by submission | Mar 6, 2007 | Story
Author : Joshua Reynolds
“My mind is the gate and the key.” The thin, frail man in the bed muttered, his lips crusty, eyes staring past reality. His name was Howard Phillips Lovecraft and he was dying.
The Censor stood over him, watching him die. And fuming.
Lovecraft was finally being obliging. Just not quickly enough.
Damn writers. Either too early or too late.
“I am the threshold and he that waits on the other side is preparing to enter…IA!CTHULHU!” The thin man coughed, blood freckling his lips. The Censor pulled his bed sheet away and his face twisted in revulsion. Something moved under the skin of the man’s belly-a twisting cancerous growth that was close to birth. The Censor dropped the sheet and shook his head.
So close. Hurry, hurry, hurry he silently urged.
The difference engine in his head pinged, warning him of imminent reality distortion. He turned, hands clenching and unclenching in nervous excitement.
Where were they? Where would they be coming from?
Plaster dribbled onto his head and he looked up. Above him, something peeled back the ceiling and looked down at him with one great eye. Wight winced as the eye blinked with a sound like paper bags tearing and serpentine tendrils began to squirm through the hole in space/time.
Perfect. Just perfect. Right on time. Wight smiled. He did so love punctuality. He glanced at Lovecraft and frowned. Now if only he would hurry up and die. If the things peering through the ceiling had to wait, their very presence would tear the fabric of this alternate beyond repair. And the damage would spread to the other alternates in this section. They couldn’t exist in unsupported world structures, not without the proper meme-patterns threaded throughout the reality’s chronatin makeup. Something he had neither the time nor the inclination to do here.
Besides, once you made them comfortable it was near impossible to get them to leave, cosmic freeloaders that they were. Impolite really. Laying their damn cosmic eggs all over, eating dreams and screwing up the geometry.
Like space coyotes, only worse.
More legs for one thing.
He turned as the thin man in the bed screamed sharply and sat up, eyes staring, mouth open to its widest. The Censor stepped back as something pushed its way up through the man’s esophagus from his stomach, causing his throat to inflate like that of a bullfrog. Wildly writhing tendrils, lighter in hue than those that dangled from the hole in the ceiling but no less disgusting for all that emerged from Lovecraft’s mouth. The Censor took a breath and darted forward, grabbing the tendrils and pulling hard. The thin man fell backwards, eyes rolling up into his head as the Censor stumbled backwards, a squirming be-tentacled bundle gripped tightly in both hands and held at arms length from his face. A tiny squid-beak snapped and clacked at him as he turned and held the thing up to the thing in the ceiling, a smile pasted on his face.
“It’s a boy. I think.”
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by submission | Mar 4, 2007 | Story
Author : Debbie Mac Rory
We’re not going to make it.
How many times have you heard that? Don’t you get fed up of it? I know I have. All manner of excuses they tried forcing on me. Poisoning me with their lies and falsehoods.
The first time I saw the new planet in the view screens I knew what it meant. It lay suspended in an ink black sky, an orb of lilac and lavender wisps in a sky that was the colour of childhood summers at the beach. It called to me of peace, of a search ended. And I wanted more than anything I’d ever wanted before to step onto the surface of that world and embrace the quiet it offered.
My colleagues didn’t believe me when I tried to share the message with them. As I spoke of the dance of clouds in the planets sky, they spoke of poisonous gases, winds that would strip metal ore from stone, forces of gravity far greater than those of earth… but even as they lied I could see the truth. They had already heard the planets message, but instead of the devotion that it had awakened it me, their hearts had hardened with malice, and they wished to keep me from my goal.
Taking over the bridge had been relatively easy. I had pretended to despondency, keeping to myself and avoiding their company as if I’d had my fill of their sympathy. No one questioned me as I wandered ’round the ship with my head bowed as if my spirit was broken. No one saw the pattern as I moved from supply room to supply room. Making a knock-out gas from the ships supplies was more than easy to someone of my expertise, and security was lax enough that the missing breathing apparatus wasn’t noticed until it was far, far too late.
They’ve started waking up in the hallway now, and I can hear them banging on the door. They won’t get in. I’ve already sealed the doors and a fire axe through the access pad is making sure they won’t crack my code. I’m sure they can tell by now what my intentions are, and that they’re cursing themselves for their foolishness for not realizing sooner that I would not simply let this lie. I’ve already forgiven them for their actions, and decided not to deny them the paradise that I know awaits me.
