365 tomorrows

Author : KJ Hannah Greenberg

Charles lingered in the treetop. Not munitions or bribery had coaxed him from his lair. Charles defended his sanctuary with occasional conflagrations and, less frequently, with bad puns. Charles continued to sup on jerboae and lorikeets. He even succeeded in catching a kestrel. Meanwhile, news crews recorded his actions.

Although the neighborhood, minus a ferret or two, remained rapt by Charles’ conduct, Doris didn’t notice, so preoccupied was she with her mailbox. Closing the lid, Doris sighed. Whereas the postal service insisted on placing parcels beneath Doris’ letter bucket, and whereas it had lost jewelry and flour sent by dim relatives, it was the lack of Wilson ’s correspondence which agitated Doris .

Wilson , busy hitchhiking through the Middle East , had reiterated, electronically, that he had sent hundreds of tacit missives. Doris had received two dozen. In contrast, Doris, who disbelieved that Mom pilfered mailbox treasures, had written, daily. Letters could not be interesting to a parent who could eavesdrop on private calls or “just happened” to walk on intimate moments.

Charles spun within his arboreal fortress. Forgetting, due to hunger-imposed hypoglycemia, that tail thrashing broke branches and caused humans to scurry forward with all manners of camera lens, he also snuffed and snorted. The chimera needed to scream and to belch (bandicoots are hard to digest), but he stymied himself remembering the incident he caused at a nearby house. Doris ’ roof, next in his line of sight, didn’t seem any more fireproof, though its layered grass looked serviceable against inclement weather. So, Charles continued his moral gymnastics.

Doris left her mailbox. Mom chastised her for loving Wilson , especially whenever Doris ’ bed resounded in the kitchen below. Even a university degree, lambasted Mom, would be better than canoodling with Dr. Hichkins’ scion.

Doris shrugged her way home and returned to her bedroom to compose. She and Wilson could travel to New York City after she won the speculative fiction writing prize. Doris described a scaly mouth sucking on a lion-like paw.

Charles watched and snorted afresh. He knew himself to be no more a manifestation of someone else’s intrusive thoughts than in any other respect imaginary. A proper monster, hatched from a proper egg, Charles was neither fabrication nor delusional invention. His source was his venerated mother.

Charles twinged again as he scanned the garden. Something rustled among the spiny-headed rush and common wallaby grass. Maybe he could take a small swoop; he was very hungry.

Doris clicked to another screen. An editor liked Doris ’ contention that individuals ought to be measured against their own norms. That woman wanted Doris to email biographical data plus a photo for Doris ’ pending work.

Such data, though, would reveal Doris ’ sixteen years and would necessitate parental permissions. Mom hated Doris ’ mass media rhetoric, caring nothing for ethical dilemmas. To wit, Mom had threatened to cancel Doris’ cable access and to disallow Doris a private postbox. What’s more, Mom instructed the postmistress to preview Doris ’ mail.

Doris scowled at her computer. It was vital to evade demographic questions. She enjoyed publishing, but enjoyed electronic access to Wilson even more. Doris rescinded her submission.

In the interim, the fire brigade that destroyed Charles’ nest designed to destroy him. Charles tweaked his ears as an armed vehicle entered the hamlet on an auxiliary road.

The next morning, Doris forwent visiting her mailbox. Fretting made her sloppy. There’d be no envelope from Wilson , anyway.

Fretting made Charles sloppy, too. He shuddered within Doris ’ mail receptacle, reflecting on just how close the municipal buccaneers had been to finding him.

Author : Phillip English

Once the guests had arrived and were seated in the confines of the oak-panelled meeting room, the host for the evening rose to the lecturn, introduced himself, and began to speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you may be aware of the theory that the people that look the most like us are the people that we tend to be attracted to. Men find women who have similar facial construction to themselves more attractive. I think there was even a Crime Drama episode that featured this as a plot device once.”

The gathering chuckled, more at the assumption that they watched public webdramas than the reference.

“What is not well known is that the same theory applies not only to sexual preferences, but social preferences as well. Statistically speaking, you are more likely to have the same tastes in music as someone who has the same facial features as yourself.”

A few people in the room scoffed slightly at this, but the speaker put up his hands imploringly and continued. “I know, I know, it sounds crazy. How can these factors possibly be correlated? We thought the same thing when we first started our surveys. But the strange coincidence of guys with jug-ears and blunt noses loving Led Zeppelin was just the beginning. We cross-referenced any number of parameters and had them come up with the same facial influence. Eating habits, exercise, your religion being influenced by whether your eyes are spaced evenly or not. We never expected to find anything like this, and we still aren’t sure if it’s something hidden in our genes, or a very subtle social ripple effect. But to be honest, the origins aren’t something we care about.”

The crowd was amused, but obviously waiting for the point. The speaker sensed this. “I can see we’ve got a very discerning crowd here, so let’s cut to the chase. What does this mean to you? Well, as some of you might have guessed given the administrative alumni that are present, the principle extends to political views as well. People are more likely to vote, believe in the principles of, and follow unbendingly someone who shares facial characteristics with themselves.” The speaker smiled at the mixture of bored and impatient nods in the crowd. He rose and moved to stand next to a door on the opposite side of the room, whispering to one of his security aides on the way.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have been working non-stop with the world’s most skilled plastic surgeons, facial recognition software specialists, genetic therapists, and data miners for the past five years on a top-secret project. The project was code-named ‘Narkissos’, and tonight I have the pleasure to introduce you to the result of that project.”

The speaker reached forward and opened the door to let a man through. The new man was wearing an exquisitely tailored suit, polished shoes, and dark glasses. As he removed the glasses with two manicured fingers, the crowd gasped.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the man who is everyone.”

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

“What’s the status of the quarantine field, Mr. Conrad?” asked Captain Germex.

“As terminal as an event horizon, Captain,” replied the ship’s Science Officer.

Mazzaroth was the fifth planet of the bright star Alpha Boötis, a Class K1.5, orange-red gas giant. Although the luminary was only one and a half times more massive than Earth’s sun, its diameter was 26 times larger, about a quarter the size of Mercury’s orbit. Alpha Boötis was one of the rare Population II “old disc” stars. “Old disc” stars formed in the thick discs of dust clouds that orbit the galactic core a thousand light years above and/or below the galactic plane. These stars have highly inclined orbits around the galactic core, and periodically wander into our portion of the galactic plane, as Alpha Boötis was doing now. In addition, star systems formed in these “old disc” dust clouds have a different chemistry than Earth’s Population I star. They have significantly lower amounts of heavy elements, such as iron, nickel, copper, and gold. Consequently, their planets were smaller, and less dense, and their solar spectrums contained elevated levels of Z-beta radiation. Astrobiologists speculate that it was the Z-beta radiation that promoted the development of the abnormal indigenous life that was currently driving the colonists of Mazzaroth mad.

A month earlier, it was discovered that the settlements on Mazzaroth became infected with neural parasites. These parasites were single celled microorganisms that infiltrate the host’s brain, causing schizophrenia, delusional parasitosis, paranoia, and dysthymia, to name a few. The disease was extremely contagious and incurable. Once a settlement was infected, there was no option except complete extermination. The only concern beyond that was containment. Specifically, did the parasites have an opportunity to leave the planet? Review of Mazzaroth’s shipping logs revealed that only two starships picked up cargo or passengers from Mazzaroth in the last two months. Both ships were expeditiously intercepted, and quarantined, before they reached their destinations. After a few weeks, the passengers on the second ship to leave Mazzaroth developed dysthymia. The first ship appeared clean. This convinced doctors that the epidemic could be contained. As a precaution, the propulsion systems of both ships were destroyed and they were towed to a nearby star. Both ships were placed in decaying orbits that eventually caused them to plummet into the star’s fiery corona. Destruction of the “uncontaminated” first ship was considered a necessary safety precaution. “For the betterment of all mankind,” reported The Department of Galactic Health and Safety.

Captain Germex stared at Mazzaroth through the forward viewport. Once, this planet had supported over 250,000 inhabitants. Now, less than 80,000 were still alive, and they were no longer considered human. “Prepare to execute Operation Sterilize, Mr. Atwood,” ordered the captain. The Tactical Officer entered the appropriate codes into the computer, then looked up at the captain and nodded, to indicate that he was ready. With both regret and determination, the captain said “Fire all torpedoes.”

The modulation fields of the twelve engineered projectiles passed smoothly through the quarantine grid at roughly 60 degrees of separation. At an altitude of 10,000 feet, they all detonated. The concussion wave spread outward at more than 2,000 miles an hour. Mazzaroth’s atmosphere ignited into a global fireball that consumed the entire planet. For a few hours, the planet was nearly as bright as Earth’s sun.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

As the relative calm of midnight in the projects was broken by a series of tightly spaced explosions, Tiberius knew he’d made a serious, and perhaps fatal mistake letting their prey separate him from his brother.

Tiberius shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet as he ran, water torn from puddles streaming out behind him. Weapon in hand, he followed the sound through an alley onto the next block, his breath measured, heart rate barely rising.

In the street to his left, a crumpled mass confirmed his fear. Gaius. Tiberius hugged the wall, slowing as he closed the distance. On the ground a few feet from his fallen brother lay a cluster of discarded alloy cylinders; casings from mechanical ignition rounds. They weren’t scanning for those, an error they wouldn’t repeat.

Gaius curled face down in a pool of his own blood. The hunted had shot him in the back; the work of a coward, or the very afraid. They’d almost had him, they were this close.

Tiberius knew they’d be alone now, the prey would have taken the opportunity to distance himself from here. For both, this was a time to regroup.

Gingerly lifting his brother from the asphalt and sitting behind him, Tiberius pulled Gaius to his chest. Steadying his head between his hands, he polled his fading synaptic field, lifting the entirety of his brother’s experience since last they’d synchronized. He felt the chase, the anticipation of confrontation, sudden searing pain through his back, and finally, death. As he felt his own heart rate plummet, he pulled back, letting his brother go.

