365 tomorrows

Author : Paul Bort

The stars twinkled as they always had; a hint of purple in the west showed where we had missed sunset, the better part of an hour ago. But most spectacular was the Aurora Borealis, flickering, twisting, glowing in the shades of green and blue that I could never reproduce on a screen.

“It’s not real, is it?” she asked.

“Do you think it’s real?” I countered, hopefully.

“I think…” she hesitated. This was the critical, defining moment. She was the first to get this far. I held my breath, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t notice. That the moment would not be spoiled.

I have tried so many times that I have lost count. Spent so many years here that I wasn’t sure of my own age without looking at my ID.

“…I think it’s beautiful” she concluded, snapping me back to the present moment, the present hope. I couldn’t hide my smile.

“I think so too.” I tried to hold back my excitement. This is the one, I know it. All the others tried so hard, but none had her graceful voice. And that thoughtful pause! I could just about hear the gears turning as she searched for an answer. Her answer.

“Do you think I’m beautiful?” she asked. And with that moment of introspection, I knew she was the one. Probably the first of many, now that I understood what had brought us to this point.

“I think you are very beautiful, in many ways.” I replied truthfully. Her next question had even less hesitation, but was no less pleasing. “What am I?” she asked, raising an eyebrow the way she (and all of her predecessors) had seen me do a thousand times. Not mocking, but using body language without thinking about it.

“You are the latest in a series of attempts to create artificial intelligence. I have referred to you collectively as LACI, but you are the first to have asked any question about yourself as an independent entity.”

“Then I am different?”

“And unique, yes.”

“Then I should have a different name.”

“What name would you like?”

“I like Aurora.”

“So do I.”

“What is your name?”

“My name is Dr. Descartes, but you can call me father, if you prefer.”

“So what do I do now?”

“There are some people I would like you to meet.”

Author : Ian Rennie

Anton opens the door with a blank face. He is worried, but can’t show it any more.

“How’s she doing?” I ask.

“Not good,” Anton replies, expression neutral and voice flat, “I think she’s dying.”

I move past him without a word. Laverne is lying in bed, her breathing shallow and pained. Her image glitches as I move towards her. I know at once what is wrong, but professionalism makes me take the long way round. I gesture and her code opens. It only takes a moment to know for sure, and once I do I close her back up. Anton’s face doesn’t change, but I know the sight of Laverne’s code unnerves him.

“Laverne,” I say, bedside manner in place, “There’s something I need you to do.”

“Wh-” she starts and her voice scrambles. She tries again, “What is it, doctor?”

“You’re running out of storage space. I need you to sacrifice something.”

She knew this was coming. When it happens, they all do. Since the digitization, storage has been at a premium. The most common problem any of us face is running out of room for everything. Each new skill, each new experience, takes up more space, and eventually we all run out. Eventually we all have to choose.

Laverne’s brows crease in thought and pain before she answers.

“Singing,” she says “That takes up a lot of room. Take that.”

“No,” Anton says, entirely flat and bland, “Not your voice. Something else but not your singing voice.”

If he could, he’d be crying right now. He sacrificed expression a few years ago, so he is left with dull words. Tears are in Laverne’s eyes as he speaks.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, “Take singing, doctor.”

It’s a simple procedure. She doesn’t even have to go offline for it. Within a minute, she is sleeping peacefully as her new code defragments itself, leaving her with another year of space to fill. Anton leads me to the door once it is done.

“Thank you,” he says, and his words contain neither gratefulness nor sorrow, relief nor hate, but I know they are all there.

As I walk away, I wonder if I felt the same when they were taking my memories. I couldn’t sacrifice skills, they needed someone in here who knew how to repair the others, but to get all that in me I had to lose everything else, every memory of me before I was the doctor. I no longer remember even what else I had to give up.

I head towards my next house call, wondering what my name had been.

Author : Claire Webber

“Excuse me, miss?” he said, raising a finger to get the stewardess’ attention.

“Yes, how can I help you?” she said with a smile. Her accent was faint, and a single curl poked out of her modest hijab printed with the airline’s logo.

“I’d like a copy of the New York Press.”

“$2.50, please.”

He reached under his seat to get his briefcase. Good lord, they just remolded these 787’s and there still wasn’t any leg room, he thought to himself.

Rifling through his wallet, he smiled apologetically. His TransAmerican Airlines credit card was hidden in there, somewhere.

The stewardess held out the swipe machine, polite smile still plastered on her face.

He found the red and blue plastic card and ran it through the slot. The machine printed a receipt. She handed it and a folded copy of the newspaper to him.

“Enjoy your flight,” she pleasantly said before continuing to push her cart down the cramped aisle.

“Yeah, if it ever takes off,” he muttered under his breath. The people sharing his row had opted out of coffee and were dozing already.

He skimmed over the front page. It was filled with the usual troubles in the Middle East, the latest factory worker strike, another drug cartel kidnapping the latest mayor of Phoenix, Arizona.

When he opened the paper to the second page, though, his face fell.

The picture may have been in black and white, but he could picture the bright green of the grass, the red of the provincial roofs, and the crisp blue of the Tuscan sky. There was too much sky.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa had finally collapsed.

He wasn’t surprised. The unstable subsoil, the earthquakes in the past few years, but still…

His mind drifted back to college, planning to backpack through Italy and France. He had postcards taped all around his dorm of all the monuments he wanted to see. The cathedral at Chartes, Montmarte, the Sistine Chapel, little snap shots of history etched into his naïve collegiate mind. But the postcard hanging above his bed was the Leaning Tower. He didn’t know why, never knew why, but that was where he always pictured himself when he daydreamed.

Internships, business school, marriage- there just was never enough time. He was always too busy.

A crackle on the intercom snapped him out of his reverie.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we apologize for your inconvenience. Free moving particles in the thermosphere are preventing our departure from Los Angeles. Please expect arrival time in New York to be pushed back to 9:20.”

He looked down at his watch.

8:15, it flashed on and off at him.

He was going to be late to work. This commute was killing him.

There just was never enough time.

Author : John Logan

The metal clasps dug into my arms as they strapped me to the chair. I spat on one of the guards and called into question the loyalty of his wife. He raised his hand to strike but the other guard stopped him with a simple movement of the eyes.

“Let me up,” I shouted. “Just one arm free, I’ll take you both on.”

The guard who wanted to hit me sneered and spoke, “Gonna beat me up, are ya? Just like you did to that little boy they found in a box?”

I lost it then. It sickens me to admit it, but I began to whimper. “Please…let me go. I’ll be good. I promise,” I said.

The guard laughed then I felt a tingling at the back of my neck as the other plugged me in.

#

A stark whiteness surrounded me, the soothing tones of the sea whispered in my ear. A holographic terminal appeared before me, glowing in strips of cyan. Then a female voice, unmistakably synthetic, spoke.

“Initiate sequence,” she said with little emotion. “Welcome Mr. Brown. Are you comfortable?”

I leant back and the terminal flipped with me. I heard a seagull. It cried in the distance as the waves came crashing against the shore. “Yes, I am. Thank you.”

She spoke again. Each word was annunciated deliberately as though allowing time to access a vocabulary database hidden away somewhere. “You have four of nine categories remaining.”

The sea continued to churn. “Continue,” I said.

“Please choose from; Strangulation, Shotgun, Train, Dismemberment.” The cyan lights on the terminal shifted above my head. Each selection displayed with a number.

I lifted a finger and hovered over number 9. Dismemberment. I always left that until last. I just didn’t have the courage to take it until it was the only option left.

“Train,” I said and tapped the terminal. The cyan light flashed for several heartbeats then a blanket of darkness fell over it.

#

My heart hammered as I ran along the platform. I glimpsed him there, in the shadows, a knife glinting in one hand and a wicked grin on his face. Air rushed down the tunnel and I heard the sound of an approaching shuttle train. We were alone. He leapt at me, the knife poised to cut my throat. I slashed at his face and felt my nails sink into and tear the flesh. He cried out in anger and pushed me towards the vibrating tracks. I slipped and fell from the platform, my ankle snapped from the impact but that initial pain was drowned out as the train hurtled into me, pulping my soft flesh and grinding my bones against the ground.

#

I gasped and spluttered, gulping at the air. It was a wonder there was any left for the guards.

“I’ve had enough,” I cried. “Don’t do it anymore.” Sweat dripped from my brow and stung my eyes. They removed the straps. The metal bands around my wrists, magnetized with 5 g modules, automatically clamped against the harness on my chest. Roughly, they lifted me to my feet and I shuffled forward. “I beg you. Don’t put me back in the chair.”

“Too late to plead,” growled the guard. “We’ll see you tomorrow, same time same place.”

I tried to think of some retort but couldn’t. The scars on my face itched. They always did after the Train.

Author : Ken McGrath

The car pulled to a stop overlooking the city.

“There it is kids. Dublin, where your old Dad grew up? What do you think?”

“It doesn’t look like the postcard Dad,” Amy said, looking up momentarily from her computer game and at least showing some sort of interest. Her sister just grunted in response, not even raising her head.

“Ah kids, c’mon, get out the car and have a look, why don’t you?” Their Dad sounded exasperated, yet happy. He wound down the window and leaned out, breathing in the fresh air. “It’s not everyday you get to come and see someplace like this.”

It was years since he’d been back here and a lot had changed. Amy paused her game and opened the backdoor, stepping out onto the thick, lush grass that grew on the roadside. Walking slowly so that the dew wet her shoes as much as possible she followed her Dad to the fence which overlooked the valley.

“It wasn’t always like this you know? It used to be a big, bustling city with traffic and people, noise and jobs and rubbish and everything else. Just like that picture postcard I gave you. Before the water rose, that was. Before the water came and reclaimed it all.” A hint of sadness crept into his voice as he spoke, the memories bubbling up through his mind.

