365 tomorrows

Author : J. S. Kachelries

Officer Gannon of the Washington DC Police was clandestinely peeking around the trunk of a large maple tree next to the curb. A patrol car pulled up behind him and turned off its headlights. Sergeant Jose Viernes climbed out. “Hey, Bill, dispatch said you requested backup. What’s going on?”

Gannon whispered, “See those two trick or treaters that look like aliens from another planet? Well, they’re acting very suspiciously. They only go to the houses of Senators and Congressmen. They just walked four blocks, from Congressman Bartlett’s house to Senator Mikulski’s house, but didn’t stop anywhere in between.”

“Maybe they give out the best candy.”

“No, there’s more than that. Once they enter a house, they stay for over five minutes. No normal kid would do that.”

“Wait a minute. Are you trying to say that you think they’re terrorists?”

“No, don’t be ridiculous. I’m saying that I think they are aliens from another planet. It’s a perfect cover. They can walk around all night and nobody would notice. They must be collecting intelligence.”

“Intelligence? From democrats? Now who’s being ridiculous?”

“Ha, ha, very funny. Well, I don’t care what you think. I’m confronting them when they come out. You just watch my back.”

When the two little “aliens” reached the sidewalk, officer Gannon drew his gun, “Freeze right there,” he barked. The two aliens dropped their candy bags and put their hands in the air. Their arms were visibly trembling. “I’m on to you guys,” he continued. “This charade is over. You’re coming with me.” He reached over and grabbed one of the alien’s antennas and pulled him toward the patrol car. His rubber mask popped off, revealing a small, petrified, blond haired, blue eyed boy. The child dropped to his knees and covered his head with his rubber alien hands, “Please don’t shoot me,” he pleaded.

Sergeant Viernes broke into laughter. “Nice going, Bill. Now he’ll have nightmares ’till Christmas. It’s OK son,” he said as he attempted to comfort the boy, “he was only kidding. You know, just a little joke on Halloween. Now, go ahead and pick up your bags and have fun.” Viernes walked past the children and gingerly removed the gun from Gannon’s numb grip, and handed the alien mask back to the child. “Com’on Bill, lets get you some donuts. I think your blood sugar is out of whack.”

The moment the patrol car was out of sight, the two kids took off in the opposite direction. They cut through a dense hedge, and stopped in the back yard of an abandoned house. One of the children pressed a button on his belt, and their spaceship decloaked and lowered a ramp. The two aliens scampered inside and reactivated the cloak. “Tuomita kadotukseen, that was close,” said Taa-Lol. “I thought he was going to look into our bags and find our mind-suckers. I’m so glad the High Council recommended that we use nested costumes, in case we got confronted. Those guys are geniuses.”

Fee-Kak disagreed. “The High Council are idiots,” he remarked. “How are we supposed to gather intelligence, if we can only operate one day a year? At this rate, we won’t be ready to invade for a century.” He began removing his costumes, “You know,” he said, “tonight’s scare gives me an idea. Get the High Council on the hyper-space radio.”

Starting November 1, 2007, the advanced scouts of the Lalande Imperial Invasion Fleet began collecting intelligence 365 days a year, disguised as children.

Author : Geoffrey Cashmore

“I hate this bit.” Tress settled back into her trans-seat and blinked as the young man in the blue uniform smiled and sprayed a puff of Tranq into her face.

“Blurq!” In the next seat, her husband lay back too as his host closed the canopy and set the dials, “Why can’t they make this stuff taste better? I hate peppermint.”

Tress leant over to whisper “They’re all so good looking…the hosts.”

Pol grunted “Yeah. You know they’re all gay, don’t you?”

“No, that’s just a myth.” Tress lay back again, giggling at the idea. “You’re just jealous.”

“Me? Jealous?” Pol flapped a large hand dismissively in the air, “I’m telling you, common knowledge. All gay.” He let out a long yawn, “Not that it matters – ‘cept if you think about it too hard – then it’s kinda weird…”

Tress felt the oxygen lamina start, “Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s quite a turn on.” She didn’t hear Pol’s reply – not in her own ears. By the time the couple were ready to board the cruiser, their identities were established in their respective hosts, ready for the risky trip to Rigel-12.

Dozens of similar looking men in snug fitting blue uniforms stood in rows at the foot of the boarding ramp.

“Pol? Is that you?” Tress thought her voice sounded rather deep.

“Yeah, hey, look…put your badge on so I can find you in the crowd a little easier.” One man helped another fit a small plastic card with Tress’s photo onto his collar clip. “Ok…I think we’re ready to board.”

