365 tomorrows

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Revy leaned heavy against the bathroom sink, his reflection in the streaked mirror staring back battered and bruised. Stitches poked through pink flesh behind his jaw and beneath his hairline, bloodshot eyes sunken and dark. How long since he’d slept? He couldn’t remember.

In the corner of his vision lurked the promise of ability. He focused, and a window zoomed into focus. “Status: Online, Idle…” He wished he knew how to make it do something. He winced through the pounding in his head, swinging open the vanity mirror to expose bottles of pills. Mixing a fistful of pain meds and anti-biotics, he dry swallowed them, feeling the fizz as they partially dissolved in his mouth.

Cho said the pain would go away in a few weeks.

Cho. He remembered Cho. He’d bought illegal bio-tech from him a few times, but this was different. “Real serious shit,” Cho had said, “top secret shit. You pay big cash money.”

Revy’s head ached as memories forced themselves to the surface. The money he’d stolen, from whom he couldn’t recall. The operating theatre, Cho gowned and chatty, the nurse counting backwards with him from one hundred. He remembered a recovery room, the feel of his battered face through bandages.

Revy closed the cabinet door and studied himself in the mirror again. The stitches were dry, maybe a week old. They should come out soon.

Cho was dead.

Those memories clawed at the fog inside his head. Cho talking about training, promising to teach him to use his implant. He remembered the silent thunder of booted feet, men shouting. Cho screaming outside his room, words he could hear but not fully comprehend.

He remembered gunfire.

It had been days since he’d found himself curled up on the fire escape of his apartment building outside his kitchen window, bare feet screaming from the cold steel and the snow.

“Status: Online, Scanning…”

Sound overwhelmed him as he stumbled out of the bathroom; the fan in the kitchen, a music player from the floor below, the old recluse coughing from his apartment near the elevator. The noises were amped up, wrapped in soft static. He leaned his head against the thickly papered wall, watching his front door through the haze of his living room as it shimmered in and out of focus. He heard the elevator door open, and the door to the stairwell. He could hear boots, men. Revy closed his eyes, listening as they made their weapons ready while closing the distance to his door, to him. The pounding of his heart increased in frequency. Adrenaline flooded his system, clearing the fog and easing for the moment the throbbing in his head. Revy retreated into the bathroom; the window wasn’t too far from the fire escape, maybe he could jump.

He could hear them with high fidelity now, right outside the door. White light and pain shot through his head and he clutched at his ears in a vain attempt to block out the sensation. Had he been flash banged? Had he waited too long? His eyes squeezed shut, he waited for the heavy hands, for barked orders that didn’t come. Revy opened his eyes tentatively to find himself outside in the hallway, door pushed open to the stairwell, listening. The old man by the elevator was coughing into his phone, wheezing about gunfire and screaming. There was no screaming now. Revy found his hands comfortable on a large assault weapon. Scattered around his apartment doorway Revy counted eight bodies amidst spattered and pooling blood.

“Status: Disengaged, Idle…”

The only thing he knew now for sure was that he couldn’t stay.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

The Deep Space Explorer held its position one kilometer from the anomaly. “What do you make of it, Cortez,” asked the commander?

“If it didn’t sound so stupid, Commander, I’d say it was a massless black hole. It’s spherical, about ten times the diameter of our ship, and is pitch black. But it has no mass that I can detect. I don’t understand how it is able to block the light of the stars that are behind it. There doesn’t appear to be anything there. We should be able to fly right through it.”

“Do you think that’s safe” inquired the commander?

“Honestly, sir, I don’t know. According to our sensors, there isn’t enough energy in that volume of space to melt an ice cube. I don’t see how it could possibly be dangerous. Although my gut says it’s a dumb idea, my brain wants us to enter it. After all, we came out here to explore the unknown.”

“Do we have any more unmanned probes?”

“Sorry, Commander. We launched the last one into the Helix nebula.”

“Then I guess we go in. But let’s minimize our risks. We’ll coast through the anomaly using only our inertia. We’ll set sensors on passive mode, and record everything. After we emerge on the other side, we’ll analyze the data and determine our next move.”