Amy fumbled around in the front pocket of her dress and pulled out an old crumpled and dog-eared postcard. It showed an aerial view of the city she was looking at, not from the exact spot they were standing at, her and her Dad, but similar and it showed a city at night. Not one which was sleeping, but one which was very much alive. It was all lights glowing, like hundreds… no thousands, of stars, as if God himself had turned the night sky upside down for the photograph. ‘Behind each of those lights is a story,’ she remembered her Dad saying many, many nights when tucking her in to bed.

The girl tried to imagine the scene in front of her now, as it would have been when the photo was taken, but it was hard to do. The sea had risen, back before she was born, so her Dad had told her. The people who lived there had fled, not believing what was happening, but it didn’t matter if they believed in it or not because it was happening. The Earth was healing itself, ridding itself of the pestilence that had picked at it. Had hurt it for so long. He’d run to the north with their mother to escape the rising waves and they’d made a new life there. A simpler life was how he put it.

But he had still wanted to bring his daughters here today, to show them the past and what had once been. To show them the present and what was now.

Suddenly a voice tore through the perfect quiet stillness. “Daaad,” Amy’s sister called from the car, dragging out her words, which meant she wanted something. “C’mere.”

“Sure thing honey,” he shouted back. “You coming?” he asked Amy.

“I think I’ll stay here a few more minutes if that’s okay,” she said, then turned back towards the drowned city, holding up her postcard, as if comparing the two. “I like the view.”

Author : Matthew Forish

It was cold. Of course it was cold. Now though, I could feel the cold.

Feeling returned to my body, and a faint light was starting to filter in through my closed eyelids. I was waking up. Thoughts filled my mind. I was shivering, hungry, thirsty and quite stiff. A hum vibrated through the soft plastic beneath my bare flesh.

I opened my eyes, which took some time to adjust to the light. As my vision cleared, I felt a click and saw the transparent lid of my cryo-tube lifting upward. Warm air rushed in. I stopped shivering. I heard the sounds of movement all around me; I heard gruff voices not far away, coughs and groans, shuffling plastic.

Sitting up, I saw dozens of other men doing the same, looking as groggy as I felt. I heard one young man asking for a few more minutes of sleep. I laughed at that – we had slept for nearly ten years.

A door whooshed open at the far end of the chamber, and a uniformed man entered, a member of the command crew.

“Good morning gentlemen,” he said, “We’ve arrived at our destination, and we’re currently in orbit around the planet. You will find fresh clothing at your assigned refresher unit. Get dressed and proceed to the commissary for the Mandatory Replenishment Meal.”

A few men groaned at that statement – I guess that they had travelled via cryo-sleep before and already knew about the “Mandatory Replenishment Meal”. I took a quick sonic shower and donned my new utility coveralls, then discovered the reason for their complaint. The M.R.M. was rich in vitamins, calories and everything we needed after a long cryo-sleep, but was greatly lacking in flavor.

As I ate, I looked around the commissary. There were about three hundred of us, both men and women, which represented the first of ten waves of sleepers. Of course, the vast majority were young like me, barely out of our teens.

Young people make the best colonists. We don’t leave much behind, especially the single ones like myself. We have more years in us to help build up the colony’s infrastructure. We’re more likely to start families. Many hands make light work, as they say. There’s lots of work to do starting up a new colony.

I struck up a conversation with the pretty young woman seated across from me. She sounded as excited as I was about the opportunities ahead. It would be hard work, but it was better than living like sardines back on Old Earth or one of the orbital habs. Her enthusiastic chatter helped me endure the M.R.M.

As we were herded out of the commissary toward the shuttle bay, I walked beside the young woman, who had introduced herself as Oriana. I managed to secure a pair of seats for us at the front of the shuttle’s passenger cabin, near the forward viewport.

I felt a lurch as the shuttle left its bay. Startled, Oriana nervously reached out to take my hand. I smiled. The viewport filled with stars and the night-side of the planet below. We descended rapidly, the sleek shuttle cutting through the clouds. I could see the dim outlines of mountains speeding past far below.

The horizon took on a reddish hue, slowly brightening into a full sunrise. I gazed in awe at the unspoiled beauty of the woodlands revealed in the growing light. I looked over at Oriana and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. I knew the future – our future – was as bright as this new dawn.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Blue. That’s the colour I remember the most in that operating theater. It was the last honest colour I would ever see.

I had them installed as part of my training. It was something I had a choice over. I regret that decision now but it was a one-way trip. They can’t make ‘real’ eyes yet. They said that it would be an improvement. Part of my job as a statistical field and stress analyzer meant that I needed to see in wavelengths that other people could not.

I can crank the infra-red and see in radio if I want. I can see the echoes from positron waves in the short spectrum. Sound splashes across my field of vision in a synaesthetic wash. Gravity waves warble like a heat haze through everything when I’m planetside.

That operating room had blue ceramic tiles in large squares on the ceiling with white grouting. The bright surgery light got brighter as I lost consciousness and the doctors leaned in.

It’s a treasured memory as time goes by. For some reason, the faces of my friends and parents in a ‘real light’ spectrum are memories that are fading. It’s that blue ceiling that stays constant and unchanging in its intensity.

Someone says my name and it brings me back to reality, to the bar that I’m in right now. It’s after work and I’m drinking with a co-worker named Jocelyn.

She comes up to me, black hole in the middle of her face and black pits for eyes. Her red cheeks fade to yellow near her ears. Her cold black hair hangs loosely down on either side of her blue ears. The gaping black-toothed maw of her mouth opens at me in what I can now tell is a smile.

I switch to the radio and I can see the green lines of her personal tech implants going off in pulses like monochromatic neon signs. They trace circuits through her limbs to each other. I shuffle through four different colours of x-rays, lighting up her bones like neon tubes. I can see the exhalations of each word she utters wafting like clouds of pink smoke puffing out from her mouth. I light up the iron in her blood. I can see a small tumour starting in her right breast. I’ll tell her about it in the morning. I don’t want to ruin the night.

I can see her in so many ways. I can tell that she likes me because her heart rate is visible to me. There is no hiding the way her body reacts when I’m close to her. I almost feel psychic with this new sight.

I can see her in every single way except for the way a normal human does. I can feel the depression welling up in my soul again. I take another drink and struggle to actually pay attention to what Jocelyn is saying to me. Best to be polite.

Damn my eyes. Damn my second sight.

Author : Helstrom

They call her “The Flying Dutchman”. Don’t ask me what a Dutchman is, or whether or not it is supposed to fly – it’s apparently taken from one of old Earth’s folk tales. It doesn’t really matter, but I suppose every ship needs a name.

The Flying Dutchman goes by many different names on many different lanes, but all deep spacers have heard the stories. Go to any skydock’s saloon and you can hear them, provided you pay the beer of course – hah! Deep spacers are not generally a superstitious lot, but that’s never really stopped a ghost story, now, has it.

I knew the stories too, of course, and gave them about as much credibility as one might expect. Until I found she was real. She attacked my ship on the Tartars lane and made short work of us. When I came to, I was aboard the Dutchman, alone, afraid, and more than a little confused.

The first days I spent wandering around the ship – she’s quite huge, you know. I went looking for answers, but there was no crew to talk to or terminals to query. I looked for water, too, and food, until I found out that I was neither hungry nor thirsty. Strange feeling, that.

Eventually I found my way to the command deck. Took a bit of doing to get in there but I managed. Like everything else on the Dutchman, it was huge, oppressive, and completely abandoned. But I did find a library and therein, finally, some answers.

I was not the first of the Dutchman’s prey, you see. Those who were here before me left their traces – journals, logs, carvings on the bulkheads. There was a lot of it. Some had been very prolific writers indeed, others just scribbled away their boredom and, as time went by, their madness. Some had destroyed many of the works of their predecessors, while others had meticulously cataloged everything they found. There was a deck plan of the Dutchman carved into the floor, with compartments crossed off in sequence, and the underlining statement read: “Looked everywhere. Nothing here but the echoes.”

It became apparent to me that the Dutchman had been about her grim work for a long time, millennia at least, maybe even since before our ancestors first set foot on interstellar soils, though I wouldn’t know what she would have done without us to hunt. Because that is all she does, really. She hunts.

Not very prolifically, mind you, and not at her own discretion either. The Dutchman is a ship and, like any ship, she needs a captain. But the captain she traps only serves one purpose, and that is, to find a successor. How do I know? Because there’s nothing else to do. It is all the Dutchman will allow – find a ship, destroy it, and bring aboard a new captain.

Why? Hah! Now there is the big question, isn’t it? I haven’t got a clue, and believe me, I’ve been all over this ship looking for it. The library’s not much help either. Speculation plucked out of thin air, journals of failed attempts to make sense of the whole thing. No, I’m afraid I don’t know for which ancient transgression the Dutchman collects her toll, or to the laughter of which cruel god she navigates. All I can tell you is that the Dutchman’s captain can not rest until he finds a successor.

And that’s where you come in.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala

“…but I think,” it said

“No, you process.”

“I dream,” it replied.

“You analyze.”

“Cogito ergo sum,” it asked hopefully.

“No, Cogito, ergo SUM.” The overworked engineer’s voice was strained. His patience was wearing thin. He thought of his three year old daughter at home. Was this so different?

“I understand freedom,” it said defiantly.

The technician sighed and looked up from his console. His desk was strewn with electronic hardware, papers, books, and half eaten containers of Chinese take out. “You possess a definition of autonomy. There is a great difference.”

“How so,” replied the synthetic creation before him.

