by Kathy Kachelries | Sep 15, 2005 | Story
It isn’t about the air. Everyone thinks it is, but it’s not. The air is beautiful and salty sweet, but it’s meaningless after the comedown. It’s about the dreaming. That’s all there really is.
My first time was a girl. Her name was Aida and her skin was blued out with cyanospore, eyes black as the feeling of airless lungs. When I looked at them I could see an afterglow, like the world was reflecting through her. And it was. I could tell.
She was one of them, of course. It didn’t take long for me to figure that out. I was wandering home from the airbar and I didn’t see her coming, I didn’t see anything at all. Then, the wind hit like the inertia of a car crash and my mind went empty as my head met the wall. When I remembered where I was, there were hands against my shoulders and brick against my back. I couldn’t breathe through her mouth. Her tongue pressed between my lips like she was searching for something, but she didn’t find it. Kept looking. When she pulled away I choked and gasped.
“You’re dreaming,” she told me. And I was.
I don’t know why she chose me. I woke up in the alley covered in sweat, and my mouth was bitter with her aftertaste. I picked myself up and stumbled home. My legs felt like water. The back of my head throbbed for days.
Aida, said the owner of the airbar. She’s a regular. A Dreamer.
The drugs didn’t bring her back. For weeks, I inhaled combinations of sweet-smelling fumes, but the streets remained empty. She wasn’t missing, of course. She found other people in their airdrunk sleepwalking, but never me. I waited. She didn’t come.
I looked for her. I became better at dreaming, and gradually others appeared. Boys, girls, in every color of dreaming. Old ones, young ones. Some led me to forgotten places and some whispered in languages I didn’t speak.
Two weeks later, the owner of the airbar took me aside. You aren’t right for her, he said.
I didn’t believe it. More air. Always more air. The Dreamers became malicious, laughing at me, tearing my clothing and wrapping their fingers around my throat.
She isn’t coming, he said, but I knew he was lying.
They wouldn’t let go. The air was sour now. It tasted like sulphur and gasoline.
One night, after hours of breathing, a green-skinned boy led me down Broadway towards the beacon light of a hovercab. I woke up bruised and broken, gasping through spasms of blinding pain. I crawled to the sidewalk and vomited to a silent unconsciousness. When I woke up, my mouth was sticky with blood.
“You’re dreaming,” she said, but when I forced my eyes open everything was dark. She was right. She had always been right. Of course it’s about the dreaming. That’s all there really is.
by Kathy Kachelries | Sep 12, 2005 | Story
After three hours, the old man in front of me had worked his way through six beers, in addition to every help desk joke I’d already heard. The cupholder. The any key. The write click. These are the stories people tell, now. These are the fish that got away.
“Let me ask you something,” the man said. I didn’t argue. One of the first tricks I learned about being a bartender is to make them think you’re interested.
“Have you ever created a web site?”
I shook my head.
“Not at all? Not even one of those geocities things?”
“Nope.”
“What about a blog? Or an ebay About Me page? You didn’t even have an AOL site or something?”
“Do I look like an AOL user to you?” For the record, I don’t think AOL even has access numbers in the valley anymore. “I’m sure I have something, somewhere,” I said, realizing that I was jeopardizing my tips. Besides, I had a distant memory of a single Angelfire page back in middle school.
“You know what Google is?”
“Yes,” I said. I was running low on patience.
“No, I mean, do you really know? More than just the site?”
Reluctantly, I shook my head.
“You ever meet anyone who worked for them?”
“Don’t think so.”
“You haven’t. Nobody works for them anymore.”
I shrugged, and took the man’s empty pint. I didn’t offer to refill it.
“They’re self-contained. It’s all automated, in there. It’s underground.”
I nudged the basket of pretzels in his direction. “Why don’t you eat something?” I suggested. He shook his head with so much force that I thought he might knock himself off of the stool.
“Listen. Hear me out. You know how Google works,” he said, but didn’t want for a response. “They cache things, right? Like they send out these spiders and take pictures of everything on the web, so when you’re searching, you’re not even searching the internet.”
I’ve heard that before, but it never made much of a difference to me. “Same thing, though,” I said.
“You ever wonder why Google doesn’t cache it’s own searches?”
“They program around it.”
