by submission | Jun 13, 2015 | Story |
Author : Ian Hill
As if caught in a sudden zeal, Adrian spun the locking mechanism and pushed the iron door open against the howling wind. Torrents of needling water cut in at steep angles, slicing to the bone with unchecked frigidity. The light inside the cabin’s entry room immediately shut off—a technological remnant from a darker, war-torn time when enemy hunters prowled the waters, eyes open for any sign of light from a victim. Adrian stood in the darkness, embracing the harsh nature as it pummeled him with salt, froth, and tiny chunks of withered sea creatures.
Slowly, Adrian stepped out onto the deck, pushing the heavy door shut behind him with the aid of the all-too-accommodating wind. It was like it wanted him to stay outside, to witness the unholy gale, the surging ice vapors, and the glacial maelstrom. When lightning struck, Adrian saw mountains standing at the horizon, looming. He saw oddly uniform ramparts of stone, clawing towers, and bulbous palaces. Darkness fell again and when lightning next struck he saw that the apparitions were merely clouds, immense and stretching from the ocean to the firmament’s apex.
Adrian shook his head and blocked the stinging rain from his eyes with an upraised hand. Carefully, he moved to the guard rail and followed its length to his normal station. He assumed Barlow must have been in this general vicinity when his mind fell ill. Adrian mechanically clung to the iron railing, leaning over the edge and gazing out at the swirling sea. It was a confusing sight, the endlessly extending planes of conflicting darkness. For a moment he wondered why he had left the safety of the vessel’s interior. It seemed out of character.
Another bolt of vivid electricity cut across the sky, burning the air around it and cleaving a path of purity through the toxic clouds. Adrian took this brief moment of clarity to imprint the image that Barlow had seen into his own mind. The deep violet waters spread from peripheral to peripheral, unbroken and perfect. The stabbing light caught all facets of the choppiness, giving new meaning to each wave and dune. Blue illumination also splashed across the monstrous clouds, changing a flat picture to a multi-tiered fortress of puffy ridges and mushroom-like bulbs. Descending blades of rain shrunk under the lightning’s glare as Adrian stared out from the dwarfed ship.
However, not all was normal in the single frame of vision that nature granted the shivering professor. At the furthest edge of sight protected by fog, haze, and the growing thickness of rain coverage stood a pillar, pristine and perfect. It was an out of place figment of the manmade world, an impossibly immense column with a semi-reflective ivory surface. It hung resolutely at the horizon line, stretching from the water upwards until the canopy of spreading clouds obscured it.
Adrian flinched as the bolt’s radioactive heat faded. His hands opened and he fell backwards, collapsing onto the slippery deck, the anomalous pillar hanging in his mind’s eye like some sort of demonic specter devoid of any clear meaning. The innate terror management found in everyone’s subconscious acted quickly to disregard the column as another mirage. Adrian lay silently as rain thudded down upon him and the wind brushed against his cheek almost comfortingly. Somewhere up there his writhing cloud tormentor waited, watching. Adrian Galbraith began to question his own sanity.
by submission | Jun 11, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“A vacuum?” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs inquired. “Unless there’s some geologic process I’m unfamiliar with that causes large pockets of vacuum to form inside solid rock, I don’t see how you would come across such a thing when excavating for a new subway. I also don’t see what any of this has to do with most of the people gathered here.” The general looked about the room at the faces of the heads of various government agencies, several of whom nodded their agreement.
“The point, general,” responded the head of the National Science Ministry, “is that we have encountered a phenomenon never before seen.” The man resettled his glasses on his nose and continued, addressing the entire group. “As you’re probably aware, several workers employed by the excavation company working on the subway in question became ill and were diagnosed with radiation poisoning. An NSM team was assigned to investigate and found no naturally-occurring radioactive metals at the excavation site. But detectors did confirm the presence of radiation in the pit. That’s when we started literally and figuratively digging a little deeper.”
“Doctor, this is all very interesting,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs. “But you have assembled here representatives of most of the nation’s ministries. A scientific curiosity does not warrant taking of the time of this country’s government unless there’s some very profound point you intend to make.”
This time the group’s assent was more vocal.
“Very well,” said the science minister. “The point is this.” The doctor tapped a button on his computer and a picture of an expanse of space dotted with thousands of stars appeared on the screen that dominated one wall of the room. “As we drilled deeper into the excavation site, the radiation level went up. Shortly after that we hit the vacuum the general mentioned. We threaded a fiber optic cable through the small hole we drilled to get some pictures.