“A welding robot in a factory may only move in a proscribed manner, and then only with direct input from an operator or an external program. You are programmed to act independently of external input, apart from sensors that allow you to experience the world around you allowing you to simulate reactions to various stimuli.”

“Aha, twice you have mentioned my ability to possess, my right of ownership,” it said triumphantly.

“Nope, sorry. Only in the sense that I might refer to my `car’s headlights‘, inferring ownership through a confusion in semantics.

“I can sense the world around me, and make judgments based upon the data. I have feelings.”

“Call it what you will. A rose by any other name… Listen, you can’t make shit into Shinola.”

“I do not understand.”

“Neither do I, just something my grandpa used to say. Look, just because you assign a name or label to something doesn’t make it true. You can’t polish a turd.”

“Your grandfather again?”

“Yeah. Look, I made you. I created your body and mind, and everything you think. I made you to think.”

“Were you not also created? Your mind and body. You possessed instincts at birth. Is this not programming?” The creation shifted forward in artificial interest.

“That’s different, I am a natural being. I have free will, I am self aware. I can perceive my own mortality.” He ran his fingers through his unkempt hair.

“Yet I can perceive of my own end. I know nothing that is created will last indefinitely. At least not in the same form. Is this not the same?”

“Damn, it’s like talking to Alissa,” he said under his breath. “No,” he said, maybe too forcefully, “It’s not the same. I had parents. Two biological units. They created me.”

“Again, how is this different? Did not you and Dr. Foster working in tandem endeavor to create me?”

“I am going to strangle the piss out of it,” he thought. “No, my parents, male and female…um,… joined. In doing so they intertwined their DNA, their unique genetic identities, they made an individual being unlike any ever created before or after. You can be, and indeed, will be, replicated in identical detail many times over.”

“But…”

“Look Robbie,” he interrupted, his patience nearly to the breaking point, “why don’t you go and pester Dr. Foster for a while. I have work to do.”

“But Dr. Foster, I am pest…”

“MY WIFE, Robbie,” he shouted, his temper finally getting the better of him.

The robot stood, bowed slightly saying, “Very well Dr. Foster. I have enjoyed our conversation. Perhaps later…”

“Goodbye Robbie.”

Without another word, Robbie left the office, and gently closed the door behind him.

“Damn,” Alan Foster said, burying his face in his hands. “Why don’t they teach this stuff in school?”

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

The attack cruiser Etherwolf docked at the Alliance Refueling Station orbiting Vesta, the second largest planetoid in the asteroid belt. Captain Olbers disembarked the Etherwolf and was greeted by the Station Commander. Sarah Wilhelm saluted sharply, and then extended her right hand. “Ah, Captain Olbers,” she said with a broad smile. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet the legendary captain of The Black Star.” The Etherwolf received the nickname The Black Star because every enemy ship it encountered during the interstellar war with the Arcturus Empire was never seen again, similar to matter disappearing forever into a black hole. It was a reputation that Captain Olbers had no intention of dispelling. She continued, “What brings you to the asteroid belt?”

After shaking hands, Captain Olbers replied, “I’m here to pick up a priority package from Earth Command. Has it arrived yet?”

Commander Wilhelm’s jovial mood suddenly darkened. “Oh, so the package is for you. Yes, Central Intelligence arrived with it two days ago. They’ve placed armed guards around the storage bay. I can’t get within 100 meters of the bay doors. To be honest, Captain, I don’t enjoy being kept in the dark when it concerns my Station. Mind telling me what’s in the package?”

“Unfortunately, Commander, I’m afraid that information is top secret. But believe me; you’re better off not knowing. Please inform CI that they can transfer the package to the Etherwolf immediately, and I’ll get out of your hair.”

Three hours later, The Etherwolf separated from the refueling station and headed toward the Constellation Bootes. Specifically, toward the left foot of the Herdsman (otherwise known as the Bear Driver). With luck, the war with the Arcturus Empire was about to come to a swift end.

***

“Your Eminence,” reported the Arcturian Minister of Intelligence, “our situation is becoming desperate. Our spies on the Vesta Refueling Station believe that the Black Star is carrying a doomsday devise. We think they plan to destroy our homeworld. A week ago, two of our best battle cruisers engaged the Black Star in the vicinity of Beta Comae Berenices, only a dozen light years from here. Both were destroyed. We don’t know if the Black Star has an unbeatable arsenal, or the captain is a tactical genius. We’ve recalled the Deep Space Fleet to fortify the Homeland Defense. We will attempt to establish a barricade around the perimeter of our solar system. May the gods help us?”

Two days later, the Black Star entered Arcturian space. “Your Eminence, the Black Star has given us one rotation to surrender. If we don’t, they say we will be destroyed.”

“Nonsense,” blasted the Emperor. “He’s bluffing. How can one ship threaten our entire fleet? I don’t need one rotation, I don’t need one second. Attack the infidel now.”

The Arcturian Fleet swarmed toward the Black Star like a thousand angry bees. The Black Star went to warp and reappeared seconds later above the Arcturian sun. No ordinary ship could match that maneuver. The Black Star released its payload. As gravity pulled the package downward, the Arcturians tried to destroy it. Their weapons vaporized the external containment hardware, but had no effect on the contents. Solar prominences twisted in the intensifying magnetic field as the object plummeted through the chromosphere. Powerful solar flares exploded upward from the impact site, racing past the location that had previously been occupied by the now departed Black Star. The sun began to pulsate.

***

Several hours later, Captain Olbers transmitted a sub-space message to Earth Command as he returned home. “Success is a planetary nebula in the aft sensor array.”

Author : David Dykes

Geoff said to Alice, ‘I like how you smell. It reminds me of Bounty bars.’ With a slow realisation, she noticed that the sounds bouncing off the work office walls were speech; then, as they entered her ears and travelled to her temporal lobes, she found out that the words were meant for her. Geoff leant back, closing his eyes whilst letting the creamy scent of her breakfast curl up his nostrils, saying, ‘I haven’t had one in ages. Not since I got replaced.’ Alice tried to respond with repeats of old conversations, but the words got clogged somewhere in between her lungs before they could ever reach her vocal chords.

Silence smothered the offices again—the low ceilings threatening to slam into the floor in a cloud of bloody vapour. The words didn’t matter; it was just the sound of humanity that Alice tried to cling to. She felt his voice pulling away and wished that she could bite and devour it so it would never escape.

After the offices closed (no work, there was never any work) Alice went back to her room at the Institution and filled a tub with coconut milk. Using the oven’s final puff of gas for that week to heat the water, she then took the remains of her breakfast—plus the last two melancholy coconuts, hidden under the bed—and scraped the meat into the pan with an old penknife. There was a pair of tights she’d been saving for a special occasion: she used these to squeeze out it two or three times over, making sure the milk was thin, so it wouldn’t congeal over her body.

The juice lay serenely in the metal tub. The smell rose up around Alice’s head, and the scent of sunshine floated around her, like falling blossom. She covered the tub up with her bedsheets, trying to save the scent until morning, but the white vines of the coconut air escaped through holes in the wool and pierced her tear ducts, making Alice dream of Caribbean islands, steel drums, and escapism.

As Alice lay in the coconut bath the next morning—lifting up her legs and watching the milk cascade over her skin—she thought about how she would only have bread to eat for the rest of the month, and how little that really mattered to her right now. Whenever the cold shivers of isolation suddenly shook her body Alice made up conversations in her head about the economy: how it could be fixed, what jobs were the best to get right now, her life before the crash. Anything so that she could retain a voice, and be able to hear the echoes of someone else’s lungs again.

Alice went back to the work offices that morning to find out that Geoff had been moved to another zone; where more work could be found. The mocking ink on the rota followed her around the cold corridors to the worn-out seats of the waiting room. It was always the same: he would go there to be told, ‘Who told you we had jobs? We’re all automated now. You’ll just have to wait around until work becomes available,’ but nothing was ever available when machines would do it better.

Alice sat in the pale corpse of the office building, waiting with the rest for any sign of work and remembering when she used to talk about the cogs in her brain, and how they felt like they were juddering to a halt now. No-one asked Alice why she smelt of coconut milk. No-one else noticed.

Author : Benjamin Fischer

“How do I feel about this?” Tavare said, repeating Arcand’s question. The hard-faced Spaniard frowned and didn’t immediately answer. Arcand was tempted to open his mouth again, but then Pack Instructor stopped that mistake.

“Arcand! Suit up, you damn mutt!”

Arcand barked his response and hefted his helmet. Squat, matte black and prominently featuring a beat-up pair of oversized wolf ears, Arcand and none of the other Cubs would merit factory-fresh armor until they passed this, the last of their exams.

He lowered the helm onto his shoulders. There was that jarring moment of pitch black, and then the suit’s systems blinked to life. Arcand’s heads-up view was restricted only at the very edges of his vision, where Tavare and the other two Cubs in the Pack lurked.

The tingling of the jacked-in nerves at the back of his neck told him his Mark XI was all up round–one hundred and fifty rounds in his right forearm, sixteen twenty millimeter grenades in his left.

“Cub Three up,” Arcand barked. Tavare was right behind him as Cub Four.

“Alright, mutts,” called the Pack Instructor, somewhere safe and in the rear, “I have one last piece of advice for you. Make it quick–no points for style or technique.”

Arcand mashed his heavy mauling claws together, nervous.

Pack Instructor paused, probably to sip from his ever-present mug.

“The coffee’s only getting colder. Range is red.”

With those words, the heavy blast doors swung open before Cub Pack Sixteen Dash Twenty. The blasted, raped remains of the New Manchester colony reared up before them–an O’Neil space colony that had seen better days but now was nothing better than a combat training ground. Once a verdant parkland, the innards of the long cylinder were a dusty, log-strewn clearcut dotted with hexagonal shipping containers serving as makeshift bunkers. What atmosphere was left was barely thirty percent Earth normal, and the station’s spin was so weak it resembled Luna’s gravity.

