365 tomorrows

Author : Tony Healey

When my heart decided to start failing on me around my seventy-fifth, the doctors offered me a bio-mechanical one. They called it ‘the ox;’ so called because it apparently never wore out. I remember sitting in the consultants office, surrounded by plastic models of replacement limbs and artificial eyeballs. Dr Fenwick sat at ease in front of me with his hands folded on his desk.

I asked him what the procedure involved. He described the removal of my damaged heart and the attachment of a device to keep the blood circulating in my body in its absence. It was then a simple case of reattaching the old arteries to the new ones in the mecha heart. I had enough of a nest egg put away that I could afford the procedure, so I agreed to it. Dr Fenwick stood and we shook on it. He regarded my prosthetic hand; the result of a traffic accident in my thirties.

“You know, we have replacements for these now,” he said.

“Do you?” I asked.

“Yes. We could replace it with one that looks almost life-like. You’d regain most of the dexterity in your fingers as well,” he said.

“Well I could…” I stammered, my mind reeling. I’d gotten used to not having the use of the fingers on my left hand, and now the thought of having it all back made me nauseous.

“Do you wear those all the time?” he asked, nodding at my glasses.

My head span. Hearts, Hands… Eyes… What else could they replace? I asked him.

He simply shrugged. “Everything,” Dr Fenwick said. “And we do insurance…”

I was still in that office hours later, booking up more enhancements. I allowed Dr Fenwick to convince me into putting the last of my money toward an extensive insurance policy. It wasn’t until later that I realized they would just keep on replacing things, even the new parts when they wore out or malfunctioned. I should have felt full of energy, knowing that I’d significantly extended my life span beyond what it was meant to be, but I didn’t. I felt tired.

I wondered how tired I would become…

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

I love making a drop. The rush as you plummet through the atmosphere, the scream of re-entry. The abrupt jolt when you hit 100m H over G and descend. The rush of cool air as you jump through the open doors and hit the deck.

Just like grandpa, ‘cept this ain’t a Blackhawk and I ain’t on Earth.

Aries, Mars; Greek, Roman. It all meant one thing. War.

They didn’t give us details, but they did give us atomics. Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t riot control.

“Awright Marines,” it always amazed me how Lt. Kolchek made himself heard over the roar of departing drop ships, “since we are out of commo range of any civilian ears, here’s the skinny. Talks with the Chinese Federation have broken down. There’s lots of sabre rattlin’ on both sides. The shit has hit the fan gentlemen.

We are here to help fortify Vostok base. You knew this was serious when you drew your combat loads. I expect nothing less than better than your best and remember the Chinks don’t take prisoners. Do I make myself clear?”

“SIR, crystal SIR,” we responded in unison. DAMN I love the Corps.

We sat in the squad bay cleaning our weapons and waiting. Basically life in the Corps is pretty boring, drilling, PT, rifle range, combat range… routine. But that 99% boredom is completely overshadowed by that 1% of sheer terror. Of course that doesn’t hit until after the fighting is over. In a fire fight you’re on automatic. Training takes over. It’s weird that way.

“Hey Yuri, think we’ll see some action?”

“I hope so man, it seems like years since we had that trouble on Europa.” Greggori and I had been friends since boot in San Diego . “Hey, remember that waitress at Venus colony?”

“How could I forget? Who would have thought that such a sweet little devotchka would know Krav Maga? My arm was sore for weeks.”

“That’ll teach you. You’ll think twice before grabbing somebody’s ass next time,” I laughed.

“What about you? That groundhog back at Armstrong City ? I don’t recall you getting anywhere that night.”

“Hey, she’d just jumped from dirt side, it was one sixth G. She caught me off guard,” I said trying to muster some lost pride.

“It’s your story Comrade.”

I had to admit, it was pretty funny looking back on it now. I had merely paid the young lady a compliment by comparing her to a chick in adult holos. Besides, she did have nice tits.

Just then the general alarm sounded, snapping us from our reverie. “Already? Hell, we just got here.” We slapped on our boots, grabbed our rucks and weapons and beat feet for the assembly area.

When we got there, our three companies had pretty much formed up. There was a great deal of talking, lots of raised voices, lots of confused Marines. The commotion quickly died away as Major Warshawski walked onto the field.

“Gentlemen, I know you’re all wondering what’s going on. I am sorry to have to tell you this. At 1337 hours GMT, Washington, Toronto and Moscow were destroyed by Chink missiles. Several more are reported in bound at this time”

There was stunned silence.

“What are we going to do about it Sir?” somebody shouted. It wasn’t allowed in ranks, but nobody seemed to notice.

“See for yourself,” the Major said, pointing behind the formation.

As one, we turned to see dozens of columns of white plumes rising behind the mountains, arcing into the morning sky.

Missiles, heading back home.

Author : KJ Hannah Greenberg

Snazzle considered, as she queued up, among the morning roses and goldenrod, that members of the machinists’ men didn’t take warmly to her puttering about their racks and chargers. Despite the technicians’ protest to the contrary, whenever she brought Little Guy to honk among the geese and ducks, those mechanics shuddered and pushed him and Snazzle away.

It was not so much that Little Guy emptied enough corn onto the ground for all of the barnyard’s critters, let alone the fowl, as it was that Little Guy picked up the heifers in the same way that more typical offshoots might lift a puppy. While they labored on their harrows and on their seeders, those lab guys slit their eyes at Snazzle and her kin.

Those thinker-tinkers especially got antsy when Little Guy wandered over to their self-propelled sprayer; they blamed that unit for her tot’s physical prowesses. They hadn’t known that Snazzle’s baby had snacked on foxes and on wolverines long before he tottled.

Rather, those applied science guys figured that a strong dose of nitrogen had altered Little Guy’s chemistry such that his xylem, which flowed among the cells of his mental engine, leaked out in almost organic guttation. The agricultural artisans reasoned that Little Guy performed feats during the day because at night his stomata remained closed. They hadn’t counted on his need to cuddle with his mama.

Snazzle shook her filaments in answer to that imagined discourse. Little Guy no more possessed hydathodes, through which he could express excess water, than he did any other means of transpirational pull. His mutant state meant that he would be, forever, forced to evaporate fluids through his tongue. To wit, he left his main orifice open. That he swallowed whole sheep or goats during his ambulations was accidental.

Consequently, Little Guy considered their jaunts to the ranch occasions for seeing and tasting animals. Snazzle, however, saw those journeys as opportunities for borrowing utensils she needed to create a system of secondary growth, of activated vascular cambium for her child.

To Snazzle, circumstances are caused by vicissitudes, not karma. Solutions derive from effort, not from self pity or blame. Ennui means lack of faith. Feelings of victimization mean not trying hard enough.

The thought of having to rupture Little Guy’s epidermis in order to accommodate his growth left her discolored and dried, but Snazzle was resolute about helping him. In the end, she would help him form cambia on the outside of his phloem.

