365 tomorrows

Author : Janna Layton

Cassandra walked down Lilac Street, past the same WMG Corporation superstores and chain restaurants on every Lilac Street in every city. “When you’re in a WMG City, you’re home!” a billboard declared. As she approached, the scanner read her retina to gather information from the marketing database. The billboard then displayed products WMG’s computers determined she might like.

She ignored the images and continued towards Heartville, one of a few scattered “unincorporated towns” of independent eateries and artist studios where WMG couldn’t do business. Supposedly. She thought of the zine in her purse. It looked inconspicuous, but no doubt WMG could do inconspicuous. One article praised a Heartville coffeehouse. Did the author, who had lived in the town for years, truly love it, or was he a “cuckoo,” an undercover WMG employee hired to promote “cuckoo eggs,” unincorporated town establishments secretly owned by WMG? The idea was hypothetical; they had no proof it was being done. “Why would WMG bother?” people asked. But as small as the towns’ businesses were, they were businesses, and Cassandra was sure WMG’s thinking was, “Why not?”

Condos gave way to shacks in Heartville, clean beige paintjobs to impromptu murals. Cassandra used to feel revitalized when entering it. Here was a place, she had thought, where art was art, where she wasn’t being monitored to determine how she could contribute profits to a monopoly. But perhaps even this sanctuary had been taken.

Once she had seen graffiti stating, “The last art on Earth.” Was she the last artist, with her poetry? No, that was vain, she told herself. Surely there were others. Surely most artists in Heartville were what they said they were.

It was possible, she thought, that a cuckoo had written the graffiti to assure residents Heartville was still rebellious and pure, and art still an escape.

She stopped by Joe’s Organic Bakery for two cupcakes. The flyers denouncing big-business agriculture: a disguise? She couldn’t tell, not even when Joe smiled at her.

A few blocks later she stepped inside a gallery, uncertain if doing so was hopeful or masochistic at that point. She liked a painting of an indigo horse, but immediately wondered if a WMG study had concluded the image would appeal to her demographic. Which was the worse prospect: for such paranoid thoughts to stay with her always or for them to disappear? Was the last art on Earth gone already, or was it right here and she couldn’t enjoy it?

“You okay?”

Cassandra turned towards a girl at an easel. “Yeah.”

A paper sign said bartering was welcome.

“Is a cupcake from Joe’s worth a drawing?” she asked.

“Definitely,” the girl replied, grabbing a pen. “Tell me what you want.”

Cassandra handed her a cupcake and a piece of paper from her writing notebook. She wanted something that she knew came from somewhere sincere. Something that, even if this artist was a WMG employee trying to lower her defenses, was created in her own mind.

Author : Andy Bolt

I am hopeful and afraid. I am hateful and compassionate. I am selfish and embarrassed. I’m Garret Garvy, an emotive Botch.

We were a small number of neurological guinea pigs for Johns Hopkins a few years back, participating in the Mechanical Smile Project, an experiment in emotion control. Not in the vague, uncontrolled way of the old prescription medications, but in a real, conscious, push-this-button-and-feel-that-way style of emotion control. It was a combination of heavy hormone stimulants and post-hypnotic suggestion, and it would have been revolutionary. You literally would never have had to be sad again. With the push of a bio-button, your life could have been non-stop ecstasy. It was the end of human suffering as we knew it, according to Meghan Wells, the frenzy-eyed young grad student who injected me with a bluish substance before asking me to count backwards from one hundred.

It didn’t work.

What it did was link, accidentally but inextricably, several of my neurochemical and hormonal processes. Virtually all of my emotions now come paired with another, and several of them aren’t all that compatible. Love and depression, for example.

I am standing in my self-cleaning kitchen, staring aimlessly into space, a plate of uneaten mush behind me. Happiness comes with panic, so I don’t eat anything with a pleasing taste anymore. I used to be pretty chunky. I’m twenty pounds underweight now. As I lean absently against my Stero-sink, my spine grate against porcelain. My polycotton smart shirt rubs against by elbows, and I concentrate on the sensation. It’s so neutral, neither pleasant nor painful. I have come to appreciate neutrality. Apathy comes paired with rage, so I have to care, but in a minimalist, nonspecific sort of way. It’s not as hard as it sounds.

It’s roughest on my fiancée. Mela shuffles into the kitchen, looking like a half-cooked slab of meat that has been left out for a few days. Her eyes are pink and barely opened, and the rest of her has taken on a faint grayish color. A few hundred reddish hairs are rebelling from her head, striking off in their own directions without regard for the collective will. She wears a purple bathrobe that is almost more hole than clothing. A jagged tear near her neck exposes the swell of her left breast. Sexual desire comes paired with grief. Not worth it.

“Nisse just needs some milk,” she murmurs, shuffling past me and kneeling in front of the fridge, where she begins rifling through bottles. Nisse’s our six-month old daughter and the only reason we’re still together. Mela takes care of her, mostly. She’s a good mother. I sit behind her, on the floor, and reach up to massage her shoulders. She sighs, shuddering at my touch.

“How do you feel?” she asks without turning around. I think about it for a moment before wrapping my arms around her stomach and pulling her into my lap. Pressing my lips to her ear, I whisper,

“I’m always depressed.”

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Lieutenant Bensen’s neck snapped in my strong hands with a crack and a gurgle. Her surprised eyes goggled up at me as her body went limp. Corporal Manciewicz lay behind me in pieces already while the happy captain himself, mister high-and-mighty Captain Pankter, squatted terrified in front of me in the corner. He’d been crying and a high animal keening was squeaking out from between his clenched teeth. He had the light sweat, wild eyes, and electric stink of raw fear. I dove towards him like a wolf would jump on a rabbit. Like the others, I used my teeth and bare hands.

I look forward out of the bridge viewport and smile at the memory.

I get it all out on the holodeck. I think I may have actually killed this entire ship by now. I’ve killed the bridge crew dozens of times for sure. Probably half of the women on the ship have earned a place in my recreation at one time or another. A few of the men as well. The ones that were going out with any of the women I fancied.

I walk around with a smile on my face all the time. My lovers have told me that I even smile in my sleep. I’ll chuckle at odd times in conversations remembering the slaughter.

I don’t get in trouble. People don’t ask me questions about my behaviour. No one knows about my programs.

Any of the crew that whines ends up there, too. I can’t stand whiners. Or complainers. Or people that don’t have the sense god gave a goat to keep their own lives in order.

I’m the ship’s counselor, you see.

I need an outlet. This entire ship’s neuroses are funneled through me and my outwardly sunny disposition. I am one of the best ship’s counselors in the fleet.

Author : Todd Keisling, featured writer

Jimmy lost his pinky finger today. I can’t wait ’til I lose mine. Mommy says it’s gonna happen sooner or later. Sometimes I daydream about it—what it’d be like to lose my arm, my foot, my fingers and hands.

The kids at school, Billy Zemicks and Janna Clebold and Harvey Valencia, they came in last week missing an eye, a toe, an ear. Not all at the same time, of course, but pretty darn close. It was like they were the most popular people in school. Everybody wanted to see them, touch the places where their parts had been and ask what it felt like.

Jimmy was in the bathroom, having the Oralator brush his teeth for him when his pinky fell off. I asked him if it hurt. He said it didn’t, and then he spat into the sink. A couple of his teeth went down the drain.

Our teacher Mrs. Crabtree says it’s all part of our natural progression. What scientists a hundred years ago were calling evolution. Only backwards. It’s kinda hard to explain, but it’s got something to do with how we used to be monkeys, and how we grew into humans. We made wheels and fire and then we made computers and cars. Then we figured out a way for machines and inventions to do everything for us.

So I asked Jimmy if he was gonna celebrate, and he said, “Nah, I’m just gonna chill out in front of the tube.” I followed him to the living room where he sat down next to Mommy and Daddy. They were watching TV while the SofAid fed them. Jimmy told Mommy and Daddy about his pinky.

Mrs. Crabtree said, “Over millions of years, creatures can gain or lose abilities and appendages based on necessity and survival.” She told us all this while holding up a stump where her hand used to be.

When Jimmy told Mommy and Daddy about his finger, the SofAid connected him to the Network. Then it inserted a needle into his arm and began to feed him breakfast. Daddy said, “That’s great, son! You’re on your way to becoming a man.”

On TV, the news reporters said it was happening everywhere, and that it boggled all the scientists in the world. Evolution was supposed to happen after a long time, not right away. Not like this.