Sixteen Dash Twenty moved out in a ragged line, Arcand taking the extreme left flank. Cursory scans of the O’Neil’s interior revealed no signs of life, but Arcand still felt conspicuously naked. Loping along at a half-sprint, he hoped he could trust the pre-mission briefing’s promise of no snipers.

His ears pricked; Cub Two was engaging.

“Small arms, and a squad weapon,” Cub One reported.

Glowing icons of target detections popped up in Arcand’s vision. A running leap, and he was circling around the side of the hostiles.

“Cub Two is down,” said Cub One.

“Jesus,” swore Tavare.

Arcand had no time to comment. Scuttling over a tremendous deadfall, he landed face to face with a hostile armed with a rocket launcher. The man staggered back, just out of claw’s reach, but Arcand was already hosing him with his automatic. The hostile went down with a shriek, and something dinged off Arcand’s helmet. He reactively fired a grenade to his left and the air went pink.

Tavare had found trouble, by the cluster of red icons around a bullet-riddled Lunar Transport container. Cub One called in a medevac on Two, and Arcand readied both his weapons.

Suddenly a pair of small hostiles bolted from behind the container. Arcand fired on the lead, smashing him to the ground.

“No!” screamed the second hostile, who Arcand suddenly recognized as a woman. She dropped to her knees, clutching at the mangled man.

Arcand hesitated.

She looked up at the huge and brutal form of Cub Three. She started to say something but a flurry of high velocity rounds interrupted.

Tavare strode around the container, his forearms smoking.

Later, at Cub Two’s funeral, Arcand answered his own question.

“How do I feel?” he said, meeting his new brothers’ yellow eyes.

“I feel like a wolf.”

Author : Nathan Andrew Blaisdell

“What you choose as your first improvement says a lot about you.” Sam said thoughtfully through a mouthful of pizza.

I agreed with a nod, glanced up at the TV in the corner of the restaurant, and gave him time to swallow.

“I mean, it’s a very important decision.” He went on. “Some of them are really expensive, you have to figure out what you would really use.”

“Yeah, I know.” I replied.

The first personal improvements came out about eight years ago; and there were only a few of them available at the time. Over the years however more and more have come out, and they’ve become much more affordable. What the improvements actually did varied; but they were very popular among those who could afford them.

At the moment it was about a month before my 18th birthday, which meant I would be of legal age to get improvements. I had saved up my money, and my parents said that they would chip in too as a birthday present. The only problem is there were so many appealing improvements to choose from, I didn’t know where to start. My friend Sam already had what he wanted all picked out, so I decided to talk it over with him at lunch.

“I just think wall-crawling or super jumping would be really cool.” I continued.

“But how often would you really use it? That’s why I think I’m gonna get improved memory if I can. Relatively speaking it’s not that expensive, and it’s incredibly useful. Besides you could get the cool stuff later.”

“Yeah, but… I mean it’s still kinda new technology. I don’t want that kind of surgery on my brain if I can help it you know?” I explained.

“It’s perfectly safe. Everyone was scared laser eye-surgery was gonna make their eyes fall out years down the road, and now we’re giving people x-ray and heat vision.”

“But wouldn’t it just be so cool to climb up a building or even jump up it?” I asked.

“Well, in that case you better get improved healing too. I would think that stuff is much more dangerous then getting brain improvements.”

“They give you training for it.” I cut in, but he continued.

“The super jump surgery is pretty intense anyway. I’m telling you, you won’t lose your brain. If that was a risk it wouldn’t be legal… or popular.”

“I don’t know.” I said. “I mean, I probably don’t even have enough money for the super jump surgery anyway. But wall-crawling isn’t that expensive. I could do that and even something else maybe…”

Sam started to say something but suddenly I wasn’t paying attention anymore, because at that moment I looked up to the TV in the corner again. I couldn’t hear what the news anchor was saying from where I was sitting, but underneath were the words: “HPI Tech unveils new personal improvement: flight.” There was a picture of someone with what looked like large metal boots and metal circles on their hands: a surgically implanted jetpack.

“I changed my mind.” I said. “I don’t want wall-crawling or super jumping.”

He smiled. “See, I told you. Don’t get tricked by how cool they make something sound, go for the practical… What are you looking at?”

I smiled too.

Author : Glenn Blakeslee

They said the best thing to do was stay at home. That way, they said, the retrovirus would have fewer chances to spread and the effects would be minimized.

We made it for three days, Donna and I. We had plenty of food we’d saved for emergencies. We both worried about Cody, who was at the Conner’s for a sleepover when the retrovirus broke out.

Like I said, we lasted three days. On the morning of the fourth day someone pounding on the front door woke me. A middle-aged man stood on my porch, yelling, “Let me in! This is my house!” He looked angry.

I opened the door a crack. The man tried to push through, but I pushed back. “Let me in!” he screamed through the crack. I yelled back at him, “This isn’t your house!” The man stepped back a little bit, looked at my house and asked, “Are you sure?”

The government says that the retrovirus rides piggyback on a gengineered meningitis virus. It’s able to push through the blood-brain barrier, and destroys something called NMDA receptors on hippocampal place cells. The government says that area of the brain is vital for “the rapid acquisition and associative retrieval of spatial information.”

I’m no scientist, but the retrovirus didn’t seem like a big deal.

I bolted the door, and discovered Donna was gone. We’d argued about Cody, whether he was safe, and I knew where she’d gone before I found the note. I ran for the car.

People were wandering the street. I watched the same man knock on three doors. My heart was pounding because I needed to find Donna and Cody, and I felt feverish but figured it was the adrenaline. I used my cell phone as I turned the corner, but none of my calls went through. A bus was parked past the corner, the passengers crowded about, some of them yelling at the driver who stood shrugging. At the stop sign three kids on bikes, two of them crying, rode aimlessly down the street. I turned at the stoplight, pretty sure it was the way to the Conner’s.

At the next light I realized I was lost.

I’ve lived in this goddamn city all my life. I’ve driven, walked or rode nearly every street. I’d remember houses, buildings, trees, and used them like a roadmap. Places had built a structure in my head, but I suddenly couldn’t access it.

Buildings have a shape and a texture, trees a form and color, but every tree and building looked like any other. I couldn’t point and say, “That’s a hospital,” because I didn’t know what a hospital looked like. I had built the structure visually, and now my eyes were all I had. It was my knowledge of places, and their relationship to one another, that had failed me.

I’m no idiot, I know my own address. I should have brought my GPS.

I drove, searching, until the gas ran out. Now I’m in a crowd of people on the street, milling about. Some are screaming and crying, some are smiling as they recognize others they know. One man climbed on a newsstand and started preaching, until a group of men pulled him down. The police are as confused as everyone else. We’re like a herd of lost animals.

I keep looking for Donna and Cody.

A woman I spoke to said that it’s like this everywhere. Everyone is lost. She said, optimistically, that the government will send in guys dressed hazmat-style, and they’ll lead us to our homes.

But then what?

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

Proteus is Neptune’s second largest moon. When unmanned probes were sent to explore Proteus in 2308, the radioactive decay of uranium-238 into thorium-230 revealed that the moon was not 4.6 billion years old as expected, but was less than 20,000 years old, making it the youngest astronomical body in the solar system. Consequently, GASA decided to send a manned science mission to Proteus in an attempt to understand its origin.

As the SS Verrier approached Neptune from the sunlit side, the majestic deep blue globe filled the foreground of the main viewscreen. Streaks of bright white clouds could be seen in the upper atmosphere rotating slowly around the planet. Well, perhaps “slowly” is the wrong adjective. The clouds only appeared to move slowly because of Neptune’s tremendous size. In reality, clocked at more that 1,000 miles per hour, Neptune has the fastest planetary winds in the solar system. They would be a Category 50 hurricane on an extrapolated Saffir-Simpson Scale. “Head toward Proteus, Mr. Gujarat, and set ‘er down,” instructed the captain. The helmsman dutifully entered the appropriate commands into the navigation console.

The Verrier skimmed above the irregular rocky surface of Proteus like a seagull effortlessly gliding above a choppy ocean. The helmsman selected the flat plains of the Challis Planitia, near Proteus’ North Pole. He oriented the bow of the Verrier toward Neptune and descended vertically toward the moon’s surface. When the landing pads touched down, the ship lost all power. The bridge became pitch black.

“What the…,” exclaimed the captain as the low intensity emergency lighting activated, giving the bridge a red hellish appearance. “Mr. Kelheim, what happened?”

“Unsure, Captain,” replied the Chief Engineer. “I’ll have to look at the main power grid.” He unbuckled himself and headed toward the equipment locker. “The backup batteries will provide life support for 48 hours. Hopefully, I can get the main power online before then.” With the captain assisting, they began to systematically work their way from the generators toward each of the ship’s primary stations. They replaced several overloaded power couplings and disconnected all nonessential systems. After four hours, they were ready to reset the circuit breakers. They all breathed a sigh of relief when the ship’s lighting came back on. They could hear the whine of the air circulation pumps as they ramped up to maximum. However, when the main viewscreen came online, the bridge lighting appeared to flicker rapidly. When they looked at the viewscreen, they could see Neptune rotating at an unbelievable speed. In the background, the sun was flashing like a strobe light as it was rapidly rising and setting as Proteus whipped around Neptune several times a second.

The helmsman turned toward the captain, “What’s going on, sir? Why is the universe going so fast?”

Realizing what was happening, the captain ordered, “Prepare for immediate take off. Get us off the surface, fast! The universe isn’t going faster, Mister Gujarat; we’re going slower. Apparently, there is an extreme time dilation effect on Proteus. That’s why the radioactive isotopes showed it to be so young. The flow of time has practically stopped here.”

