365 tomorrows

Author : Kathy Kachelries, Staff Writer

That Halloween, the ship decided to be a ghost.

The ship itself wanted to use an oversized sheet, but Tommy laughed at the artificial intelligence and pointed out that there was no way his mother would be able to find a sheet that big. It was a small ship, the kind most kids in his middle school got when they turned twelve, but even a small ship would require at least three or four king sized sheets, and besides, where would they put the eyes? It was a terrible idea. Being a ghost was fine, Tommy said, but the ship would have to be a ghost ship. Tommy himself would have to be the ghost driver.

Tommy placated the ship by allowing it to have a ghost flag, which was a pillowcase with a ghost drawn on it with permanent marker. He hadn’t asked first, but his family had plenty of pillowcases. He only used one pillow; his sister used four. He felt justified in his decision to give the ship what it wanted.

The ghost costume itself (the ship’s, not Tommy’s) was accomplished with a lot of dark tempera paint, the kind that most kids used to paint names, sports logos, and witty comments on their ships during the school year. He smeared it over the white plastimetal surface as the ship sat contentedly on its three landing feet, humming a popular tune through its speakers. The paint didn’t go over quite as well as he hoped. Rather than looking like soot or rust from outer space, it looked like fingerpaint, like a prank gone very poorly. Tommy didn’t tell the ship, though. He didn’t want to hurt its feelings.

His own costume was slightly more involved than the sheet would have been. Tommy used the leftover paint to smear over the only white pair of pants and shirt in the house, which he’d found in his older brother’s drawer, and after they were sufficiently filthy he went at them with a wire cutter, which was the only sharp thing he could find in his father’s workshop. When he came back outside, the ship whistled contentedly.

“I think we should be zombies instead of ghosts,” Tommy said. They looked more like zombies anyways. He drew a new flag on a new pillowcase, this one with a caption declaring a lust for brains, and he rubbed the last bit from the bottom of his paint jar over his face. They made much better zombies than ghosts, though he wasn’t sure if a ship could be a zombie. Either way, he again decided not to mention it. His ship was more sensitive than most, and often took things the wrong way.

Tommy’s mother took the usual pictures, and gave her usual lecture to the ship about its responsibility for the safety of the boy. “Braaaaaains,” the ship declared, and it plotted a course through the city. The year before, they’d charted out the best towers for candy and prizes, determined not to waste their valuable time in the wrong districts. By the end of the four hour window permitted by the city, the trunk of the zombie-ship was nearly full. Because his mother’s curfew was an hour later, the ship landed on a public pad atop one of the tallest buildings and they rolled to the edge as Tommy popped the front dome to look out over the twinkling city.

“Sorry you can’t eat candy,” he told the ship as he pulled the wrapper off a piece of caramel. The ship ate nothing, not even fossil fuels, sipping its power off of a hydrogen battery.

“It’s okay,” the ship said. Its internal lights flared with contentment. “I prefer eating brains, anyways.”

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Author : Jim Wisniewski

They say the wind carries the souls of the dead, forever blowing to remind us of things past. At least, that’s what the kasht say, but then our worlds usually have less wind than Tun Ekshati. Most humans don’t believe it.

Marcus might. He’s been here long enough.

“You have to make them reconsider!”

We sit in the local equivalent of a bar, carved in rounding curves into the side of a rock face. Wind blowing through carefully shaped channels along the outer ledge plays a quiet, mournful note that changes with gusts and lulls. Kasht aesthetics dictate transience and minimalism. Dwellings are carved to look like natural hollows in the rock, structures built without metal requiring continual repair. Neglected for a few centuries, wind and sand would scour away even the largest community without a trace. It’s like they’re embarrassed they exist at all.

I shake my head. “Marcus, be reasonable. None of the Union admission criteria are met. The kasht aren’t independently spacefaring, have nothing valuable to trade and show little interest in contact with offworlders. We can’t justify the energy cost of maintaining the gate metric.”