They said we should embrace this new wonder of humanity. They said, “Imagine, no longer feeling the need to sleep! Or eat! Or copulate!” We still needed to sleep and eat, of course, but they said it was always a possibility. That was one of the great things about evolution.

I still don’t know what copulate means, though. Maybe I won’t have to. It sounds gross.

Author : Grady Hendrix

…and he suddenly wakes up with a start. The light was all wrong, a brief nap shouldn’t have taken this – 5:45! Oh, god. Oh, no. Why hadn’t his alarm clock gone off? Eric squeezed his forehead in his hands and made a high-pitched sound: he had slept through his own wedding. This is the kind of thing that happens when you have a secret laboratory underneath your house and you muck about with time travel.

“I’ll fix it,” he said out loud. “I’ll fix it.”

He leapt up and adjusted the time vest for just one more trip. He cinched the straps and hit the button and he was instantly unmoored in the Chronoverse, suddenly reduced to a unique set of free floating personality traits rushing backwards to…

Just a few hours ago! He looked at himself sleeping at his desk, head nestled in the crook of his elbow. He’d done it! He carefully set the alarm on his clock and got ready for his return trip. Is that what he looked like from behind? Well he certainly needed to shave the back of his neck more often. Then he was looking down the barrel of a gun. Several guns, in fact. Several guns being held by uniformed strangers.

“Come with us, Professor Tenser,” one of them said. “We’ll make this easy on you.”

“Who are you people?”

“Copyright Enforcement. You invented time travel, but we used your invention to travel back in time and invent it before you. You’re wearing a bootleg vest so we’re going to have to kill you.”

“You can’t kill me for a copyright violation.”

“Sure we can. Our lawyers went back and put it in the Constitution.”

Eric panicked and slapped the button on his vest, flinging himself randomly into time. The Copyright Cops followed. Down the corridors of history they ran: Medieval, Mesozoic, Middle Reformation, Great Awakening. Hiding behind Thomas Becket’s robes, crouching in a Catholic hiding hole, squatting behind the battlements of a castle. Eric was good at running but then he thought, “What if…?” and he set a different path.

Now waiting on the pink shores of a prehistoric sea, Coelacanths mating merrily in the deep, he sees a tiny fish, gills straining, taking its first crawl up onto land, chased by an angry trilobite. Eric had worked this problem out, spending almost a year in a looped millisecond so that no time at all had passed. He had pinpointed this little Rhipidistia as the earliest ancestor of the Copyright Cops who were on his tail. He smushed it with a rolled up magazine.

“There,” he said. “Now to get back to my wedding.”

Yanked into the present, he’s back in his lab, exhausted after his chase through time, but exhilarated as well. He sits at his workbench to get ready for the wedding but first, just a little nap. He puts his head down on his arms, he falls soundly asleep…

Author : Kathy Kachelries, Staff Writer

“You won’t like it there,” Rajani’s brother said. “People go crazy like that, so far from the sun. There’s science behind it. I saw it on the forums.”

Sam’s avatar hung on the screen throughout the call: himself at twenty-one, tanned and grinning as he reclined in a white plastic chair. His UV goggles had been shoved up into his dark hair, and she recognized the backdrop of the mainland relocation center behind him. The photograph was half a decade old, now. Samir was an account manager for a software company in Dhaka.

“I’m not going to go crazy, Sam,” she said with a tired but affectionate sigh. Rajani leaned back as far as her small control chair would permit her and folded her hands behind her neck. “I was a janitor on Mercury, remember? And a receptionist in the Hilton Luna.”

“But the sun was always there, Raj. You just had to travel a couple hours to see it. And an ice moon? The Eskimos used to go nuts, do you know that? Pibloqtok, they called it. You’re not cut out for a place like that, hon. Come back to Bangladesh.”

Rajani was used to her brother’s pleas, though they were less frequent and impassioned than her parents’. “The Sunderban’s underwater, Sam.”

“There are other places above sea level.”

“It isn’t the same.”

Despite the frequent cost of replacing her shuttle’s oxygen filter, Rajani fished a lighter from her pocket and lit a cigarette, exhaling towards Sam’s avatar with mild frustration. Her own avatar, displayed beside his, contained a preteen girl on a pale beach, bands of white surf curling around her ankles. Her father’s small fishing boat was tied up in the background.

“Have you ever seen ice, Sam?” she asked.

“Are you smoking in your shuttle?”

“I asked you a question.”

“Sure. I went to the ice park in Greenland a few years ago.”

“That’s not real ice.”

“It’s frozen water.”

“Not the same thing. They freeze it. I did a fly-by of Io once, a couple months ago. Nothing but black peaks and valleys, and the settlement’s lights reflecting over it.

“Sounds nice,” he said, though his tone was dubious.

“It looks like the ocean at night. The way our flashlights hit the waves when we were hunting for crabs.”

Sam was silent for several seconds. “You’re becoming an ice miner,” he finally said.

“There’s no global warming out there.”

Her brother sighed, but Rajani knew that she had won. “I can’t talk you out of it?”

“I’ll visit on the off-season,” she promised, and flipped the switch to disconnect. With a mechanical click, both avatars disappeared. Rajani angled the nose of her craft upwards, away from Earth, preparing to trade one orbit for the next.

Author : Todd Keisling, featured writer

My brother used to tell me about the glory days, when the Government was less unified and there was more than a single state. Usually what he told me went along with what they taught us at the Academy in history class, but sometimes he’d add little details here and there. Things they didn’t include in their presentations.

This was after he’d joined the Military, served a couple of tours and came back. He was different when he returned. Told me and Mama that he’d seen his nightmares come to life during that time, that we just wouldn’t understand. Not long after is when he’d start telling me about the way things used to be. About how there used to be actual television broadcasts with fictional plots. He called them “sitcoms.”

We had this car. A real zoomer. Old rust-bucket from the 20th. He bought it before he was recruited, and before he left for duty I told him we’d fix it up when he came back. I didn’t expect him to return, but he did. Sometimes I think maybe it would’ve been best if he hadn’t.

One day, while we were both on our backs underneath the old GT, my brother told me that I should stop taking the supplements.

He said, “There’s more in them than just serotonin.”

I told him we had to by law, that we’d be in big trouble if we didn’t, but he just chuckled. He told me people used to read for enjoyment. The last book I actually saw was in an antique shop downtown.

“They didn’t have to outlaw books,” he said. “Back in the day, a lot of people wrote about futures where governments banned books. They were wrong. People just stopped giving a shit. Channel Zero took care of the rest.”

He took the ratchet from my hand and looked me in the eye.

He said, “This country was built on revolution. They want you to forget that. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Two days after he killed himself I was out working on the car to clear my head. Mama came to me, her eyes all puffy from crying, and gave me a letter. No name or return address. Just had my own name scrawled across the front. The letter simply said:

“Warehouse 27. Corner of Reed and Pine. Wednesday. 11 PM.”

And then, below that, it said:

“Your brother was a good friend.”

I was told my entire life not to break curfew. Two hours of Channel Zero were mandatory. We were always supposed to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior, and I’d heard about what happened to those who were caught in the streets after hours.

What my brother told me underneath the car that day stuck with me, and I wanted to know who sent this letter, so I managed to sneak out. I took to the alleys and the old routes I used to follow when I was a kid.

Warehouse 27 wasn’t empty. There were a lot of young men like me there. There was a lot of anti-Government propaganda tacked to the walls. After a few minutes, the doors were closed, and several soldiers and patrol officers filed into the room.

One man in a black uniform stepped forward and said, “You’re all under arrest for conspiring against the Government.”

Everyone murmured. We knew we’d been had.

“High treason is punishable by execution,” he said, “or by four years of Military service. The choice is yours.”

The soldiers cocked their rifles and took aim. I realized then what my brother was talking about, and why he enlisted in the first place.

The choice was obvious. I just wish I’d had time to say goodbye to Mama, and that I’d finished that damn rust-bucket car.

Author : Debbie Mac Rory

We have no choice, they said. We have to leave. We don’t know where we can go, or even if we can survive out there, but we can’t live here any longer. But there isn’t enough room here for all of us.

And then it became clear that the “we” and the “us” indicated in the news broadcasts, referred only to the healthy, the fertile, the educated among our peoples. Those who had been born without genetic abnormalities or physiological conditions which science should have long since cured.

The selection process was as short as the world government was able to make it, but it still stretched into months. Riots broke out worldwide, incited by those terrified of being left behind and those made bitter by tests results that rejected their chance of passage, even though they considered themselves healthy.

