by submission | Oct 17, 2008 | Story
Author : Chis Sharkey
The sign read:
P.B. FARNSWORTH’S TRAVELLING CIRCUS PRESENTS:
THE MYSTERIOUS HOVER-CAT
WITNESS THIS MYSTICAL CREATURE OF GRAVITY-DEFYING MAJESTY
THREE NIGHTS ONLY
OCT. 5TH, 6TH, AND 8TH
Special Agent Smith studied it intently. The font was, of course, overly dramatic and flourished across the paper. The sign included an artist’s rendition of “Hover-Cat”, depicting a tabby hovering over a podium, surrounded by an orange glow. Down at the bottom, in small lettering was the disclaimer :”Tickets not refundable”. Smith activated his mouthpiece hidden in his shirt cuff.
“Control this looks like the place. Request permission to proceed.”
“Permission granted,” chirped the voice in his ear piece, “Remember Agent Smith, this mission is recon only. Apprehension is not authorized at this time.”
“Roger that.”
Smith approached the smiling young woman at the ticket booth.
“One, please,” he said with a smile.
“That’ll be six dollars,” the ticket lady replied.
Smith took his ticket and proceeded into the tent where the show was to be held. It was fairly empty. That was good, it allowed Smith to get a front row seat, making a bio-scan more accurate.
Taking a seat, Smith pulled the bio-scanner, cleverly disguised as a pair of glasses, from his jacket pocket and put it on. The readout, visible only to Smith, displayed in front of him. Scanner Active. Smith touched his watch, remotely activating the scanner. He waited a few seconds, and a new display popped up in view. Scan Complete, No Signs of Alien Lifeforms.
The circus tent started to fill up, and finally the show began. Smith watched intently as the emcee entered the center ring with his assistant, an attractive young woman. Between them, a cloth draped over what looked like a podium. With much flourish and build-up, the emcee finally pulled back the cloth, revealing a cat sitting a top a podium, surrounded by a glass bell. Lifting the bell, the emcee warned the audience to prepare themselves for what they were about to see.
As Smith watched, the cat lifted into the air effortlessly and started hovering towards the audience. Ignoring the “ooos” and “ahhs” as the cat flew over audience members’ heads, Smith touched his watch again, keeping his eyes intently on “Hover-Cat”. After a few moments, the display read: Scan Complete, Extra-Terrestrial Life Confirmed. Remaining calm, Smith activated his mouthpiece.
“Control, I have positive I.D. Request permission to apprehend.”
After a long pause, “We have received the results of the bio-scan. Permission to apprehend granted. Use of deadly forced is NOT authorized.”
“Roger that.”
Smith immediately stood up and walked out of the tent and around to the back, where the performers would exit after the show. He spotted the emcee about a half hour later, holding a live animal carrier.
“Halt!” he yelled, “F.B.I. I need what you have in that cage!”
The emcee took of running, cage in hand. Smith took off after him.
“Control, I have a runner headed towards rear exit, request immediate assist!” he yelled into his mouthpiece.
He followed the emcee into the rear parking lot, where five F.B.I. vehicles were already waiting. Smith saw his partner Johnson jump out of the lead SUV and tackle the runner. Smith caught up moments later.
“Good job,” Smith said.
“Thanks to you,” replied Johnson, “Confirm this is the life form?”
Smith peered into the animal carrier. He nodded.
“Confirm. Positive I.D.”
“Good,” said Johnson, “Let’s get it back to the lab.”
by Sam Clough | Oct 16, 2008 | Story
Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer
The best definition of ‘coincidence’ is ‘you weren’t paying attention to the other half of what was goin on.’ Related to this is the little-known fact that effect can predate cause. Me and Darien were an effect. The cause’s name was Milo.
“Time?” I shouted forward, struggling to match Darien’s pace. I saw him glance at his wrist.
“One minute twenty-six. Now shut up, and run!”
I redoubled my efforts, barely keeping my footing as I chased Dar around corners. He ducked through a gap in a broken chain-link fence. The sign on it read ‘Absolutely No Entry’. With fifty seconds to get into position, Darien certainly wasn’t bothered about trespassing, and so, neither was I. Darien shouldered his way past a flimsy door, and shuddered to a halt. I stepped after him.
“Six seconds. Hide.” Darien hissed, gesturing towards the stacked crates all around. I ducked between two particularly large boxes. Dar slipped behind the bulk of an offlined stacking robot.
Three.
Two.
One.
An access door at the far end of the warehouse began to roll up, letting light into the gloomy space. I glanced down towards the opening, and saw a double silhouette: one man and a general-purpose assistant-droid.