Such direction would necessitate Little Guy ingesting a few horses and a couple of the farmer’s sons, but it would solve his metabolic quandary. Thereafter, Little Guy could cross pollinate with any woody vine of similar genetic material. The couple could produced mobile, flowering grandchildren for Snazzle and could rid the farm of its rat problem, its cats, its donkeys, its llamas and its prize elephant.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

We put Jesus24K99 into his cage for our own protection. The anti-coagulants weren’t holding. He was destabilizing. He’d bleed out soon.

The hole in our research was the stigmata. The actual crucifix had been uncovered in a basement vault of the Vatican. The nails from the cross had been scraped for flakes. The DNA, when used to make clones, had created short, dark babies.

Obviously not Jesus.

We tinkered with the DNA, adding a lot more milk to the coffee, if you will, to make the clone more acceptable to Middle America. We needed an Aryan beauty the likes of which would make women swoon and men envy. We needed today’s Jesus, not the old one.

Blond, emaciated babies were being created in our lab. They refused to eat. They cried a lot. Vials of their tears had cured cancer in my wife and two of the assistants. Even Jeffrey’s back was normal again.

Plans were afoot to release the cure for a price that was low enough to afford but would still make our company billions under masked creation papers. Lies, basically. The cure for cancer. Probably the cure for AIDS. Who knows? Maybe the cure for everything. If nothing else, at least these crying babies could make the people of earth healthy again.

Unfortunately, it made me picture rows and rows of eyeless Jesus Baby Clones crying into suction tubes in cages like chickens in KFC farms. I got back to work.

Most of them had turned out hemophiliac. We had no idea what to do when the holes in their hands and sides appeared. This baby Jesus was moving sluggishly.

It was like some unseen force was killing these babies, like what we were doing was not for the greater good and we were being sabotaged.

Jesus24K99 rolled onto his back and stopped moving. The pool of blood spread out beneath him, eventually slowing to a stop as his heart stopped pumping. The tattoo on his arm was scanned. The lights in his cage went out.

The compactor took over. He was added to the basement remains.

We hadn’t even figured out how to accelerate his aging when we made a stable copy. There was talk of hiring an actor as Plan B and cutting our losses by sticking with the whole ‘cure for cancer’ thing.

I’d be out of job if they did that but I was starting to think that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Author : Lisa Marie Andrews

“What’ll you choose?” She stood behind the boy and looked into the mirror. His cheeks were dusted with freckles; eyes darkened with indecision.

“I don’t know.” He said. He’d always thought it odd that the skinless wore no clothing. They walked exposed in bright coppers, burnished golds, and tarnished silvers.

“Once we weren’t given a choice.” Her fingers were polished from use. They through the windows refracted light from fingers to mirror to the boys pale skin. “Once it wasn’t voluntarily and the process would have lasted years, now you can choose, Jacob. How long do you want it to last?”

Jacob inhaled slowly. The soft scent of ozone crept into his lungs and he wondered if he could stand to never taste the air again. The glass misted over as he exhaled.

“Why’d you pick to be the way that you are?” He asked.

“The way that I am?” Her laughter rippled in waves and bounced off of the walls. “You’re of the fourth generation, Jacob. You should be used to this by now. Natural growth is a slow process and I’d been flesh for long enough.”

“But, mother, is it really enough? You lost things when you chose to Transition. You could have stayed flesh, you wouldn’t have lost anything.” The metamaterial that was his mother’s face grimaced, but the emotion didn’t, couldn’t, touch her eyes.

“Look outside, Jacob.” The room shifted and the walls became windows. “How many adults do you see wearing original skin?” The figures that lined the streets below were varied in shapes, sizes, and colors, and most of them reflected the suns light. They rippled and flowed across aged pathways.

“You don’t miss anything? Any of it?” His hands pressed against the windows, the oil of his skin marred the pristine glass. “You didn’t love any of it enough to stay. To just wait through it. Grandpa waited through it. He said it could be, that it might be, better…to just wait.”

“What do you love the most?” She said.

“The tastes, the smells, the -feel- of the air on my skin, the way it brings warmth and coolness to me. I’ll miss that. I love that.” His voice cracked, just a bit, and his eyes widened in surprise.

“But for years you’d be uncomfortable. Your voice will crack and yes, the cracking will fade, but you’ll age, like your grandfather. It’s your final day to choose, Jacob. Your voice just proved that to you, even if nothing else has.”

Jacob pushed open a window and let the currents of air dance across his skin, let the warmth of the sun kiss his freckled cheeks. He watched a woman with sunken skin wrapped around hollowed eyes, with arms that hung in gentle folds of flesh, set a slow pace down the pathway. Would she live for another 10 years? His mother would live much longer. Much longer then everything that wasn’t, or hadn’t been, rebuilt. She wouldn’t ever be like that. His arms looked small, bony, and he wondered what it would be like to wake in the morning tall and strong. What would it feel like to move with the fluid motion of the skinless? What would it be like to never feel his bones grow frail and worn by time and to never again feel the sun.

“Make me like you.” He tasted the air again. His mother pulled him into an embrace before she opened the door and they turned to leave.

Author : Phill English

Special Agent Jessy McCormick knocked gently on the door of the Director’s office. He looked up from his desk, where a large holographic display was swarming with reports that he was busy gesturing into folders, signing quickly, or dumping into a bottomless recycling bin. He didn’t pause as he addressed her.

“Yes, Special Agent?”

“Sir, we’ve just received a call from the Deterministic Energy Department.”

The Director grunted. “And? What do they want?”

“They want you to take a look at something. They say it’s important.”

The Director barked a laugh, “I’ve got an outbreak of Chaotics in the main district, over one thousand energy directives to implement, and a list of official emails that I might finish reading when I’m asleep in the grave. What could be so important?”

“They say they’ve found a cache. They said they believe it to be the biggest they’ve seen for decades. Centuries, perhaps. Sir, they said they’ve found the ‘motherload’.”

The Director’s hands finally stopped sweeping the console’s face. “‘Motherload’? That’s the exact term they used?”

“Yes sir.”

The Director was already out the door before Special Agent McCormick had a chance to ask what it meant. By the time she caught up, he was already stepping into one of the department’s cuboid transports. “Did they say where they were?”

“Yes sir. Third District, Thirteenth Iteration.”

“Thank you Special Agent, dismissed.”

* * *

The maniacal sobbing was audible as soon as the Director stepped from the transport. DED troops surrounded the entrance to the Iteration. The Chief of the DED was standing at the entrance. He greeted the Director as he arrived. “Thought you might like to see this before we set the boys loose. Not every day you get a cache like this.”

“Who’s the owner?”

The Chief consulted his display. “One Mrs. Narelle Williams. She’s the noise you can hear. Totally deranged. Keeps screaming that her boy will be coming home any minute now. The room is his apparently, perfectly preserved.”

“Is he here?”

“Records show he died in the riots three years ago. Hardcore Chaotic.”

“Good. Less ownership issues. May I?”

