by submission | Jun 13, 2009 | Story
Author : John Logan
Leviathan IV floated in space, amongst the debris of its brother and sister starships, somewhere in close proximity to Alpha Centauri. Inside its massive hull, a team of veterans were preparing for their last mission. They were the last hope for their species and each man felt the weight of responsibility rest heavily on his shoulders.
“Do we have to use these antiques?” asked Stims.
Their leader, a man named Flex, grunted and spoke, “I don’t like it any more than you, but Dakros said we can’t leave any trace of technology on Earth.”
An array of carbine powered rifles lay before them and Stims grudgingly picked up one equipped with a scope and then slung it over his back. “Damn, if they ain’t heavy,” he said.
The other men retrieved a similar weapon and followed Flex down a tight claustrophobic corridor. The walls of the ship began to vibrate, testament to the experimental technology that was powering up to transport the team over four light years distance and six hundred standard years into the past.
The team passed a porthole, the silhouettes of broken ships and suspended corpses painted a bleak picture of devastation.
“They’re all gone,” whispered one man. “All of them.”
Flex turned and scowled, “Shut your mouth, Brack. I don’t want to hear it. Stay focused or I’ll put my foot up your ass.”
The team moved on, each man silent and brooding—lost in his own thoughts. They came to an open chamber where a spherical pod rested half-embedded into the floor. Around it, an eerie crimson light pulsed.
Dakros stood there waiting, his face contorted into a mask of impatience. “Time is running out,” he hissed. “The Earth men have found us. Quickly, all of you gather round.”
Flex nodded to his men, prompting them to form up and stay attentive to Dakros’ words.
“Here is a dossier with all the information you will need concerning the target,” said Dakros, handing it to Flex. “You were all specifically chosen for this mission not just because of your ability to kill, but because of your knowledge of human language and culture.”
Flex studied the dossier. He lifted his head from the printed paper and said, “Are you sure this is gonna work? I mean this is a prototype ship after all—”
“Let me make it clear, gentlemen,” said Dakros. The lines on his face deepened under the shadows of the room. “The human scourge has already annihilated our fleet, next is the home world, your families, loved ones and friends, all of them will die.”
Stims nudged the rifle into a more comfortable position.
“I’m very confident that we can send you to the correct space and time,” continued Dakros. “However, it will be a one-way trip—I’m sorry.”
None of them protested.
Flex plucked out a photograph from the dossier and held it up. “This him?” he asked.
Dakros nodded. “Our historians have worked hard to pinpoint the turning point in the human evolution of space travel. This man…” Dakros pointed an accusatory finger at the photograph, “…is responsible for the human progress that has ultimately led them across the stars to war with us.”
The face of each veteran soured with hatred as they studied the photograph, committing the features to memory.
Dakros suddenly clapped his hands together, shattering the silence. “All aboard now, we have little time,” he said.
They piled into the cramped pod. After a few moments preparation, the pod detached from the Leviathan and hurtled through space, its destination Earth, Dallas, 1963.
by submission | Jun 11, 2009 | Story
Author : Q. B. Fox
With her middle finger she idly traced the ragged designer scar that ran across his tanned bicep, but she appeared unimpressed by it and her mind was obviously elsewhere.
He stared at her pale, flawless skin where it stretched over her perfectly proportion pelvis and was equally apathetic; she was, physically, no better than all the outstanding beauties he’d taken to bed.
Perhaps it only mattered now because, this time, he really liked her. She was, he thought, an angel; and literally too at the moment, her wings curled provocatively round her so that the soft, white feathers revealed more than they hid.
“I have an idea,” her voice velvety in the broken silence. “Why don’t we meet…?”
“….outside the system,” he finished her sentence.
Did he imagine that both their avatars were breathing a little quicker?
He looked at himself critically in the fluorescent-lighted mirror, a slight paunch round the middle, ginger hair thinning badly at the crown, and tried to remember the last time he’d stood in front of anyone looking like this; the doctor, two years ago, perhaps.
He travelled to her apartment by the most direct route, and saw only a maintenance crew in the street, poking around behind the covers of an unidentifiable plastic block.
She opened the door, only her head appearing at first, her hair a wild explosion of tan-coloured, tight corkscrew curls. Her eyes were open wide and close-together and her nose small, upturned and piggy above a weak chin. She stepped back to let him in and smiled, horsey, uneven teeth surrounded by thin lips. And he realised that he was beaming back at her.
He was unconscious of the involuntary movement that brought them together, placed his hands on her bony hips and pulled her, flat chested, towards him.