The black circle in the foreground of the main viewscreen began to grow as the ship completed a five second burn of its aft impulse thrusters. The background of stars disappeared one by one as the anomaly expanded to fill the screen. The helmsman announced, “Entering the anomaly in three, two, one…” The image on the black viewscreen suddenly burst into hundreds of fiery purple streaks shooting from the center of the screen toward the periphery, like a continuous fireworks explosion. Several seconds later, the lightshow abruptly ended. It was replaced by a field of stationary stars. The black anomaly was gone.

“Are we through?” asked the commander.

“Negative,” replied the science officer. “That isn’t the original star field. Whoa, sensor data are really bizarre. All of the fundamental universal constants have changed. The speed of light, Planck’s constant, and Boltzmann’s constant are trillions of magnitudes smaller than they should be. Even the four fundamental forces are different. Their ratios are the same, but their absolute magnitudes are way too low.” After a few awkward minutes of silence, he added. “Commander, perhaps the anomaly that we just entered is an independent universe, with different properties than our own. It has billions of galaxies crammed into a few kilometers.”

“That’s crazy,” remarked a navigator. “If that were true, our ship would be millions of light-years long in this universe.”

“Not necessarily. When we crossed the boundary, our matter must have been converted, so that now it is consistent with the fundamental laws of this universe. We’re probably super small now too.”

“Can we get home?” asked the commander.

“We should convert back to normal size when we pass through the boundary going out. Let me see if I can locate it.” After thirty minutes of intense analysis, the science officer reported, “I was afraid of this. It looks like our conversion didn’t occur until the aft end of the ship passed through the boundary. The bow of the ship was over a billion light-years into this universe before we fully converted. Each of those purple streaks must have been a blue shifting galaxy as we flew by. At maximum warp, it will take us over 10,000 years to reach the boundary.”

Author : William Tracy

Eighteen thousand meters up in the sky, two aircraft dance. The larger tanker hovers above the other, and the two vehicles mate. The space plane drinks thirstily, then releases.

The tanker banks to the right, leaving the space plane free to climb. It raises its nose to the sky, and stalls for one heartbeat. Then it shudders as the rocket engages. The sky outside the windows dims, and stars cautiously emerge as the vehicle enters suborbital space. Clouds swirl far below, and the horizon—noticeably curved—is shrouded in a thin veil of atmosphere and crowned by the glimmering aurora borealis.

Inside the cabin, passengers release their safety harnesses and gently rise, weightless. A man in a flowing robe maneuvers to the front, and turns to face his fellow passengers.

He speaks. “Lord, we are gathered here today to become closer to you. Possibly in the physical sense, and certainly in the spiritual sense. We are here to witness Creation, to be awed by its grandeur and by Your power. We look down on the sphere we call home, and we feel small, as we feel small in Your presence. We thank you for this opportunity to experience Your power. We thank You for blessing the engineers with the wisdom and foresight needed to construct this spacecraft, and we thank You for guiding the flight crew to bring us here safely.”

The congregation joins the preacher in saying “Amen.”

Hymns are sung, and prayers are spoken. A sermon is given. The service is carried out in a calm, orderly manner.

As if on cue, moments after the last “amen”, a chime sounds, and the captain speaks. “We have now been in space for two hours, and are ready to begin our descent. Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts now. Thank you.”

The craft enters the atmosphere. Its fuel spent, its wings swing into position to aerobrake. The vehicle descends to five thousand meters as it glides toward the landing strip.

Then a shoulder-launched missile leaps into the air and strikes the plane, ripping open the fuselage. The craft tumbles from the sky, and tears a burning gash into the earth.

We praise God as we do His work. Those who turn their backs on the light will taste the sting of Hell. The heretics will be purged from the land, and the true faith will remain pure.

God’s will be done. Hallelujah!

Author : Ivy Tyson

They meet in the ruins of New York City, rather by accident, right in the middle of what used to be Times Square, back when people actually lived there.