Paranoia took its place in the proceedings and only those who had a place ensured were allowed to prepare and load the ships. I suppose they believed that we, abandoned as we were, would yet try to poison the food, or infect their ventilation systems with some pathogenic substance. I know there were some that would have done so, and some that tried through the layers of security that surrounded the airbases. Most of them lost their lives on the lasers of the defensive grid.

When the ships had at last completed preparations, few were at full capacity. The medical AIs, calling on all the worlds collected knowledge, rejected all children under 12 in the belief that the exposure of such young bodies to the unshielded radiation outside the atmosphere would render them infertile, and useless as colony members. Even allowing for the families who opted to stay together on a now barren planet, or the parents who kissed their children goodbye, leaving them with crippled aunts or grandfathers too old to qualify, the numbers were far fewer than expected.

Most of the ships have left now, but the security grid around the airfields is still active. The children who were left come here most days to throw rocks against the fences, and watch the lasers turn them to dust. I still come to watch the last of the ships, assisting those others who try to hack into the abandoned bases so we can siphon the remaining power for ourselves.

The little girl with me clings tighter, burying her face in the cloth of my garments as the dust clouds raise from yet another launch. I adjust the gauze around my face with one hand so I can keep watching, while gently stroking the child’s hair with the other, to comfort her.

When finally the rockets flare has faded beyond what I could follow in the brightness of the noon-day sun I take the girls hand and turning, we walk together into the echoing streets.

Author : TJMoore

The path to the discovery of intelligent non-human life was, for me, a life’s journey. SETI had invested billions in high tech telescopes and antenna arrays, thousands of personnel hours and miles of red tape, without a single positive result. I had done it at the cost of just over five hundred thousand dollars, twenty five years of my own life, my own sweat and tears, my family, my friends, my reputation and my respect. The last two or possibly three items I have since recovered, depending on your definition of “friends”.

It all started with the artifact. I had found an artifact that I believed to be part of a larger artifact that was lost or discarded by prehistoric visitors from another world and time. It ended with my excavation of a site that I had purchased with the proceeds from the sale of my house, my land, my entire estate and personal wealth. The excavation resulted in the discovery of a mechanical devise of unknown origin, composition or purpose. Scientists have analyzed the metal like material and have determined that nothing like it exists in the world as we know it and the material has yet to be reproduced by any known process.

The discovery site was the southern edge of a quarry where decorative marble was occasionally mined for its unusual color, transparency and high concentration of fossils. The fossils were so numerous that the strength of the stone was unacceptable for most building materials so the quarry had been dormant for many years. I had little trouble purchasing it.

I had great trouble finding it. It took years of searching through paper invoices and inventories, work schedules, logs and shipping documents. The final link was actually an artist who had ordered some slab marble for a pedestal he was commissioned to build at a museum. He had personally scouted out the stone to be cut from the quarry, deliberately choosing the brittle stone for its interesting fossils. Unfortunately, the museum changed the color scheme of the atrium and the stone was sold to a tile company to be cut into floor tiles. The tiles sat in a warehouse for several years until it was sold at auction to a wholesaler who shipped it to another warehouse where it sat for another few years. When the wholesaler went out of business, it was sold, again at auction, to a distributor who sold it to a contractor whose business was building and remodeling for small businesses. The contractor had used the tile in the restrooms of a new office building.

So we arrive at the beginning of the journey where I, sitting on the bathroom throne, caught a glimpse of something unnatural beneath the polished surface of the floor tile beneath me. It was a tiny spring with a tiny fossil passing through the coils. A spring deposited in the ancient muck when the now fossilized shellfish was still alive. A spring made millions of years before man.

Author : Viktor Kuprin

Any starship could request a flyby. Popik received them all the time from the Customs Patrols and the Space Force when they needed to eyeball our ship. If they wanted a bribe that day, they’d come aboard Popik’s old Mod One. He would shake hands with the thug-in-charge and discretely pass some rubles or gold kopeks he’d gotten from here and there.

That’s what you had to do if you were a free trader like Popik, especially if you occasionally hauled illicit cargoes on the side like bootleg vodka or tobacco. The Americans treated tobacco like it was some kind of fission-grade plutonium. But the colonists on the Fringe Worlds gladly paid for it sight unseen.

Maybe Popik was curious to see the ship or, I suspect, he just wanted to give me a surprise. He keyed up the code for a flyby request, transmitted it, and to his surprise the reply came back giving the okay. Back then, before the wars with the Helgrammites and the others, there weren’t so many alien starships in human space. Not like now.

When he called me over the comm, I was playing with dolls in my cabin. I raced to the cramped control center, dragging my favorite teddy bear behind.

“Sit down, Vika, and watch the big televisor,” Popik said. “We’re going to see something special.”

“Is it Poppa or Momma calling? Are they coming?” I asked.

“Not this time, my heart,” Popik replied. “We’re going to see a Tsoor ship, an alien ship. We’ll fly past it in a few seconds. Watch.”

“Da, Popik.” I should have known it wasn’t my parents. Poppa was on duty aboard a warship somewhere in deep space. Momma was away, too, always working in some company office on Getamech. So, when I wasn’t in school, I got to travel with Popik and live in his asteroid domik between our trips to the stars.

A strangely-shaped orb appeared on the televisor screen and began to grow in size. Popik grinned and fired the retros, slowing our approach.

“It’s a Class-4 Tsoor starship. They call it a ‘Porpita,’” he explained.

“That’s a funny name, Popik!” I bounced and giggled, hugging my teddy bear.

The Tsoor ship was a cluster of four huge connected spheres glowing bluish green. Bars of brilliant violet light circled the globes’ equators and vertical axes. I saw no portholes, no windows, no one looking back at us. To me it looked like some giant, magical New Year’s tree ornament.

“Can we flash our lights for them, Popik?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We probably shouldn’t, my heart. The aliens might not know what to make of it.”

Then the beautiful Tsoor starship receded into the distance and was gone.

I watched and re-watched the video Popik had made of the flyby. And all these many years later, I still have that recording. Just a few seconds long, but it takes me back to those happiest of times, back to my dear grandfather.

Author : Todd Keisling, featured writer

Mr. Serling entered the cafe and took a seat at the bar. He ordered the lunch special which, for that day, was a bowl of vegetable soup, carrot sticks and a peanut butter sandwich.

His arrival did not go unnoticed. Rob watched from his booth table while his girlfriend, Mary, nursed her coffee.

“Rod Serling is an alien.”

Rob chewed his lip as he made his confession. Mary set down her cup of coffee, glanced around the cafe and lit a cigarette. She blinked.

“Your neighbor is an alien?”

“Yes, I’m telling you, he’s a damned alien and he’s right there.”

Mary took a drag and exhaled a plume of smoke. She regarded poor old Mr. Serling’s aged back and smiled.

“You’ve been smoking too much, man. Not the ciggies, either.”

“No, Mary, I’m serious. Here–”

Rob produced a brass pocket watch. Mary smirked.

“It’s a watch, Rob.”

“No, it’s not just any watch. I found this in his front yard.”

“You were snooping in that poor old man’s front yard?”

“No. Well, maybe. Yeah, anyway, look–this watch stops time. Just like in that old Twilight Zone episode.”

From his seat at the bar, Mr. Serling uttered a low belch and opened up a copy of the morning newspaper.

“Rob, you’ve been doing more than smoking. Did you drop that acid last night after I left?”

“I’m serious, Mary. Look.”

“Rob, it’s a damn watch. Now, I want you to go over there and return that man’s property. Tell him you found it and think it belongs to him.”

“But Mary, he’s an alien!”

This last outburst attracted the attention of several cafe patrons. Mr. Serling was too absorbed in his newspaper to notice.

Mary put out her cigarette in the ashtray and placed her hand on Rob’s.

“Honey. I love you, but I swear to God Almighty, if you don’t stop watching those reruns on TV, I’m going to kick you in the ass. The real Rod Serling died in the 70s. You know that. That guy–”

She pointed at old man Serling.

“–just happens to have the same name. That guy’s not even related. You know that. I know that. Now go return his watch before I smack you.”

“Mary, you’ve seen the shit that goes on next door some nights. You’ve seen things float into the sky and hover and the flashing lights and–”

“Rob, I’ve been stoned out of my mind and seen elephants eclipse the sun. He is not an alien. You’re just paranoid and weird. Now go return the damn watch.”

Rob snatched the watch from the table and rose. He marched over to the bar where his neighbor Mr. Serling sat chewing a peanut butter sandwich.

