by submission | Sep 10, 2015 | Story |
Author : James Patrick Riser
The wheelchair’s wheels creaked as The Private rolled himself up to the desk. A clock on the wall: half past midnight.
There are no pictures.
In a drawer: a purple heart, a dogeared, worn bible and a standard issue, new-era handgun;
Digitally signed to it’s owner, smartgun.
“The first and last word in Military Killmachine Technology” (Copyright 2030)
The light shines off the scar tissue on the back of his hand as he reaches for the soft, comfort grip. The weapon contours to his palm as he switches the safety off.
“Hello Private. You have switched the safety off,” the gun reports.
The Private studies the gnarled flesh of the healed exit wounds on his arms before putting the gun to his temple.
Pulling the trigger.
“Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs it down, but a good word cheers it up,” the gun responds.
The Private’s eyes flicker to The Bible in his drawer.
Pulling the trigger.
“Do not be a fool–why die before your time?” the smart weapon asks.
Pulling the trigger.
“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.”
The Private closes his eyes so tight, a tear forms, races down his cheek, cutting through stubble.
Pulling the trigger.
“You are attempting to deface government property. Automatic safety switching back on.”
The Private puts the gun down and produces a bottle of scotch from another drawer, a small glass; He pours himself three fingers.
by submission | Sep 7, 2015 | Story |
Author : Travis Gregg
Ryan took one last look around the greenhouse. The expansive row after row of flourishing plants had been his home away from home for years. He knew every inch of the space, from the greywater feed lines to the UV lighting panels. There were kilometers of trays and he’d had his hands deep in every one of them, churning the soil, making sure the seeds were sprouting correctly, and working in the nutrient tabs. He was going to miss the place terribly.
Years ago when he’d first gotten the greenhouse assignment he’d balked. After graduating from primary, part of the ceremony of finally becoming a full member of the station was receiving your assignment from the overseers. This was the thing you’d be as an adult and the contribution you’d make to the greater whole. Several of his friends got assigned to engineering and one even qualified for operations. Some of his other friends had gotten stuck with maintenance but even that had seemed more interesting than watching plants grow all day. His parents could see his disappointment but it would have been childish to pout and unthinkable not to follow the role he was ostensibly best suited.
As he got older and learned more about the station, he realized just how important the greenhouse was. In addition to providing supplemental food, it acted as an ancillary oxygen system, and provided nutrient recycling. Probably the most important function of the greenhouse, in Ryan’s mind at least, was that it reminded people of what they’d left behind. The space station was huge, holding nearly a hundred thousand people. It was cold and stark, built for efficiency and reliability. The bulkheads and passage ways were grays and whites, harsh and utilitarian. When the necessity of the stations became evident, stations like the one Ryan lived on were built as quickly and efficiently as possible, and this was reflected in every aspect of the station. The greenhouse was the one exception with its warm air and fecund aroma. Ryan encouraged everyone he knew to visit the greenhouse and often made small gifts of plants for people to keep in their quarters. In his mind, the greenhouse was the essence of what they’d had to leave behind.
As Ryan grew into the role, the greenhouse had flourished. Whether it was just luck or the overseers had a way of knowing, the greenhouse was exactly where he needed to be. He was going to be sad to leave it behind and there was still so much work to do. Just that morning he’d managed to work out the nutrient deficiency issue that had plagued the radishes for months.
As when he was young, the overseers again had called on him to put aside what he wanted for the good of the station.
Hundreds of years ago humanity had fled to the stations orbiting the planet. The pollution and radiation had become too much to fix and so humanity had packed up, giving the planet time to renew, the pollution to dissipate, and the radiation to subside. Every few months probes charted the progress and finally the radiation had dropped to reasonable levels, at least around the poles. What was now needed was for humans to once again go down to the planet and restart the terraforming in earnest. Only so much could be done with the probes and it was time for humanity to come home.