They are both armed: she with a pistol strapped to her hip, while he supports a rifle on his shoulder. Both are uneasy with these armaments; there are evidences of new calluses and deep shadows in eyes that have seen too much. They are not soldiers by choice, merely a man and a woman forced into their current position by circumstances far outside of their control. Still, both weapons are firmly pointed towards the other without more than a bare second of hesitation.

“Are you with Them?” the man demands, nervously straightening his glasses with his shoulder even as he holds the rifle.

The woman twitches, the pistol wavering for a moment before she rights it. “Why should I tell you?”

“I could kill you!” the man threatens with a certainty born of sad experience. “I’ve killed men and women both before!”

“So have I,” she says with sadness that he understands. “Anyway, I’m not with Them. Are you?”

That strikes him as an odd question. “Why would I ask you if I was?”

“To save yourself,” she replies. “To make me think you’re not, to keep me from shooting you. They say not to take any prisoners.”

“If you have the slightest doubt of a citizen’s loyalties, you should shoot without hesitation,” the man agrees. The words are rote, because he has heard them and repeated them so many times before.

The woman clicks the pistol’s safety off. “And do you doubt my loyalty?”

He considers this. “Well, I don’t know you. So I suppose I do. Do you doubt mine?”

“I suppose I do. And for the same reason: I don’t know you.”

“Then it seems we’ll both have to shoot,” he says regretfully. He hasn’t seen anyone else for two weeks.

She sighs with matching resignation. “You’re right. I’m sorry that we have to. It was pleasant, seeing another person.”

“Yes, it was,” he agrees with something like a smile. “What’s the protocol for this?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. How about the count of three?”

“That seems fair,” he concurs, despite his disappointment. Then he hesitates. “Say, what if we’re it?”

“How do you mean?”

“What if we are on the same side, right? And supposing we shoot each other, They’d win?”

She considers this. “Well, that couldn’t be so bad.”

“No?”

She looks down the darkening street. “Well, maybe we’re both lying. And so when we shoot each other, They will be the ones to lose.”

“That’d be worth it,” he admits. He no longer knows who is Us and who is Them. “On three, then?”

“On three,” she agrees. “It was nice, to have this talk with you.”

“And you,” he says. He levels the rifle at her heart. “I’m sorry.”

Her pistol aims at his forehead. “Yes, me too.”

“One,” he says.

“Two,” she echoes.

A second after he whispers Three, he realizes that he does recognize her, from a small cafe back in college. She was ordering a coffee, and he almost asked her on a date. But by then it’s too late.

Two gunshots ring out amidst the ruins of New York City, from the middle of what used to be Times Square.

The war ends.

Author : James C. Clar

“Shit,” Corporal Sean Collins thought out loud. “I’ve got to calm down. My oxygen will be gone in twenty minutes if I don’t. I need to stay low. If I raise my head above the dunes to take a shot, that Martian bastard will vaporize me.”

Collins had gotten separated from his patrol during a violent sandstorm … a storm that, although abating at ground level, was still disrupting communications. Attempting to make his way back to base he became disoriented and wound up alone and with his back against a sheer rock wall. Thank God for the undulating sand dunes that partially protected his position to the front. He fell in love with them, in fact, as soon as the shooting started. A lone ‘Marty – probably separated from his men as well – spotted him an hour ago and began firing. “Son of a bitch,” Collins swore. “My tour’s up in three weeks. I just want to make it home to see Rachel and my baby daughter sometime before she’s ready to go to college! If I’m just patient and wait out the storm, Command will send a flier out to look for me.” Hunkered down and shivering on an inimical, alien landscape, Sean weighed his options.

****

Meanwhile, Zadok crouched behind some boulders and checked the charge on his pulse rifle; enough left for two, maybe three, bursts. His elevated position gave him a huge advantage over his enemy. The human had nowhere to run and the moment he raised his head above the dunes that sheltered him, Zadok could pick him off with ease. Even now, the Martian soldier saw a flash as sunlight reflected off the helmet or visor of the trapped earthling. It was just a matter of time. Although eager to return to base for the communal meal, Zadok … like most of his ancient race … had learned patience over the long, silent eons. He was more than willing to wait.

