by submission | Apr 23, 2015 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
They gathered, all of those interested in watching, at a position twice the distance Pluto was from the sun. Onboard the maiden ship, Corosin, Trya watched intently.
“It’ll happen soon,” Gavin said. He smiled, revealing a perfect row of teeth. Long ago, when Sol was still a yellow sun, humanity had eradicated tooth decay, cancer, and all other diseases.
“Do you think it will hurt?” asked Trya. Her blue eyes glistened in the artificial light.
“Hurt?”
“When Sol explodes?” she said. “How do you know it doesn’t feel pain?”
“Not at all.” He paused and thought on it a moment. “We’ve known Sol was going nova for thousands of years,” he said. “That’s why we moved out to the stars. Mankind will survive.”
“But what happens when all the suns in the universe go out?” asked Trya.
Gavin grinned. “Relax. That won’t happen for millions of years. We’re working on machines that can cross into other dimensions. By the time all the stars in the universe fade to black, we’ll simply jump into another dimension.”
“But what happens when all the stars in all the dimensions die out?” she asked.
Gavin nodded. “That’s a good question. By that time, we’ll have figured out a way of building our own stars.” He pointed toward Sol. “Imagine having a star just like Sol to replace Sol when it’s gone.”
“When Sol goes nova, it’ll be the end of the beginning of mankind,” Trya said. “Don’t you feel any remorse of it?”
Gavin shook his head. “Not really.” Then, his expression softened and he took her hand. “It’s Sol,” he said. “The birth star of mankind. It’ll go nova, explode, contract back down into a white dwarf, then transform again in maybe a million years into something else. It’s the nature of a star. Sol served its purpose.”
He turned to her. “Now, we have to honor Sol’s sacrifice.”
“By watching it go nova?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
They sat there for a long time, staring out the viewport of the ship. With the passing of each second, Sol was visibly shrinking. It was something Gavin had seen a dozen times before, but there was something that touched him emotionally about Sol’s impending transformation. He had lied to Trya about not feeling remorse for Sol. He did feel a pang in his heart for the star that had birthed mankind so terribly long ago.
The ship’s computer alerted them that Sol would go nova within minutes.
Gavin held her tighter.
“I don’t want Sol to go nova,” Trya said. “Why can’t things be like they were when we lived on Earth?”
“Mankind wasn’t supposed to stay tied to one world,” Gavin told her. “We were supposed to go out into space and explore. We did.”
“But we left Sol behind,” she said.
“Sol will always be a part of us,” he said. “And we’ll always be a part of Sol.”
The security claxon went off, but Gavin flicked a switch and shut it off.
Through the viewport, they saw the light go out of Sol. Darkness filled the cabin of the ship.
Then, a massive explosion filled the view port with light. The computer automatically adjusted the screen so as not to hurt their eyes, and Gavin and Trya watched as the newborn supernova Sol was born.
“I will miss you, Sol,” Trya said.
“We all will,” Gavin replied. “But it’s time to go home. I’ll leave a probe here to monitor Sol.”
Trya nodded.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
He dropped the probe, then turned their ship toward the stars and left Sol behind.
by Julian Miles | Apr 20, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The Gynler are a race that specialises in winning wars by slow, psychological means. They pride themselves on not having had to use a weapon of war in over a century. When it came to conquering Earth, they spent a long time in planning their opening move.
“It must be devastating to their collective psyche.”
“It must demonstrate our technological dominance.”
“It must be visible to all regardless of censorship.”
So they dusted off a strategy used three centuries before against a humanoid race called the Nondori: they attacked the Moon.
More correctly, they vandalised the Moon. Everyone knew about the Man, or Woman, in or on the Moon. Come joy or mishap, we smiled when we looked up on a clear night and saw the silver companion to our lives.
The Gynler struck the Moon with malicious precision. When we looked up the following night, a leering face peered down. Faintly comedic, fanged and horned, it was a perfect evolution of the infamous ‘Kilroy’ style of graffiti.
“We will leave them for a year. Let them quiver under the reminder of our power.”
Quiver we did – with rage.
That single act managed to achieve what centuries of diplomacy had failed to do: unite the nations of Earth. We plotted and schemed and frothed and spouted rhetoric and fortified all the while.
