by Stephen R. Smith | Mar 22, 2007 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
“You know, puny human, you’re about to die?” The voice reverberated off the store fronts, assailing the ears like broken glass. “You think you’re faster? That you can outgun me?” The biped stood stoic, unusually tall and peculiarly proportioned, bellowing down the dusty thoroughfare.
“Can’t say that I’m faster, and I’ve not got a gun quite like your cannon there, but I don’t plan on letting you kill me.” The retort came from a man not two thirds the height or weight of his rival, fidgeting uneasily at the other end of the street. Behind closed doors and shuttered windows, the townspeople sheltered themselves but, unable to let the showdown pass without witness, many could be seen peering cautiously through cracks. “The name’s Zigg. If you do intend to kill me, the least you could do is learn my name.”
“High noon, Ssegg.” Indifference slurred it, as much as the reptilian mouth did. “That’ss when I’ll kill you.” There was laughter beneath the words this time, one sound layered over the other. Zigg suddenly recalled his breakfast, and struggled to swallow it back down.
The clock tower ticked the minutes away before noon as horses shuffled uneasily at the hitch-post. Wind blew tumbleweeds past, and set the weathervane squealing on a nearby rooftop. The clock struck the first midday bell. Zigg studied the street carefully. Two bells, then three. Four bells, five.
“You know who’s going to be the death of you?” His lips slowly pulled back into a wide white grin. “Rube Goldberg.” The clock struck its sixth time.
The towering gunman cupped both hands behind his ear-vents, and bellowed back at him. “What? Rube who?” He slowly studied the doorways and closed windows, as though at any moment this ‘Rube’ would step from the shadows. Seven bells.
Zigg pinned the tall creature with an icy stare as he reached slowly down to the ground and plucked a fist sized rock from the dust at his feet. The alien watched with peripheral interest as he carefully drew back his arm and pitched the rock up at the creaking weathervane, the impact echoed in the eighth bell of twelve.
The weather vane spun wildly and broke loose, caterwauled down the corrugated steel roof, to alight on the rump of the closest tethered horse. The ninth bell struck as the horse reared, tearing the hitch-post off its mooring, and setting its three companions to bucking in unison. As one, they galloped up the main street, still attached to the length of railing. The horses passed the general store, two to either side of the sign post, as the clock struck for the tenth time, the impact snapping the post clean off at its base. The alien gunman stood fixated as the post was dragged towards the open street, propelled by the horsedrawn length of railing. The horses veered in opposite directions, slipping free of the rail, to race away through the city streets. The signpost dug into the dirt, then cart-wheeled end over end up the street past the gunman, to come to rest a dozen or so meters beyond him in a cloud of dust.
“That’ss your Rube Goldberg?” The question barely escaped his mouth as the clock struck twelve, and an explosion echoed down the street. The alien turned to face the smiling visage of his opponent behind the smoking barrel of a gun. He willed himself to try to speak, to move, but he couldn’t. Thick fluid oozed from his throat as he fell to his knees.
Zigg turned his gun to the sky, blew softly across the barrel-mouth, enjoying the sound for a moment before he continued. “You just gotta have a little imagination.” He tipped his hat as he slipped his gun back into its holster, turned and walked away.
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by submission | Mar 20, 2007 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields
I wake up. It’s dark. I’m in chains.
I’m in a prison cell. Like in a castle. Like in the middle ages.
Straw on the floor, mortared brick stonework, metal door, the whole bit. My lenses adjust. Clearly this is a construct. Incongruously, there is a mirror on the wall. I shuffle over to see what state I’m in. The chains are heavy and make a ridiculous amount of noise.
I take a look in the mirror to see how things are.
Giant extended binocular lenses refocus and adjust in my reflection where my eyes should be. There is no skin on the bottom half of my face. Just white teeth and bright red muscle stretched over strong jaws. My nostril slits purse wetly at the smell in the place. There’s a ruff of long stiff bright green feathers above my huge distended black glassed-over eye sockets. I bring my fingerknives up and run them gently over the ruin of my face. My long white limbs have been left alone. There are still six of them. My bone white skin has the texture and dryness of cork. Old scars criss cross my entire frame.
Everything looks normal. At least they didn’t screw with that. I look out the window to see when and where I am this time. I hope it’s not Salmento. I don’t know if I could handle that again. I see the moons outside in what I suddenly realize is a night time sky. My lenses adjust. I think the hardest part is the disorientation.