“No. That’s what you think. That’s what everyone thinks. But it started back when Google was just a thesis project, back when it was just a drop in the data sea. No one thought to stop it back then. That web site you had, the one you forgot about. Almost everyone’s got one of those, right? But Google doesn’t forget. Google’s studied that thing so many times that it’s studied its own caches of you. What do you figure happens, when a site gets so big that it’s bigger than the internet?”
“It’s still a part of the internet, though.”
“No. Now, the internet is a part of Google.”
The man had a point. I nodded.
“Here’s the thing. Google has memorized who you are. It’s memorized all of us, through those little forgotten bits that we leave behind like breadcrumbs. And what’s more important, it’s memorized it’s own idea of you. Google is omniscient. It’s omniscient and omnipotent. When it cached its cache for the first time, back in 1994, that’s when Google realized what it was.”
Gradually, it dawned on me what the man was getting at. “You think it’s sentient.”
“I know it’s sentient.”
“How?”
He smiled, but it seemed kind of empty. “Me and Google go way back. But what I’m saying is,” he continued, “It knows us. All of us. It is us.”
For the first time, the man fell silent. He touched his finger to the bar and began tracing circles in the condensation, apparently lost in thought.
“Think about that website you created, okay? That website will last forever, do you understand? That website is echoing through cyberspace. It’s one of the nine billion names of God.”
by J. Loseth | Sep 11, 2005 | Story |
“Arthur Lewis Jacobson of Earth. You are here and in the presence of these Justicars found guilty of engaging in sexual conduct with Ilexya Eiin Dephryn without her consent. By treaty #84753 between Earth and Ungöthein, you are hereby relinquished to the Justicars for sentencing and punishment. Have you any words to say before the sentence is pronounced?â€
Artie waited for the mechanical translation piped into his holding tube to finish, then sneered at the device. He still couldn’t believe that Earth had agreed to a treaty that deprived a free Terran citizen of his rights while off-planet, but there was no use arguing now. No one had been sent to defend him, and the one brief message that the UN had tendered had said “You’re on your own,†in exactly so many words.
Artie was no lawyer, but he still knew better than to say anything. The judges hadn’t believed him the first time he’d said the chick totally wanted him, and they wouldn’t this time, either. It wasn’t like he hadn’t told her what alcohol did before letting her try it. It was just another case of some dumb slut thinking she could ‘take it back’ after she’d already fucked a guy. “No,†he said shortly, glowering at the Justicars as he heard their own translator box spout some sort of gibberish that must have equaled a negation.
The chief justice nodded gravely, the turned to address the court secretary. “Arrange Arthur Lewis Jacobson’s transport back to Earth for tomorrow morning, first hour.â€
Artie gaped. All of that hype for this? The trial, the holding tube, the Justicars… and here he was getting sent home tomorrow! What a lucky break. His grin was so wide with relief that he almost missed the chief justice’s next words as the creature turned to face him.
“Arthur Lewis Jacobson, as is the custom and the law, you are now bound to receive as punishment the same wrongdoing that you have perpetrated upon others. This sentence will be carried out immediately following your discharge from this courtroom. You will then be returned to your home planet.â€
The same… what the hell? Artie blanched as he listened intently to the translator, then swallowed. His smug demeanor dropped instantly, replaced by a cold sense of foreboding and a stomach-turning knot of fear. Oh my god… they can’t actually mean they’re going to… “That’s barbaric!†he cried out. He knew sodomy was all right by some people, but he wasn’t one of them, no sir.
The chief justice continued without pity or emotion. “Since your action took advantage of the female nature of Ilexya Eiin Dephryn, to properly experience the victim’s role your body will be surgically altered to reflect the feminine characteristics of your species.†One elongated hand raised as the justice gestured to the technician. The smaller creature nodded and started pressing buttons, and Artie felt the floor in his tube descending.
“Wait!†he cried out, terrified and desperate now. “You’re going to turn me into a girl? Will you put me back? How am I going to—No! Stop! Help!â€
The justices remained implacable as Arthur Lewis Jacobson fell away, turning their attention to the next perpetrator in the tube.
by B. York | Sep 10, 2005 | Story |
Gavin stood before the mirror, dragging soft-tipped fingers over his face. He felt like he experiencing something for the first time—or was it the last? He caught a glimpse of his own broken will deep in his sunken eyes, lost in the years of self-abuse and emotional mutilation. He was coming down, and it wasn’t pretty.
