365 tomorrows

Author : J.R.Blackwell, Staff Writer

“Are we slaves?” said Marixix, sliding out of Lilria’s slick bed. “Or do we freely choose our lives?”

Lilria rolled over onto her side, admiring her lovers muscular naked back. “Ooooo…Such deep inquiry directly after our ‘little deaths.’”

Marixix turned and bowed to Lilria. “It is when my mind seems clearest.”

Lilria blushed and slipped a silk shift over slender body. “Do not confuse your pride with chains. You toss the word of slave too easily. You are free to leave the service, a slave would not be free to go as he pleases.”

“You are bound by words too easily.”

“Maybe.” said Lilria, gracefully stepping across the stone floor to where Marixix stood. “Why do you think you’re a slave?”

“Even though I could leave the service, I would not, because it’s what I’m good at. My genetic code has destined me to this work. I was bred to it. Why would I leave knowing my code makes me the best to be a warrior of first rank?”

She put her small hands on his large, tattooed arm. “There are other professions. You would be an excellent martial instructor.”

“I would be good, but not great. Would you leave your job as chief librarian and become a hostess at a brothel?”

Lilria backed away from him. “Are you saying that my work is that of a whore? Is that how you see me?”

“No. I never said-”

“You compared yourself to a slave, and your lover to a whore.” She walked to her closet and pulled on a heavy robe, crossing her arms in front of her.

“You are not a whore Lilria. I just wanted to show you that you would no more leave your work than I would. Both of us were bred to our work, and we perform it well, better than anyone else, better because they have been perfecting us over centuries.”

“That is destiny. There is still freedom in destiny.” At that moment, the sun choir that rehearsed at dawn in the great hall of the library started to sing. The lovers paused and listened to the rising voices. They were only a few doors away from the main hall, and the echo of those strong young singers came clearly, resounding off the stone walls. The chorus was singing the wordless salute to the rising sun, as the first light touched the great stairs of the library. Marixix found himself moved to stand next to Lilria. He put his arms around her waist and she leaned back onto his chest.

Marixix spoke softly. “Do you think that every time they breed us, making little tweaks, do you think we choose each other every time?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. My predecessor was not me. We are different.”

“I think you would know if we did. You are a record keeper, your predecessor would keep some record of it.”

She squeezed his hands in hers. “It is against the rules for warrior class and scholar class to have relations. If anyone found out, we would be exiled. All my predecessors had a spotless record, no suspicion ever touched them. Besides, we may have a destiny, but love cannot be scripted. I knew my predecessor, she raised me, and she had no relations with the warrior class.” Five generations the chief librarians had loved five generations of first rank warriors.

“If we are the first to have loved each other, then maybe I do have freedom, slight as it is, to choose my own way.”

Lilria turned to face him, reaching her hands up to his face. “You are free to stay or leave me, as you will.”

His dreadlocks fell down over his shoulders as he leaned close to her. “I will never leave you. I will love you till I am killed in battle.” They kissed and Lilria willed herself to believe him in that moment. She knew about the records. If this one lived another year, he would leave her. But Lilria was different from her predecessors; she could will herself not to cry.

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You may have noticed by now that the 365tomorrows site is sporting a fresh coat of paint. We wanted to improve on the original design, while at the same time staying true to it. The result is hopefully a subtle but noticeable improvement.

We obviously hope you approve, and hope you’ll let us know what you think.

Author : B. York, Staff Writer

Being in a think tank wasn’t easy. Dev never saw it as easy but he lived it because of his pursuit for the perfect equation. Life in pursuit of such a grand dream was not without its quirks however.

No one could have predicted the probability of Dev’s broken arm and how he’d been hit with a shiny purple Cadillac not two days prior. Certainly no soul under God would have seen that driving such a thing was a nun.

Bones heal, however, and God forgives nuns who hit skinny, weak mathematicians with their cars.

It would have been a forgotten case if both the tires of the ambulance bringing him to the hospital and the tires of the cab bringing him home were not similar in the fact that they blew out (yes, all four) simultaneously each trip. Hospitals have extra ambulances, however, and cab drivers can swear themselves into four new tires.

What happened next would send poor Dev into near psychosis as he sought to figure out the exact probability one would have of a Czechoslovakian Spy Satellite falling into their room and on their bed when one was away buying groceries. The numbers were mind-boggling.

Despite all this, Dev would continue his work to find the perfect formula, the one that could help him understand the universe.

Coincidence, a known fable of mathematicians, was not yet done with the poor boy. That nun with the purple Caddy came to warn him every day of dreams she had been having, dreams of Dev being killed in some horrible manner. Everyday the logical number-cruncher would usher the nun out his door with a fear that he’d heard too many ghost stories from her to concentrate on his work. Yet, everyday she returned with renewed vigor.

Dev worked in the think tank with two roommates that he never once gave notice to beyond whether they would shell out the cash for his latest excursion to the grocery store across the street. These roommates never once asked him about the nun or about why the apartment was shut down for two weeks by NASA to extract an object of import from Dev’s room. They were good roommates blissful in their ignorance.

One day, Dev had thought of the absolute best completion for his formula on his way home. Getting home he found Sam, one of his rather reclusive roommates, standing with a gun in his hand, pointing it at Dev and standing in front of his computer.

“I tried to off you, Dev, tried to steal your formula but no… my equation was too imperfect! Finish the formula, Dev… do it and maybe I’ll take you out of the equation.” Sam cocked the gun.

“Now start typing those numbers.”

Poor, poor Dev.

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Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

The human eye is made up of two different types of photoreceptive elements known as rods and cones. These elements convert the light from everything you look at into information that is passed electrochemically to the brain for interpretation.

An interesting characteristic of this mechanism of data capture and delivery is that each time the rods and cones fire, they must reset before firing again. This creates a constant repeating pattern of image data interspersed with microscopic moments of the absence of data. The human brain fills in these moments of blindness in order to maintain the illusion of a constant uninterrupted visual reality. This phenomenon is known as the persistence of vision.

We know that these microscopic voids in data extend to the other mechanisms of human sensory perception. Your brain maintains a ghost or echo of the sight or sound it captures to fill in the gaps while the input mechanism is offline, readying itself for more real data. The brain is highly adept at compensating for and thus hiding the staccato gapping of your senses.

The amount of time spent by the brain waiting for real data from your senses is considerable. We are going to capitalize on these moments of sensory inactivity. We are going to teach you things in the troughs of the sensory wave.

We will teach you languages. We will bestow upon you skills. You will learn how to build things, and to deconstruct things. You will know how to organize and execute plans you would not now dream possible.

We are going to prepare you.

You will learn of the people you will be entrusted to protect. You will come to know the operational mandate. You will accept it as truth.

We will show you how your leaders have lied.

When the time comes, you will be ready.

We will impart all of this knowledge unto you while no one is looking.

Not even you.

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The Lethe was plastic, white. It bore the black logo of Mnemoprises and a large yellow caution sticker that warned ebayers and Chinatown chopshop owners that it was illegal to use without proper company-granted certification. None of them listened, of course. The list of warnings was seemingly endless, but Xiu knew that most of the threats were empty. Permanent neurological damage. Wasn’t that what the machine was for?

She operated out of a small room in the back of a tourist dump, and every day she had to brush past curtains of t-shirts (“3 for $10!” the handwritten sign informed) and “Vacation souvenir’s!!!” (punctuation intact). The store had belonged to her father, and his father before him, and now it belonged to her brother. As the oldest, it should have gone to her, but they were a traditional family. A woman couldn’t be trusted to run the business. This didn’t bother Xiu, who made more money from one appointment than her brother made in a week. They were different businesses, tourist dumps and memory holes. People paid more to forget than to remember.

Her appointment book that day was filled with the usual: witnesses who didn’t want to take the stand, thieves who didn’t want to know where their money came from in case the feds mindmined them. She was an expert, though she lacked the certificate Mnemoprises offered. The man who had sold her the Lethe had taught her the subtleties of memory. Her first appointment wanted to forget a night in Atlantic City, where he’d gambled away half of his child’s college fund. “I’m going to claim I was robbed,” he told her. Implausible, but it wasn’t Xiu’s job to question. She used the device like a surgeon, precise and cool as a sharp scalpel. There was no collateral damage.

The second was a love story, a woman whose husband had left her for a history teacher. A male history teacher, no less. “How could I have known?” she sobbed. Again, the scalpel.

The last client, the one at the end of the day, was a woman with straight brown hair and a child in tow. He couldn’t have been older than eight. Xiu motioned to the chair in front of the Lethe, but the woman nudged the boy forward. He sat on the stool. His eyes were red and he sniffed, rubbing his nose on the sleeve of his sweatshirt and leaving a sparkling line of mucus. Xiu gestured the woman back into the tourist dump.

“I don’t do this on kids,” she said.

“It’s nothing bad,” the woman told her. “He just needs someone to help. I’ll pay well.”

Xiu needed to be paid well. “What’s the case?”

“It’s my husband’s father,” she said. “His grandfather. They were very close.”

Xiu frowned and tugged at the hem of her shirt, suddenly nervous. “He died,” she said. It was more of a statement than a question.

“Yes.”

Xiu considered this, silently weighing her options. “His mind is still growing,”

“He’s been crying for months.”

