by submission | Mar 30, 2015 | Story |
Author : Will Shell
The lieutenant staggered closer to the viewing window, each drag of her left leg adding to the blood smear that trailed a half mile through the ships corridors. Emergency floor lighting pulsed indolently, the waning breaths of the backup electrical system. She knew it wouldn’t be long until the emergency oxygen pumps ceased.
Another step.
From deep within the ships bowels, vibrations of a distant explosion rippled outward. The stars in the view window began to sink, and the steel ship groaned as it gradually capsized. The rising slope of the floor made each unsteady step progressively painful.
Another step.
Her injured leg gave way, the slope too steep for a steady grip atop the oily blood. The ship tilted more, making every effort to pull the lieutenant away from the window. The pilot’s chair was almost within arm’s reach, if she could drag herself there, she could climb her way back onto her feet.
She lurched forward, kicking with all the remaining might of her battered body, but the pooling blood allowed no traction. Flattening her hands, she pressed them hard into the cold floor. Slowly her elbows bent and she slid forward. Harder she pulled, gritting her teeth and groaning until her forearms rested under her ribcage. Reaching forward, her fingertips grazed the chair. Again she forced her hands into the floor and pulled. The ship continued its slow, steady tilt.
Her muscles tensed into iron from fingertips to abdomen. Again she crept forward until her arms convulsed. Muscles exhausted, gravity overpowered her body and dragged her away from the pilot’s chair. Bellowing with pain, she lurched one arm forward, throwing all her weight and power into the opposite side. Three parched, discolored fingertips slapped around the base of the chair, just enough for some leverage. Pulling with white knuckles and straining, popping joints, she inched herself forward until a full fist clamped onto the chair. With a sturdy grip she slid faster now, until her arms embraced the base of the chair; a trifling, temporary salvation.
The lights pulsed slower and dimmer now. There wasn’t much time left.
Pulling herself back to her feet using the chair for leverage, she breathed deeply and took a step forward.
Ten more steps to go.
Abandoning the support of the chair, she had nothing for leverage between herself and the view window. Every step had to be perfect; she wouldn’t have the strength or the time to pull herself up again.
Two steps.
Her body leaned forward, trudging against gravity. A pale blue glow began to form at the bottom of the view window.
Another Step
The glow intensified. A vibrant blue curtain trickled its way down her face, spilling over the lieutenant until her entire upper body burned a radiant sapphire.
Three steps.
The ship trembled under another explosion. Her knees buckled and she stumbled to all fours, barely holding herself up from collapsing full-sprawl to the floor. She let the tremor pass before making a methodical and painful return to her feet
Another step.
The emergency lighting quietly died away, which meant the oxygen pump was no longer respiring.
Two steps.
Radiant blue and swirling white now filled half the view window. She stretched both arms outward and staggered forward.
One final, desperate step.
Her hands crashed into the window. Her breathing fogged and cleared the thick glass. The entire planet filled the view window. One wide strip of lush, ripe green wrapped around the center of the planet.
Tears quietly streamed down the lieutenant’s face, bending around a wide, open-mouthed smile.
She sighed happily, “..Second Earth”
by submission | Mar 29, 2015 | Story |
Author : Art Klein
The moon looked bigger than ever. That shouldn’t have surprised him. He knew it was bigger because it was closer than ever. He also knew it was getting even closer. But how big it looked tonight really did surprise him.
“How long do they think we can survive after you leave?” she asked.
“I don’t know. They said a few months, but the quakes are more violent and the tidal waves higher than they originally predicted,” he answered. After a short pause, “I don’t want to go without you. I’ll stay.”
“Don’t be a fool,’” she snapped. “You were selected for the team because you’re a Level 12 scientist. Why die here with me when you’ll be much more important where you’re going.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
He looked away as he felt the sting of tears forming in his eyes.
“Don’t go sentimental on me,” she said. “You still have a lot to do before you leave. All the equipment you’re taking still needs final testing. You’re going to be an important part of building a new world.”
He looked at her for what seemed like a long time. She was right. The team of scientists and engineers didn’t know very much about the new world to which were they would travel. They knew the new planet was in a habitable zone around its star and that it’s about the same size as their current home that was coming apart because of the increasing pull of its nearing moon. He didn’t want to think about the final collision.
