The Collector

by featured writer | Sep 17, 2007 | Story

Author : Todd Keisling, featured writer

It’s the smell that gets to me. Agent Lennox ducks his head out from the kitchen just in time to watch me vomit into the hall.

“You okay, Church?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Just peachy-keen.”

The smell is that of burning meat Inside the kitchen are the remains of tenant #62 Jim Hollerbach. That horrid smell is from his insides coiled and plopped into a frying pan.

I check my sensory inhibitor, thumb it to olfactory and I’m good to go.

Agent Lennox’s phone rings. He taps the earpiece.

“Lennox,” he answers. “You’re shitting me. I’ll send Church over in a minute.”

He taps the earpiece again to disconnect and motions to me.

“The perp lives down the hall. Tenant #41. Guy jacked his line and set it on a loop.”

“He looped?”

The inhibitor gives me a metallic taste in my mouth.

“Yeah,” Lennox says. “Blind analog feed. Should be down the hall to your right. Go check it out. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

I give the remains of Mr. Hollerbach a passing glance before I leave the room. My stomach twists, but nothing creeps up my esophagus.

The Government requires inhibitors for situations like this. Dulling the senses is required to perform an Agent’s duties—or so they tell us in training. It sure beats the hell out of puking.

The serotonin, they tell us, is to enhance community morale.

Agents like myself and Lennox aren’t required to take the supplements. The inhibitors do it for us.

Walking down the hallway, it hits me. Analog. That’s not a word you hear very much these days. The SmartCams are wired to an all-digital encrypted network, and knowing how to bypass that encryption with old technology would require extensive old-world knowledge.

Printed literature took a backseat after the invention of Channel Zero. Rather than face scrutiny and ridicule during such a turbulent time, the Government chose to reinforce a blind eye toward printed material, instead pumping all its resources into the necessity of the single channel. It made more sense to divert the public’s attention rather than force them to give up reading.

It worked, too. People stopped reading. They stopped caring. Books were no longer a danger because no one gave a damn anyway.

Tenant #41—tonight’s murderer—isn’t home, but he left behind the blueprints for his own design.

I step past the forensics team, tug on a pair of gloves and thumb through the first book I see. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

Every wall in the apartment is outfitted with makeshift shelving. Books—at least a thousand—decorate the room. It’s an antiquarian’s dream collection.

“Lennox,” I say, and tap my earpiece.

He answers, and I tell him to conduct a search on all the local antique shops. When he asks why, I tell him.

“Because it looks like our perp is a reader.”

“Oh shit.”

I disconnect and put down the book.

The Government thought they could sweep this under the rug. That if people stopped caring about books, there would be no reason to take away that particular “freedom,” and no cause for alarm or rebellion.

Staring at the home of this murderous reader, I realize the Government has made a gross miscalculation.

Time Assassin

by submission | Sep 16, 2007 | Story

Author : Daniel Rosenblum

“This wasn’t what I expected the past to be like.”

I looked around warily, absorbing the unfamiliar sights. I was alone in a rotund, palatial chamber, standing at the center beneath a sweeping ceiling supported by ornate columns. Yellow shafts of early-morning sunlight penetrated the room’s few windows, casting soft, dramatic shadows across the echoing structure.

I checked my watch. 4:28 AM. It was time to commit the grandest act of goodness possible.

Behind the mahogany doors ahead slept a powerful, perverted man. In two months, his distorted thoughts and nefarious deeds will irreparably damage the future of civilization. Three hundred years later, in my natural time, we still felt the shockwaves of destruction emanating from this man’s atrocities.

Now I held the power to end it all before it ever began.

I slipped through the doors like an avenging spirit, intent on my purpose. There he slept, so mortal and vulnerable – no more than a collection of bones and muscle. His faint breathing filled the room, amplified in my ears over the intense throbbing of my nervous heart. I removed my weapon from its holster, took steady aim, and…

“For morality,” I murmured angrily, and the deed was done.

I had done it. No one would ever hear of my deed, sing songs in my name, or celebrate a saved future. No, I didn’t require any fanfare – only the knowledge that I had done what’s right.

I returned to my time, looking forward to enjoying a world free from fear and oppression.

“This wasn’t what I expected the future to be like.”

