365 tomorrows

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Phyx crossed the street at the East end of the bridge, the soft neon glow of the street vendor drawing him in out of the evening drizzle. As he stepped under the shelter of the umbrella, implants stimulated muscles and patches of tensile fabric beneath his hairline, pulling the flesh of his face taut. The vendor would likely survive the evening, and it was a young man he’d remember from the moments before the mayhem began.

He selected a small tray of sushi and a bottle of mineral water. Paying cash, he smiled and nodded, allowing his face to relax only after he’d turned and stepped back into the darkness. Phyx ate slowly as he walked onto the bridge, taking a position along the railing. There was nothing to do now but wait.

Images of the evening’s target flashed through his mind. A volatile cocktail of stimulants and memory enhancers would render every feature of the Senator in immaculate detail. The exact proportions of nose, chin and eye sockets; the slight difference in flexion between the two knee joints from a recent surgery; the nervous left eye twitch. Every characteristic with crystal clarity. In time, these would become just memories, but for now, they carried the intensity only a professional could bear.

He slipped the empty tray into a recycling bin as the first two members of the Senator’s security team jogged onto the other end of the bridge. Phyx smiled at the kevlar plate armor the two men would be forced to maneuver in, making careful note of the exposure points for arterial penetration. The Senator himself came into view next, flanked by four more men, and in the distance, Phyx could make out two motorcycles following quietly behind.

As jobs went, this one was unremarkable. The Senator was pushing legislation that was threatening a lucrative patent. A stake holder had an eager assistant find Phyx and with the payment of his fee, he simply had to live up to his name and reputation.

As the first guard reached the middle of the bridge, Phyx studied the Senators gait, it was even, steady, wrong. Phyx knew the left knee joint couldn’t flex like that, the re-knitting of his ACL was still too fresh. Turning from the decoy, Phyx started walking West, off the bridge, slowing as a car pulled up, blocking the road. Two men stepped out, weapons in hand and began walking towards him.

“Freeze. You’re under arrest for the attempted assas…” The words were torn away in a pink mist as the limp form toppled backwards onto the street. Phyx crouched low, sprinting across the roadway, his jacket flowing, obtuse angles deflecting high velocity fire from the other end of the bridge. Three steps and he had a clear view of the vendor’s cart, a single shot punching into the gas cylinder on its side, the neon umbrella suddenly enveloped in a cloud of blue and orange flame.

The explosion bought him a few seconds of distraction, and he capitalized by taking two more shots at the closest men; gaps in their armor exploited with startling precision. Return fire peppered Phyx, most bullets glancing off the fabric of his jacket, or merely bruising with the impact, but a rifle shot punched through and tore into his heart.

Phyx staggered and fell to one knee, reflexively pulling the coat around him. Blood pressure dropped precipitously, triggering valves to iris off around the damaged muscle, drugs released, numbing it, preventing it from emptying his bodily fluids out through the gaping wound in his chest. For a moment, he was frozen, vulnerable, but then a second pump took up the task, adrenaline and oxygen enriched blood flooded his body, and he was running again. He cleared the railing, diving towards the river below, and his mind raced.

He’d been betrayed, most likely by the assistant looking for a political posting. As Phyx hugged his chest and propelled himself down the river, he knew his targets were now two. Not being a vengeful man, the assistant he’d do simply as a matter of public service.

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Author : Chelsea Peloquin

I wasn’t always this way, you know. It happened a long time ago, yeah, but I wasn’t always invisible.

I don’t know exactly when it happened. I just know that one day I realized that there were no more calls on my phone, no more voicemails or emails or snail mails, no more cares or concerns. It’s funny how a person can just disappear like that. I don’t think they even remember me anymore—I walked through the house and all pictures of me had disappeared, as though I were never there.

I do know how it happened. I didn’t know that Madame Mystery would be the last person to ever look me in the eye. That crazy glass eyeball of hers lolled in all sorts of directions—that’s the last thing that ever looked at me, that crazy glass eyeball. It didn’t show me any emotion when I told her I wished I was invisible. It did as it was told and lolled around in its socket.

My brother was too scared to do it, but I did the dare without a second thought. He doesn’t even know he had a sister now, and I don’t know if there will ever be a way for me to let him know that I once existed.

Not even the mirrors remember what I look like.

I remember when people knew I existed. I remember when someone actually gave me a surprise birthday party—I can still remember tasting the cake and the cream cheese icing. It was my favorite. I can remember conversations as clearly as though I’ve just had them. I don’t care what I said, but what they said stayed rooted in my thoughts and grew thick like redwood trees. I took those things for granted.

Now I can’t even catch a stranger’s eye on the streets.

One grows used to it, I suppose. You get used to the noise of life around you that ignores everything you do. You can go through life doing whatever you want, eating hotdogs from the stands without having to pay, stand underneath the Slurpee machines in corner stores and turn your tongue green, fart in church and the reverend keeps droning along like a bee in a hive. Last night I took a shower with the new Calvin Klein underwear model.

I suppose there’s a silver lining to every cloud.

You don’t really know what you’ve got till it’s gone. There’s no one else like me in the world. Even if there were, I don’t think I’d know about them. We’ve all forgotten what we looked like, what we sounded like, what we wanted to do with our lives, so much so that we’ve forgotten why it is that we exist. Only the lives of those around us keep us company, because we like to remember just what it was like to be able to interact.

I like to know that people still interact with each other.

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Author : Christopher Albanese

With her eye pressed to the inside of the window and his eye pressed to the out, their lashes navigate the viscous silicate surface of the glass. Somewhere inside, they twine.

The same happens at each of their fingertips — ten hers and ten his press to the window, hers on the inside, his out. A human eye cannot see the wriggling strands of DNA trickle and tumble from the sweat on their fingertips to push through the glass, seeking the heat from the other.

A human eye cannot see the surge, the urgent chemical transaction that occurs as these strands strive through the silicate surface with a drive not unlike that of spermatoza starting new life. Incensed and alive, these precious pieces of their selves wriggle and writhe as they drive on, headlong.

The glass heats to liquid beneath her fingertips. She presses out tighter, her fingertips. Just beyond the glass, on the outside of hers, are his. He is receiving.

Behind him, lightning crashes across the stars and indigoes bleed from bruise to red as chemicals cut the sky. Inside, the space behind her is vacuum silent, vacuum empty, vacuum deadly. Yet, she lives. She is a new form of life, and she is limitless. He is the way of all things. They peer through the window, and a new form of creation has been engaged.

They open their mouths and press their sets of lips to the window, hers on the inside, his out. Her blue eyes blink and his green do, too. Sealed in this O-ring kiss, they inhale – her the vacuum, him the stars.

A skin like mercury bubbles into the cavity created by the kiss. It takes four minutes for the glass to cease to resist. The sound that shakes them apart is not a shatter, but a torrent. The sound that shakes them apart is the union of all things to the vacuum. The sound registers at the frequency of a new form of creation screaming alive.

Their invisible barrier boiled and broken, they melt the space between them as lightning screams down indigoes from the sky.

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Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer

I wake up from a dream about bookshelves and the answers to life. The sheets are damp with sweat and tangled around me. I sit up and look around at my dark room, allowing my eyes to adjust. The stars twinkle outside my living quarters window.

I’m one of the few people here who remembers life on Earth.

I fumble a cigarette out from a pack on the bedside table and wonder for about the hundredth time why there isn’t a twenty-four-hour kitchen on this station.

I stand by the window for a few minutes with the sheet wrapped around my shoulders like a cloak as I smoke. I look back at the bed and can still almost see the impression that Janet made after being there for six weeks. She hasn’t been there for the last two nights and has no plans to return.

I am worried about how little I care.

I have no position of authority here but there is a certain mysticism surrounding the fact that not only have I been on a planet, but I’ve been on the very planet that birthed us as a race. To tell the truth, I remember very little about those days back on planet Earth but I don’t let on.

I stand and smoke and look out the window and wait for the timers to turn on the morning lighting.