“Go ahead.”

The Director ducked down into a room hidden by a false bookcase. This was old tech, probably put in place in the final days before Order was imposed. As he descended the final steps and turned to inspect the space, he was dumbstruck. It was quite a small room, perhaps five square metres, but what it lacked in size it made up for in clutter. Mangled sheets cascaded from a bed that was half buried in an assortment of sex mags and political books. Any of the stained carpet that may have once showed through was covered by food wrappers, clothes, and moldy tissues. The shelves were lined with action figures and the walls practically hidden by a layering of posters. The finishing touch was provided by a pair of filthy underpants hung from a ceiling fan.

The Director whistled. The DED had their work cut out for them. Restoring Order to this mess would yield enough energy to power the District for years.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

The two Capellians had traveled over 40 light years to collect a breeding pair of humans for the University of Xenobiology, on Capella Prime. During the trip, they also diligently recorded the various transmissions emanating from Earth in order to provide their scholars with as much cultural information about Earthmen as possible.

Satisfied that his trap was properly set, Ler’th returned to the spaceship and said, “As they say here on Earth, I am ‘clever as a coyote’, yes?”

“I believe the phrase is ‘clever as a fox’,” corrected Sefal’l. “Coyotes are stupid animals. Remember, they are the predators that are constantly being run over by ground transportation vehicles, or falling off of cliffs.”

Before Ler’th could reply, the trap alarm sounded. “Wow, that was fast,” he said as he glanced at the monitor. “We snagged one large one and one smaller one. Looks like this will be a quick trip.”

“Not so fast Ler’th. We need to make sure we have a male and female.” The Capellians left their camouflaged ship and approached the trap. “Earth humans,” asked Sefal’l, “are you a breeding couple?”

“Hell no,” snapped the slightly inebriated adult. “This is my son, Billy-Bob. We’s out here on a huntin’ trip. Looks like we got caught in y’alls snare. How’s about letting us out?”

“Not likely, human. We must take at least one of you back to our planet, along with a female.”

“What’s that? A woman you say?” inquired the now interested adult.

“Yes. And, as well as our trap appears to be working, we may be able to capture whoever you want? Would you prefer, Mary Ann Summers, Ginger Grant, Jeannie Nelson, or Mindy McConnell?”

“Holy crap,” belched the old man. “Them’s old television characters. I reckon that they must be a hundred years old by now. I ain’t agoin’ on no trip with them. Now let us out of here, or I’ll blast ya.” He waved his twelve gage threateningly.

“Don’t be absurd, human. We know how to make your projectile weapons useless.” Ler’th extended a finger and stuck it into the end of the barrel.

“Dad, don’t shoot,” pleaded the teenager. “Let me try something.” He held up his cell phone. “Listen, you scum bags, my weapon contains corbomite. You either let us out, or I’ll blow you to pieces.”

“Ooooh, noooo, not corbomite,” mocked Ler’th. “You mean the stuff Captain Kirk said would destroy the Fesarius ship. That was a bluff. See, we know more about your treachery than you think earthmen. Perhaps we should just destroy you both, and collect two new samples.”

“Don’t fret, son,” said the father as he pulled a stainless steel flask out of his back pocket. “I didn’t want to use this, but these aliens leave me no choice.”

“Hah. Look Sefal’l, he’s got a pretend phaser. Or maybe it’s a light saber, eh?” Both aliens began to make a cackling noise, which presumably, was laughter.

“Nope, my friends,” slurred the old man. “This here is an Illudium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator.”

Instantly, the Capellians became silent. “Whoa, hold on there Mister Earthman. There’s no need to overreact. We were just having a little fun. Look, we’re opening the trap. There, see, you’re free to go. No hard feelings.” The two aliens began backing up toward their spaceship. When they got close, they darted inside. A few seconds later, the spaceship was a distant black dot in the clear blue sky.”

The old man took a swig from the flask and smiled. “Damn aliens. Let’s go home, son. I can’t wait to tell your ma that I weren’t wastin’ my time watchin’ them cartoons after all.”

Author : Jeff Kirchoff

A few short keystrokes and the room sprung to life, bare, the walls black yet glowing with the subtle aura of electrical potential. Rico strolled to the center of the small space and looked at the crumpled paper clutched in his left hand with a sigh.

He spoke aloud to the empty room, “Cara, is everything ready?”

“Yes, loading is currently in progress.” The mechanical sound of the ship’s AI buzzed from the walls in response, mechanical and staccato in a vaguely feminine way, “Welcome back Chief. Should I run the program now?”

“Light it up.”

“Roger.”

The walls of the room flickered with static then snapped into focus, like an ancient television adjusting itself after a sharp thump. Where moments ago there was only blackness now contained an impressive springtime reproduction of a tall, shady tree surrounded by a secluded meadow. Wispy white clouds materialized in the sky, floating lazily overhead as wildflowers sprung up around Rico’s feet, growing a month’s time in an instant and spreading the pleasant smell of nature, subtle and earthy. He took in a deep breath and sighed.

Beneath the tree’s canopy a small ironwork table flickered into existence, followed quickly by two complementary chairs. Knowing what came next, Rico began to walk toward the tree and took a seat. Elbows on the table, he gazed at the empty chair opposite him, trying not to close his eyes.

He blinked. In the span of an instant a pale, dainty woman appeared before his eyes. Her long chestnut hair wafted in the gentle breeze, her blue jumpsuit ruffled almost imperceptibly.

“Kenna.”

She stifled a giggle, “I wish you would stop having a staring contest with the computer every time we do this, you know it waits to make huge changes until your eyes are closed.”

Rico cracked a grin, “Right. So how have you been?”

“Great! I got hired into Mars, just like you suggested.”

“Well, I put a word in.”

Kenna twirled a finger through her hair, “I appreciate it. Everyone is so nice here, all the red is kind of hard to get used to though. How’s your run going?”

“Same as always.” He frowned, “You know how hauling cargo can get.”

Her face turned serious and her voice badly mimicked his, “It’s a lonely job but someone has to do it!”

Rico gave her a playful shove, “Cut it out.”

“I wonder how you put up with it.”

“Well, this room certainly helps, how realistic it is.”

“Oh, of course.” A smile spread across her face, “So, what did you want to do today Ricky?”

“Nothing…” He abruptly grabbed Kenna’s hand,” I just wanted to sit here with you for a while.”

She smiled, “Whatever you want, love.”

The allotted time for the meeting passed and Rico sadly said his goodbyes, promising to meet again soon. As the room blackened and he stepped through the door into the cockpit of his hauler he looked again at the crumpled paper in his hand that he had been clutching the entire visit. He smoothed it out and stared at it while he sat back down at the helm, picturing himself receiving the printed letter from the post at his last stop, months ago.

Dear Rico,

I’m sorry that you had to find out this way but

you-–

He couldn’t bear to read any further.

“Cara.”

The ship droned, “Yes Chief?”

