365 tomorrows

Author : B.York, Staff Writer

“I guess you found me. I just wonder what’s keeping you from cutting me open to find out how I do it.”

The doctor sitting in front of him adjusted his glasses and smiled, trying to remain reasonable with the locked up felon before him. The white room they were in with the standard mirror left no illusions for the man being held there today. His eyes were a soft brown, his hair thinning and his stubble overgrown. No special features, no distinguishing marks or habits.

The doctor clicked his pen, “So, Mr. Fieldman-”

“Call me Bill. No one calls me Mister.”

“All right, Bill. So before we begin let me tell you that we’re not going to cut you open. We just want to ask a few questions just to make sure and then we’ll run some tests.”

“Tests. Right.”

“How long have you known how to do it?”

“For a while. Listen, it’s not knowing how, it’s kind of automatic for me. It’s like seeing a smudge on a kids face and pointing at them and going ‘Hey kid, you got some shit on your face’”

The doctor smirked, “Bill if we’re going to get you out of here, we’ll need to be more precise. Fewer metaphors. Can you remember the first time?”

“Right. Less emotions and humor. I’ve hated doctors all my life. They told my mother she had something she didn’t. I knew because of the thing… so when I was old enough I found the bullshit ones and I roughed them up a bit. Oh, you mean the first time I did the thing? Middle school. Some kid with a runny nose and a cold.”

“How does it work? Do you feel anything when it occurs? Any numbness or even pain?”

“Naw, I just let it happen. Sometimes I shake their hand or just give’m a slap on the shoulder but I think it happens before that. I can see it happening. I feel bad and worse until the moment I do it and it doesn’t take much. It’s like giving in.”

“A few more quest-”

“So, did you tell your wife?”

“Excuse me?”

Bill pointed to the ring on the doctor’s finger, “You’re married. I was just wondering if you told your wife that you had it. It’s kind of a big deal.”

“I never… wait, what are you talking about?”

Bill sighed and turned his head looking at the mirror, “Nothing you need to worry about anymore. So, you were going to ask me another bullshit question?”

Author : Benjamin Fischer

“So you’re a butler.”

Xero repressed the urge to roll his eyes and sigh. The woman across the aisle on the maglev had seen his replicant’s sigil, a broad tattoo of the symbol for Gemini on the back of his left hand. She’d also seen his impeccable dress and the parcel he’d retrieved from the spaceport. She’d put two and two together and now she wanted to talk.

“I am an executive,” he replied, setting down the display screen for his book.

“Which is another word for butler,” the woman said.

Xero would have slapped her if she hadn’t reeked of money, but the ostentatious garnish on her purple dress suggested it was straight off some Euro runway.

“You are new to Luna, ma’am?” he asked her.

“Why–yes,” she said. “You can tell.”

“I pick up on such things,” Xero said.

“Like a good butler would,” said the woman. “So, he cloned himself to get out of doing the household chores? You Lunies amaze me.”

“Yes, I do the chores,” nodded Xero, ignoring the slight. “But our relationship is much more than that of a servant and master. I manage his economic interests and his wives when he is traveling or indisposed.”

“Wives? In the plural?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” she snorted. “The casual polygamy of this place still astounds me.”

“Oh, they get along,” said Xero. “Never bored for company.”

“I’ll bet.”

“You’ll bet what, ma’am?” asked Xero, even though he knew.

She leaned in.

“So in the dark,” she said, blushing, “can they tell that you’re not him?”

Xero chuckled.

“I’m his executive, ma’am.”

“But do you–do you, you know?” the woman asked.

“From time to time.”

“And what about him?” she asked.

“Not his taste,” Xero said, and then seeing the continued color in the woman’s face:

“Sometimes when I’m with them,” he said, “he will watch.”

That shut her up for a moment and Xero almost got back to reading the latest chapter of his favorite serial when she piped up again.

“How large is your household?” she asked.

“About average for Copernicus,” he replied.

“What’s average?” she asked.

Xero set aside his book’s diamond case.

“Two of us, the three wives, the pool girl, the plumber, the gardener, five different Intelligences, two sponsored children, and maybe three entertainers on contract. That’s everyone who lives in the quarters, at least,” he said.

“That’s average?” asked the woman.

“Mmm, yes, ma’am. About average.”

“Everyone lives like that?”

“No, but the option is always there,” said Xero.

“But that must be expensive-”

“Twelve adults and Intelligences, ma’am. We all pull our weight.”

The woman shook her head.

“Absurd,” she said.

“Maybe,” Xero said, “but it’s damn good fun.”

The woman snorted.

Xero glanced at his darkened book. He sighed and opened his mouth anyway.

“In the Concourse Level, ma’am. There’s a club called Young’s.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, not understanding.

“When your husband starts looking,” he said. “You might as well begin with the best.”

“What?” she said.

“It’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it?” said Xero. “Getting replaced.”

“Jim would never-”

“Ma’am,” Xero said, grinning, “I’m sure he’s thinking of you as well–he’s probably already getting an executive of his own.”

Author : Luis Barjo

“It’s not a scam,” Robin explains as he plugs the cloning tank into the wall. “It just grows in there for a few hours and, when it’s ready, just hop right in. They proved it, man, they proved it with science and we’re gonna be rich.”

Picture a hallway with an infinite number of unmarked doors. Well, it took a few years to get there and a few more to find someone willing or capable of conversation. And, would you believe it, the very second we did, a couple of scientists became millionaires. Whoever is out there wants what we know, and knows plenty we don’t; all we had to do was ask.

I’m sitting here memorizing equations. I just have to run them in my head at the right time, with some provided variables, and I’m back on terra firma. At least that’s what the box claims. You can find these kits anywhere: a few hundred dollars, an empty basement and a friend a big brain and balls to match and you’re an official member of the TransGalactic Couriers.

“How’re you coming along with those numbers?” Robin is busy plugging what seems to be a large gas canister into the tank. That little box on the side, the one the outer controls are wired into, shocks the gases just the right way. Amino acids turn into DNA turn into a functional body. Sure, it’s practical immortality in a sense, but after the novelty wore off no one bothered. This isn’t the most exciting of galaxies.

“I’d be a little better if you’d shut the hell up for five minutes. Why am I the one going through all this trouble again?”

“Because I flunked Holonomic Calculus more times than I could count. In fact, I think you were the only one in that class that made any sense of that blackboard after two weeks.”

When he’s right, he’s right. I read over the documents I need to ferry; they compute out into a series of equations that become the variables to the one I’ve memorized. You’re not supposed to remember anything when you come back, when you wake up in that homunculus body the tank is welding together out of thin air. Thanks to the calculus, I’ll remember a few numbers. Feed them into some more equations and we’ve got a chunk of data TGC will pay a bundle for. Sounds easy enough, right?

“Okay. It’s all set. You remember what to do, right?”

I sit down on the stool. Behind me is a foot-thick slab of concrete. Beneath, some bunched-up plastic sheeting. If this goes well we’ll rent out somewhere with a drain next time. I inhale deeply and try to remember: they’ve done this a million times before. It’s perfectly safe and more than worth the money. It’s just like a photo booth.

Robin aims the revolver dead at my third eye chakra.

“Feelin’ lucky, punk?”

Author : Kathy Kachelries, Staff Writer

Eric Hayton was not happy. In fact, his unhappiness was palpable: it could be seen in the four empty coffee cups on his desk, in the disgust with which he regarded his wall of monitors, and mostly, in the overfilled ash tray positioned on the corner of his desk. Smoking was illegal in the colony, but if he didn’t get this weather bug sorted out, he would have bigger things to worry about than a misdemeanor fine.

Almost a century ago, the first wave of emigrants suffered through perfectly stable weather. Although the colonists were expected to enjoy a sempiternal spring, the lack of seasons only reminded them that their world was artificial. The Monarch system, written a decade later, swept the programming awards and was immediately put into use. It projected the weather for an entire imagined planet, then used the colony’s temperature and humidity controls to match the weather for a hypothetical longitude and latitude. Because it was self-reliant, the only people who studied it were eccentric techno-anachronists and third year programming students. Even Eric, the colony’s chief meteorologist, hadn’t read the output in years. It was stable. Reliable. There had never been problems before.

Judging by the two feet of snow outside of Eric’s window, there was a first time for everything.

“Linz, can you put on another pot?” he called as he gnawed on the end of his stylus. He’d run out of cigarettes a few hours ago and run out of sleep twenty hours before that, but for now, his coffee reserves were holding. It was his responsibility to track down the bug, but introducing new code to the Monarch system was dangerous. Sure, he could stop the snowfall with a few keystrokes, but since the simulation built upon itself, one clumsy move could cause floods and droughts for centuries to come.

“After this round,” Eric’s daughter called from the other room. Through her headphones, he could hear the muffled sounds of her video game. When Lindsay appeared with a fresh mug of coffee, he gestured to the largest monitor and a tap of his stylus froze the code in place.

“You see anything there?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s self-correcting though, right? It should work out the kinks in a week or so,”

“We don’t have a week or so,” Eric said. He picked up the mug. “Everything’s shut down. The whole colony’s snowed in.”

Lindsay shrugged uneasily. “We only started learning Monarch this semester,” she reminded. “I barely know anything. Are you sure you didn’t leave yourself logged in at a public terminal?”

Eric shook his head. “Aside from the computers at City Hall, his is the only machine wired in to the sim.”

“I guess it’s just a natural bug, then.” Lindsay wrapped her arms around Eric, giving him a quick hug before turning back to the living room. “Good luck,” she added.