Hoisting the limp mass of the fallen man over one broad shoulder, Tiberius began the long walk home. “He ain’t heavy,” Tiberius spoke out loud to no-one, and smiled.

Once in the relative safety of their loft, Tiberius lowered his brother gently into a cavity in the floor. Opening a series of valves he watched as fluid sluiced in through the open rim. While the cylinder filled, he wandered into the kitchen, retrieved several cartons of supplemental protein and carbohydrates, and drank them while locking down the room. Fire doors crawled down the walls; heavy insulated alloy barriers turning the small apartment into a vault. The network inside isolated itself; from the outside periodic news feed queries would maintain the impression of active occupation, and a grocery order to be placed in a few weeks would ensure there would be supplies when needed.

Preparations complete, Tiberius removed his clothing, showered away the dirt and blood of the hunt, then climbed down into a second cavity in the floor adjacent to that of his brother.

Through the glass, Tiberius watched the nanotech already breaking down Gaius’ corpse, exposing raw muscle and bone to the soup of proteins and enzymes surrounding him. Placing his own hands into contoured pads, he surrendered to the process. Fluid quickly filled the tank, and he barely shuddered as it flooded his lungs. The nanotech, gelling the fluid around him, oriented his brother’s still cooling hands into the identical contours mirrored on the other side of the glass. With a blueprint to follow, the deconstruction of Gaius focused, tearing down only what needed to be repaired, or rebuilt.

Tiberius allowed himself to drift into a meditative trance. In a few weeks, his brother would be whole again, his memories restored from their unique system of backup. They would share a meal, and then they would go hunting again. Now the contract was secondary, their primary motivator was much more personal.

Author : William Tracy

A luxurious coat of trees springs from the earth’s skin. The morning’s clouds have burned off, and the jungle canopy stretches to the horizon in every direction. A single towering industrial complex pierces the rolling sea of leaves.

The structures are girded by a labyrinth of pipes of myriad sizes and hues, crisscrossing and splitting and joining. The maze is punctuated by dire chemical hazard placards. The steel monoliths sparkle in the afternoon sun, altars to unknown gods.

A solitary robot trundles along a catwalk high above the forest floor. A twisting vine struggling to reclaim the structure for nature is crushed unseen by the lumbering machine.

Methodically following the radio beacons studding its path, the robot turns a bend and travels toward the center of the complex. It leaves the living forest for one of metal, where constellations of colored lights blink on and off. Ubiquitous embedded microcontrollers read their instructions from solid-state wafers, then sleep until their next jobs arrive.

Solenoids twitch open and shut, and a gasp of steam escapes a vent. The cloud is swept away by a tug of wind that sets the trees to whispering amongst themselves. The robot notes the change in atmospheric pressure with its internal barometer, but feels nothing.

It reaches its destination, and stops. Guided by barcodes burned into the structure, it mates a canister to a socket, forms a seal, and flushes fluid into the system. The pipes scream as precipitates dissolve and reagents flow again.

Its job done, the robot turns and descends a zig-zagging ramp spidering down from the sky. The sun slips away to roost in distant mountains. Its glow floods the jungle, and sets the sterile machinery alight. The robot’s infrared unit recalibrates to compensate, and it continues forward.

The robot reaches the ground, and returns the spent solvent canister to its hopper. The machine moves on. The feeble twilight—so fleeting in the tropics—comes and goes. Gleaming sequins appear in the sky, shy and self-conscious. They are drowned out by the abrupt onslaught of nauseous sodium vapor lamps sprouting from the buildings at regular intervals.

A jaguar leaps into the robot’s path. The machine stops, its infrared camera tracking the animal’s body heat. The cat snarls at the robot, but the robot cannot hear. The creature glides into the night, and the machine resumes its dogged march.

Now the jungle is alive with sound. Unseen beasts roar, scream, call, chirp, and sing. Oblivious, the robot moves to a tool bin. Servos whine as it peruses the implements one at a time, digesting the information from RFID tags. Finally, the robot mates a repair attachment to its arm. It turns to continue, then hesitates.

For a moment, the machine wishes it could see the sunset.

Author : Phillip Gawlowski

The glitter of hyperspace was replaced with stars, as we crashed through the light barrier. Sensor input filled the screens, and the computer placed markers on the transparent steel.

“There.” Mike pointed at a small blip. “That looks promising.”

I nodded. “Yeah, we’ll start there, and then look at the two closest planets. The green first, the red one last. But first this blue ball.”

A strong storm tore at our ship’s wings as we made our way to the surface at a spot where we might find what we were looking for.

“Isn’t it strange, that the computer picked a place in the middle of ruins?”, said Mike.

“Yeah. But no matter what parameters we feed that thing, it always points us to that location. So, we’ll take a look.”

“Just to shut her up, eh?” Mike chuckled.

“Just to shut her up.” I grinned.

It must have been a city, once. A large one, too. There were towering ruins everywhere, making the approach more difficult than I liked. Especially with the wind, and now rain, too. Good thing that we could rely on the computer to guide us. I only needed to think about where I wanted to go, and the computer brought us there, correcting for atmospheric eddies.

I picked a nice, wide spot in the middle of the open place. “Larger than I thought,” I said.

“True. 850 acres, I guess. What do you think?”

“Give or take. C’mon, grab your suit. We are going out.”

Mike and I waited for the airlock’s cycle to complete. The atmosphere was breathable, but we hadn’t come this far to risk the mission on some fungus or bacterium in the air that’d kill us. And while the computers aboard the ship were sophisticated, they weren’t fully autonomous yet. I heard the hiss of the airlock through the membrane of my suit, and waited for the lock to open. A desolate, deserted spot vista greeted us, the ruins looming over us in all direction, like some memorial for a long forgotten people. I hesitated, and stepped outside, looking at the grey and brown soil. I doubted we’d find what we needed, but Mike carried the cryo-unit nonetheless.

We searched for an hour or two, until we found what we were looking for. With care we packed it into the cryo-unit, and watched until the unit’s diagnostic lights changed from red, to amber, to a comforting green. “Okay, let’s take off again.”

I nodded, and turned to follow Mike, until a sign caught my eyes. I could barely make out the script. It was old, and the alphabet was archaic. “Centr.l Park”, it read.

I looked back at the dying tree, whose leaves we were sent to gather, and hastened back to the ship.

Author : Mark Ingram

Seeeee? Timmy thought self-importantly, I told them he was real, and I was right.

His smile was ear-to-ear as he held the proof of the night’s happenings before his eyes. In his hands, he wielded an iron poker like a baseball bat; a viscous, black liquid—Timmy had never heard the term “ichor” before—now coated the metal shaft. He admired the oily shimmer of all the colors reflecting off the fluid from the lights on the tree—he pushed the girly word, “pretty,” out of his mind.

They told me he was just make-believe—they told me there wasn’t any monster. Timmy mentally rehearsed the story he was going to tell his parents: I knew he was going to look for me, so I hid behind the couch, he paused to cognitively pat himself on the back for being so smart, and then, when he wasn’t looking, I got the poker, and I hit him in the back of the leg, and then I hit him in the head, and then I poked him in the back, and then . . .

He stopped and realized he was beaming just like he was imagining he would be in the morning; this was, in his opinion, the most amazing story of courage and cunning he would ever divulge. His gaze returned to the crumpled mass near the chimney, and he knew the monster would plague him no more.

He has a stupid, fat face, Timmy mused, and stupid, red clothes, and a stupid, ugly beard. And he’s so fat and gross. He stared disdainfully at the corpse—too young to recognize that spitting on the body would accurately symbolize how he felt. For a moment longer, he watched the thick ooze seep out of the monster, turning the fuzzy ball on the tip of its conical hat—knocked to the floor in the scuffle—from white to black.

Timmy had been a good boy this year.

Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer

Out of the inhabitants of the world, Conrad was the trend-setter. He’d sparked off the craze for playing as gods when he’d discovered a cache of ancient texts. He’d painstakingly recovered audio platters from the less senile databanks in the cities. The six cities provided everyone with the power to create and destroy, to reshape the land according to their whims. No-one understood them, and most were rightly afraid at hastening their slow decay. Conrad, however, enjoyed prospecting for information.

Conrad casually adjusted his eyes to see into the infra-red. He was in one of the vaults underneath the southwest segment of the city of Suberesk. This segment had been dead for years: vault after vault of quiet, inscrutable machinery. Some seemed pristine, whilst others appeared to have started decomposing. Conrad had even found one vault full of natural florae growing quietly underneath an artificial light source.

In the next room, something caught his eye. A old-style holographic display was flickering in one corner, displaying the same fraction-of-a-second of animation over and over again. The projection was an abstracted human head, spasmodically twitching in a sort of half-nod. Conrad took the first action that seemed natural – he kicked the projection unit.

The animation sputtered through a few more frames, then began to play smoothly.

“Integrator online. On the next tone, it will be beat six hundred and six, subinterval twelve of interval sixty-two thousand. There are two messages waiting, marked for the attention of any and all citizens. Would you like to view them?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The first message was received forty-eight thousand, six hundred and twelve intervals ago. It has been altered for language, tone and content.”

The abstract head shrank into one corner of the display, and a second head appeared. Reptilian in appearence, it spoke in a series of choking hisses. The integrator spoke over it in a smooth voice.

“We have grown impatient, city-dwellers. Your cities have stalled our solarsystem and many others. You waste energy in a ridiculous and profligate manner. Your actions threaten the stars themselves. If you do not halt your activities, we will be forced to destroy you, even if it means destroying ourselves in the process.”

The reptilian head faded, and the integrator once more occupied the whole display.

“The second message was broadcast forty-eight thousand, six hundred and eleven intervals ago by Doctor Aki Munroe at Ichioresk. It is presented verbatim, but carries a strong/disturbing content warning. Do you wish to view it?”