I can hear their screams now. Frantic high notes that strain and are swallowed by the roar from the ships hull as we begin to enter the planets atmosphere. They’re getting frantic. Even though the door is reinforced steel, I can hear their screams reach higher, hear the raw fear as the ship begins to groan and tear with the strain of entry.
‘We’re not going to make it’.
Oh but we will.
++ Status Report: Contact lost with Research Vessel Star Struck while on mission to conduct research on planet XK2935. All souls considered lost. ++
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by submission | Mar 2, 2007 | Story
Author : Marc Paige
Disclaimer and Waiver of Responsibility:
Second Chances, Inc. will make one (1) small change to one’s personal timeline and are not liable for any damages or loss (including loss of life) as a result of the altered timeline. No financial alterations. Any fraudulent change will be immediately reversed. Only you will be aware that the change has occurred. No refunds.
Part of the process involves an RPA interview (regression, prognostication analysis.) Two hours into it, the team had worked out the event that needed to be altered.
The time ripple was effective and accurate. As advertised, only I was aware of the change. My “big†mistake never happened.
I guess I don’t know what I really expected. I mean, people never really learn from their mistakes do they. Instead of blaming my past self for a lapse in judgment, I should have learned from it and moved on. But no! I couldn’t do that. They made it too easy.
“Wish you hadn’t bought that car? Answered the phone that fateful night? Ate that bad piece of fish? At Second Chances, Inc. we can help! Our team of dedicated professionals will erase that bad decision with pinpoint accuracy. Call now for an estimate, financing available.â€
That’s how they get you. Bastards.
During the interview, I told them “if only I hadn’t taken that first puff…†That was it. They calculated the right spot in my timeline that let me sneak that first smoke and setup the machine.
“Ready?†The tech didn’t really wait for an answer and touched the screen.
For a moment, my body felt “wrongâ€.
After the ripple, the cancer was gone… well, never happened I guess.
As I got up to leave, I reached in my jacket pocket for the fried cherry pie the ripple had placed there.
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by submission | Feb 28, 2007 | Story
Author : J. S. Kachelries
“Well, what do you think?†asked my roommate, with a grin that appeared to cover almost half of his disheveled face.
“About what, Jim?†I replied, while pretending to ignore the large polished chrome sphere sitting between us, in the middle of our kitchen table.
“Come on, Isaac. What do you think of my doctorate project, The Graviton Shield?â€
“It looks a metal basketball to me. What’s it supposed to do?â€
“Besides win me a Noble Prize? Well, when I activate it, it will become unaffected by gravitational fields.â€
“You mean it will float?â€
He laughed. “Of course not, you idiot. You Liberal Arts majors really crack me up. It still has inertia. You know…Newton’s first law. It must continue to move in a strait line in whatever direction it was moving when I threw the switch. Do you know what direction that will be? Hell, of course you don’t. Look, the Earth rotates in 24 hours. At our latitude, we’re moving at about 700 miles per hour. Without Earth’s gravity holding it down, the GS Ball will drift upward toward the west. He pointed toward the top of the refrigerator. In addition, the Earth also orbits around the sun. Let’s see, that’s 587,000,000 miles in 365.25 days. That’s 67,000 miles per hour. At this time of day, the Ball will continue to move toward Epsilon Tau.†He pointed toward the window above the sink. “Of course, we’re also revolving around the center of the Milky Way. Let’s see…that’s…â€
“OK, OK, I get it. Just tell me where to stand, so it won’t hit me if it actually moves.â€
“Oh, you’re fine right where you are. The battery will only last about 30 seconds. Just long enough to prove it works.†He reached over and flipped the toggle switch on the top of the Ball. But the Ball didn’t move. Regardless, Jim jumped up and began to dance around the kitchen, cheering and shouting “Oh yea, oh yea, I knew it. Take that bitch!â€
“Whoa, Jim. Calm down. It didn’t work.â€
“Don’t you guys take any science classes? Of course it worked. Had everybody, including my ex-girlfriend, been correct, that Ball should have exited the kitchen, stage right. But it didn’t. Don’t you see what that means? Duh, I guess I’ll have to explain that to you too. Mary Jane, my ex, said I was a self centered, egotistical, narcissistic bastard, who thought the universe revolved around him…..What, you still don’t understand? The Ball didn’t move! God, you’re slow. If the center of the universe was really somewhere out there in the cosmos, we’d have a hole in kitchen wall. Therefore, I must be the center of the universe. Everything does revolve around me. I’ve got to send her an IM.†He reached under the table and brought out his laptop.