“Oh!” she gasped, her voice high and nasal, and he could restrain himself no longer.
There was a protracted, fumbling fight with real and reluctant garments, but eventually their love making was hurried and sweaty, gulping desperately at lung-fulls of air between slavering, uncontrolled kisses. And, ultimately, it was inadequate and agreeably unsatisfying. They laughed like drains and, as the non-virtual sweat soured on their skin, adding to the queasiness in his stomach, he sighed. This was amazing.
Later, as they lay wrapped in scratchy sheets, her eyes flashing a very ordinary hazel and she cackled, “I have an idea.”
He knew immediately what it was; just as connected to her here as they had been before.
“New avatars,” he whispered, as if fearful of being overheard uttering a great heresy.
They giggled like children when they found a checkbox, hidden deep within the options screen, labelled “turn off limits”. They squealed like pigs at every asymmetry warning and hooted like monkeys as they dragged the sliders hard one way or the other.
It took the rest of the evening, but eventually they added costume to the skinny, mad-haired woman and sagging, balding man on the computer, outfits like the uncoloured, shapeless clothing discarded on the floor.
And then they plugged in and holding hands, both real and virtual, they set off to shock the world.
by Patricia Stewart | Jun 9, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Captain, we’re being hailed by Ambassador Kapris. He say’s it’s urgent.”
Dammit, thought Captain Santiago, I don’t have time for this. “Tell him that I cannot be interrupted.”
“Sir, he says that it’s a matter of life and death. He says that our tachyon experiment won’t work.”
“What? Nobody on Pegasi Prime knows about this experiment. How the hell did he find out?”
“He says that if you transport down, he’ll tell you.”
A few minutes later, the captain materialized in the office of Ambassador Kapris. “This is a breach of security, Ambassador. I demand to know how you found out about the experiment.”
“I told him, dad,” said an old man standing next to the Ambassador. Santiago hadn’t even noticed him until he spoke. The old man continued, “I’ve waited decades for you to get here. What’s the matter, don’t you recognize your own son?”
Santiago studied the old man. He had to admit, there was a resemblance. “What are you talking about? I don’t have any children.”
“True,” replied the old man. “But you will, unless you listen to what I have to say. When I was young, you told me that the experiment you’re about to run failed. It started a cascading temporal distortion that destabilized your warp core. You and your crew managed to get into escape pods, but when the reactor blew, everybody was killed, except for you and Mary Toole. A temporal rift transported your Pods back in time almost 90 years. You landed on this planet and went into hiding so you wouldn’t disrupt the timeline. You eventually had a child, me, and I too have lived a secluded life. Mom died several decades ago, and you died within a week. Today, the circle is complete. I can finally come out of hiding. You had asked me, if I lived long enough, to try to save your crew. Please, call your ship. Tell them to shut down the experiment. But hurry, time is running out.”
“Ensign Toole from Engineering? I barely know her.” After a moment’s reflection, Santiago finally said, “No, this is ridiculous. I can’t stop the experiment without evidence.”
“Okay,” offered the old man. “Just delay it ten minutes. Then you’ll have your proof.”
“What kind of proof?”
“Well, I’ll disappear, of course. If your ship doesn’t blow up at the exact same time, you’ll change history. My history, to be specific. The cascade won’t start at 10:25, you won’t get into the escape Pods at 10:28, the ship won’t explode at 10:31, and you and mom won’t be transported back in time to have me. I’ll cease to exist. Simple, huh? Can a ten minute delay hurt?”
The captain studied the sincerity in the old man’s eyes. Eyes, he realized, that were nearly identical to the ones that looked back at him every morning when he shaved. He decided that it was worth the gamble. He tapped his communicator, “Captain Santiago to Engineering. Power down the tachyon generator, and await further instructions, out. Okay, ‘son,’ let’s say you’re right. Won’t this cause your death?”
“Technically, yes, but I’ve already lived 86 years. Besides, maybe a few years from now I’ll be born again in this timeline. But do yourself a favor, dad. When you get back to the ship, get to know Mary Toole. She’s a wonderful person. She’ll make a great wife, and a fantastic mother. And, please, make sure that you tell her that I love her.” With that, the old man smiled and faded to nothingness. The chronometer on the wall read 10:31.
by submission | Jun 7, 2009 | Story
Author : George Li
The rusted orange hue of the sky made dancing reflections on Mirna’s “skin”. Carefully, she raised the fragile watering pot.