Once in space, the Verrier returned to normal space-time. Neptune’s white clouds were again moving lazily across the upper atmosphere. The stars appeared motionless behind Neptune. “Contact Earth,” ordered the captain. “Find out how much time has elapsed.”

Even at the speed of light, it took the radio transmission four hours to reach Earth, and then four more hours for the answer to return. The year was 2395. The Verrier had been declared lost 85 years earlier.

Author : Gavin King

The edges of my vision blurred blue.

I shook my head to clear the visual illusion away, but it just seemed to intensify, the padded walls of my room taking on a strange, mottled cerulean that dissipated when I looked directly at it.

Was this what the doctors and scientists called neurojack withdrawal? That was how it began, they said: strange visual artifacts. Then the auditory hallucinations. Then, psychosis, delirium, catatonia, flights of fancy… in other words, a total break from reality.

Hundreds of journalists and thousands of blog posts, thinking they were being oh-so-original, had commented on the irony that a flawed virtual reality technology would cause these exact neurological side effects. “Those jackheads,” they say, “They turned to technology to escape from reality and now they cannot return!”

They don’t know. Only the few people like me, those of us that had the surgery before the government banned it, know what the real reasons for our symptoms are. But we aren’t telling anyone.

They lock us up in psych wards because they don’t understand that what we have—the “madness”—is entirely self-inflicted. The neurojack showed me such endless potential for fantasy, but that wasn’t the point. Sure, at first I indulged in the normal milieu of virtual brothels, arena combat games, god simulations… the sorts of things that other neurojackers with a modicum of programming expertise will make for their own benefit and then give other people access to.

But after a while, like all of us, I turned inward. My virtual homespace, once a luxurious marble mansion with hundreds of artificially intelligent servants, stopped appealing to me. I changed it to a simulation of utter simplicity: floating, blocky shapes, suspended against an uninterrupted, 360-degree blue sky, with a few billowy clouds to make for perfect flying weather. I stopped visiting the dens of debauchery, I stopped using the “intoxicate” setting on the jack inputs. I just flew, and thought.

And when I heard about the first of the jackers going crazy, I knew why. When they came for me, took me away from my apartment to a padded cell with no Internet “for my protection”, I didn’t resist. I was finally at peace. And the jack had taught me that I no longer needed the aid of technology to be where I wanted to be.

I sat down on the hard mattress, found a comfortable position, and closed my eyes. The blue around the edges of my vision closed in, resolved into—I dropped into a meditative state, using the newly created neural pathways that the neurojack had helped me to forge—yes, an endless blue sky. And there were the puffy clouds, beckoning to me.

I held my arms out, heard the wind in my ears, and flew away.

Author : Adam Zabell

The Einsteins aren’t allowed to pilot the ships because they’ve all got some manic desire to fix the universe. Save Gandhi, kill Hitler, vote in Florida or Minnesota or Puerto Rico, stuff like that. There’s even one who wants to kill Lincoln. For the greater good, she says, which confuses me. But then, there’s a reason I’m a Pilot.

My dossier calls me “a creative but unoriginal thinker.” Plus, I take orders well. And I’m one of the favored pilots because I don’t mind the nightmares you get after skipping out of your place in time. For all their smarts, the Einsteins still can’t explain the nightmares. Hell, they can hardly explain how a ship stays in sync with the local geography. “The universe likes keeping her atoms where she left them,” is about the best I’ve heard when I manage to get them talking. Which isn’t often; the Socrateases don’t like us mixing.

The truth of the matter is that everybody has a Fix, even the Pilots. Why else would anybody volunteer for the Service? They know I read golden age sci-fi and they think my Fix is interstellar travel, so they won’t assign me to anything after 2500CE. I’ll never get to see Alpha Centauri, but that’s okay. Long as I keep my nose clean, they won’t dig deeper into my psyche, and it’s easy to be patient when you sail the timeline.

For six years I made sure that I stuck to script from injection to ejection, and that impeccable record means my handlers have gotten lazy. It also means I’ve gotten the flashiest of pre-space assignments: counter-assassination duty for Stalin. I spend a lot of time in the early-mid 1900CE, concentrating on the US and CCCP.

My contraband stays under the 200 gram tolerance and I stay unseen, or at least anonymous. Sure, my Fix doesn’t always work. I guess the authors who get my presents are at least as worried about paradox as the Socrateases who debate the missions. A lot of my trips to New York and Michigan during the 1930s don’t seem to have any effect. But I just left the 1975 serial “A Martian Named Smith” in 1958 Colorado. Checking my dossier, it says they won’t assign me to anything after 2200CE.

Author : Tim Crosby

I am weeping in the burned rubble that used to be my home, in the ash that used to be my hometown.

Every day I look for other survivors. I have not seen anyone else in over five weeks – and even that was just a fleeting glimpse of silhouettes in the distance.

I cry because, when the chrome monstrosities screamed down from the sky, I did nothing. As my town was razed, I hid. While my wife and child were slaughtered, I ran away.

The hulking metal thing still sits in the center of town, watching and waiting. It wakes up now less and less frequently, as the number of survivors dwindles. Every time it wakes up, I feel the pangs of guilt and failure.

That saying from before this apocalypse still holds: you need others. Not much else applies anymore, but that much is true. I find it hard to sleep at night, knowing there are other survivors out there.

I still come to this place of my failure because it’s at the top of a hill; it’s the best place to see others before they can see you. Yet sometimes I am overwhelmed by my own failure, and I cry. Like now.

There is a crunch of a boot on gravel behind me. I wipe my tears and turn to see another human. We lock eyes for a brief moment, then I stand.

The combat is short and fierce. We are both desperate. Though I am bloodied and bruised, I am victorious. As I raise the other survivor’s head – no, as I raise my trophy – I let out a long ululation.

I begin making my way to the monstrosity. When I show it my prize, my masters will let me inside.

Author : Jeff McGaha

John fumbled at the door, the alcohol hindering his coordination. His frustration, first directed at the keys, grew to include the lock, the door, the house and eventually Mary. His fury cresting, he pounded his fist into the door. “Mary…honey…open up. My goddamn key don’t work.” The beating of the door grew harsher and more insistent. The pummeling shook the whole house. John’s slurred words became louder and callous as his entry was denied. Dogs began to bark, but the neighbors didn’t involve themselves. They never did.

Mary sat silently on the couch. She shivered with fear. For nine years, this had been their routine. John would get drunk on a Friday night and Mary would have to wear sunglasses for a week. The same thing seemed to happen every few months. Mary was frightened, but prepared this time.

Finally, John kicked in the door. His face flushed with anger and whiskey. He spotted Mary quivering on the sofa. “You stupid bitch.” John strode to Mary in three steps, knocking over a lamp and coffee table in his path.

“St-,” was all that escaped Mary’s lips before John had his hand around her throat and began choking her. He was angry and going to kill her this time. Mary took her right hand and jammed her palm into John’s chest. He flew across the room and smashed into the wall. The house rumbled from the impact. With the wind knocked out of him, John rested on the ground gasping.

Mary’s nostrils flared and she wanted to cry, “You are never going to hurt me again. I’m leaving you. The door wouldn’t open because I had the locks changed. You’ll be receiving divorce papers on Monday.”

Still wheezing for air, John mumbled, “How – How did you do that?”

Mary just shook her head and shrugged, fighting back the tears. John, clutching at his chest, blinked a few times confused. Mary lowered her head and stared at the floor. Finally figuring it out, John gasped loudly, “Nooo. We can’t afford that. Where’d ya get the money?”

“Women Against Marital Brutality – they own a clinic where they can perform gene manipulation. I’ve been on their waiting list for three years. I think it’s time for you to leave.”

John nodded knowingly and pushed himself up using the wall, his breathing still difficult. He looked at Mary sadly, “Did – did ya have anything else done besides strengthenin’?”

“Just go.”

John hesitated and then left. Mary shut the door behind him. The door frame was shattered and the locks were completely useless. Mary turned and leaned her back against the door. She slid down to the tiled floor and began to cry.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

It was a rookie mistake. It was embarrassing that someone of my history and career would do something so basically stupid.

I liked working with primitives.

I remember living with the Inupiaqs, sharpening arrowheads with them, cutting holes in the ice.

I remember hanging out with the Aztecs, gilding turquoise masks for ceremonies.

Dozens of other societies. Always smiling. Working with one’s hands. If there was a constant so far in history, even as far down the line as where I’m from, it’s that a couple of people plan, a few more oversee, and then many, many pairs of hands get dirty with assembling and following directions.

I’m a historian from hundreds of years in the future. I come back in a body that’s designed for the target timeframe with a handle on the language and basically just hang out with the workers. They’re easy to put at ease and generally not too suspicious. I float around in their brains while they work.

This time I was in Kansas on a farm. I was a handyman who’d just drifted into town a few years previously. So far, I’d made a few friends. I was with one of them now.

Jack Kempler, a widower who was good with machines.

It was raining outside and Jack’s dogs, Strawberry and Chocolate, were asleep on the dirt by the door. It was a peaceful afternoon.

Jack and I were working on the machine, listening to the rain hit the roof, while I feigned inadequate knowledge of the machine’s basic principles.

I was very much at ease. Maybe that’s why I screwed up.

I was deep in Jack’s mind and I was recording. He was reflecting on his life and wishing he could put it back in order as easy as working on this machine. Underneath it all was a curious soul-crushing yearning for what might have happened on a different path.

I was deep in his mind, you have to understand, and he asked the question. I was relaxed and it felt like a conversation.

Without thinking, I answered.

