by submission | Oct 29, 2006 | Story |
Author : Curtis C. Chen
When Stacy was twelve, she celebrated her father’s thirty-third birthday.
It wasn’t actually his birthday. It was two weeks before his birthday, but he was leaving on a mission in five days.
Stacy thought the party was boring. There were a lot of grown-ups there, drinking smelly drinks that looked like soda but tasted bitter when she stole a sip from her father’s plastic cup. He was talking to another grown-up at the time and didn’t notice.
“It’s only sixteen light-years,” he was saying. “We’re not sure how hard we can push the stardrive, but we also need to balance the relativistic effects.”
Stacy wandered into the kitchen to find her mother. She was standing over the sink, alone.
“Mommy?” Stacy said, tugging at her skirt.
Stacy’s mother turned to look at her. Her eyes were red, and her cheeks were wet.
“Time for bed,” she said.
When Stacy was sixty-five, she celebrated her father’s fortieth birthday.
She barely recognized the man who embraced her as the waitress maneuvered her wheelchair into the restaurant.
“My little girl,” he said, his eyes glistening.
They brought a plate of food that she wasn’t allergic to. She toasted him with apple juice. She felt tired halfway through dinner, but pinched her arm under the table to keep herself awake.
She stayed until all the other guests had left. There weren’t many of them. The waitress brought Stacy a glass of warm milk, and a cup of coffee for her father. The coffee smelled good.
They talked for nearly an hour. He asked about Stacy’s mother, about what had happened to his family over the last half century, how they’d lived without him. Stacy’s mother had remarried when they thought her father’s ship had been lost, destroyed during their initial acceleration out of the solar system.
“She never stopped loving you,” Stacy told her father. She showed him the family photo that her mother had kept until she died, and which Stacy still carried in her purse. He cried quietly.
When the restaurant closed, Stacy’s father helped her into a waiting taxicab. He noticed her coughing and asked about her health.
“I’m old,” she said, forcing a smile. She didn’t want to tell him about the cancer.
Four days later, Stacy got a call from the agency. They had found her father dead in his apartment. He had overdosed on ibuprofen, washed down with a bottle of whiskey. They said he hadn’t felt any pain.
The note read: “No parent should outlive his child.”
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by submission | Oct 28, 2006 | Story |
Author : Kat Rose
Battle raged on around him, the constant sounds of gunfire ringing in his programmed earlike audio receptors. He, however, was oblivious to anything but the almost lifelike pain near where his navel would be, where the bullet had pierced his stark green casing.
For the first time in his battery powered life, he wished himself dead, unable to function, in electronic terms. The war was one-sided, and he knew he was on the losing side. His opponents were hell bent on destroying every robot created.
Once, before the human race realized they had made themselves disposable, robots and humans had gotten along, but after the new leaders had been elected, the entire human race had found that they were no longer necessary in this world and had been opposed to that fact.
RC926’s pupils grew large as a sort of shocking blue fluid leaked from around the bullet hole. As he lay himself down, the robot gave one last humanlike sigh, almost with emotion. Almost.
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by featured writer | Oct 26, 2006 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Featured Writer
The nails slide out effortlessly from beneath the shizu skin of my fingers. The swollen carapace of my back splits in even sections and the hive breathes. The hum becomes a vibration you can feel in your chest.
Something like icing bleeds out my tear ducts and I’m crawling with death. The paper medical gown twitches where it shouldn’t and starts to tear as new bones find new ways to move and the flesh swells to accommodate. My eyes are wide and black. New teeth start growing out of my shoulders and elbows. Saber tooth armour. Clear quartz cataracts rise out of my forehead. The diseases in the air reflect back through the magnifying bacterial lens that is my aura.
I make Pestilence look like a child just starting out.
I’m not even out of control yet.
I am barely seen scissors in a pulled open mouth. I am moving so fast I become a series of shadows. I become a force. Sounds of my destruction are lagging a long time behind my actions. People and equipment are obliterated before they’re aware of danger. I’m moving so fast it’s like I’ve been unhinged from time. It seems obscene that I should be able to maintain this kind of speed.
Tumours form on my skin and blink open to reveal new biological armaments. The cells of my body have finished what the creators intended and are starting to improvise. I am bionanotechonology. Tiny molecular compound copies of me spray out in spore clouds to infect and replicate other flesh.
My only limit now is imagination. I’m becoming art. A bioluminescent avatar of creativity though destruction. A messenger of the meat come to destroy. I am all the horsemen. I’m the nightmare of the flesh. I’m conscious disease. I am biomass. I’m DNA with the lid off. I’m psychotic cellular intelligence with no brakes of conscience. I’m cancer’s descendent.
I leave a trail of hot fat and warm blood.