The other man turned away for a moment, looking over towards the trans-bays “Bye, me.” He said, then ran to catch the others as they climbed the boarding ramp. “Hey, Pol…nice butt!”

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Today I’m teaching my new arm how to stack discs on a peg. This exercise is no different from everything else I’ve done here lately. All pretty much futile. The way it’s supposed to work is with my real right arm I place the biggest blue ring on the peg, and then I try to will the metal hand at the end of my phantom arm into putting a second blue ring on the other peg. It learns, or it’s supposed to be learning how I make my good arm move. They’ve wired it to both the remains of my left bicep, and my good right arm. It’s also tapped into the big nerve bundles where they enter my spinal column. That freaks me out just thinking about it. The idea is that the prosthetic arm will watch what my right arm does when I make it move, and then it will somehow recognize the similar instructions I give my phantom arm, and act on them. It sounded like it could work, but it’s been a slow process.

“You’re thinking too hard.” The doctor’s a bit of an arrogant ass, but I’m here on his nickel, so I tolerate him as best I can. “I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but don’t over-think this, you’ll just confuse it. Close your eyes, count to ten backwards and put both rings on at the same time.”

“Sure Doc, whatever you say.” He may be on to something, I know there are things I do better without thinking. “10, 9, 8.”

“Good, good! There, you see it works. You just have to think less.”

Both blue rings are on both pegs. Shit. He might be right. Of course, this arm just did something when I wasn’t looking, and that’s a little weird.

“Try the orange one. Don’t think, just do it.” His cheerful tone really grates on my nerves, he’s got two good arms and isn’t stuck in the kindergarten play room stacking blocks all day.

“Good, good! There, you see, you’ve done it again.” Ok, that’s just not right at all. It’s like the arm’s trying to impress him or something. It is working though, there’s no question about that. Maybe if I try harder, no, maybe if I try a little less hard, maybe I’ll get the hang of this thing. I’ve been waiting for an arm like this for almost a year now, I mean an arm I can actually control, one I can actually get to do things I want done. Maybe stacking discs for a little while longer’s not such a big deal.

“Good, good! There, you see, you’ve finished.” I really should pay more attention than that, I mean, I wasn’t even trying that time. This is going to take a bit of getting used to.

I wonder how long has this arm been waiting for me?

Author : Cody Lorenz

One explosion behind her, one to the left. Sylvia ducked into the nearest available hole, just as the third boom sent dust into that very same nook.

She crouched, grabbing up the carbine, flipping open its cover, and staring at the little screen, pausing first to wipe the grime away. Her fingers hammered at buttons, trying to restart the damned thing.

They were coming.

She had to split off the maintenance plate to get to the glowing center. Power core, tubes one through seven, focusing arrays, batteries, circuit boards.

Their steps were heavy - what choice did a half-ton creature have but to be lumbering?

The bridge of her nose began to pound. This could mean only one thing.

Ah, one of the ‘sistors knocked out. It only took five seconds to fix, and she went running back out of her hiding place.

Sylvia was indeed the best shot in her battle group (well, only shot, now), and when she took aim, one of the beasts fell, crackling with the leftover energy discharges, leaving a car-sized grave for itself in the ground. She didn’t smile, or cry, simply did it. Again, and again, she fired, until the world seemed to be coated in a veil of superheated plasma. The world only got its color back when there was no more ammo, and she felt her head beginning to truly ache.

A finger was placed on the tip of her nose, and then the pain exploded.

She blinked out the temp implants, sitting up, a man immediately handed her a tissue. Her clothes (not fatigues - just your standard “I’m twenty and hot so notice me!” clothes) were getting stained red.

“Well, Miss Smith, we’ve come to believe your play testing duties are over,” the man said, one of those lab coated and goggled men who never got any sun or exercise, “Take heart, though, young lady, in that you’ve helped perfect the ultimate system for home enjoyment. We only need to work on that problem you’re experiencing.”

“What, the bloody nose?” She wiped at it, sniffling some, coughing once, and finally balling a piece of tissue up to use as a rudimentary plug, “It’s worth it!”

Author : Grady Hendrix

The woman on the bus was beautiful. That was true of most suicide bombers - they had a glow about them like an expectant mother or a rich man. The bus turned up the hill and she tried not to let her elbows bump into the explosives strapped to her ribs.

When she’d been gang raped by her kitchen appliances it was the dishwasher that made the first move, pinning her against the counter while the Cuisinart and the blender immobilized her arms with their power cords. The microwave pulled her down to the floor and then they all piled on. She blacked out a few times but it wasn’t a tasteful fade-out like in the movies; time was chopped up and spliced back together. She blinked at seven o’clock, and then it was seven thirty and the appliances were dragging her across the floor like a rag doll, then she blinked again and they were all back in their places like nothing had ever happened.