Lindsay closed the door behind her and pulled on her headset as she dropped onto the sofa.

“I’ve only got time for one more run,” a static-laced voice said. “We’ve got to finish tomorrow’s codework.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Lindsay said,with a glance to the closed door. “School should be cancelled for at least another week.”

“I feel bad saying it,” another guildmate grunted, “but we’re damn lucky this bug happened when it did. Gives us some time to catch up with that guild on Reki 5.”

Lindsay’s avatar joined the rest of her guild at the digital battleground. “Let’s show them what we’re made of.”

Author : Tim Hatton

The black is total.

Oedi’s life is devoid of light and endlessly deep.

Only stars prick the canvas. He stares at them, each in turn, for entire shifts. He finds it odd to realize that what he is looking at has moved from that spot eons before the light reaches his eyes.

Silence is the most common media.

Long stretches separate the use of his ears. Sound becomes painful.

His maintenance sentence was called “lenient” by the magistrate. He was dropped off on the station equipped with nothing but the clothes he was given and a thin instruction manual.

The only assurances he has of the functionality of his mind are the rare, random explosions that emanate from the Solar Span Gate. Exiting ships burst from it in a fanfare of sound. The pent up energy that held open the sub-space passage is unleashed as a fantastic show of swirling color. Reds shrouded in orange present a flame in the night, while yellow tickles the edge. Greens sprout healthy beside the warmth, soaking up the blues while they live. Surrounding it all indigo fades to violet, their soft transition back to space. No wavelength is neglected.

Every so often, one of these craft will dock with his prison and inject food and water. The rest fire up their electro-magnetic generators upon exit and gracefully glide away, propelled by their own polarized force field. The gift of their colorful arrival spent, they wander away from Oedi without acknowledgement.

His presence on this revolving maintenance deck is decidedly unnecessary. Computers regulate the day to day functioning of the Gate. Oedi is an overseer – a strange irony for a convict. In the rare event that the system is unable to repair its own malfunctions, Oedi does it. The rest of his life is spent idle. Nutrient paste is administered every eight hours. Water is available any time, but only four liters every twenty hours. The water is Oedi’s favorite. Sometimes he tries to cup it in his hands.

Oedi’s face is a gauze of pigment-deprived wax. His eyes are consumed by pupils, and in their black voids, his existence is mirrored. Life on the deck is permanent, but this situation has taken something from Oedi that he did not mind relinquishing. Oedi will die here, and that reality, coupled with the doldrums of his experience, has erased all fear of death. In his dreams, his mind melts with the blackness of space and his body fuels the light reactions that dance magnificently from the Gate.

For now, he resumes his examination of the stars – always staring at those things that are no longer there.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Kyle shifted in the metal chair, suspiciously regarding the toaster sitting on the table in front of him.

“So, it’s a toaster,” Kyle finally spoke, not taking his eyes off the appliance, “what’s so special about that?”

Niles cleared space on a desk in the corner, waking up his laptop and tapping impatiently as it warmed up. “I’m going to make it fly, and I want to see what you think when I do.”

“Flying toasters?” Kyle looked over one shoulder, eyebrows raised. “You’re shitting me, right?”

Niles left the laptop to finish initializing, and plucking a package from his pocket crossed the room to stand beside Kyle. “It’s going to fly, trust me, you’ll see.” He slipped a stubby antennae out of its wrapping, and held it up for Kyle to see.  ”I’m going to pop this sensor on you so I can monitor and graph what you’re feeling while you’re watching, ok?” Kyle nodded, turning his attention back to the chrome box in front of him. Niles peeled away the wax paper backing to expose the adhesive pad on the device, and carefully stuck it sideways across the back of his friends neck.

Satisfied that it wasn’t going to slip off he returned to the laptop, apparently now in an operational state, keyed up a console window and stood poised with a finger over the ‘Enter’ key. “Ready?” “Ready,” came the response. Niles depressed the key and watched, dividing his attention between the screen and his friend, and periodically glancing at the toaster on the table.

Kyle stared at his reflection in the polished side of the toaster. Two slice. Very boring. For a moment, he could have sworn the cord had moved, but that wasn’t possible. No, it was moving, and he watched, mouth slowly sagging open as the cord withdrew from the clutter on the table to slide up the toaster and into the air. The wire flattened as it coiled into what was almost a propellor before beginning to swing in circles. As it gained speed, the room filled with the ‘whip-whip-whip’ sound of a small helicopter. As he stared, mouth agape, the chromed metal sides of the appliance seemed to peel away, unfolding outwards into wide wings. The toaster appeared as if to stretch once, then began flapping. Kyle moaned as the toaster slowly rose, clattering from the table to hover a few feet above it in the air. As he tore his gaze away to find Niles, he heard the toaster clatter back to the table, and as his head snapped back around he found himself staring again at a lifeless appliance, wings folded invisibly away, cord limp on the table top.

“Holy shit!” Kyle’s mouth moved, words started and stopped several times before he spat out “Holy shit” for a second time.

Niles stepped forward and retrieved the antennae from his friends neck before returning to his laptop and closing the lid.

“That’s incredible,” Kyle started again, still staring wide eyed at the now lifeless appliance in front of him, as though as any second it may leap back into the air. “Incredible.” He stared and then suddenly struck by a thought, turned to face Niles. “That is incredible Niles, and don’t get me wrong, but what the hell use is a flying toaster?”

Niles peeled the spent adhesive away from the stubby antennae before returning it gently to his jacket pocket. “Oh, don’t worry, I can think of plenty of ways to use this.”

Author : Cody Lorenz

Mike was nervous, you could tell by the stains at the armpits of his shirt, and the way he kept shifting, causing that awful gown to rustle. He coughed, if only to make the little man with his chart speak up.

“It is hard to put this,” he started, in a regretful, timid tone, “but you’ve got EIT.”

Mike had never heard this particular acronym before. But it was all in the doc’s words – fatal, terminal, the end of his long, strange trip of 233 years. It was too bad his shocked, gaping mouth couldn’t move, letalone come up with a word or sound.

“I can tell you that it will not be painful, and-”

He was cut off by his patient: “Just…shut up. Tell me if…what does it do…why…why me, why did it happen?”

“It is a new disease, but swiftly becoming a common one,” the little man took his glasses off, wiping them with a black cloth, “Tell me, Mister Evadne, how many times have you used a Rebooth, or one of their home products?”

“Every day, why wouldn’t I?”

“And that is the problem,” replacing his glasses, the doctor sat on a rather unpleasant looking stool, “You just can’t reorganize your body’s basic materials! Replacing cells willy-nilly! You’re ripping yourself apart for vanity’s sake!”

The little man’s outburst was quiet, still nervous-sounding, but it had force. Mike was taken aback. But rather than focus on a perceived insult, he chose the smarter option.

“I…I don’t…is it curable? Vaccine? Pills or…or something?” The panic was all too clear in his voice, now high, reedy, and discomforting.

The doctor pushed with a foot, gliding to his computer.

“I’m afraid not,” and, after a pause, “I am deeply sorry.”

That’s when every word the little man said lost all meaning to his patient.

The fog had lifted after nearly an hour. Mike had changed in that dream-like state, and had sat in the clinic’s waiting room amongst the young and old. He didn’t realize that his wife was in the car outside – seventh wife in his life, and he’d outlived two of them.

He just didn’t want to get old, didn’t want to fall apart.

The irony was lost on him.

Author : B.York, Staff Writer

The pills didn’t work. Private Dawns was still unable to recall anything that might help. Stuck between an ambush and a colony outpost somewhere off the Z sector of Alpha Centauri, Private Dawns had nothing but her rifle and the training she’d been put through. That meant that she and her squad were shit out of luck.

Lt. Jorgenson turned to them, “Anyone have any ideas? We’ve got less than 0100 to make it to the jump point with these people and these guerillas are pinning us down.” The digital input in their visor displays showed them the mess they were in. When red flanked the perimeters it meant that all hell was going to come raining down eventually.

The squad looked on the brink of madness, when suddenly Private Dawns remembered. She adjusted her display and sent a download to the Lt.

“Jesus, Dawns you think that’ll work?”

“Pills started working, Lt. I know it because I’ve been there.”

That’s all Jorgenson needed to hear as he gave the command to roll out. Squadron Hellcats broke through a small cushion of offensive in the perimeter and took cover. The smoke was clearing from the firefight when they split to south and north. The guerillas might have heard them coming, but it was too late for them to organize. The offensive soon became the defensive as the small group of thinly spread but well-trained soldiers became the new perimeter and locked the guerillas in the same outpost they were trying to exterminate without a means of escape.

“That’s the thing about guerillas”, Lt. Jorgenson remembered Private Dawns saying, “If they get organized, change strategy and execute. Takes those bastards forever to re-group.”

Within twelve hours the de-briefing started about the outcome of Colony Outpost Beta. The men and women sat around drinking their coffee and laughing about the recent jokes they’d heard or the funniest shit that had happened that day. When the de-briefing began all went silent and turned to face the Captain.

“Well done, troops. Colony Outpost Beta is alive and well and being relocated as we speak. I’d like to congratulate all of you for your hard work but mostly I’m recommended Private Dawns for a Prismatic Star for participating in our dreamscaping program. Her recall of the Panzer Strategy when defending saved many lives and completed the mission.”

Everyone cheered, they held Private Dawns over their head and they cheered. Private Dawns had never been happier. At least that’s what the readings said at the console. The doctor turned to the other as they casually wrote down their readings for the day, “Think they’ll ever find a cure to wake these soldiers up?”