Where there once was a wealth of technology, there was barbarism. Where there used to be a massive city just before the vast horizon, there was black, smoldering rubble. My laboratory was in ashes. My home was in splinters. I could see a small cottage faintly in the distance, starting life anew. At first I could not understand. I had fixed it! But the man’s ideas were greater than his flesh, transcending the material. Someone worse – far worse – had taken his place. The world was destroyed, but I knew what I had to do.

I returned to the past, 4:27 AM, and waited for my earlier self to arrive. I soon saw myself appear in the center of the room, just as I remembered. I stood still, staring at the back of my head.

“This wasn’t what I expected the past to be like.”

I took a step towards my earlier self and gripped my weapon.

I looked around warily, absorbing the unfamiliar sights.

I checked my watch. 4:28 AM. It was time to commit the grandest act of goodness possible. I held the power to end it all before it ever began.

No one will ever hear of my bravery – I only knew that I was doing what’s right. I removed my weapon from its holster, took steady aim, and…

“For morality,” I murmured angrily, and the deed was done.

Amateur Historian

by submission | Sep 15, 2007 | Story

Author : Robert Niescier

“Why do you keep writing in there?”

He looked up and into her eyes, through steam shaded orange from the bonfire’s glow, and smiled. “It’s so people, future people, remember everything we went through. So we don’t get lost as just two generic survivors of the bad times. History tends to cast a blind eye towards those who don’t record their own endeavors.”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘people who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.’ I’ve heard the cliché.”

“Yes, and it’s advice humankind tends to ignore. But that’s not why I’m keeping a journal.”

The fire had begun to die down, so he groped through the darkness for another log. He placed the wood onto the weakening embers, close enough to the water-filled pot to keep its temperature up and boiling. His hand recoiled in pain as a flame jumped up like a startled snake and burned him.

Her eyes widened. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Here, let me get something to put on it…” She began to rummage through her backpack and came up with a cream. “This will help.”

“Thank you, but no. Save it for when we really need it. It’s only a little burn.”

“And when that little burn turns into a little infection, then turns into a little toxic shock, where will I be? You want to test out just how much of a survivor I really am? Use the damn medication.” But still he refused, and soon she put the cream away and sighed. “You didn’t finish answering my question,” she said.

“What else is there to say? I don’t want to be forgotten. It used to be that if you produced a grand work of art, a moving story, an invention or theory that would improve the quality of life, your name would be remembered, your memory encapsulated in books and landmarks dedicated to your name. But those opportunities are gone now; the only thing left for us is to survive. To be.

“This journal, this story, is the only thing I have left to give. I want future generations to know that, even though our time may have come so close to destroying that which we had spent centuries to build, everything that we held dear, that we were still just people. Neither villains nor heroes. Just people who made a grievous mistake and paid for it with everything they had.

“How can you be so sure that these future people will find your little journal, or if they will even exist? What if we were the only…” Her throat made an odd noise and she stopped. She poked at the embers with a stick for a few minutes, then shifted her body away from the fire and laid down, her gaze to the sky.

He grabbed two scraps of cloth and, after picking it off of the fire, placed the water pot onto the highway blacktop. He stood up and looked down the highway, but there was nothing to see but inky blackness all around. He shivered. It was getting colder every day; they would have to increase their pace if they hoped to reach the western coast before the winter months.

“Beautiful,” she whispered.

“What?”

“The sky, it’s beautiful. You know, I lived in the city all my life. I never really got to see the stars. Not like this. It’s like we’ve entered a whole new world.”

A coyote howled somewhere in the distance. He looked up, up at the black, star-sprinkled tapestry that seemed to go on for ever and ever. She was right; it was beautiful.

Chameleon

by submission | Sep 14, 2007 | Story

Author : Debbie Mac Rory

My knee is still bleeding from the last time I fell and my trousers keep sticking to them, bringing forth fresh darts of pain. But I’m too scared to use my torch here. I’ve already been stopped by two division patrols on my way here; I guess my research wasn’t thorough enough, and I still look overdressed for this part of the city.

She told me just to find somewhere quiet and private in the shared sector, where we could be alone. When I’d asked how she was going to know where we were supposed to meet, she smiled and told me not to worry. “I’ll find you”, she said.