I drain the last of my bowl of the locally favored drink, syrup-thick and heavy with vegetable fats. The proprietor flits over to clean off the floor between us, twittering praises to generous patrons in his own tongue as he works. Marcus, long since fluent, smiles and whistles a thank-you in response.

He’s clearly comfortable here. He ought to be, as the local xenoanthropologist for almost eighty standard years. His own cleft dwelling is virtually indistinguishable from a native’s. They’re just as clearly fond of him. They call him ikoberat-kinei, “Pillar-of-dawn,” because of his blond hair and after a mythic immortal from their folklore.

He faces me with a solemn look. “I’m worried that…” He pauses, hesitates. “This all seems like a soap bubble sometimes. I’m worried that if I’m not here to watch it, everything will disappear.” He gestures expansively, taking in the whole room. “What if I want to return?”

“You can take a slowboat. I’m truly sorry, Marcus, but the decision is made.” I gather my feet under me and stand; he follows suit. “They’re closing the gate as soon as we return.”

Marcus performs the traveler’s farewell ritual with the proprietor, and we pull on our facemasks as we approach the door. I step onto the sand, but he halts at the ornamented threshold. “No.”

“What?”

“I can’t do it. I’m staying here.”

“You…” I stop. I recognize the determination on his face, and I can’t force him to come, legally or physically. He’s bigger than me.

He has to know what he’s getting into. It’ll take a slowboat over a century to get back here. Maybe by then he’ll convince them to join the rest of the galaxy.

I just nod, and turn back towards the ship. As I walk, the wind erases each footprint as soon as it’s made.

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Author : Curtis C. Chen

When Stacy was twelve, she celebrated her father’s thirty-third birthday.

It wasn’t actually his birthday. It was two weeks before his birthday, but he was leaving on a mission in five days.

Stacy thought the party was boring. There were a lot of grown-ups there, drinking smelly drinks that looked like soda but tasted bitter when she stole a sip from her father’s plastic cup. He was talking to another grown-up at the time and didn’t notice.

“It’s only sixteen light-years,” he was saying. “We’re not sure how hard we can push the stardrive, but we also need to balance the relativistic effects.”

Stacy wandered into the kitchen to find her mother. She was standing over the sink, alone.

“Mommy?” Stacy said, tugging at her skirt.

Stacy’s mother turned to look at her. Her eyes were red, and her cheeks were wet.

“Time for bed,” she said.

When Stacy was sixty-five, she celebrated her father’s fortieth birthday.

She barely recognized the man who embraced her as the waitress maneuvered her wheelchair into the restaurant.

“My little girl,” he said, his eyes glistening.

They brought a plate of food that she wasn’t allergic to. She toasted him with apple juice. She felt tired halfway through dinner, but pinched her arm under the table to keep herself awake.

She stayed until all the other guests had left. There weren’t many of them. The waitress brought Stacy a glass of warm milk, and a cup of coffee for her father. The coffee smelled good.

They talked for nearly an hour. He asked about Stacy’s mother, about what had happened to his family over the last half century, how they’d lived without him. Stacy’s mother had remarried when they thought her father’s ship had been lost, destroyed during their initial acceleration out of the solar system.

“She never stopped loving you,” Stacy told her father. She showed him the family photo that her mother had kept until she died, and which Stacy still carried in her purse. He cried quietly.

When the restaurant closed, Stacy’s father helped her into a waiting taxicab. He noticed her coughing and asked about her health.

“I’m old,” she said, forcing a smile. She didn’t want to tell him about the cancer.

Four days later, Stacy got a call from the agency. They had found her father dead in his apartment. He had overdosed on ibuprofen, washed down with a bottle of whiskey. They said he hadn’t felt any pain.

The note read: “No parent should outlive his child.”