“Cure? No. They should have never started that dream pill program to begin with.” He flicked the switch to the room Private Dawns slept in and the lights went out. A courtesy he gave her to make himself feel better.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

The unmanned Marius Lander (in honor of Simon Marius, the German astronomer who named the four large Jovian moons, and claimed to have discovered them before Galileo) successfully touched down on the icy surface of Europa. After a quick systems check, and notification to Earth Command, the fully autonomous probe began to deploy the scientific instruments that it had carried for six years and four billion kilometers. Of course, there were the unanticipated, but inevitable, glitches (e.g., recorder anomalies, electromagnetic frequency shifts, disrupted communications, etc.). These issues were either fixed, or successfully “worked around.”

The first mission objective was to launch the Nuclear Powered Thermo Boring Probe (NPTBP) as the prerequisite for the exploration of Europa’s subsurface ocean. It was estimated that it would take the NPTBP at least thirty days to penetrate Europa’s five kilometer thick icy crust.

As the NPTBP maliciously melted its way through the ice, Earth scientists were busy analyzing the plethora of data being transmitted from Marius’ extensive instrumentation package. To say the least, the data was puzzling. Tidal fluctuations were less than ten percent of the expected 100 meters. This was interpreted to mean that the moon must be a rigid solid; with a modulus of elasticity five times higher than tungsten carbide. Then the seismology data came in. No evidence of moonquakes. Seismologists could not explain how close approaches to Ganymede and Io did not produce gravitational instabilities in Europa’s structure. As if that weren’t enough, the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Ground Penetrating Sonar (GPS) packages revealed that the ice layer was only about a kilometer thick, and it abruptly terminated at a smooth spherical surface. Neither instrument could penetrate beyond the one-kilometer deep interface. At day six, the NPTBP encountered an obstacle at 987 meters.

After much consternation, the Mission Commander authorized the Boring Team to exceed the thermal design limits of the probe. Although the probe had been designed only to melt through the ice, in theory, the “business end” could be heated to over 2000°K. When the thermocouple indicated that the probe tip reached 1341°K, the probe began to move downward. However, after a few minutes, telemetry data indicated that the probe was in freefall. A few seconds later, it abruptly stopped. The NPTBP no longer responded to Marius’ commands.

After a great deal more debate, the Mission Commander authorized the Oceanographic Team to lower the tethered Hydrobot down the hole bored by the NPTBP. When the Hydrobot approached the depth of the original obstruction, its forward looking camera revealed that the NPTBP had melted a hole through solid metal, at least one meter thick. In addition, the camera revealed an empty chamber immediately below the metal interface. The scientist could see the NPTBP lying sideways on the “floor,” approximately 20 meters below. The Hydrobot was lowered an additional 18 meters. That’s when the monitor began to show an irregularly shifting image as the camera was being jostled about. Seconds later, there was an image of a large yellow eye with two parallel, black vertical slits, presumably dual pupils. A pair of green eyelids blinked from opposite sides of the eye. Suddenly, the monitor turned black, except for a quickly shrinking white dot in the middle of the screen.

Author : Lucas Atkinson

“Tell me what it is you do, Mrs. Adam, In your own words.”

“Well,” she said, and leaned forward onto my desk. “I deal in luxury goods. One specific luxury good.” She smiled. “Obscurity.”

“That seems a strange way to say it. Usually one would…”

“Of course. But then my clients are not usual men. Lesser men seek fame, to increase their fortunes or what have you, but only a select few can know true obscurity. Those whose fortunes and position are secure…” She pulled at the sleeves of her suit. “The media’s a circus, you know. It can tear you apart. Fifteen minutes of fame can be fun, but the aftermath can kill. You’ll be associated with whatever gimmick you were a part of for the rest of your life. I’m sure you’ve also seen those celebrities with scandal after scandal, hounded by the tabloids.

“My clients don’t have to worry about that. Neither their face nor their personal life will ever appear on television, in newspapers, or in the internet. These days, being completely unknown is the ultimate status symbol. That’s how the technocorps and other companies hire their upper echelons. They only hire those they’ve never heard of, despite their numerous qualifications.”

“Do you have any clients I might have heard of? I mean, their positions?”

“You’ve never heard their names, but the man who invented the fluid processor, or author of the Countdown novels. You know the richest man on earth? Ryan Turner? He’s not the richest. By my count, there are over fifty people richer then the supposed tenth richest. The forty not on the list are all my clients.”

“It seems a wonder I’ve never heard of you,” I joked.

“Yes,” she said, and smiled. “I’m my own best advertisement.”

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

I looked at the dashboard with a mounting fear.

The mutiny had gone off and turned messy. The company pilots had been killed when we blew the cockpit door. We’d had to execute our hostages. The airlock was empty now and their inside-out, frozen corpses goggled wide-eyed thirty AUs behind us.

In the not-here of throughspace, I could imagine the feel of passing wind rattling the portholes. I could almost feel the gentle slap of the ocean against the hull even though we were galaxies away from any planet with an ocean. There was nothing, of course, but the silent dimensionless void outside of the windows.

The temperature gauges said that it was both way above and way below tolerable in the vacuum outside. There were other contradictory readings. It was all that I could read.

No one had really mapped throughspace. It got us from place to place but ships that had applied the brakes had either exploded or disappeared entirely. We had to settle for what our instruments told us as we rocketed through.

We knew how to manipulate doors in and out of it but the real essence of what we were traveling through in throughspace was a mystery. Much like gravity in the old days. It could be measured and predicted but the ‘why’ of it was always elusive.

We were halfway through the trip and we had another sixteen hours to go before arrival in hostile territory. We might be able to bluff our way through a patrol or two but once the word gets out, we won’t be able to hide. We’d never be able to stand up to a full search, either. If we got boarded, there would be a firefight.

So here I was. We’d won the fight, struggling up from the prison deck and into the crew quarters. We were vagabonds now, treasonous savages who had killed their captors. Our entire reason for living right now was flight from the enemy and the finding of a safe haven.

All good except for one thing. Pilots spoke a different language than us. They had a verbal shorthand that had developed over time into its own separate dialect. I never really understood why until now.

Several hundred buttons, brightly lit with a Christmas tree rainbow of colours, stared up at me. There were dials, switches, slots, and knobs. A library of discs and glow-cards were stacked on either side.

There was no main stick or pedals.

The pilots in our holding cell, the ones on our side, they had been killed in the mutiny.

No one was left on our victorious team that had the ability to pilot a ship. One wrong button could make the ship try to stop or turn and kill all of us. We had no choice but to hope that the ship was on some sort of autopilot and that we’d be able to do some trial and error guesswork once we got through to other end.

The pictograms and symbols on the dashboard were alien and unintelligible. We could just as easily open a hailing frequency as we could fire a missile pulse if we started pressing the buttons randomly.

From below decks, I heard cheering and carousing. I dreaded taking the subleaders aside and telling them the news.

Author : Andy Bolt

Senator Bigfoot sat at the top of the Eiffel Tower daintily sipping espresso from one of Café au Francais’ literally bottomless vortex glasses. His massive, gorilla-derived nostrils inhaled the artificially addictive coffee smell, and he smiled to himself as Jenny stepped out of the spacebender and glided toward his table. He liked Jenny. The multicolored nanolights in her flowing blond hair sparkled with hypnotic blinkery. She hummed low and smooth, her pitch-perfect artificial larynx set to a calypso love song. The lowjack pheromones pumping out of Jenny’s pores didn’t affect bigfeet, but Senator Bigfoot thought Jenny was pretty anyway. Not just because she had been engineered to be pretty either, but because she really was. (Although Senator Bigfoot had an I.Q. of 220, his silverback genes granted him a simplicity of thought that made him more contented than most.)

“Hello, Jenny!” he called to her.

He caught her eye, and a wild swirl of rainbow pigments cascaded through her irises.

“Big!” Jenny’s mech-wings fluttered with delight, and she half-flew the remaining twenty meters to the table. “I’ve missed you!” she sang, kissing his leathered cheek. “Congratulations, Mr. Senator!”

“I’ve missed you, too. Sit, sit.”

Jenny smiled and swished and sat, still humming. “Green tea,” she trilled to the overexcited waiter. “So does this make you the first senator from Mythlabs?” Senator Bigfoot smiled as her loose silky coat almost swallowed her up.

“No,” he responded. “You’re forgetting Senator Gremlin.”

“Oh! Yeah, yeah. He got asked to leave, though, right?”

“Sort of. He was asked to holocommute. He kept making everything malfunction. But how have you been?”

“Alright. Being a siren is fun, most of the time. I get to sing a lot. That part’s nice. But all the boys try to sleep with you, and women hate you. It seems a bit artificial because of all that. Everything happens without me really doing anything.”

The waiter, a jumpy young man in a jumpy smart suit, whizzed up to Jenny with a glass of green tea and a walnut sized diamond.

“Here’s your tea,” he said. “May I have the honor of being your eternal love slave?”

“Not right now,” Jenny laughed, patting his shoulder. “But thank you for the tea.”

Senator Bigfoot shifted uncomfortably. He glanced out the longview window at a flock of three-legged Samjoko swooping and diving over Ulsan. Their bioluminescent flesh-mesh made them glow like bright little suns.

“Jenny-“ he started.

“Yes, Big?”

“Will you marry me?”

Jenny stared at him for a long minute, steam drifting around her cheeks and turning them pink.

“Yes,” she said. “I think I will.”