“M-Mr. Serling?”

The old man swiveled in his seat and faced Rob.

“Yes?”

“I, uh, well, see, I was walking along and I found this–”

Rob held up the watch. Mr. Serling’s eyes brightened.

“Oh, thank goodness. I thought I’d lost it forever. Thank you, young man.”

Mr. Serling took the pocket watch. He opened the cover, stared with gentle amusement at its ticking face, and then pressed the stop button.

Everything froze.

He rose from his seat, left a couple of dollars on the bar and left the cafe in its frozen state. Above, birds hovered still in the air, while cars and people stood in place.

Rod Serling surveyed the street corner, smiled and nodded. His work here was done. He pulled back his sleeve, tapped his wristwatch, and promptly vanished into another dimension..

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Annette sways forward and for a second it’s like there’s no bonesetter in her bloodstream. She’s languid again. Graceful and alive. Pre-soldier.

We’re friends. That’s hard to come by this far out in the rings. Most of the other folks float silently around me in a stellar hermitage braid. Small living quarters from many different ages float amongst the wide thin ocean of spaceborne glittering rocks.

Some of the stones are boulders. Proximity sensors take care of those ones and automatically keep my ship safe. It’s the dust that’s worrying. Clogged injets or filters can mean slow death out here. They need constant maintenance.

Annette is here to double check my work. It’s not necessary but it’s nice to have another person to talk to once in a while. I’ve turned off the grav to make it easier for her. She hitches a smile back at me and with a little smirk I realize that I was checking out her body. We’re developing a little relationship here.

We’ve markered each other’s ships with private SOS position beacon tags. There’s no buddy system out here for the permanents but we felt like starting one up. We’re really bucking the bell curve of loneliness. There’s a silent amusement between us that I know we’re both enjoying.

I get a cheerful mock pout thumbs-up from her and a sarcastic grin goodbye. Emotions last for days in this timeless darkness and I’m smiling for days. With the silent hiss of the ringsand expanse rubbing the hull, I deliberately wait. It’s like I’m living inside a bell being sanded by wind.

Later that month, I call up the map. There’s a burst of three dimensional static and then I can see the planet floating flat in front of me like a milkspider’s eggsac framed by the rings. It has a red eye like Jupiter that stares at me from the center of the projection at the planet’s north pole. Maybe that’s why the founders named it Taurus. With the rings and the storming bullseye, it looks like a targeted dartboard.

I turn off the dataflow and config the custom holo to just show me Her and Me. I kick back in my chair and smoke, watching the two red dots float far apart in the rings of Taurus. I let my affection grow like a cancer inside me and I wonder if she’s doing the same thing.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

My head was throbbing. I pinched the bridge of my nose in an attempt to ease the pain. It didn’t help.

“Try rubbing your temples. That seems to work for me,” suggested a gravelly voice to my right.

Prior to that instant, I didn’t know anyone was with me. In fact, I didn’t even know where I was, or how I got here. Although the room was on the dark side, I couldn’t open my eyes wider than thin slits. I decided to keep them closed. “What’s that?” I was able to say in a raspy voice that was barely louder than a whisper. “Where am I? I demand to know what’s going on.”

“Well, buddy, I don’t know where we are. But I know it ain’t no place good. It seems we’ve been kidnapped by Spacemen. We’re in some kind of flying saucer. They picked you up yesterday. I’ve been here about a week.”

“Spacemen? Flying saucer? What are you talking about?”

“I know it hurts, but think hard. What do you remember?”

He was right, it did hurt. But I fought through the pain. “Let’s see. I remember being in a large room. Something like a hospital room, or maybe a laboratory of some kind. Oh my God. You’re right. I do seem to remember seeing aliens. At least I think I do. I can’t be sure. Maybe it was a dream?”

“More like a nightmare, my friend. Try again. Can you see them?”

“I can’t really see anything. But I do have some vague impressions. Oh God, their smell. I remember their stench was awful. Especially their breath. It was like decomposing flesh. It was horrible.” I tried to concentrate, but everything was still blurry. “I sense something. Yes, they were ugly. Discolored teeth. A big nose, at least that’s what I think it was. Two evil looking eyes. And they had things growing on either side of their heads.” I struggled to focus on the fleeting images at the edges of my consciousness. “I also recall this metal contraption attached to the top of my head. It stung me with burst of electric shocks.” I grabbed my temples, and fought the pain. “I also remember thinking, ‘boy are these guys stupid. They’re a race of idiots. Ugly ass idiots. We should do the universe a favor and kill them all.’ I remember thinking how it made my skin crawl just being in the same room with them.” I shuddered. “How about you? Did you see the same thing?”

I couldn’t see my companion, but I could hear him chuckle. “Yeah. It was exactly like that. Well, on the first day, anyway. But not now. Not after I figured out what they’re doing. That thing they put on our heads, it’s some kind of mind reading device. They put one on you and another on one of them. Then they sit across from you and suck your thoughts right out of your mind. All those things you remember about how disgusting and hideous they were. Well, that’s not what really happened. You see, that mind contraption works both ways. You’re actually remembering what they were thinking about you.”

Author : Todd Keisling, featured writer

It’s the smell that gets to me. Agent Lennox ducks his head out from the kitchen just in time to watch me vomit into the hall.

“You okay, Church?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Just peachy-keen.”

The smell is that of burning meat Inside the kitchen are the remains of tenant #62 Jim Hollerbach. That horrid smell is from his insides coiled and plopped into a frying pan.

I check my sensory inhibitor, thumb it to olfactory and I’m good to go.

Agent Lennox’s phone rings. He taps the earpiece.

“Lennox,” he answers. “You’re shitting me. I’ll send Church over in a minute.”

He taps the earpiece again to disconnect and motions to me.

“The perp lives down the hall. Tenant #41. Guy jacked his line and set it on a loop.”

“He looped?”

The inhibitor gives me a metallic taste in my mouth.

“Yeah,” Lennox says. “Blind analog feed. Should be down the hall to your right. Go check it out. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

I give the remains of Mr. Hollerbach a passing glance before I leave the room. My stomach twists, but nothing creeps up my esophagus.

The Government requires inhibitors for situations like this. Dulling the senses is required to perform an Agent’s duties—or so they tell us in training. It sure beats the hell out of puking.

The serotonin, they tell us, is to enhance community morale.

Agents like myself and Lennox aren’t required to take the supplements. The inhibitors do it for us.

Walking down the hallway, it hits me. Analog. That’s not a word you hear very much these days. The SmartCams are wired to an all-digital encrypted network, and knowing how to bypass that encryption with old technology would require extensive old-world knowledge.

Printed literature took a backseat after the invention of Channel Zero. Rather than face scrutiny and ridicule during such a turbulent time, the Government chose to reinforce a blind eye toward printed material, instead pumping all its resources into the necessity of the single channel. It made more sense to divert the public’s attention rather than force them to give up reading.

It worked, too. People stopped reading. They stopped caring. Books were no longer a danger because no one gave a damn anyway.

Tenant #41—tonight’s murderer—isn’t home, but he left behind the blueprints for his own design.

I step past the forensics team, tug on a pair of gloves and thumb through the first book I see. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

Every wall in the apartment is outfitted with makeshift shelving. Books—at least a thousand—decorate the room. It’s an antiquarian’s dream collection.

“Lennox,” I say, and tap my earpiece.

He answers, and I tell him to conduct a search on all the local antique shops. When he asks why, I tell him.

“Because it looks like our perp is a reader.”

“Oh shit.”

I disconnect and put down the book.

The Government thought they could sweep this under the rug. That if people stopped caring about books, there would be no reason to take away that particular “freedom,” and no cause for alarm or rebellion.

Staring at the home of this murderous reader, I realize the Government has made a gross miscalculation.

Mega Flare , by Patricia Stewart is now up on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast, the official podcast of 365tomorrows.
Mega Flare was written by Patricia Stewart, and read and produced by JR Blackwell.

Author : Daniel Rosenblum

“This wasn’t what I expected the past to be like.”

I looked around warily, absorbing the unfamiliar sights. I was alone in a rotund, palatial chamber, standing at the center beneath a sweeping ceiling supported by ornate columns. Yellow shafts of early-morning sunlight penetrated the room’s few windows, casting soft, dramatic shadows across the echoing structure.

I checked my watch. 4:28 AM. It was time to commit the grandest act of goodness possible.