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Author : Kat Rose

Battle raged on around him, the constant sounds of gunfire ringing in his programmed earlike audio receptors. He, however, was oblivious to anything but the almost lifelike pain near where his navel would be, where the bullet had pierced his stark green casing.

For the first time in his battery powered life, he wished himself dead, unable to function, in electronic terms. The war was one-sided, and he knew he was on the losing side. His opponents were hell bent on destroying every robot created.

Once, before the human race realized they had made themselves disposable, robots and humans had gotten along, but after the new leaders had been elected, the entire human race had found that they were no longer necessary in this world and had been opposed to that fact.

RC926’s pupils grew large as a sort of shocking blue fluid leaked from around the bullet hole. As he lay himself down, the robot gave one last humanlike sigh, almost with emotion. Almost.

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Author : Daniel Nugent

“And I expect you to show all your work on the problem sets. Points will be deducted!” shouted Professor Smith as his class began to shuffle out of the lecture hall. He began collecting his papers and tri-parencies from the holo-video podium.

A man in an immaculate gray suit politely held the door open for the exiting class before briskly descending the stairs to the floor of the amphitheater. “Doctor Smith, I presume?” he asked, extending his french-cuffed hand. The Doctor took the man’s hand. “I’m Claude Robinson, from Zeus BioTechnology. We spoke earlier.”

Smith’s hand lingered for a moment as he looked at the contracting agent. “You’re early Mr Robinson. No matter, I’m on my way to my office.”

As they exited the dimly lit corridor that led to the classroom and approached the enervator, Mr Robinson spoke, “Do you enjoy teaching, Doctor Smith? It doesn’t seem to fit a man of your nature, from what I know of you.”

“Enjoy it? Not at all. How would you like to deal with whining, snot nosed children, day in and day out. Barely a one is intelligent enough to put their pants on properly, let alone even begin to understand genetic molecular manipulation,” he said as they stepped on, ripples flowing across the transparent gravitational field where their feet fell. “Though… there are some certain benefits,” Smith’s mind lingering on a certain co-ed.

“I have to say, I didn’t expect they’d send a Cyborg out to meet me, considering the nature of my work.”

Claude idly watched waves flow from where his fingers touched the wall of the enervator, the setting sun casting royal purple on the cityscape below. “Hardly any intent, Doctor Smith. I simply happened to have a congenital and rather deadly disease as a child. Zeus BioTechnology only cares about their employees to the extent that they perform their jobs in a superior fashion.”

“Hmmph,” Smith replied, shifting his weight against the wall.

“Might I enquire as to how you were able to tell?”

“Usually all I need is to shake a man’s hand… but yours was perfect. I noticed an odd reflection in your eye. It appears they still haven’t gotten the biosilicon retinas right.”

The enervator stopped and Smith led the other man to his office door. They entered and the halogen lamps flickered on. Smith walked through the cramped office, placed his bag on a stack of books, and turned back to face Robinson who had started tapping a thin card. The lights flickered again and he placed the card in his pocket.

“No doubt Zeus BioTechnology has to have the latest in dampening technology,” said Smith.

“The very latest, Doctor Smith. Any listening devices will think that we are discussing licensing your RNA retrovirus engineering toolset.”

“Hah, one of my lesser discoveries, at best. Even that nitwit McCoy could have created it,” he said, turning to face his office window. “When Zeus brings my new work to the public, we’ll all be rich beyond our wildest dreams. Immortality won’t come che-ACK!”

Smith was cut off as Robinson jabbed a syringe into his neck.

“What are you doing you metal domed ninny?! You’ve killed me!”

“Hardly, Doctor Smith. I’ve simply given you a hybrid viral-nanite Alzheimer’s injection. You’ll be mostly fine, though I believe that the University will begin paying your pension a bit sooner than anticipated,” Robinson said, setting the Doctor down in his chair whereupon he slumped forward on the desk. He rifled through a few drawers, taking several files and a bottle of Whiskey.