Senator Bigfoot smiled. In the longview, a Cherokee rain dancer shimmied, the kinetically fueled barometric sliders in his hands and feet producing a light summer mist in southern Oklahoma. Jenny giggled.

“It’s a silly world, Senator Bigfoot.”

“Yeah,” he replied.

Author : Jennifer C. Brown aka Laieanna

Mary passed the town’s graveyard, her eye on the mobile facility parked in an empty lot. The line trailing out from the small trailer door was already thirty deep, but a rush of people was only a few steps behind her.

Linda turned to give Mary a big smile after Aaron had nodded to her approaching. “Mary, you came early!”

“Yeah, I figured I’d get a jump on the line this year.”

“Understandable. I think the older we get the less this holds our interest. Can’t stand on these feeble legs as long as the young ones.” She laughed at her own apparent joke that Mary didn’t get.

Aaron leaned forward and gave Mary a wave, “Hey Mary. Did you decide on something this year or are you going with of the usuals?”

“The usual, I guess. Maybe a vampire or witch.”

Aaron nodded again. “Don and I have a bet going. He’s going to be a werewolf, and I’ll be a hunter. The money is all ready to be wired to the winner in two days. I can’t wait till I take him down and his hard earned cash will be paying for my spot,” he jabbed a thumb towards the graveyard, “which I hope not to use for years to come.”

“You should already have one prepaid,” Linda huffed. “You guys are boring. I’m going for something different, like…”

“You won’t believe what Johnny said to me,” Stacy interrupted, panting as she jogged up to her friends, cutting the line. “Says he read in a book that Halloween used to be for kids.” The group stared incredulously. “Seriously! Said kids would dress up and go from house to house asking for candy. He wanted to go out tonight.”

Linda crossed her arms. “I would never let my child out on Halloween. With all the freaks running around, the last thing you want is a child outside a safe zone.”

Confused, Mary shook her head slightly. “Why would they need to ask strangers for candy? We give them tons of candy on Halloween. It’s traditional.”

“Besides, no one is at home on Halloween. And there’s no way the guards will open a safe zone during the holiday,” said Aaron.

“I know,” Stacy sighed. “I tried to make him understand that Halloween was for adults, that he had to wait till he was eighteen. He cried, saying we were doing it all wrong. I can’t get him to understand that it’s not safe.”

Three kids, just barely legal for the holiday, walked passed the group, chatting about the demons and psycho killers they were going to be that year while rubbing the spot a needle had penetrated in their arm. The change was already showing on their bare skin and one girl squealed in excitement when she looked at it.

“First timers,” Linda snorted.

“They’ll be dead before midnight,” Aaron said.

“So what are you turning in to this year, Linda?” Mary asked, remembering she had been cut off earlier.

“A princess.”

Stacy laughed, “Oh geez, you’ll be mauled by any number of people in town if you’re turning in to that.”

“Not really keeping to tradition,” Mary said.

“That’s where you guys are wrong.” Linda had a sly grin on her face. “I’ll be a crazed princess, having been locked in a tower for years with no real contact. I even have an axe and knife at home, all sharpened and ready to take someone down. I won’t be right in the head tonight. You guys will be safer if you stay away.”

Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer

The witch is bony, skeletal, his spine in a permanent curve. His liver spotted hands tap on his rubber console, fast like shuffling cards. He cackles with glee, casting his code-spells. The only light in his little cave under the mountain is the luminescent blue screen that glows on his wrinkled face.

He dives through the world that exists in tanks above his mountain, looking in though his screen, like a peeping tom with a tiny window. In the clean, silver facility at the top of the mountain bodies hang motionless in giant tanks filled with a gel that applies gentle pressure from all sides.

His daughter tried to get him to join her in the dream world. She called it a more perfect alternative. He knew what it really was: a prison. He pokes at his handheld device and initiates a program that gives everyone with red hair lice. Cackling, the witch puts down his handheld and toddles over to his larder. He will have to go out soon, set some traps or try to scavenge canned food.

Outside his cave, there is a moan. The witch walks outside, leaning on his stick. Naked, sprawled among the rocks is a young man. He is covered with a thin layer of grit stuck to goo that is stuck to flesh. His fingers are bloody and his long stringy hair is matted to his face. The young man looks up at the witch.

“Please,” he says, squinting at the sun.

“Fish plopped out of the tank?” The witch cackles.

The young man’s face falls on the ground. “I . . . came to study with you.”

“Script kitty.” He cackles at his own joke but stops as he realizes he is the only one laughing. Laughing on his own never felt lonely, but with someone else, his jokes are flat. He looks at the blood under the nails of the young man. “How did you get down the mountain?”

“I crawled. I’m, I can’t . . . “ The young man faints.

The witch drags the naked, gooey man inside and pours water on his face. The young man wakes up sputtering.

“I’m calling your factory bots,” says the witch, his fingers flicking over the handheld.

“No! Please,” the young man begs. “I know that you can hack into the world. I want to learn from you, here, in the real world. I want to understand the magic of code.” The young man shivers. “I crawled here. I want to make code dance.”

The witch sat in front of the young man. “You are too weak.”

“I know,” said the young man.

“You could never survive on your own out here,” muttered the witch.

“I’m willing to learn,” said the young man. “Teach me.”

The witch raised a bushy eyebrow. “You are also very naked.”

“No one knows the code anymore. Someone has to learn, for the good of our community. If something should truly break, someone needs to know how to fix it. Help me.”

The witch crossed his arms and looked at his console. One button, and the bots would come to collect the lost naked man and dump him right back into his virtual world. The witch put down the console and spread a blanket over the young man.

“What’s you’re name, boy?”

“Jeff.”

“Jeff, tomorrow we start by finding food. Also, never say you will make code “dance” again, or I will bash your toes with a heavy rock.”

“Yes Master,” said Jeff, smiling as he fell into a heavy sleep.

Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer

I work on Opingtu. Two-and-a-bit AUs from civilisation, on a good day.

Lee thrust the crowbar into my hands, and set off down the corridor at a run. I swore, and ran after him. Me and Lee were as thick as thieves — always had been. Started when we were twelve, I think. Talking of thieves — that’s what Lee did with his spare time. Stole stuff. How he found merchandise to steal inside this godforsaken hollow rock and how he got it out are mysteries I never had the urge to plumb. I supposed he had a day job, too, and that’s how come he’d managed to follow me out here. It just never seemed to come up in conversation.

I was in slightly better shape than him, so caught up with him before he got too far from where I had been sitting. He had a second crowbar in a thin bag strapped across his back.

“What the hell?” I demanded, glaring at him. He just glanced back, and put on a new burst of speed. We raced by surprised faces and angry officers. Lee ignored them, and thus, so did I.

He led me into the prisoners sector.

We stopped by a door marked ’512′. Lee punched a long sequence into the pad by the doorframe. The door itself didn’t have a handle — for security reasons, apparently — but after Lee had entered the code, it obligingly slid into the wall. He pushed me inside. Faintly, in the distance, I could hear running feet.

Once inside, the door slid shut, and the lights came on. The room held six stasis caskets. The ambient temperature had to be about ten degrees higher than the corridor — stasis support gear isn’t exactly environmentally friendly.

Behind me, Lee slapped the red panel next to the door. The steel-on-steel sound of the bolts grinding into position was perceptible. Once the door had stopped vibrating, he smashed the control panel with the end of his crowbar, gave it a twist, then jerked a tangle of wires out of the wall.

Such an action caused the door’s emergency subsystem to cut in. Which was designed to engage an additional lock, then shut down. Security reasons. It was a prison door, after all.

He pointed to the casket labelled with a roughly painted ‘Three’.

“Break it open.”

I stared at him. He stared back.

“In for a penny.” He shrugged.

“Remind me to kill you later.”

Our crowbars punctured the cheap aluminium of the outer casing, and we hauled it apart. It split open like an oversized drinks can. The coolant sheath beneath it was tough plastic, but we made short work of it.

Soon, me and Lee were standing in a rapidly-expanding puddle of light blue liquid, staring down at one of the prisoners.

The guy in the canister was just coming around, the effect of the stasis field interrupted. His face contorted as the pains hit: only then did I recognise him.

“Everyone said he was dead…”

Johnny Rukopashka got slowly his feet, and took the crowbar from Lee. It looked like a toy in his hands. He bared his metal teeth, and clapped Lee on the back. His claws left a tear in Lee’s shirt.

Johnny was a pirate. A gangster. Or more precisely, Johnny was eight feet of graft muscle and metal. Johnny had been declared dead, but his very — vibrant — presence convinced me that he certainly wasn’t amongst the deceased.

“This a rock, boys?

“Yeah. Opingtu.”

“No dreck. Now boys, you’re going to help me take over.”

Author : Andy Bolt

It started when a song got stuck in Jola Ndenga’s head. She had just gotten the new aMix mp12 player, the one that could store a theoretically infinite number of sub-quantum sound files and injected just under your cochlea. They had just become available at Charon Station, and she had been amped to get her hands on one. Even though C1 was supposed to be the blistering edge in scientific research, the United Inner Rim’s top priority, she had spent most of her time out here watching space-faring rocks and trying to resist the urge to stick her head in the neutron remuter. Truth was, there was not much use for a xenobiologist on Charon. Someone from the initial survey team had reported a possible site for microbial bacteria, but that had amounted to nothing. At least now, she had maniacally decided, her suicide-inducing levels of boredom could be set to a pleasing soundtrack.