“Of course!” Conrad almost shouted, captivated by the artefact.

Again, the integrator’s head shrank to one corner of the display. A young woman’s face appeared. She looked worried, and she stumbled over some of the words, as if choking on them.

“After long contemplation, the unified response to the coalition’s threats is relocation. This shift will take place at the beginning of interval one-three-three-eight-ten. We’re going to attempt to use the cities to project a frameshift field around the world. This’ll isolate us from the universe at large. Existence effectively ‘out of time’ will allow the city grids to tap any major source of energy in this universe or any other. From any point of time. If this project succeeds, we’ll have guaranteed our survival. Possibly at the cost of our culture, since and isolated world is doomed to stagnate. But we must try this. The alternatives are too horrific to contemplate.”

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

“Meteorologists, you can’t live with ‘em, and you can’t vaporize ‘em. That’s what I always say,” bellowed Jose Vargas, Prime Minister of The United Countries of Earth. The large dark skinned Brazilian reached across his antique mahogany desk and grabbed a Cuban Cohiba from a hand carved cherry-wood humidor. He stuck one end imperceptibly into the desktop disintegrator then offered it to his guest, who waved a polite no thanks. “First of all,” he continued as he put the ‘guillotined’ end of the cigar into his mouth and lit the other end with a plasma lighter, “you guys figured out how to control upper level wind shear, and you eliminated all of the Atlantic and Gulf hurricanes. Without the hurricanes to draw out the excess heat from the tropical waters, the Gulf of Mexico heated up to over 130 degrees. That killed all the plankton and fish. Not to mention devastating the resort areas along the gulf coast.”

Professor Ichabod Palmitter, a slim, balding, middle-aged man squirmed in his oversized chair, which incidentally, had legs that were three inches shorter than Vargas’s chair, “Uh, with all due respect, Mr. Prime Minister, that’s not an accurate representation…”

Vargas cut him off in mid-sentence. “And then you created that mid-west weather grid in North America to disperse all of the supercell thunderstorms, so there wouldn’t be any more tornadoes. That idea was a winner. Lightning discharges decreased by 80 percent. Without lightning to convert gaseous nitrogen into nitrates, the soil became sterile. I’ll bet over a million people died of starvation because of that little brain fart.” He drew in a lungful of aromatic smoke and blew several smoke rings toward his office skylight. “And let’s not forget that ‘global warming’ fix you guys came up with. You took so much carbon dioxide and methane out of the atmosphere that you triggered a freakin’ ice age. New York City is still buried under a thousand foot thick glacier. So, Doc, tell me, what hair brained idea did you come up with this time?”

Palmitter nervously cleared his throat. “Uh, well, sir…ah…we think the best way to end the ice age is to release 50 million tons of chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere. They will destroy those pesky ozone molecules that block the sun’s ultraviolet light. The more energy we get to reach the Earth’s surface, the quicker we’ll begin to warm up.” He folded his hands in his lap, and grinned proudly.

Using his tongue and teeth, Vargas rolled the end of the cigar around in his mouth. The lit end emitted a corkscrew of smoke as it circled in the air. Vargas plucked the cigar out of his mouth using his thumb and middle finger. Then, he pointed his plump index finger directly toward Palmitter’s chest. His lips pulled back to produce an exaggerated, toothy smile. “Why… you… dirty… DAWG,” he roared. “I can’t believe it. Man, I guess I owe you guys an apology. That idea is absolutely brilliant.” Vargas glanced over at the organization chart on the far wall of his office and focused his eyes on the name of Alexander Roge, the Secretary of Global Environment. Hidden sensors interpreted his desire and opened a comm link. “Hey, Al,” he said as he lifted his large feet onto the corner of his desk, and crossed his legs at the ankles, “Get in here pronto. And bring your check padd.”

Author : Mark Ingram

He toyed with the hunting knife as he daydreamed; it gave his hands something to do. He was not much of a thinker, but tonight, he allowed his eyes to shift out of focus and his mind to wander . . .

What would we do if aliens came to Earth? Would they come in peace or war; would they already know all that we could teach them; would they want to help us advance our technology; would they get us off this mediocre, blue-green rock . . . ? Start at the beginning: war or peace? The result of war is obvious. We have barely set foot on the moon; they have traveled a gagillion miles to get here. Their technology is far superior to ours.

We would be crushed.

Depressing thought.

He lit another cigarette. He was on his third pack since sitting down, and his five-o’clock-shadow had turned into a three-in-the-morning-overcast. He scratched it and went back to his musings.

Suppose they come in peace? That would be astounding—and very un-humanlike of them. Let’s assume that—after all the formal greetings between the human and alien nations—no one side offended the other. Highly unlikely, but that too would be a breath of fresh air. If they did insult each other (which would be almost a certainty due to both parties’ ignorance of the other’s probably radically different culture), there would be bad blood. Bad blood leads to distrust, leads to prejudice, leads to discrimination, leads to bloodshed . . .

We would be crushed.

Right, anyway, so if they came in peace and we didn’t piss them off, there might be talks . . . or something akin. The world would know of them. Some people would welcome our allies, some would stay at a cautious distance, some would be afraid; it’s inevitable. But there would never be uniformity of opinions among humans. Some groups would always fear the aliens. Even among humans, hatred has lasted between nations so long that they fight each other because they always have. Palestinians versus Israelis. Chinese versus Japanese versus Koreans. Northern Irish versus Britons. No matter how tolerant a culture claims to be, someone—some nation, some state, some planet—will hold prejudice against what’s different. And some subset of that will act on it. Whether the reason is that they don’t like the way the newcomers look or dress, are upset by the visitors’ ignorant disrespect of a specific human culture, feel threatened by them, or have their own way of thinking—perhaps even their own theology—challenged by the aliens’ presence, some people will act out. It might be minutes or days or years after contact. Hard to pacify the entire world’s concerns forever. Violence will ensue. And violence leads to bad blood . . . leads to bloodshed . . .

We would be crushed.

May they never know.

And with that, he thrust his knife deep into the writhing mass on the table in front of him until it went limp.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

“Hey baby, how are you?” I replied to the phone.

I had told my wife that I had gone to Earth for business.

Angela lay, limbs spread wide and gloriously naked on the bed behind me, a beatific smile on her face. We’d been hedonistically wasting the hours of our romantic getaway. The scenery on this moon of Jupiter was supposed to be amazing but all we did was stay in the hotel room, order room service, and fuck. It was magnificent.

We had spouses, of course, back on our home planets. This was an affair.

“Oh my god, are you okay? I haven’t been able to get through until now.” my wife asked on the phone.

She was in a panic. I figure that she’d found a receipt or that one of my friends had squealed or that, hell, maybe she’d just pieced it together. I was relaxed. More lies. My wife was gullible. It wouldn’t be a problem.

“Things are great, hon. I’m in New Hampshire right now. The boys and I just went to see a movie and have a few drinks. They have a nice office. How are you?” I replied, the untruths slipping effortlessly from my lips with no twinge of conscience.

Her voice was confused and shrill. “Oh thank god. Are you sure? Did you manage to get away in time? When did you go the movie? Are you talking about yesterday? Where are you?”

I calmed her down. “Baby, baby, listen. It’s fine. I’m in my hotel room in New Hampshire on Earth, just like I said. I’m thinking of you. Don’t be crazy. Everything’s cool.”

There was an icy pause. When her voice came back, it had hardened. A dark place in the back of my head opened up a flower. Something was horribly wrong. I was missing a big piece of the puzzle in this conversation.

“Turn on the news.” She said in a flat voice. I reached over and thumbed the wall unit to life.

Every station said the same thing. Earth had been destroyed four hours ago in a civil war. Reports were still coming in concerning who started it. Our homeworld had become a husk. There were no survivors.

Angela screamed on the bed, gathering the blankets to her amazing breasts and staring wide-eyed at the screen. Her husband was an Earth senator.

My wife didn’t even question the sound of a woman’s voice in the background. She knew. I’d been caught.

“My lawyers will contact you tomorrow.” My wife said and turned off the connection.

Busted.

Author : Rob Burton

Dear Victim,

I am writing to you to tell you that, in a short while, you are going to be arrested for killing the Prime Minister. You didn’t do it, right? Wrong. Here at MI6, when we want to kill someone and say that you did it, you can be sure that we’ve made sure that you did.

I picked you for several reasons. Firstly, you have an interest in world affairs and have spent time on the internet researching terrorism. Now, I know that you are going to say, ‘but I wasn’t researching how to be a terrorist, I’m just concerned’. Well the courts won’t see it that way now that I’ve altered the list. Secondly, you have annoyed a few people over the years – some of them really hate you, you know – and so we got them to write their opinions on you on ‘mebook’. The press will look you up, and it will help us a lot if nobody likes you. Thirdly, you have short, dark hair, a heavy brow and a facial scar, which makes a conviction 18% more likely. Fourthly you are a liberal who is known to disagree with recent government policy – this gives you motive, and we like to eliminate as many threats as we can with one action. It’s more elegant. Lastly I picked you because, of all the many people who fit the profile, I don’t like the look of you.

According to your psychological profile, upon finishing this email you will attempt to run away – I hope you do, as it will further incriminate you – and that telling you this will not dissuade you. A few words of advice: Do not take your car, we can track it. Similarly, do not steal or borrow anyone else’s car. We can also track your mobile, PDA and laptop, and use them as listening devices. Do not go through any major urban areas; the cameras can pick up your ID using face recognition. Do not go anywhere near an airport or port either, for the same reason. Follow these simple rules and I give you six hours.

Thanks to the national DNA and biometric database, and a quick search through your bins, we have planted enough evidence around the site to easily convict you. Juries believe that DNA and biometric evidence is a rubber stamp for conviction. It is not, but they watch too much crime drama to be convinced otherwise. Also, we have hacked the new brain scan lie detector that Juries love so much, so it will show that you are feeling as guilty as a priest at a bondage party.