“I can’t do this anymore, delete the VR program I’ve been running.”

Author : Thomas Desrochers

Whether or not something is difficult is largely a thing of perception. If you practice doing most things a lot, then they become easier. Driving, hunting, farming – they all becoming easier with practice.

Living alone does not.

For three thousand six hundred forty nine days I have lived my life alone. No conversation with anyone who can reply, no hand shakes, no hugs, no smiles.

They can’t talk, you see. Everybody else has just sort of forgotten. ‘its 2 slw’ they tell me, the ones that bother to communicate with someone like me, that is. I used to try and remember who they were so that maybe I would have somebody, anybody to talk to. The only problem was, I couldn’t recognize anybody when they all wear the same mask and the same suit.

Every day alone is hard.

It took me five years before I decided I might want to try it out, that I might want to be able to communicate with other people. They told me ‘u r not cmpatble w/ the tchnlgy, u r prone 2 szres,’ so I had to do without.

So I live alone. I live alone atop my hill. Just me and my animals and my fields. I raise my own food, haven’t seen a dollar in years. I am not compatible with the stores.

They stay in the city these days, down there in that bustling town. No time for driving any more, better stay close. All the houses in the hills are dark and empty, the roads are unused and falling apart. But with the people gone the animals have come back, which is good for me. They’re just more dinner.

I watch them down there, some nights. They light up the whole valley with their lights – one massive glowing Nirvana, automated, self-run. It seems to me that the people are rather inconsequential.

It all started so innocently. A way to communicate silently, quickly. No need to get dragged into conversations or unduly bother those around you, it was a way to keep things private. Then it was an obsession, and then an addiction.

I used to practice speaking every day. I would read aloud from one of my books for a few minutes, just so I would remember how. I stopped five years ago. What is the point?

Whoever invented texting must have been real smart. I wonder if he was a nice guy? I wonder if he knew he would be a thief?

He stole my voice. He stole my language. He stole my love. He stole my life.

It’s hard to live alone.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Levon leaned against the shower tube, letting the jets of water assail his body from all sides. As the sweat of the previous night’s activities rinsed away, the more subtle indicators of his exertions seeped in. Both his head and kidneys ached from the soup of chemicals he’d drank, sniffed and injected with the woman now sleeping naked in the next room.

Warnings pulsing dimly in his periphery reminded him that his kidney augments were still on standby, sifting and analyzing the foreign bodies in his bloodstream. An amber warning flashed, the proximity alarm on his equipment locker had been triggered. His company was awake, the message flashing red as she tried the door.

Levon flipped through and discarded most of the blood-work findings; street grade meth, cocaine and a too high level of alcohol, but the last one stopped him cold. A battery of tranquilizers had been automatically disarmed, all bearing Federated P.D. chem tags.

“Shit. She’s a cop.”

In an instant water droplets were evaporating in a jet of warm air and kidney grafts went into overdrive, flushing his system clean and pumping in Epinephrine.

Exiting the shower he could hear the woman padding around the bedroom, his sub-dermal grid-work of sensory pickups and Faraday shielding twinging as a transmitter narrow-banded a short range encoded transmission. Not only was she a cop, but she had a partner nearby.

Opening the door he found her perched on the end of the bed, tanned shoulders and arms exposed above the bedsheet she’d drawn around herself.

“Hey baby, look at you,” her words slurred together into a sound like a sneeze.

“Hey,” Levon moved to the closet, the auto-bolts retracting as he reached for the handle, “back in a sec.” He slipped through the door, closing and letting it lock securely behind him.

He’d converted the walk-in to a safe room when he’d started renting the sixth floor apartment. The low level lighting reflected dimly back at him from the kevmesh that coated the inside of the cramped space, uneven thicknesses of the dark green ultraweeve armor pooled on the floor where it had run as he’d sprayed the layers on.

He could feel a mass of people thundering up the stairwell at the end of the hall.

He pulled on overalls and a jacket and jammed his feet into a pair of Magnum Ions. Overturning a crate in the middle of the room he slung his shoulder holster and perched in a squat on the box like a bird, face down to his knees. He thumbed the release tabs on two canisters glued into the floor on either side of him and covered his face with his hands. The canisters ticked a few seconds before geysering upwards, thick jets of liquid spattering off the ceiling, foaming and filling the space, securing his hunched form in a bubble of packing foam.

He felt his cocoon shake, knowing that his bathroom had just been blown out the side of the building. A second set of explosions tipped his pod sideways, and Levon braced himself as a final eruption jettisoned the entire closet shell out the newly formed hole in the building, launching it through the window of the much nicer lofts across the street.

Levon had barely stopped moving before he blew the cocoon seals and stood up, the force separating the two halves neatly, leaving a man shaped impression in each.

Stepping through the broken glass and window frame, he surveyed the damage outside, his apartment now just a jagged tear in the brick facade of the building. Below, his shower poked out the side of a cargo van, vaguely phallic in a glittering mess of LED advertising and shredded metal.

Turning, Levon faced a startled couple sitting up in bed. Stepping past them, he helped himself to a piece of toast and a slice of bacon from the breakfast tray forgotten at their feet.

“Don’t get up,” he grinned, “I’ll see myself out.”

Author : Carol Reid

Is there a sign over Gina’s head that reads, “Vacancy”? She imagines it in neon, that peculiar orange pink reserved for a certain class of motel– and apparently for her, a certain class of fucked up female, who had a reasonable, ordinary life before the thing began. Maybe she should blame her dad, poor dad, long dead and blameless anyway. The other half of the sign lights up. No. No. No. No. You did this on your own, girl.

She has a cell phone in her hand and his number written on her wrist, as if she could forget it, although never has she called him on the phone before. She is not near any motel. She is in her car, parked neatly between the lines in the empty Wal-Mart parking lot. Recession has cut back hours, everyone heads home at six. It’s a quarter after seven, the September sky turning lavender overhead. She has a cell phone in her hand, open.

Everything feels so still, just an underlying electric hum, perhaps from the cell, perhaps from the lowering sky. Her need for him tears at the lining of her gut. He has done nothing to encourage this. He is merely there, out there, somewhere, waiting for her call.

Her head swims a little from hunger but she doesn’t want to hurl again. Her husband has noticed that lately she picks at her dinner; she can hear him thinking that maybe she’s on the sauce. And she has tried a little, just wine so far, which did nada to file down the edges of the thing to any tolerable level. On nights like tonight, when he leaves for his shift at four thirty and doesn’t come home till five a.m., she can live unobserved. She can pick up a six of cider and tuck it under the passenger seat, drive up and down the alphabet of residential streets, Aspen, Brook, Cassia, Dunbar. She “dun” went to the “bar”. Ha ha. Not yet, at least. Later, alligator.

She rubs her thumb across the inked-on ten digit number she took the entire afternoon tracking down while her husband napped. The ink doesn’t smudge. If she wants it gone she’ll have to take a layer of skin off with it. If only her husband had woken up early, crept up behind where she sat at her computer, demanded to know what the fuck she thought she was doing. No. She had any number of lies ready. There wasn’t a thing her husband could have done.