Ryan knew he’d never see the station again; this was a one way trip. He didn’t mind though, if anyone could get life going back ground side it was him.
by submission | Sep 5, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The ship sprang into existence at the edge of the Groombridge 34 A system. The vessel’s matter wave attenuator drive, having allowed the vehicle to quantum tunnel across 127 light-years of space, slowly powered down with an audible drop in pitch throughout the ship. The starship’s two occupants were not quite organism, not quite machine. Nor could such quaint notions as sex or race be applicable to them. The twin red dwarf stars that comprised the Groombridge system painted the cockpit crimson.
“Why the detour?” asked the one called Betlu.
“We have to transmit a message,” replied Ebbud.
“A message to whom?”
“Have you ever heard of a ship called the Artemis?”
“No.”
“It was the first manned ship to attempt faster-than-light travel.”
Betlu frowned. “What has an ancient ship to do with your cryptic message?”
“It is to the Artemis our message will be directed.”
Betlu’s frown deepened.
“The Artemis was the first attempt to send a vessel with a crew from the Sol system to Proxima Centauri. It was launched in 2377,” explained Ebbud.
“Launched when?” asked Betlu. Ebbud restated the date using the standard galactic calendar.
“That’s preposterous!” exclaimed Betlu. “Why that was 7,200 standard years ago!”
“Yes, it was,” said Ebbud. “Shortly after the Artemis was launched, an error in the calculations programmed into the ship’s primitive FTL drive was discovered. It never emerged near Proxima Centauri. The miscalculation caused it to remain in hyperspace, emerging into realspace for only a second every 2,400 years.”
“But our ancestors weren’t immortal as we are,” protested Betlu. “The crew would be long dead.”
“They employed a crude hyperspatial warp drive,” said Ebbud. “From the crew’s perspective, no time would pass while they were in hyperspace. The vessel has sailed the galactic sea like a modern-day Flying Dutchman.”
Betlu did not recognize the antique reference but from context comprehended Ebbud’s meaning.
“A ship has been tasked with trying to contact the Artemis every time it has momentarily emerged from hyperspace,” continued Ebbud. “Calculations show the vessel will emerge from hyperspace here in a few moments. We must be ready to transmit our message.”
“What message will we send?”
“The word ‘of’.”
“‘Of’? Just one word? And what does that even mean?”
“It’s from an ancient language used by our ancestors called English. It’s a preposition. Twenty-four hundred years ago another ship encountered the Artemis and transmitted the word ‘out’. And 2,400 years before that still another vessel sent the word ‘drop’.”
“Drop out of,” said Betlu. The ancient words told him nothing.
“And in another 2,400 years a vessel will intercept the Artemis when she emerges in the Oort Cloud surrounding Gliese 777. That vessel will send the word ‘warp’. From the point of view of the Artermis’ crew, just a second after their attempted jump to Proxima Centauri, they will have received a message saying ‘Drop out of warp’. Depending on how quickly they respond to this message, ships will be positioned at various locations in the galaxy at various times that the Artemis might emerge. It may yet take many millennia.
“All this time and effort,” said Betlu, “for a group of barely intelligent primitives who tried to set out for the stars before they were ready?”
“All this time and effort for pioneers,” Ebbud corrected, “without whom we would not now enjoy the benefits of galactic civilization.”
Just then, another vessel appeared, ancient and ghostly. Ebbud and Betlu’s ship transmitted its monosyllabic message just before the other spacecraft faded into nothingness.
by submission | Sep 3, 2015 | Story |
Author : Selso Sam Zaghloul
Cherry woke up at three o’clock local time, sweating and panting. She turned and looked out the window as the light from the smaller moon dripped into the room.
She had the dream again. The same dream she had nearly every night since the colony group had plopped their dull-gray prefab houses on this world. A dream of music, of an unearthly song bigger than everything, and of a light that would consume the heavens.
She trudged out of bed, dragging herself to the sink. She splashed ice cold water onto her face, as if trying to wash out the vision from here mind. It didn’t work. She could still hear the song echoing in here head, and the light dance before here whenever she blinked. She sighed. Cherry wished she had someone to talk to. But the other colonist lived in a compound about ten minutes away; a home to herself was supposedly Cherry’s reward for her work on the soil survey.