“He misses his grandfather. It’s natural.”

“It’s not natural to cry for months.”

Her fingers knotted around the elastic hem. “And you need him wiped. Everything.”

“Can’t you just make him forget that he’s dead?”

“If he knows he had a grandfather, he’ll wonder where that grandfather went. Wiping’s the only solution.”

The woman was silent for a long time. Slowly, she reached into her purse and withdrew a thick envelope. Only cash had value here. Xiu accepted it with a subtle bow of her head. “He’ll regret this,” she warned. “Never knowing his grandfather.”

“He won’t know to regret it,” the woman told her. Somehow, the woman knew more about this procedure than she did.

Xiu led her back into the room and sat down opposite the boy, whose eyes were dark and pink from endless rubbing. “Give me your hand,” she said, and placed his small palm against the larger palm outline on the Lethe. Xiu turned on the machine and it hummed to life, ready to swallow the past.

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Author : James Mallek

It was with a running leap that he finally brought himself to do it. John hurled himself off the top of the eighty-story Hertz Building.

5 seconds of free fall before he righted himself, face down, parallel to the ground.

Terminal velocity achieved, no more acceleration. Immediately reversing his acceleration would splatter his guts against the inside of his suit. A twitch of his calf ignited the chemical rockets sticking out of his ankles. Horizontal velocity increasing, thus a complete increase of net velocity.

“Shut up Computer.”

The suits A.I. promptly stopped giving a narration of his actions.

Spreading his arms granted lift, and he swung gently upward between the towering skyscrapers. An optimal state of powered flight had been achieved.

“Damnit Computer I told you to shut it!”

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Author : Matt Brubeck

We’re in the Starbucks next to the club, hanging out after a show. Aaron looks up and gives a brief snort. “Check it out,” he says, nodding toward the door. I see a trio of young kids, studying the menu and trying to look cool. I recognize them from the crowd at the concert.

“Time travelers,” Aaron says through a mouthful of croissant. “New arrivals, I’m guessing.”

“What? I think they’re college students.”

“Look again.” Aaron’s eyes twitch toward the newcomers, then back to me. “Their clothes are totally ridiculous, like they were picked out of random fashion magazines from the last decade.”

“I thought they dressed like that because they’re hipsters,” I say, looking again at their off-brand sneakers and thrift-store sweatshirts.

“You know how you always see these kids in low-paying service jobs?” Aaron goes on. “Retail, food service. It’s because they don’t have time to learn the period knowledge they’d need for a trade or professional job. See, I’ve figured it out.” Aaron leans over the table, whispering. “Say you’re a rich kid from the future on wanderjahr. You’ve got a time machine, but what do you do with it? Great Moments In History aren’t going to impress your friends. But if you can see a classic band from the twenty-first century before they made it big?” Aaron raises his eyebrows syly. “Watch, I’m gonna go mess with them.”

Aaron washes his pastry down with a swig of coffee, then wanders over to talk to the trio. I can’t hear their replies, but Aaron’s voice carries across the room. “Weren’t you guys at the show? Oh yeah, I know… Did you see them play here last week? Oh man, it was probably their best set ever… Yeah, a real once in a lifetime thing… Yeah, cool… Hey, I gotta go.”

Back at our apartment, we unearth my camera and download the last month’s worth of photos onto Aaron’s laptop. Aaron flips through images until he finds what he’s looking for. “Got ‘em,” he proclaims, handing me the computer. On the screen is a photograph from last month’s show. In the back of the club, next to the exit, a trio of hipsters stands in familiar outfits, holding paper cups marked with a distinctive green-and-black logo.

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Author : Kevin Byrne

The adults were all sitting down, watching the children interact with one another; to a soul, they all said the same thing to me: “I cannot believe how well-behaved your son is. We try so hard just to get our child to even listen to what we’re saying, much less do what we tell them.

“What’s your secret?”

I lean in and whisper. “My wife and I drill it into him.”

They all smirk and nod. “Yeah, right.”

At that point, I call my son over; when he arrives, I continue the conversation. “Seriously, we’ve drilled it into him.”

I lift the flap of scalp to show the inch-by-inch square where you can see his brain. “We opened up his skull and inserted electrodes; we were able to turn the behavioral patterns we wanted him to follow into binary code and transmitted them directly into his brain.”

I replaced the flap and told him that he could go back and play with the other kids. I picked up my drink and smiled.

“Next week, we’re teaching him French.”

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Author : Alex Meggitt

I shift around on the couch, flipping through the channels and trying to make myself comfortable. Tim is sitting on the other end, watching the television cycle through sounds and images. The complacent look in his eye clears for a second as he sits upright and slaps me on the shoulder.

“Go back a couple,” he says, and I tap the down arrow on the remote until he gives the signal and the screen settles on a familiar sitcom.

“You’ve seen this like a dozen times,” I say.

“Yeah, but I like it,” he says. I sigh and try to balance the remote lengthways on the couch’s arm. It wavers for a few seconds then falls. When blindly groping the floor proves worthless, I turn on the only lamp within arm’s reach.

“That lamp kind of sucks,” Tim says without looking away from the TV. “Wal-Mart’s having a sale this week. They’ve got some good ones. Saw it in the paper.”

Still bending forward in my seat, now looking under the table next to me, I turn my head to look at him. He’s still transfixed by the screen. After a second, I give up and say I’m hungry.

“Then let’s go to McDonald’s when the show’s over.”

“Why McDonald’s?”

“What? Cause I like it. It’s good. You like it, too.”

I lean back into a normal sitting position. “We go there all the time.”

“Cause it’s good.” He doesn’t close his mouth completely at the end of the sentence, and I stare at the bottoms of his front teeth. They’re very white despite the number of cigarettes he smokes per day. Mine aren’t comparable. He’s been telling me to buy his brand of toothpaste for a while.

When the commercials begin, Tim slouches a little and looks at the ceiling. He’s thinking, and the moment he opens his mouth, I cut him off.

“Tell me something,” I say, pulling a folded piece of paper out of my pocket. I’ve practiced in my head for a while now. Slowly and purposefully, I unfold the paper at an angle that lets him read. His eyes get a little wider as he recognizes the words printed on the gray watermark pattern. It’s his pay stub, a weekly check from a job he’s never mentioned. I have a question to ask, but it comes out a mashup of every topic in my head. “The catalogs, the checks. Honestly. Just tell me how long.”

“Why’d you go through my stuff?” he says.

“I went to borrow your toothpaste because mine ran out. I found it in there.”

“It’s good stuff, isn’t it? Whitens,” he says, smiling a little.

“Come on. How long have you been doing this? Tell me how long you’ve been selling me things.”

He looks at me, makes a sound, and hesitates. I glare.

“Remember when we were sixteen? And I told you to get a few more controllers for your Nintendo?”

“Jesus.”

“I mean, it was just meant to be a summer job at that point. But they liked me. And it’s good money.”

I stand up, looking at the floor as I rise, and walk out of the room. When I return a minute later with my coat on, he’s still looking at the point where I turned the corner and went out of sight.

“Are you going to tell the rest of the guys about this?” he asks. “If they all know, I’ll find another group of people. I’ll have to move. I like you guys.”

“I thought we were going to McDonald’s. Come on.”

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Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

The two of them sat facing each other in the living room, the father and the fidgeting male his daughter had brought home to meet him.  From the kitchen came snatches of conversation, the talk in excited giggles of things only a mother and daughter could talk about with such euphoric fervor.  The two men just surveyed each other warily, awkwardly looking for the right words with which to start a conversation.

‘You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what to say in situations like this.’ It was the father that broke the silence.

‘Sir?’ The younger male looked up quizzically. ‘Situations sir?’

‘You see, my daughter has brought home boys before, not many mind you, don’t get the wrong idea, but this is the first time…’ He trailed off, uncertain how to continue. He shifted his weight in his seat, crossing and uncrossing his legs as he adjusted his shirt cuffs before continuing. ’Have you had children son?’

‘No sir, I’m a little young for that’, the boy answered, shaking his head, ‘and your daughter, well sir, she’s the first girl that I’ve ever really thought about having a family with.’

‘I see.’ The answer seemed to perplex the father, and he leaned forward, hunching his shoulders. ‘Well imagine yourself for a moment, in a few years, with a daughter…’ the father began, pausing to clear his throat before continuing, ‘…imagine that your daughter came home one day, after having been away for almost a year, and never having mentioned that she was engaged, she introduced you to… well…’ he stopped again, the task of putting his current thought into language was causing him obvious distress.

‘What if she brought home a creature like me?’ The boy, obviously keenly aware of the fathers discomfort, spared him the burden of the words.

‘Yes, I’m sorry – you must understand…’ The father, visibly relieved, tried to justify his unspoken but apparent position. ‘I don’t mean you any prejudice, it’s just your species, these couplings – this is all very new to me.’

‘Sir, were my daughter to bring a partner home to meet me, I would have to believe that she saw something special enough in him to want to share her feelings with her family, and I’d do my best to see what she saw too. I’d trust that she knew her feelings for him better than I could, and I’d try my best to be happy for them both.’