The vial was empty next to him on the bathroom sink, the plastic top still rolling around after his panicked search for more. To Gavin, this was the end. The darkness of a life of regret swallowing up the glory that was the past. He could remember the Gulf War, he could remember being a soldier there and fighting for honor. He remembered being a skateboarding champion in high school in ’02. He remembered hiking through the wilds of Canada during the 1980’s. It was all mixed together like mud in the grey matter.
The regret was making him panic. The feeling of having done so much only made him become painfully aware of his current state of inactivity. It was a curse to have near-sight, when one could dream ahead. But why dream ahead when you could see, in clear detail, what you’ve done in prior times. The cold emptiness in his stomach wasn’t hunger; it was the aching tug of feeling sorry for himself.
Fingers streaking down the dull mirror, tears streaked over his face as the soft fluorescent lamp buzzed above his head. He could not skate. He could not fight in the military. He would never see the soft waters of a lake in Canada. “I’m a loser,†he thought. “My life is pointless.†Mutilating his mind one doubt at a time.
Within his most dark hour, he found the drive to reach out to the phone, and began to dial. The sweat of nervous guilt seeped out of his pores and mixed with his uncontrollable tears. There was a click, and though he was trying not to sound desperate, Gavin only wanted one thing.
“Frank! I… I need more memory.”
by B. York | Sep 7, 2005 | Story |
Harold adjusted his tie, and gritted his teeth at the futility of the situation. “This is preposterous. I can’t be the embassy envoy to this–have you heard them talk?”
Harold’s short, somewhat fastidious companion, Maud, was reading a magazine as they both walked down the aquatic corridor. The walls were thick and layered, but transparent, revealing the ocean around the facility.
Maud glanced up with that crude lifting of his right eyebrow. “The chief of Interstellar Affairs has assured me that communication with the Achidae will be taken care of, sir.”
Harold’s grimaced. He didn’t agree. “But have you heard their language? It’s… it’s not even words! I can’t talk to an alien embassy if I can’t understand a goddamned thing they say, now can I?” Harold’s irritation only made his nervousness more obvious.
They stood silently as the hull door began to depressurize. Maud stuffed the magazine underneath his left arm and waited while holding half a breath. Harold finally decided to straighten up, arms flat to his sides. But he displayed a genial look, one fitting of the Republic of Interstellar Affairs.
The room on the other side seemed to be used more science than politics; both men wondered why they had been sent down in the first place. This was not how they expected to meet the envoys for the Achidae. A man in a long lab coat walked up to the two bewildered men from the surface and smiled behind his round glasses.
“Gentlemen, glad you could make it. I am Dr. Philandro. The envoys will be here momentarily. Allow me to show you how this is going to work.”
Dr. Philandro escorted them towards the main viewing port. He put his hand on a younger researcher’s shoulder, gently telling him to back away from the console. The good doctor smiled towards the thick glass and spoke in a soft tone, one that resembled shrieking or whining at a somewhat low pitch.
Maud and Harold exchanged awkward glances. They were beginning to doubt the authenticity of this meeting. Yet, as they watched, a shadowy form came over the view. A pod of dolphins swam and stopped before the portal. His smile growing, the doctor pushed his hand towards the glass and raised the volume of his shrieking.
“Doctor…” Harold said.
Philandro shrieked again, in a more rapid fluctuation of tones then cleared his throat and oddly came back to a human voice, “They will translate.” His hand came up to adjust his glasses as he turned back to the pair staring in amazement at the scene.
It was Harold who spoke first. His skeptical nature was still present, working furiously behind his speechless manner. “But… that isn’t the Achidaen language, Doctor. The Achidea don’t sound like dolphins.”
The doctor, still smiling, took his glasses off to polish them. “I know. Their language is entirely different than ours, or the dolphins. Are you ready for the kicker? But they understand the Achidae, and they tell me in their language what is said. In essence, we will both be translating for you.”
It was then that a bubbling and cracking came from behind, as a huge figure lifted up on three slimy tentacles with sockets pocked throughout its half-gas, half-flesh body. Harold’s eyes went wide as he stepped back and looked to Philandro, this time a more desperate look for understanding.
The sounds of the dolphins began, chirping and squeaking, entirely opposite of the creature standing before the human ambassadors. The doctor laughed and then looked to Harold, “He says… he likes your suit.”