Placing the amber liquor on the desk with the cap off, Robinson turned towards the door. “Why are they so naive? Don’t they understand that we’d only be interested if Immortality was consumable?” he remarked to no one. He tapped his breast pocket once and exited the room.

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Author : Duncan Shields, Featured Writer

The nails slide out effortlessly from beneath the shizu skin of my fingers. The swollen carapace of my back splits in even sections and the hive breathes. The hum becomes a vibration you can feel in your chest.

Something like icing bleeds out my tear ducts and I’m crawling with death. The paper medical gown twitches where it shouldn’t and starts to tear as new bones find new ways to move and the flesh swells to accommodate. My eyes are wide and black. New teeth start growing out of my shoulders and elbows. Saber tooth armour. Clear quartz cataracts rise out of my forehead. The diseases in the air reflect back through the magnifying bacterial lens that is my aura.

I make Pestilence look like a child just starting out.

I’m not even out of control yet.

I am barely seen scissors in a pulled open mouth. I am moving so fast I become a series of shadows. I become a force. Sounds of my destruction are lagging a long time behind my actions. People and equipment are obliterated before they’re aware of danger. I’m moving so fast it’s like I’ve been unhinged from time. It seems obscene that I should be able to maintain this kind of speed.

Tumours form on my skin and blink open to reveal new biological armaments. The cells of my body have finished what the creators intended and are starting to improvise. I am bionanotechonology. Tiny molecular compound copies of me spray out in spore clouds to infect and replicate other flesh.

My only limit now is imagination. I’m becoming art. A bioluminescent avatar of creativity though destruction. A messenger of the meat come to destroy. I am all the horsemen. I’m the nightmare of the flesh. I’m conscious disease. I am biomass. I’m DNA with the lid off. I’m psychotic cellular intelligence with no brakes of conscience. I’m cancer’s descendent.

I leave a trail of hot fat and warm blood.

I tear through the lower floors up to street level. Guards empty entire magazines of experimental weaponry into me. They become food. I burst through the asphalt into afternoon sun. I am a multitude of arms and eyes and teeth behind a black ashen sporecloud that does not obey the wind.

I can smell the entire population of this city waiting to become one with me.

I figure if they can get me somewhere airtight with walls I can’t break…but that’s academic. I don’t trust them to get that organized before I become too big to contain.

They. I’m already thinking of them as they.

So easy for humanity to be shed.

Here they come. I lose conscious thought as I expand all my senses to the fight and the expansion.

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Author : Angela N. Hunt

“We’re flying.”

His voice is soft. Satisfied.

Her smile never wavers, nor her posture or the angle of her head to the angle of her swan white neck. But the hand in his squeezes for a half-second. Her feet keep perfect time with his as they glide across the floor, bars of the Blue Danube Waltz carrying them as effortless as their feet.

They slide into a perfect pause.

“Like doves,” she says quietly.

And they’re off again, whirling around each other in a tighter orbit than any binary star.

* * *

Caspurtina, the Residence’s sorceress, turned away from watching the dancers with a satisfied nod. Looked like she’d have her Dancers for the Mystery after all. With a flick of her wrist, she shook out the fingers of one elegant, manicured hand over the surface of a nearby nanoparticle-board table, one of many surrounding the dance floor, each displaying a different fractal star pattern. Starlight fell in brilliant sparkles from her fingertips. Wouldn’t do to have too much residual enchantments mucking up her next working.

The sparkles played havoc with the nano-surface, setting up a new and exciting fractal pattern not in the designer’s specs that then proceeded to make the surface of the table break out in a swath of tiny pansies. She’d have to have someone clean that up.

She took in the group of somber suited investors.

“As you can see, we have all the elements that we require for our gala,” Caspurtina said.

“Will there be a need of additional funds?” the banker from Tokyo inquired.

Caspurtina grinned, pure charm.

“Only if you wish to flatter me,” she replied and he bowed in amused return.