She keys in the series of innocent numbers, each one a stroke nearer to getting the thing done. Each tone has its own heavy frequency, and after the series of ten is complete, the silence on the line sucks her breath away. Who knows what she really sees next? It is likely that her mind can’t open wide enough to take it in. In its place she sees the matte metal shell of the craft hovering just above her, and the hinged staircase dropping open, each step limned with a neon glow. The roof of the car is first transparent, and then permeable, so that when she reaches up to clasp his hand there is no longer any barrier between them.

Author : Q. B. Fox

The members of Juliet Patrol, 29 Group, Royal Engineers hunkered down in a squat two-story, stone building balanced on the hillside. Lt. Harry Banford watched through the unglazed window as a UN superiority denial aircraft painted a con-trail far, far overhead.

At the sound of a distance whine, Banford dropped back into cover, barely ahead of the muffled, distant whump that shook plaster from the ceiling and blew in dirt through the empty casements.

After a moment’s silence, and not for the first time that day, the soldiers of Juliet Patrol relaxed their braced shoulders, then blinked and coughed in the bright, moted sunbeams.

Private Darren Hastey, first time in theatre and green as a cabbage, uncurled on the floor and cringed under head-shaking gaze of his fellows. “I wish they wouldn’t do that,” he grumbled.

“Don’t be an idiot, Hastey,” spat Sgt. “Handy Andy” Andrews. “If our planes stop knocking out their bomber drones then this whole hillside will be flatter than your girlfriend’s chest and faster than it takes you to disappoint her. Am I clear, private?”

“Yes, sir,” Hastey sang back, as brightly as he could muster, then immediately winced at his mistake.

“And don’t call me ‘sir’, you idiot,” Andrews growled, “I work for a living.” He paused and then, turning to Banford, he apologised “No offense, sir,”

“None taken, Sergeant,” the Lieutenant smiled.

Then everything was quiet, except for occasional distant small arms fire and the clicks of Lt. Banford’s keypad as he rechecked the mission details.

“Why here, do you suppose, sir?” Sgt. Andrews asked unexpectedly.

“Erm, well,” Banford, considering the details on the screen in front of him, “this hillside obviously faces the target, and these buildings provide…”

“No, sir,” Andrews interrupted, “why do they all come to fight over Jerusalem.”

“Ah, yes, I see what you mean.” his officer reconsidered. “The Jews and the Romans, the Romans and the Persians, the Crusades, the Ottomans, the British, the Israelis and Palestinians….”

“And now the aliens,” Andrews concluded grimly. “Even they think it’s special to their religion.”

“And now the xenomorphs,” Banford corrected. “I don’t know why.”

And then after he’d thought for a moment, “There’s a syndrome named after this place; it’s one of only three geographically located syndromes; Jerusalem, Florence and Paris.”

“What about Stockholm syndrome, sir?” Hastey interrupted.

“Be quiet, you idiot,” his sergeant snapped, “An educated man is talking.”

“Yes, si.. Sergeant,” Hastey responded meekly.

“But Jerusalem syndrome is unique even among these unusual conditions,” the young officer continued as if he’d not been interrupted, “Some people who come here just become obsessed, become unhinged; believers and unbelievers alike get a glimpse of God.”

“I heard that reality is thinner here,” Hastey said nervously into the pause, “that we really are closer to…”

But before he could finish, or Andrews could rebuke him, Private Collins, pushing his headset further into his ear with two fingers, spoke clearly and precisely over the top of them. “Sir, we are go; repeat: we are go.”

Juliet Patrol sprang to their feet and raced down the stairs. With practiced professionalism they deployed the array, and after a moment to check the alignment, Banford squeezed the firing trigger. A hoop of air shimmered, as molecules rammed into each other, delivering a near invisible punch to the target; on the ridgeline across the valley the xenomorph transmitter disintegrated.

Like all snipers, they should have redeployed after firing, but nobody moved. They just stared. Very slowly, like wallpaper peeling off damp plaster, the sky, just where their target had been, was tearing open.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

It’s a reasoning process. There are seconds left. The cold leather of the chair is warming up beneath my manacled wrists. The restraints are tight on my arms. I’m wide awake and dreaming.

I can’t decide if it’s a syringe or a snake that they’re drawing back out of my arm. I can feel the pitter patter of little feet running through my veins, getting progressively softer as they hit the smaller tributaries. My body is a giant vibrating footstep tied to a chair.

Laboratory nine. People don’t come back from this lab. I have opinions. This is where they put people with opinions. You should hear the way the sergeants pronounce that word. It’s right up there with communism, hippie, and free will. Venom drips from their lips.

It’s dark in the tiled room except for the light over my chair. My muscles vibrate faster and faster until they hit a state of constant striation. Being cognizant, I realize that this must be what a seizure is. I’ve never had one before but I saw a friend have an epileptic fit when I was a child.

We were playing in a field. It was a hot day. This was before the occupation, of course, before the clicking mandibles hissing out a whisper that was the closest they could come to English. The messages from the sky. The examples. Prague, Toronto and for some reason Adelaide made into legend as a warning shot. I remember the hissing language from aliens. They looked like a cross between spiders and crucifixes.

I remember they lit up the atmosphere of the Earth to prove their power, to scare the primitives. The ozone layer had flashed like a dance club.

Me and my friend David in that summer field had looked up. The strobe light of the entire sky had set my friend to moaning. His joints froze and he fell back like a broken toy. An animal keening had squeezed out of him. It sounded like a kettle reaching a boil.

It wasn’t a good sound. I can hear it echoing around me now in the laboratory and I realize that it’s coming from me.

Soon, I know that if I don’t give in to the suggestions that are coursing through my veins, I’ll die. No one has come back from this room. No one has given in.

It’s almost comforting to know that there are still humans who will fight to the death on these tables, resisting the attempt to shape their allegiance until they’re switched off permanently. I feel honoured to join them.

I can feel the lights within my mind turning out one by one as the chemicals give up coercion and switch to destruction.

I am candles on a birthday cake being blown out.

Author : K. Pittman

Sometime before midday’s full blaze, Susan threw down her skein and stopped walking. Georgia broke pace steps later and trod back, face flattened, hat shadowing her glare.

“What.”

“I want milk. I’m tired of water.” Susan half-turned and looked from whence they’d walked.

“There’s no more milk. Those jackasses pinched our stashed powders before trying to rape and/or rob us, remember? It got ruined in the fight.”

Susan’s hands moved towards where pockets would have been, finding: many canvas belt pouches, some part full, all cinched tight: a sun-warm firearm, holstered, secured: pack ladders and buckles, floating taut on taut webbing – she folded her arms underneath her breasts, drew a deep breath, exhaled deliberately. Dropped her arms and swiveled towards Georgia-

Whose weapon was in her hand, its burnished muzzle trained on her. “Do you want to die?” Georgia’s look was unwavering, and exhausted.