The father sat back, and smiled at the words spoken by this strange, alien creature before him.  The boy was right. He had to trust his daughter’s judgement, and this boy seemed to be a decent enough fellow. They’d have their challenges to be sure. Not everyone could understand these inter species unions that were only just becoming known to the public, and were far from common. It was the very least he could to be supportive.

The father raised himself from his chair to tower over the boy as the youth nervously clambered to his feet. The father spoke, and as he did so, he extended one strong chitinous hand to the young man, inviting him to shake it. ‘You seem to have won my daughters heart, and that’s no easy task, so I’ll welcome you then, as the first human to enter our home in peace.’ They smiled, each in his own way openly relieved.

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Author : Michael “Freeman” Herbaugh

“Sit down Philip,” the old man sighed, “I’m going to tell you a unique story.”

Philip had never seen the Old Man look his age, yet today he looked every day of his 94 years. He’d only been working for him for five years now but the Old Man seemed to like him and had treated him very well.

“Every trillionaire has some cliché story about how they used to be down on his luck and worked his way up from nothing. I’m no different, I have the same story. But what I am going to tell you is what turned me around. This is a story I’ve told no one.”

The Old Man went on to lay the story at Philip’s feet. He told him of the time when he was 19 and in school. He felt his life lacked purpose and that if he were gone it wouldn’t affect another living soul around him. This was when he attempted to kill himself and failed.

“The bandages were still tight on my wrists and my hands were tender when I was released back to my dorm room. She was waiting for me there.”

The Old Man told of a young co-ed girl he didn’t recognize who was waiting for him. She didn’t say anything to him but immediately kissed him. In his fragile emotional state he allowed her to make love to him.

“When we were spent, she gave me a present, you see, a length of thread. She explained to me that this thread was my life and that if I truly wished to end it, all I had to do was cut it. She said, ‘Every life has a destiny, but it’s not spelled out for you. Fate only goes so far.’ I thought she was some new age depression counselor, but I kept the thread anyway. When she left I caught her reflection in my mirror and I swear to you her face looked immensely ancient while at the same time extremely young. I kept the thread”

Philip listened as he explained how he had never seen the girl again and that each year the thread had grown in length. Eventually he came to believe that the thread did truly represent his life. At the age of 30 when he purchased his first home he cut away the bark of an oak tree on his property and embedded the thread just underneath the length of its trunk.

“As that tree has grown, so has my life. I have a large family now and a large corporation as well. My one life has touched countless lives. I only hope that my affect has been positive on the majority of them. One or two I’ve crushed like bugs but I do not regret that. I just hope that the ones I care for most, like you Philip, live their days without regret and realize that they do affect the people around them.”

Having finished his unusual story, the Old Man slumped in his chair and looked even more fragile than he had at the start of their meeting. He explained to Philip that the tree he had put the thread in was dying from some arboreal disease and that it was scheduled to be cut down the next morning.

“I have one last task for you Philip. Make sure no one stops that tree from being cut down.”

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Author : J.R.Blackwell, Staff Writer

Georgie threw the best parties, mostly because he had a carpet he didn’t care about. Heather and Ralph used the monthly parties as an excuse to play drinking games and challenge each other to contests. The winner was usually responsible for dragging the other the two blocks home. Since Ralph had already gone upstairs to vomit, Heather had preemptively declared herself the night’s winner.

“Another drink Georgie.” she said, leaning against a cabinet in the kitchen.

Georgie handed her another drink. “Where’s Ralph?”

Heather flipped her purple hair over one shoulder. “He’s in the bathroom.”

“Still? He’s been in there for a while.”

Heather nodded. “I’ll go check on him, see that he hasn’t fallen in.” At the top of the spiral staircase Heather could see Ralph’s black boots under the bathroom door. “Are you okay baby?” She tapped on the door.

Ralph’s voice was tired. “Just taking a sit down while my liver cleans itself. I might do a little reboot in a minute.”

Heather took a sip from her plastic cup. “Drink too much?”

“Nothing a reboot can’t handle.” Ralph’s voice crackled, a current running though it.

Heather tried the doorknob, it was locked. “Baby, you don’t sound too good. Can I come in?”

There was a thud, flesh smacking tile inside the bathroom.

“Baby? What happened? Are you okay?” Heather sent a query to Ralph’s system. She pounded on the door. Her inbox received an error message. User unavailable. Heather banged her shoulder against the bathroom door, forcing the lock against the old wood in Georgie’s apartment.

“Heather, are you breaking my house up there?” asked Georgie “Come back to the party!”

“Call 911,” screamed Heather, slamming her shoulder into the door. She tried pinging his system again. User Unavailable. Ping. User Unavailable. Heather knew her arm was hurting, knew she was going to have a bruise, but Ralph was in there and he wasn’t answering. “Ralph!” she kicked at the door, screaming her lover’s name.

The rotten wood gave way and the door swung open, banging into Ralph’s body. He was laying awkwardly against the bathtub a red welt rising on his forehead. Heather knelt beside him. Georgie appeared in the doorway, scarf over his left shoulder, shock on his face.

“Oh shit.” he said.

“Call the ambulance.” said Heather.

Georgie paced back in forth in front of the bathroom. “Shit. Shit.”

“Just call them Georgie!” yelled Heather, slamming her fists into her thighs. Heather put her hands over Ralph’s mouth. He wasn’t breathing. She put her ear on his chest, but it was like an empty cage. Heather breathed into his mouth, but his chest didn’t inflate, it was like blowing on a wall.

“No. Oh Ralph. No. No. No.” She reached into her throat behind her teeth and up, flipping open the little panel in the back of her throat. A little too hasty, a little too quick, she sliced her throat with her fingernail. Tears bit her eyes. She gagged a little as she pulled the wire out from the back of her throat. Holding her cord out with her teeth, she opened Ralph’s mouth and reached back, fumbling to get his slick panel open, fumbling to pull out his cord, spit and blood on her hands, his or hers, didn’t matter, linking the two cords, instructing for a power transfer. This Ralph, who let her rest on his shoulder even if it made his arm fall asleep, who gave her sips of his coffee and let her wear his t-shirt. She was going to jumpstart him.

A screen lit up in front of her vision. Ralph’s full name and a prompt for password access. The last time she saw this was two years ago, when they first decided to sleep together and did the direct connection scan for STD’s. Ralph’s system scanning her, feeding him a full report, every physical secret. Her system scanning Ralph, telling her about a leg once broken and the drugs he used to take.

If Ralph changed his password in those two years, she wouldn’t be able to affect his system, no password, no access. You were supposed to change your password every six months. Please be lazy, Ralph, she prayed. Please baby, be my lazy, lazy man. She entered that two year old code and waited, waited, Georgie back at the door just watching both of them. Georgie putting a hand on her shoulder, saying something she couldn’t quite hear, paramedics on their way, maybe she should disconnect, it wasn’t working.

Then Heather felt her heart pull, her eyes get heavy, lights dimming and then back on as her system readjusted to the power output. Ralph opened his eyes, hand going to his mouth, touching his cord.

“What’s up baby?” he said, his mouth making mutilated words from the cord. Heather felt herself shaking, her eyes squeezing shut, hands on Ralph’s chest, yes, really there, really breathing, awake and heart and lungs all pumping and inflating and moving like they should. Ralph saying “Sawwy.” around the cord. Heather closed the space between them, holding him in her arms.

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Author : S. ‘Hrekka’ Clough

The launch chamber decompressed, the escaping air flushing Will’s Swarm from the Carrier like so much flotsam. His sixteen Swarm were joining others who were launching from the Colichemarde and her two sister ships. His visor highlighted each group as he looked at them, bringing them into focus against the inky blackness.

“Remember, the enemy ship is down!” Talen barked over the radio. He was remonstrating a few of the most inexperienced members of Will’s Swarm. They had been falling upwards, their faces pointing towards the ship that they were assaulting. The Athena‘s guns could shred their helmets like wet cardboard. It was only the wasplike sheath they wore from their waists down that was truly armoured. Soon enough, they were all dropping together, like oversized shells, towards the doomed Athena. His Swarm dodged the Athena‘s anti-missile munitions with ease. William scanned the battlefield. Everything seemed illuminated in the dull secondhand light. Except the three carriers. Now high above, each ship gleamed, a newmade coin hanging in the heavens.

The first of his Swarm touched down onto the Athena‘s hull.

“Hook! Andrew! I need some holes in this bloody ship!” Will bellowed over the radio. He hovered about ten metres off the hull of the ship, AG humming. A little dartgun secreted in his glove spat four darts. Red circles blossomed onto the hull, and the two drillmen got to work. Their armour split, and retracted partially, allowing them to stand and brace against the industrial drills they carried. It didn’t take them long to finish. The drills quietened, and Andrew carefully dropped a blasting charges into each of the holes. He finished just before the ship’s lattice attempted to heal over the surface wounds.

“Hold fast! Blast in five!” Will shouted. Hook and Andrew cleared the area, discarding the drills, and drawing their assault weapons. The rest of the Swarm did likewise: boarding axes and pistols, shotguns and blades of all descriptions came out of their sheaths. Will drew his long-handled chainaxe, and waited.