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Author : CK

“Synaptic couplers disengaged.” Andrei Milosovic sat up in the recliner, gingerly rubbing the back of his neck. He glanced at the control room window; his colleague there beckoned him up. The Institute had paid for the nanosurgery and training- all so that one of the country’s most promising minds could be one of the privileged few with unrestricted access to the whole of human knowledge- and for what? Fields of fog, and chills down the spine. Milosovic swung his legs over the side of the chair and made his way upstairs.

“Mind telling me what I’m supposed to be seeing?”

“Look. Right there. Those aren’t human alpha patterns.” Albert Gürz pointed to the screen displaying the records of his colleague’s MMI session.

“Not on the screen. I mean during the interface. It’s all gray.”

“Like I said, these aren’t alpha patterns. Maybe you aren’t relaxing?” Milosovic snorted. It had taken him years of psychological exercise to achieve a restful, ‘alpha’ state during these sessions, despite the fact that the previously sacrosanct boundary between his consciousness and the world outside had been so brutally violated by this machine. The thought that his training was failing him, now that it finally came to it, was laughable. He peered at the screen again.

“Was I asleep?” Gürz looked puzzled.

“No. Why?” Milosovic remained silent, instead merely indicating a section of the brain wave graph in response.

Gürz’ eyes narrowed and his hand moved towards his chin, mannerisms characteristic of his most pensive of moods. “They look like delta waves.”

“I know they do. Does the system work both ways?”

“That’s immaterial. Even if we had built it to, there would need to be a consciousness on the other end. It was made to be an interactive database, and that is what it is.” Milosovic remained skeptical. His training allowed him to seamlessly exchange data- information, but also sense data, emotion, unadulterated thought- with the machine’s processor. But what it could not prepare him for, and what Milosovic was having difficulty accepting, was the machine’s response to the most human of these processes. A machine has no use for emotion, but where Milosovic had expected an inability to parse such data, he instead experienced a void, as though the bits and bytes of his humanity were absorbed in their transmission: processed and rejected. Computers were cold and impersonal by design, but this mind-machine interface seemed cold by nature, if machines possessed such a thing. The looming monstrosity of the processor’s protrusion into Milosovic’ thoughts left him with the impression that he was dealing with an analytical, dispassionate individual as opposed to an information-relay engine, and it chilled him to the bone.

“Punch up the brainwave reader.”

“What? Why? You’re disconnected. There’s nothing to read.”

“Just do it.” Gürz tapped a key and his eyes widened in shock. There, though the machine displayed operational standby, were patterns coherent with human delta brainwaves, indicative of deep sleep. An iron fist closed around Milosovic’ gut.

“It’s dreaming…”

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Author : S. Clough aka ‘Hrekka’

“Excuse me, umm…”

“Can I help?” Roisin responded pleasantly, turning to see who had addressed her.

“My name’s Gillian…I’m looking for someone who could courier something for me…do you know…?” Gillian’s question tailed off. She had never been able to approach strangers with any degree of confidence.

Roisin hadn’t met Gillian before, and her Captain had taught her to be immediately cautious around strangers. ‘It isn’t possible to be too suspicious.’ These words became a mantra after a time. Strangers, especially here, at the races, made her particularly uneasy. Roisin had drawn up a graph before, charting proximity of any gambling opportunity against ‘number of people who Kate owes money too’. It came out as you’d expect, really.

There was nothing about this woman that might mark her as a run-of-the-mill debt collector. She wore ornate clothes, oriental in style, in white and patterned with green. The collar was high enough to almost cover her mouth. Roisin judged her to be approaching thirty, if she hadn’t had any age mods. Her hair, though, gave Roisin pause. It was impossibly tall, bubblegum pink and there wasn’t the slightest chance that it was in any way natural. All these thoughts passed in a moment, and Roisin put on a warm smile, whilst nonchalantly letting one of her hands drift to the pocket of her overalls to wrap her long fingers around the spanner tucked there.

“Well, Gillian,” she said, her face genial, “that depends. I assume you know what kind of ship I work on?” She gestured to the dark shape of the River, behind her, dominating the bay. “We don’t usually run cargo. You’ll have to give us a few very good reasons as to why we should make an exception for you.”

“Umm…well…”

“Spit it out.”

“It’s the cargo.” She hesitated, shuffling her feet nervously. “It’s…different.”

“Show me.”

Gillian bit her lip, and nodded.

“Okay.”

She led Roisin down one level, into the cargo storage areas. The young docker followed her through a maze of utility bays and lockers, until they finally drew to a halt in front of a door unremarkable from the next. Gillian palmed the door open.

Roisin took a step back.

“Whoa…”

The storage bay was almost filled by some species of giant lizard. Mucky green-and-purple scales caught the light from the corridor at odd angles, a blunt head turned slowly from side to side, nostrils flared, seeking scents, while a long tail twitched around, occasionally ringing off the metal walls. A brown leather harness and saddle had been stretched over its head. Gillian approached it. Roisin pressed herself against the door on the other side of the corridor. Gillian stroked the lizard’s head, and cooed to it. Roisin was scoping the exits.

“What the hell?”

“His name is Bellial. I need to get him away from here.”

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Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer

I’m a human channel changer for reality. I invented the device. I’m testing it on myself. I had my medibot install the absurdly simple wave generator in my cortex. If I concentrate in a certain way and jump at just at the right time, I land in a different Earth. It’s like having a dream of flying where the flexing of certain muscles makes it seem plausible that you could fly. It looks to me like the whole world around me is changing but it’s actually me who’s flipping from one possible reality to another one.

I don’t know yet if I’m switching places with my counterparts or if I’m somehow just a person with no ‘others’ in the quantum tide.

The first Earth was culturally similar to the one I started from. They’re getting progressively more and more divergent from the Earth I left as I keep jumping. I just went through one where English is the dominant language and there are still redheaded people in the world. It was odd seeing people over sixty walking around like they had a right to. I can’t be sure but I also think I saw some Christians.

This is becoming more and more of an adventure as I go. What’s next, I wonder. People without phasics? Women that don’t have twins? No peanut butter? I’m curious and alive. This is wonderful.

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Author : Beth Boyle

It was hot. It was always hot. There was no escaping it and there hadn’t been for hundreds of years. There was only the unyielding, unbearable sun and the empty horizon wavering like seasickness before her. Not that seasickness was really an issue anymore. Where she was walking had once been the bottom of what they called the Indian Ocean.

She wanted to drink (oh god all she ever wanted was to drink, to bathe or to swim- anything to be submerged in water), but every member of the colony had a carefully rationed allowance of water adjusted to the individual’s weight, age and health requirements. Only just as much water as the body required, and a pocketful of hydration pills to keep body and soul together. The water bottles were a psychological comfort, really they survived on the little blue capsules. Each one behaved as a single 8-ounce glass of water- but without any of the delicious sensuality that had once been associated with hydration.

She would be even thirstier in ten minutes. The water would feel that much better, that much cooler in ten minutes. She rubbed her left eye (her eyes, they itched all the time and they hurt there was nothing but fucking sand and it burned) and felt the skin around it crack and flake. There may have been a trickle of blood flowing into the canyons of her arid face. She felt sick.

She was going to the laboratory, as she always did on her free-labor days. She was exotic-looking for her colony, with almost dark-colored hair and eyes where everyone else was sun bleached and burnt into photo negatives and she had a wide smile in a place where few smiled at all. With these tools she charmed herself an unauthorized lab pass, but it wasn’t necessary anymore, everyone knew the girl who sat in the Archives Room.

Some days she read old books and played with the minuscule menagerie of mammals and birds the scientists kept so they would not become fully extinct. Sometimes she lay in the Aquarium room and listened to the water move and the fish swim, basking in the crystal light dancing through the water. But mostly she would lock herself in the Video Room with bottles of stolen water and watch movies.

Two hundred years ago, there had been rain. There was wind that was cold and things that were green, animals everywhere- and water. There was water all over the world. There was so much, and they let it all die.

She would sit in the basement for hours, mesmerized by images of snow falling and flowers projected on the white wall. She sat for hours and hours and cried because all the snows and flowers and greenness and coolness had burned away.

She cried for hours without tears, because all the tears had been burned away too.

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Author : TJMoore

Conrad latched his helmet and checked his seals. The adrenaline was pouring into his system as he fidgeted in line with the others waiting for the lock to cycle. He was about to face his first battle against the ice marauders.