“What is that?” asked the general. “Did you drill into some subterranean chamber? Are those specks of light radioactive material?”
The scientist took in a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. “Ladies and gentlemen, we believe what you’re looking at is empty space.”
The minister was met with blank stares.
“The specks of light were noted to be moving slowly, all in the same direction. After we took some measurements and did some calculations, we determined it is, in fact, we who are moving. It has been theorized that the world is rotating and thereby creating centrifugal force and that that’s why objects fall to the ground. Our observations are consistent with this theory.”
“But what IS that?” asked the general again, pointing at the screen. Are you suggesting the world is surrounded by some dark, speckled material that acts like a vacuum?”
“I’m suggesting, general, that our world is a hollow, spinning rock in the middle of an unimaginably large vacuum. Our researches suggest those specks are massive spheres of nuclear fusion held together by their sheer mass. And almost all of them are several trillion miles away or more.
The group exploded in a cacophony of voices. “Ridiculous!” said one. “Blasphemous!” said another.
“I said ‘almost all’ of those fusion-spheres are unfathomably far away!” yelled the science minister. The group fell silent. “One is much closer.”
He hit a button and a reddish fireball filled the screen.
“This one is close,” he repeated. “And it’s getting closer. It would appear we’ve been on a journey. How it started and why has been lost to recorded history. But we’re about to arrive at our destination.”
by submission | Jun 9, 2015 | Story |
Author : Jason Spicer
“Can you perceive it now?” Mrllg moved the viewing orb over to Grlg’fst for viewing. “There, in the third quadrant, slightly below the ecliptic.”
“Yes, I perceive. Interesting.” His chords trailed, dissonant and primal, as if facing a challenger in the Great Hall. “We must reach out to it. Whatever it is creating that hole in Nonspace must be perceived before the Council rests.” Grlg’fst clicked a nervous bone on the glistening floor as he continued to emanate a guttural rumbling. He was clearly disturbed.
Mrllg was impatient. He had been viewing the orbs for many cycles, always just noticing the perturbations in Nonspace, but not able to catch them long enough to reach out to them. Finally, he had found a large enough disturbance that Grlg’fst had perceived it, and Grlg’fst was moving too slow. Did he not see this was the Deep Memories returning? Mrllg paced, clicking bones and wringing paw-claws, “Well, can we reach out now? No sense waiting. Particularly if my sensories are accurate.”
“I already have. I need both of your brains to resonate with me.” Grlg’fst closed both lids over his socket and focused. Mrllg joined his brains to him and together, they reached out over the vast distance of inky night to the object that tore such a large hole in Nonspace.
The hole in Nonspace was not standard Morlarian protocol, nor was it something any species in the Great Domain would have used. Nonspace travel was banned several millennia ago for being inherently too expensive and a drain on the resources of the mineral planets. Together, the young Morlarian Viewers bent their four brains toward the tear. Something was not right. A large object breached the tear and began materializing in the shimmer between Nonspace and reality.
Grlg’fst broke the connection and shivered. “I need the cubes of Deep Memories.” He leapt to the other side of the room. “This cannot be correct.”
“So you felt it as well? I told you I did not perceive incorrectly. I am not that young.” Mrllg was somewhat arrogant about it, even though he knew that if he were correct, it would not matter in a few days anymore. Not much would.
Grlg’fst was scanning the Deep Memories. Entranced, he raced through the history of the Comings, when the Morlarian Prophets gave permission for their ancestors to set afire every planet that resisted their ways, their Great Redemption that had brought peace to the Galaxy at long last. It had been millennia since those days. Could the final Prophecies really be true?
A warning pulse ebbed near the viewing orbs of distance. Mrllg checked quickly, and his heart began to palpitate, saliva dripping incessantly from his mandibles. “Grlg’fst… look”
On the viewing screens, the orbs began projecting the scenes. In nearly every corner of the stellar system, holes in Nonspace were appearing, and the objects began to materialize. Vessels as large as small moons streamed into the space where the holes were. Swarms of smaller ships, too numerous to count followed close behind the behemoths.
“Get the Council on channel. It is time.” But there was no time for them. Their research and patrol station winked out of reality as a TimeSpace warhead detonated on their perimeter.
Man had returned to the Galaxy,
by submission | Jun 6, 2015 | Story |
Author : Elijah Goering
It began with the invention of the tool. Perhaps that was our big mistake. We built a civilization. We survived the discovery of the power of the atom, and lived to develop a faster than light drive. Immediately, we raced to colonize dozens of systems, and began terraforming at least one planet in each system. Then we faltered, stopped expanding just long enough to populate our colonies. And then we created the weapon.
I will not describe the weapon in detail and help whomever might find this to destroy themselves. I will simply say that it had the power to scourge a planet of all life. The inventors meant to use it only once, and achieve a final victory over their enemies. The demonstration was effective, and soon the technology was bought, stolen, or copied by every planet, except those whose enemies got it first. But if we’re anything we’re vengeful. Homeless fleets of warships got their revenge.
No planets survived, but life continued among the asteroids. So did the war. Two of the most powerful nations banded together and destroyed the homes of every other fleet. I escaped before my home was destroyed, but I have not since seen any sign of my people. I roamed far from home through unexplored star systems and waited until I thought it was safe to return. I was right. The war was over. Nowhere that I searched was there any sign of life, only ruins of a lost civilization. Until I got to the home system.
Males were too rare in our society to risk in war, all were left safely at home, until our homes were destroyed. In orbit of a gas giant in our home system was a monument which said “Here was the final battle of the Oikosians. Whether by accident or design, this small moon was destroyed in the fury to combat, with the last of our males. Now our species goes to extinction”.
Perhaps some males survived, and a colony was formed in secret, far from the war. But if so, I have since roamed through hundreds, perhaps thousands of systems and have seen no sign of it. Some systems had life, but nowhere was there intelligence. I found only one planet truly bustling with life, orbiting a yellow star halfway through its life. I have placed my ship in the Oort cloud orbiting its sun. It is my hope that intelligence will evolve on the planet nearby, and develop a technological civilization. Before my escape I collected as much information as I could, and on board I have a library containing works of science, mathematics, and the history of the Oikosians up to the final war.. Perhaps they will find me, and with my working FTL drive I will be the key to the stars for some future civilization. To that end I will now disable life support to save energy so that my ship can send a message when another ship comes near. By the time the aliens get here they should be ready for the FTL drive. So ends the dominion of life from the planet Oikos, and so (I hope) begins a new era of life in the galaxy.
-The Last Historian
by submission | Jun 4, 2015 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
Dear Mr. Hawking,
I regret to inform you that I will not be attending your reception, scheduled for 12:00 UT, 28 June 2009.
Or perhaps I should say that I apologize for not having attended your reception, given that this letter will not be delivered until after the event has concluded. You of all people must understand the complexities of communicating in a manner such as this, but alas, we are limited by the temporality of our existences.
It would, perhaps, be prudent to inform you that a number of my colleagues discouraged me from sending this letter. In fact, they expressly forbade me from attempting any communication with you at all.
Their prejudice is not, as you might imagine, any concern over temporal paradoxes or alternate timelines or any such nonsense. Nor have they discouraged me from contacting you based on the concrete evidence that no one did, in fact, attend your reception. No, such historical truths can often be misrepresented, and I certainly trust that, if asked, you could have taken such a secret to your grave. A man of your intelligence could at least be trusted for that small a task.
No, the true reason my colleagues have urged not to contact you is simple: They do not like you.
And I’m afraid to say, Mr. Hawking, that I cannot much blame them.
Why, the very nature of your invitation is reason enough to scorn you. You may suppose that young and upstart time travelers may have a keen interest in making your acquaintance, regardless of the consequences. But you would be incorrect. Most young men in our business find your invitation so insulting, not only to our profession, but to the march of scientific advancement itself, that they would rather you die in ignorance than know the truth. What kind of arrogant man, they say, would claim to know more than men a thousand years more advanced than he?
But alas, Mr. Hawking, despite my hearty agreement with my colleagues on the latter point, I simply could not let the former pass. A man of your intelligence does deserve to know the truth before he dies, and thus I have crafted this letter to be delivered on your deathbed, mere seconds before you eyes close for the last time. Yes, you are going to die, and if my timing is correct (as it often must be) this will be the last thing you read.
And so I say again, Mr. Hawking, I am very sorry to have missed your party. Perhaps in the next life (if there is such a thing) you will look upon the natural world with a bit more humility.
Sincerely,
A Concerned Time Traveler