“How soon will you be leaving?” she asked.
“They said we’ll need to go sooner than they originally thought because the moon’s orbit is decaying faster than before,” he answered. “Now they’re saying two weeks or less.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath, but she said nothing for a moment. Then, smiling at him as she slipped her arm around his waist, she said, “Then let’s get home. We have better things to do where no one can see us.”
He nodded quietly as his thoughts drifted to the planet on which he and the team were going to build a new life for a select few; a planet orbiting its sun in the company of seven others.
by submission | Mar 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Matt Forshaw
This is how I sleep; in a sarcophagus amid the stars, my body quiet and unmoving. There is no blanket to keep me warm, no pillow, no mattress that I rest upon. I do not toss or turn. I do not shiver, though it is cold. My chest does not rise or fall, there is no gentle rhythm of a steady beating heart. My breath is stored in hard chrome tanks and fed to me through valves and tubes. It is not gas, but a complex fluid that gives to me the oxygen I need. Likewise, my blood is kept safely outside of me, and there it remains for the duration of this journey. I do not need it as I sleep. Throughout my veins and arteries, a solution is pumped to keep me cool.
This is how I sleep, with wires and tubes attached, to ensure that I am living. Though in this state you would be forgiven for thinking such was not the case. The hum of electronics and environmental systems provide a soundscape to my rest, though I do not hear it. While I sleep, I travel. Incomprehensible distances at speeds I cannot fathom. My body travels faster than all of my imagination. I travel with my eyes closed. I am told I do not dream, though I often feel as though I’ve dreamt. I remember snippets sometimes, images and flashes, imprints and emotions from the dreams I’m told I do not have. They say it’s from the electricity they use to start my body up again; that my brain interprets it as sweet remembered episodes. It sounds plausible and scientific to me, but perhaps it doesn’t matter. Either way, my eyes do not move or flicker as I sleep.
When I awake, or rather when I’m awoken, it is with a drawn out wrenching gasp. The world takes a long time to return, though I suppose I am the one who has been absent. It is visceral and wet, with choking and mucous and fluids I do not know the names of. I itch in places I can’t reach. My skin is red, my muscles sore. I wash myself with water and I marvel at the sensation. I breathe. It has been long and far since I’ve truly felt a thing, even sleeping as I have been. Time passes, and I am awake to experience its flow. I no longer travel faster than my thoughts, into the gaps between the stars.
I have a room to sleep in now. It has a bed, and a door that leads to another room for washing. I find I cannot sleep on the soft bed, wrapped up in the warm blanket. It suffocates me as I stare at the ceiling with unblinking eyes. The floor is not much better. The small room for washing affords me greater sleep, where I can lie in a pool of cold water. But still, I am kept awake by the sound of my heart, a drum inside my chest. The movement of my lungs is a distraction that will not cease. The blood pumping noisily around my veins is anathema to my rest.
They will find me one morning with the blood removed, it is better on the outside. My chest will be still, with no noisy tattoo issuing from its beating muscle. My tubes and wires will not be sophisticated, but at least they will be there again. This time I tell myself I will not dream. I am tired. This is how I sleep.
by Duncan Shields | Mar 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The ship had recently shaved a comet at close to metaspeed. Nowhere near light but still enough to cause pretty serious damage.
With silicates, sparks would be flying around the cabin. Since they’d used the bios instead, it was juices and blood. The pilot was metal but the ship was meat.
He was ankle deep in a dying craft and aiming for a rest stop.
Something bubbled up on the monitor in front of him: a course to a hot rock that was close. It had an atmosphere that would support the ship but would eventually kill him if the repairs didn’t get finished in time.
He knew that he was the expendable part of the mission. It was a gamble. He squeezed the ‘yes’ organ beside the chair and the ship lurched sideways on the new course.
The hot rock came closer on the screen as the humidity inside the ship increased along with the rising fluid levels closing around him.
The ship tore down through the atmosphere, igniting as it went. The outer shell layers hardened and then shriveled as the ship sped closer to impact.
The ship hit the ocean a few hundred meters away from the coast.
The impact tested its structural integrity and found it wanting.
It cracked open like an egg into boiling water.