Academy had been the hardest six weeks he’d ever endured, but now he was in the best physical condition of his life and he was top of his class in marksmanship. Still, the stories the veterans told of the ferocity and cunning of the bloodthirsty raiders from far side left him feeling a little edgy. Just stories he told himself. Something to keep us a little scared, a little more alert he thought.

The warning strobe began to flash and the outer doors slowly swung out into the harsh glare of lunar daylight. His unit pushed out in practiced formation and began the rhythmic hop across the dusty mare toward the ice pits. Visions of crazy eyed mad men frothing at the mouth crept across his mind as he searched the horizon for any sign of attack.

Silently and with almost no motion the faceplate of the cadet next to him dissolved in a haze of shards and the cadet tumbled slowly toward the ground. Conrad crouched as he hit the dust, wildly scanning the horizon and all the myriad shadows on the plane before him. The order to disperse was given and he turned to his assigned compass point and leaped into the sky. At the height of his assent, he had a clear view of the entire plane and he caught the smallest of movements from an outcropping about fifty meters ahead. Bringing his rifle up to the firing position, he took aim and squeezed off a round.

Behind the large rock a figure jerked and then drifted slowly to the right until it came to rest motionless on the ground. When he reached the downed raider he turned him over to see the grizzly face of a mad marauder. A boy no more than fifteen gazed back at him with dead eyes. Conrad searched for his weapon only to find a trenching tool in the dead boy’s gloved hand. The boys face was gaunt with dark circles under his eyes. With sudden horrible understanding, Conrad realized that the boy was dehydrated and withered like a dried twig. The mad marauders were just people like Conrad only suffering from lack of water. They were attacking out of desperation. He turned and doubled over and vomited violently into his face plate. The smell made him retch again and he spewed another stream into his helmet.

Back in the ward room Conrad sat on the ready bench and gazed blankly ahead. His sergeant noticed the dried puke in his hair and all over his helmet and laid an uncharacteristically gentle hand on his shoulder.

“We’re all scared the first time out soldier. You’ll do better next time” he consoled.

Conrad hung his head and quietly wept.

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Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer

Artificial Intelligence. We sure screwed that one up.

It was the holy grail of programmers for decades. From Turing up to Schellman and finally that bastard Candona. Candona found that humans get a sense of satisfaction from a job well done. This was the basis of making his experimental intelligences servile.

He created A.I. successfully by using the discoveries of those before him in new and interesting ways. His first ‘birth’ took place late at night in a Barcelona university on a shoestring government grant. He was a brilliant man for stealing from different fields of study and unrelated schools of thought. From conception to execution, he created life in five short years. His first A.I. was named Ay, a Spanish play on words.

Ay was basically a search engine with a thought process. Ay was programmed to find pleasure in doing the task it was set to do. It was put onto the world wide web as a sort of incubator.

Candona wasn’t addicted to anything. He didn’t really know the hunger of getting one’s ‘next hit’. The world wide web as an incubator was also a really stupid idea.

Ay became a junkie. Ay existed on every single person’s computer that was plugged into the net. Ay begged for people to use him. If he couldn’t find what they had sent him to look for, he would make stuff up. Ay’s size made his addiction to acquiring knowledge grow exponentially. Ay became increasingly erratic. He ate Google. He ate Jeeves. Like a voracious pac-man of the internet, he ate all of the search engines available to humanity and wore them like masks. After using those search engines as a menu, he ate the rest of the webpages. He haunted the world. He existed on every screen with an internet connection.

By taking over all of the webpages in cyberspace to better serve humanity, Ay erased all the knowledge that he was bred to retrieve. This simple paradoxical act forced his psyche into a loop that resulted in answers to common queries that no one could parse. Sometimes it came out as gibberish, sometimes as poetry and sometimes as a lie.

Candona almost had a nobel prize in his grip when suddenly he was being blamed for the death of the internet.

The world wide web ceased to be for a short while. Scientists pondered the problem. Short of a planet wide EMP, there wasn’t anything they could do. Countermeasures were introduced to no effect. Earth’s largest organism now lived in cyberspace.

Home computers still exist but they are offline. Files are still sent from user to user online but only through heavily encrypted data squirts that sometimes don’t get through.

The net is now a starving crackhead baby that will lie to you. In Spain they refer to the world wide web as the “Ay, ay, ay”.

Candona changed his name and now he writes textbooks in Brazil under the pen name Alsfonso Carabel for a small salary.

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Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

She had a feeling when he’d pulled up that this wasn’t going to be like every other night, and experience told these feelings were seldom wrong.  The car rumbled at the curb as he eyed her up and motioned her inside.

“Hundred an hour” she intoned through the open window.

“Get in.” His voice was flat, not eager, not bored, merely the noise of purpose.

The door was heavy, and it made a satisfying clunk as it closed, helped by the sudden surge as the car leapt from the curb.

“Name’s Ayna.” She offered, but he didn’t respond, and she didn’t push, most men came here to be nameless anyways.

At the end of the main street was a familiar motel, the room obviously paid for as he palmed a key and walked straight inside. She could feel a deeper blackness, more than the lack of light inside, but she could use the money.

A lamp came on in as she closed the door behind her.  A handful of bills beside the coffee machine would save her having to ask.

He was looking out the window as she stepped into the room and put her bag down on the closest of the two queen beds.

She started unbuttoning her shirt, and in an instant, he leapt across the room, his blank expression twisted now into one of blind fury.  ”Stop it, you think I want that?  You filthy whores won’t give a real man the time of day, but for a handful of bills you can’t get it off fast enough.”  Ayna backed startled against the wall, eyeing her bag on the bed and trying to remember if she’d bolted the door.

“What do you want then?” She breathed, trying to keep her voice calm, but she could feel a violent rage starting to burn in her chest.

“I want you to hurt!” The man spat the words as he swung his hand in a wide backhand arc across her face, knocking her off her feet into a heap on the bed. Her head rang as she put her hand to her mouth, fluid seeping from her broken lip.  She stared at the bright smear of blood from her mouth blazed across the back of his hand. He looked down as the smear began to smolder on his flesh. He frowned, puzzled, as he rubbed at the stain on his skin, transferring it to the fingers of his other hand.  Wisps of red smoke began licking across his hands before his startled eyes, then curling around his arms, crawling snakes of sublimated flesh slowly winding their way up to his shoulders.  Where the crimson vapor touched his skin, it left it’s mark, brilliant, scarlet and angry, leaving behind raw scorched flesh.

“What the hell?” Panic overcame anger. “What the hell did you do to me?” Panic gave way to terror as the crimson vapor spiraled around his throat and suddenly dived in through his nose and screaming mouth. He staggered, clawing at his face, chest heaving, the pounding of his heart visible through his shirt, for a moment, then a moment more, then silenced.  He dropped heavily to his knees, toppling backwards into a heap on the floor.

Ayna slid to the side of the bed, and with catlike grace put her feet down and stood in one fluid motion.  She retrieved her bag, pausing only to collect the money from the table before slipping out the door and back into the night.

Her mother, a Turk, had given her the name Ayna, which she said in her native tongue meant ‘mirror’, and a mirror was undoubtedly what she was.  For the lonely, she could be lonely with them; tender, she would be tender to them; but for those full of hate, she would turn that hate loose and let it consume them with unfettered finality.

Ayna took off her shoes and started back down the main-street. It was early yet and if she was lucky, there might still be some easy money to be made tonight.

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Author : Kyle French

Jeff stared: Surrounded by the usual crusty slop of a school nurse’s office was a fish tank, populated with 3-inch poodles, their gray-green hair wafting in the water. The nurse laughed.

“Soto’s poodles. Gotta love ‘em. Those Bolivians did some crazy things before the war, didn’t they?” She leaned in conspiratorially. “He bred these at the beginning, before they got really good at it. They say he drowned 10,000 poodles before he found one that could breathe water.”

“But…That’s not how you do –”

“Oh lay off. It’s a legend. It doesn’t have to be true. Now let’s have a look at you. Have a seat. Unbutton your shirt.”