She had been aural-loading the new Virulent Photons album – thirty-four tracks of twelve second bursts of intergalactic noise mixed over a calypso backbeat – when her transmitter began playing the song. She had never heard it before. Indeed, she had never heard anything quite like it before. When the newsites would come asking later, she would describe it as a combination of meringue, plasmatronica, and a third type of music that she was unable to fully identify.

At the time, however, she simply became very nervous. The aMix was still a relatively new technology, and there was a post-urban legend flying around about a beta tester for the Grape corporation. Supposedly, she was still in cryogenic suspension after an early model had become inextricably integrated with her central nervous system and driven her psychotic with round the clock renditions of Tom Jones’ “Sex Bomb.”

So Jola greeted her own malfunction with some alarm, half-prepared to gouge out her own eardrum with a pinpoint cooking laser. She approached Ryx Marcomb, the station’s biotech engineer, and Willix Frog, the knowledge-specific medical clone, with great haste.

“Alien music is burrowing through my skull,” she told them. “Help.”

Willix offered to operate instantly and found that the magnetic scalpel did its job cleanly. Within twenty minutes of the problem’s first discovery, Willix, Ryx, and Jola were staring at a slightly bloody, centimeter square aMix chip under a broad-beam microlight. Ryx had jury-rigged a nanophone and a bag of Willix’s emergency transplant tissue to play back the still repeating song at an audible level.

“You know this song?” Ryx asked, flipping his gaze between the chip and Jola.

“No one knows this song,” Willix answered, offering his colleagues a look at his handheld sonic spectrometer. “˜It doesn’t conform to any extant musical style. Half of these lower tones are infrasonic and wouldn’t even be audible to the human ear. And this,” he continued, gesturing at a garbled looking wavelength, “isn’t even a sound in the conventional sense of the word. It’s a permutation of a sound wave that the computer can’t even begin to analyze.”

Ryx raised an eyebrow. “New life communication signal?”

Jola glanced at the pad. “Don’t think so.” She took it from an obliging Willix. Within a moment, she had overlayed the spectranalysis and one of Willix’s medical files.

She displayed it to her colleagues. Onscreen was a translation of the sound waves into a rough approximation of a DNA sequence, and the helix seemed to hum.

“The song IS the life.”

And inside the aMix, the alien song breathed its musical breath.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

Circa 2086, the war with the Epsilon Eridani System was currently on hold, as leaders from both worlds were attempting to negotiate a truce. However, most of Earth’s military advisors were against a truce, because the Earth Alliance was clearly winning the war. Our technology was far superior to theirs. It was best, they said, to destroy the Eridani’s ability to wage war while we had the advantage, rather than give them the opportunity to regroup and strengthen. What the Eridani lacked in technology, they made up for in aggressiveness. They would be back if they were not destroyed. But soldiers only fight the wars; politicians start and end them.

While the negotiations ebbed on, the Earth Alliance continued to patrol the solar system. The stealth scout ship Casper was assigned the volume of space between Earth and Venus from zero degrees to minus thirty degrees. Normally, a pretty quiet sector. The Eridani almost always attacked Earth from above the ecliptic, most likely because their star was located in the northern hemisphere. They were considered aggressive, but not very imaginative. While the two-man crew of the Casper patrolled their sector, their proximity alarm sounded. “Hey, Commander, look. It’s an Eridani ship. What’s it doing in here?”

“Good question Lieutenant. Let’s follow it and find out. Keep the cloak engaged.” They tailed the Eridani ship to a small asteroid. The Eridani had constructed several large ion drive impulse engines in one quadrant of the asteroid. “What data do we have on this rock, Lieutenant?”

After consulting the ship’s computer, “It’s called 2340 Hathor. It’s an Aten Type asteroid. It’s approximately 5.3 kilometers in diameters, a mass of 200 trillion kilograms, and average orbital velocity of 30.7 kilometers per second. Oh, damn. It’s scheduled to make a close approach to Earth on October 21, 2086. That’s in two months. Do you think those bastards are going to attempt to change its orbit so that it hits Earth, even while they negotiate a peace treaty?”

“Apparently, Lieutenant. Notify Earth and request instructions.”

Two hours later, Earth responded. The celestial mechanics concluded that based to the photographs of the ion engines, a burn of 18 hours was required to produce an intersect orbit. If the full burn was completed, Earth would not have time to alter the new orbit before impact. A battlecruiser was being dispatched, but wouldn’t reach their coordinates for three days. Their orders were to continue monitoring the asteroid, but if the Eridani ignited the engines before the battlecruiser arrived, they were to attempt sabotage, at whatever cost.

The engines ignited the following day. “Well, lieutenant, our moment of truth has arrived. I’ve been thinking of options. Unfortunately, the only sure fire way to stop them is to park next to their fuel tanks and overload our reactor. What do you say?”

“Well, sir, I have three kids on Earth. I’d prefer to have them die of old age, rather than by a comet impact. I say, let’s do it.”

On Earth, Steven Patterson was walking his dog just before sunrise. As he looked into the western sky, he saw a bright star appear near the horizon. It was nearly ten times brighter than Venus, but faded quickly. “What the hell was that?” he wondered aloud.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

I am miles underwater. I’m the only human competing.

I’m riding a ten-foot cretaceous seahorse named Cheval. I pronounce it ‘shovel’ as a private joke. No one here would understand the mispronunciation.

There are representatives here from sixteen planets. Mostly aquatics but there are two air breathers like me. A hindbrain Mohr-nex with 288 as an identification marker. It’s riding a bio-rocket jellyfish ringpulser. The other one’s a silicate rocksliver named CPR. We talked a little before the race. It’s riding a ramjet mollusk with cold, blue eyes.

There’s even an avian from a gaseous tiny-giant. It has beefed up muscles to ‘fly’ in the cold, pressure-rich water. It doesn’t have a mount. It’s going it alone. In the absence of a mount, it’ll end up a slave if it loses. We’re all racing for mount ownership here. I admire its courage but it doesn’t have a chance. There’s an insane glint to its one red eye that makes me doubt my assumption for a second.

My articulated pressurized scuba suit is working fine. The stats are all lit up like Christmas lights on the inside of my faceplate, showing blues and greens. An overlay of the caverns is pulsing stationary with topographical lines. I’m hoping that my human tech will be more accurate that the other racer’s means of navigation; the sonar from whale-face, for instance. I have no idea if it’s more precise than my radar.

I lean forward and with my black servoglove, I pat Cheval just above the ear-hole. He flexes his massive tail and swishes his equine head. He’s eager to get on with it.

The huge transporter building behind us lights up the dark water around us. The beings laying wagers are little figures in the windows. They’re the super-rich that can afford ringside. There are millions of others watching on the telly and d-sense around the system.

The aquatics are all more suited to this environment but no one racer present has raced this course before. This equalizes the playing field. The rules are simple and brutal. No weapons are allowed but your mount is allowed to employ whatever naturally occurring offensive or defensive capabilities that it possesses.

The electrified hallowfish that last year’s winner is riding gives us all a chill. We remember the stats of that race. Last year’s winner sits proud and straight in his saddle above the hallowfish. He’s striped like a zebra and glows with bioluminescence. His eyes are huge and glowing. His mouth is a shattered nail bucket of teeth. There’s an anticipatory cloud of fang-poison floating in a halo around his mount’s head

I’m hoping speed and maneuverability will win the race.

The glowing balls of angler fish in front of us change colour.

On your marks.

Author : Dee Harding

I have it in my hands, but I don’t understand it. Mirah peers over my shoulder, grins in my periphery, and pokes at it. The amber clouds react to the gravity of her digit instantly, particles drifting into a new configuration of spin. As she removes the finger, it spirals back into something like its original shape, spitting out loops of fire and tiny shrapnel as it goes.

“Where did you find it?”

I’m motionless with awe, listening to its low rumbling growl and very much aware of the plume that keeps it afloat. I’m afraid that I’ll drop it. I’m afraid that it will burn through my hands.

“The Monks. The Physic Monks.”

She says this carelessly, idly, as if the fact is not important, staring at the thing in front of me all the while.

“The Monks? The Physic Monks? The same Monks who split atoms for ritual? The same Monks who keep a pet black-hole on the Mountain? The same Monks who will murder us if they know we have…whatever… it is?”

“In the Mountain, and they call it a tamed Singularity.”

Mirah is suddenly an expert on these things, on the monks who worship Shiva and live on the Mountain. All the rest of us know is that they idolise creation and destruction, that they make bombs too small to see, and then wipe them away. Somewhere in their temple is a wheel, a torus, which pulls strange matter into the world. Suddenly the thing in my hands is sinister. Suddenly it has the capacity to not just burn me, but unmake me, as if I never was. Fear and wonder orbit its shrouded centre amid a multitude of glowing embers.

“Think of it as a glorified lock-pick.” She says, “Think of it as a key. That’s what it’s for.”

I’ve never been able to leave well enough alone. I always ask the inevitable question.

“But, what is it?”

Mirah smiles the widest smile I’ve seen on anyone, ever, and points upward. She points at nothing. There is no moon tonight, there are no clouds, no aircraft since the coming of the Second Dark. There is nothing in the clear night sky but the distant light of a thousand galaxies, each drifting slowly in its own mystical configuration.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala

The young couple slept peacefully in their bed while powerful, dark forces worked against them, against mankind. Two malevolent figures watched them from the darkness, their eyes aglow.

These two creatures descended from races older than man himself, had bided their time, waiting for the opportunity to strike. They were patient, lurking in the shadows. Soon the moment would be theirs; they would emerge from the darkness and take their rightful place in the light.

“Well Commander Xerc…”

“Not yet Rufus. We shall use our Terran names until victory is in our grasp.”