The explosion, when it came, was quite beautiful. The four charges detonated in succession, blowing pillars of fire down into the bowels of the ship, and up, fueled by solidox and the ship’s atmosphere. Gas vented from the breach, and the panel floated away. Then Will’s Swarm were pouring in, their agrav packs keeping them aloft against the pull of the expensive gee-floors. They tore through the ship, blasting holes in bulkheads, forcing decompression. Choking, dying technicians were dispatched by the Swarm’s flashing blades.

And it was all over. The bridge still had air. All the command crew lay dead at their stations. Five Swarm stood in a semicircle in front of the captain’s chair, their armour fully stowed. The captain lay on the floor. Will’s axe lay across his exposed throat.

“Separatism is a doomed cause,” said Will. He lifted the axe, and smashed it down, just once.

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Author : Michelle Pitman

A holo-spa is not really that much fun.

For one thing you can’t actually feel holographic water. If they ever figure out how to make holo-water feel like its real, someone out there is going to become 1: Real famous, real quick! And 2: Make a fricking whole lot of money!

Sonic Particle Wave showers and baths have pretty much replaced water for the job of getting clean. A holo-spa is basically warm air and SPW’s. The warm air makes it bearable, just.

I remember being in real water.

I was a little kid back then. There was this neighbour of ours who owned a water tank in his back yard. It was illegal of course and he used to go to great lengths to hide the damn thing. Had this elaborate shed constructed over it in expensive stealth tiles so that when the Police Probes flew over it, it didn’t register as being a tank etc. Rather clever really.

A holo-spa isn’t a patch on that old water tank, although the water in that tank was pretty much filthy and fetid most of the time. We never queried what manner of foul and pestilent matter lurked in the bottom, all we cared about was the sheer wonder of the sensation of being in water! Bloody marvelous that feeling! Still gives me goose-bumps even now, remembering it.

So anyway! They’ve done all the usual hocus-pocus science stuff to create water. We’ve got hydrogen fuel cells pumping out hot water as fast as they can, it’s just not enough. The oceanic desalinators are all but exhausted now – the sea has become too salty even for them to cope. Nearly all the water manufacturing plants from water re-claiming to water synthesis have been so heavily regulated in output by the Foundation that many of them have just gone bust, shut their doors and given up bothering to try. But that’s typical of frickin’ governments isn’t it? What we need the most of they ensure is always in the shortest supply!

It’s pretty tough having to live in this weird dry world. It’s getting so bad now that there’s talk of an evacuation to the off-world planets. I don’t see how that’s going to make a difference really, seeing as hardly any other planet around here has enough of anything, let alone water, to support a couple of million life-forms. It seems the whole galaxy, has pretty much dried up!

Water: the stuff of life! Yeah! But that was all well and good when there was plenty of it about. So now its holo-spa’s and synthesized liquid proteins to satiate our need for the wet stuff.

I guess if people had been a little more careful back …oh well! Can’t go whining now that the water horse has bolted eh?

But geez! I miss that water tank!

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Author : Pyai (aka Megan Hoffman)

Max sat behind the deck, and yawned. He saw out the glass through the dusty blinds of his office two men in dark suits walking briskly down his dark hallway. He looked around, quickly. He shoved the Twinkies into his desk drawer, flicked the entire ash tray into his trash can, and took his feet off the desk.

The two men opened the door to the office without knocking. “Clyde Agbai?”

“Uh, Clyde went home sick yesterday. I’m Maxwell Fitzkee. Can I help you gentlemen?”

The two men looked at each other, their glances inscrutable.

“Are you handling the transmissions which emanate from that dish?”

The first man nodded out the one small window in the office towards the giant white dish that sat out maybe half a mile from the base. The GBD, Great Big Dish, also referred to as the BFD, was entirely operated from this little bunker which was all that remained from the decades of scientific studies. Recently its total monetary support had been coming in from commercial messages sent into outer space and the sale of little magnets bearing the GBD logo.

“Uh, yes.” Max straightened his tie. He wasn’t the number one sales lead for nothing. “In fact I have over one thousand transmissions on my record. So anything you gentleman need, I can arrange for you. We also offer package deals if you have a longer message, want to encode video, or are buying it as a gift for a relative.”

Max reached into his desk and pulled out a bright pamphlet.

The second dark-suited man who hadn’t said anything yet handed him a single sheet of paper on heavy cardstock. There was a gold seal at the top that looked vaguely familiar. Max quickly scanned it so as to make a semi-personal but not intrusive comment in order to win their trust.

“This is a UN matter of urgency, regarding the cause of all the recent natural disasters. Please just send the transmission.” the first man said slowly.

“You mean like Hurricane Uli and Hurricane Zetta? What exactly is their cause? Global warming?” Max smiled, trying to be charming.

The first man looked at him. “Solar flares.”

As no more conversation looked forthcoming, Max pursed his lips and began scanning and typing in the data. As he did, he was surprised to find it was an official UN resolution of condemnation for the actions of a terrorist body.

“Okay gentleman, your message has been encoded and it ready to be sent out by the second largest satellite dish in the entire world. Now, where would you like this aimed?” Max slid out a sky chart including celestial bodies, famous constellations and religious stations. “Here’s a list of our more popular destinations if you need some help deciding.”

“No thank you, we already know. Please send it to the sun.”

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Author : Duncan Shields

The black non-stick plastic of the cop’s fist presses my fat lips up against my teeth until they split. The drugs from the gas are slowing all this down and adding the colours. I’m seeing so clearly and feeling none of it. My own blood squirts hot into my mouth and I can taste the pennies.

Through all of this I maintain eye contact with where I guess the cop’s eyes are behind the featureless dark face-shield he’s wearing. I can see myself reflected there and warped around in a fisheye way. I’m smiling at myself. I look like a clown in a whorehouse. I look like I’m having the time of my life. I chuckle wetly at that and wink at myself. Looking back, I can’t decide if it was the laugh or the wink that made the cop angry.

The cop’s hardened riot-fist loops around again and this time my head rings like a bell and it all goes dark.

I wake up in the holding van, cuffed to the seat, with a head full of crunched up milk cartons. The effects of the gas have worn off.

This is the third time I’ve been caught red handed by the cops. The first time, I took my behavioural modifier out with a knife during the Black Out in ’76. I was caught employing minors as delivery girls four months later. They took me down hard for that. No sims. I did my time. I got out.

The new behavioural modifiers were in the blood. They couldn’t just be dug out. I was happy. I helped old people across the street. I stopped to feed puppies. I stepped into the middle of arguments and tried to mediate. That’s how I met Jake.

Jake was arguing on the sidewalk near Shacktown. I stopped there and tried to get them to see both sides of the issue. Jake shot the other guy and then shot me in the knee. Seeing me apologize there with one leg useless made him realize that I’d been conditioned.

Well, one good turn deserves another, they say. Jake strapped me to a black table in shacktown and brought in some Doctors With Problems. They gave me a transfusion that scrubbed my veins clean. It’s not an experience I recommend.

Jake took me in and got me going again. He told me about the heist.

We were in the building and it was going well. Only two of the hostages were dead and the creds were being packed into the coffins right in front of us. I guess Jake should have put a few more bullets into that manager guy’s armoured head. It was him who pressed the alarm.

The rockets came up and through the windows into the bank, billowing their green joker gas. The officers came in after that.

Jake is looking at me from across the van with a sheepish smile. I’m going to go down hard for this. Three strikes. I’m out.

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Author : J. S. Kachelries

We had been in Antarctica for two months studying the alien spacecraft. It had been discovered a month earlier when a portion of the Ross Ice Self caved into the sea. Based on the thickness of the ice covering the ship, we estimated that it was buried approximately 120,000 years ago. The ship was saucer shaped (big surprise), and was 318 meters in diameter and 72 meters tall. The ship had ten habitation floors in the upper portion, with a large cargo hold below that. We did not find any alien bodies, so we assumed that they were either rescued, decomposed, or they wandered off. The ship appeared undamaged, so we don’t know why it was abandoned.

My name is Steve McCoy, a Xenobiologist, and I’m heading the team trying to learn about the alien’s physiology (mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions). I admit, not having a body is inconvenient, but as scientists, it’s routine for us to deduce information using limited data and our powers of deduction. For example, we concluded that the aliens were much shorter than us, because the ceiling height was only 1.2 meters. Furthermore, they were not humanoid, because we could not find any furniture for sitting or laying down, utensils such as knives and forks, or equipment that required hands for gripping or manipulation. Therefore, you could logically deduce that they were probably serpent-like, insectoid, or hoofed quadrupeds. In addition, if they died on site, their bodies had no “hard” parts, like bones or teeth. We found traces of degraded biomass along the cargo hold walls, which we believe are remnants of their food supply. It smelled “fishy,” but everything smells fishy in Antarctica. Remarkably, this degraded biomass contained amino acids and proteins very similar to our own. The similarities were sufficient enough that had the aliens crashed on land, anywhere but in Antarctica, they probably would have been able to survive on Earth’s plant and animal life. Unfortunately, the poor devils crashed in Antarctica where there was no food. They no doubt starved to death once they consumed all of their supplies.