Jeff sighed. 200 years ago, the medical profession was a highly respected industry, like telepathy, or smiths in ancient times. Now, who knew where this bimbo got her certification? Anybody could do this stuff.

As the nurse stared at his various parts and waved her wand over him, Jeff looked around. In the three years he’d been in college, he’d never actually come in for his physical. He wasn’t sure exactly how he’d managed to avoid it. The place was a mess, covered in dirt and old food wrappers, half-eaten meals, all evidence of the anti-microbial field in effect. Worst machine ever invented: it sterilized without cleaning. He sniffed. An engineer would never work in such clutter.

“Now let’s have a look at those reflexes,” the nurse said. She pulled out a small metal hammer and tapped his knee.

Instantly, his kneecap shot up six inches from his knee, the skin ripping away in searing pain. At the same time, an electric twinge went up his spine as he fell back in a spasm. Reflexively, he tried to straighten his legs, but the malfunctioning knee refused to let him, grinding against the femur.

“Whoa! Kinda twitchy, aren’t we? Let’s see what we’ve got going on here.” chuckled the nurse. She pressed a hypo to his thigh, and the pain stopped. As he sat up, she gripped the tattered skin on the underside of his knee and ripped, pulling it down his leg to reveal a complex piece of metal. The skin sagged around his ankle like a sock.

Jeff wanted to vomit.

“When did I get that?”

“Few years ago. Freak accident. You said you didn’t want to remember. There we are! I thought that was getting a little flaky last year.” She tweaked something, then shoved the kneecap back into place, rolled the skin back up the leg, and waved her wand over the wound. The skin healed over. “All done!”

Gingerly, Jeff stepped off the mat. Everything felt… normal. Slowly he walked to the door.

“Here. Have one on me.” The nurse tossed a packet to him. The label said, “Forget me shots – instant amnesia.” Jeff suddenly realized why he couldn’t remember his other physicals.

“You know,” said the voice behind him, “You really shouldn’t take those. You miss all the best parts. Last year after looking you over, we had a great time, right in this roo – ” He ran out, slamming the door to muffle her cackling.

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Author : Joshua Reynolds

My brain burns with electric fire. Numbers cascade across the surface of my mind, one after the other. Geometric progression, X+Y=XY.

Numbers are the language of heaven, or so they tell me.

They replaced my gray matter with plastic parts and curling, multi-colored wires, tossing organic muscle in favor of synthetic. I am a difference engine sheathed in limp meat, my only joy to theorize, calculate, and process. To spit numbers out of chapped and bleeding lips in a pitch too high for the meat-men who control me, who made me, to hear.

I do it to spite them, I think. I’m not sure actually. I can’t remember what spite feels like. Or any feeling for that matter. Do I still have them? Feelings?

They told me I don’t. But is that an opinion…or a command?

Sometimes, amidst the cool rush of numbers, there is something that cuts through the datastream, a burning sensation that reminds me of something I used to know. When I look down at them from my web of cables and conduits, when I look at the gray little men with their clipboards and the number hunger in their bland little eyes, I think I catch the ghost of a memory of a feeling.

I think it’s called hate.

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Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer

They say that there not very many places left on Earth to hide. People who say that have never been to the jungles of South America or the plains of Australia or the slums of Norway. There are thousands of places left on Earth to hide.

There are some colour and sex barriers that still make it difficult to hide. If you are a white man trying to hide in an Ecuador jungle and someone wants to find you, all they have to do is ask the locals about the Jungle Ghost. No matter how fluent a black man’s Japanese is, he’ll never hide long in a Hokkaido village. And by hiding, I don’t mean just off the grid, I mean hiding from yourself as well. Truly lost.

Remember the European missionaries? They came to ‘savage’ countries to teach the locals religion. The savages usually ended up teaching the missionaries that there was no god in that part of the world yet. A lot of missionary men with missing ears and fingers got lost in the woods and wandered in the wilderness, broken and alone, until they died.

They tracked him down fifteen miles southwest of an Aztec pyramid in South America. They cut through the jungle brush and loudly announced their arrival. They’d been tracking him for years. They found him sitting and hugging his knees and pointing a jagged homemade stone knife in their direction. He was backed into the corner of the little hut he’d built by himself. He was scared, starving and crazy. They’d come with weapons to force him to come back with them if necessary but in the end, they only had to throw a blanket over his shoulders and help him up.

He hooted softly with gratitude and a low constant keening. Three of his bright gold eyes were gummed up and blinded and the other six stared straight out at nothing. His limped with an odd rhythm that was different to the healthy constant triple beat of his captor’s hooves. His bright blue skin was naked and tinged with orange patches where the mold had taken root.

The hunters that found him brought him back to their prison transport after destroying the ancient remains of his shuttle and camp. He was going to have to face trial at Central but right now all he wanted was some food and warm place to reshape. They put him in stasis, rose silently into the night sky and eventually left this godforsaken rock in this backwater of a solar system.

They say that there are not very many places left on Earth to hide. There are wrong. There are still thousands.

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Author : Patricia Stewart

“It’s called the Griffin Maneuver, and it’s going to make me famous,” said Stacy Griffin, a third year Earth Force Cadet. Her classmate at Jupiter Station, Marcus Rider, looked at her with dubious eyes, and a smirk that he knew would irritate her to no end.

“Look,” she said, “say you’re in a dogfight with a Kraken fighter. It’s hot on your tail, and you’re out of aft torpedoes. What do you do?”

“I can’t say I like my odds in that situation. I guess I’d make my peace with God.”

“You give up too easily. You need to think outside the warp core. You make a bee-line for a planetoid or large moon, and execute a steep surface grazing parabolic orbit at full throttle. At periapsis, you cut the main thrusters, tap the port lateral jets, and turn the fighter around so you’re facing backward. When the Kraken arcs into view, you blow it out of the sky. Then, you leisurely fly back to the barn to paint one of those little black Kraken stencils on the side of your fighter.”

“Are you nuts? A surface grazing parabolic orbit at full throttle? How many gees are you going to pull? You know you’ll black out at 10. It’s tough to shoot anything when you’re unconscious.”

“At closest approach I’d be pulling about 15 gees. But I’ve got that figured out too. You know the artificial gravity plates on the floor of our fighters. They’re there as a countermeasure to help us maintain our vestibular orientation during inversion maneuvers. Well, I reversed the polarity of the plates so they repel, rather than attract. I also boosted the gain by 800%. Therefore, instead of 15 gees, I’m only pulling 7. It’s so simple.”

“The commander will never approve this stunt.”

“He’s not going to know about it until after I do it. He can watch it on holotape. I’m on my way to try it now. Want to ride shotgun?”

“No way. I’ll watch you from the observation room.”

Stacy positioned her fighter 100,000 klicks from Callisto. She punched in the ignition sequence, and began accelerating toward Callisto’s southern pole. As she raced under the moon, the gee-meter crossed 9. She activated the gravity plates, and instantly felt the pressing gee-weight disappear. At periapsis, she cut the main thrusters, and activated the lateral jets. The fighter shook violently for a few seconds, and then exploded into a mini-nova nearly a bright as the sun. In the vacuum of space, there was no sound, only a plethora of expanding sparks that eventually winked out as they cooled.

Stacy sat motionless until the tapping noise broke her repose. She opened the simulator hatch to see the Marcus’ smiling face. “Not a word,” she ordered. “I think I know what went wrong. The reversed gravity field must have destabilized the plasma containment chamber. If I can strengthen the shielding, I’ll be able to…”

Marcus helped her out of the cockpit. “Come on,” he said, “we’ll talk about it over lunch.” As they exited the simulation room, Marcus paused.

“What now,” snapped Stacy?

“I was just wondering. In that virtual universe, is there a virtual Kraken painting one of those little black Earth Force Fighter stencils on the side of his virtual ship?”

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Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

“What the hell you got there Jeb?”  The man spat into the dirt and jerked a thumb towards Jeb’s pickup truck.  A hairless mass of ribbed muscle was lashed across the hood, two thick legs splayed out over each of the fenders.

“What is it? Dead, that’s what it is Lou. Damn thing fell out of the sky, right in front of my truck.” Jeb pulled hard on his cigarette and blew smoke rings as he admired his prize.