****

In Topeka, Kansas Rachael Collins walked out into her backyard. Her young daughter was in her arms. One of her friends had shown her how to find Mars in the evening sky. She gazed up at the distant planet and thought of her husband. Someone else had tried to explain that the light from Mars took nearly fifteen minutes to reach Earth. Rachael only barely understood what they had been talking about and, to be honest, she didn’t really care. All she knew was that her husband was up there somewhere on that distant, dusty world. When she stood in her yard and looked up at the faint orange glow in the darkening sky, she felt a connection with Sean. His tour was nearly up but it would a year or so before he made it home. It didn’t matter. Unlike her impetuous husband and his crazy Irish relatives, Rachael was infinitely patient. She was more than willing to wait.

Author : Ian Rennie

People sometimes look at me weirdly when they first see me, and after all this time I can’t really blame them that much. I’m disabled. They see me with the goggles and the earpieces and they wonder what’s going on. Then they check the nets to see what it could be, and their faces get the same uniform look of pity and contempt. How tragic it must be, they think, not to have infoplants; way worse than being blind or deaf, because missing senses can be replaced by impants. How wretched not to have lucid dreaming or radiotelepathy.

My parents didn’t find out about it until I was four, when they took me to get the usual edutainment wetware. My body rejected the spinal grafts, rejected them with such savagery that it nearly killed me. The doctors refused to try again, saying that another rejection would kill me.

To my parents’ credit, they never made me feel different. They got me as unobtrusive a headset as they could, got me gloves so I could take part in sensationals with them. My elder brother, Troy, once beat up a kid at school for calling me a “limp”. I’ve never minded the names, though. They can call me a limp or a flatline or a blackout. They can even pity me for my disability, and I con’t care, because there’s one thing I can do that they can’t.

I can turn it off.

I can take off the sensation gloves, the goggles, and the earphones. I can unclip the belt pack and leave my computer in my room. I can be alone if I want to be. I look at people my own age and I know they’ve never had a night’s sleep where their dreams weren’t sponsored by Toyota or Burger King. They’ve never wanted to know something and had to work at finding it out. They’ve never laid out in an empty field under an infinite sky, alone but for their thoughts, knowing that no popups or instant messages will ever spoil the view.

They look at me and they feel pity.

I look at them, and I feel lucky.

Author : Sikko Boersma

I made the rounds like a sergeant – tapping a dozing sentry here, putting out a cigarette there. Greetings were muttered, barely understandable. The men were caked in mud. Some had blood on their trench coats. I joked with a young corporal in particularly bad shape – “your uniform is a disgrace, corporal – polish those buttons”. He pulled what was left of his face into a grimace and replied – “yes sir, no excuse sir”.

The officers’ bunker was further back, dug deep. The door opened smoothly to a scene that seemed to be completely out of place. Soft lighting, comfortable chairs. Friends sitting around a darkwood table. Music. Jeffrey grabbed the bottle of amber liquor and had a solid drink ready at my place before I even sat down.

“About time Alec, dragging your heels?“

“Had to make the round,” I replied, and took the glass, “Make sure they’re all ready for the main event.”

“Hear hear. To the big one.”

We raised our glasses, emptied them, slammed them back on the table. We drank the next round without a toast. Strong drink, good year.

“God, we’re in a rotten mood tonight,” bawled Jeff, “This is an oh-nine, have a heart! You’d think we’re getting ready for a funeral!”

Grim chuckles went up around the table. Lars raised his glass: “To us, then!”

The glasses met in a ringing cascade, got emptied, back on the table – next round.

“What do you think, Christian?” Asked Jeff, “Are we really the last?”

Chris took his glass: “Well, I haven’t heard from anyone in a while.”

“I’m shocked, Chris – not even from the girls?”

“No, Peter, not even from the girls – but your sister says hello.”

Soon the night was going by at a furious pace. We recalled stories of a past that seemed almost as distant as the ancient history our dusty teachers had once tried to imprint upon us. But our past was different – who cares about the moldy figures of old? The past we lived, that’s what’s important, that’s what brings back the memories of all the things we left behind when we went into these Goddamn trenches. Remember that guy in fifteenth grade, with the white hair? He went into music, then he painted it black – haha! Man, I’ll never forget that girl I dated in one-seven. You never dated her, you had a date with her, it’s not the same! Fuck you Jeff, let’s have another. To dates, and the mess we made of them! Hear hear!