The police poked around the bushes behind her house, even after she told them that the perpetrators were all back on their shelves and in their cupboards. The ER was a mixed blessing: her insides were burnt and lacerated and her arms were a contused mess, but they all thought she was crazy. That is, until the defibrillator lurched off its trolley, grabbed her with one of its paddles and used the other to drop the registered nurse. They both screamed, except the registered nurse’s scream was more like a moan because she was seizing. Two cops and a resident burst in to witness the defib tearing at Catherine’s blouse. She managed to throw it against the wall but it flipped itself over and started to drag itself after her by its paddles. The cop shot it until it was smoking plastic shards but still they refused to believe her.

She moved into a motel. The TV went out in the hall. The telephone went in the tub. She was reconciling herself to moving off the grid someplace, maybe Idaho, when she saw the manager’s children playing Xbox one night through their window, and she saw the way the controllers always managed to burrow their way, slyly and invasively, into the childrens’ laps.

The bus pulled over. Nobody would ever understand why she was doing this, but someone had to stop them. And so she stood up and walked out onto the street and found that the Maytag factory was abandoned. A single security hut was at the gate.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Oh, honey,” the security guard said. “They all moved to China.”

“But the appliances – “

“Made in Taiwan. Made in India. We just importers now. It’s enough to make me cry, too. You need a cigarette?”

The vest was manual, just a fuse that needed to be lit. And why not? She couldn’t stop this invasion by foreign – by alien – appliances. But she could make sure they wouldn’t ever have her body again.

Author : Emily Cleaver

Something was wrong. The explosions cracked through Kinleigh’s earpiece. On the periphery of his vision to the left delicate violet orchids of plasma fire bloomed in the low gravity against the black bulk of the hill. They were firing. Why the fuck were they firing? He felt fear kick at his stomach. His fingers scrabbled at the comm switch.

“Unit B cease fire. Cease fire! Acknowledge last transmission. Serious hazard. Volatile gas. Cease fucking fire!”

The earpiece hissed. The sound of firing came again, this time from the right. Nolan’s unit. The fear thumped at his guts. His eyes tried to penetrate the shadows beneath the branches of the fat black plants belching their vapours all around them. They were strange to him, not a type they’d catalogued yet. He turned to Brite, her face a dead pearl sheen through the thickness of her visor. He touched her arm through the suit, its warmth familiar. That electric jolt he always felt when he touched her, even after all these years, shot through him. Panic rose in his throat. He had to get her away before he went after the others.

“Brite. They’re not responding. They’re going to blow us all up.”

“What are they firing at?”

“I don’t fucking know. We scanned the wood. There’s nothing here but us.”

Kinleigh glanced at the readout on his wrist. Still only the blinking warning light for volatile gasses. There was nothing to fire at.

On the hill one of the plasma bolts hit a gas pocket and the sky lit up an angry purple. Brite’s eyes were fixed on the flickering light. Her suit needed venting. He could see the rubber clinging to her, outlining the neat curve of her breasts as she sucked away the last of the air inside. He knew why she didn’t vent. He could feel it himself, the reluctance to open the ducts to the alien dark. Inside the suit was safety. Outside it was everything else. Its protective embrace pinched at him tightly as he used up his own air. For a moment he was back in the in warmth of their dorm bunk, feeling Brite’s small soft lips pull hungrily at his skin. He didn’t want to open the vent.

“Brite? We have to move.”

Her breath tugged at her suit from inside and she stepped back. His hand hovered over the duct control. Breathe and risk dying. Don’t breath, die. He vented.

His suit inhaled. Brite’s eyes were fixed on him, huge. The sponges in the ducts expanded and shrank as they filtered. But he could smell something different in the new lung of air, something mad and awful from the night. Shapes pulsed in his vision and terror tightened his muscles. Brite became monstrous in front of him, a writhing limb from one of the black plants reaching out to touch his face. He fired.

The plasma poured from his gun and bloomed towards her like the offering of an exotic flower.

Author : Viktor Kuprin

Father was up late cleaning his long rifle and my old musket. Mother fried biscuits and packed pickle dog for us to take on our trip to Fort Needmore.

No, we don’t eat dogs. That’s just what we called pickled baloney. We always took it when we went into the woods.

I’d only been to the fort a couple of times. Father said we had to go. There was big trouble coming, and the Americans couldn’t help us. They didn’t have enough ships or soldiers.