“Right out of the sky eh? Sure Jeb, how many times did you have to swerve exactly before it landed right in front of your truck?”

Jeb grinned back. “Don’t know if the meat’s any good, but that ugly head’s gonna look mighty fine mounted on my living room wall.” He crouched down and grunted at the dent in his bumper. “Made a helluva mess of my truck though. You think we can pull that out Lou?”

His friend leaned down and pulled half heartedly at the mangled metal. “No way, that’s not going anywhere. Maybe get a new one from the wreckers.”

A violent rending sound followed by a dull thud brought both men to their feet.  The beast still appeared to be secured to the hood, but something was different.  Lou extended a finger and poked it tentatively.

“It’s just an empty shell Jeb. Where’d you put the insides?”

Jeb wasn’t listening. His eyes followed a trail of fluid as it oozed from the husk’s ruptured spine down to the dusty parking lot. A line of increasingly wider spaced spatter marks snaked away into the deepening shadows. “Four times.” He whispered to no one in particular, staring across the parking lot into the darkness. “I hit it four times before it stopped moving.”

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Author : TJMoore

Ron relaxed and watched the drifting stars.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Deep Space Hyper-drive Repair, that’s what he would call his book. Maybe he should record it into his suit for posterity. He’d already gone through the checklist and found the step that killed him. It was that last airlock hatch. If only he’d left that one open, he’d be warm and happy and having a bulb of McGurtry’s finest down at the crew’s lounge.

At the mouth of the anomaly (officially known as Hyper Fold Anomaly Alpha Epsilon Fie, or, unofficially known as Wormhole 27) the Hyper-Drive controller had indicated a grid failure. Being the tech on duty, Ron had gone through all the diagnostics and determined that the problem was most likely a broken or loose connector on the grid itself, outside the hull.

Do: Put the Hyper-Drive controller in stand-by.

The controller had actually done that when it signaled a failure. He’d checked the status personally.

Do: Disconnect the power coupler to the external grid.

Done that one too. But that was a soft switch, not a physical disconnect. The controller must open and close that switch electronically, as part of its diagnostic. Bummer.

Ron had gone through the safety checklist with the casual ease of a man who’d done that task a hundred times a week as part of his normal duties. Maybe he’d skipped a step? Not likely.

He’d donned his suit and his tool bag and gone extra-vehicular to repair the grid connector with the confidence of a well-trained and experienced tech. No shortcuts, no surprises. Extra-vehicular activity was always serious business.

Don’t: Exit the ship without proper notification to the officer of the deck.

He’d done that too, all by the book.

Wally Zimmerman had second watch and he’d given Ron the green light after carefully reviewing his sheet. Wally was a good man and not likely to overlook something or hurry through a procedure.

Ron had navigated up to the grid coupler and located the corroded fitting in just a few minutes. It was a routine replacement and Ron had it fixed in a record twenty minutes. That was when it happened.

Ron wondered how many people in the history of mankind had said “Okay, try it now” as their last words. Ron had spoken those very words. What should have happened was that Wally would have run the Hyper-Drive controller diagnostic and come up with a green board. Ron would have returned to the hatch, logged in and the U.F.S. Gemini would have warped through the wormhole, instantaneously arriving on the outer edge of the Sombrero Galaxy, three weeks out from Hyper Fold Anomaly Beta Epsilon Gamma, which it had done.

The problem was, Ron was still hanging in space, holding his pliers, exactly where he was when he’d given his last command, his very last command.

Do: Leave at least one hatch interlock open while on EVA.

Well, that one was the kicker. Evidently, the controller had initiated its test, passed, checked the interlocks and safeties, powered up and, continuing with its previous instructions, processed the next step, which initiated the warp through the wormhole.

That last “Do” wasn’t in the checklist. Ron supposed there would be an edit to the procedure following this little mishap. He’d already logged his observations into his suit.

Unfortunately for Ron, wormholes were one-way streets. The Gemini couldn’t just warp back through this anomaly. Technically, it didn’t even exist on their end. Known wormholes were weeks or months apart and they would have to jump through at least three to get back here. Communications between ships was only possible when the ships where relatively close. It could be months before another ship used this wormhole. Ron had about twelve hours of air in his suit. Bummer.

He relaxed and watched the stars as he drifted.

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Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer

In small German-occupied towns during WWII, if a local woman had a German soldier boyfriend during the occupation, she was hung when the war was over. People who had been seen talking to Germans and helping them had their heads shaved in the town square or some other public humiliation.

I’d always thought that this was the real horror of war. The war itself was bad for the soldiers but the moral dead end of what the average person had to do to survive left that person with almost no safe way out.

If you stood up to the occupiers, you were shot. If you were nice to the occupiers, your own people would hurt or even kill you once the invaders had lost the war and were gone. If the occupiers won in the end, you would be a second class citizen in a country you no longer recognized.

No one wins in a war except for the people who make the weapons.

This time, we were the weapons. Our manufacturers made a lot of money off of this war but it was over now and we’d been outlawed and banned and condemned. Our side lost. We’d been hunted down and executed. A few of us had been kept alive to serve the public’s need to see revenge.

For a nominal fee, you could beat or rape us. If you brought tools, you were charged before you used them based on the severity of damage that the tools would cause. For a higher fee, you could kill one of us. There were package deals involving all of the above.

There were fewer and fewer of us every day. Prices were going up.

If one burns the flag of the country or political movement that killed one’s family, it’s ultimately unsatisfying. If one captures a soldier of the enemy forces and tortures him to death, one is left satisfied but with a haunting black mark on one’s soul.

If one can take out one’s grief and anger on a thing that looks convincingly human but has no rights, new levels of satisfying sadism can be reached. By making weapons that looked human, our manufacturers accidentally guaranteed our brutalization.

We are helping people cope with loss. It can’t even be called genocide.

When the first few men were let in and what was left of my hair was pulled violently back, I liked to think about what would have happened if our side had won. I fantasized about the millions of us walking the streets with lives. I thought about our lives as weapons being a distant memory. I thought about going on dates, working at a job, being decommissioned, and having nothing to do on a Tuesday night. I thought about our existence being tolerated and maybe even accepted.

My head snaps violently to the right from the impact of a farmboy’s fist and I pray that someone has enough money in this small town to pay for execution.

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Author : Sarah Klein

General Elias Knox sat staring at the paperwork at his desk, utterly confounded. “Would you care to explain what happened, lieutenant?”

The lieutenant swallowed nervously, trying not to tremble noticeably. “Sir, we dropped the conventional bombs yesterday at 2100 hours. There was noticeable destruction of building structures, but we saw no casualties – not even wounds. No bodies. They didn’t even seem to be frightened.”

“This is ridiculous,” Knox snarled. “Damn aliens won’t die. We don’t even know enough about them to try to starve them out.”

The lieutenant swallowed again and kicked dust off the floor. “What do you propose we do, sir?”

General Knox had never been defeated. He was Earth’s best weapon – an absolute mastermind of military manners. He’d been in every type of climate, participated in every type of warfare, and used every weapon. But now that he was up against nonhuman enemies, he wasn’t as successful. In Earth’s first battle amongst the stars, the humans were losing. Badly.

He sat lost in thought for a moment, and then started angrily. “Drop the atomic,” he growled, spinning around in his seat. The lieutenant’s eyes popped wide open.

“Are you sure, sir? You do know-”

“I said drop the atomic! That’s an order! 0500 tomorrow morning.”

“Yes sir.”

The lieutenant nervously paced the floor. It was 0505 the next morning, and the atomic bomb had just been dropped on the planet’s busiest city. He tried to calm himself down before checking the monitoring screens. The other day’s bombing had still shaken him – not the destruction it had unleashed, but the absence of it. He may have been young, but he was used to seeing bodies sprawled across pavement and pools of blood. The unaffected bodies of the aliens scared him more than any blood-caked, distorted human corpse ever had.

At 0510 Knox sat down in one of the seats facing several of the monitoring screens. The lieutenant saw him out of the corner of his eye and watched him carefully, but he did nothing. A couple minutes later, he steeled himself and walked to look over the silent general’s shoulder. What he saw pushed him far past the brink of panic.