We thought that you might want to know why. Well, as you know, the current government has increased our budget and power exponentially over the last few terms. Now, it seems, the Prime Minister may be regretting a few of those choices. We cannot allow that, so we have killed him, demonstrating to his replacement (who is now guaranteed to win the next election) that we are not to be trifled with. This means that we can get whatever we want, which is more of the same, actually. Longer detention periods, fewer rights and greater surveillance. More power for us to play.

And why am I telling you this like some idiotic bond villain? Because it makes no difference to your fate, and because my boss and I think it’s hilarious.

This message will delete itself, leaving absolutely no trace, in two seconds.

Trust me. I know your reading speed.

Author : Denni schnapp

Oil painted rainbows on the pavement. Franklin coughed as he dragged Chrissy behind him.

“Keep your mask up,” he rasped, holding his own to his mouth with his free hand. The fumes made his eyes sting.

He paused, squinting. “Not–” Deep breath “Far. Now.”

His daughter remained silent, holding his hand as he resumed at a gentler pace.

The wind picked up, clearing some of the smog to reveal the silhouette of the Outer Settlement. There would be people, and air clean enough to breathe.

A sudden glare made him stop, Chrissy colliding with the heavy cloth of his coat. He pulled her behind him.

“Who are you? Where are you going?” a metallic voice rang out.

“Franklin Howards and my daughter Chrissy. Please–the bombs…”

The bombs had killed almost everyone before going on to poison the land.

“There’s no room! Leave the kid.” The latter an afterthought.

Chrissy clung tightly to his arm.

#

The bombs hadn’t killed her mother; cancer had seen to that. At another time there might have been kindly relatives, perhaps help from the government, but with millions struggling all that remained for Franklin was to return to the refinery, taking his daughter to live in one of the prefabs with their thin walls barely keeping out the noise and smell.

There had once been a forest, cut down during the building work. Only a few patches of shaggy grass remained. The kids had to play indoors. Not that there were many: another girl and two boys, all with wheezy coughs. Franklin couldn’t remember their names; he saw little of his daughter, let alone the other kids. By the age of twelve, they would be sent away to school-workcamp.

When the bombs fell, Chrissy had just turned eleven.

#

“Please, we’re just passing through!” Franklin fought for breath, inhaling deeply so that he could speak with a loud and confident voice. Don’t let them hear us wheeze.

“You people are always passing through.”

“We’re on our way to the harbour.”

“Ha! And where, pray, would you go from there?”

Franklin winced. Not in front of Chrissy. But his daughter gave no indication that she had understood, her eyes wide as she stared at the light.

“Give us the kid if you want, but you make your own luck.”

For a heartbeat time stood still. The school-workcamp was in the Outer Settlement. Chrissy would be better off there, with kids her own age.

“Leave the kid and go.”

Chrissy seemed to come to her senses. She tugged at his sleeve and Franklin stumbled back. After a few paces the beam cut off. They had rejoined the twilight zone and were of no further interest.

The sky was streaked with gold up where the soot couldn’t reach. The light settled on his daughter’s face. Franklin crouched.

“Chrissy, I want you to be safe…”

“Daddy, don’t go!” The mask distorted her voice.

He swallowed a lump in his throat. “Don’t you want to see–,” dammit, what was the boy’s name? “–Ollie again?”

“Ali,” she sniffled. Good, she was listening.

“I meant Ali. And the other kids that have left for school?” Workcamp.

Chrissy blinked and nodded. Brave girl.

“Come with me, Daddy!” She was keening.

There was no point trying to make her understand. If she was to have any future, he had no choice. He rose abruptly, holding her so tightly that it hurt him, but what hurt most was that she did not try to struggle.

The glare returned as he stepped over the perimeter. They stood motionless, waiting for the patrol to pick her up.

Author : Bill Richman

Bobby had always been a little different. His family felt it. So did the neighborhood children. His friends would have felt it too, if he’d had any. Of course, the other kids were quick to pick up on his oddities and use them to taunt him. He was used to that. Still, why did he have to hide what he felt? His longing to be accepted made him easy prey for those adults who knew what to look for and weren’t afraid to exploit it. Frank Martin was no exception. As a grounds keeper at the park, Frank saw a lot of kids every day, but his interests were very specific. As soon as he saw Bobby, he knew they were alike. It was only a matter of showing a little interest and acting a little bit friendly. Not too friendly, because that was dangerous. Just enough to pique the boy’s curiosity and draw him nearer.

“Hi!” Frank called to the boy, smiling and waving invitingly. “I’ve seen you around, and you look like maybe you could use someone to talk to.”

“M…me…?” stammered Bobby, looking around as though he expected the man to be addressing someone else.

“Yeah, you,” Frank chuckled nervously, glancing around to make sure no one was taking notice of them. “I’ve been watching you. I’ve seen the way you act. I know what you’re feeling. Do you want to come over to my house on Saturday? I think you’ll like it,” Frank blurted, knowing that he was going way too fast, but desperately afraid that he’d lose his nerve otherwise. “Of course, it’ll have to be our little secret,” he whispered, almost pleading.

“Um… well… I guess so…” Bobby mumbled, so stunned by the attention that it never occurred to him to wonder why someone like Frank would take so much interest in a boy like him.

“G…good…” stammered Frank, suddenly scared to death at what he’d just set in motion. “H…here’s my address. P…please don’t t…t…tell anyone wh…where you’re going.” With a trembling hand, he gave Bobby a small scrap of paper.

The lazy silence of Saturday afternoon was broken by a loud pounding and an angry voice shouting, “Police! Open the door!” Before Frank could do more than stand up and turn around, the door was thrown open, and an officer lunged into the room, followed closely by Bobby’s parents.

“What are you doing with my son?!?” screamed Bobby’s mother.

“I’ll kill you, you bastard!” shouted his father.

The officer pushed Frank roughly aside, revealing Bobby and another boy sprawled in full view on the couch, leaving little doubt as to what had been going on.

“Bobby!! What has he done to you?!?” wailed his mother.

“M…m…mom…? D…dad? It’s not his f…f…fault. I…I’ve felt this way for a long t…t…time now. Mu..mis… mister Martin is my f…friend.”

“Bobby? What the hell are you talking about, son? We raised you better than that!” moaned his father.

“D…d…dad? I… I’m s…sorry, bu..but it’s t…t…true,” Bobby sobbed. “I… I’m… a… a… r…r…READER!”

“Mister Martin, I’m placing you under arrest for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, possession of illegal materials, and teaching without a license. You’ll have to come with me,” snapped the officer, reaching for his handcuffs.

The well-worn copy of “Tom Sawyer” hit the floor with a crack like a judge’s gavel.

Author : Chis Sharkey

The sign read:

P.B. FARNSWORTH’S TRAVELLING CIRCUS PRESENTS:

THE MYSTERIOUS HOVER-CAT

WITNESS THIS MYSTICAL CREATURE OF GRAVITY-DEFYING MAJESTY

THREE NIGHTS ONLY

OCT. 5TH, 6TH, AND 8TH

Special Agent Smith studied it intently. The font was, of course, overly dramatic and flourished across the paper. The sign included an artist’s rendition of “Hover-Cat”, depicting a tabby hovering over a podium, surrounded by an orange glow. Down at the bottom, in small lettering was the disclaimer :”Tickets not refundable”. Smith activated his mouthpiece hidden in his shirt cuff.

“Control this looks like the place. Request permission to proceed.”

“Permission granted,” chirped the voice in his ear piece, “Remember Agent Smith, this mission is recon only. Apprehension is not authorized at this time.”

“Roger that.”

Smith approached the smiling young woman at the ticket booth.

“One, please,” he said with a smile.

“That’ll be six dollars,” the ticket lady replied.

Smith took his ticket and proceeded into the tent where the show was to be held. It was fairly empty. That was good, it allowed Smith to get a front row seat, making a bio-scan more accurate.

Taking a seat, Smith pulled the bio-scanner, cleverly disguised as a pair of glasses, from his jacket pocket and put it on. The readout, visible only to Smith, displayed in front of him. Scanner Active. Smith touched his watch, remotely activating the scanner. He waited a few seconds, and a new display popped up in view. Scan Complete, No Signs of Alien Lifeforms.

The circus tent started to fill up, and finally the show began. Smith watched intently as the emcee entered the center ring with his assistant, an attractive young woman. Between them, a cloth draped over what looked like a podium. With much flourish and build-up, the emcee finally pulled back the cloth, revealing a cat sitting a top a podium, surrounded by a glass bell. Lifting the bell, the emcee warned the audience to prepare themselves for what they were about to see.

As Smith watched, the cat lifted into the air effortlessly and started hovering towards the audience. Ignoring the “ooos” and “ahhs” as the cat flew over audience members’ heads, Smith touched his watch again, keeping his eyes intently on “Hover-Cat”. After a few moments, the display read: Scan Complete, Extra-Terrestrial Life Confirmed. Remaining calm, Smith activated his mouthpiece.

“Control, I have positive I.D. Request permission to apprehend.”

After a long pause, “We have received the results of the bio-scan. Permission to apprehend granted. Use of deadly forced is NOT authorized.”

“Roger that.”

Smith immediately stood up and walked out of the tent and around to the back, where the performers would exit after the show. He spotted the emcee about a half hour later, holding a live animal carrier.

“Halt!” he yelled, “F.B.I. I need what you have in that cage!”

The emcee took of running, cage in hand. Smith took off after him.

“Control, I have a runner headed towards rear exit, request immediate assist!” he yelled into his mouthpiece.

He followed the emcee into the rear parking lot, where five F.B.I. vehicles were already waiting. Smith saw his partner Johnson jump out of the lead SUV and tackle the runner. Smith caught up moments later.

“Good job,” Smith said.