Behind the mahogany doors ahead slept a powerful, perverted man. In two months, his distorted thoughts and nefarious deeds will irreparably damage the future of civilization. Three hundred years later, in my natural time, we still felt the shockwaves of destruction emanating from this man’s atrocities.

Now I held the power to end it all before it ever began.

I slipped through the doors like an avenging spirit, intent on my purpose. There he slept, so mortal and vulnerable – no more than a collection of bones and muscle. His faint breathing filled the room, amplified in my ears over the intense throbbing of my nervous heart. I removed my weapon from its holster, took steady aim, and…

“For morality,” I murmured angrily, and the deed was done.

I had done it. No one would ever hear of my deed, sing songs in my name, or celebrate a saved future. No, I didn’t require any fanfare – only the knowledge that I had done what’s right.

I returned to my time, looking forward to enjoying a world free from fear and oppression.

“This wasn’t what I expected the future to be like.”

Where there once was a wealth of technology, there was barbarism. Where there used to be a massive city just before the vast horizon, there was black, smoldering rubble. My laboratory was in ashes. My home was in splinters. I could see a small cottage faintly in the distance, starting life anew. At first I could not understand. I had fixed it! But the man’s ideas were greater than his flesh, transcending the material. Someone worse – far worse – had taken his place. The world was destroyed, but I knew what I had to do.

I returned to the past, 4:27 AM, and waited for my earlier self to arrive. I soon saw myself appear in the center of the room, just as I remembered. I stood still, staring at the back of my head.

“This wasn’t what I expected the past to be like.”

I took a step towards my earlier self and gripped my weapon.

I looked around warily, absorbing the unfamiliar sights.

I checked my watch. 4:28 AM. It was time to commit the grandest act of goodness possible. I held the power to end it all before it ever began.

No one will ever hear of my bravery – I only knew that I was doing what’s right. I removed my weapon from its holster, took steady aim, and…

“For morality,” I murmured angrily, and the deed was done.

Author : Robert Niescier

“Why do you keep writing in there?”

He looked up and into her eyes, through steam shaded orange from the bonfire’s glow, and smiled. “It’s so people, future people, remember everything we went through. So we don’t get lost as just two generic survivors of the bad times. History tends to cast a blind eye towards those who don’t record their own endeavors.”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘people who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.’ I’ve heard the cliché.”

“Yes, and it’s advice humankind tends to ignore. But that’s not why I’m keeping a journal.”

The fire had begun to die down, so he groped through the darkness for another log. He placed the wood onto the weakening embers, close enough to the water-filled pot to keep its temperature up and boiling. His hand recoiled in pain as a flame jumped up like a startled snake and burned him.

Her eyes widened. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Here, let me get something to put on it…” She began to rummage through her backpack and came up with a cream. “This will help.”

“Thank you, but no. Save it for when we really need it. It’s only a little burn.”

“And when that little burn turns into a little infection, then turns into a little toxic shock, where will I be? You want to test out just how much of a survivor I really am? Use the damn medication.” But still he refused, and soon she put the cream away and sighed. “You didn’t finish answering my question,” she said.

“What else is there to say? I don’t want to be forgotten. It used to be that if you produced a grand work of art, a moving story, an invention or theory that would improve the quality of life, your name would be remembered, your memory encapsulated in books and landmarks dedicated to your name. But those opportunities are gone now; the only thing left for us is to survive. To be.

“This journal, this story, is the only thing I have left to give. I want future generations to know that, even though our time may have come so close to destroying that which we had spent centuries to build, everything that we held dear, that we were still just people. Neither villains nor heroes. Just people who made a grievous mistake and paid for it with everything they had.

“How can you be so sure that these future people will find your little journal, or if they will even exist? What if we were the only…” Her throat made an odd noise and she stopped. She poked at the embers with a stick for a few minutes, then shifted her body away from the fire and laid down, her gaze to the sky.

He grabbed two scraps of cloth and, after picking it off of the fire, placed the water pot onto the highway blacktop. He stood up and looked down the highway, but there was nothing to see but inky blackness all around. He shivered. It was getting colder every day; they would have to increase their pace if they hoped to reach the western coast before the winter months.

“Beautiful,” she whispered.

“What?”

“The sky, it’s beautiful. You know, I lived in the city all my life. I never really got to see the stars. Not like this. It’s like we’ve entered a whole new world.”

A coyote howled somewhere in the distance. He looked up, up at the black, star-sprinkled tapestry that seemed to go on for ever and ever. She was right; it was beautiful.

Author : Debbie Mac Rory

My knee is still bleeding from the last time I fell and my trousers keep sticking to them, bringing forth fresh darts of pain. But I’m too scared to use my torch here. I’ve already been stopped by two division patrols on my way here; I guess my research wasn’t thorough enough, and I still look overdressed for this part of the city.

She told me just to find somewhere quiet and private in the shared sector, where we could be alone. When I’d asked how she was going to know where we were supposed to meet, she smiled and told me not to worry. “I’ll find you”, she said.

46…47…48…49…50 paces further into the alley and there should be a door on my right. My fingers fumble on the greasy brickwork for the frame the obsolete city maps told me should be here. Finally my touch meets jaded timbers, and I move to brace my shoulder against the door. The door disintegrates in a shower of wood dust as I push against it, leaving me yelping as I hit the floor, skinning my partly healed knee again and earning a matching scar across my knuckles.

I sit there for a moment, cradling my bleeding hand and generally feeling so miserable that I never heard her come up behind me. She smiles at my disproportionate distress and takes my hands in her gloves fingers and pulls me to my feet. She gestures for me to follow her into the darkness further inside the warehouse.

When finally she stops, she takes the torch from my stiffened fingers, and props it against a wall, exploiting its feeble light to the full. I smile at her, and raise a hand to gently brush my thumb across her cheek – and my breath catches as I watch the trail of colour left there, as if I’d dipped my fingers in paint before touching her. Her skin seems to be flowing now, catching the colour from my hands, and carrying it in mesmerising swirls across her face. I tear my eyes away from the sight, and lifting my other hand to her shoulder, being to draw small shapes on her skin. I feel dizzy already, but when I see that she’s removed her gloves, and her hands are lying naked in her lap, I take her face in my hands and kiss her as all the world fades away.

***

When I finally open my eyes, my vision clears enough to let me catch a glimpse of skin as dark as my own, and a pair of unfamiliar hazel eyes. But the smile is the same, as is the gentle touch of her fingers. She could almost pass for human now.

Author : Todd Keisling, featured writer

Dr. Watson and Dr. Blair watched as the orderlies interned the patient in observation room three.

Dr. Blair scratched absently at the back of his hand.

“So,” Dr. Watson said, “what’s his story?”

He gestured to the nameless patient in the straightjacket. Both orderlies left him in one corner of the padded room and closed the door behind them. The doctors stared at the young man through the observation window.

Dr. Blair grimaced, cleared his throat and said, “Wandered into the clinic this morning. No name, no ID.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No,” Dr. Blair went on. “He sat in the ER for two and a half hours before we could squeeze anything out of him. Even then, it was nothing but inane babble. Something about aliens.”

Dr. Watson smirked.

“You should be used to that in your neck of the woods.”

Dr. Blair continued to scratch the back of his hand. The skin was red and puffy.

“Damn kids come in from college, drive up to Archuleta Mesa to get stoned and look for the ‘lost military base.’ All they find is a hangover.”

“Lost military base?”

“Yeah,” Dr. Blair said. He kept scratching. The skin turned a dark reddish-purple from his consistent agitation. “Local myth. Sort of like Area 51 up in Nevada, but this base is underground, just north of Dulce. They say it has seven levels. Level seven is where aliens supposedly perform genetic experiments on human beings. Or some shit like that.”

Dr. Watson turned back to the observation window. The nameless kid slowly rocked back and forth. Blood dribbled down from a large, bulbous boil on his forehead.

“That’s one hell of a zit.”

Dr. Blair gasped as he drew blood from the back of his hand. Dr. Watson turned and frowned.

“I’ve got a first aid kit in my office. Walk with me.”

The two doctors left the observation ward.

Dr. Blair continued his story.

“Funny thing is, the kid isn’t stoned. Not as far as I can tell. When we finally got him to speak, all we could get out of him was a bunch of babbling and crazy talk.”

“What did he say?”

“Typical Archuleta bullshit. Went up with a few friends, dropped some acid, got separated. He said he found his way into the underground base and was led down to the seventh level where, and I quote, ‘E.T. revealed the greatest secret of all.’”