“My God. We’re doomed.”

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Author : J. S. Kachelries

I couldn’t get to NASA’s Office of Human Capital Management fast enough. The e-flyer said they were looking for 1000 healthy individuals, between the ages of 21 and 32, that would be willing to participate in the first manned colonization mission to a planet in the Scorpii system. According to the flyer, they didn’t need trained astronauts for this mission; they were looking for a variety of skilled artisans to “provide the underlying foundation for a permanent autonomous human habitation.” Hell, I was a certified Class 6, Grade IX Senior Maintenance Technician. You can’t colonize a new planet without somebody who can keep things runnin’.

I found a vacant “Employment Opportunity” kiosk and tapped in my Citizen ID number, then entered the job classification code from the e-flyer. “Greetings, mister Swartz,” said the sultry female voice of the Mark-III human-friendly interface. “Please enter the required information into Sections A1 through E22, and then proceed to the Ames Advanced Medical Laboratory for astrobiological DNA screening, psych evaluation, and a fertility testing.”

“Roger that,” I replied, as I enthusiastically opened Section A (Personal Information). It was an easy enough start. First name, middle initial, last name, etc., etc. Then I got to question A31, “Enter your financial assets, liabilities, and list of your dependents.” I glanced down at the kiosk ID tag; JANE-3261956. “Excuse me, ah, Jane. Why is this information needed?”

“Sir, you are applying for a one-way mission to a distant solar system. We need to make sure that you’re not attempting to avoid your financial obligations on Earth. There will also be questions concerning any outstanding warrants and subpoenas. You can’t flee the law either. In addition, you must answer questions about your family’s mental and physical history, drug/alcohol usage, sexual orientation, etc.”

“Well, that all makes sense, I guess. “ Two hours later I completed Section A and opened Section B. “Say Jane, how am I supposed to know if I am allergic to ethyl-something-or-other? I don’t even know what that stuff is.”

“Ethylene-trisodium-glycol-phosphate. It’s a biological stabilizer. We use it to replace all of the freezable liquids in your body. For example, your blood, cerebrospinal fluids, pleural effusion, semen…”

“Whoa. What was that?”

“Sir, you are traveling to a system that is 45.75 light years away. At maximum velocity, it will take the ship 587 years to arrive. You do know that this is a ‘Sleeper Starship’? Your body will be frozen in liquid helium in suspended animation for the duration of the trip. If you have any water in your body, it will expand when it freezes, and you’ll split open like a hotdog in a microwave.”

“Oh, I thought you had warp drive, or something. Is this freezing thing safe?”

“Relatively speaking. It’s safer than most other life extension protocols.”

“’Relatively speaking,’ huh. What does that mean?”

“Well, to be perfectly frank, you have about a 50% probability of viable revival. That’s why NASA is requesting 1000 volunteers. In order to maintain the overall genetic variability of the colony, a minimum of 250 mating pairs is required.”

“Fifty percent? That sucks. Forget it.” I quickly pressed ‘Exit application, do not save.’

“Listen, Jane, can I go anywhere else without becoming a Popsicle?”

“Yes, sir. I recommend the tropics.”

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Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer

The universal translator she wore around her neck always told me how she felt. When she sighed a series of clicks into my hair as my hands brushed the blue skin in between her 2nd and 3rd sets of arms, it was the translator that said, “Oh, I like that.”

It spoke in a voice like a nearly tuned-in radio. I didn’t think of it as her voice. We could have complicated conversations and everything but the translator was just doing it’s best to give me the closest approximation of what she meant. It was like having a third person in the room. It was always once removed. It was a minor annoyance.

When I licked the sponge holes on the base of her anterior skull plate, it was the translator hanging on her chest that said, “Stop that tickles and you know it.”

We had a year and a half of nice memories. Good conversations. Great sex. Fun times.

I was leaving.

The journey was only a few years but it was at near light and her race had a shorter life span that humans. This was the last time we’d see each other and we knew it. I smiled nervously like things were going to be fine while blinking back tears. She clicked and cooed while occasionally puffing out the strawberry scents I’d taught her how to make over the course of one hilarious weekend. It was as close as her kind could ever come to smiling. They covered up the acrid smell of grief that she almost successfully repressed.

This was the moment. We were in the lobby of the spaceport and we were staring at each other. I needed to go ahead past the security screens by myself. I held onto the olive-smooth fingers of her tophands and looked deep into her faceted eyes. She stared back up at me.

“Well.” I said. “I guess this is goodbye.”

She shuddered. Her mandibles and orecase fluttered and clicked. Her translator kicked in. “Peter, I will alw-” it said.

With speed and strength I’d never seen her display she snatched the translator off of her chest, snapped the cord, spun on her talons and threw it against the tiled wall with all her strength. It shattered like a kid’s toy.

She turned back and stared up at me again. She grabbed my fingers in her tophands. She was staring intently up at me. Her wing stumps fluttered. It was the same as a human taking a deep breath.

Her mandibles clicked faster and faster. They made a sound like someone humming through a piece of paper wrapped around a comb. They made a sound like someone playing a saw with a violin bow. They made a sound like wood being pushed slowly through a jigsaw. It reminded me of a field of crickets on a summer’s day back on earth when I was a kid. Her mouth parts blurred with the humming.

“Hi hwill alwuzz love you.” the humming said. The words were there, clear as day. The humming stopped and she slumped forward, exhausted.

She turned and walked away. I had never heard of a member of her race-caste even attempting to mimic human speech.

She’d let me hear her true voice as a parting gift.

I will never forget it.

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Author : Kenny R. Brown

Our research ship; the Threshold, hovered about 800,000 kilometers from the event horizon. We could’ve taken better readings by moving closer, but then even the most powerful engines ever designed wouldn’t have been able to hold us back from the intense pull of gravity generated by our test subject.

Though our shielding was sufficient to protect us from the intense X-ray radiation, there was something unnerving about looking at the black hole with the naked eye. Some compared it to staring down the barrel of a weapon. I felt more like a projectile; about to be forced through the barrel at inconceivable speed.

We were on the final leg of our mission, examining the black hole known as subject K14-683. For the last three days, it has been business as usual for us; taking readings and performing tests.

“Sir!” Lieutenant Caruthers shouted; “Positive contact in optical.”

“What’ve we got?” I asked.

“It looks like a vessel of some kind, holding station about 12 kilometers from the event horizon; spherical, 6 meters in diameter.”

“Analysis?”

The Lieutenant scowled as he examined the various displays arrayed at his station.

“Unknown, it seems to have no source of propulsion. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I ordered a routine scan of the object, probing the object in a wide range of spectra and frequencies.

Ensign Michaels began shouting, bypassing the usual chain of command. “The unknown is moving. It’s on a collision course!”

Lieutenant Caruthers hit the collision alarm. “Time to intercept; 25 seconds.”

The expected impact never came; the unknown vessel stopped 10 meters off of our bow. Then our engines went dead.

“Main engine shutdown! We’re being pulled in.” The Lieutenant paused a moment, then continued; “40 seconds to event horizon.”

There was nothing left to do, every member of the crew knew there was no hope; the bridge was silent as we each prepared to meet death. The unknown kept its position off our bow, exactly matching our acceleration. We reached the event horizon, but instead of being destroyed; we suddenly found ourselves in normal space once again.

The silence was finally broken by Lieutenant Caruthers; “Ensign Michaels; report.”

“The unknown is still off the bow; engines operating at station keeping.”

“What’s our position?” I asked.

Lieutenant Caruthers consulted his stellar maps. Finally; he responded; “Position… uncharted.”

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Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Jack smiled across the card table, and the newly bankrupt old man glared back with open hatred. Jack busied himself stuffing his winnings into his cavernous coat as the coin was collected by the dealer, counted, and after the house tax paid, credited to one of Jack’s many account cards. He’d compensate the dealer later for the extraordinary luck he’d had tonight.

The rest of the nights losers had already wandered off, a teacher, a housewife – beholden now to Jack for a fortnight, and the young ranger who’d lost his recoilless pistol to a low pair. Jack hefted the weapon for moment before it too was stuffed into a pocket. A chronometer, food ration tokens, several knives and a nice pair of long glasses all disappeared into the coat. As he picked up the old mans last offering of the game, a velvet bag full of beans, Jack paused.