“Thanks to you,” replied Johnson, “Confirm this is the life form?”

Smith peered into the animal carrier. He nodded.

“Confirm. Positive I.D.”

“Good,” said Johnson, “Let’s get it back to the lab.”

Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer

The best definition of ‘coincidence’ is ‘you weren’t paying attention to the other half of what was goin on.’ Related to this is the little-known fact that effect can predate cause. Me and Darien were an effect. The cause’s name was Milo.

“Time?” I shouted forward, struggling to match Darien’s pace. I saw him glance at his wrist.

“One minute twenty-six. Now shut up, and run!”

I redoubled my efforts, barely keeping my footing as I chased Dar around corners. He ducked through a gap in a broken chain-link fence. The sign on it read ‘Absolutely No Entry’. With fifty seconds to get into position, Darien certainly wasn’t bothered about trespassing, and so, neither was I. Darien shouldered his way past a flimsy door, and shuddered to a halt. I stepped after him.

“Six seconds. Hide.” Darien hissed, gesturing towards the stacked crates all around. I ducked between two particularly large boxes. Dar slipped behind the bulk of an offlined stacking robot.

Three.

Two.

One.

An access door at the far end of the warehouse began to roll up, letting light into the gloomy space. I glanced down towards the opening, and saw a double silhouette: one man and a general-purpose assistant-droid.

I was supposed to follow Darien’s lead: he would incapacitate the human target, I would take out the robot pet. Double footsteps, regular as clockwork, began to echo towards us. We were the self-styled magicians: agents of synchronicity. The subtle rearrangers of reality. A little nudge here and there so things happen…well, just so.

Milo and his robot stepped past my hiding place, apparently oblivious to my presence.

Darien moved. I covered the space between me and the pet in two steps. I hooked my foot around its ankles, and jerked it backwards. It toppled to the floor, and I slapped magnets to either side of it’s head, thoroughly disabling it. Darien had drawn a compact handgun, and was pressing it against the back of the Milo’s neck.

“We know what you’re thinking. And no, it wouldn’t work. Left pocket.” I obligingly reached into the target’s leftmost pocket, and drew out the small box. I worked the simplistic controls, and two barbed spikes slid out of one side. It buzzed gently as electricity arced across the gap.

“A little close defence? Nice, Milo.” I laughed, and carried on fiddling around with the device.

“Don’t chatter.” Dar hissed.

We held the tableau for another minute. I could see Darien counting the seconds. That’s the first thing they teach you – big events hinge on the smallest coincidences. One ‘disrupted schedule’ can throw the fate of nations one way or the other. Milo was on his knees, shaking violently. Obviously, and painfully afraid for his life.

“And, time.” Darien replaced his handgun in it’s hidden holster, grabbed the mark’s neck, and hauled him upright. I returned the shockbox to Milo’s pocket, and retrieved my magnets from the junked clanker.

“What the hell!” Milo growled, and scrambled to his feet.

“Veracity. You should go home, Milo. And don’t stop for anything.”

Just as Darien turned to walk away, the first of the klaxons sounded.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Truger loathed recreational narcotics; he could never understand the point. Hallucinogens, depressants, all of them ran completely counter to his personality.

This made his current situation unbearable.

He remembered the moments before the crash, the low orbit sky-fight, the enemy fighters he’d engaged and the victory that he’d been sure of, one snatched away in a hail of flak as they’d strayed too close to the anti-aircraft emplacements. His last memory was of the gaping hole in his cockpit, and the cauterized stumps of his freshly truncated arms and leg.

He remembered waking here.

The first hallucination had been the spiders. He hadn’t seen them as his eyes were bandaged, but he felt them navigate across his body, clicking and chattering, poking and prodding. He’d been trained to overcome foreign chemicals in his system, and he tried as best he could. The bandages were peeled back from his eyes, tiny metal appendages pulling away the mesh to let the light in. Somewhere far away, someone began screaming. His drug-enhanced imagination fed him back his own face reflected in a hundred shining facets. Seconds stretched into minutes before a sharp pain in his shoulder redirected his attention, and, as the light dimmed, he was aware that the screaming had stopped.

When next he awoke, the room had changed. The bugs were gone, and everything was bathed in a green white glow, it’s edges blurred and indistinct. Truger tried to sit upright, but his torso was too heavy. He concentrated instead on his drug-heavy hands, and as he struggled with them, the memory of cauterized limb fragments flashed back, vivid and real. The panicked surge of adrenaline helped him pull them into his line of sight but instead of familiar or even burnt flesh he found clear, crystalline limbs of stunning beauty. He marveled as the light refracted through their internal structures, until their weight finally overcame his strength.

He had to wake up. This hallucinogenic daydream was too much.

Somewhere, someone was screaming again.

Truger couldn’t remember falling asleep, or being awoken again. The light had changed, and a flurry of activity in his peripheral vision begged for his attention. His head was too leaden to move, so he strained his eyes to the left and wished he hadn’t. A doctor, resplendent in his gown, moved in and out of his field of view conversing with a nurse. Their heads both stretched impossibly in the dim light, elongated and flailing whip-like at the air. The doctor’s arms tapered off into slender, excessively jointed digits which undulated as he spoke. Their words were no more than melodic chirps to Truger’s intoxicated mind. That people took these chemicals into their system willingly and for entertainment was beyond his comprehension. The images they superimposed on his reality terrified him, and he squeezed his eyes shut as though willing the distorted shapes to disappear.

He felt something in his personal space, and opened his eyes to the faces of the medical staff, pressed close and staring, eyes now faceted and double lidded, mouths a quivering mass of vertical fleshy strips.

“Stop giving me drugs,” he screamed into their startled faces, the force of his words driving them back. “I can suffer the pain, but these drugs, you’re driving me out of my mind.” The effort taxed him to near unconsciousness. As his awareness slipped away into blackness, he whispered simply “no drugs”, a series of sound-waves the doctors chirped and clicked about for some time, trying to decipher what these noises could possibly mean.

Author : Chris Sharkey

“Call it,” Doctor Knight instructed excitedly.

“Call it?” Han replied inquisitively.

“Yeah, call it. Heads or tails?”

“You asked me to come down here for a coin toss?” Han was skeptical. Doctor Knight almost always had some ulterior motive.

“Of course not,” replied Knight, “I’m trying to demonstrate my latest scientific breakthrough. Come on, call it, heads or tails?” he repeated, lifting his right hand to view the quarter sitting on top of his left.

Han hesitated. The doctor’s insistence worried him. Having known Bishop Knight, PhD for almost five years, Han had come to appreciate his penchant for brilliant discoveries. Of course, the good doctor’s cunning intellect came with the usual eccentricities exhibited by the extraordinarily brilliant, but Han had never seen him get this excited over something so trivial as a simple coin toss.

“Heads or tails?” Doctor Knight started growing impatient.

“Fine, tails.”

The doctor grinned.

“What do you suppose your chances of being right are?” He asked without revealing the coin.

“I dunno, fifty-fifty?”

“Hm, not quite,” said Knight,”But close enough for the purposes of this demonstration.”

Lifting his right hand, Doctor Knight revealed the quarter, laying face up. Han just stared, waiting for the doctor to explain his demonstration.

“As you can see,” said Knight, “this coin is not on tails. If we had set a wager, you could have lost something of significant value.”

“Well, fortunately for me, I’m not a gambling man,” Han replied sarcastically.

“Of course you aren’t, and neither am I, which is why I asked you to come here. What if I told you it were possible to increase your chances beyond fifty-fifty?”

Han blinked, not certain he had heard the doctor correctly.

“I don’t follow,” he said simply.

“Assume, for a moment,” continued the doctor, “that your odds of correctly guessing which side the coin lands are fifty-fifty. Without manipulating the coin in some fashion, those odds will never tip in your favor. What if I told you that your chances could be increased without doing anything to the coin?”

“Enough with the hypotheticals, doctor. What are you getting at?”

“Luck, my dear friend,” Knight said with a smile, “I’ve discovered a way to manipulate a person’s luck.”

“Manipulate?”

“Yes, as in increase or decrease the amount of luck any one person has.”

“But that’s impossible,” exclaimed Han, “Luck is not a quantifiable attribute. Hell, it’s not even scientifically possible to prove luck exists. It just a term, used by the superstitious to explain the unexplainable events in their lives.”

“Those are the kind of assumptions that prevent scientists from making breakthroughs such as these,” countered Knight, “If your mind is already closed to the possibility, why would you explore it. I, however, was not so deterred and posited that luck can be quantified, and ultimately, manipulated. It took years of dedicated research, but a last I have a breakthrough. Allow me to demonstrate.”

With the last sentence, Doctor Knight handed Han the coin.

“Toss it,” he instructed.

Han wasn’t sure if he was impressed or bewildered. After an hour of coin-tossing, Knight hadn’t been wrong once. After the first thirty, Han had started using the change in his own pocket and had even moved to the other side of the room, just to make sure the good doctor wasn’t playing a practical joke.

“Okay,” Han said finally, “Now will you show me how you did it?”

“Of course,” said Knight with a grin, “Just after I return from my vacation.”

“I see,” said Han disappointedly. “Where are you going?”

“Vegas, my dear friend.”

Author : Brian Armitage

Iskerreth stood before the assembly, manacled. The humans looked on, waiting. Listening. All was imminently silent. The Korrosk soldier straightened his back, his muscles shifting under his scales, his head quills flat against his scalp. He pressed his elbows together in a show of humility, and spoke.

“I have fought against and killed your brothers. I deserve death, and am… dumbfounded that I am here, alive. Even to speak before you, humans of authority.”

His bright orange eyes with their horizontal slit pupils scanned the Solar Congress, his audience. The gills on Iskerreth’s neck, bright purple when they opened, fluttered with anxiety.

“A slave is sold, and goes to his death. Korrosk are bred for numbers, not for strength. Our lives have little meaning, and our deaths none. We have fought and died without honor for… too many generations. The Veleura command, and the Korrosk obey.