“I…I don’t understand.”

“Exactly.” Georgia took a few steps forward, wrist steady. “Pick up the water.”

“What are you doing?”

“This,” said Georgia, wrapping her free hand onto the gun and centering it onto Susan’s head, “is an object lesson. Your first and your last.”

Susan stepped back into a defensive stance, staring past the gun, into hat’s cast umbra, locking eyes with Georgia. “Stop pointing that gun at me.”

Georgia’s eyes locked back. “Pick up the damned water.” The gun never drooped.

Minutes passed.

Finally, Susan knelt, costive, to the scrub, arms bent out and away, and picked up her skein, gradually attaching it to her belt. She looked down, to secure it fast, and heard Georgia’s heels turning in the sand, her steps away regular and fast. Susan scrambled to catch up, and wordlessly fell into formation two steps behind, two steps to the left, her footfalls in a ragged echo of Georgia’s rhythm.

Georgia spoke out of the side of her mouth. “Next cache is in 12 klicks, near water, and Ray’s old trading outpost. A bullet or two’ll get us new powders. Maybe a short stay. Might be some sort of small civ near, within a days travel maybe. Maybe. You can opt out there if you like.” Susan’s abstruse stare looked past her shoulder. “Fine. When we get there, we’ll hit the flask, and you can bitch me out, but I don’t wanna hear anything until then. I just saved your fucking life.”

“But-”

“You’re my only…my last fucking friend, Susan. I’m not letting you chump out of this one. There’s no fucking safety net. There’s no exit,” and silence and steps and silence and the sun across the sky on a long hot afternoon.

Author : Nick Gonzales

“You heard they finally nailed teleportation?”

“No.”

“Yeah, just yesterday.”

“For real?”

“Fo rizzle.”

I turn to look at Billiam, his eyes lit up expectantly as he leans towards me across the table. His face is twisted into his characteristic grin of childlike excitement. An off-putting grin, but not without some charm. You’d think he had just told me we had finally put another man on the moon.

Today, Billiam’s hair is fluorescent green, with streaks of pink, symmetrically arranged into eight spikes. Mine is the same color, but I did mine in the sink.

“No, I mean, like, for _real_?”

“Of course for real. Teleported a small little mouse all the way from New York to Atlantis,” he beams.

I can actually feel my hopes fall.

“What do you mean ‘of course’?” I sigh. “Atlantis?”

“What? What’s wrong with Atlantis?”

A female white Bengal tiger slowly trots by the table, followed by a small pack of screaming children. The smallest, a girl of probably about four years, dives forward and grabs the rare cat by its tail until it pauses, allowing her to jump astride it in a practiced motion. Kicking her heels into its side wildly, the girl hoots as the cat resumes its walk. A quick check of Wikipedia informs me that the Panthera tigris is an apex predator and obligate carnivore, native to East and South Asia. I don’t believe San Diego is located within either region… but it gets hard to tell sometimes.

The sky darkens momentarily as a dragon flies overhead. Or maybe it was a plane.

“Hey, Robin.” Billiam calls me back to the conversation.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said what’s wrong with Atlantis?”

“Um, Atlantis isn’t a real place…”

I’m 65% sure that Billiam is a hologram.

Officially, there are no sentient holographic images yet. Officially. But the problem with an obligatory collective conscious web is the lack of filterization. The Resonance is beyond this sort of control. The holos were introduced at least a year ago.

Billiam scoffs and falls back into his grin. “What do you mean not a real place? Didn’t we go there last year for Spring Break?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Come on, man. We all know Atlantis is no more real than that tiger. The island nation belonging to Poseidon that sunk into the ocean eleven thousand years ago. The Atlantic Ocean, I might add.”

“Quoting Wikipedia again?”

“Paraphrasing. Please.”

“You know, I don’t get you sometimes. So much reliance on the Resonance, and yet you doubt it so.”

My problem is not with the holos. I’ve been to Atlantis, that digital paradise twelve miles off the coast of California, with its attractive native population, perfect weather, and exotic architecture.

But is anyone building anything real anymore? What is the benefit in building something when it can all be programmed into the collective consciousness? Are there any real hairstylists anymore? Actual pet shops?

It is easy to become paranoid, growing up in a society raised on science fiction. But this isn’t the Matrix. The world is still real so far, I was alive before the Resonance was activated.

But I wonder what all of the physical scientists are doing now that computer science has taken over the world? What does it even mean when you teleport a living creature to a place that doesn’t exist?

I have been to Atlantis, I realize with a start. What does that mean?

“You there, Robin?”

I’m 65% sure that Billiam is a hologram.

And what is the benefit in being human in this digital age?

Author : Michael Merriam

“We never had much,” she said. “The freighter was our life. Now it’s all lost, ripped apart by a neutron star.”

I sat next to her. I couldn’t answer. My mind was dazzled, my eyes locked on her naked body stretched out on the bed we shared. She reached out her arms, and I fell into her embrace.

My lips on her neck, I stroked the flat of her stomach, reached beyond with one hand until she pulled me onto and into her body.

I was a silly child. She had over two decades on me, my lovely, melancholy lover.

Later — days or weeks later — we sat on the rocks overlooking the dead lighthouse, long abandoned, nature carving it up.

“Do you think the stars will give back what they have taken, at the end?”

“I don’t know.”

And I didn’t. I still don’t.

She was a beautiful burning demon, all alabaster skin and black hair. She seemed an artist’s creation, unreal, ethereal. In that moment she frightened me.

“I think they will.” She turned, leaned on me. I place an arm around her, held her tightly.

Soft sobs and crashing surf were all.

#

Autumn.

A cool breeze blew off the sea as I watched the crowd gather like ghouls and vultures. The white and red van, its ugly blinking eye atop, sat parked with doors open wide. I didn’t need to go down. I knew.

I didn’t travel to Mars Station to see her casket fired into the sun, as was her right as a navigator. I didn’t want to watch it blaze in the an instant before evaporating or deal with dour strangers and weeping women, black shrouded, staring, whispering, asking questions I wouldn’t answer.

I would remember my lover for her laughter, her sweat-covered skin after sex, her gentleness in all things.

“Do you think the stars will give back what they have taken, at the end?”

“I don’t know.”

I still don’t.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

I had heard the news only a short few minutes ago. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it.

I walked out the back door onto the deck and looked up and down the beach. Like mine, all the other houses were darkened as well. Like that would make one bit of difference with today’s tech. I barked a bitter laugh.

Michelle must have heard. Silently she slid up beside me, slipping her hand in mine. She always looked so beautiful. Her flaming red hair framing her delicate features. Just the right number of freckles across her nose and cheeks.

Now her face looked gaunt as if all the joy that only moments ago had filled it, had washed away.

“Do you think it’s true?” Her voice was a dry. The sound of autumn leaves rustling in the wind.