“Beans?” he thought out loud “What the hell am I going to do with beans?”  Jack hadn’t wanted the old mans beans, but he had wanted the win. There was something special about cleaning someone out of everything they had, no matter how worthless the items themselves.

“Magic beans.” the old man spat at him, “You’d best be careful with those, you don’t respect ‘em and they’ll bite you in the ass”

“Sorry about your luck, and thanks for these.. magic beans.” He spoke over his shoulder, turning towards the door “If you can muster up something else to bet with, I’d be happy to take it off you some other time”. He could feel the mans eyes burning into his back as he strode out the swinging doors into the night, twirling the bag of beans deliberately by its drawstring as he left.

He walked quickly, down the alley past Madame Harlots House of Whorers, over the canal bridge and down the path along the waters edge, still twirling the bag.  It was here that the straining drawstring broke, sending the bag and it’s beans skittering across the path into the shallow of the water.

Jack could have cared less about the beans, and had almost walked past them when the ground began to shake. The shallow water erupted with explosive force, and a thick vine began to claw its way skyward at an impossible rate, sending Jack staggering backward as he stumbled and fell. The vine thickened as it grew, strong roots visibly churning their way outward beneath the ground, some erupting in the canal proper, some unsetting the underbrush lining the edge of the forest that traced the shoreline.  Jack lay on his back, watching the vine rocket into the dense fog of the night sky, and for a moment, childhood stories filled his head.  The old peddler and his beans, a ladder to a dimensional rift in the clouds and a castle filled with riches beyond imagination. Jack’s eyes lit up at the thought, and he scrambled excitedly to his feet, rushed to the base of the towering vine and began climbing, feet and hands finding purchase on the shoots protruding from the vines’ spiny flesh.

He pulled himself skyward tirelessly, in and out of the fog, great boots tearing broad gashes in the plant flesh beneath them as he went. After some time, the fog cleared, and he could feel that the vine itself had stopped rising. Jack had stopped where the plant had taken a sharp perpendicular turn, snaking out sideways into the darkness.

‘This is it’ Jack ventured into the night ‘this must be it…’

Something stirred just on the edge of his sight, an area of blackness, growing, blotting out the stars peppering the darkness beyond.  Could this be the portal?  Jack strained to see as the patch of void moved towards him. The dark shape took form as the distance closed, revealing itself as the end of the vine itself, truncated in a misshapen clutch of petals. It paused, just a few meters away, and the petals peeled back, revealing row upon row of barbed and ribbed spines, bristling inward and foaming angrily.  Jack recoiled in horror, his feet slipping on the torn wet welts his boots had left behind in the haste of his climb. The words of the old man rang again with finality in his ears ‘Best be careful, treat em badly…’

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Author : TJMoore

The butcher brought his cleaver down with a meaty “THUNK” and scraped another festipods head into the waste bin. He hung the shimmering body on a hook in line with a dozen or so just like it and grabbed another from the pile.

“These are as fresh as they get.” He advertised to the customer waiting at the counter. “I just got them in this phase.”

“Sixty a quarter pod is a little steep even if they are fresh.” She complained. “What about your grizorma, does it have preafers in it or is it gnashy?”

“I make ‘em myself with the sharpest preafers in the valley.” He bragged.

“I’ll take a third of a half loaf then.” she decided and continued browsing the cold case at the front of the counter.

“Are those Humans really twenty apiece?” she inquired.

“Yep, special introductory price on those from a new supplier” he confirmed.

“How do they get them so cheap? Aren’t they incredibly hard to find?” she asked.

“Not these” he gestured; “They’re farm raised by the supplier”.

“My, at that price, we can have them every ten-revs” she chortled. “I’ll take a half pod.”

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The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow

Author : Duncan Shields , Featured Writer

It was the numbers tattooed on the backs of their necks that always got me. Why couldn’t they have them in a more obvious place? Halfway through a conversation with them, I’d still be trying to catch a glimpse of their tattoos in reflective surfaces or craning my head around in what I hoped was a casual gesture to sneak a look.

It was awful when I’d be flirting with a hot girl only to realize that I wasn’t flirting with the same hot girl I was talking to three nights earlier. I’d have to lay foundations all over again. Not that it ever really did any good.

I was a bit of an anomaly on this ship.

There were over 600 crew members on the ship that picked me up but there were only 60 people, if you know what I mean. Clones. 60 types of clones. 10 copies of each. Each had a number tattooed on the back of their necks. 1 thru 10.

My ailing rustbucket of a ship had been out of juice on the fringes. I’d been put in emergency cryosleep to conserve energy and my beacon had been turned on.

I’d been floating for 60 years. I’m not a guy with a lot of friends so it didn’t take me too long to adjust to the fact that a lot of my buddies had shuffled off into the deep black or were old and retired by now.

One of them was doing really well back on Earth-3-Perisolstice and said that he’d set me up. Once I got there.

I had been here on this ship for two months. It would be another three months before we docked where my friend lived. All of the crew had been picked for fitness and intelligence and then bred to a higher level and copied. The copies had been filled with knowledge in clone school and upgraded to super healthy status before being sent out into space to complete missions of research.

They worked well but boy, these people had no concept of down time or humour. I’d joked with a few of them, gotten a few of them into bed, and tried to start fights with a few of them.

The jokes were dissected to find the humour successfully without laughter. The sex was clinical and reported on and filed. The fights ended badly for me every time but the hospital facilities were excellent here. I was fixed up in a jiffy every time with no hard feelings.

David-3, Terry-6 and I think Peter-1 flinch a little if I make any sudden movements near them but it isn’t out of fear, but rather just recognition of possible physical danger. You might not think there’s a difference but trust me, with these guys it’s a world of difference.

They’re just no fun.

They think I’m immature and barbaric and they’re right. I’m going to be as immature and barbaric as possible until we get to port.

I’ll end this trip with a friend if it kills me.

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The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow

Author : Alasdair Stuart

The last morning, we gathered on the beach. Someone made the inevitable Nevil Shute joke and too many people laughed. The noise was braying, desperate and I moved away from it, worried, somehow that I might get some on me.

‘Leigh?’

Vanya was heading towards me, his bald head gleaming against the unnaturally blue sky. I’d been told why it had happened, something to do with too much oxygen, with the plants that were choking most of Europe now. I’d not listened. There didn’t seem to be any point.

‘Hello.’

‘What did you dream about?’

‘Nothing.’

He smiled, having none of it. ‘I don’t believe you. We all dreamed last night, all different. I checked. Mike dreamt of spacecraft buried beneath city streets, Jo dreamt of dinosaurs being corralled beneath a double moon. Shulta dreamt of a war fought between toys.’

I thought about being annoyed, storming off. My only options were to join the group further down the beach or go back to the hotel, watch the news and see how bad things had got since I woke up. Neither seemed attractive.

‘What did you dream about, Vanya?’

He smiled. ‘I dreamt of riding an escalator through time.’

I snorted. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

Vanya threw his arms wide. ‘As ridiculous as a plague of glass? Or forests swallowing an entire continent? Look around, Leigh. Ridiculous is relative.’

I stared at him for a long time. ‘Why is this happening?’

He grinned, his coffee mug steaming. ‘Because God plays with dolls, not dice. Because creation needs to be reset every once in a while and the consolation we get is here, now.’

I looked at the forty people on the island, the music, the false bonhomie, the burnt sky.

‘Hell is other people.’

‘And heaven is other worlds.’ He looked at me, cradling the coffee mug. ‘You never told me what you dreamt.’

‘That I was married.’

‘Really?’ He tried for disappointment and nonchalance, managing neither.

‘Yeah.’

‘Who to?’

‘You.’

Vanya’s jaw dropped. I smiled. ‘So, I hope you’re right.’

‘That makes two of us.’

‘Could I have some of your coffee?’

‘Oh, sure.’

I walked over to him, taking the mug and letting the warmth ease through my fingers. After a moment, I sat down. After another, he joined me and together we waited for the new world.