Some said the Americans didn’t care about our world because we didn’t have much money and they didn’t want our furs and mussels for trade. Instead, the CIS Space Army, the Russians, would be coming.

The next morning Mother put out my best buckskins and boots. But then she bawled something awful when we hit the trail. She cried so hard, Father had to help her back inside the cabin. That scared me.

It was the end of the hot season, so we had an easy hike through the woods. The air was sweet and the ground was dry. We stopped once to watch a big fat rockchuck grubbing around a bunch of wineberry bushes. Father told me to leave it be.

When we got to Fort Needmore, the Russians were there. They wore strange hats and clothes, all dark blue or camouflaged. Even some of their ladyfolk wore uniforms. On their suits there was a weird patch that looked like black noodles with a ball on top. Father said it was the CIS flag. Some of them wore red rocket-and-sickle medallions.

The big meeting was held in front of the distillery. We gathered around, and a Russian with white hair and blue eyes stood on a whiskey barrel to talk to us. He said everyone had to come to the fort, and to bring all our black powder and ammunition. The “Yelgrammites” were coming and we had to fight them.

Father acted like he didn’t believe the Russian. “You mean helgrammites? Like we seine up out of the river rocks?”

The Russian nodded. “Da, but bigger. In spaceships they come, thousands and thousands. They have intelligence, but they don’t communicate with us. They show no mercy. We must make ready to fight soon. Or they kill you and take your world.”

After the meeting, the Russians handed out packages to everyone in the crowd. Father told me to get one. A pretty Russian lady dressed in white handed it to me.

When we got back to the cabin that night, Father let Mother open the package. Inside it was sacks of buckwheat, canned food, medicines, and square blocks wrapped up in silver foil. Mother handed one of the blocks to me. I couldn’t read the Cyrillic letters on the pretty paper, so I just ripped it open.

I thought it looked like smashed skat. It really did, all brown and…well. Father and Mother laughed and laughed. They told me to taste it. And it was heavenly good. Mother thought it was chocolate, but Father said chocolate costs over a hundred dollars a kilo. The Russians would not be giving that away. I know now that it was a carob bar.

I broke the carob into small pieces so it would last longer. Father and Mother both took some. And as we enjoyed that sweet treat, sitting together as a family by the light of the oil lamps, we didn’t know what was coming.

Outside, from high in the night sky, we heard sounds like thunder, the sonic booms. Father ran for his rifle.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

Kathleen Wright entered the Temporal Control Room after being notified of a Class I permutation to the Primary Timeline. “I got your message, Williams. What’s the problem?”

“Sorry to bother you on your day off, Ms Wright, but it appears that Charlie snapped. He was supposed to go back to November 1963 to replace the pristine ‘magic bullet’ from the Kennedy assignation with a severely damaged bullet. But he completely disregarded his mission objective, and did something that irrevocably altered the timeline.”

“Williams,” she corrected, “for us, nothing is irrevocable. We can send a security team to pre-date him. We’ll bring him back before he changes the timeline.”

“You don’t understand Ms Wright. He’s established at least a dozen time-anchors. He’s entrenched. We can’t bring him back.”

“Time-anchors? Field agents aren’t trained to do that. It requires a Senior Temporal Analyst.”

“Well, he figured out how to do it.” He swiveled in his chair to face her. “I think he’s got Temporal Psychosis. There is a definite pattern of impaired judgment, irrational behavior, paranoia, schizophrenia, and dementia.”

Wright sat down at a terminal and accessed Charlie’s Psych-Evaluation. “Hmm, eleven months ago his evaluation showed him to be marginal, but within the mean minus three sigma threshold. It was recommended that he have minimal exposure to chroniton radiation, but the union filed a grievance because that prevented him from working overtime. He was allowed to operate pending administrative review, which apparently never occurred. Oh well, I guess that’s sand through the hourglass. We’ll deal with mission protocols after we fix this permutation. Our immediate concern now is to minimize the damage he’s caused.”

Williams handed Wright a printout of the new timeline. “Look at the altfuture,” Ms Wright. “Charlie was at the center of major riots in the 1970’s that practically destroyed the United States. President Nixon declared Martial law. Millions of people were killed. The Soviet Union ends up the only super power for centuries. We don’t exist in the new timeline. My wife and kids are gone.”

“Don’t worry Williams. We can fix this. First of all, what are our options? Can we kill him in early 1964?”