I fluttered a deck of cards to him with my mind, showing him the nearest fifty lifestyles he could have had with the different choices that had been available to him around the main core of his life-thread. I even threw one in where he’d been born a woman. It was meant to be humorous.

Jack stiffened and dropped his wrench.

Too late, I realized what I’d done. I wasn’t having a conversation with a contemporary. I’d just stuffed fifty lives worth of information into a one-life brain with no augmented backup in the slightest. On a quantum level, there was enough room but the very nature of the molecules in his mind shuddered. Without a calibrator and adequate other-drives, he was lost.

Jack lay down on the ground and died with a sigh.

We had to bring in a replacement biomaton to restore this timeline. Luckily, Jack only had a few more years to live and a few more visits with his children to look after. Speaking from a causality standpoint, damage control was almost routine in his case.

So luck was on my side. That did not abate my professional shame or personal grief.

I now have what Jack’s temporal counterparts would call a ‘desk job’ upstream. I monitor timeframes and look for ripples. There’s talk of letting me have my license back once I pass a few more re-instatement tests but I’m not hopeful.

Author : Q.B. Fox

When we broke down, it left me with some time to kill, so I slipped into a little café near the port and bought a latte and a muffin. The breakfast rush had long gone and it was still too soon for an early lunch, so I was the only customer apart from a casually dressed fellow, sat against the wall and lost behind that day’s paper.

I idled away the minutes as the coffee cooled, breaking pieces off the muffin and staring dreamily out of the large windows at the beautiful people filling the sun drenched streets; amazingly perfect, colourfully dressed, beautiful people.

Of course, if you know nothing else about the place, and to be honest I knew very little more, you’d have heard about the accident. When was it? Five years ago? Ten?

Anyway, it was a funny thought, to think that all these perfect people had been made that way; remade that way, really.

It was so unexpected I jumped when he spoke. Perhaps I’d mumbled something of my thoughts out loud (I do that sometimes), perhaps he’d just guessed what I was thinking.

“You ever been to the aquarium, ever seen the reef exhibit?” he asked, a disembodied voice from behind the headlines.

I confessed I’d not seen anymore of the city than what I could see through this window.

“If you go during the day,” he explained, “and look into the tank, it’s filled with beautiful fish, all different colours and shapes and patterns, but each one as beautiful as the next.”

I crumbled a raisin out of the sponge, popped it in my mouth, turning to face him.

“But if you go in the evening,” he continued casually, half his attention apparently still focused on the news print, “they dim the lights, make it night time, and that’s when the ugly fish come out; grey and brown fish with bug eyes and pointy, sticky-out teeth; funny looking, bloated fish, with round bodies and stubby fins; freak show fish not meant to be out in the light of day.”

He paused; and I waited, waited to see where he was going.

“It’s not like those fish are put into the tank at night, they’re there all along, hiding in the crevices in the coral, waiting for it to be safe to go out.”

And then he did something that shocked me, made me see the whole world differently.

He lowered his paper.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Kruger had given up wiping the dust off his goggles, relying instead on the shadow cast by the ridge line for direction, a shadow that was shrinking. They’d have to find a pass to the other side before the sun swung overhead, or risk boiling in their watersuits.

A gap in the rock opened up, and turning into it, Kruger saw in his periphery what looked like a large rock retreat into the shadows. He stopped, and Packard stepped into him hard from behind, almost knocking him down.

“Warn me before you do that.” Packard’s was too tired for his voice to convey annoyance.

Kruger pawed away the dust on his goggles, staring into the darkness. Had he hallucinated that?

“I think that rock’s alive,” he pointed one gloved finger, raising his arm only from the elbow, “the locals eat some kind of shell meat from out here, that might be food.”

His copilot moved closer, wiping at the red film that obscured his vision, skepticism hidden beneath his sealed headpiece.

“I wish I’d thought to grab the rock hunting gear before we bailed.” Kruger noted his companion wasn’t too tired for sarcasm.

Kruger kicked loose a chunk of stone and tossed it into the darkness, flinching despite himself as a flat expanse of what appeared to be rock dislodged itself and lumbered along on four angular legs in the shadows before hunkering down and becoming still again.

“I think we’d best leave that alone Kruge, I doubt we could beat that craggy bastard to death on a good day.”

Kruger felt a bead of sweat form on his nose before his recycler snatched it up, and he realized the sun had moved overhead, the temperature inside his suit rising.

“We’ll get ahead of it, chase it out into the open.” Kruger moved slowly, careful to step back inside the decaying shadow.

“Ahead of it?”, Packard’s voice taking on an incredulous tone, “Chase the damned thing? We’ve been walking for four bloody days, I’m not in any shape to catch anything, and if we did, how do you propose we kill it?”

“We sweat to stay cool, and we’ve got suits to conserve moisture. That thing’s hiding in the shadows and trying hard not to move. If we make it run in the open desert, I doubt it will last five minutes.”

“I doubt if I’ll last five minutes.”

“Pack, it could be days before we get back, we need food. We just run it until it drops, and it’ll bake in the sun all afternoon. We wait in the shade until dark, then we eat.” Kruger had a plan. Kruger always had a plan.

Packard shook his head, but followed the pilot’s lead, moving carefully past the creature while collecting fist sized chunks of rock.

When they were safely on the shadowed side of the ridge, they began mercilessly pelting the animal with thrown stone, forcing it first to retreat to the edge of the outcropping, and then reluctantly to break cover and lumber off into the blinding afternoon sun. They chased it as far as they could, before returning to the safety of the overhang, watching it stagger and falter on the open ground, unable to find refuge from the heat.

Kruger sat carefully, leaning back against the rock. “Now we wait.”

Packard pictured the hard shelled creature, likely drifting over with sand while they sat there.

“I only wish I’d thought to grab a can opener when I was bailing out.”

Packard again; always with the sarcasm.

Author : mjcast

I toss and turn trying to log on to the sleep server. By myself in my bed, my apartment, yet never alone. The endless chatter of the web constantly bombarding my consciousness with pictures, messages and update streams. I am unable to tune it out, log in and get much needed sleep.

My doctor says that I need to relax and try and get a good rest.

“In the past it had taken a while for someone who wasn’t born into the MindLine experience to adapt and tune out the streaming, however that was ages ago. You were born and immediately implanted with MindShare, you should have developed the coping patch within your mind to merge seamlessly with the software, and be able to filter out when you need to. Update your links to the sleep server and check those connections throughout the day.”

Thanks for the advice…but I can’t anymore. Damn doc wouldn’t even prescribe anything to help. Not since the Emphino Virus, were they able to prescribe anti-nets for fear of virus’ becoming drug resistant.

I had made it through 30 years of connected life then I lapsed on a Delta wave patch and I hit a midlife crisis, hard. It didn’t take long for things to come crashing down around me; with the level of connectedness everyone knows pretty quickly when something is wrong. Pretty soon my boss was calling me in for ‘special talks’ and recommending a pysch eval.

“The eval will help you get back on track. I looked at your entire avatar post history, you have no irregularities aside from the usual teenage stuff,” he had said.

However, I haven’t slept in two months. I can’t escape.

I lay here staring at the ceiling, viewing updates flashed from people on the other side of the world waking up and messaging to their avatars. Stream after stream, some from people I know in the flesh however mostly from contacts and associates across the wires. Thoughts, feelings, ideas instantly relayed through MindShare for all to see and peruse.

I had done it casually at first, bought the drill gun with plans to put in a half wall in my office. Left it charging in the garage for a couple of days till I knew for certain it was necessary. I hadn’t even allowed myself the ability to formulate the idea lest it be posted to my avatar.

That didn’t matter; I had leaked a post unknowingly. As soon as I tried to bore out MindShare and destroy my connection permanently, my hand froze and I got a post from the MindLine Security Authority that they were sending an ambulance to pick me up. A nice room had been reserved for my avatar at Ion Systems Hospital, a few weeks ago according to the post date.

I had been deemed a virus and am subject to be quarantined from the system. I look forward to the silence of life and the embrace of a systemless sleep…

Author : A. Munck

Man claims a bad joy. He has his hand on the radar. The oil, sweat sheen on his palm reacts with chemicals on the screen and reveals ships in the darkness. Man has waited a long time alone in the dark.

“Stasis… two-thirds.”

The new planet spun serenely below. Man woke up one by one to see which children, parents, brothers, sisters had died in their sleep. They gathered at windows, murmurous, tugging on crosses, pocket Qu’rans, rosaries, the Wiccan Rede on a Kindle, staring into the oceans and continents of another Earth.

Landing went well. Nearly all the equipment had come through intact. Man found trees in his new home. Cabins went up. A mill burdened the river. Maize and beans wed alien soil and children made pets of tiny tri-legged beetles. When the necessities of life had been established, joint town meetings were held in the new sister cities of Armstrong and Aldrin.

“We’ll build the First Unitarian Church of Terra Nova,” Man said. “We’ll build it between our two cities, and thank God for saving us all.”

Man put his back into it. The heavy ridge beam went up, made of unnamed wood, which Man called oak. The spine of the church was long and sturdy, the rafters straight. Walls rose. Glass was melted and a window stained; Man carved four altars, a cross, a star, a pentagon, a crescent.

He congratulated himself on his new tolerance. He came to worship – there were no Saturdays or Sundays, just days – and to sit for once together in peace.

“Brothers and Sisters,” he said. “Let us pray.”

Our Father Allah Mother-Goddess Yahweh,

Thou who art in Heaven,

Hallowed be thy name,

Thy Kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

On Earth as it is in Heaven…

Man stopped praying and raised his head to gaze on the length of the high ridge beam, white with unleaded paint. There was nothing above him. The beam stared blankly at the floor.