But the truth hung there, unspoken. They wanted Cherry and her dreams of heavenly music and all-embracing light as far away as possible, as if she was a useful, but dangerous animal. And maybe they were right to do so, she wondered in despair, maybe she was a ticking time bomb, waiting to go off.
Then she heard it. The same music from her dreams rose faintly into her ears. Cherry listened, at first in fear (this was it, she thought I’ve had finally lost my mind) and then in longing, greater longing than anything she had wanted in her entire life, until she could stand it no longer and ran out into the night, the melody pulling on her soul like a fishing line .
She didn’t care that it was the middle of the night, or that the song emanated from the untamed forest, or even that she was as naked as a newborn. The music made its siren’s call, and Cherry would answer, no matter what.
As she dashed through the spiral pines she nearly ran into pack of gecko-wolves, one the planet’s most vicious predator, who could strip a man to bone in seconds. She barely noticed them as they parted before her as if they were bowing before some sort of holy woman.
She exited the forest near seaside cliff. The Song was coming beneath her, from within the earth. She got on her knees and began to claw at the ground like a dog searching for the last bone in the universe. Hours later, she hit something.
The music stopped.
She had uncovered a black metal surface, barely visible in the light of the second moon. Cherry held her breath, and slowly reached for it with here index finger, trembling in both fear and excitement. The second she touched the metal’s cool surface, veins of light appeared on it, spreading quickly. The structure, a sphere the size of Cherry’s head, bursts out of the ground, knocking her on her ass, and floated over the clam sea.
The sphere disassembled itself into five pieces, like a puzzle in reverse. The floating pieces were still connected by the light, and from that light emerged five new structures, rectangles this time, and they too disassembled, and reattached themselves to the ends of the sphere-pieces. The process repeated-metal structures would come forth from the light, take themselves apart and attach the new individual parts to the ever expanding super-structure that had begun with the sphere.
By the time the larger moon rose, Cherry was no longer sitting before open space.
She was standing before a city.
by Julian Miles | Sep 1, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Lie back, Daniel Sixteen. This will be over in under five instants.”
I swing my legs up and settle into the logro, feeling the soft curves adjust to the contour and temperature settings supplied by my envi. Things have definitely come long way from my last forgetting. Not that I remember the exact details, but the echo of certainty – what used to be called déjà vu – hints me true.
Yarrie Four-Twenty Clone smiles and rests her hand on my brow, her entire forearm tailored to convey reassurance and gravitas with that single contact: I am safe in competent hands.
“Please drop your envi.”
A simple request that causes me more discomfort than the fact I am about to have three decimillennia defragmented. When one lives forever, the little things become so tiresome: shower temperatures, seat posture preferences, tea flavours and strengths, they all take up time and matter. So we have attotech personal processors – envi – to carry those environment invariables and free our matter for living.
I drop my envi and feel a lack that I cannot name. Then a grey twisting streaks across my conscious, is gone, and I feel lighter. My envi restarts without prompting.
“Arise, Daniel Sixteen. You are cleared.”
Man’s technology has allowed him to live forever. In conjunction with the need to limit the number who are permitted to do so, there is a need for those of us who are permitted immortality to remain sane – some early horrors taught us that lesson well.
The postulated problems with memory turned into hard limitations until selective memory removal became a science, two centuries after its genesis in the torture chambers of MK-Ultra. Amnesia is not enough: an amnesiac has simply lost the way to a memory, not lost the memory itself. Brains have a finite capacity and only a limited way to tidy up – after all, organically we’re still designed for around a hundred years of thinking at most.
The memory removal process has retasked an old term, and ‘defragmentation’ is what immortals voluntarily undergo. Formative memories – the first four decades – are inviolate. Apart from that, you can choose what you keep: the Euphorics only retain joyous events, Glooms keep their disappointments close, Screamers retain extreme events, Horrors retain catastrophes, and so on. The gamut is similar to the old book and film genres, but since we can come back from anything bar a total brain incineration, we are our own entertainment. Vicarious pleasures are a thing of the past for the eternals, and those who do not qualify for immortality can watch us for their entertainment.