“So many that we have fought are slaves, as we are.” The alien stopped suddenly. His tail came to rest, and his gills stilled. His head bowed low. “We were not prepared for Earth.” It was a moment before he spoke again.

“Our masters gave us your communications. We listened to you as we fought. As I… shot down your fighters, I heard one of your commanders.” With a deep breath, Ishkerreth raised his head. “For a moment, he sounded like our masters, saying, ‘Do you want them to die for nothing? Fight on!’ But when he spoke again, I was shaken. He said…” The warrior’s shoulders began to shake.

“He said, ‘they volunteered for this.’”

The Korrosk soldier shuddered, tilted back his head, and roared, a deep vibrato from the depth of his chest. Only barely audible was the gasp from the crowd. He clutched his head in his hands.

“They chose the fight! They chose! A choice the Korrosk have never been given. And we never shall, unless…”

Iskerreth’s quills rattled against his scaled head. The Korrosk lifted his eyes to his audience, and dropped to his knees. His gills again began to flutter.

“We beg you. We beg you… give us the choice. Only allow us the chance to choose, and we will serve you. Never have we chosen our fight. Never have we died with honor. Allow us… the choice. If you do… I offer you the oath. The oath we are made to swear to our masters.”

He raised a clenched fist to the very center of his chest, above his heart. His entire body shook. Then, Ishkerreth opened his mouth and bellowed the oath, with zeal:

“We will trade the years of our lives for a moment of yours! We will trade a sea of our blood for a drop of yours! We fight at your pleasure! We die at your wish! Send us, and we will go! For…” For a moment, he choked. His breath heaved once, and he shouted ever louder, “For the honor of the fallen!”

And he fell quiet, head bowed. Silence. The warrior sobbed once, and was still. He slowly regained his feet and lifted his head.

“If any of you would stoop low and stand alongside us, I-”

The entire audience rose to its feet. 80,000 humans and Korrosk stood, just as the Solar Congress had stood together those hundred years ago. The great hologram of Ishkerreth in the center of the stadium looked around on all sides, awestruck.

From his private booth, Moshkerreth raised a clenched fist to his heart. His wife squeezed his hand, her pink skin soft against his scaled fingers.

“Happy Allegiance Day, Mr. President,” she said.

Author : B. Zedan

Periodically, the pilot wished he had company. There were some things that were just more enjoyable with another being around. Besides the obvious, there was chess. The ship’s helpful AI, such a benefit when it came to the obvious, just didn’t cut it at chess. Not that it was stupid, of course. It was quite exactly the opposite.

“You’re a thrice-damned son of a bitch.” The pilot chucked one of his pawns at the holo he’d picked for the ship to wear when they played chess. Only certain parts of the form were dense enough to interact with objects. The pawn shot harmlessly through the faintly shimmering torso and clattered unfulfillingly on the deck. The pilot began to sulk. “Damn sonofabitch bastard.”

“Would you have preferred the pawn to hit me? If this is your preference, I can generate solidity at whichever part you wish to next target.” The ship, through the holo’s face, displayed the practised concern of a head waiter dealing with a difficult customer. The face then lit with a degree of helpfulness. “I also could display pain or discomfort when struck, if you’d like.” The pilot wondered if there was an algorithm to degrees of helpfulness.

“What I would like you to do is stop letting me win.” He paused, as though a computer needed a moment of contemplation. “I left my king wide open, just there for you to take. But you didn’t. You messed around with the same dumb, obvious moves you’ve been making since the first time we played and you won.”

The ship didn’t say anything. It seemed to think he wasn’t quite done. The pilot found that he wasn’t.

“I mean, if you’re doing this because you think I’d prefer it then you’re off your deck. Letting me win like that only reminds me how easy it’d be for you to kick my ass at this game.”

The ship remained quiet.

For the briefest moment, the pilot worried he’d hurt the ship’s feelings.

“Listen—” he began. The holo shook its head.

“No, it is all right. You have a very valid point. I thought you would prefer to win, but I did not factor that you might also like to work for the win.” The pilot was a little startled.

“Yeah, that’s—that’s pretty much it.”

“I had not taken into consideration that your kind reveres the concept of hardship and looks down on success unless there is at least a token struggle in achieving it.”

“I just didn’t want you to make it so easy.”

“I understand.”

The pilot shifted in his chair uncomfortably. He wondered about the connections being made in that giant, unfathomable brain. He wished he had company.

Author : Bill Gale

Showing every one of his seventy-two years, the speaker rose to podium of the vast granite chamber. He uttered a single word – “Order”. The irony of this formality did nothing for the moods of the three dozen delegates, for whom standing in hushed rooms had been the order of the day for weeks now.

With eyes wracked by fatigue, Speaker Frederick Van Hast read his brief for the last time. How had events advanced this way? The Age of Excess seemed generations ago now, though only years had passed. So much had changed. So much had been lost under the brazen march of progress. How many of these men were children of that time? Van Hast surveyed them, eyes straining in the pallid light. So many were young, the old and infirm having been the first to have been lost. Only fortuity and strength had saved the few like Van Hast. The worst affected zones had lost all elders. As the leaders began to die, the young rose up and tore their lands to shreds. Might made right in a world of famine, plague and war.

Van Hast had tried to convince himself that the situation had been so different in Europe, but there were stories everybody had heard. The story of the village in England, where men butchered their own families for hoarding. In France, as well, where a young woman was arrested by a mob for keeping a cat, and was buried alive in a meadow outside Lyon. Nobody had recognised how close the insanity had been to the surface, how much of the world was constrained by bread and circuses. They were asked to concede a modicum of their luxury, and they refused. When it was taken from them, they went mad. Societies crumbled. The world stopped.

How many of these men had never known a time of hunger before? He could see them, blinking as though to wake from a terrible dream. Mouths agape in confusion, their faces asked, “Why me?”; “What did I do?”; “We didn’t realise”; “Nobody told us”; “It isn’t our fault.”; “We thought there would be enough” Perhaps there would have been enough. If the farmers had kept farming, or the miners mining. Perhaps, if consumption had slowed. The governments had forced rationing because nobody would give up their excess voluntarily. The violence began. Production slowed, the famines begun. Electricity stopped overnight. Nobody had been informed of the scale, of the scarcity of food and fuel. On the precipice, the leaders of the world had closed their eyes and hoped somebody else, anybody else would find a solution before they fell. Without fuel, there were no communications. No medicines. It took strong men to keep their sanity in a world where any animal is edible, any illness fatal. The young men here, they knew who was to blame.

A new government had arisen. A provisions network was set up to cities, while the rural areas were left alone out of necessity. This government had been charged with a single task – Solve the crisis. Cure the stricken Earth.

Van Hast trembled as he addressed the chamber. Maybe this was the solution. An end to the famine and strife. He and addressed the assembly.

“One in six.”

One by one, the men nodded and filed out of the room to convene with their generals and subordinates. There were three dozen men, he pondered. Six of them would not see tomorrow.

Author : Ben ‘Inorian’ Le Chevalier

I’ve been a cypro for a few years now. That’s a short way of saying I have a cybernetic prosthesis. Technically, I’m a cyborg as is any human with mechanical parts, but people don’t like the word. It’s been given too many bad connotations from old scifi movies in the late twenty-first century.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah. Cypro.

I got my first cypro part for a job. There was a new manufacturing firm in town who were offering enhanced pay and accelerated promotion to cypros because we can lift heavier weights and are generally stronger than pure bios. I had my arm cypro’d. Suddenly I could move heavy machinery by myself.

I worked with that for a while, until me and Sara, that was my wife, until we had saved enough to afford a nice big house in the centre of town. We were living a better life than most of our neighbours, and it was thanks to the cypro.

After a few years the firm offered me another promotion, this time to foundry foreman. Eventually I got a second cypro, just another arm, you know. Sara didn’t like it, but I got a pay raise with it, and it meant I could keep Sara in the lap of luxury.

A revelation came after I suffered an industrial accident. When I was in hospital I realised that my cypro arms had been fine, but my outmoded bio back had failed. I ended up selling off the house and getting my whole skeleton replaced, with my legs soon to follow. I was getting closer and closer to the peak of what I could be, but Sara complained. I think she just didn’t like cypro really.

Soon enough I was approached by a world leader in cypro development. I was somewhat surprised when they told me I had the largest percentage of cybernetic parts of anyone alive. They invited me to be in their cypro testing programs, and then advertise the tested products. The money was fantastic, but working on the cutting edge of cypro is what made me sign on.

Now all that’s left of my bio past is my brain, flawlessly cased inside my cypro body. I’m the first man to receive any cypro part, so I stay on the cutting edge of perfection.

They’re calling me the world’s first true cyborg. Perhaps I am. It doesn’t worry me. I’m perfection.

Author : Andy Bolt

Carlton Marx felt only mildly guilty for opening up slice portals in peoples’ thoracic cavities. He was doing it in the hopes of developing a method of deployment for his growing army of genetically engineered combat fishconomists – economist/sea creature hybrids pumped full of high test adrenaline and testosterone boosters.

When Piranha Maynard Keynes burst out of Queen of England’s chest on live neuro-vision, it took a squad of amphibious battle yetis to catch and subdue him. Back in his lair, deep beneath an Albuquerque bagel shop, Carlton pondered his actions.

“I feel bad about my deadly aquatic assassin eating the Queen,” he said to no one in particular. “But people must learn about the heterodox theories regarding variable interest rates in a capital gains economy. And I can’t think of a better teacher than a psychotic half-man, half-fish, all financial wizard. Also, I need a bagel.”

Carlton pressed another button.