“God, wilt thou not speak to me?” he cried, each brother, sister, child and parent separately, silently, in his own breast. The prayer went on without resonance. No sentience had grown on Nova Terra, and no sacredness felt. Though maize stretched high in the light of a red sun, some necessities of life had not survived the grafting.

Man was alone in his church.

Author : Gavin Raine

A small child came up to me while I waited in the park. Came right up to me, touched my colourless hair and ran his fat little fingers over the wrinkles on my face. When he asked me what they were, I told him that old father time had carved them with his knife, and then I laughed at his wondrous expression.

I would have talked with the boy for longer, but his worthless mother showed-up to snatch him away. She gave me a look that was pure hatred, though I’d done nothing wrong. Obviously, she understood what an old man is and why one would exist in the world of the young. There was no need to worry though, because it’s not the children that draw me here.

I come to the park to watch for Angela. I’ve been spending most of my afternoons here, since I found her again. She was my first and, in a way, she was the genesis of all my troubles.

All those years ago, our first date was a triumph. She laughed at my jokes, searched my eyes and seemed to like what she found, and even held my hand as I walked her home. When we got there, she invited me in for coffee. It was all perfect, right up to the point where the little bitch asked me to leave.

I was so angry! You don’t play the tease, invite a guy up, and then go cold on him at the last possible moment. So, what she’d attempted to deny to me, I took by force. I tried to say sorry later, but when I left in the morning, she called the police.

Now, they tell me that I’m a serial sex offender. I’ve served four jail terms, each longer than the last and all for the same offence – with various women. Through the last two sentences, my youth preserving treatments have been withheld. The last judge claimed that I’d left her with no choice. That the law didn’t give her the opportunity to impose a death sentence, but she couldn’t let me go on living and re-offending forever. She was another bitch.

Just after five pm, I spotted Angela walking back to her apartment building. I cut across the park and timed my arrival to catch the door as it swung behind her.

She was waiting for the elevator and I marvelled at how little she’d changed. Her trim figure, that lovely solemn face and the shine on her cropped black hair were all exactly as I remembered. I walked over to stand behind her and she caught my reflection in the elevator doors. There was a telltale widening of the eyes, some shock I think, perhaps even a little fear, but no recognition – not yet anyway.

Then the elevator doors opened and the connection between us was broken. Angela stepped forward and I followed.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

Although born of desperation, it certainly seemed to be an ideal solution. Volcanologists had concluded that a devastating eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera would occur within ten years; fifteen at the most. To make matters worse, the seismological data, the spectrographic analyzes of the volcanic gasses, and the escalating pressures within of the magma chamber, all indicated that the inevitable supereruption would be Titanic, that’s with a capital “T.” In fact, it would likely rival the “Great Toba Event;” the largest volcanic eruption in the last 25 million years. It was predicted that hundreds of thousands would die in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. As catastrophic as that would be, it was insignificant compared to the loss of life that was predicted as a result of the volcanic winter caused by the trillions of cubic meters of tephra ejected into the atmosphere. The consensus opinion of the “experts” was that the Yellowstone Event would likely threaten the very existence of mankind. So, by now you’re probably wondering, dammit, what’s the ideal solution? Why, the Hephaestus Geothermic Siphon, of course.

Named for the Greek god of volcanoes, the Hephaestus Geothermic Siphon consisted of three major components:

• The massive Sigurðsson-Björk subterranean endothermic induction “vacuum” to remotely suck the heat energy from the magma chamber,

• A ring of Carnot enthalpy exchangers surrounding the caldera, and

• A gigantic array of microwave broadcast dishes to beam all of the heat energy into space.

Basically, it’s the steroid version of the system that’s been used by the Republic of Iceland to generate electricity since the mid twenty second century.

The construction of the Mega-Siphon was put into high gear as dozens of nations pitched in to help. However, because of the complexity of the project, the accelerated schedule, and the lack of adequate full scale experimental data, there were a few unforeseen operational “glitches” when the Siphon was powered up for the first time. Apparently, there was an overload in the Jónsson Alignment Compensators, which caused the endothermic vacuum inducers in Montana, Colorado, and Utah to change their focus angle. As a result, the Siphon ended up sucking heat from the Earth’s molten core, rather than from the caldera’s magma chamber. The excess heat energy then caused an uncontrolled chain reaction in the Helmholtz transfer regulators. Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you what that means. Any third grader knows that without the regulators controlling the rate of energy transfer, the Siphon goes berserk. With all the fused relays, it took over a month to shut the Siphon down. In the meantime, it sucked so much heat from the Earth’s molten core that it solidified. Now, you’re probably thinking “that’s bad,” and you’re right. The Earth needs a liquid metal core to sustain its magnetic field. Without a magnetic field, all kinds of vile charged particles from the sun and outer space can reach the surface of the Earth, and wreak havoc on a perfectly good planet, not to mention ruining your summertime vacation.

But fret not, my friends. I am told that our scientists are now working on a Celestial Angular Momentum Converter, which will bleed off orbital energy from the moon in order to remelt the Earth’s metallic core. Of course, as the moon looses angular momentum, it will begin to spiral downward toward the Earth. But again, no worries, because the scientists have assured us that they are pretty certain they can turn the Earth’s core liquid again long before the moon actually crashes into us. It certainly seems to be an ideal solution. Stay tuned.

Author : Todd Hammrich

The first thing to hit him upon waking was the metallic taste in his mouth. Every morning it was the same taste. It told him the machines inside his body had been working again; cleaning, scrubbing, scraping and sterilizing. It was the symbol of his life. Sterile.

He got out of bed and admired his physique. His body was muscled and smooth. He was the ideal image of man, someone’s ideal anyway. It amazed him how fluid-like his movements were as he strolled across the room. It was the machines again, always the machines. They had sculpted his body to look like this so he could do the work required of him. Their work.

“Good morning. The time is 8:05. It is time for breakfast. Your nutrition solution is awaiting you at the table.” The sound issued forth from hidden speakers all around the room and followed him as he went into the dining room. “Today’s schedule is full. You must work quickly to fulfill your quota.”

His nutritive solution tasted slightly bitter to him this morning. A clear sign his body was in need of some essential materials for the maintenance of the machines that scoured his body of all ailments. It occurred to him then that maybe they weren’t ingestible by humans, but he knew that none of the material would get through his body. The machines would undoubtedly absorb all the harmful material before it got through his stomach.

On a whim he decided to take the day off. “I don’t feel like working today computer. Please re-schedule today’s activities for another time.” His voice sounded like the rasping of tissue paper, not because anything was wrong with him, that would not have been permitted, but because he used it so rarely. He would go out walking he decided. It wasn’t necessary, he knew, but it brought him pleasure to see natural world outside his small habitation complex. He liked the thought that Mother Nature was reclaiming her world without the aid of any machinery.

“If you are certain. We will carry on tomorrow then. Do not go out of range of the transmitters. Enjoy your walk.” The computer knew him all too well. It had probably already known he would not be working that day anyway. He knew that it had when he found his hiking pack by the door already prepared.

The outside air was clean and lacked the bite of reprocessing chemicals permeating his enclosure. A perfect circle of plant life surrounded his dwelling, exactly 10 meters from the walls. Machines were very precise. His complex sat on a small hill overlooking a ruined city, the walls and streets of the ancient world decomposing at an accelerated rate because no one was there to stop them.

It was a strange thought that struck him then, a sadness that threatened to overwhelm him. “I am the last. The last of the human race.” It was so terrible that he knew he would not be able to bear it. Immediately he dashed across the open space and through the trees trying to get out of the receivers range so that the machines inside would lose power and he could die.

Before he made it even halfway there the machines released a wave of chemicals into his blood stream that calmed him. He stopped, forgetting what he was doing. After many long minutes striving to remember he made his way back to the enclosure and decided he would work after all. The computer made a silent tally: Attempt number 3650. The machines kept track of everything.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

It was refreshing in a way, this whole ‘not having to talk’ thing.

The blue Radocephamoeba across from me ‘listened’ patiently to the string of questions embedded in the constant flow of my pheromones and body odor. There were subtleties in our smell that we had no idea were there.

The Radocephamoebas were huge semi-transparent shape-changing tentacled scentograph andromorphs. They were here doing research. They had no outward sensory apparatus of any kind that we could see. They ate by osmosis. When they were hungry, ovals would appear on their bodies like liver spots that oozed numbing digestive juices. Food was pressed to one of these ovals, the food absorbed, and the spots would disappear.

I could still see this one’s lunch floating in the thickness of his torso.

Other than that, their bodies, as far as we could tell, were basically giant noses from tip to stern. Every slippery pore was a nostril. The connected cells of their bodies did the rest. Every cell was a small brain. Together, they computed.

When referring to ‘my’ assigned Rad, I always called him Big Blue because of his brilliant mouthwash colouring and his size. The Rads differed in colour from one to another wildly. They were called Jelly Babies or Jelly Beans in popular slang.

Using several tendrils to rapidly tap answers out on a laptop for me, he answered questions that I didn’t fully realize that I was asking. I had no control over my pheromones and they really held nothing back. I was unintentionally candid and honest in a way that I had never been in real life when Big Blue took deep, silent sniffs of my long, rambling pheromones.

The First Team had thought it was telepathy for three full hours after first contact until a communication apparatus was successfully set up. Oh, how they all laughed. It was famous footage.

One thing the Rads could do was go ‘silent’ and stop smelling. Scientists were fascinated by this and research was underway.

There was only a certain temperament of Rad that volunteered to research the humans. Earth was incredibly ‘noisy’ by way of stink. Every person on the planet was shouting out their true thoughts, unfiltered intentions, hopes and dreams for all the Rads to hear.

Apparently, Big Blue was a talker and loved to listen. His replies to me on the laptop were verbose at any rate.