“It’s true. Come with me.”

I tugged her hand and led her down to the waters edge. She walked beside me as if she were lost, falling.

“Remember our honeymoon?”

“Yes,” she said. Her voice had taken on an airy, detached quality. “It was my first trip to orbit. It was so beautiful. The gardens, the trees, that quiet little beach on the lake. It was so lovely there. I wish we could go back.”

“Someday.” I said. “When this is over. Look, you can see them now.” The warm twilight was slipping away, and impenetrable night was bearing down. Above us against the distant stars, the sparkle of the L-5 habitats shone in a glistening, shimmering arc.

“Look there,” I said, pointing to one twinkling jewel in particular. “There it is. That’s Eden. Our little garden”

And we watched those precious jewels. We watched them as one by one, each glowed a little brighter, before winking out forever.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

“Dammit Joe, it’s freakin’ freezing in here,” complained Thomas Sampati as he checked the spaceship’s thermostat.”

“We’re eight hours behind the Phoenix,” replied Joe. “We need to make a non-traditional course adjustment if we hope to win the race.”

“’Non-traditional?’ The course goes from Vesta, around the sun, past Earth, and back to Vesta. That’s 600 million miles. There’s nothing to change.”

“Officially, the course is from Vesta, around the sun, and back to Vesta. It’s just that they time the start of the race so that the Earth is positioned off to the side to give the contestants a gravitational slingshot on the way back to Vesta. The sponsors want the Earth swing-by so the spectators can see the ships up close. But we’re not ‘required’ to swing past the Earth. In fact, in ’79, the Orion accidentally flew thousand miles too close to the sun and ended up on the wrong side of the Earth, so they were decelerate, not accelerate. They finished in last place, but they weren’t disqualified. That precedent makes it legal to cut inside the Earth.”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

“Relax. I’ve been planning this contingency for months. I figure if we fly really close to the sun, we can fly directly back toward Vesta, and shorten the trip by seventy million miles.”

“How close is ‘really close’?”

“Until today, nobody goes inside Mercury’s orbit, about 30 million miles. I plan to go as close as 5 million miles.”

“Are you nuts? They stay that far away for a reason. The sun’s kinda hot you know. We’ll be subjected to 36 times the radiation of the other ships. We’ll fry.”

“Not necessarily. I plan to deploy a Meissner shield; a thin mirror-like reflector made out of a superconductive alloy. It’s also a perfect Faraday shield. Virtually nothing will get through to the ship.”

“Virtually nothing?”

“Well, it will get a little hot in here. That’s why we need to make it as cold as possible before we start.”

“Do you also plan to change the name of the ship to ‘The Icarus’?”

“Icarus? He was the one who died.”

“That’s my point.”

“Look, Tom, either grow a pair, or get in an escape pod.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll stay, but I don’t have to like it.”

“Thanks. Now, start hydrating yourself. It’s going to take twelve hours to complete the fly-by of the sun.”

As the ship began to round the sun, the thermostat started to climb. “How hot can we go before we die?” asked Sampati.

“At 100% humidity, only 105F. But I have the dehumidifier at maximum. We can probably survive to 170F, as long as our perspiration can evaporate. Keep drinking water, and take those salt tablets.”

At periapsis, they fired the main thrusters to maximize the ship’s velocity.

During the fly-by, the men were forced to endure a living hell. For the first six hours, they were worried that they would die. For the second six hours, they were wishing they would. Finally, they were heading away from the sun, and the temperature began to drop. Drenched with sweat, Joe checked the telemetry. “According to the computer, we shortened the trip by ten hours. We should be ahead. I’ll check with the officials.”

“God,” exclaimed Sampati, “That was the worst 12 hours of my life. I wouldn’t do that again, not even for first place prize money. Uh oh, what’s wrong?”

“The update just came in. Those bastards on the Phoenix did the same maneuver. They’re still eight hours in front.”

Author : Sean Wallace

“Now, we all look forward to entering the Archangel when we retire, but what about those people who go there before then? Constance Vyke reports on the people who keep Archangel running…”

Constance, pretty in a thin, blonde sort of way, starts her report through a practiced smile. “Thank you Milo. The Archangel Station, owned and run by the UN, has been running for almost thirty years; taking us in when we become elderly and giving us a life of pleasure and joy in our most fragile years. Not everyone who comes here does so for the Grace Chambers though. I’m here with Nigel Howard, Chief Engineer for the Archangel and he is, as you can see, a great deal younger than 65.”

Nigel offers a small smile, slightly confused. “Hello there Constance.”

“First of all, I’m certain our viewers would like to know how you can cope with being so close to the Grace Chambers?”

“Well, I’d be lying if I said it isn’t tempting, but thankfully you need specific implants to be able to join the residents; implants stored and inserted planetside. So there’s no way for me, or anyone else here, to ‘dip in’.”

“But how can you cope with it? Bliss and joy happening so close to you and you cannot take part in it… even I’m feeling the pull, and I’ve only been here a few days.”

“Firstly, if you work on the Archangel you get to retire five years early. Plus, without people like us, no-one would be able to enter Gracie…”

“Gracie? Is that what you call them?”

“Oops, sorry.” Nigel wipes his hand down his eyes and coughs. “Yeah, it’s the nickname we gave the Intethlon Quantum Core GC20. It’s a lot less of a mouthful. But yeah, we do an important job, maybe the most important job there is, so you get a lot of satisfaction out of it.” The increased numbers of suicides and high level of substance abuse went unmentioned, especially after Head Office had some serious words with him about ‘appropriate responses’.

“Anyway,” Constance says, slight annoyance peeking through her media-friendly tones, “what’s a typical day like up here? What do you do every day?”

“Well, we don’t work every day Constance. But for me, a typical day involves nothing more than your usual space station Chief Engineer; I read reports, ensure the tech is all in working order, manage the new arrivals and deliveries…”

“And it’s really not difficult to see hundreds of people enter the Grace Chambers, Gracie?”

“Really, it’s not a problem.” Nigel coughs and balls his fists. “… but anyway, we get everyone in, give them the introduction and then fit them into the chambers for their new life. Then we send back any deceased for planetside burial and ensure that the next day’s work is prepared. That’s about it; as I said, nothing more than the typical station.”

“Alright then, Nigel, just before I go I’d like to ask what the first thing you’re going to do after you retire is?”

Having thought long and hard about this over the decades he’d worked on the Archangel, the truth sprang to answer the question itself; “I’m going to Solar-sail to Mars.”

“Thank you very much for your time Nigel.” Constance turns back to the camera. “There you are viewers, normal people doing amazing work up here in the Heavens. For MSN-BBC, I’m Constance Vyke.”

“Constance Vyke there. We’ll see you after these messages…”

Author : Eric Kimball

It starts as the faintest quiver of sound, a slight singsong beat carried by the wind. The few stray notes that reach my ears instantly spring to the forefront of my consciousness.

“Mother, he’s here!”