I tear through the lower floors up to street level. Guards empty entire magazines of experimental weaponry into me. They become food. I burst through the asphalt into afternoon sun. I am a multitude of arms and eyes and teeth behind a black ashen sporecloud that does not obey the wind.
I can smell the entire population of this city waiting to become one with me.
I figure if they can get me somewhere airtight with walls I can’t break…but that’s academic. I don’t trust them to get that organized before I become too big to contain.
They. I’m already thinking of them as they.
So easy for humanity to be shed.
Here they come. I lose conscious thought as I expand all my senses to the fight and the expansion.
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by submission | Oct 25, 2006 | Story
Author : Angela N. Hunt
“We’re flying.â€
His voice is soft. Satisfied.
Her smile never wavers, nor her posture or the angle of her head to the angle of her swan white neck. But the hand in his squeezes for a half-second. Her feet keep perfect time with his as they glide across the floor, bars of the Blue Danube Waltz carrying them as effortless as their feet.
They slide into a perfect pause.
“Like doves,†she says quietly.
And they’re off again, whirling around each other in a tighter orbit than any binary star.
* * *
Caspurtina, the Residence’s sorceress, turned away from watching the dancers with a satisfied nod. Looked like she’d have her Dancers for the Mystery after all. With a flick of her wrist, she shook out the fingers of one elegant, manicured hand over the surface of a nearby nanoparticle-board table, one of many surrounding the dance floor, each displaying a different fractal star pattern. Starlight fell in brilliant sparkles from her fingertips. Wouldn’t do to have too much residual enchantments mucking up her next working.
The sparkles played havoc with the nano-surface, setting up a new and exciting fractal pattern not in the designer’s specs that then proceeded to make the surface of the table break out in a swath of tiny pansies. She’d have to have someone clean that up.
She took in the group of somber suited investors.
“As you can see, we have all the elements that we require for our gala,” Caspurtina said.
“Will there be a need of additional funds?” the banker from Tokyo inquired.
Caspurtina grinned, pure charm.
“Only if you wish to flatter me,” she replied and he bowed in amused return.
With that, the investors dispersed, off to find other entertainments for the evening.
Caspurtina took one more look at her chosen Dancers, though they didn’t know it yet, taking in the white feathered skirt floating against the sharp black of tuxedo pants, feet flashing like wings.
Really. What better way to summon the ghosts of Fred and Ginger for a command performance?
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by featured writer | Oct 24, 2006 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Featured Writer
I’m standing in front of the safety glass and seeing the thing look up at me. Its legs end in black tentacles that look diseased. The fingernails of its left hand are very long. One nostril is dripping what looks like grape juice onto the cell floor. It’s a little pathetic and I get a swell of sympathy that I have to stamp down on immediately.
I have to remember the deaths. I have to remember Allison.
I try to keep the steel in my voice. I can see Allison in his jawline. I can see Allison in the patches of long blond hair that poke through the short black haircut. I can see Allison in his left blue eye with the long eyelashes.
“Ask question?†he says to me.
“Yeah, I have a question†I say. “Are you scared of dying?†I ask this thing.
With a shock, I can see that it has two blue eyes now and the rest of its patchy and uneven hair is turning blonder by the moment.
“Not as long as I know you’re here with me.†It responds. Its voice is getting higher, closer to Allison’s. Its English is getting better. It’s gaining focus. Its shirt is getting tighter as Allison’s breasts push forward and fill the man’s shirt that it’s wearing.
It’s gaining strength by the second. Allison’s been gone for months. I thought I could to do this. I was kidding myself. My vision is starting to blur with tears and I can see that Allison is nearly complete before me behind the glass.
I watch my fingers reach towards the lock. I stop and look at my traitorous hand. I don’t have the code to open the cell anyway. I have no idea what I was about to try to do.
“Brian†it says. Allison says my name. “Let me out. Let’s go somewhere. Quit your job. We can live somewhere hot. Let’s forget this and get out of here.â€
I breathe deeply. I realize that I’m standing and my forehead is pressed against the glass. With a start, I stand back and straighten my clothes. Control. Control. I turn and walk towards the main elevator up to the office. I leave this parasite behind.
“Brian, they’re going to kill me!†the Allison thing shouts to me as the door to the elevator closes.
It’s a few floors up and then a brief scan on checkout and I’m out. They saw the whole thing on CCTV so they don’t ask me any questions. They let me out into the fresh air and into my empty life.
The department doesn’t know when Allison was taken. I may have been living with the parasite for days before they detected it. Maybe weeks. I might have made love to it.
I get behind the wheel but the shaking and the tears start before I’ve started the car. I feel almost grateful that the thing in the there let me see her one more time.
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