They entered Dr. Watson’s office, who proceeded to dig out the first aid kit. He chewed his bottom lip as he bandaged Dr. Blair’s wounded hand.

“Are you okay, doctor?”

“Yeah,” Dr. Blair nodded. “Just a rash. Shouldn’t have scratched it like that.”

Both men sat.

“Anyway,” Dr. Watson said, “what’s this big secret?”

Dr. Blair tried to refrain from smiling, but not hard enough.

“The kid says an alien told him he was the messenger. That he would send a ‘great revelation’ back to his race. Whatever that may be, I have no idea. That boil on his forehead has swollen to twice its size since this morning. He kept picking at it, which caused it to bleed. When we tried to treat it, he grew violent and attacked one of my nurses.”

“Odd.”

“Indeed.”

Dr. Blair rubbed his bandaged hand and rose from his seat.

“I’ve contacted the local police. Hopefully they can help track down his identity. I assume he’s in good hands here?”

“Of course,” Dr. Watson smiled. “I’ll be in touch.”

He saw his friend to the door. As he returned to his desk, Dr. Watson wiped sweat from his brow and felt a slight bump upon his forehead.

It itched and throbbed at his touch.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

It’s a strange thing, knowing exactly when you’re going to die. Luther had become accustomed to the idea; the arrest, the charge of treason. He knew it was a death sentence the moment they’d kicked down his door. He was surprised only at how easily he faced the imminence of his demise.

At least he’d made a difference, challenged the status quo and been heard. That they were killing him just crossed the ‘t’ of his righteousness.

A squat camera droid regarded him dully from outside his cell, the red ‘recording’ light glowing softly on its head.

The droid perked up suddenly, hoisting another camera off its body to cover the approach of three people from down the cell block.

Luther closed his eyes and let the rumble of booted feet reach him through the floor; felt rather than heard the figures stop outside his cell and only moved when the flood of fresh air signaled the opening of the cell door.

“Luther King, prisoner nine two zero seven seven six, charged with the spreading of propaganda deemed treasonous by the Government of the People and having been found guilty in a court of law, the time has come to carry out your sentence.” Two helmeted soldiers flanked the doorway as the Emissary of the Government looked down at him, letting his words echo in the small room.

“Doesn’t matter if you kill me, someone else will take my place.” Luther returned the icy stare, belief and strength of purpose calming his nerves.

“Oh, quite the contrary, I think that when we kill you, we’ll find a marked reduction in the number of people who are willing to take your place.” His thin lips parted from wide white teeth, forming the ghost of a smile.

“You think you’re all so clever, but for all your eyes and ears you can’t see the people rising up beneath you. I’ve infected dozens with the truth, and you can’t stop that truth from spreading like wild fire.”

“Actually, Luther, you’ve inflicted your lies upon exactly twenty two people in the forty seven days since you first spoke out,” he paused for a moment, enjoying the subtle changes in posture his words compelled, “you see, we knew the moment you broke the law. Twenty one days is the optimum period prior to arrest. If we’d simply killed you, as we once would have done, no one would understand why you died; your death would have held no value for us. In twenty one days you’ve shared your ideas enough for them to remember, but not enough to understand. Enough to notice your departure, but not so many as to tip the scale. They’ll know exactly why you’ve died, Luther, and just how dangerous your ideas can be.”

“You can’t believe people will see my punishment as fair, you can’t expect them to take your side. You lose, you kill me and you lose. You’re just making me a martyr to the cause.” Luther’s voice was cracking noticeably, this wasn’t right, what was being said couldn’t be true.

“You don’t seem to understand Luther. We intend to take you out to the gallows where you will swing by the neck until you are dead. Right now people are clearing their dinner tables and tuning in to watch the show. Our killing you has nothing to do with punishment Luther, it’s entirely a matter of deterrence.” The Emissary smiled. “Your death itself is of little consequence Luther, it’s the ceremony of your death, the ceremony of your death will punctuate our point quite nicely.”

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

It was always slightly embarrassing for me to watch Jarima try to pick up a guy.

She had a bodybuilder’s physique. She had a wide rubbery mouth and a strong jaw. She had bright red hair kept short. A little spray of freckles danced across the bridge of her wide nose.

She laughed like a horse and chewed with her mouth open.

She was an orphan and had learned to fight from an early age. She protected her little brother and her little sister in the orphanage until they were taken away and adopted by separate families. She never saw them again and since she was older, no one adopted her. She told me once that they didn’t actually tell her that they were in an orphanage until they had been there for two weeks. She laughed when she told me that story.

She made it to being a teenager through several rapes and numerous beatings.

She made it through being a teenager by killing boys who tried to rape and beat her.

During battle, she was as good as most of us and better than some.

We picked her up outside the courthouse. She’d gotten off in three previous murder trials with a self-defense clause but it was clear that the next time she was on trial for murder, she’d go down. It was only a matter of time in her neighbourhood before some thick-headed boy would think she was an easy target, ignore the rumours, and try to get it on.

We gave her the pitch. Money, interstellar travel and violence. She leapt at the chance.

We’re a company of private mercenaries. We look for a certain type of person in police records and give them the chance to make money with us. Lots of violence. Some months are better than others.

So now we were on leave in a backwater bar in Southern New Nelson.

She never went as far as to wear a dress but she was wearing some badly applied makeup. Coupled with how much courage she’d had to drink, she made a messy picture. She asked me to wish her luck before she sauntered away from me after a deep breath.

I’ve seen Jarima stare down warlords until they break and spill their secrets. I’ve seen this woman kill with her bare hands. I’ve seen her take bullets and hardly wince until the mission was completed. I’ve seen her lose friends and keep going without looking back.

I covered my eyes with my hands as she walked up to the guy at the end of the bar.

I was waiting for his polite rebuke followed by her angry response. I was waiting for his insolent reply and then the sound of his arm breaking and perhaps some shattering glass before going in as backup and peacekeeper.

It was always slightly embarrassing for me to watch Jarima try to pick up a guy.

Hey Rube , by Steve Smith is now up on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast, the official podcast of 365tomorrows.
Hey Rube was written, read and produced by Steve Smith.

Listen to it Here.

Author : Todd Keisling, featured writer

Colt was a block from his apartment when the curfew alarms went off. The firing klaxon startled him, and he dropped his smokes. Heart pounding, he retrieved them and ducked into a nearby alley.

It wasn’t long before the first patrol sped by, its rifles poised and searchlights tracking the darkened streets ahead.

He curled up beside a dumpster, flipped his collar and tried to keep warm. The smokes helped. He scolded himself for losing track of time. The bookstore down by the square had enticed him yet again. It wasn’t until the owner, Mr. Drabury, pulled the shades that he realized what time it was. Drabury told him the local alarm was damaged in a riot a couple of days prior.

Gunshots echoed from somewhere farther down the street. Colt wasn’t alone in breaking the curfew.

More shots. Then again, he supposed, maybe he was.

After the hum of the patrol’s engine grew distant, Colt rose to his feet, lifted the lid of the dumpster and climbed in. The smell was horrid and he fought the urge to retch. The feeling of nausea passed after a few minutes, and he reminded himself that spending the night there was safer than trying to dodge the patrols for that last, crucial city block.

Not that it mattered. The master locks in his apartment promptly engaged at curfew. All of his neighbors were safe inside their homes, spending time with their families and worshiping Channel Zero for the required two hours.

Colt reached into his pocket and pulled out the FM transmitter. He affixed it to his ear and thumbed the dial in search of the right frequency. Suddenly his head was filled with the rants of the self-proclaimed Mad Man.

Authorities were still trying to track him down. Rumors circulated that he never transmitted from the same location, and never with the same encryption. After the collapse of the nationwide radio network twenty years ago upon federal implementation of the FCSA and SmartCam installations, the “Mad Man” set up a single broadcast. He brought back the music of the previous century, before it was “tainted by lack of creativity.” He preached, he hounded, he ridiculed the Network and the Government and the apathy created by both.

Colt liked him. He took a drag from his cigarette and lifted up the lid to exhale the smoke.

The Mad Man screeched in his ear.

“–and what do they do for ya, people? You sit at home at night, after you’ve worked yer ass off for the man all damn day, and they expect you to watch this so-called ‘Channel Zero’. They say you’re doing the country a favor. Well I say you’re spying for the man. You’re spyin’ on yer fellow countrymen. It’s sick. It’s disgusting. And if you agree with it, then you’re no fuckin’ different.”