With that, the investors dispersed, off to find other entertainments for the evening.

Caspurtina took one more look at her chosen Dancers, though they didn’t know it yet, taking in the white feathered skirt floating against the sharp black of tuxedo pants, feet flashing like wings.

Really. What better way to summon the ghosts of Fred and Ginger for a command performance?

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Author : Duncan Shields, Featured Writer

I’m standing in front of the safety glass and seeing the thing look up at me. Its legs end in black tentacles that look diseased. The fingernails of its left hand are very long. One nostril is dripping what looks like grape juice onto the cell floor. It’s a little pathetic and I get a swell of sympathy that I have to stamp down on immediately.

I have to remember the deaths. I have to remember Allison.

I try to keep the steel in my voice. I can see Allison in his jawline. I can see Allison in the patches of long blond hair that poke through the short black haircut. I can see Allison in his left blue eye with the long eyelashes.

“Ask question?” he says to me.

“Yeah, I have a question” I say. “Are you scared of dying?” I ask this thing.

With a shock, I can see that it has two blue eyes now and the rest of its patchy and uneven hair is turning blonder by the moment.

“Not as long as I know you’re here with me.” It responds. Its voice is getting higher, closer to Allison’s. Its English is getting better. It’s gaining focus. Its shirt is getting tighter as Allison’s breasts push forward and fill the man’s shirt that it’s wearing.

It’s gaining strength by the second. Allison’s been gone for months. I thought I could to do this. I was kidding myself. My vision is starting to blur with tears and I can see that Allison is nearly complete before me behind the glass.

I watch my fingers reach towards the lock. I stop and look at my traitorous hand. I don’t have the code to open the cell anyway. I have no idea what I was about to try to do.

“Brian” it says. Allison says my name. “Let me out. Let’s go somewhere. Quit your job. We can live somewhere hot. Let’s forget this and get out of here.”

I breathe deeply. I realize that I’m standing and my forehead is pressed against the glass. With a start, I stand back and straighten my clothes. Control. Control. I turn and walk towards the main elevator up to the office. I leave this parasite behind.

“Brian, they’re going to kill me!” the Allison thing shouts to me as the door to the elevator closes.

It’s a few floors up and then a brief scan on checkout and I’m out. They saw the whole thing on CCTV so they don’t ask me any questions. They let me out into the fresh air and into my empty life.

The department doesn’t know when Allison was taken. I may have been living with the parasite for days before they detected it. Maybe weeks. I might have made love to it.

I get behind the wheel but the shaking and the tears start before I’ve started the car. I feel almost grateful that the thing in the there let me see her one more time.

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Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

He made the corner into the alley at a full sprint, nearly missing a mountain of abandoned waste containers, but not completely. One foot caught a lid, throwing him off balance, and momentum and gravity combined to send him skidding across greasy asphalt into the wall opposite. Rain water and urine raced each other to saturate his coat and chinos as he struggled to regain his feet, sweat and fresh blood clouding his vision where the alley brick had left its mark.

He’d killed a mech just ten minutes earlier, and he knew exactly what would happen if they caught him.

The buildings lining the alley stretched skyward, shutting out any light from above, and the streetlights could no longer penetrate the murk as he stumbled forward. A dumpster loomed out of the darkness, offering a route to a fire escape above, and he clambered upwards, leaping from the complaining metal of the bin to the hanging rungs of steel, then pulling hand over hand until he could hoist a foot up and climb higher to safety.

He hadn’t meant to kill anyone. He thought he’d surprise his girlfriend at home, used his key to her apartment, and found him there, with her.

The iron staircase announced his ascent to anyone with any interest, but he was past caring now, he needed to get clear of the area, and once he was on the roof, he was sure he could disappear.

She’d screamed when she saw him, just standing in the doorway of her bedroom, watching this other man, watching what he was doing with her. Something snapped, and he was suddenly wielding a lamp he didn’t remember picking up, swinging repeatedly at this strange mans head.