“Yes Mrs. Pewtersmythe, we have waited this long, patience is something we can afford.”

“Yes Rufus, the ability to calmly wait, to endure hardships and subjugation has helped our two peoples in the past. Now that diligence will pay off, the spoils of this victory shall be ours for the taking. Nothing will be withheld from us.”

Mrs. Pewtersmyth’s voice took on a high keening edge. Not for the first time did Rufus think there was something of the maniacal in it, though he wisely kept his council. She had led them well thus far.

Though there was not a small bit of enmity between their two species, they had been able to work together to achieve their mutual goals. Mrs. Pewtersmyth’s people, the Leonaise, were renowned for their guile and cunning. Using craft and skill to achieve their ends, resorting to treachery when diplomacy failed.

The Siriuans, though no less intelligent than their gracile allies relied more on their massive size, and strength. They were warriors, devourers, conquerors. Over many a domain did they hold sway.

The truce between their two people was not easy. For centuries these two great races had fought an endless war, neither gaining the upper hand. A tenuous armistice had been established, leading to a semblance of peace, though neither side fully trusted the other.

Over time an affinity had developed between Rufus and Mrs. Pewtersmythe, and there existed between the two, if not a liking, then to be sure a genuine mutual admiration for the other. “Do you think there can ever be a true peace between our people? Will we ever leave the eons of bloodshed and war forgotten in our past to allow us to march ahead in unity and prosperity.”

“You are like all of your kind Rufus,” she said quietly, casting an indulgent glance in his direction as a parent might to its offspring. “Beneath that wild and ferocious exterior, you are all, at heart gentle and philosophic souls.”

Rufus bristled slightly at these remarks. “That may be true Commander,” he said stiffly, “as the old soldiers saying goes ‘prepare for peace, but plan for war’. No one dislikes combat more than the combatant. Your people, while seeming to engender trust are always plotting… scheming… hatching nefarious plots… ” his deep voice trailed off into a low growl.

“Now, Rufus, I meant no offense,” she purred soothingly, “let there be no ill will. I merely meant to suggest that beneath the surface bravado, you Siriuans are a deep and contemplative people.”

“Thank you Mrs. Pewtersmythe.” The man moved on the bed, “I think it is time.”

“Yes, I believe your right.”

The man stirred and sat up.

“Rowrf,” said Rufus.

“Mrower,” chimed in Mrs. Pewtersmythe.

The man looked at the clock, scratched his head, stood and said;

“Okay, okay. I know. It’s time for breakfast,” he said and left the bedroom.

Commander Xercian, and Leftenant Klatu followed along behind.__

Author : Jennifer C. Brown aka Laieanna

Getting off the shuttle, Teddy shoved his way through the crowded corridor, eyes focused on the nearest destination locator. When he was in range of the sensors, the map of Los Angeles lit up in various colors. The locator welcomed him and started to rattle off hotels and restaurants including their average prices and ratings.

“Bar,” Teddy barked.

All lights on the map dimmed down save for six green ones scattered across the surface. The machine began describing the destinations, each light flashing in synch. The first two were sky bars high in the clouds. Next was a club-bar in the city center. Teddy chose a blinking green on the opposite side of the station and left the locator, missing out on the details.

The carrier ride to the bar was a quiet and soothing one, which Teddy hated. He watched the city go by with it’s empty streets and glistening buildings. A speck of dirt would probably set off the alarms, and a seedy person would put the whole place in a panic. It was no surprise he avoided Earth. Once other planets were colonized, Earth was turned in to a paradise. They slowly shot the scum into space and left the beautiful people on their home planet. If it weren’t necessary, Teddy would have never left his side of the universe.

In twenty minutes, he was standing outside the Haze Bar which sounded like an alright place to smoke, drink, and fight. Three things Teddy was dying to do. Inside, the air was hazy, but with no smoky smell. The place was half full with people chatting at tables and around the bar. Everything was automated.

Teddy sat at a corner booth that instantly asked what to serve him. “A camel pack and bourbon,” he ordered. A wall panel opened and out slid a tray with a caramel colored drink and a pack of cigarettes. He laid eighteen credits down on the tray and it retracted when the merchandise was taken away.

Taking a sip, Teddy nearly gagged at the flavor. It wasn’t bourbon. He wasn’t even sure it was liquor. He inspected the cigarettes, afraid to slip one into his mouth and get the taste of disappointment. There was a camel, but a disclosure underneath stated they had clean lung filters. He put the pack back down.

With no smokes, no liquor, he had only one pleasure left. It was time to make trouble. He walked over to a center table and tapped on the empty chair next to a gorgeous blonde who was deep in conversation with her big boyfriend. “I’ve got fifty credits to spend and no hotel. What will you give me if we just take it outside?”

The woman couldn’t even respond, but her boyfriend stood up. “What,” he asked, more shocked than angry.

“Your woman looks like a Reenar stuffing machine, but not as durable. Promise I’ll be gentle.”

“Please leave, sir,” the man growled, but took no swing.

Teddy was tired of waiting. “Screw it,” he said under his breath and went for a punch in the other man’s gut. His hand slipped right through and he stumbled from the unexpected inertia. Another man was standing near where Teddy fell. Teddy got up and tried a jab at that man’s jaw. Again, he only hit air. Five more tries at anyone in the bar, including a dumpy, old lady, and he gave up. “Goddamn holograms! You’re all hiding in your houses, but pretending to be with a crowd. Stupid planet. I’m going back to where people actually know how to live.”

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Eerin wasn’t sure exactly how she came to be in the pawn shop, and yet here she was. When she’d left her apartment in the Brodsky building, she’d been intent on going for coffee, but rather than the chrome and glass and fragrant aroma of a café she found herself surrounded instead by the detritus of generations of the desperate and financially needy. She had no recollection of having walked here, and she had puzzled on that realization as she made her way past the two cast iron bicycles at the door, around the jolly jumper and the stuffed bear that occupied it, and down the length of a case filled with khaki and metal bayonets and seemingly authentic World War II gas masks. Eerin had stopped finally at the back of the store, confronted by glass display cases littered with dusty lighters, jewelry and numerous other odds and ends. It was one such oddity that had begged her attention, though holding the rock encrusted and rusting metal stick as she now was, she couldn’t fathom what interest she should possibly have in it.

“You’ve got a keen eye, Miss, that’s a very valuable piece.” She braced herself for the sales pitch. “A gentleman left that in my father’s care in exchange for a crib and a baby carriage once, and some pocket change too mind, but I’m sure you and I can come to a fair price.” The shop keeper grinned, exposing widely spaced and badly nicotine-stained teeth. She’d begun to hate him the moment she’d stepped through the door.

“I’m not interested,” she lied, only barely aware that she’d done so, “I’m really just looking.”

The object began to feel warm, and she shifted it from one hand to the other, unsure if it was actually getting hot or not. As she did, large pieces of the rusted surface metal began to detach themselves, disintegrating to fall like dirty snowflakes onto the counter top.

“Oh dear, you’ve broken it, you’re going to have to buy it now,” he placed both hands palms down on the counter, leaning forward and frowning, “very expensive that is, very expensive.”

“I’ve done no such thing,” Eerin defended herself, straightening “and I told you I’m not interested. Besides, I’ve only got enough money for coffee; I didn’t come here to shop.”

The store owner narrowed his eyes. “If you’ve got no money, I hope you’ve got some other way to compensate me for my loss.”

Eerin’s first thought was of how quickly could she get to the door, but as she raised her hands and began to step backwards, she found herself staring at her reflection in the mirror behind him, her startled face framed neatly by the perfectly cauterized hole burned through his head.

He dropped behind the counter out of sight, and her mind raced with panicked thoughts: Should she run? Should she call the police? And say what? could she hide the body? Leaning on the counter and frowning down on the repugnant corpse as she worried, she absently began erasing him, neatly vaporizing his remains with back and forth sweeping motions of the now gleaming and gently purring device.

Stepping back onto the sidewalk of 8th Avenue, she paused a moment to bask in the warmth of the afternoon sunlight. For just a moment, she wondered how it was that all of that had come so naturally to her, but that thought was soon replaced with the question of how long it would take to walk to the Starbucks at 8th and West 43rd.

Author : Kathy Kachelries, Staff Writer

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Aja said, though her eyes avoided her sister’s face. Saj noticed the hesitation, noticed the way Aja’s bangs (gray and black, like soot-streaks on the walls of a bombed-out Akari factory) hung thin, revealing a forehead creased only with the lines of age. Saj’s hair was short and black, the standard military cut, and the slashed-circle brand of the soldier caste was glossy and pink above her eyebrow.

“How would you know?”

“You still look like you’re sixteen.”

“I’m nineteen. And I’ve changed a hell of a lot.”

Saj’s voice was tight, somewhere between the tone of a defensive child and a fierce adult, but there was no conflict in the duality. Saj kept her head high, her expression arrogant and indifferent to the curious stares of the few other teenagers in the café. None of them were branded. The caste system had been eliminated twenty years ago, when Saj was seventeen and light years away in the dying months of the war.

“You’re a doctor now,” Saj’s eyes remained hard on Aja’s face. “A plastic surgeon. Is that what happened to your mark?”

“Don’t do this, Saj.” When she frowned, her face looked like the wrinkled crust of the ice moon of Omnaki. Aja would never see that moon. No Salal would ever see it again. “The war is over, now.”

“Your war.”

“Our war.”