I shrug and my skin goes transparent.
I look inside myself to see if the parts of the weapon are still there. They are. I relax marginally and my skin goes opaque again. All I have to do know is get out of here, find another Korridor, assemble and bail. I’ll need some meat to do that, though, so I have to sit tight and wait for a visitor.
All the prisons I’ve ever been to have guards. Even in the distant future. Automation just never takes place. The variables mix with the cost and it turns out the best and cheapest way to police people is to hire a bunch of other people. Lucky for me.
I kick back. I overlay a game in the center of my vision and turn off my corpus callosum connecting the two halves of my brain and play Ruse with myself, waiting for the biology of this building to come to me. Maybe a guard but hopefully someone important. An officer or a regal representative or something. Those are always tastier.
I will win.
I’m always one step closer. I’ll stay ahead. They’ll be sorry they picked me.
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by submission | Mar 19, 2007 | Story
Author : Sarah Klein
He was getting another body. Again.
Always something new, though. Many people got almost the same body again – erase my scars, make me look younger, but I want to keep my fingerprints, they’d say. Smooth out the wrinkles, get rid of my freckles – that was what this business was really for. But he was different. This was his drug. Instead of once, it seemed infinite. This time I want brown hair, this time I want more muscle, this time make me blind in one eye. It was his experience, he said.
I didn’t call it an experience. I called it stupid and wasteful. He was never one to listen to anyone else, though. Ostracized by his family, he lived alone. Friends visited him occasionally – he was no hermit – but many people looked down on him. Everyone I knew thought I looked down on him, too. But every soul has their shady, heart-wrenching secret, and mine was that I loved him. Well, he knew it, of course. I’d confessed to him twice during our lengthy friendship, and both times he had brushed it aside. He didn’t feel that way, he said, and I don’t think he ever felt that way for anyone. Still, we continued being friends, as we enjoyed each other’s ideas and conversation.
But soon, he was worse. Switching bodies more often, he also began to start experimenting with drugs. I found him several times passed out on the floor, paraphernalia scattered, vomit in gruesome puddles. Didn’t he want anything more than this? I asked him, pressured him, and begged him, but to no avail. He was self-destructing, and he didn’t care.
You can’t switch bodies forever. Each time, it gets riskier and riskier. They’d told him this was the last body they were giving him, he said, with a sigh of disgust. They don’t want the blood on their hands when something goes wrong. In his blissful, honest tone, he told me when and where he was getting transplanted. I’d always been good to him – it was impossible for me to do anything nefarious to him, and he knew that. But I was losing him, and I knew it.
It’s illegal to break into a procedure. It’s illegal to tamper with a procedure. It’s also extremely easy, if you know how to be quiet and who to bribe. There may be laws, but without proper enforcement, they’re nothing but paper. And so, I found myself in his room, looking down at the two bodies and all the tubing. I smiled, seeing his new body being very similar to his original one. For some reason, it made me feel like there was some way for his redemption. I pricked my finger carefully, watching the blood form into a single, round droplet. Carefully inserting it into the rest of his blood transfer tube, I slipped it back in and left. I didn’t know what it would do, or what havoc it would cause. He’d have some of me, even if I never had him.
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by submission | Mar 18, 2007 | Story
Author : Selena Thomason
Ian knew he shouldn’t get involved. Still, he set down his drink, tapped on the towering back next to him and said, “Look, why don’t you leave her alone? Clearly the lady is not interested.”
The hulk turned towards him, which is when Ian noticed the extra pair of arms coming out of the alien’s torso.
A Ketchin, Ian thought. That’s just great.
Ian had heard of the Ketchins but never actually seen one. They were supposed to be formidable fighters, both strong and skilled. Ian expelled a long breath and bolstered his nerve. It was too late to back down now.
The woman moved between them. “Come on boys, there’s no need for trouble,” she cooed.
Ian couldn’t decide if she was stupid or drunk. “Miss, you best get out of the way and let me handle this.”
Instead, the woman pulled Ian to the side and lowered her voice. “Look, fly-boy, I don’t need or want your help.” Ian was startled to find that all the sweetness had gone out of her demeanor.
“What?” How much had she been drinking, he wondered. “He was clearly hitting on you.”