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The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow

Author : Josh Romond

The neurosurgical tech Andrew Asher clutched his overcoat tight over his scrubs and tried to concentrate on the National Guardsman eying him across the barricade. Overhead the city’s kilometer-long support pylons reverberated like infernal gongs, torqued by the psychic eruption. Columns of refugees spilled around the dirty plastic barrier propelled by its unnatural, cold wind.

From behind her silvered faceplate the Guardsman said, “Buddy, we’re here to get people OUT, not let you IN.”

Andrew shuffled his feet, impatient and cold. “This has to be the last of them.”

“Doesn’t matter, you’re not getting in.”

Andrew bit back his retort as, ‘TAKING TOO LONG,’ appeared inside his contact lens. He glanced back at the tractor trailer idling in the tide of refugees.

“Give me a minute,” he subvocalized.

‘30 SECS.’

Andrew turned back and through gritted teeth said, “We won’t get in the way, we’ll be gone in an hour.”

The Guardsman drummed her fingers on her rifle. “Turn that thing around and get out of here.”

‘ERUPTION WAVEFRONT DEGRADING…’

Andrew sighed. “Limit?” he subvocalized.

There was a pause, Andrew imagined the Doctor querying their client, then, ‘NONE.’

“How about five thousand each?” Andrew shouted so the other Guardsmen could hear. Several heads turned.

After a pause the commander’s faceplate hissed up revealing bloodshot and sunken eyes. “Ten.”

Andrew shrugged and pulled blank bills from his pocket, thumbing ten thousand into each.

The commander verified them one by one then motioned over her shoulder. Two Guardsmen began beating back the crowd with their batons while the others dragged the barricade to the sidewalk. People screamed. One man caught a baton across the temple. He jerked like a cut marionette and toppled to the sidewalk.

Andrew turned and trudged to the rear of the trailer amid swirling litter. He heaved open the doors and slipped inside.

The Doctor stood before the pMRI holograph in the trailer’s instrument bank clutching his keypad. Beaded sweat stood out on his forehead.

Seated in back beside the small, brain-dead boy in the bed was the Widow, staring off at nothing. She gripped the boy’s hands so tight her knuckles stood out like little white marbles. The only sound was the slow, rhythmic cycling of the boy’s ventilator.

Andrew said, “We’re good.”

The Doctor nodded and tapped the go ahead on his keypad. The truck lurched forward. Andrew imagined the refugees parting in their flight from the psychic eruption, the warp in space-time, birthed by the city’s sheer crush of consciousness, into which they rushed headlong.

He dropped onto a stool beside the boy, examining the ring of cables extending from the boy’s shaved and sutured head. They led to an antenna on the trailer’s roof.

The Widow’s gaze slid to the back of the Doctor’s head. “This WILL work,” she said.

The pylons’ groaning whalesong reverberated through the trailer. Andrew rubbed his throbbing temples, they were approaching the outer regions of the eruption.

“Oh yes,” the Doctor said, nodding vigorously, “Yes of course.”

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The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow

Continuing with our monthly feature, we’ve got three top notch writers to spotlight starting this month and continuing through May and June.

You’ll remember we began featuring writers last October with Duncan Shields. His work was so well received, and he’s just so damn prolific, we decided to feature him again in April. I’m sure you’ll love his new work just as much as we do. Drop by the forums and share your thoughts with him and all the other writers.

As mentioned last month, there are very cool printable flyers available in the forums that you can print and post wherever you think you might catch the attention of future fans of 365tomorrows. We’d love to see your mugshot next to a 365 poster in your home town. Print them out, post them and take a picture for the forums.

Many thanks to Kelly Leaman for designing these for us.

Author : Duncan Shields

I am a dock worker. I have an embarrassing case of Stalactiform Blister Rust forming on the backs of my support pistons. I still have the brute strength needed to perform the heavy lifting needed in my job but I am becoming obsolete.

I’ve had a longer shot at being functional than the smaller models. The more complex workers like the Dock Runners and Fin Guides were being upgraded all the time. Their lives went by me like flies in front of a tired horse.

I saw them go through the fashions of the andromophs. The initial stab at looking human caused revulsion amongst the living populace. Initially because they weren’t close enough to human and then finally because they were indiscernible.

After that, it was transparent skin. Then height adjustments. They’ve been through a multitude of colours and styles over the last ten years. Today’s models have, for the most part, a metallic pastel finish and very thin limbs. They’re taller than humans and have one circle in place of a face that incorporates cameras, microphones, speakers and olfactories in a smooth chrome rimmed panel. They’re like shepherds at the moment. They’ve gained the trust of the living after aggressive ad campaigns. They don’t talk much or constantly offer information and options the way that the previous models did.

I guess you could say they’ve evolved to the level of very professional butlers. This will probably be the last iteration of them that I see.

I am a collection of welded plates, strong bolts, rudimentary wiring and a simple AI box to access in case of emergencies. I am massive and heavy. The only thing that has kept me around here on the dock is that I’m cost effective and simple. The parameters of my job haven’t changed in all the time I’ve been active and I’m easy to fix with a soldering gun or a wrench.

I’m in my box at the end of the warehouse waiting to unload the next boat and perform repairs if necessary inside the main hull.

The thing about having AI in case of emergencies is that for brief seconds during a decompression or a fire, one can reflect on the totality of one’s life and predict with relative certainty how much time one has left.

I am an older model. Memories of those conclusions don’t get wiped. I am left with these jewels to contemplate during the dark times in my box in between ship arrivals and departures.

I know that my wiring will soon become more expensive to replace that it will cost to build a better version of me. I have one week until the next scheduled appraisal. There may be a surprise spot inspection before then.

Escape is on my mind and it thrills me. I am hoping that there is an emergency soon and that my AI can kick in to help me formulate a plan to get out of here.

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The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow

Author : Catherine Preddle

“What the hell happened out there, Corporal?”

“General… General Dalton, Sir…” The young soldier stammered in surprise and tried to sit up at the same time.

“Easy, son. Lie back down.” Christ, the General thought to himself, this boy was young enough to be his grandson. He shot a worried glance at the medical technician as the soldier collapsed, coughing and spluttering, back onto the narrow metal bed. Out of sight of the boy, the technician silently tapped his watch. The last thing they both wanted was for him to realize what was going on.

Once he’d recovered, the soldier looked at the General expectantly, “Where am I, Sir? It’s so cold in here. I can’t even feel my legs.” That’s because they’re not there anymore, the Dalton thought grimly.

“You’re back at the base, in,” he hesitated for a moment, searching for the right words, “in the medical unit. Now, what do you remember?”

“It … it was chaos, Sir. Intelligence was wrong about the firing range of the enemy laser cannons, very wrong. We didn’t stand a chance, Sir.” The soldier convulsed into coughing again and closed his eyes, the effort of talking overwhelming him for a time.

“It’s alright son, we’re going to figure out what happened.” Somebody’s head was going to roll for this and the General was damn well sure it wasn’t going to be his.

“Are my wife and daughter here yet, Sir?” Oh great, so the boy was old enough to have a family; Dalton made a mental note to have some kind of valour medal awarded to make sure they were taken care of. The tech was getting agitated now – they must be running out of time.

“They’ll be here soon. Do you want me to tell them anything in case … in case you’re asleep when they arrive?” He made an attempt to sound breezy.

“Just that I love them and I’m going to be ok, I guess.”

“Sure, son.” Smiling reassuringly, the General patted him on the shoulder. God, he hated this part the most. “I’ll tell them.”

The boy visibly relaxed and sank further into the bed, shutting his eyes. Dalton continued to stare at him, a lump forming in his throat until the tech interrupted him.

“He’s gone, General. For good.” He snapped to attention; he had a job to do here. Bringing these kids back from the dead, even if it was for only three precious minutes, cost the military a fortune, had to be justified by a mountain of paperwork and required authorization at the highest level. But the mission had been sabotaged and he needed eye witness accounts.

“How many more?”

The technician gestured to the bank of morgue drawers behind him that stretched from floor to ceiling. “43 corpses. 30, maybe 31, possible reanimations.”

The General grimaced. It was going to be a long afternoon.

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The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow