by Jared Axelrod | Apr 5, 2006 | Story
“I see you’ve done some pruning,†Margaret’s therapist said. “I like what you’ve done with the branches around your sternum.â€
“Thank you,†Margaret choked out. It had been a trial learning how to talk with roots entwined around her larnyx, but she had muddled through. “I think…I think I made a major…breakthrough. Other day. On the lawn.â€
“Yes? Say more about that.â€
Margaret grimaced, forming words that sounded rough and hard. She toyed with the braches that jutted out from her left elbow as she spoke. “On the lawn. I was…in the sun. At peace. Feeling the grass…at the sun. It felt…wonderful.â€
“That’s a good thing, Margaret. A very good thing.â€
Margaret smiled at that, leaves tickling her cheeks. “Was thinking…since had break…though, I could get…a phone call.â€
“Oh, Margaret…â€
“Or clothes!†The vines entwined in Margaret’s hair shuddered slightly. “Clothes? I’m…ready for clothes.â€
Margaret’s therapist closed her book and folded her hands. “Margaret. You came here because you wanted to get away from all that. It was making you sick, remember? All the technology, all the information. It was overwhelming. It was making you sick.â€
“Yes…but…think…â€
“What would you do on the phone, Margaret? You can barely talk.†She reached out and stroked the branch around Margaret’s collar bone. “I think you’ve done some lovely work here, but you’ve still got a long way to go. But you have made progress. I’ll talk to The Leader about giving you more time in the Orchard. You like working in the orchard, don’t you.â€
Margaret had a great deal of trouble choking out a “yes,†so she settled for a slow, sad nod.
“That’s the spirit, Margaret. There’s still so much of the modern world in you. But we’ll cut it out yet.â€
by Kathy Kachelries | Apr 4, 2006 | Story |
“Swimming’s easy,” Aaron said as he tightened the foam ring beneath her shoulders. “There’s only one rule: keep breathing. If you can’t find a way to breathe, that’s when you’re in trouble.”
Leah nodded as her brother gathered her into his arms, lifted her from the chair, and placed her carefully at the edge of the porch. She didn’t feel her feet dip into the water, but she saw the gray of the ocean swirl across her tan skin. “Mom says not to,” she said, for the fifth time in the last ten minutes.
“Mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he said with a smile.
Leah watched the water, partially opaque with flecks of dust. The setting sun behind them soaked the light from the sky, and on the opposite horizon, the sky and the water seemed to merge into a thick band of black.
Her classmates called her a cripple: Legs McGee, to be precise. Sometimes, she thought of herself that way. Leah watched them swim to the edge of the schoolyard, hanging onto the edge of the net and daring each other to jump past it. She’d long since gotten over envy. In recent years, she simply watched them glide through the water with the ease of a native being. They were like fish, their shimmering skin glazed with saltwater.
“You can’t live on the ocean and never go swimming,” Aaron continued as he lowered her into the nearly opaque mass. Small circles of bubbles moved outwards from her skin and she clung to her brother’s arms as the sudden coldness wrapped around her waist.
“I can’t-”
“Don’t listen to them,” he said. The water was now splashing around the edge of the foam floater, and she felt it dip with her weight. Leah’s throat closed in silent panic. “Calm down,” Aaron told her. “Like I said, the secret is to keep breathing.”
He pried her fingers from his arm and jumped into the water, his black hair disappearing beneath the gray. “Aaron?” she called. There was no response.
The house was a silhouette now, cast against the watercolor sky. The ocean was completely silent. “Aaron!” she yelled. Leah slapped the water with her arms, trying to push herself to the point where her brother had disappeared. A loud sound erupted behind her, and beads of water met her shoulders.
“Boo!” he said, and she screamed. As her voice met her ears, Leah realized it was only partially terrified. She wiped the ocean with her palm, throwing water in his direction.
“You scared me.”
“I don’t know how to drown,” he said as he blocked some of the splash with his arm. Aaron wiped his eyes, then squinted. “Hey, how’d you get all the way over there?”
“I pushed,” she said.
“We call that swimming,” her brother told her with a deep smile. “Welcome to the club.”
by B. York | Apr 2, 2006 | Story |
Marshall Weisman didn’t bother perusing the files. He’d been tracking this maniac down for years now. The poor looking gent in the outer rings had no excuse, no recourse. It was clear to him and any other officer of the Outer Planetary Patrol. Weisman barged into the room watching the humble act flying across the fugitives’ face as he slammed the door.
“Think you’re one slick pony, don’t you, Doberson?” The officer said as he dropped into a seat in front of the cuffed vigilante.
Carl Doberson was a rough-looking sort, but he had conviction in his eyes. He looked healthier than the others that Weisman had run down, but in cold space, the odd ones came in all varieties. He sat at the single table with a mug of coffee before him. Doberson looked sternly at the investigator and growled. “I am not a criminal.” The words hung in the air for several seconds before he continued with a sigh. “I’m just trying to protect my family.”
“That’s a cute tale, Doberson. Is that the one you’re going with this time? Let me spell it out for you.” Weisman stood and inched closer to the man, moving beyond the range of the interrogation microphone. “Seven counts of theft from Cruise ship vessels. Two of them royalty! Five counts of Aggravated Assault against guardsmen, some of which involved deadly weapons. And I’m not even getting into the charges of resisting arrest.” As Weisman glared into the face of his enemy, he was sickened by the debauchery of the fiend.
“Those people don’t need all that food!” Doberson protested. “My family and I travel on a Class B skimmer. Do you honestly think we hold enough food to survive out here alone? I’m not a criminal, I’m a good husband and father.” Doberson was pleading with his eyes and Weisman hit him across the jaw hard. Shaking off the sting on his fist as the man recoiled and lowered his head.
“You make me sick! Your lies won’t work this time Doberson. We’ve got you nailed for all these counts, and you’ll be lucky if I don’t stack up those assaults to attempted murder. Now tell me where your ship is! We know you have stolen goods aboard. Pirating is…”
“I am not a space pirate! Why do you people insist on using that term! Have you seen space pirates? Have you? They are vile, they smell and they don’t even speak whole sentences!”
The officer raised his hand to strike the criminal again, but Doberson recoiled in time to ward off the attack. Marshall wasn’t willing to push his luck even though he’d already disconnected the audio and video surveillance devices in the room. He turned around to pace off his anger and hooked his thumbs in his pockets, “Doberson, you’re a real piece of work. You must be the most pathetic space pirate I have ever seen. Most pirates are proud of—gurh!”
The officer hit the floor. Behind him, Doberson held the mug, now shattered, in his cuffed hands. He went fishing for the keys from the Marshall’s pocket as he muttered to only himself now, “I said… I’m not a fucking space pirate.”
by Kathy Kachelries | Mar 31, 2006 | Story
No one knew how long Catherine Malone had been missing. Her absence was reported to the police after three weeks of unpaid rent, but neighbors admitted they hadn’t known that the apartment was occupied. “She kept to herself,” said the landlord.
The universe does not think in hours, days. There is no measure of universal time. Humans count one moment after the other. Consecutive time. But a vibrating cesium atom doesn’t know how many times it’s shuddered. A sun doesn’t know how long its burned. Time is dependent on the consciousness of the observer, and without someone to draw demarcations between the seconds, time becomes an unlabeled, unmeasured stream.
So what clock must a time machine be set by?
The landlord unlocked the apartment himself, but found no sign of his tenant. Half-read books and half-filled notebooks rested open upon every table, and a mostly-empty pizza box had attracted a halo of flies. The bed was unmade, and the dishes were filthy. The wooden floor was littered with crumpled clothing.
Does time attach itself to an object and move with that object? Specifically, would a time machine set for three days prior return the traveler to the room she departed from, or to the naked void of space left in the wake of the moving Earth? Can there be universal latitude and longitude in an expanding universe, or is that another human construction? In the latter scenario, how could a machine be set to return a traveler to the Earth?
The police could find no next of kin, and although a brief investigation suggested abduction, that theory was ultimately disregarded. “She probably just picked up and left,” said an officer in an off-the-record conversation. “People do that sometimes. Move to a different state to start over.”
Assuming that the problems of the initial leap could be easily solved, the biggest problem becomes the return journey. A person’s presence out of their own time would certainly change their future, so how could they return to the world they’d left? If an oddity like time travel were to spark the creation of an alternate timeline, how could the machine be set to return to the timeline of origin? Could a chronological beacon be constructed, like a lighthouse through time?
The case remained open, long after the apartment had been cleared and rented to another tenant. No next of kin appeared, and the woman’s belongings were donated to a nearby shelter. After a decade, the files on open but unsolved cases were moved to the basement of the precinct, where they rested for almost half a century before a flood turned the papers soggy and rusted the ancient hard drives. “We’re working to restore the old documents,” a representative said during a press conference, shortly before ordering the boxes to be returned to the basement. “These things are sixty years old,” he said to a coworker. “No one remembers them anyways.”
by Jared Axelrod | Mar 28, 2006 | Story
The robot was no bigger than a diner roll, and had a tendency to shift on of its many stiff legs when it was processing. It was on the kitchen table now, and Megan lowered herself so that she was eye-level with it. It’s forward-motion sensor quivered when her face came close. One antenna moved to touch Megan’s curly red hair, but she swatted it aside.
“I could take your battery right out, you know,” she said. “Where would you be then?” Megan let the robot process that before continuing. She glanced at the clock–no time left. “And even if I don’t, I am not getting you that upgrade, not after this, so you might as well forget it. Just show me where you’ve hidden my keys so I can get to work!”
The robot did nothing. Megan stared daggers at its sensory antennae, but it only seemed to react to tick of the clock, and rhythm of her hurried breath.