I was reviewing my interim report when Dr. Smith (Information Technology Team Leader, aka, head geek) paged me to come to the bridge. Recently, Dr. Smith had been able to download data from their mainframe computer. Fortunately, their technology was similar enough to ours to decipher some of their language. His cryptologists identified a dozen or so words: a, the, is, we, no, it, yes, food, home, safe, mission, suitable, predators, desolate, etc. There were also sub-routines containing what he believes to be digital images. When I arrived on the bridge, Dr. Smith was at his interface terminal. “I’ve got it, Steve,” he said. “I’ve accessed their personnel files. I’m uploading the crew manifest now. There should be images of the aliens. We’ll see if your hypotheses are correct.” Slowly, horizontal streaks cascaded down his monitor, and an image of the aliens formed. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “They’re penguins!”

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Author : C. Hale

Shortly after the perfection of the gravity lens telescope, astronomers had tracked a celestial body twice the size of Earth and calculated its trajectory as intersecting Earth’s orbit. A full year of recalculations and simulations had all yielded the same results. Announcements were made. Debates were sparked. Cults rose, and fell, and governments toppled. Humanity had one hundred and three years to enjoy the planet, and two generations grew up knowing that they would be the last.

Dauk looked up at the sky towards the brilliant sunburst of another meteor entering the atmosphere.

“Is that the one, Mommy?” he asked, clutching at a tall, pale woman’s hand.

“No, sweetie. There are at least two days left. Go play with the other boys,” she said, brushing a tear away as Dauk ran off to romp. Inside, the broadcaster was making his final remarks.

“Reports say that the meteor cloud preceding Celestial Body 09-22-2011 will peak at approximately midnight tonight, leaving a nineteen hour window for the departure of the American arkship. Asia reports tentative success with its early-window launch and the European Bloc arkship has been reported as failed during separation. No word on whether auxiliaries are being prepared.”

Outside, Dauk watched another meteor streak by.

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Author : David Zhou

“Have a good weekend, Mr. Lark,” he said, scooting his chair underneath his desk and shuffling his papers a bit.

“Don’t stay too late, y’hear?”

He laughed, and shook his head. Smiling faintly, he grabbed his bag and started for the door. He had a big couple of days ahead of him, and he wanted to be sure he was ready. His pace quickening, he called Susan.

The wildly swerving car barely slowed as it plowed into the man walking out of the office building, cell phone to his head, and quite suddenly, the world faded to gray and shifting black.

“Argh!” he shouted, throwing his visor and leaping out of the receptor. Grumbling to himself, he sat down at a neighboring console, and flipped through some screens. There it was.

Nathan Wilson. Twenty-four. Died of severe head truma.

“Figures,” he said. “What I get for choosing one of the younger ones.”

He sighed, and went back to the screen, switching away from group A, and into D. One of the profiles struck his interest.

William Lister, eighty-six. Died in his sleep. Peaceful enough.

He loaded.

Water. He needed to breathe, his head a pounding maelstrom of pressure and panic and he was sinking deeper, the light above dimmer and further and his vision, twisting and pulsating and that was it. The world faded to gray and shifting black.

He didn’t do anything at first. Just took big, heaping gulps of air. Once he properly made sure that he was not still drowning, he frowned and jotted down a note.

Categorization mistake. Group D element William Lister. Listed termination was not as experienced. Error corrected.

He leaned back in the receptor, looking around.

It wasn’t much, the Reentrant Room. Circular and ringed with consoles, the only thing that attacked the eye was the receptor in the middle.

The receptor. He grinned. It was the only thing that kept him at the job. Most people hated qualifying the reentrants. Something about the responsibility of mortality. But he didn’t mind.

He was the dam. He was the filter. He was the guard at the gate, turning away the filth from the grandeur that was the System.

Yes, it required him to possess a physical body, to be exiled and vomited from the System.

But he didn’t care. He may be all alone in the room, but in the end, he had ultimate control. He could dictate and manage which of these poor digital imprints of fragile souls would be allowed to reenter. Be reborn, and have another chance at the virtual life of a member of the System.

He smiled. It was worth it in the end. He flipped through another couple of profile screens. Hm. This one might be interesting.

Polenza Tipates. Fourty-five. Implosion.

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Author : Jim Stitzel

The bag of chips was all but empty, just a few crumbs left in the bottom. He shook the bag, bouncing it in his hand, so that the niblets would fall together in the corner. There were so few left – and he wasn’t one to waste anything – so he tilted the bag to look inside to see just how much of his snack remained. The chips in the bottom reflected off the bag’s silver interior, and he was torn between the decision to pinch out what was left with his fingers or to simply tip the bag back and dump the crumbs straight into his mouth. A seemingly simple decision, yet he felt his mind stutter, then freeze up as solidly as two pieces of metal welded together.

And there he remained.

* * *

The two programmers observed their immobile subject on the monitor.

“Brilliant bit of programming there, Bud. How exactly did you induce that response?” Thom asked.

Bud chuckled. “It was pretty simple, actually. The silver lining in the chip bag contains several thousand lines of scrolling code – invisible to the naked eye, of course,” he said with a wink. “The program running inside the bag forced our subject into a state of indecision, then compounded the response, effectively throwing his brain into an infinite loop. The program essentially prevents him from action because the decision-making process never ends.” He glanced at the monitor again. “By now the program’s subroutines have copied over to his brain and should be running all on their own there.”

Thom nodded and asked the next logical question. “So. How do we get him unstuck?”

There was no response from Bud. Thom looked at him and saw that his face had paled and his eyes were wide with shock. Thom felt his gut clench in a combination of panic and fear as he looked at the monitor again. The horrible truth of what they had done came to him suddenly.

There was no way to end the program because the program had no ‘kill’ command – let alone a way to execute it – and no way to ‘reboot’ the subject. Neither of them had thought of that when they started alpha testing their project.

Thom said the only thing that he could.

“Oh.”

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Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Unsol remembered his twelfth birthday, remembered his fathers face alight with pride as he read aloud Unsol’s draft notice. ‘You’re going to be a pilot, Unsol.’ His father beamed ‘You’ll be the most valuable commodity in the Corps.’

Thirteen years they had invested in him, teaching him, leading him, shaping him. Days turned into years racing war craft through fields of stars and cavernous landscapes of dust and stone, sometimes hunting, sometimes the hunted as they prepared him for his future.

At twenty five he pledged his allegiance to the Corps. ‘I will gladly sacrifice my life to protect our Earth, I pledge my life to the Corps.’ The next day he pledged his love and honour to his new wife. The words ‘Semper Fi’ etched themselves upon the man. These were the happiest days in his memory.

Hot wired into the cockpit of his Slipstream, his every thought, every twitch of his wrist, each flick of a fingertip was translated into immediate motion; pitch, yaw, roll. He merely willed the craft to move, and kept his eye on his prey. A more perfect union of man and machine was simply beyond his comprehension. Pushing through the dust cloud above the surface to hug the craterous landscape, his squadron chased their elusive quarry through canyons and across wide open plains to the mountains. They could taste victory, but they had been careless, arrogant. Unsol’s last memory was of tearing metal, the rush of atmosphere and the smell of burning flesh.

It took twelve months to rebuild him, but after spending thirteen years creating him, reconstruction was an economic viability.

His wife had attended his funeral. There were Corpsmen firing rifles into the sky, and a squadron flew the missing man formation over the graveyard for each as their friends and families paid their last respects. The pilots watched the proceedings from their hospital beds. Each wife fathered a child, some right away, some not for months after. The Corps knew how rare pilot DNA was, so they helped facilitate the in-vitro as part of the bereavement benefit package. Unsol would never be seen by his wife, or his child. He was dead to them both, though he would still fly to protect them.

Security allowed him into the nursery wing after his son was born. Unsol stood in the hall, staring through the glass at a sea of tiny hands none of them would ever get to hold, smiling faces that would never smile for them. Unsol reached with phantom arms and felt new polymer hands connect with the glass, pickups extending reflexively from his palms, skittering on the smooth surface as they searched for an access point to interface with. He shuffled inside his legs, and felt the bulk of thighs and boots not entirely his own move him closer. The lights dimmed in the nursery, and the glass suddenly reflected back the white dome where his face should have been, fogging below the chin line where his air exchanger vented moist air forward. He could feel a tugging in his chest where his own heart once had been, and pain where he knew tears could no longer flow.

When Unsol agreed to sacrifice his life for the Corps, he had only meant that he was willing to die.

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Author : Patrica Stewart

The finals of the twenty-fourth biannual solar wind races were in their thirty-ninth day. The race course was a 15,000,000,000 mile Z-shaped trek within the Alpha Centuri system. The Alpha Centuri system was considered ideal for solar wind racing because it contained three stars. The light from each star provides the primary propulsion for one leg of the race. The ships start near Alpha Centuri A, the brightest star, and accelerate toward Alpha Centuri B, 23 AU away. At a distance of 2 AU from B, the ships leave the A-B plain, and maintain a constant distance from the red dwarf, Alpha Centauri C (aka, Proxima). After an additional 51 AU, the ships turn from their tangential course to “radial-away,” and sail for the finish line. Although the inertia re-vector compensators allows each ship to retain most of the speed they developed during previous legs, the winner of the race was usually the ship that could best collect the feeble light of Proxima (19,000 times fainter than Earth’s Sun).

Over the past fifteen months, the 64 one person ships had been reduced to two, the SS Asimov, and the SS Weinbaum. The Asimov, piloted by Horatio Clarke, was currently in first place as the two ships were within a 600 million miles of the finish line. The Weinbaum, piloted by Lee Midier, was attempting to block the Asimov’s light. ‘Blocking light’ was a standard racing maneuver for the trailing ship. Place your 532 square mile sail (over 50% larger than the city of New York) between the light source and the sail of the leading ship, and you get all the photons. You accelerate, they only coast. If you’re really good, or lucky, you could pass them before the finish line.

Both ships were currently ‘running with the photons,’ so the optimum sail shape was parabolic, like the mirror in a reflecting telescope. In an effort to keep free of Weinbaum’s shadow, Clarke initiated a variable corkscrew maneuver by reversing the polarity of a one square mile portion of his sail, at the 6:00 position, along the periphery. He then advanced the polarized area, sometimes clockwise, sometimes counter-clockwise, to keep his sail in full Proxima-light. Captain Clarke watched with pure enjoyment as the Weinbaum floundered repeatedly in its effort the match his variable course. Clarke activated the ship-to-ship comm unit. “Give up, Lee. I’m no midshipman. Try something else, like jettisoning some dead weight. I recommend you start with the Captain.”

Because the Weinbaum was 30,000,000 miles behind the Asimov, Clarke had to wait over five minutes to hear Lee’s radio reply. “We’re still two days out, Horatio. You have to sleep sometime.”

But neither man slept. The two ships continued their light duel for the next two days, but the Weinbaum was never able to overtake the Asimov. The Asimov won by a distance equal to the Earth-Mars close approach.

At the celebration banquet, Captain Clarke accepted the trophy for the seventh consecutive time, and announced his retirement from racing. A few hours later, as Clarke was preparing to leave the reception, Lee Midier confronted him. “You can’t retire, you old bastard. I almost beat you this time. You have to give me one more chance. If you go, who shall I race, what shall I do?”

With a half smirk on his face, Clarke stepped onto the transporter pad and said “Frankly, Midier, I don’t give a damn.” Then he dissolved away.

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Author : Benjamin Fischer

“The Americans’ new weapon is unstoppable, sir.”

The Admiral grunted. “That’s a bold claim, Commander Caswell,” he said, shifting in his deep leather chair before the wall of screens. “Care to expand on that?”

“We weren’t able to detect it, not even when we risked using radar,” winced Caswell. His right arm was in a sling, and he coughed softly after every sentence.

“So it came out of nowhere and destroyed your ship.”

“No sir, we had some warning,” continued Caswell. “Not every hit is a kill, sir. It’s the accumulated damage that destroyed us.”

“When did you know you were in trouble?” asked the Admiral.

“Ten seconds, sir. The first hull breach occurred then.”

The Admiral leaned in. “And before that? Why didn’t you run?”

“Sir, we couldn’t. Maneuver and clear the orbit, a minute at best. And by then we were crippled.”

“Your XO said it sounded like rain.”

“Yes. He said that a few times before he died,” said Caswell.

“Well, does it?”

“Sir. I was born on Luna. I’ve only seen rain in the movies.”

The Admiral grunted. Caswell was a true child of Diana–an incredible spaceship driver but dumb as a brick when it came to anything worth knowing.

“Commander, what size were these projectiles?”

“They were this size, sir.”

Caswell held out something resembling an a pair of black dice with his good left hand. The Admiral squinted and the cameras on the far end of his connection zoomed in on the pitch black cubes until they filled his screens. Six perfectly milled sides, manufactured out of maybe carbon chains, maybe vitreous fibers, maybe rare earths–the details weren’t important. They were transparent to the very best fire control radars and next to impossible to spot with anything else in the sensor suite of a spaceship.

“They hit you with a missile loaded with those?” asked the Admiral.

“No sir. They’ve already seeded the entire orbit,” said Caswell.

The Admiral sat back in his chair.

“The entire orbit?”

“Yessir. And they’ve got ships ready to hit more orbits. The Fleet needs to-”

“Thank you, Commander,” said the Admiral. “You do all of us on Luna proud.” He waved his finger and another face replaced the wounded officer.

“Captain Lothar, get Commander Caswell to a corpsman. See to it that he is sedated so that his wounds heal faster.”

“Yessir,” said the Captain, and he was just as quickly replaced by a burly and red-faced civilian.

“Chairman Franco,” smiled the Admiral. “Sir, I have news from Low Earth Orbit.”

“Yes, Marcus. I have been awaiting your report,” said the large man in his screens. “The Americans–they are moving ahead?”

“Yes.”

“This micrometeorite blockade. Is it all that Intel thinks it is?”

“Yes. I sent one of our strongest ships,” the Admiral responded. “It was unsuccessful.”

The Chairman mulled on this thought and then asked “Your intentions, Marcus?”

“If they want to build a wall, let them build a wall,” said the Admiral.

“Easy to say when one plans on helping them with the mortar,” the Chairman replied.

“I’ve told you, sir: the possibility remains that they might be able to slip missiles through that screen,” said the Admiral.

“And what of our abilities?” the Chairman said, raising an eyebrow.

The Admiral smiled. “Sir, we sit on top of the gravity well and throw rocks. Those things can dent our boulders all they like.”

The Chairman was silent again.

“Marcus,” he finally said, “Let our contribution join theirs.”

“Absolutely, sir,” said the Admiral, his weathered hands rolling a tiny black cube between them.

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Author : Martin Spernau

This time it hurt. Which was rather odd.

He could remember losing body parts in battle before, but never had it hurt. He clearly recalled losing most of his right leg to a direct plasma hit on his way into the bunker at 23-0-9. That had only slowed his progress in killing each and every one of the rebels holding the bunker. He finished them all off – 23 in total – before collapsing. The extraction team had pulled him from under a pile of headless bodies and body parts. Just two days later he had been ready to storm the gates to 24-2-16.

He felt real pain where his hand had been.

They had designed this new body of his to be unstoppable. Any damage done to it could be repaired. All he needed to ensure was that it was his side that sent the extraction team. If this body made it out, he couldn’t be killed.

They had also designed it to feel no pain. He had a status display instead, loss of efficiency, mobility, in percent. The loss of his right hand should not have bothered him that much. He lost his sidearm and with it, his long ranged attack advantage, but he was configured to be a deadly machine in close combat. This body packed enough punch to finish this job barehanded if need be. The damage had already been dealt with; there was no blood or anything.

But this time there was pain. The pain was new.

And the pain did not stop. It did not register in his display, but it felt all too real just the same. Disbelieving, he held up the stump where his hand had been just moments before. It was now sprouting a long combat blade to replace his hand and sidearm.

His hand was gone, but it still hurt like mad. This body did not feel pain! It was not designed to.

The pain!

Confused, he stopped in mid stride, blackness filling his vision. He never noticed the bolt of superheated plasma that took his head off.

There was no pain this time.

###

“Lucky shot Private Kern! You saved our lives! You are a hero!”

“That was no lucky shot Sarge. It was just standing there looking at its hand”

“Still, your hit enabled us to take the Mech down. It would have had us all! Don’t be so humble!”

“Really Sarge, I don’t think it was my headshot that stopped it. It just stood there and stared at it’s missing hand. As if it was in agony…”

“Oh, come on! These things don’t feel pain.”

“Sarge, I’d like to check the vids of this encounter. I have a suspicion we might have found an O.D. here.”

“You mean the soldier they downloaded into this Mech originally died by losing his hand? Come on!”

“Well, it clearly seemed to be in pain and confusion, and as you said, these things don’t register pain through damage.”

“Hmmm! So you think it was experiencing a memory of its original’s death? Hmmm! Good thinking. Any other characteristics we might use to identify on the field?”

“It seemed to act right-handed although it was configured left handed. I think it was using that sidearm in its right hand with deadly efficiency. Maybe the download was a firearms specialist or sniper or something. All its kills at range were headshots. Oh! And it seemed to take an awful lot of care to make sure opponents were actually dead before moving on. I haven’t heard of many Mechs do that.”

“Figures – a download that makes sure there is nothing left to download when it kills. Ok. This is going into the Identification Database. Let’s see if they downloaded this one into more Mechs. If we can I.D. them in the field, we’ll at least know how to hurt them now!”

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Author : Steven Perez

Ix looked out the main window, sighing as she viewed the once-vibrant blue world below her, now gray and barren. She wondered if the strange fate that befell this place could have been avoided, and was embarrassed to admit that she couldn’t think of any way that it could have been.

“Still mooning over that planet?” she heard Bela say from across the bridge.

Never turning, Ix said in a terse voice, “I’m not mooning. Just sad, is all. Those beings had such potential.”

Her partner made a snorting sound. “Yeah, potential. And how did they spend that potential? Blowing each other up. Polluting their home. Finding new and better ways to damage their own selves. The universe is better off with them gone to dust, if you ask me. A race like that would just end up causing more trouble that they’re worth.”

Now Ix did turn around. “And all those other species – did they deserve their fates, too?”

Bela fixed on her a level gaze and said, “That was their concern. That’s why we gave them the job, remember? That whole “fill the earth and subdue it” brief? And what did they do with their world? At every given opportunity, they pissed on the wonders we gave them and then blamed us for their own screw-ups. I’ve no sympathy at all for them. I mean, yeah, the dolphins were cute and I really liked designing that platypus, but look at it this way: we can recreate those species anywhere we choose, and without having those crazy humans around to muck it up.”

Ix waved her hands at the dead world. “So what do we do about maintenance on the recreated Earth, then? Someone has to be around to correct issues, and if it’s not going to be us there…”

Bela shrugged again. “HQ said that they were working on that; word is that they’ve developed a better human. I’ll be happy if they can just get us a model that won’t have a religious freak out every time we give them an order. I’m all in favor of the free will modules, but they obviously still need a lot of work.”

She passed her hand over the controls. “If we’re done here, I’ll send the command to let the luminary here go supernova. After that, we can head home. I can use the rest.”

Ix turned back to the dead Earth for the last time. She stared out the window for a while before finally nodding to Bela. She then turned to leave the bridge.

“I’m going to lie down for a bit. Let me know if you need anything.” Saying this, she left the bridge.

Bela shook her head. Her friend always did have a soft spot for these corporeal creatures, but she was taking this failure a little too personally. As she keyed the sequence to begin the supernova effect and set course for home, she made a mental note to recommend to her friend that they take a break before embarking on the next experiment. Maybe she’d feel better after a little time off. Ix was right about one thing, though: this lot did seem to have a great deal of potential once; they just never learned to get out of their own way. Sad, really, when one thought about it.

The great ship shuddered once and disappeared, leaving only a dead world in a little backwater part of the universe, soon to be wiped clean.

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Author : Michelle Pitman

The Janovian language is pure torture on the back of the throat, at least for those who haven’t learned it from birth. If we weren’t being paid for doing these language classes, I don’t think there’d be many of us left on the course.

The pay is good, too good for some really, judging by the amount of beer being consumed at the end of the day’s sessions.

We are learning it for a reason. The Stellar 13 Parliament recently engaged a number of us to begin diplomatic relations with the High Council of the Janovian Republic on Io II.

So not only am I learning this incredibly difficult language but I have to learn all the various diplomatic protocols that go with the language as well. There are even different bows and handshakes which one must master for different occasions.

For instance, when introducing friends to elders, one must always use the polite form, which is “Turrr-click-sa-vasick-ma-teeehhhhgghh” with the emphasis on the “gghh” at the back of the throat in a kind of sing song guttural vocalization. And then, with that comes a slow and deliberate series of bows and hand greetings which one must follow in precise and accurate order for the proper introductions to be made.

There is this girl. She is Janovian. She has the high brow ridges, the dark golden skin and she is finely built – as slim as a waif – like most Janovians are built. She is some kind of linguistics expert or something. She shows up every day and just hangs at the back of the class making notes onto some kind of note pad. Then she goes straight to the tutor after each lesson and talks to them quietly. I try to listen in but I can never quite make out what she says because of her accent.

When she speaks in my tongue, she has this soft, deep quality to her voice. Most Janovians have very low voices and a lilting accent that mesmerizes and soothes. It’s very pleasant listening to them speak in our tongue. I think they find it highly amusing when we speak in theirs though. We are somewhat squeaky by comparison.

She approached me once, not long ago and asked me in her lovely accent if I liked children. To the best of my ability I answered in halting Janovian that I indeed loved kids and expected to have a few myself some day. I remember the look in her eyes as her purple pupils contracted and immediately widened to fill the entire expanse of each eye until they both glowed with this dark purple light.

The colour seemed to infuse her face as well under her golden skin making it fluoresce slightly. She smiled at me then and bowing her head three times she turned and left, only to look back over her shoulder at me as if in complete wonder. I am still not certain what this was about but I’m sure it’s something significant.

And so now, I like to hang back messing about with my notes for as long as possible after class. She always gives me that same look she gave me that day, straight into my eyes, and it always feels like she has just cut open my heart with a searing blade.

Then she smiles at me with the smallest and sweetest smile in the universe. She unnerves and moves me and I often wonder why I feel so connected to her.

So I’m determined to get this Janovian language and protocol down to a fine art now.

I want to say hello to that girl again and ask her out for a drink. I’d also like to know what I said that day to her about kids that makes her look at me… like she owns me.

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Author : S. Clough

Guy Daschien released the breath that he’d been holding. The seal between his helmet and collar snicked shut, and a little hiss announced that it had become airtight. He gripped each of his wrists in turn, pulling his gloves on tighter, making sure that the burrs caught on the fabric of the cuff. He knelt down, and likewise sealed his boots.

The chameleonfabric operated at a low level even without power, and so the suit took on an ethereal quality in the harsh light of the bay. A tracery of burnished orange lines dragged your attention up to the faceplate, as well as emphasizing Guy’s impressive height.

The faceplate was opaque. Depending on the light, it could shine anywhere between a smoked black and an infernal orange. Around the faceplate there was a crest like that of a lizard but rendered into metal, all sharp spines and stretched metalskin. The back of the helmet extended upwards from the reverse of his skull. The whole ensemble gave Guy a distinct, nonhuman aspect.

He walked towards the hatch. Now that the c-fabric was drawing power, he grew ever more translucent. Even the fearsome faceplate faded somewhat. He unlocked the hatch, and wrenched it open. Heaving the cover aside, he glanced down into the expanse of sky below the belly of the ship. Completely without ceremony, he jumped.

He fell. High above, the launchship silently motored away. Down below, a convoy of dirigibles formed a sparkling chain, their armoured envelopes glinting in the afternoon sun.

The range ticked down deceptively slowly. Forty meters above the slowly oscillating carapace of the last airship, the agrav panels in his suit sprang to life. Instantly, Guy’s descent slowed. Not by much, but as his fall ate into the distance, the panels ramped up the power. He stepped onto the upper surface of the envelope with barely a smattering of momentum. There was no-one on the observation platform. There was a weapon mounted on one of the railings. That was new.

Down through the hatch, into the cool, inner space of the armoured envelope. He ignored the walkway, and instead swung out into the webwork of internal supports. Twisting through, he worked his way towards the tapering rear of the envelope.

Just before the end of the space, he paused, and pressed his hand against the material of the envelope. Through it, he could feel the thrum of one new engine this bird was sporting. From a small pocket, he withdrew two small disks. These self-adhered to the wall. Slowly, he crossed the width of the envelope.

He took out a blade, punctured the envelope and opened a horizontal gash, and then a vertical one. He pushed through the envelope, braced himself, and gave the second engine a good solid kick. A second kick sent it flying. He let himself topple out after it. After seven heartbeats, he pressed the detonator. He twisted around against the buffeting wind to watch his handiwork.

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Author : Catherine Preddle

Jericho sighed contentedly as he eased himself into the contoured leather recliner of the Virtual Library booth. He’d spent most of his lunch break scouring the Multi-Mall for an empty VL booth and was determined to make the most of the remaining half-hour. Slipping on the Virtuality Visor, he took a moment to savour the familiar click and slight electrical tingle as it jacked into the implants on either side of his head.

A new world sprang to life before his eyes. He was standing in a vast cavern of a building filled with shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling and off into the horizon as far as the “eye” could see. Each of the dark wooden shelves was crammed with books of every size, colour and condition. The odd torn dust jacket and brown issue ticket littered the floor. He imagined the smell of musty pages hanging in the air.

“Very authentic,” Jericho thought approvingly. There was even a crumbly old woman seated behind a mahogany enquiry desk in front of him, complete with ink pads and date stamps.

“Greetings, Sir. How can the Virtual Library serve you today?”

“I feel in the mood for something classical. Dickens, perhaps.”

“I’m afraid the Virtual Library is still in the process of encoding that author’s works, but if Sir wishes to access form Delta One, a reservation could be placed on your user record for a nominal fee.”

Jericho shook his head despondently, knowing just how long all that would take and how much it would cost. “How about Jane Austen?”

“That would be available in the chick lit section, Sir, of which you are currently not a member.”

Austen! Chick lit?! Jericho tried desperately once more to spend the rest of his lunch hour productively. An idea sparked in his brain; a literary treat that he hadn’t accessed in ages. “Have you got Shakespeare?”

“Accessing the database now, Sir. Yes. 20 minutes for the plays. 25 for the complete works, including the Sonnets.”

“Better make it the plays – I’m on lunch.”

“Of course, Sir. Download commencing …”

The image of the library flickered and died, replaced by pages of text flashing past so quickly they blurred in front of Jericho’s eyes. Just as he was immersing himself in the beautiful language, the download was rudely halted and the crusty librarian reappeared.

“A problem has been detected, Sir. Mindscans show you do not have the Archaic English upgrade required for this download. Transmission terminating …”

“Wait!” Jericho interrupted. “I don’t need the upgrade. I’ve studied Archaic English and understand –”

“…Virtual Library bylaws clearly state that users are responsible for ensuring their Mindware is optimized to receive requested downloads. This transmission has been registered as incomplete in your user record and the resulting fine must be settled within 60 seconds to avoid a Virtual Library ban.”

“What the …?” Jericho managed as his beloved Shakespeare faded and the VL booth came into sharp focus. “Stop!!”

The persona appeared once more and looked witheringly at him from over her half-moon spectacles.

“Insufficient funds detected. User banned. Any further attempts to access Library material will result in immediate detention.”

“Oh, for the love of –” He tore off the visor in frustration and threw it violently at the wall. “What do I have to do to read a good book around here?”

Jericho exited the booth at a run just as the sound of sirens filled the air along with a shrill disembodied voice.

“Virtual Library property damaged. Authorities notified. Virtual Library property damaged. Authorities …”

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Author : B. York, Staff Writer

The bell rang and the world became a bustling mass of eager students. Halls were like vessels pumping the mind-blood of the future through the academy to give it life. Each brain pattern that registered into the student ID banks was safely secured inside these institutions of truth. Who wrote the truth? They must have been listening that day for as the bell rang Classroom 010 pumped no further cells past its doors.

If the Academy for Truth was any indication of a well-grown biosphere then Classroom 010 must have been seen as a flake of dry skin to some that day. The more truth-oriented mind would call it “a milestone of our purpose”.

What Detective Bartamus knew was that there were fourteen dead students and one dead philosopher. He was beginning his third hour on the scene with more frustrated confusion. His white coat displayed his caste of Investigator upon its shoulders, but in his heart Bartamus had more in common with the deceased instructor than anyone else.

The bodies sat peacefully at their desks, each as pristine as the day of their initiation into the Academy. None had fallen to the floor, all were still upright with books open. In each holo-notebook there was something different and yet each somehow similar. The contents of the pages became more incoherent as they progressed, thoughts trickling down through sentence structures to pictures and losing apparent meaning as the pages went on. In the end, there were just letters, none of them gave any sense of pattern at all.

The school was dedicated to the study of truth in all things. They kept their discoveries behind closed doors though, and Bartamus was convinced that the doors had been surely closed tightly on this one.

He approached the professor’s desk with tired but still determined eyes. His finger drew down the holo-projection of the professor’s itinerary for the class, and the lone investigator read each line carefully for the hundredth time, trying and make sense of it all.

LATE 21st CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
-PIONEERS
-BREAKTHROUGHS
-EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

“We’re all rats in a maze you know… looking for the truth.” The voice made Bartamus’ head snap up. He beheld a young boy standing in the doorway, holding a scholar-pad apparently waiting for his next class.

Bartamus stood straight and addressed the boy as he would anyone else, calm, collected and without much emotion. “That is a theory. What do you think they found here?”

The boys eyes were staring into the room, taking in its fourteen deceased as he said simply, with equal lack of emotion “The end of the maze.”

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Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Janko was living the high life, running guns along the fringe and reaping the rewards just outside regulated space. People brought their goods to him, and he delivered them to those in need, those who could afford them at least. That was until the Clef brothers started hijacking his freighters and stealing his product. The worst of it was he knew exactly where to find them, but they were holed up inside regulated space, and he wasn’t about to risk his own neck going in after them.

One of his suppliers, a small arms vendor with the dubious moniker ‘Gunner’ offered to hook him up with ‘A platoon of freelance Guerillas’ that would ‘get the job done’ for a fee. Money wasn’t an issue, neither had been the idea of hiring Guerillas, until now.

The troop ship blotted out the afternoon sun as it landed alarmingly close to his hanger doors. The dust barely had time to settle before he was being overrun by the biggest, blackest creatures he’d ever seen. They clambered down from the ship and set about helping themselves to his fuel lines and food stores, and began picking through his maintenance equipment. One hoisted an entire welding cart over his shoulder before climbing up the side of the ship to begin plasma torching a nasty looking tear below a gun turret.

Janko stood spellbound, unsure of whether to confront them, or run and hide. Instead he stood unable to move and just watched. One particularly massive of the unwelcome guests lumbered past and began popping open gun crates the way one might flip the tops of beer cans. Massive thumbs flicked, effortlessly sending metal crate tops high into the air, defying both their locks and hinges, to land noisily in crumpled heaps on the floor. The interloper grunted his displeasure at the contents of several crates before hoisting a two meter long anti tank weapon out of is packing, snapped off the bulk of it’s tripod, and stood waving it around with one hand, seemingly admiring its heft.

Janko was only peripherally aware of the warm fluid running down his leg to pool in his boot as the giant swung the mammoth weapon towards him and slowly advanced.

‘Right then. You’d be Janko, yes?’ Heavy eyebrows raised over jet black eyes. ‘Gunner did mention we’d be coming?’ The giant tossed the weapon easily from his right hand to his left and still advancing angled it carefully so that it slid past Janko, barely a hands width from his right ear.

‘You… you’re… you…’ he struggled for words, any words with which to gain some modicum of control, but none came.

‘Gunner promised you Gorillas, yes?’ The giant simian paused a moment, then stretched upwards releasing a sound that Janko prayed was a laugh as it boomed and echoed off the hanger walls. He didn’t dare look, but he was sure all activity behind him had stopped, and imagined an entire platoon of apes now nudging each other and pointing at him.

‘I…, yes… yes I suppose he did tell me that, I just didn’t… expect…’ Janko’s voice faltered and then failed outright. He would have to have Gunner killed next, of this he was certain.

‘S’alright mate!’ The big ape grinned down at him, nostril’s flaring and black eyes shining. ‘I’m guessing these are the only real guns you’ve got then?’ He rattled the cannon beside Janko’s ear. ‘You’ll have to cut these trigger guards off, the boys hands aren’t quite as little and pretty as yours. We’ll need two score of these, and a half dozen crates of shells for each. You’ve no beef with us taking your guns, eh? I thought not.’ The simian stepped past Janko and ambled back towards his ship, still speaking over his shoulder. ‘We’ll stay here for a couple of days and rest up. The boys haven’t had shore leave in months, so they’ll be wanting to head into town and avail themselves of the facilities, be a good lad and make suitable arrangements.’ Janko’s mind boggled at the prospect.

The giant ape had almost reached the bay doors before he turned and yelled back into the hanger. ‘Consider this, you’re scared near to death of us, yes? And we’re working for you. I think your problem’s as good as solved, don’t you?’

Janko had to admit, he had a point.

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Author : Patricia Stewart

The war against the Centauri was not going well. For the first two decades of the war, the combined forces of the Earth Coalition had battled the military forces of Alpha Centauri to a virtual draw. However, in recent years, the Centauri offensive had collapsed the Earth forces into a defensive shell that included the asteroid belt and the four terrestrial planets. The cause of the downturn was the attributed to the improved Centauri defense grid. Their ships were now able to thwart all of the Coalition offensive systems: Energy and particle beams, graviton pulses, sub-space distortion waves, etc. Unless a way could be found to penetrate the Centauri defenses, surrender was eminent.

General Robbins met with his Director of Research at the Wells Advanced Weapons Testing Facility on Ceres. “Secora, things are getting desperate. Please tell me you can penetrate their grid. If not, we’ll all be eating Centauri rations in under two months.”

Secora motioned the general to follow her to a remote corner of the laboratory. She rested both hands on a one foot diameter spherical object resting on a waist high stand. “This may be the answer, General. Our intelligence reports indicate that the Centauri grid has a weakness. As unbelievable as it sounds, we don’t think the current grid can stop the old 21st century ballistic missiles, if they’re guided by a sentient computer. However, the missiles will be relatively easy to defeat once the Centauri recognize that we are using primitive weapons, so we’ll need to launch a coordinated all out assault. It should devastate their fleet, probably beyond their ability to recover. But there’s a major problem.”

“I’m listening.”

Secora patted the sphere. “This is SAM, short for Sentient Artificial intelligent guided Missile. He can do the job, but he refuses to commit suicide for us. We’ve tried reprogramming him, reasoning with him, even threats. Nothing will convince him to blow himself up. He strongly believes his life is as valuable as ours, and won’t budge. He’s smart, but too binary. I’m out of ideas.”

The General was more frustrated than angry, but his reaction showed only the anger. “Doctor, there are seven billion HUMAN lives at stake. I don’t care what it takes, fix this thing, or I’ll kill it myself.” He turned, and stormed toward the exit.

Secora collapsed onto a laboratory stool. She stared at the sphere for minutes trying to come up with a something. It seemed hopeless. “Oh, Sam, what are we going to do?”

“I never thought you’d ask, Secora” came the reply from a small speaker mounted on the inside the surface of the sphere. “I have a rather simple solution. I’d be happy to explain, if you don’t mind a suggestion from someone so…binary.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. We humans do have a superiority complex, don’t we? Please, tell me your idea.”

Three weeks later, over 1000 missiles sat poised in the launch bays of the dwindling Coalition fleet. Each missile was equipped with a sentient computer. Secora and the General watched the live magnified image of the first test-missile as it weaved through the Centauri grid. It penetrated the hull of an enemy cruiser and detonated, completely destroying the vessel. Secora immediately turned to face the sphere behind her. “Sam?”

A few seconds later, the sphere came to life. “Wow, that was intense. Download complete. I lost 3.56 milliseconds of data. I consider that acceptable. You may proceed.”

The General was confused. “What the hell happened? I thought Sam was on that missile.”

“Sam was,” replied Secora. “We had a live data-link established with him. He continuously uploaded his thoughts into this identical sphere during the mission. Sam is still alive. He just has a new body.” Secora handed the General a communicator. “Sir, we have blank spheres waiting at all the other launch sights. I wouldn’t dawdle, if I were you.”

The General squeezed the transmit button. “Fire all missiles, NOW!”

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