Colt bit his cheeks and fought back laughter. He wanted to cheer on the Mad Man, but the dumpster was already vibrating from a nearby patrol.

“And speaking of spying, people, did any of you catch the broadcast over a Network secure channel a few hours ago? They say there was a murder on Grid Four. Guy knifed to death right there while everybody wat–”

A series of pops erupted in the background. The Mad Man gasped.

“Looks like my cover’s up, ladies and gentlemen. ‘Till next time, I bid you all adieu—and wake the fuck up!.”

The frequency went dead. Colt sighed, finished his cigarette and put it out against the wall of the dumpster. He wrapped his arms around himself, positioned himself as comfortably as possible amid the bags of rotting garbage, and closed his eyes.

Without the voice of the Mad Man in his ears, it would be a very long night.

Author : Michael Varian Daly

Paln gently cupped the small green vegetable in the attachment designed for its harvesting. The steel segmented orb closed – a soft ‘snick’ – cutting the stem. Paln carefully placed the hard round vegetable among its brethren in the bin strapped to his midsection…and felt Pleasure.

“Brussels sprout,” he sub-vocalized. He knew what they were, the perfect conditions for growing them, but he would never eat one, had no concept of what a ‘brussles’ was, nor cared.

His universe contracted, focused totally upon the next small green vegetable. Cupping. ‘Snick’. Bin. Pleasure.

Internal sensors told him the bin was At Capacity, though Paln knew that already. That made him feel Satisfaction. He stopped harvesting, smelling the rich loam of the field. He could analyze the chemical components to the millionth part, but organic senses came first.

Paln was the perfect blend of the organic and the cybernetic. He looked around at his Pod Brothers, felt Connection. They were all Type 26 General Purpose Agricultural Mandriods. He was officially PLN-161697434, but the Mother/Master/Ruler who hatched his brood from the uterine replicator had called him Paln, his first moment of Pleasure.

He put the full bin on the field cart, retrieved an empty one. He was still human enough to sense the beauty of the day. The sun. The fields. The easy sloshing of the nutrient tank on his Feeder nozzle. The quiet hum of the vaporizer on his Bleeder nozzle. His Brothers harvesting. The grace of the dark skinned, yellow eyed, Mother/ Master/Ruler upon her horse, overseeing their work. The Fear/Awe of seeing her shambok, long hard leather hanging lazily from her saddle horn, the Symbol of Overseeing.

Tonight, when Paln was reclining in his cradle, the Bleeder-Feeder tubes hooked up, toxins draining, body healing, he would dream of the day, sun, fields, smells, sounds.

He would dream of Selt’s funeral. The Pod gathered at dusk. Selt’s body on the field cart. Mother/Master/Rulers down from The House, bearing torches. The yellow eyed one anointing Selt’s forehead with oil. The prayers as the black bag was…

Niniskil sat up with a start, breathless and sweaty. That chingado dream again!

She glanced around to find her Sisters, saw Rhea on one side, Tzisoc on the other, both still out cold. She quickly looked between her legs, sighed with relief. At least she had detached the bioform phallus before she passed out. It had been a serious Bacchanal. But after ten months on deep space patrol, they’d earned it.

She crawled out of bed, went to the window, looked outside.

The gorgeous vista of Sylph looked back at her as if designed to be perfect, which, of course, it was, from its core outward. Nothing, but jeweled archipelagos strung across warm azure seas without predators, skies painted with wispy clouds, all under the multicolored rings that crowned this princess of worlds.

A few yards away, just up from the white beach, a group of Sisters rested upon loungers in glistening nakedness, while a tall, lean Harlequin, a Mandroid pleasure server, offered them cold drinks.

She drew back, light suddenly like daggers in her skull.

“Ugh!” she grunted. That was definitely a Past Life dream. Too much detail…that yellow eyed Sister!

“Chingos!” she spat. What Sister wants to remember an Incarnation as a AgroDriod? But there it was. Time to see the Priestesses of Eriskegal for Regression Therapy. But not today.

She crawled back into bed. “The Wheel Turns,” she muttered, snuggling close to Rhea.

Drifting off, she thought, “Be extra nice to the servants today.”

Author : Grady Hendrix

Danny Leeds really wanted to punch his wife in the mouth. Over the last two years she had managed to cast their relationship as one where he was constantly the oppressor and she was eternally the victim. If he said anything she didn’t like, it was an attack. If he told her something she was doing that bothered him, she wound up crying in the bathroom. Christ! All he was doing was trying to communicate, but now he was at the end of his rope. He was a nice guy, but if she wanted abuse, he’d give her abuse.

He made an appointment with his doctor, sat down and explained the situation. His physical results were all on file from last time so this was mostly a psychiatric evaluation.

“You really want to do this, Danny?” his doctor asked.

“Absolutely. I’ve thought about it calmly and I think it’s the only solution.”

“Okay, but I can’t sign you up for anything in the face. And I can’t write you a prescription for kicking. Once she’s down, she’s down and you need to back off.”

“I understand, doc. I don’t want to hurt her, I just want her to know how much pain I’m feeling inside. I can’t seem to communicate it to her with words, so this is all I can think of.”

His doctor wrote out the prescription, filed a copy with the local police and Danny went home.

He stopped off at the gym to limber up first. The last time he’d had a physical therapy/psychiatric prescription he’d stressed his rotator cuff and he didn’t want to be back at the doctor’s first thing in the morning. Once he’d worked up a good sweat, he showered off, got dressed and went home. As soon as he walked in the door his wife shot him.

“Huh – ?” he said, stupidly, looking down at the hole in his chest.

“I’ve got a prescription,” his wife said, waving the piece of paper. Sure she did – Danny recognized the signature.

“Dr. Harris,” he gasped. “That hack.”

Danny slid down the wall and sat in a pile of his own blood.

“Don’t undermine my therapy,” his wife said.

Danny coughed up a gout of black blood and died before he could tell her that, once again, she was completely misinterpreting what he was saying and making him feel really, really bad and that maybe she should think about how the problems in their relationship might be partially her fault.

Author : B.York, Staff Writer

Kale made a habit of playing only in his backyard. The public display of toying with small action figures in the park or at a friends house made Kale a shy boy indeed. Instead, he would enjoy the comfort of solitary imagination in his backyard. The young boy, only eleven in age, could play with plastic soldiers from sunrise until the dusk of the evening. Though even in his wildest dreams he could never fulfill the true desire to have his imaginings come true.

One day in the fall, Kale took to digging in the back yard. He dug mounds for his action figures to battle upon and pits for them to die in. Kale made very deep pits for the figures to die in to make it that much more dramatic. It was only with this digging that Kale found the hole that day.

The hole was a thing not so much larger than his head and black with no light penetrating. Kale looked at it, he poked at it and the darkness within the hole swallowed his finger until he pulled it back. It was a peculiar thing this hole. He had decided that he would see just how deep the hole would go. He sacrificed an action figure to the depths of the hole and nothing happened. Kale covered up the hole and went inside.

The next day, Kale woke up and went outside to play but not before his mother gave him some purified water to stay hydrated in the intense heat outside. He quickly made his way to the hole which was still there beneath the dirt. Kale was not willing to sacrifice any more figures to the hole so he decided to take something from the house instead. Yes, his father’s electronic measuring tape would do nicely. He sunk the measuring end into the hole and eventually ran out of tape! Shrugging, the young boy dropped the rest of the electronic tool into the hole and waited. Nothing happened so Kale covered up the hole and went inside.

When Kale woke up his vitamins and morning supplements were fed to him through the bio-water he drank before ever leaving his room. His mother made him wear the anti-irradiation overcoat and sent him out back to play. Kale uncovered the hole and began to ponder about what to put inside it today. He’d assumed that whatever he had put in it the day before had not worked to its desired effect. Today Kale went inside and retrieved a toy of his meant to play 1.2 million songs from the 21st Century. He slipped it easily into the hole and waited. Nothing happened and so like before, Kale went back inside.

The very next day Kale’s meditation was ending and he told his mother he’d be going outside. Everything he needed was already injected through nano-machines into his body. The boy went outside and took to using a displacer wand to move the dirt from the hole without ever touching it. Today, Kale decided, he would truly experiment with what the hole meant. Sifting through the junk in their metallic recycling console, he’d found an old relic of his grandfather’s belongings from after the war. Taking the object out back he dropped it into the hole and waited for a long while. Nothing occurred so Kale had the event recorded in his brain then went inside.

