trying to warn us not to get to close. We must have temporarily entered their universe. I suspect that we traveled more than two million light years while we were unconscious.”
“Can we get home?” asked the captain.
“That may be a moot point, sir. Unless I’m mistaken, we didn’t get here by distorting space-time in the conventional sense. Most likely, we temporarily acquired the properties of the alien’s universe and our physical matter has been moving through space at the speed of light. If true, that means that although we didn’t experience the passage of time, we’ve been traveling for more than two million years. Even if we could get back ‘home,’ we’d be the equivalent of australopithecines to our descendents.”
by submission | Sep 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Andrew Pang
The global media sighed at NASA’s attempt to laugh off trillions of dollars worth of international effort. Its called The L.O.F.T. [Lot of Floating Trash]. The Japanese first encountered it in 2011 at the Second Lagrange point, an area in space where gravitational forces seem checked. The Solar C probe was sent to observe its effect for commercial satellites. Instead of gently slowing to a stationary position, Solar C ceased transmitting. It happens I suppose. But other probes encountered the same problem, always at the L2 Point.
By 2022 another unmanned probe was sent specifically to investigate and found a three hundred meter transparent orb, scratched and dented by bits of floating solar panel and tungsten plating. The orb shifted. It changed shape, from spherical to cuboid, then to pyramidal and to rhomboid. The world hushed. Childish excitement gripped entire nations as the expectation of heavenly guests spiraled.
The gathering of probe after expensive probe began. Observatories around the world focused in on the mysterious object. It was difficult to see, laser topography simply refracted through the objects glassy surface. It seemed impervious to all the drilling and laser mass spectrography. Seemingly detecting this problem, it obligingly became opaque like mother of pearl. No sign of mechanical moving parts, no transmissions apparently sent or received, no heat signature. Yet it morphed continuously, ever more complicated and at Prime Number intervals, one second, two, five, seven, eleven, thirteen. After innumerable quasi-rhomboids and tetra-dodecahedra, scientists were puzzled to see several totally new shapes believed not to be possible in 3-Dimensional Euclidean space.
2027, and my how attention spans have shortened. The world grew weary of the ineffectual rubix cube in space. The LOFT now drew only the esoteric navel gazing sorts. As though sensing these people’s apathy, the shapes became simple again and the intervals changed. Sphere, six minutes, Cube, twenty eight minutes, Trapazoid, eight hours and twenty two minutes. Perfect Number intervals. Attention grew again, as the object became to blink like a faint pulsar in the night sky. Worries grew whether it was going to explode, just like a pulsar and douse the world in radiation.
2034 and a joint international convention finally approved a manned expedition. The world grew impatient and vaguely paranoid of the the object, sat one and a half million kilometers away surrounded by the most expensive clutter of mechanical parts, probes and bits in history. “The Lofty L.O.F.T.” the more sensible broad sheets called it. They had a point, at ten thousand kilometers it was clear exactly how much junk had been launched at the object, it was almost completely obscured by debris. Closer to five thousand kilometers. The blinking light stopped. A calm and collected voice spoke over the flabbergast shuttle crew: “About time you came in person.”