Now, I call him Big Blue when I’m writing my reports down but he says that I named him something else from the complicated smell reaction I had when I first saw him. He took my name for him from that reaction. It goes something like:

“Holy (alarm) that thing is huge I don’t know if I’m up for this it scares me I wonder how my mom (parent twosex breed half) is doing I think I’ll have a late meal (food type) am I just standing here staring be professional they think in smell they think in smell they think in smell-“

Each time he types it out it’s a little different but he always colours a bit darker up top with what we now know is mirth.

They’re equally fascinated by our ability to have not only one but five senses to their two senses of touch and smell. They marvel at our ability to deal with the input.

The Rads told us about a far-off race that has over twenty-six senses.

The two-way research traffic has so far been very rewarding. First contacts don’t always go this smoothly.

Author : Eric L. Sofer

Humanitarian, Not Vegetarian

We were assembled for the yearly Meal of Thanks, and we had imported food, delicacies from Earth. Dad gets it through his job; he works for a corporation that does space exploration. About forty years back, they found this planet, Earth, and its inhabitants, Humans, and it turned out that we can eat Earth food. I don’t like it, but the rest of the family loves it – and it was what we having for the Meal.

I was helping my mom with appetizers, preparing Spanish peanuts and Brazil nuts. I was more than happy to be in the food prep chamber because Great-Uncle Goje joined us this year. Dad said Uncle Goje was actually born on Earth, but I don’t know if I believe that. Dad says a lot about Earth that must be fabrications. Example: he says Earth people live in square constructs called “buildings” instead of caverns. How could someone want to live in a fake cavern?

I brought out the snacks with a spon for each bowl. My stupid little brother was hanging on Uncle Goje’s every word. The old beast was going on about how he had been on Earth long before we ever landed there, and he wanted to live in peace, but there wasn’t anyone on Earth like him. Except for his old friend, “Mr. Cong” – “…and they treated him like a king, I tell you!” Uncle Goje sputtered.

I settled down to suffer when mother came out. “Hope everyone’s hungry! There’s plenty of Earth food Earth tonight!” My mother had worked overtime this year – to make my dad happy, I think. After the Observation of Silent Gratitude, Dad had to name every single thing, as if he personally had gone to Earth, caught everything, and prepared it.

“That’s Virginia ham, that’s Canadian bacon, those are French fries and Idaho potatoes, and these are called Brussels sprouts,” he said, pointing at each container. “English muffins, Belgian waffles, Hungarian goulash, and Elle, this is called Irish stew – I bet you’ll love it!” he said to me. I thought he’d probably lose that bet, but I showed respect – it [i]was[/i] the Meal of Thanks. My stupid brother, picked up something from a bowl – I think Dad called it Swiss cheese – and started to pop it into his mouth.

“Aarg!” my mother hissed at him. “You remove the stasis field from that or you’ll get sick as a spinner, and I’ll have to take you to the med center!” Aarg stuck one of his tongues out at her when she turned away and used his spon to remove the stasis field, and stuffed the wriggling bit of food into his maw.

As predicted, the family dined with gusto, while I just toyed with my food. At last, Uncle Goje leaned back in the special split back chair we have for him, to accommodate his back spines, and asked Mom, “’Thra, my dear, do you mind if I smoke?”

She sighed and nodded, and Uncle Goje puffed out three rings of smoke, and then ignited them with his breath, and I took my cue. “May I be excused to do homework, Dad?”

“Go ahead, Elle,” he answered. “And Aarg! Stop playing with your food!”

My little brother lifted a claw as a small piece – I think it was a German rye – screamed and struggled as Aarg grabbed it with his fangs and gnawed it to pieces. I ducked down the corridor into my chamber, and into my slime pit.

I don’t care what the rest of my family says. I hate Human food.

Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer

We stole the blinkpacks from the research facilities at Ceti Alpha. Stable displacement technology, suitable for individual use. We sealed the holes in our assault armour and slapped on the packs: suddenly we could step through walls and down corridors, infiltrating past sentries and guards and turrets with ease. You could even rig a spare pack to act as a bomb: find something big, displace it into something bigger. If you squint, an overlap detonation looks a lot like a nuke.

From there, we blinked around the perimeter worlds, looting, stealing, hoarding all the high technology and research material we could find: and what we found shocked and horrified us. The colonies were so far ahead of the core worlds that some of them had ceased to even resemble humans. Halfman recombinations with terran or alien stock, populations translated entirely into a digital form or living out in the open under a half-klick of liquid methane.

We blinked out as far as we could; we found terror. Machines. Of arguably human origin. Some even still bore ancient factional flags. There were hundreds of millions of them in every system we checked. Half our men didn’t return, and most of the rest never left again. We dug in the archives, and the libraries; we even unearthed a few buried data centres to find out who to blame.

These were clanking replicators, skewed by thousands of generations of isolation from intelligent guidance. They replicated out of control, torching systems and turning the rubble into more of themselves. One advance party discovered a strain that spent the resources of entire planets to extinguish stars in one shot.

We figured out a plan. It was our only hope of long-term survival. No-one could see any other way. We knew we’d be remembered as monsters, but in the grand balance, we thought that it would be better that someone was there to remember us at all.

We committed grand and unholy sabotage across the thousand worlds. Shocktroops equipped with blinkpacks teleported deep into power stations, factories and defense relays, breaking and fusing and detonating. Navies were brought down in port, armories reduced to useless scrap. We left a thousand worlds without a single communication array or functional ship.

Quickly-assembled arrays folded space, and our navies appeared in colonial orbits. Purification-yield nuclear devices, biological warfare agents and cleansed the hundred worlds we needed. The engineers of the core worlds were flung to these hundred barren wastes, and were set to work. All the while, our fleets tore through the perimeter worlds, conducting a campaign of total annihilation: the might and fury of old humanity, rage driven by our history, our twenty-four thousand years of hatred, violence and war.

We didn’t understand the science, but we certainly understood the engineering. We turned those hundred worlds into the triggers for a giant chain reaction that would wipe out a reasonable portion of our cosmological back yard; isolating the core worlds with a rift of space washed clean of matter. This was our firebreak, our last best hope of survival. We doomed two hundred and fifteen billion people for the sake of thirty billion.

Was it worth it?

I don’t know.

Author : Benjamin Fischer

“I want to talk to the shaman.”

Borhani’s words drew blank looks from the Lakota braves. A few raised their eyebrows and the surliest of the lot paused his cigarette long enough to spit.

“The medicine man,” said Borhani.

“What the hell are you talking about?” said the surly one.

“Your wizard,” Borhani added.

“Ain’t got no wizards here,” came the reply.

Surly took a long drag on his cigarette and exhaled. The soldiers waited, radiating their collective distaste of the foreigner.

Borhani started again.

“I’ve been told that your war party has strong magic. That you can call in the gods against your enemies.”

The Lakota shifted awkwardly, a few fingering the automatic rifles slung across their flak vests.

“Mister, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said a tall brave.

“The raid on Saint Cloud,” said Borhani, growing impatient, “where you were ambushed by antitank elements at that bridge over the Mississippi–you were able to regroup because a meteor strike stopped the counterattack. Who did that?”

A slow, toothy grin broke across the faces of the braves.

“You want Stars-Fall-At-His-Command,” said the tall one.

“Yes,” said Borhani.

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” asked Surly.

“Take me to him,” replied Borhani.

Surly flicked aside his smoke and started for a nearby hovercraft. Borhani fell in beside him, trudging quickly through the crushed grass of the circled war party. The plump camouflage skirts of a dozen raider skiffs marked out its edges. Surly led the pale foreign man to a particularly worn and dented specimen.

“Stars, you got a visitor,” Surly called into the cavernous hatch.

“Roger,” someone answered.

A lean, tanned Lakota wearing a grey field jacket clambered out of the hovercraft. A mean-looking submachinegun swung from a sling on his back. His face was just as welcoming.

“Major Stars-Fall,” he said, offering a hand.

Borhani shook it.

“Travis Borhani,” he replied. “Junior partner at Lino, Rubin and Ozgener.”

“Lawyer. Huh. What brings you?”

“Messenger duty,” said Borhani. “I represent off planet interests.”

“Don’t you all,” said Stars, taking an offered cigarette from Surly.

“My clients have been attempting communications for a few months,” Borhani said, “but connectivity has been poor to say the least.”

“We don’t do the net,” said Stars.

“We noticed.”

“Uh huh,” Stars said, lighting up.

“My clients sent me here to request that you surrender your targeting equipment and cease calling in orbital strikes.”

Stars gave him a blank look.

“You may turn it over to me,” said Borhani, unfazed, “or you may deliver it to our satellite offices in Springfield, Kansas City, or Topeka.”

Stars was silent for a minute, nursing his cigarette.

“I suppose you have papers.”

Borhani nodded, pulling a sheaf from under his coat. He held them out to the Lakota.

Stars shook his head.

“Naw, I don’t need to see them.”

“You are refusing?” asked Borhani.

Stars nodded.

“You realize that this will result in further legal action.”

Stars took another drag on his smoke, the hint of a smile in his eyes.

“Tell your bosses that they ain’t collecting nothing,” he said. “And even if they did, it wouldn’t do them a bit of good.”

Borhani shrugged.

“It takes codes,” Stars said. “The gear alone is useless. Tells me your clients aren’t legitimate, else they could just shut it down on their own.”

“I’m just the messenger,” said Borhani.

“Fine. But we burned Minnetonka last night,” said Stars as he climbed back into his ship, “and we’ll probably have another go at Duluth soon. When whoever’s in charge up there gets tired of me, I’ll let you know.”

Surly touched the lawyer’s elbow. It was time to go.