The iron rungs curled over the rooftop wall, and his heart pounding, chest heaving, he threw himself onto the flattop roof, gravel scattering beneath his boots as he raced towards an adjacent rooftop at random. He could run for miles up here, the buildings so close together, he could be halfway across the city before anyone knew to look for him.

He’d hit the stranger ten, maybe thirty times when it happened, the bastard started twitching wildly, not like a human would twitch, but violently, mechanically, arms and legs flailing about in perfect synchronized rhythm, the girl scrambling to safety, not from the bloody lamp, but from the flailing stiff limbed machine in a death fit conniption on her bed.

This was a somebody’s mech. Someone would own him, and they’d hunt him down and exact payment for the damage he’d done to their property. He fled. She screamed after him, but her words lost themselves in slamming doors and his tumbling down stairs. Lost themselves in the realization of liability and the promise of violent repercussions. People had been killed for accidental damage to these mechanical men, and he’s smashed this ones brains in, pulverized it beyond repair.

The city moved beneath his feet, slipped by as he jumped the narrowed gaps where buildings leaned towards each other, reaching to close any available space above the streets. Time and distance passed between he and his crime, and with each step, each ragged breath he began to feel less frantic. He would be safe, had to be safe, they couldn’t find him up here, they’d no idea where he’d gone. Maybe she wouldn’t tell them who he was.

He leapt again, a sudden drop in his stomach as the next roof came up to meet him, a sudden flare of blue light, voices amplified into his brain. Panic overtook him and he lurched left, trying desperately to make the next rooftop. A sudden flash, eyes flooded with light before consciousness was ripped violently away and gravity took complete control.

The officer lowered his weapon, and thumbed his radio. ‘Control, this is five niner two, two, seven, the runner’s down, send a pickup to my twenty – over.’

A second uniformed man turned off the tracker he’d been focused on, walked to the fallen figure and kicked it lightly in the ribs. ‘I never will get why they bother to run.’

The shooter powered down his pistol and holstered it. ‘You want to be careful kicking that thing, you break it, and its owner will see to it you pay for it the rest of your career.’

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Author : Pyai (aka Megan Hoffman)

On top of the highest shelf of plywood painted to look like expensive wood, in the corner of the spare bedroom, sat a globe. The globe rested on a base of wrought iron with gentle scrolls and turned out feet like a bathtub. The globe itself was made of copper, the lines of latitude and longitude the structure of the sphere and the continents rough globs of flattened metal not actually bearing resemblance to modern continents other than Africa adrift in an empty hollow sea.

One rainy evening my brother Dante had taken the globe down to use in his newest and bestest invention. Open on his floor were books on Time Travel, Teleportation, Electrical Engineering, and Quantum Calculus. Math, he once tried to explain to me, worked differently if you managed to get small enough.

He came out of his room the next morning looking dirty and disheveled, grinning from ear to ear with huge cuts on his arms. Mother scolded him and patched him up, but I snuck into his room and listened. He spoke first of visiting a Maha Raja in ancient India and convinced him he was a magician by accurately reading the stars for him. There had been no impending cosmological phenomenon like an eclipse to seal his place as the Maha Raja’s favorite foreigner, so once the ruler had lost interest in him he had to flee for this life with the aid of the Maha Raja’s daughter, who of course could not run away with him because she was betrothed to another man.

After that he had traveled to Old New York City before the wars and aided the Mayor’s detectives in solving some mob-related murders. Dante showed me the place where one of the mob bosses’s henchmen had cut him with a knife. It was quite an impressive mark, even after Mom had slathered nano-disinfectant goop allover it.

When I grow up I want to be just like my big brother Dante. He always builds these great inventions and has these great adventures. He says I’m too little to help him with anything. Mom says he’s One Of A Kind. I can’t wait until I’m old enough to be One Of A Kind, too.

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