“Well of course he was, you idiot,” she whispered. “I’m secreting a Ketchin pheromone. Do you have any idea how much it costs to get those artificially? A least a week’s pay. A busy week’s pay.”
“You want this lug’s attention?” Ian realized too late that he had raised his voice again.
“Well, yeah!” she fired back.
The Ketchin pounded an inner fist to his chest. “Want me, she does,” he proclaimed proudly from a couple feet away.
Ian leaned into the woman and whispered, “But why?”
“You don’t know much, do you fly-boy?” She pulled Ian away a few more steps while waving flirtatiously to the alien as if to say she would be right back. “Look, Ketchin are easily satisfied… physically, you know, and without any intimate contact on my part. Get it?”
Ian balked at trying to untangle that unpleasant mental picture. He just stared back at the woman.
“Their erogenous zones are under their inner arms,” she prompted.
“Really?” Ian leaned around the woman to get a look at the Ketchin who was still gazing lovingly at the strange woman.
“All I have to do rub him under his arms and then…”
Ian raised his hands as if to stop her from continuing the sentence. “Enough. I get it. But why would you want to?”
The woman leaned in closer. “Ketchin males are very agreeable post-pleasure. And very generous….” She glanced over at her alien prey and gave him another wave.
“I see.”
“So, if you could just stay out of it.”
“Right. Gotcha. Consider me out of it.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. I really was just trying to help.”
“I know. Thanks anyway.”
Ian sat back down at the bar and ordered a double. He vowed that next time he would confirm the damsel was actually in distress before getting involved.
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by submission | Mar 16, 2007 | Story
Author : Joshua Reynolds
The dead moved on surprisingly swift legs, despite muscles that had to be mostly composed of rot. So he ran faster.
It had been a meteor, carrying a star-sickness. That was what had caused it. It wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t been here when it happened. For those first few days when the virus was in the air and eating away at living cells and he was trapped here with them. Quarantined by faceless bureaucrats for the good of everything else.
And now he was running, his breath hissing in and out of three lungs, skin burning with fever. He had to get home. Get away from this sour world, get help. All he needed was some help.
All he would get was the Censor.
Wight watched from the trash-strewn alleyway as the empty-eyed legions hunted the last living man on this Earth, his coat in shreds, clothing bloodied, face filled with the same ruthless determination to succeed and survive that he himself saw in the mirror every morning. Which wasn’t surprising really. They were both Censors after all. Both Wight.
Brothers in blood and bone and genetic coding. Created in steel wombs and raised in nutrient tubes by nanny-bots programmed to teach them all the values of Prime-Time and the Timeline Validation Bureau, to ready them for the war in the gaps between seconds. Mister Wight. Censor Wight. One and all.
They even thought alike. Which is why he was here now. To stop himself.
He stepped out of the alley as his other self ran past and stood in the path of the hungry dead. As the dead groaned and converged on him, arms outstretched, jaws slack he pulled on a pair of TeslaSurge gloves and stretched out his own arms. Blue energy suddenly cracked to life between his fingers, rippling up and down between his palms. With a flick of his wrists he released the energy, whipping it into the advancing forms. It coiled and snapped almost like a thing alive as it jumped from one body to the next, destroying what little remained of their physiological cohesion and reducing them to puddles of meat and stink. Soon all of the hunting pack were dissolving in their own juices. But there was a sound on the wind. A mindless rumble. More of them on the way.
“They have excellent hearing. They’ll follow the sound of the energy discharge.” his twin coughed into a bandaged hand, features haggard. Weeks of running, hiding, fighting. All of it had worn him down, worn away his sense of duty. He intended to go home, quarantine or no. Wight could see it in his eyes. “I need to leave. Now.”
“I will.” Wight raised his crackling gloves. The other Censor’s tired eyes widened slightly. In the light put off by the gloves he looked ill. Like death warmed over.
No wonder really. He was infected after all. All it took was one bite. Just one. And that meant he couldn’t be allowed back into the time-stream.
“I’m sorry.” Wight said as the energy rippled outward, away from his hands towards his twin, whose shoulders slumped, as if a massive burden had been taken off them.
“I know.” he said as the energy enveloped him. Breaking him down back into his basic elements. Until the Censor stood alone on an empty street with only the dead for company.
Then he too was gone, leaving another sour world in his wake.
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