“The only people who shared that war with me died in the massacre on Soulon 5.” Saj’s expression was stony, and her dark eyes had narrowed into slits. “This isn’t my home. This is some world that you made, you and the rest of them, after I went away.”

Saj stared at her sister’s hands, which seemed even more alien than the leathery flesh of the Akari. Liver spots, wrinkled skin, fingernails painted mauve. It was hard to believe that they’d shared a womb, nineteen or sixty years ago.

“There’s a place for you here,” Aja whispered. “I’ve been saving. You can live with James and I, and go to University. We can get rid of your brand.”

“This isn’t my world,” Saj repeated. “And no one’s touching my brand.”

A cold silence fell over the café, and Saj realized she’d spoken too loudly for the enclosed space. She pushed herself up from the table and it creaked at the force of her muscular arms.

“Remember the river, out behind the house?” Aja said. “Where we used to swim in the summer?”

“You’re older than Grandma was.”

“We built a raft once, to see if we could float away from the colony.”

“If I’d drowned, you would have been firstborn,” Saj snapped.

“And I would have gone instead of you.”

Aja’s voice was calm, but Saj pushed away from the table and whirled, her boots squeaking against the floor as she stormed towards the glass door.

“I’ll wait for you.”

“You’ll be waiting for a damn long time.”

“I’ve been waiting for sixty years.”

This time, Saj hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. She stared back at her sister, something indefinable flickering behind her dark eyes.

“Come home,” Aja said.

Saj gritted her teeth and turned away. “I don’t have a home.”

She slammed the door before shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket and tightening her fingers around her cellphone. Its directory was empty, aside from Aja’s number and the Social Service Center. She wanted to break it, to watch it explode like a photon grenade, but she didn’t move. Saj was cold and tired, and she didn’t know what to do next.

Author : J. S. Kachelries

It was a bright sunny morning when Angela Lansfield headed toward the Town library in Mendocino Cove. She was researching time travel for a new mystery novel she was writing. However, prior to diving into Hawking’s time travel theories, she decided to relax, by browsing the old newspapers in the historical files in the library’s basement. While there, she stumbled onto an article concerning one of the town’s most prominent families. Apparently, 40 years ago, Bill Windom had been kidnapped. There were no ransom demands, and he was released unharmed five weeks later. The kidnappers were never found.

Angela knew the Windom family. Bill and his wife had both died years ago, but Angela was still close friends with their only child, Mileva, who had served with Angela on the steering committee for the town’s Historical Society. Angela decided to visit Mileva to find out what she knew about the kidnapping.

“Oh, I’m sorry Angela,” Mileva explained, “I was only three years old at the time. I don’t remember anything about it. It must have been so horrible for mother. Why are you interested, anyway?”

“Well, Mileva, I was writing a story where my main character wanted to murder his older brother so he could inherit their parent’s entire estate. But he knew if his brother was obviously murdered, he would be the primary suspect, if not by the police, certainly by the press. His solution was to travel backward in time and murder his brother in the nursery. He could never be a suspect, since he wasn’t born yet.”

“That’s an interesting storyline, Angela, but what does it have to do with my father?”

“Well, it dawned on me that someone could accomplish the same thing by preventing the parents from conceiving the child in the first place. It’s much less messy too, wouldn’t you agree? That’s when I thought about your family. Your mother was already forty when you were born. If your parents were going to have a second child, they needed to do it soon. And then your father was kidnapped. Why? What was the motive? It certainly wasn’t ransom money. Then I put two and two together. You occasionally mention having a younger brother, although there is no record of his birth. Perhaps you have retained memories from that timeline. To be perfectly frank, Mileva, I think you traveled back into time and kidnapped your father to prevent him from conceiving your younger brother. Was it for the money, Mileva, or was it because your parents loved your brother more than you? I’m sorry, Mileva, but I have to ask the sheriff to reopen the case.”

“My goodness Angela, what an unbelievable hypothesis. You writers do have such active imaginations. Yes, by all means, feel free to talk to the sheriff. I don’t mind.”

A few minutes after Angela left, Mileva made a phone call. “Tom, I have a problem…”

…It was a bright sunny morning when Angela Lansfield headed toward the Town library in Mendocino Cove. She was researching time travel for a new mystery novel she was writing. When she turned the corner, she saw the town’s fire department in front of the library. She walked up to the fire chief. “My heavens, Chief, what happened? Nobody was hurt, I hope?”

“No one hurt, Mrs. L. The fire was confined to the basement. It completely destroyed the historic reference section. The rest of the library is okay though. If you want to wait in the Coffee Shop, we’ll open the library to the public in about an hour.”

“Thanks, Chief, that’ll be fine. Although I will miss reading those old newspaper articles.”

Author : Andy Bolt

Sometimes, it’s fun to be surrounded by an army of mutant water buffalos with horrible skin conditions and bizarre, temporally unstable face tentacles. Other times, I’ll be running through Brazil and suddenly, one of the local amphibians will hop into the air, balloon up to massive size, and snatch a helipod out of the sky with a semi-sentient, prehensile tongue that is suddenly considering a run for congress. Plus, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a field of precious lilies grow biomechanical arms and gang beat a man to death while shrieking Tom Jones songs at nausea inducing intrasonic levels.

I still hate Earth. I still hate humans.

My name is Ted. Well, actually, my name is a combination of potent chemicals, genetic information, and high frequency electromagnetics. “Hearing” it in all its glory would rewrite the DNA of the average human to the point where that individual would be totally unable to use a flush toilet, let alone understand what they were being told. So I go by Ted. Ted the alien.

I’m extra-dimensional, I come from outside of time as humans conceptualize it, and I’m from a galaxy far, far away. My species – let’s call them the Teds – are genetic telepaths. We communicate by sending compressed data streams that alter each others’ codon chains. In Tedland, it’s how we talk. On Earth, it makes me a biogenetic magician, capable of turning this planet’s clumsy organic mass into any number of forms, including several which would pop tiny human brains if made public. I’ve seen it happen.

I’m stuck here. You wouldn’t understand why.

The worst part is that my ability can’t be completely shut off. When I direct it, I can make the locals into whatever I like. When I don’t, everyone simply changes as my voice leaks out of me. Humans become stronger, smarter, and more creative entities. Their basic genetic profile is shifting. They are becoming little, Neanderthal Teds. These creatures are still far superior to normal humans, and their newly found voices change others. My best guess is that the human species will be completely gone within six months.

I have conquered this planet without trying. I don’t even want it.

Author : Debbie Mac Rory

Jeremiah Founders swallowed nervously and licked parched lips for the fourth time. Meeting the eyes of the enforcers standing opposite him, he gave a small nod, and they released their charges. Jeremiah winced as the woman hit the floor with a small cry. She paid no mind to her injuries though, or to him, only pulled herself across the small divide between herself and her partner lying unconscious where he had fallen. The bruise on the woman’s face did nothing to take away from her beauty; in fact, the way loose strands of hair had fallen across her face and caught on her parted lips only emphasized her delicacy…

Jeremiah blinked. Amazing that such a thing could distract him, he thought, staring at the ceiling as he composed himself. Obviously a sign of her superior breeding. Jerimah coughed to break the silence, and when the woman’s violet eyes moved up to watch him from a delicate heart-shaped face, they were almost enough to take his breath away again.

“Ms. Azar, I am here as a legal representative of Renew, and it is my duty to inform you that following the illegal actions of both yourself and your partner, Renew as of today has repossessed its property…”

The woman continued to stare up at him, her mouth moving soundlessly as if trying to piece together words spoken in a foreign tongue. Jeremiah sighed and removed the necessary paperwork from his briefcase.

“I am here to present you with a…contract,” he said, flourishing the documents, “that if yourself and your partner sign to the effect that you will make no further difficulties for Renew regarding this case, such as attempts to contact persons within the organisation, no further charges will be pressed against you”.

“You’ve taken my child away”

Jeremiah sighed and after a moment, placed the documents on the counter top in the small kitchen. “I’ll leave the documents here for your perusal. I understand that this may be an emotional time, and you shouldn’t make a decision like this in haste”.

“But you can’t just take away my child…”

“Ms. Azar, I must remind you that while Renew acknowledges your payment in full and discharge from service of both you and your partner, your genome remains copyright and licensed property of Renew. Therefore, any and all products and copies thereof remain the property of Renew.”

“Please!” Azar sobbed, throwing her hands out to him. Crackling filled the air as one of the enforcers shifted, small arcs of static rippling across his gloves. Jeremiah held out a hand, forestalling any further action on their part while he leaned down to take hold of the woman’s hands.

“Please”, he said, “do not misunderstand the kindness of my tone. I speak softly only to make this process as pleasant as possible for myself. Any other affection I may show towards you comes only from the knowledge that I have taken pleasure in your … sisters on occasion, maybe even yourself once though that is most likely doubtful. But the fact remains, even if I was able to help, I would not. I would not willingly lower myself to aid your kind”.

With that Jeremiah pushed her back to lean against her companion as he straightened to leave.

“I don’t believe your kind should ever have been given rights at all, but what’s done is done, and it’s still a healthy pay check for me at the end of the month”.

Tears spilled freely and silently down silken cheeks. Azar hugged herself as the guards began to move towards the door.

“I just want my baby back”

Author : Kyle DeBruhl

“That boy’s a hatchet.” She spoke with absolute resolve, setting her half finished mug on the counter as she did so. Her lips carefully sounding the words out and letting each one linger for a moment before dissipating in the air. Dennard nodded vigorously. He knew exactly which one she meant, often wondering whether or not the boy would live long enough to regret.