The night wore long. Jeff, having exhausted his bravura fast as usual, fell asleep in his chair. Chris became sentimental. Eventually the talk died down and we just sat there, looking at the empty bottles, trying not to make sense of anything.

It began just before dawn with the waxing and waning shrieks we knew so well. Jeff woke up: “Looks like this is it, then.”

We got to our feet, picked our insignia off the table. The report of rifles began to swell. Now that we wore rank, it fell upon lieutenant-colonel Christopher Stanford to say something profound. He poured a round of drinks – we took them.

“Gentlemen… It’s been an honor.”

We raised our glasses, emptied them, slammed them back on the table, and took out our service pistols. The barrel, predictably, tasted like metal, and in the last instant I wondered if we really were the last.

Author : Skyler Heathwaite

Its illegal, but I love mind-surfing. I don’t even bother with TV anymore. I just go for a walk around town, see what I can find. Its a real gas to pick out the hidden truths in polite conversation.

For example, I sat a booth down from a really cute couple in this diner the other day. They looked nice enough, smiled a lot, held hands across the table. All of a sudden, real genuine like he says “Becky, I love you.” She lit right up, bright as Christmas.

I lace my fingers around my fork and press my thumb against the teeth. I get an image of her kissing another guy. Tall, scruffy, well muscled. The thought came before the words, a strange kind of stereo effect “I love you too.” I fight back a grin and leave a big tip.

From there I take the subway. Once I’m on I just close my eyes and drift, a sea of thought laid out before me. I don’t go for anything specific, no dirty secrets or credit card numbers. I just take what nature is kind enough to bring me.

A man three seats down and across the isle is drawing up plans in his head for a new apartment complex. Blond girl, just stepped off is worried she’s at the wrong stop. Little kid, no more than seven is dreaming about being an astronaut. The old woman next to me misses her husband John. I’d look just like him if I shaved a little closer.

My stop is up, and I walk up to the street. The constant babble used to drive me mad, now it comforts me. I go to my crappy hardware store job and start another day. I never had much of a plan, nothing like being an astronaut anyway.

I guess I could join the Psychic Studies Division, get registered and start doing government work. They’d teach me how to use my gifts, how to pick out a single private thought on a crowded street. I’d get a nice government loft in a nice part of town, with a nice paycheck and probably a nice woman to pair up with. The guys in long coats wouldn’t scare me out of my boots anymore.

But then I wouldn’t be me. I’d be a government man, no matter what they taught me. A fat woman walks up and asks if we can fix her husband’s power drill. She wants to surprise him for his birthday. This time the smile wins.

This is enough.

Author : Kile Marshall

As soon as the package popped down into the gravity sink I pulled out a saber and slashed through the heavy framing. For the most part it came away and dissolved into the recycle chutes quickly, so I slowed and steadied my hand. There were only a few remaining chunks and I didn’t want to disturb the contents. I’m not sure what risk there was, but I’ve always been overcautious when it comes to precious things.

“Vlad, I don’t see purpose here.” Musaf was staring at me with the usual distrust in his eyes—distrust not of my intentions but of my ideas.

“That’s because you’ve all silicon ’ware for brains,” I mumbled. “No soul or such, just fat lines and margins of black and red.”

“Red now,” he grumbled. “Money wasted!”

“My money,” I replied. “You only helped, just held the threads. I had to input and pathogenize the memes, I claim the gainings.”

“You are obsessed with archaic foolishness! Anachronite!” He swiveled his face from a pissed-off avi to mild irritation and turned to absorb some data stream surging past.

“Here, come,” I said. “You see it too.”

I reached the final box, old plastics textured to look like real uso wood. A little glimmering hook with a digilock based around an exponentially-vertexed manifold.

“You still won’t tell me costs,” said Musaf, weaving his way into the gravity sink.

“Pascal’s gambit,” I said, beginning to stream the framing code to the lock. “The reward is infinite.”