I was supposed to follow Darien’s lead: he would incapacitate the human target, I would take out the robot pet. Double footsteps, regular as clockwork, began to echo towards us. We were the self-styled magicians: agents of synchronicity. The subtle rearrangers of reality. A little nudge here and there so things happen…well, just so.
Milo and his robot stepped past my hiding place, apparently oblivious to my presence.
Darien moved. I covered the space between me and the pet in two steps. I hooked my foot around its ankles, and jerked it backwards. It toppled to the floor, and I slapped magnets to either side of it’s head, thoroughly disabling it. Darien had drawn a compact handgun, and was pressing it against the back of the Milo’s neck.
“We know what you’re thinking. And no, it wouldn’t work. Left pocket.” I obligingly reached into the target’s leftmost pocket, and drew out the small box. I worked the simplistic controls, and two barbed spikes slid out of one side. It buzzed gently as electricity arced across the gap.
“A little close defence? Nice, Milo.” I laughed, and carried on fiddling around with the device.
“Don’t chatter.” Dar hissed.
We held the tableau for another minute. I could see Darien counting the seconds. That’s the first thing they teach you – big events hinge on the smallest coincidences. One ‘disrupted schedule’ can throw the fate of nations one way or the other. Milo was on his knees, shaking violently. Obviously, and painfully afraid for his life.
“And, time.” Darien replaced his handgun in it’s hidden holster, grabbed the mark’s neck, and hauled him upright. I returned the shockbox to Milo’s pocket, and retrieved my magnets from the junked clanker.
“What the hell!” Milo growled, and scrambled to his feet.
“Veracity. You should go home, Milo. And don’t stop for anything.”
Just as Darien turned to walk away, the first of the klaxons sounded.
by Stephen R. Smith | Oct 15, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Truger loathed recreational narcotics; he could never understand the point. Hallucinogens, depressants, all of them ran completely counter to his personality.
This made his current situation unbearable.
He remembered the moments before the crash, the low orbit sky-fight, the enemy fighters he’d engaged and the victory that he’d been sure of, one snatched away in a hail of flak as they’d strayed too close to the anti-aircraft emplacements. His last memory was of the gaping hole in his cockpit, and the cauterized stumps of his freshly truncated arms and leg.
He remembered waking here.
The first hallucination had been the spiders. He hadn’t seen them as his eyes were bandaged, but he felt them navigate across his body, clicking and chattering, poking and prodding. He’d been trained to overcome foreign chemicals in his system, and he tried as best he could. The bandages were peeled back from his eyes, tiny metal appendages pulling away the mesh to let the light in. Somewhere far away, someone began screaming. His drug-enhanced imagination fed him back his own face reflected in a hundred shining facets. Seconds stretched into minutes before a sharp pain in his shoulder redirected his attention, and, as the light dimmed, he was aware that the screaming had stopped.
When next he awoke, the room had changed. The bugs were gone, and everything was bathed in a green white glow, it’s edges blurred and indistinct. Truger tried to sit upright, but his torso was too heavy. He concentrated instead on his drug-heavy hands, and as he struggled with them, the memory of cauterized limb fragments flashed back, vivid and real. The panicked surge of adrenaline helped him pull them into his line of sight but instead of familiar or even burnt flesh he found clear, crystalline limbs of stunning beauty. He marveled as the light refracted through their internal structures, until their weight finally overcame his strength.
He had to wake up. This hallucinogenic daydream was too much.
Somewhere, someone was screaming again.
Truger couldn’t remember falling asleep, or being awoken again. The light had changed, and a flurry of activity in his peripheral vision begged for his attention. His head was too leaden to move, so he strained his eyes to the left and wished he hadn’t. A doctor, resplendent in his gown, moved in and out of his field of view conversing with a nurse. Their heads both stretched impossibly in the dim light, elongated and flailing whip-like at the air. The doctor’s arms tapered off into slender, excessively jointed digits which undulated as he spoke. Their words were no more than melodic chirps to Truger’s intoxicated mind. That people took these chemicals into their system willingly and for entertainment was beyond his comprehension. The images they superimposed on his reality terrified him, and he squeezed his eyes shut as though willing the distorted shapes to disappear.
He felt something in his personal space, and opened his eyes to the faces of the medical staff, pressed close and staring, eyes now faceted and double lidded, mouths a quivering mass of vertical fleshy strips.
“Stop giving me drugs,” he screamed into their startled faces, the force of his words driving them back. “I can suffer the pain, but these drugs, you’re driving me out of my mind.” The effort taxed him to near unconsciousness. As his awareness slipped away into blackness, he whispered simply “no drugs”, a series of sound-waves the doctors chirped and clicked about for some time, trying to decipher what these noises could possibly mean.
by submission | Oct 12, 2008 | Story
Author : B. Zedan
Periodically, the pilot wished he had company. There were some things that were just more enjoyable with another being around. Besides the obvious, there was chess. The ship’s helpful AI, such a benefit when it came to the obvious, just didn’t cut it at chess. Not that it was stupid, of course. It was quite exactly the opposite.
“You’re a thrice-damned son of a bitch.” The pilot chucked one of his pawns at the holo he’d picked for the ship to wear when they played chess. Only certain parts of the form were dense enough to interact with objects. The pawn shot harmlessly through the faintly shimmering torso and clattered unfulfillingly on the deck. The pilot began to sulk. “Damn sonofabitch bastard.”
“Would you have preferred the pawn to hit me? If this is your preference, I can generate solidity at whichever part you wish to next target.” The ship, through the holo’s face, displayed the practised concern of a head waiter dealing with a difficult customer. The face then lit with a degree of helpfulness. “I also could display pain or discomfort when struck, if you’d like.” The pilot wondered if there was an algorithm to degrees of helpfulness.
“What I would like you to do is stop letting me win.” He paused, as though a computer needed a moment of contemplation. “I left my king wide open, just there for you to take. But you didn’t. You messed around with the same dumb, obvious moves you’ve been making since the first time we played and you won.”
The ship didn’t say anything. It seemed to think he wasn’t quite done. The pilot found that he wasn’t.
“I mean, if you’re doing this because you think I’d prefer it then you’re off your deck. Letting me win like that only reminds me how easy it’d be for you to kick my ass at this game.”
The ship remained quiet.
For the briefest moment, the pilot worried he’d hurt the ship’s feelings.
“Listen—” he began. The holo shook its head.
“No, it is all right. You have a very valid point. I thought you would prefer to win, but I did not factor that you might also like to work for the win.” The pilot was a little startled.
“Yeah, that’s—that’s pretty much it.”
“I had not taken into consideration that your kind reveres the concept of hardship and looks down on success unless there is at least a token struggle in achieving it.”
“I just didn’t want you to make it so easy.”
“I understand.”
The pilot shifted in his chair uncomfortably. He wondered about the connections being made in that giant, unfathomable brain. He wished he had company.
by submission | Oct 11, 2008 | Story
Author : Bill Gale
Showing every one of his seventy-two years, the speaker rose to podium of the vast granite chamber. He uttered a single word – “Order”. The irony of this formality did nothing for the moods of the three dozen delegates, for whom standing in hushed rooms had been the order of the day for weeks now.
With eyes wracked by fatigue, Speaker Frederick Van Hast read his brief for the last time. How had events advanced this way? The Age of Excess seemed generations ago now, though only years had passed. So much had changed. So much had been lost under the brazen march of progress. How many of these men were children of that time? Van Hast surveyed them, eyes straining in the pallid light. So many were young, the old and infirm having been the first to have been lost. Only fortuity and strength had saved the few like Van Hast. The worst affected zones had lost all elders. As the leaders began to die, the young rose up and tore their lands to shreds. Might made right in a world of famine, plague and war.
Van Hast had tried to convince himself that the situation had been so different in Europe, but there were stories everybody had heard. The story of the village in England, where men butchered their own families for hoarding. In France, as well, where a young woman was arrested by a mob for keeping a cat, and was buried alive in a meadow outside Lyon. Nobody had recognised how close the insanity had been to the surface, how much of the world was constrained by bread and circuses. They were asked to concede a modicum of their luxury, and they refused. When it was taken from them, they went mad. Societies crumbled. The world stopped.
How many of these men had never known a time of hunger before? He could see them, blinking as though to wake from a terrible dream. Mouths agape in confusion, their faces asked, “Why me?”; “What did I do?”; “We didn’t realise”; “Nobody told us”; “It isn’t our fault.”; “We thought there would be enough” Perhaps there would have been enough. If the farmers had kept farming, or the miners mining. Perhaps, if consumption had slowed. The governments had forced rationing because nobody would give up their excess voluntarily. The violence began. Production slowed, the famines begun. Electricity stopped overnight. Nobody had been informed of the scale, of the scarcity of food and fuel. On the precipice, the leaders of the world had closed their eyes and hoped somebody else, anybody else would find a solution before they fell. Without fuel, there were no communications. No medicines. It took strong men to keep their sanity in a world where any animal is edible, any illness fatal. The young men here, they knew who was to blame.
A new government had arisen. A provisions network was set up to cities, while the rural areas were left alone out of necessity. This government had been charged with a single task – Solve the crisis. Cure the stricken Earth.
Van Hast trembled as he addressed the chamber. Maybe this was the solution. An end to the famine and strife. He and addressed the assembly.
“One in six.”
One by one, the men nodded and filed out of the room to convene with their generals and subordinates. There were three dozen men, he pondered. Six of them would not see tomorrow.