“Only if it doesn’t cause a contradiction with the time-anchors. I’ll check. Damn, the anchors extend into the twenty first century. We need to neutralize him using non-fatal methods. I was thinking, Ms Wright, if he’s already psycho, maybe we can get him committed. They were doing that all the time back then. We only need him neutralized until the 1980’s.”

“No, Williams, it’s too easy to escape from mental hospitals, or to be released. We need him locked up in maximum security. And he needs to be discredited. Everybody must regard him as a total psychopath. Call in Harrison, White, and Starkey to devise an impact assessment. Also, have them recommend mitigation options. Tell them he’s got to be convicted of a horrific crime. Multiple murders, at least. They’ll need to establish a past. He must be an orphan, or have abusive parents. Don’t worry, Williams. This will be much easier to fix than when Adolf crossed over.”

Author : Sam Clough aka “Hrekka”, Staff Writer

“What’s that?” Cal asked, gesturing to the ornately patterned box resting on the mat in the centre of Petra’s cabin. His passenger had a southerner’s skin, and the wrist spurs that showed her to be a Kadian, a native of the desert.

“La boîte de ciel,” she murmured, then paused, and looked up at him, “my sky-box. I am razir.”

“Skyhacker,” Cal breathed, examining the box more closely. It was a solid block of metal, fifty cents on each edge, the sides ornately inlaid with organic patterns. The top of the block was dominated by a giant circular dial, demarcated like a clock face, with sixty fine graduations. A disc of metal with a single indicator sat within the dial, and at its centre was a hole that would take a large, cylinder-style key.

The Razir — or more popularly, Skyhackers, were the only group to ever find a functional ‘emergency weather controller’. Anyone with a telescope knew full well that the morning stars that encircled the planet were artificial satellites, and most scientists assumed that they had something to do with the very predictable weather patterns which covered the continent. Most of those same scientists refused to credit the claims of Raziran weather control — but most aviators worshipped razir as gods amongst men.

“Come see,” Petra beckoned him over, and fished a large key from the pile of clothing spread across her bunk. She knelt down by the box, and Cal copied, kneeling opposite her. She took his hands, wrapping them gently around the key. The key snicked into the hole, a tight fit.

“Eeks co-ordonnez.” She twisted the key, and the dial clicked round to thirty-five. A light pressure, and the key clicked lower.

“Egrek co-ordonnez.” She twisted the key again, this time setting the dial to thirty. Once again, she clicked the key lower, and twisted it to ten.

“Il pleut. It rains.” She smiled, and pointedly clicked the key down yet further.

She set two final digits, then rapidly pulled the key out.

Cal, realising that he had been holding his breath, slowly exhaled. The box remained where it sat between the pilot and his passenger, as inert as ever.

“Did it work?” Cal asked, slightly disappointed at the anticlimax. Petra shrugged, her limited english obviously exhausted. Unhappy with himself for getting so excited, Cal returned to the dirigible’s controls. The sky had been clear blue, to the horizon, now outside the shadow of the dirigible’s envelope, clouds were forming.

Petra had entered the cockpit behind him. He glanced at her, and saw her warm expression.

“L’art du ciel.”

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Agent 13 jumped out of the bomb-bay doors of the scrambler jet into silent extended twilight.

He fell for three calm, wind-buffeted minutes before starfishing his teflon squirrelwings out. The wrist-to-ankle elastic bodychute helped him brake with no heat signature before he hit the living hull of a brand new Hindenberg six miles up in the middle of a raincloud.

It was damp to the touch and warm in the rain like a lover’s skin. Agent 13’s goggles irised open wide to light the area he was going to cut.

X-ray flashes gave him an idea of the strutwork underneath and the number of nearby workers walking skeletal on the night shift of the upper levels.

He was surprised by the hundreds of small skeletons hanging upside-down amongst the giant ribs of the airship.

Bats. Well, they could help with the confusion.

Agent 13 knelt on the hull and let the pads of his suit’s knees grip tight to the weave. Leaning back, he extended his arm straight up and fired a wide dispersal of metal spider-silk streamers around him. They were charged with flat electrons. Irresistible to strikes.

Make the lightning come running.

With a sound like the ripping of the world, the lightning struck the hull around Agent 13. He knelt in the middle of the lightstorm and plunged his scalpel-edged fingertips down and through the cheeseclotch, vinyl, and polycarbon.

Air blasted out.

He flipped himself down and through the gap like a diver into the darkness inside. The bats were screaming.

Three workers rushed past him to repair the damage. It would be written up as a lightning strike and forgotten about. Agent 13 was invisible in the shadows with the camcells activated.

He climbed deeper into the shadows and darkness to the heart.