When Milton “Electric Eel” Friedman came crashing through the sternum of DJ Hemoglobin in Hoboken’s techno-vampire disco, most of the patrons thought it was part of the show. A sparking Friedman played along, doing a set of “The Electric Slide,” “Electric Boogaloo,” and “Oh, Dear God, It’s a Shocking Fish Monster! (Summertime Love mix).” Then he inadvertently electrocuted all the pseudo-vampires with a combination of The Running Man and an excited pop-and-lock maneuver.

“This string of semi-accidental deaths is greatly perturbing me,” Carlton mused, licking strawberry cream cheese off his lips. “Perhaps I’d feel better if I knew that people understood how the Walrasian model presents the possibility of perfect competition leading to Pareto efficiency. Wait, did I say Walrasian? I meant Walrusian!” Carlton cackled with self-satisfied glee. “Bagels sure are delicious,” he added, tapping another button.

Marie-Esprit-Léon Walrus exploded into Independence Hall through the torso of a tour guide dressed like Thomas Jefferson.

“Vour score and zeven years ago,” he began, gasping through his tusks with a French accent. Several people looked confused as he flopped heavily onto his flippers, emerging from the trunk of the dead guide.

“I thought Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address,” said a puzzled little boy with braces.

“Walruses are very bad at history,” said Carlton sorrowfully, munching with grief on his ninth jalapeño and blueberry bagel.

“Perhaps that is the greatest tragedy of all.”

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

It’s light outside which means that if we leave our hiding place, we will be seen and killed.

Not too long ago, human history was exposed and swept clear. Everything we sent at them just bounced off. It’s six months later and I have no idea how many of us are left. They seem to have stopped actively hunting us which is good. We’re more like vermin now. They lay traps and go about their business. It’s still very unsafe to travel in the daylight.

They have dry, deep-blue skin the same texture as cork. Bullets go about an inch in and stop. It’s like they’re made of rock with a light coating of clay. They’re huge. Two massive elephant-foot legs. Two arm-tentacles that split into a mess of smaller tentacles at the end. Those tentacles are very efficient and ridiculously strong. Watching them operate the complex mining machinery they brought with them is almost thrilling.

Watching those tentacles go into a loved one’s head orifices and squeeze is another matter entirely.

They wear what look like black rubber overalls with giant galoshes. About the only weak point we can find is that they need to wear filter masks poking out of their mouths to breathe this atmosphere.

If you shoot them in the filter and none of their friends are around to give them a replacement, it takes them about half an hour to die. It’s a rather gruesome thing to watch. It’s like their insides are made of slugs and someone is pouring salt down their throats. It looks agonizing. We’d rather give them a quick death like they gave so many of us but beggars can’t be choosers.

I laughed once when Teddy referred to us as ‘the resistance’. As far as I could see, we scavenge for food and try to avoid the new owners of this planet. We fight when cornered and almost always lose. Resistance indeed. Pah.

Gwendolyn’s pregnant now. She’s the only woman with our little group who is of child bearing age. None of the three men in our group is admitting to being the father but she’s not pointing fingers. Anyway, it could be one of the other six of us that have been killed over the last three months. It’s maddening not knowing if we’re the last ones in Britain. We met one other person in the last four months but she couldn’t talk. She died not too long after we met her.

We lost.

Author : Glenn Blakeslee

He led me past a tractor rusting in the rain, pushed aside chickens with his foot and opened the door to his little house. Inside, bleak light fell through dirty windows.

“How much you gonna charge?” he asked.

The house was cluttered with dirty cooking tools and heaps of unwashed laundry. A new chaotic rice-cooker and a clunky media player sat on a wood countertop. He wore a blue phototropic shirt. Typical burgeoning bourgeois.

“How much you gonna charge?” he repeated.

“Where is she?” I asked.

He led me into a back room. His wife lay on a simple bed. She smiled wanly, her eyes only for her husband. “Zensheu,” she said.

Zensheu nodded toward his wife. “You need to fix her,” he said. “She needs to make sons and clean.”

I pulled a chair to her bedside, set down my bag. Zensheu stood watching. His wife had dark circles under her eyes, but her pale skin was unblemished. She was lovely. “I’m Wenwen,” she said.

“I’m here to heal you,” I said, and she smiled a brilliant smile through sad eyes. “I need you to take off your blouse.” Zensheu didn’t move so I helped Wenwen sit up. She slowly removed her blouse.

“I’m paying someone to feel my wife’s titties?” Zensheu asked, his arms folded across his chest. Wenwen’s right breast was swollen along the radial midline. The skin there was dark. “May I?” I asked her, and when she nodded I used my fingertips to probe along the distention. I could feel a mass.

“You one of those livelong guys?” Zensheu asked. “You gonna live forever on my money?” I raised Wenwen’s arm and felt along her chest, up to her armpit. The lymph nodes were swollen.

“You fucking corporados,” Zensheu said. “You squeeze poor farmers, you fix our breaks and bruises and live forever.” I pulled the assay unit from my bag and ran it along the distention. Wenwen winced as the probe extended and snapped back. I set it aside.

“That’s it?” Zensheu said. “I owe a bag of gold?”

Nothing he said was true. I learned my craft online, bought my gear second-hand in Beijing. I saved for months for my first kilo of nano, and rode my bike through the district. I made just enough to support my wife and I.

The livelong nano was for the rich, and would never, ever, be mine.

I poured ten grams from the nanosite canister onto the palette. I turned on the transceiver and plugged it into the assay unit. While the unit turned diagnostic data into machine code and passed it to the transceiver, I pushed aside a small portion of nano, shielded it with my knife, and then passed the transceiver over the rest.

This nano would eat Wenwen’s tumor, and follow the metastasized cells along the highway of her lymph system.

I punched a different code into the assay unit, fed it to the transceiver, and passed it over the portion I had shielded. That nano would live in her womb forever, killing male zygotes.

I pushed the nano together into a single pile, scraped it up with a wooden spoon, and fed it to Wenwen. She grimaced at the taste of carbon, and swallowed.

Outside, the rain still fell. Zensheu approached from the side of the house, and held out a chicken. The chicken was scrawny, its legs deformed. “Here’s your pay,” he said.

I took the chicken from him, and slammed its head into the side of the tractor. I threw it in the mud and walked off, into the rain.

Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer

Sacha slumped down in a doorway, gathering her heavy clothes tighter around her. As a prophylactic measure, the cloth and leather were almost useless: it was less about protection, more about appearances. The door behind her was like every other in this street. Rough, wooden, and with a ‘X’ splashed across it in red paint.

She stared at the bodies that littered the street. Tens of them on this street alone, thousands across the district, and hierarchy-knew how many uninfected were starving to death in their homes, afraid to unseal the windows. Some of the infected were dangerous, violent, but those in the later stages of infection just curled up and died where they fell.

Sacha was trapped, doubly so. By the quarantine around the town, and by the blockade of the ‘red’ districts. She was not infected. Unlike the citizens of the town, Sacha had an immune system she could talk to.

However resistant she was to the pathogens in the air, she was not resistant to the flamethrowers of the local army. In the style of armed forces everywhere, they had donned their rudimentary hazardous materials suits and were methodically putting the town to flame.

Someone walked past the door by which Sacha was slumped. He was wearing a neat, well-fitted uniform – that of an officer in the local army. He continued past her, down the street, then Sacha heard him stop and backtrack. He stared at her for a long moment, then spoke.

“Emdal-Abek Sacha Sousver. Medical technician, on assignment from Cluster.”

“And you are?” Mildly surprised at the use of her full name and the unimpressive description of her assignment, Sacha got to her feet and eyed the officer more closely.

“Ash-Abek Peter Carnelian. Disruptor.”

“Sent to rescue me?”

“No. Cluster is worried that this crisis will lead eventually to a military coup. I’m here to guide them down a different track.”

“Let me guess. Kill the High Command.”

“In one. Are you sure you’re medical?”

“Positive. Do you think you could get me out of here? I’m becoming immunocomprimised. I’ve done all I can to help, but I need to get into a medical lab.”

“I think I’ll be able to explain it away.”

Peter placed a hand on her shoulder, and they headed for the nearest checkpoint. A line of soldiers were carefully creating a dead zone on the infected side, setting fire to everything within ten metres of the perimeter. A milling crowd of the infected were shouting, screaming and begging just outside the reach of the flamethowers.

“Sod,” Peter murmured, “we’re going to have to get through them.”

One of the crowd spotted Peter’s uniform.

“Djah!” The cry of ‘officer’ went up, and as one mass, the infected turned and ran towards what they saw as their salvation.

“Run.” Peter hissed, and Sacha fled back the way they’d come. He drew a sidearm, and levelled it at the crowd. “Uhd. Tuz lidla. Lidla!” Some of the more risk-averse slowed, but most continued to run. He fired three times into the crowd, and ran after Sacha.

Panicking, Sacha ran headlong into a dead end. Peter was hot on her heels, having discarded his now-empty sidearm. There was a knife in his hand, and bloodstains covered his once-immaculate uniform. He threw something at her. Instinctively, she caught it: small, ovoid and metallic. A capsule key.

A rush of air almost knocked her off her feet and a door hissed open in the air beside: Peter had called his one-man capsule. He wanted her to leave.

Author : Matthew Forish

My call sign is Belle – I don’t have a real name, just a designation: ASC-a217.5. I stand about four-foot-two – pretty short even for a girl – and weigh in at a paltry eighty-four pounds. There are plenty of children larger than I am. Of course, I was designed this way. My size was selected specifically when I was engineered – it was an asset in my line of work. I could slip through spaces too small for most people, and I tend to blend in to a crowd

Tonight I was attending a diplomatic ball. I was dressed in an elegant blue gown, classy without being overly showy – the better to blend in. My hair – long at the moment – was up in a fancy but conservative style. I hated long hair – it got in the way – but it was necessary to keep up appearances on this assignment.

Standing against a side wall, I scanned the crowd. There were a number of overtly-dressed and armed security guards at the entrances to the room, and my trained eye noted five special agents – dressed in finery and mingled with the crowd. That brought the total security presence in the room to fifteen, plus the advanced security drone that hovered near the ceiling.