Kit Newman went to his boss with an idea he’d had at a barbeque outside the car repair shop they worked in. His boss laughed. Then stopped laughing and called his brother. Who called his boss: General Albert Simms. Again, the laughter turned to a thoughtful silence. Kit Newman got flown to London. Then to America. Then to Russia and on to China.
Four months and six days later, Kit Newman pressed the button at Canaveral that launched an old Ares V – carrying maximum payload – toward the Moon.
Three days later, Earth waited. Most watching screens, the rest standing in open spaces across the night side of the world.
Something grey-white blossomed dead-centre on that leering face high above. Within a few moments, the face was largely obscured by a pale blob. Around the world, humanity went noisily crazy and screamed defiance to the skies as they raised their glasses.
Sixty-five thousand litres of a blend that was mainly white exterior emulsion and anti-freeze makes a big mess. A glaringly obvious big mess when it’s slapped onto a vast, black scorched surface made by aliens who completely failed to understand human psychology.
Everyone agrees that the Moon’s surface will have to be cleaned up eventually. But before that, we’re going to wipe the Gynler off the face of known space.
by submission | Apr 18, 2015 | Story |
Author : George R. Shirer
“Do you ever feel guilty?” Red asked.
“About what?” asked Blue.
“About lying to the humans.”
“No,” said Blue. “Why would I feel guilty? They’re happy. They get to live full lives.”
“But they don’t know the truth,” said Red. “They don’t know that they’re just disembodied consciousness, enjoying a virtual reality that will never end.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” chided Blue. “Besides, they’re the ones who chose this. Remember? When we told them that their star was going to explode, it was the humans who asked for our help.”
“I know,” said Red. “But it doesn’t feel like we’re helping them any more.”
“You think too much,” said Blue. “You always have.”
“And these humans did not make the choice,” pointed out Red. “It was their ancestors. How long ago? A thousand cycles?”
“Who can keep track?” said Blue.
“I think we should contact some of them,” said Red. “I think we should discuss the possibility of reincarnation with them. We could reconstitute bodies for some of them and. . . .”
“Do you have any idea how long and tedious that would be?” complained Blue. “Why can’t you just enjoy things the way that they are? Why do you always have to be such a misery?”
“Excuse me for having a sense of empathy. Reincarnation. What do you think?”
“I think no,” said Blue.
“I think yes,” said Red.
Blue glared at him. “Deadlock.”
“Not if we ask Green,” said Red. “That’s why we’re a triumvirate. Remember? Majority rules.”
“Fine,” growled Blue. “Let’s ask Green.”
It took them a while to find him because Green liked his privacy. When they did find him, Green was sitting beneath a thought-tree, singing a song about love on dusty Altair. He stopped when Red and Blue appeared.
“Hello, Green,” said Red.
Green sighed. “Hello, Red. Blue. What brings the two of you here?”
Blue crossed her arms and nodded at Red. “Ask him.”
“I think we should reincarnate some of the humans.”
“I think it’s a waste of time,” said Blue. “They’re happy as they are. Why spoil that?”
“So you’re deadlocked and you’ve come to me to cast the deciding vote?” asked Green.
“Yes,” said Red. “What do you think, Green? Should we reincarnate the humans?”
* * * * *
The simulation dissolved into pixilated noise.
The teacher tapped her control pad and clicked her claws for attention. The students swivelled their eye-stalks toward her, respectfully.
“We all know what happened next,” said the teacher. “Green chose not to answer, leading Red to act on his own. This was in direct contravention of thousands of years of Triune custom and law.”
The teacher extended her eye-stalks, peering at the young crustaceans before her.
“And we all know what happened next. Don’t we?”
There were murmurs of assent.
“Red reincarnated several hundred humans and helped them establish a colony near the Cirdetaclan Nebula. There, they spawned and spawned and spawned again, becoming one of the most pestiferous nuisance-species in known space until they were wiped out by the Galactic Council.”
The teacher retracted her eye-stalks and shifted her stance. “And what lesson, class, can we learn from these incidents?”
There was no response. The teacher felt a familiar wave of frustration sweep over her, common to educators everywhere, regardless of species or social development.
“The lesson is simple, class: never trust an AI.”
by submission | Apr 17, 2015 | Story |
Author : Joey To
Tris slowly opened his eyes. He let his head remain on the cold workbench for a second before sitting up and rolling his stiff shoulders. Wincing as he rubbed his neck, he squinted at the window: snowflakes fell and white glare flooded the room.