I sat there motionless while I tried to decide if I should call the psychotic helpline, or just get up and run like hell. That’s when I noticed that the Ball was moving very slowly to my left. Although I hadn’t noticed until now, it had actually moved about a foot since Jim had flipped the switch, right down the center of the table. As I carefully watched its path, it began to curve away from me as its battery began to die. Huh, I thought, it looks like it’s trying to make a big circle, a little bigger than a hula-hoop, with Jim smack dab in the middle. “Well, I’ll be damned!â€
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by featured writer | Feb 27, 2007 | Story
Author : Sam Clough aka “Hrekka”, Featured Writer
I was on a hostile node, and a half-dozen Dahakeen were chasing me. With guns. Quite big ones. I didn’t have a weapon at this point, having lost it in the factory complex that I was now hot-footing it away from. Well, ‘lost’ is a bit of a stretch. I had it taken from me by a guard. He ripped out the firing mechanism in front of my eyes. The idiot then turned away to place the clip down on a shelf. When he turned back, he met my cosh coming the other way. On reflection, he was probably the one who tipped the Dahakeen onto me. What made it eerie was the fact that there was no noise of gunfire, just low thuds, followed by patches of tarmac ahead of me glowing cherry-red and splintering, before they would explode. I thanked code that Dahakeen couldn’t run and shoot straight at the same time.
I scrambled through the half-ruined doorway and bolted towards the stairs. The building was oppressively dark, but my eyes were slowly compensating. I threw myself onto the first floor landing, and carried on up. As I turned to start up the next set of stairs, there was another barrage of thuds, and a ripple of explosions as significant chunks of the structure exited this mortal realm. I had made it about halfway up the stairs when I heard another thud, and felt a bright, screaming pain in my leg. A microprojectile had whipped through my foot and exploded in the stair beneath me. My calf was a mess, laced through with thick shards of wood.
I pulled myself back up, and forced myself up the stairs, round onto the landing, and up onto the next flight. My leg was hurting like hell, but I couldn’t stop. I looked up, and my heart sank. About half-way up the flight the stairs disappeared, only to restart about a metre higher. No way I could jump it with my leg like this.
Then she stepped out, framed by the diffused light of the window behind her. She saw me, and didn’t hesitate, but descended as far as the gap, and held out a hand. I scrambled to the drop and caught hold of it. She hauled me over the gap, and upright. She fitted her small shoulder under my arm, and with her help, I walked. We made it to the top of the stairs, then round onto the landing. I collapsed there, gasping from the pain of walking on my ruined leg. I looked up at her.
She grinned down at me, her skin looking ash-white in the half-light, the shape of her face clearly defined against the shadow. With an easy motion, she ripped the activator on a health patch, and slapped it over my wound. She turned, reached into the shadows behind her, and withdrew a gun. It was not as big as the one she had across the back of her long jacket, but was plenty big enough for my tastes. The barrel on her weapon looked like it would be able to swallow my arm. Below us, past the broken stairs, the sounds of the dahakeen were easily audible. They were searching for me, and would not take long to reach this landing, even with the broken stair.
She saw my worry, and pressed a slender finger to her lips. They were the darkest red I’d ever seen, like cochineal. There was a bang, and she looked up, suddenly, and moved slowly to the stairwell. For several seconds, she just stood there. Then, slowly, she returned over to me. Sidling closer, she pressed her lips almost to my ear, the only sound the gentle rustling of her coat against the floor.
“I can get you out of here. Trust me.”
Sliding the gun around from her back, she tapped a control, and it whined, as capacitors accumulated charge. She winced as the sound grew, before smiling at me one more time and jumping over the gap in the stair. Her arrival below was suddenly punctuated by a ripple of explosions, and the harsh, high report of a mass driver.
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