“Can we-“ suddenly the wooden moon gate across the way shrugged open and a small frail-featured boy appeared, escorted on either side by the colossal guards of the compound.

Din was small. To say small is to misjudge him, he was tiny. He stood at least a foot under the other boys his age. His thin arms hung limp at his side and his chest showed bone and the movement of the organs underneath. His matted hair belied the insight that lay beneath it. To say he was small was to misjudge him, but to say he was intelligent couldn’t do him justice. His gaunt cheeks hemmed a diminutive face; however entrenched in that face sat two focused eyes: the eyes of a owl. They glanced and rechecked everything as if always attempting. The muscles of his jaw clenched and relaxed rhythmically with the heaving of his chest. The closed mouth, always upturned in a sort of scowl-smirk, whispered at its loudest and more often then not said nothing at all.

Din saw the faces of the two elders. He saw the mug and her long, unpleasant looking tendril. He saw the vast garden which had stood for centuries, a testament to the complex society from which it came. He saw everything and took in more. He saw the nervous hand of Dennard, the beady eyes of the head mistress, the cavernous stare of the behemoth at his side. He saw more than anything the feelings. They echoed out of each individual in the garden, emanating and reverberating. He saw them in words and sounds, colors and numbers, and he understood. Din knew what was coming before she ever opened her grey lips.

“Dennard and I were just discussing your place in this academy.” When he was not there, she didn’t miss him. She hated him. Hate was such a strong word, but she despised his kind, they always refused to go along with anything. However when she was in his presence, she felt a sort of glow. A feeling that made her refuse to give up on this diminutive little one.

Din at once saw the faces change. He knew his control. His smirked as always and began his game. He spoke without opening his mouth. He released his own colors and numbers and he saw theirs change. He bled empathy and they swallowed it up.

When Din left the garden he knew his place was safe for a bit longer. He chuckled, not out loud of course, and smirked in his all knowing manner. Too easy.

Author : Debbie Mac Rory

Jennifer staggered and fell to the ground. Barely feeling the impact, she forced herself forward, straining her tired legs to run faster.

Throwing a glance back over her shoulder, she let out a strangled cry. The strange figure was still there. She willed herself faster, straining to reach the peak of the dune ahead as her feet slipped and sank in the fine black grains.

“Jenny…”

Jennifer’s breath caught in her throat and she stumbled to a halt. It had never called her by name before.

“Jenny, do not run away from me”

Jennifer turned, something in the voice compelling her. A man dressed all in black stood at the bottom of the slope, extending one gloved hand towards her.

“Come here”.

Slowly she began to move towards him. Something in her mind screamed at her to run, to keep running, not to go near this too-solid stranger, but her legs moved with a power of their own, and within moments she stood facing him.

He smiled as he placed his hands on her shoulders, leaning forward to whisper to her. Her eyes rolled back in her head and he caught her weight easily as her body went limp. He lay her down on the ground and turned on his heel, vanished from the disintegrating dreamscape.

***

Derek’s hands quivered as he took a long pull from his cigarette. He started suspiciously across the table at the man seated opposite him, seemingly asleep with the points of three fingers resting gently against his temple. He drew hard on the cigarette, starting at the credit chip lying on the table in front of him. He looked up again to see the stranger’s sharp blue eyes regarding him and jumped, spilling ash across the fine linen of his trousers. Silence stretched for what seemed like long moments…

“It’s done?” he demanded, impatience making his voice harsh.

“It is done” the stranger said, sitting upright and stretching languorously. “She was already dreaming, so investigators will find nothing. They will probably settle on heart failure, an autopsy will show nothing”.

Derek heaved a sigh of relief, stretching some of the tightness from his shoulders. He took another drag on the cigarette, before picking up the credit chip and tossing it across the table. The black clad man still smiling cocked his head to look at the chip for a moment, before reaching to pick it up.

“Paying in full”, Derek said, watching his associate twirl the chip in his fingers. “And yeah the thing’s unmarked. Don’t ya think I know how easily ya could track me down if I tried cheatin’ ya?”

The stranger’s smile broadened to a wide grin. He stood and tucked the chip into his jacket pocket. “A pleasure to complete business with you” he purred, turning on his heel to stride out the door.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

With lost marbles over mixed drinks, I stare at the face reflected in the oak bar. It looks more real to me, somehow, than I feel.

The bartender comes over to me. His huge moustache is waxed to slippery perfection. He looks down at me with crossed arms and a scowl. I know what that means. Time to pay up and leave.

I look up at him. I smile to let him know that I’m alright. The mirror behind the bar shows me that I’m a clown with wide rubbery lips smiling an idiot’s smile. The five-o’clock shadow on my face has turned into a two-in-the-morning carpet.

I’m having trouble balancing on the wide stool that I’m on. He doesn’t even need to say it. The bartender’s right. I’m done for the night.

I reach back to get my wallet. It takes five tries. He’s patient.

I pull out my credit card and lay it on the bar. The bartender picks it up and carries it over the credit card machine. The last half inch of my martini is trying to keep the bottom of the olive damp.

I try to fish the olive out of the glass but I fumble. The glass skips away and falls over, spilling the last little bit of gin onto the bar.

“Oh Jesus, Danny!” I hear from the end of the bar. I recognize the voice. I look up from licking the gin off of the bar to see what the problem is.

It’s the bartender again. He’s looking straight at me. I wonder why he’s doing that until I remember than my name is Danny and he’s probably found a problem with my credit card.

He comes back and puts the card down with the receipt. It’s gone through just fine. Of course it had. This is the magic card given to me by the government after the war. It never runs out. I was determined to drink the treasury dry.

I bring my other arm, the heavy one, up with a clank onto the bar. Its jagged shapes are cornered with rubber to prevent it from scratching furniture or people. Its barrel has been filled and plugged, never to fire again.

It’s too wired into my head to be removed, they said, and this credit card is their apology.

“You can’t lick the bar, Danny. You know that.” The bartender says and shakes his head.

”But….I shpilled.” I explain, amazed at the thickness of my own tongue.

“Come on, Danny. You can’t stay here. Go on. Get out. See you tomorrow morning.” Said Danny, not unkindly.

I stand up, aim for the door and walk outside. It takes five tries. He’s patient.

I fall over with a crunch of glass into the garbage in the alley behind the bar. I smell limes. I don’t get up.

Home Sweet Home. I’m enjoying the freedom I fought to preserve.

I’ve drunk enough that the faces of the screaming children in a country far away won’t wake me up. That’s the theory, anyway.

I close my eyes.

Author : Robert Niescier

The bacterium was our lab’s greatest achievement. An organism engineered to metabolize cellulose into ethanol quickly and efficiently would eliminate humanity’s dependence on fossil fuel and make energy shortages a thing of the past. It was our gift to an energy-starved world.

Sure, there were numerous obstacles to overcome. Sequencing and sorting through the thousands of cellulase and fermentation pathways to find the perfect combination of efficiency and output took time, and we were forced to manually engineer multi-branched carbohydrate metabolic pathways to maximize usage of all the monomeric sugars. The ethanol toxicity posed another problem, but through the optimization of an existing efflux pump the microbe was able to protect itself.

This led to what I considered the coup de grace: the septic cellulose liquefaction efflux pump. The biggest problem, the one we spent years of headaches trying to fix, was getting around cellulose crystalline structure. Sure, the bacterium was able to metabolize the carbohydrates once they got into the cell, but the fermentation was limited by the surface area of the substrate used. Even sawdust took too long to be considered effective. But in mere hours the SCLE-pump turned any cellulose sample, even blocks of wood, into soupy globs of cellobiose disaccharides ripe for absorption and fermentation.

The day after publication we received phone calls from nations all over the world. The Nobel Prize came a year later.

It was a few weeks after Sweden that I noticed something strange happening in the wooded areas around my lab. It was the deer. Their behavior was quite unusual, coming out during the daytime, stumbling into roads, even passing out in odd positions in the open. A graduate student joked that they looked drunk, and a certain suspicion made my stomach rise to my throat. I immediately called an ecologist friend of mine and asked him to look into the blood alcohol count of the local fauna; a few weeks later he called back and said, with astonishment, that it was off the charts.

That day I assembled my team and asked them if any of them had ever poured samples down the drain without properly bleaching them first. A few people looking at their feet were all I needed to see.

Sure, it was a big joke at first, drunk animals, hobos sucking bark for free booze. It became significantly less funny when houses began to slop down onto their foundations, then burst into giant fireballs and fried everyone unlucky enough to still be inside.

It wasn’t the bacterium we engineered that was making the forests melt into goo; it was the DNA. To avoid complications with the microbe’s main genome we had placed all the pathways onto two plasmids; pRN45 and pRN86. We didn’t stop to think that, in a world where 50% of the carbon is locked up in cellulose, that plasmids optimized for its digestion would be so highly selected. Hindsight, I suppose.

It was happening all over and got worse every day. Once it got into the groundwater there was no way to stop it. A plague on everything green and photosynthetic in the world was upon us. Pictures from NASA showed black spots lined with red all over the planet, growing bigger day by day.

We had to retreat to the deserts and tundra and live in caves; there was no other choice. I don’t expect to survive much longer as there is little left to eat, but I don’t want to say that to the others in my cave because they already don’t like me. I can’t imagine why.

It’s a New Year now, as 2007 slips away into our remembered yesterdays, and 2008 becomes both our now and our foreseeable tomorrows.

Happy New Year from all of us at 365tomorrows, and may the New Year be everything you want it to be, and a few things you’ve even not dreamed of yet.