I noted my partner, dressed in the guise of a waiter, moving about with practiced ease with a tray of drinks. I was the only one who noticed the tiny devices he was scattering around the room. As he passed me, I snatched a glass of brandy from his tray – my eyes catching his signal that he was finished.

Moving toward the dance floor, I lifted the brandy to my lips and savored it for a moment before my bio-toxin neutralizers rendered the alcohol impotent. Such was the price of my unique abilities. After draining the glass, I deposited it on a nearby table and continued my advance. I spotted my target among the dancing couples. He was paired up with a visiting ambassador from a backwater world.

As usual, none of the guards paid any attention to my tiny frame as I cautiously approached my quarry. One of the special agents glanced my way and smiled at me, before continuing his subtle scans of the crowd.

I was right behind my prey before the drone finally noticed me. It’s blaring alarms were cut short as the stun-pulse flashed out from every corner of the room. Most of the guests and all of the uniformed guards dropped from the pulse, which barely registered as a tickle in my enhanced neural pathways. Only my target, the special agents and the few dignitaries wealthy enough to afford high-end neural implants were standing now – as well as my partner and I of course.

My target turned around in confusion, spotting me for the first time. I drew a slender blade from among my stylish hairpins and took one quick slash across his throat. “You should have voted no on that amendment, Senator,” I said quietly as the shock registered on his face, his life slipping through the gash in his throat – his nano-meds unable to contend with the counter-nanos set loose by my blade in order to save him.

With my partner at my side, I dashed for the nearest window. The special agents moved to intercept us, but were thrown back by the sudden concussion of a cluster of explosions that covered our escape. As we leapt through the shattering glass and plunged into the blackness below, I noted with satisfaction another job well-done.

Author : Glenn Head

Transmission 211.

Is it on, Greg? Is it? Okay.

Today our situation – stranded on Jupiter’s ice moon Europa – has worsened. Todd disappeared last night. He wasn’t in camp, by our ship, and we thought he’d gone on a surveillance trip. We found him dead this morning. He was frozen solid, metres away from the camp’s external therm-lamps. In my medical opinion he died from hypothermia. Problem is, he was stripped naked.

None of can believe Todd would have walked out of camp, in this hellish cold, without wearing some god damn gear. Greg and a couple of us think something killed him then stripped him. I’m not sure. I saw no marks, no indications he’d died from anything other than hypothermia. The jury is still out.

Transmission 212.

Blaine’s gone. Greg and I searched for an hour or so. As long as we could manage in this blizzard. We found nothing. No thermal trace on the imager. I don’t think she’s coming back. Hope the rescue crew arrive soon.

Transmission 213.

Greg’s dead. But we know what’s happening now. Doc Brabham managed to take a sample from what was left of Greg’s clothes. He scanned it and found these little microbe things. They eat synthetic materials. Brabs says we woke them. Now they want to eat. Todd wasn’t stripped – his clothes were eaten.

Transmission 214.

Brabs reckons they must have hibernated for one hell of a long time before we came. We aren’t the first to land on Europa. Those creatures must have fed before. He found evidence of synthetic materials inside them. He calls the creatures Europan Moths. I call them our death warrant. If they start eating into our camp we’ve had it. Hurry guys, we need your help.

Transmission 215.

Still works? Thanks, Brabs.

We lost one half of the camp. The microbes ate through the primary and secondary walls on our east side and depressurised the chamber. We lost two men. Those of us left managed to retreat and establish life support on the west side. Lost a lot of power, though.

Where are they? Come on guys.

Transmission 216.

They’ve grown. Eating a lot of our equipment. They’re still small but you can actually see them. They’re like little dust mites, you know, the ones we used to have on earth. They move quick, and they can really eat.

We tried spraying the things with our sanitary fluids. It slows them down but it doesn’t stop them. Brabs reckons we can only hold them off for a day or two max.

Transmission 217.

Brabs died. He saved us pretty… pretty much. He saved us. Sealed a hole with his body.

I can’t do this, switch it off, I..

Transmission 218.

I saw a dot in the sky tonight. It was moving slowly but it’s got brighter. Could be the rescue crew? I hope so, cos if the Moths don’t get us, the hunger will.

We haven’t eaten in days.

Author : Glenn Blakeslee

It’s a disease, I guess, an affliction. My body is bound to a parallel.

No, not a geometric form, but a line around the earth. I’m bound to the 38th parallel.

I woke one morning dizzy, with throbbing pain in my limbs and abdomen. I hurt for days, but I found each time I went south the pain subsided. A few miles south of my home the pain and dizziness went away completely, and I actually felt good.

My friends thought I was crazy, but lent me a GPS. I found I was right on top of the parallel. I went back again and again for relief, until finally I lay down and slept there for the night. When I woke I felt wonderful, but I couldn’t go away again. It made the pain worse.

I couldn’t go west, either. I could only move within a half mile of the parallel, always east. So I started walking.

My job and home were behind me forever. At first I survived off friends, and then on the kindness of strangers. At times I went for days without food, always walking east. I figured it was a magnetic thing, the cells of my body aligned along certain points. All I could do was keep walking.

Am I worse off than you? Most people are bound to a region, a geographic area of a few hundred miles. The area I live in is more narrow than yours, but greater for its fantastic width. As humans we are bound to place, but my place is without end.

My family and friends figured I was obsessed, like in a movie, so they organized my eastward journey as a charity, a round-the-world walk for peace. It helped to pay the way.

It was painful crossing oceans. I spent the time asleep, mostly. Getting back to the parallel was the only way to find relief.

My route took me over the driest, most desolate place on earth. I had my pack with a little food and water, but I was so low that I was ready to lie down and die. That’s when I found Eliza.

I first saw her as an indistinct speck on the horizon, but as I walked the speck moved closer until I could discern it was another person. A woman.

Our paths intersected. She was the barest slice of a girl, but I loved her instantly. She spoke my language. We sat and talked for hours. I didn’t want to move forward. I asked her to walk with me.

She said that she could not.

She told me she was bound to a great circle, like mine. Her path would diverge from mine, as it followed the ecliptic rather than the purely geographic. We plotted our paths on the map from my pack. They would cross again in the American Midwest.

If we could find our way there, we could stay together in a hospitable place —our lives complete within a half-mile radius. I would gladly give up my narrow freedom for love and companionship.

We made love, and we stayed in the spot of our confluence until our food almost ran out. I took her picture with my cell phone. We made plans to meet and then we parted, our paths gradually diverging.

It was very difficult.

I made my way around the earth, across on my line, anticipating our meeting. And here I am in this fine town –Saint John, Kansas.

So, sir, have you seen this girl?

No?

How about you, sir? Have you seen this girl?

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

The aliens dug our tunes.

It was sweet. They came to down to us in these big blue ships, all curves and awe-inspiring slowness through the clouds like settling continents. Freaked us right out. We, the human race, didn’t even try to attack. We’d seen this movie before. We knew that there would be no point. We just waited for them to either kill us or speak up. There wasn’t even much panic, just a global sort of cowering whimper.

Wide eyes in the shadows of floating leviathans, we waited, holding each other tightly.

“Hey there. Uh. Hey. Right. This one right? Okay. Hello!” said the sky. It was a human voice, the kind of voice you’d hear at any old bus stop on a cel phone. Our guy, North America’s guy, was named Robert Gogas. A greek fry cook from Venice, California. The aliens had kidnapped him and told him to speak to us in our native tongue to calm us down.

“They like our music but they say we have shitty transceivers. Uh, like, I mean, uh, our broadcast quality. It’s lame. They say. But they really like us. Man, this is AWESOME!” said Robert Gogas. “They’re all blue. They’re musicians, man!”

All over Europe, similar addresses were taking place as the atmosphere was turned into a giant acoustical dome. Each ship had taken a local artist and had him or her talk to the planet, to his country of origin, in the local language.

There was a flurry of translation after Pete stopped talking. He rambled on for about fifteen minutes. The upshot was this.

The aliens, named the Kursk, wanted to install giant antennae at equidistant points around earth and they wanted us to hook our datacables into them. They wanted us to funnel our libraries, television shows, podcasts, webpages, movies, songs, animations, books on tape, and spoken word into the antennae for the enjoyment of the whole universe.

They wanted to turn Earth into a radio station.

We were far from the first.

That was ten years ago. After the first year, they started to ship down billions of tiny things that looked sort of like a cross between an iPod and a throwing star.

They were universe radios. The music of a billion billion civilizations was suddenly available to us.

It’s been a fantastic decade.

Author : Ben ‘Inorian’ Le Chevalier

Insanity. That’s the first thing I thought when they told me about the project. Insanity.

I felt a sharp shock, followed by pain at the back of my head.

Well, there goes another one. Another one of the thousands they have taken from me, but it doesn’t matter to me anymore. That was strange. Once, it had mattered, now it didn’t. The tank seemed to dull all feeling. Of course it was supposed to, physically. Perhaps the matter does affect the mind, after a time.

I was one of the few. We were all selected because we had the right type of brain, the right mental architecture, the right-

Another shock. Another pain. Another one gone. I must be on top form today. I wonder what they do with them all…come to that, I wonder what they contain. Some, I’m certain, must be for the betterment of mankind. Others, the ones I worry about, the ones that keep me from tranquillity, they must be the opposite. They must be the destructive ones, the painful ones.

They’re probably the ones that hurt more, but who can tell?

I’ve been in the tank for near on five years now.

For near five years I’ve been having ideas formulated in my mind, then being brutally ripped away without me ever seeing the shape of them.

I laughed when they told me about the ‘think tank’. I laughed because I thought they had misunderstood the term. It had turned out that they had simply taken it further.

My ideas are no longer mine…my body is not mine, the only thing I have is my-

Another shock. Another pain.

Another one gone.