People had thought it would be them who caused this. Sentient robots that would rebel and destroy humanity. It didn’t work out like that. Robots simply had no need to rebel, they did not have the urge for power like most humans had. It simply wasn’t needed, wasn’t in their programming. Even the ones with no directive, no programming, even they had no such urge. These “Free-Thoughts” discovered in seconds, with their huge infallible minds, what took human philosophers millenniums to figure out. The rarity of life. The need for diversity, companionship, and harmony. So it was not the robots that caused this. It was the humans themselves.
Like most things, it started slowly. A buildup of mistrust, paranoia, and hatred. People started blaming everything for their troubles, everything but themselves. Wars started, lives were lost. But it seemed humanity would survive, like it had done so many times before. Until someone went nuclear.
Mirna slowly released the valve. With robotic precision, she filled the pot.
It took several years for humanity to die out. But eventually, even the race’s legendary resourcefulness could not save them. Robots tried to help, tried to stop the impending extinction. But they were pushed away, the paranoia and suspicion of the human mind was too hard to overcome. For the first time in thousands of years, Earth was free of humans. And the Robots were alone.
Synthbot M-1RN Edition A. That was what Mirna was, that is what the label on her back still said. Her original directive was gardening, taking care of the now desolate parks. And yet, even after all her masters died, even after she learned how to override her original programming, she still enjoyed her work. Perhaps it was something about making life, and seeing it grow.
Mirna walked over to a half broken cup filled to the brim with soil. On the top was a small flower. She delicately tilted the watering pot, and watched as a few drops of this now precious liquid fell.
There were plenty of spare parts, abandoned machinery, and broken vehicles. With careful rationing, Mirna could live forever.
Lazily a colorful butterfly landed on the small flower.
Mirna smiled. Maybe she would get to see the Earth reborn.
by submission | Jun 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
“Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my apartment?”
The man at the window didn’t turn to look at Lloyd’s outburst. When he spoke, his voice sounded bored.
“You know who I am, and if you have any sense, you know why I’m here.”
Finally he did turn. He pulled a card out of his pocket, and a hologram leapt out of it, a tiny three dimensional version of his face, with a stream of data running underneath it.
“Agent Moorcock, Chronology enforcement. Don’t bother introducing yourself. You’re Lloyd Fry, on placement from the archaeology department of the University of Charon, and you and I are the only people in this city from our century.”
Lloyd adopted the slightly guilty pose that comes naturally to anyone who has to deal with the police, as if running through in his mind what he could possibly have done wrong.
“Of course, how can I help you, officer?”
“Where is it?”
A chill ran through him. He tried as hard as he could not to let it show, and ended up overcompensating
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Mr Fry, please don’t cause any problems. Your university worked hard for your visa, and I’d hate to think they wasted all that work just because you panicked when you saw a badge. Where is the recorder?”
The game was up. Lloyd reached into his back pocket, noticing as he did that the agent tensed very slightly at this. He pulled out a silver stub roughly the size of his thumb and placed it on the table. The agent walked over to it.
“A motorola HS6290 hologram recorder, best in its class at the 2053 Consumer Electronics show, as I recall. Mind telling me why you thought you should bring one back to 1996?”
“I-”
The agent cut him off before he could get himself in any deeper.
“Mr Fry, you are in pre-unity time. Any time period before 2018 is embargoed, and likely to remain so. When you received your visa, you agreed not to bring anything back with you apart from your body. Even there, your records state they removed your retinal HUD. What in god’s name made you think this little thing would be acceptable?”
“I didn’t think anyone would mind. I needed it to take recordings for my fieldwork, and…”
“And?”
Lloyd slumped into a chair, feeling around three inches tall.
“And I wanted to get a hologram of the eiffel tower before it was wrecked by the earthquake. My mother asked me to.”
Agent Moorcock’s face softened slightly. He said nothing, the man before him knew what he had done.
“So,” said Lloyd after a while, “What happens to me now?”
“Nothing happens to you now.”
Lloyd’s face creased in confusion.
“What do you m-”
Agent Moorcock touched a control on his wrist and the room vanished. Instead, he was walking through a crowded travel lobby towards a tired figure standing in front of a desk.
“Mr Lloyd Fry?”
The man turned. it was the same face Moorcock had just seen, maybe six months younger.
“I’m afraid that your visa application didn’t pass vetting. Unfortunately we cannot permit you to complete your travel plans.”
Lloyd looked disappointed but resigned. Applications were rarely successful.
“Can I ask why?”
“I’m afraid that information is classified, sir. Oh, sir?”
“Yes?”
Moorcock held something out to the man. It was, after all, for his mother.
“You dropped your recorder.”