The pilot sank down beneath the waves. He needed no air to survive but the salt content in the water would rust him solid if he didn’t get to shore quickly. He hit the bottom and started walking shoreward in the darkness.
It took him six hours to get to the beach.
The remains of the ship washed up around him. He collected what he could find in the surf and put it all into a wet pile.
He connected what umbilicals he could find to the main processor organs and waited for a wetboot to start.
He waited for a week until the air on the planet oxidized him to the brainpan. Days later, he fell forward in pieces with a rattle into the pile of bioship remains.
The rains and heat mixed them further into a soup over the course of the next month.
Bioforms are adaptable.
They couldn’t perform at a macro level so they set about making adjustments at a molecular level, stealing from the available materials to make simpler self-propagating one-celled organic copies. They did this for years, using up the entire reserves of composting organic bioship and pilot mineral compounds at their disposal.
The volcanoes cooled over the next few millennia. The one-celled organisms became more complex. They adapted to life on the surface with the idea of building a ship to go further buried deep in their DNA.
We are the descendants of this ship. Every living thing on the planet is a result of an attempt to build a ship that failed. All evolutionary trees are attempts to create more ships or ship builders. Our duality, our two sexes, our inner yearning of something unfinished and our hybrid nature. We are coded at the most basic level to be what we are. We are the closest that the builders have come.
We have been programmed to leave and continue the journey.
We will do so.
by submission | Mar 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : A. Katherine Black
Sweetie sat rigid with revulsion. Wet lumpy kale dotted with soft pine nuts lay rejected on her plate. She stared at the thickly curtained window, denied the right to watch the normal world go by. Relentless ticking of the grandfather clock echoed through the dining room and clashed against the slurping sounds of her parents devouring their dinner.
Sophie didn’t even seem to notice anything unusual. And why would she? Her toddler world spanned the length of this stupid ranch house and went as deep as the swing set out back. But someday she’d understand. Poor thing.
Sweetie pointedly avoided looking toward the head of the elegantly set table, where Dad’s lips curled outward and stretched as his jaw unhinged. Webbed fingers shoved a flopping, stark-eyed fish down his gullet with a slurp.
“Sweetie, hon,” Mom said in her wet bubbling voice, “you okay?” Her cold webbed hand moved to touch Sweetie’s pink forehead. “You feel hot and clammy.”
Sweetie rolled her eyes away. “Of course I do, Mom. That’s what people feel like all the time.” She shoved her chair back with a start and stomped away.
Dad’s gurgle followed her down the hall. “We’re people, too, Sweetie.”
She slammed the door.
She waited for hours, until the house was silent, until Sophie curled into a ball under her covers with about ten stuffed animals, until her parents rolled around doing gross stuff she tried hard not to think about while they swam around the mossy indoor pool at the back of the house. Why hadn’t they just disappeared on a fishing trip like everyone else did? Sticking it out for the kids’ sake, really. She’d rather be in a foster home.
Sweetie pushed up her window, climbed over her desk and slipped outside. She reached in for her flashlight, but somehow she was able to see better tonight than usual, so she left it on the desk. She ran across several backyards, fast and light on her feet. Daren was just where he always was, waiting under a tree.
They didn’t talk much, which was just fine with Sweetie. What the hell was she supposed to say, anyway? Uh, my dad’s a mackerel and my mom’s a trout?
So they made out. He was one of the best kissers she’d found so far. His lips were soft and forceful at once. And tonight they were… salty. Had he eaten nuts for dinner? Popcorn? Something.
She pulled him to the ground, giggling. His mouth was so moist. She kissed him hard, tugging on his bottom lip, sucking it in, relishing the fullness, the flavor.
“Ow!” Daren pushed her away. She could see him as clearly as if it was high noon. His bottom lip hung, stretched and swollen. His words were clumsy, his voice high. “Whah dah heah?”
But she didn’t want it to stop. Just a little more. This was good.
###
Sweetie’s parents felt the tremor in the water and swam quickly from their cave to the pool’s surface, popping their heads above water where Sweetie’s feet dangled at the edge. Tears poured down her cheeks, already washing away the blood.
Mom’s hand went to Sweetie’s knee, cool and reassuring. “It’s alright Sweetie,” she gurgled softly. “Mom and Dad are here.”
End