His mouth tasted like ash and his lungs filled with soot and dirt. The boy opened his eyes to the same landscape he’d fallen asleep in yesterday. The sounds of bombs going off in the distance couldn’t wake him after all that he’d heard and witnessed in his life. He had no parents to ask to play, no brothers or sisters alive to help him through the day. He coughed heavily and stood up, stumbling through the black smoke with the smell of decay and the heat of radiation about him. His foot hit something. Staring down, the boys pained eyes could make out what looked to be a hole but one blacker than any he’d ever seen. An object as pristine as the sky had been once laid next to the hole. It appeared to be a shiny metallic object; one with a handle and a barrel and even a trigger. It had been polished and kept well and for some reason it filled the boy with a sense of familiarity.

He reached down, gripping it by the handle and noting a small parchment slipped just under the trigger. He unfolded it and read what seemed to be ancient calligraphy, yet in astonishing clear English, “Reload, Please”.

Author : Todd Keisling, featured writer

From: Mason, Ed

Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2154 8:02 AM

To: Mason, Brandy

Subject: RE: When are you coming home?

Dear Brandy,

I told them this was a bad idea.

After over a hundred years of planning, the eggheads in Houston finally sent us to Mars. We get there, set up a solid base, and conduct tests. Then some genius decides to go dig at one of the ice caps. You know, to see if they can find some kind of geological evidence of extraterrestrial life.

They expected to find some frozen microbes, bacteria, or even a frozen bipedal creature at best. What they did find, though, wasn’t in the guidebook.

When I was a kid I thought Mars looked like this giant ball of rust and dirt. And, to be honest, that’s what it is—rust and dirt. On the surface, anyway. Go about a mile below ground, and you’ll stumble upon an intricate network of metallic tunnels and tubes. You’ll find what looks to be an intricate propulsion system powered by an advanced form of fusion.

Or something like that. This was twenty years ago. I’m just one of the gearheads they shot out here to get it working.

Most things were up and running by the time I got here. The only thing they hadn’t figured out was how an advanced civilization had managed to construct—and move—a craft the size of a planet. Something so large it has its own moons. To be honest, I really don’t give a damn. I’m just here to do my job and get back home.

There’s a single chamber a few hundred clicks from the first entrance point. The eggheads have dubbed it the “control room” due to a large panel with several asymmetric shapes that glow in the presence of an EMP charge.

So when I took a look at the crude drawings and blueprints they’d provided and came to the conclusion that none of us had a single clue as to how to operate this thing, I told them that maybe we shouldn’t mess with it.

Maybe we should just let Mars be a planet. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.

They didn’t listen. Instead they told me to press the big oblong-shaped thing on the panel with an EMP emitter. Since these guys are signing my paychecks, I figure hey, what the hell, you know?

So I push the button.

That was four hours ago. Reports came in from several other outposts that some volcanoes spewed to life around the same time they made me push the button. That solved the exhaust enigma.

Now the eggheads are running around, barking orders and figures and trajectories and shit. Now they say planet-side effects of this sudden gain in momentum is going to screw with the gravity and cause surface-wide destruction.

They’re telling all surface-dwelling associates to head underground.

So all that rust and dirt, well, it kind of makes sense to me. Let’s say some advanced species built a big spaceship. They took it out for a joyride several billion years ago and ran out of gas. There sure as hell wasn’t any AAA back then.

Anyway, from the looks of things, these intergalactic geniuses didn’t understand the concept of brakes, because the eggheads can’t figure out a way to slow it down.

Looks like I’ll make it home in time for Jimmy’s birthday after all. I know he wanted a hovercar, but you tell him Dad’s bringing him something even better. He doesn’t even need keys to turn it on.

Love you,

Ed

[-MESSAGE DELIVERED-]

Sam Spade , by TJMoore is now up on the Voices of Tomorrow Podcast, the official podcast of 365tomorrows.
Sam Spade was written by TJMoore, and read by Steve Smith.

Listen to it Here.

Author : Sam Clough aka “Hrekka”, Staff Writer

“What are you doing?”

“Fishing for disasters.”

Proc looked up from his console and gestured towards the giant radio telescope that dominated the view from his window. ‘The ‘R-PSD’ logo was stamped across the base of the dish. Conspicuously, this was the name of Proc’s ex-employer.

“There’s always something bad happening out there somewhere,” he explained, “and I just hope I’m the one to find it first. Disasters are always big news, and I want my cut.”

“You’re insane, Proc.”

“So are you, Dizzy, so are you.”

Dizzy left him fiddling with his controls and disappeared into the other room to make lunch. She had just started to grate some cheese when she heard an ecstatic shout from Proc. Still holding the grater in one hand and the block of cheddar in the other, she wandered back over to where Proc was sitting, and leaned over his shoulder.

“What’s up?”

“Score. Asteroid fell out of orbit and smashed up a habitat over in Cygni. I’m patching to the networks: E-alpha offered me a ten percent finder’s fee on whatever I brought in.”

Diziet clapped and went back in the kitchen to finish preparing lunch. She had just found something to drink when Proc called her back to the console again.

“They bought it. My advance is already through and there’s more to come!”

Diziet leaned over his shoulder again and tapped a key to scroll through the feed. She tapped the screen over the number designating the system of origin.

“That’s not the code for Cygni. That’s…” She paused, not believing her eyes. “Oh God, that’s Beychae. What was the name of the habitat?”

Proc quickly checked.

“Home At Last. There were no survivors.”

Diziet sunk to the floor and was holding her head, shuddering.

Proc’s eyes widened, and let out a small gasp, “Dizzy…your parents…I’m so sorry…”

Author : JT Heyman

“Name?”

“Archimedes Goldblatt Jastrembski Akune,” the applicant replied.

The immigration official looked at the application on his holoscreen and nodded. He studied the screen.

Akune studied the office. Behind the official’s chair, a hologram of the great seal of the Colony of New Canada floated without a ripple. Akune’s eyes narrowed. That was top grade technology … and expensive. He glanced at the wall which held a continuous, live interstellar feed … also expensive … from New Canada’s capital, New Ottawa. There was one cobblestone street. The other roads were just dirt. One building was modern and clean … the governor’s mansion. From what he could see of the other buildings, they were little better than the pioneer cabins from three centuries in the past.

“You have three advanced degrees?” the official asked.

“Yes,” Akune replied. “I’m a certified medical doctor and I have doctorates in civil engineering and agriculture. I wrote the new textbook on colony development.”

“Hmm,” the official said impassively. “Capacity for children?”

“My sperm count and motility numbers are on the fourth screen.”

The official touched the screen. “Hmm. Impressive.” He touched the screen once more. “And you’re wealthy. Self-made trillionaire. No chance of becoming a ward of the colony.”

Akune said nothing. The official was too calm. Something was wrong.

The official fell silent as one of the emigration shuttles lifted off, making the embassy building rumble.

When the noise had decreased and they could speak normally, the official said, “Ah, the joys of Embassy City. Sometimes, I think Earth put all the colonial embassies next to the main emigration spaceport just to hinder the attempts of qualified candidates to leave its sterile megalopoli for the adventure of the stars.” He closed the application on his screen and stood. “We had you thoroughly vetted before you walked through that door, doctor. What made you think you were qualified to emigrate to New Canada?”

Confused, Akune said, “My skills. I’ve studied New Canada extensively. I can help make New Canada a thriving colony. I could help improve its medical care, its city planning, even its use of native food plants. I want to help the people of New Canada.”

“And spread your genes?”

“Well, yes, of course. The one-child limit on Earth is unacceptable to me. I’ve always wanted a big family.”

“I thought so,” the official said grimly. “Disqualified. Request for immigration denied.”

“What? Why?”

“As I said, we vetted you thoroughly before you walked through that door. Very thoroughly. Your great-grandmother died of cancer.”

“Yes? Oh. But it was a rare, non-genetic cancer. It’s not something my children would inherit.”

“Sorry. We can’t risk our gene pool with your obviously defective genes.”

“But ….”

With a pitying look, the official added, “If you want to go to a colony so badly, try next door at the Embassy of New Wales. I hear they’ll take anyone.”

Dejected, Akune left.

As the door closed, the official sighed. “Just once, I’d like to see a qualified applicant.”

The third year of 365tomorrows is now under way, and with it comes new featured writers. For the month of September we’re proud to present the writing of Todd Keisling, author of the novel A Life Transparent.

Todd’s work is fantastic, and we’re very pleased that he’s written eight new stories for us to share with you over the course of the month. We’re sure you’ll enjoy them as much as we do, but drop by the forums and let us know what you think.