The control-cube laid in front of him, still connected to the diagnostic panel via leads. The monitor displayed multiple graphs and lines of code. But Tris eyed the blinking words in red: AI Protocol #776 Failed.
He sighed and shook his head.
“That is the second night in a row, Tristan.”
He turned to see Jamie at the door, her perfectly neat and straight long brown hair gleamed hard in the natural light. He smiled weakly and shrugged.
Jamie smiled back. “This is bad for you, your neck in particular.”
“I know,” Tris mumbled. “But I need to—”
He stopped himself when Jamie glanced at the dented photo frame in the corner. “Would you like breakfast?”
“Maybe when I get back from the shop.”
•
Barry frowned as he disconnected the cords to the control-cube. “Nothing’s wrong. Maybe it’s your coding?”
Tris stared blankly at the thing as the shop owner sighed and eyed the snow building up at the window sills. “I could swap it for another anyway.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” said Tris, picking up the cube. “It probably is just my program.”
As Tris headed for the door, Barry called out. “You’re my best customer and maybe it isn’t my place to say this but it’s time to forget it. Work on something else.”
Tris nodded, strode out the door and trudged toward his car.
•
Back at his workbench, Tris scoffed down the scrambled eggs.
“Is that my spare control-cube?” asked Jamie as she entered the room.
“A replacement.”
He was about to hit the Enter key to initialize another test when the sun emerged and he caught a glimpse of the picture frame as it reflected a beam. He gazed at the photo, barely recognizing himself in it. The little one with brown hair… he had almost forgotten her too.
Outside, the snow finally stopped falling when Jamie nodded at the picture. “She would be my age by now—in appearance I mean.”
“Maybe Barry’s right,” Tris muttered, glancing out the window.
Jamie tapped her neck with her finger, opening up a small port and switch, then smiled. “Maybe he is.”
by submission | Apr 16, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The hunting party moved toward the caves at Es Skhul, about 20 kilometers south of Haifa, Israel. Of course, no one in the tribe would have recognized any of those geographic designations any more than they would have regarded the time as being 50,000 BC. The hunt had been comparatively successful. The party, which consisted of twelve men and three women, were anxious to rejoin the rest of the tribe.
One of the tribesmen grunted a series of guttural syllables that approximated the sentiment “The hunt went well. We will have to give thanks to the Light Raft.” The “Light Raft” was what the tribe called the Sun which they regarded as a luminous god that sailed across the sky.
“It is a star,” said the tribesman known as Argin. The word was foreign. It was not the word his tribe used for the lights that dotted the night sky.
“What?” his compatriot asked.
“Yes,” Argin replied. “We must give thanks.”
Argin fell silent. He was thoughtful and brooding, something his companions had noticed over the last few weeks. He used to be much more talkative, they’d noted. Now, he spoke little and usually said something strange when he did speak.
A star, Argin thought. That’s what the Light Raft is. But what does that mean? As he walked on, the answer to his question floated up from somewhere in the depths of his mind. It is a ball of fire, he thought. Or something hotter than fire. And so are the tiny lights in the night sky. They’re like the Light Raft but much farther away. And both they and the Light Raft are hot and bright because… He shuddered. He looked up at the Sun. He lacked the vocabulary to express what he comprehended. But in some vague sense he knew what nuclear fusion was.
He knew when his bizarre way of thinking had begun. It was after he’d encountered the other tribe. He had been out scouting on his own and had come upon them. At first, he didn’t know if they were people or animals. Their skin was hard and bluish. Their legs were jointed differently than his. Their raft had been damaged. Argin had the strength to lift some of the wreckage that the small, frail people of strange tribe could not. They were grateful for his help in repairing their–
“Starship,” he whispered.
Somehow, he understood, if imperfectly, that the world was a giant round rock moving around the Light Raft and that they had come from a similar rock moving around another Light Raft very far away. He knew that one of their shamans had touched his mind, reworked his brain. He knew that the strange tribe had been as his tribe is now a very, very long time ago.
Argin felt depressed. He was acutely aware of how simplistic and backward his people were. He felt ashamed and embarrassed that he himself wore an animal pelt and lived in a cave. He had ideas he couldn’t express. He had thoughts that he could share with no one because they simply couldn’t be made to understand. The other tribe thought they’d given him a gift but it was a curse. That night, his tribe sat around the fire and ate and talked and laughed while Argin looked up at the stars and wept.