46…47…48…49…50 paces further into the alley and there should be a door on my right. My fingers fumble on the greasy brickwork for the frame the obsolete city maps told me should be here. Finally my touch meets jaded timbers, and I move to brace my shoulder against the door. The door disintegrates in a shower of wood dust as I push against it, leaving me yelping as I hit the floor, skinning my partly healed knee again and earning a matching scar across my knuckles.

I sit there for a moment, cradling my bleeding hand and generally feeling so miserable that I never heard her come up behind me. She smiles at my disproportionate distress and takes my hands in her gloves fingers and pulls me to my feet. She gestures for me to follow her into the darkness further inside the warehouse.

When finally she stops, she takes the torch from my stiffened fingers, and props it against a wall, exploiting its feeble light to the full. I smile at her, and raise a hand to gently brush my thumb across her cheek – and my breath catches as I watch the trail of colour left there, as if I’d dipped my fingers in paint before touching her. Her skin seems to be flowing now, catching the colour from my hands, and carrying it in mesmerising swirls across her face. I tear my eyes away from the sight, and lifting my other hand to her shoulder, being to draw small shapes on her skin. I feel dizzy already, but when I see that she’s removed her gloves, and her hands are lying naked in her lap, I take her face in my hands and kiss her as all the world fades away.

***

When I finally open my eyes, my vision clears enough to let me catch a glimpse of skin as dark as my own, and a pair of unfamiliar hazel eyes. But the smile is the same, as is the gentle touch of her fingers. She could almost pass for human now.

Let Him Dangle

by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 12, 2007 | Story

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

It’s a strange thing, knowing exactly when you’re going to die. Luther had become accustomed to the idea; the arrest, the charge of treason. He knew it was a death sentence the moment they’d kicked down his door. He was surprised only at how easily he faced the imminence of his demise.

At least he’d made a difference, challenged the status quo and been heard. That they were killing him just crossed the ‘t’ of his righteousness.

A squat camera droid regarded him dully from outside his cell, the red ‘recording’ light glowing softly on its head.

The droid perked up suddenly, hoisting another camera off its body to cover the approach of three people from down the cell block.

Luther closed his eyes and let the rumble of booted feet reach him through the floor; felt rather than heard the figures stop outside his cell and only moved when the flood of fresh air signaled the opening of the cell door.

“Luther King, prisoner nine two zero seven seven six, charged with the spreading of propaganda deemed treasonous by the Government of the People and having been found guilty in a court of law, the time has come to carry out your sentence.” Two helmeted soldiers flanked the doorway as the Emissary of the Government looked down at him, letting his words echo in the small room.

“Doesn’t matter if you kill me, someone else will take my place.” Luther returned the icy stare, belief and strength of purpose calming his nerves.

“Oh, quite the contrary, I think that when we kill you, we’ll find a marked reduction in the number of people who are willing to take your place.” His thin lips parted from wide white teeth, forming the ghost of a smile.

“You think you’re all so clever, but for all your eyes and ears you can’t see the people rising up beneath you. I’ve infected dozens with the truth, and you can’t stop that truth from spreading like wild fire.”

“Actually, Luther, you’ve inflicted your lies upon exactly twenty two people in the forty seven days since you first spoke out,” he paused for a moment, enjoying the subtle changes in posture his words compelled, “you see, we knew the moment you broke the law. Twenty one days is the optimum period prior to arrest. If we’d simply killed you, as we once would have done, no one would understand why you died; your death would have held no value for us. In twenty one days you’ve shared your ideas enough for them to remember, but not enough to understand. Enough to notice your departure, but not so many as to tip the scale. They’ll know exactly why you’ve died, Luther, and just how dangerous your ideas can be.”

“You can’t believe people will see my punishment as fair, you can’t expect them to take your side. You lose, you kill me and you lose. You’re just making me a martyr to the cause.” Luther’s voice was cracking noticeably, this wasn’t right, what was being said couldn’t be true.

“You don’t seem to understand Luther. We intend to take you out to the gallows where you will swing by the neck until you are dead. Right now people are clearing their dinner tables and tuning in to watch the show. Our killing you has nothing to do with punishment Luther, it’s entirely a matter of deterrence.” The Emissary smiled. “Your death itself is of little consequence Luther, it’s the ceremony of your death, the ceremony of your death will punctuate our point quite nicely.”