“Why?” asked Musaf. “You already know what cheese tastes like.”

“Do you believe the synthes?” I asked. “Really? They refuse to acknowledge umami or ottslich. Who knows what else they’ve lost.”

“Of all writ, this sensophilia of yours costs us more than market flux.” He glared.

I unlocked the box and flipped it back. Musaf peered over my shoulder at the pale, damp slab concealed within. Some white powdery stuff drifted up into the air; the slab was covered with it.

“This?” asked Musaf incredulously. “I’ve seen five-unit synth that looked more appetizing. Sensors say it’s rotten, too.”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s verdad, supposed to be. That’s how it’s fabricated, how they’ve been doing it for… ever.”

“Like vint-malt?” asked Musaf “Live germs?”

“I suppose,” I said. I dissolved a wrapper and produced a couple of carb wafers. Using a knife, scavenged from an antique dealer a few moons back, I carefully carved into the waxy bulk and spread it out onto two of the wafers. I gave one to Musaf, the other for myself. He stared at it angrily and then engulfed it whole. I let the taste hang in my mouth for a moment.

Musaf stared at me, and his face crossfaded into disgust. “Of all things! Vlad, what of! It tastes atrocious!”

I grinned. “Exactly! It’s even better than I imagined.”

Author : Benjamin Fischer

The alert came abruptly.

“INCOMING INCOMING INCOMING!” blared the base PA speakers. Laeta was face-first in the damp, rich earth of the outpost’s central parade ground before the echoes of the announcement had died. The speakers squawked again, but they were drowned out by the earsplitting CRACKCRACKCRACK of the base defense lasers lighting up.

The rolling, popping detonations that followed a moment later were almost an anticlimax, the blasts resembling firecrackers compared to the thunderous report of the HEL. But Laeta still felt her back and sides peppered by dirt, wood chips and tiny stones. Some fraction of a rocket’s micromunition payload had penetrated.

The screaming started a few seconds later.

“Medic! Medic!” a man was shouting.

“Stay down!” someone else yelled.

Behind them came the labored, high-pitched squealing of someone stricken.

Laeta didn’t dare look. The forward operating base had taken a few bombardments in the three weeks she’d been stationed inside its walls, wires, moats and broad killzones, and she already knew that the locals liked to mix it up by throwing in a few more bombs after the initial chaos had died down. Hands over her head to protect her face, she cursed the fact that her helmet’s straps were digging into her chin.

The commotion continued for the few minutes it took for the satellites overhead to search the misty hills surrounding Procyon. Situated out on a low spread of farmland at the foot of the Cascades, the FOB typically had to rely on sky surveillance rather than line-of-sight from its spidery signal tower.

The all-clear finally sounded after what seemed like hours in the dirt.

The Ranger was soaked in blood, but he was making far too much noise for most of it to be his. The tall Lunie had been reporting in for a routine physical–Earth normal gravity was absolutely punishing to those who hadn’t been raised under its stresses–and he’d already loudly voiced his opinion that he was far safer out amongst the locals than in the squat concrete bunkers at Procyon.

He had evidently been proven correct.

“She’s dying, god damn it! Somebody get a medic!” he shouted, tears smearing the gore splattered across his face.

One of the medics–Marcus–was already on the scene, but it was painfully obvious that there was nothing he could do.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his arms dripping with viscera. His patient’s abdomen had been shredded, and barring the immediate attention of a surgical trauma unit, she was good as dead.

She whinnied softly, blood loss quickly sapping her strength.

“Please, do something, Marcus,” said Laeta. “She’s in pain.”

The medic caught the intel officer’s eyes.

He dug in his combat lifesaver kit, his fingers clumsy and wet.

“No,” said the Ranger. “I’ll do it.”

He wiped his hands on his backside, pulled his sidearm, and standing astride his comrade, shot her between the eyes.

His pistol brought base defense troops running.

The Ranger safed his weapon, holstered it, and bent down to kiss his horse goodbye.

He started sobbing again.

“You,” he cried into the mare’s lifeless muzzle, “were the best Earthling I ever met.”