“Hmm?” Mother replies flatly.

The mechanical calliope is louder now, adding to the urgency in my voice. “The Good Humor man is here!”

“Oh, and you want to get something?”

This strikes me as a very dumb question, but I simply reply, “Yes, please, may I go?” Now is not the time to anger Mother.

“Very well, but don’t take long.”

“I won’t,” I say in mid-stride. I emerge in time to see a battered white truck with a yellow emblem crawling down the road. Other people are here and we all cluster about the truck in a teeming, churning mass. After jostling in a crowd that resembles a tiny war more then a queue, I reach the front.

Sam, the Good Humor man, looks over at me with his big plastic grin. “Hey there buddy, what’ch get’en today?”

I pause for a moment, looking at the brightly colored board. Behind me, the crowd shifts angrily, but I ignore the collective impatience.

“I’d just like a Neapolitan, I think,” I say after considering all the options.

“Gotta love the classics, buddy,” Sam says, extending a plastic packet with his piston-driven arm. The packet drops into my hand as Sam turns his cold glass optical ports and poorly painted head to the next customer.

I tear open the wrap with a single pull and then guide my trembling hand to the cybernetic socket at the back of my skull. There is a quick jolt of pain as the chip comes to rest in its socket, sending short circuits through my body and brain. Then the experience fills me.

First kiss, first date, first time someone says “I love you,” the sweet bubbling strawberry of love in blossom. I savor the sensation, feeling the excited butterflies in my stomach, drinking in every moment of it. Then the next emotion overtakes me, the cool, smooth, creamy sensation of a love in full bloom. A walk hand in hand with a loved one, a soak together in the hot tub, the simple pleasure of waking next to them, I float through oceans of vanilla bliss. Last, I descend into the dark, decadent chocolate sensation of love-making: not sex, but the velvety sinful sensations around the borders of intercourse, a nibble of an ear, a gentle caress, the contentment of post-coitus. These feelings coat my body in thick, warm syrupy streams.

Eventually the sensations fade, receding with each beat of my heart like an ocean tide. I remove the expended Emotional Emulator from the back of my skull, a thin trail of smoke wafting from the charred circuit.

Before returning to my work station, I take a moment to watch the others. Some dance to invisible music, others laugh at an unspoken joke, and others quiver in sexual ecstasy. The “real thing,” as the outsiders like to call it in their ridiculous flyers, is a shallow imitation of the Good Humor chips.

Besides, who has time for the “real thing”? From morning alarm until the beginning of another sleep cycle, we’re occupied with debugging code, swapping circuits, and defending the perimeter. But it’s worth it. Only an AI like Mother can create the Emotional Emulator chips. If we keep her happy and functional, then trucks will be sent, loaded with their simple electronic pleasures. After all, it’s the simple pleasures that make life worth living, is it not?

Author : Bill Lombardi

Troy sat by his bedside. Watching.

Hours past and then Jon’s eyes slowly opened. “I’m thirsty.” His voice wavered, his strength beginning to ebb.

Troy poured him a glass of water and stood by him holding the straw. He took several sips. Coughed. Troy wiped his chin. Soon he was asleep again. Troy sat and waited.

When he awoke next he asked, “Is it day”?

“No. It is night.”

“Can you see the stars?”

Troy went to the balcony doors, drew the curtain and opened them. He looked up at the moonless sky. “There are many stars.”

“Can you see the Big Bear?”

“You mean the Great Bear. Yes.”

“I remember lying in the field out back at night naming as many constellations as we could.”

“And you were always incorrect.”

Jon laughed weakly which led to another bout of coughing. Troy moved to his side and helped him sit up until it passed and then he gently laid him back down.

“You’ll stay with me?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know why I ask. We’ve been together for as long as I can remember.”

He placed a cool hand across Jon’s forehead and soon he was asleep again – and the ever present Troy sat and waited.

Several days passed and he never woke again.

They came and took him and Troy watched from the window as the vehicle pulled away. All of Jon’s things had been packed and removed. Only Troy was left. He looked around at the empty rooms and on the floor in a corner was an image. He picked it up. It was of the two of them when they had visited China. On the Great Wall. They both stood backs against a turret, blue sky above. Troy remembered that day. They had walked and seen as much as they could while the sun still shone. Taking images. Troy folded it and placed it in the pocket of his pants and then went to stand by the door. The service would be by soon to wipe his memory and shut him down. He looked around at the empty rooms again. And waited.

Author : Matthew Banks

“It thinks,” said the emaciated man, blinking up at the doctor with red-rimmed eyes. The doctor looked down at him for a moment, then turned to the display mounted on the wall. The multiscan of the man’s brain was mostly normal, except for the bright blob sprouting from the left hemisphere. The doctor turned to the man. He was mostly normal, too, except for the weeping ulcer on his chest. But as with all his other symptoms, the ulcer was abnormal, as demonstrated by the glossy white molars sprouting in a clump from its center. The doctor suppressed a disgusted sneer and turned back to the display.

“It probably does think,” she said, stroking her chin, “I don’t know what Dr. Glasseter told you, but it’s no brain tumor. It’s a pleurineoplasm.”

“A what?”

The doctor rolled her eyes. That was the problem with these longevity treatments: people got them without having any idea how they worked or what side-effects there might be. She frowned at the patient. “I think your brain is trying to grow an extra lobe.”

The man blinked. “Why?”

The doctor scowled, and the man recoiled. “Why? What do you think? It’s the Novos. How long have you been taking it?”

“A few years.”

The doctor shrugged. “Well, there you go, then. Your body is throwing off stem cells like crazy, and without any real regulation, sometimes they get confused. Didn’t they explain all of this to you after the surgery?”

The man self-consciously touched the scar beneath his armpit where a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic had pulled a fully-formed kidney out of the patient’s lung. The doctor wanted badly to shake her head at the man and laugh.

“Well…he said, looking down at the floor and swallowing loudly. He looked up with renewed confidence. “Just the price of immortality, I guess.”

This time, the doctor couldn’t help but laugh. The man squinted at her. When she regained her composure, she walked up to him and pointed at the toothy lesion on his chest.

“Immortality? You’re going to keep getting those. Dentate teratomas are the most common side-effect of Novos. How long do you think it’ll be before you get one in your brain? Or you get one in your heart that gets gingivitis and gives you a fatal blood infection? Mr. Greene, you’ve been suckered.”

He scratched at the lesion and picked aimlessly at its teeth.  “I was running laps a week after the lung surgery. Whatever accidentally grows on or in me, I can have it removed and recover just fine.”

“No you can’t,” the doctor said. Her voice had grown solemn, and the patient stared at her, startled.

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t have the brain growth removed. Thanks to the Novos, it’s already forged connections with pretty much every anatomical structure. That’s why you’re hearing the voices, that’s how you can tell it thinks: you’re hearing the neoplasm’s thoughts. If we tried to remove it, we’d probably take most of your brain with it. I project you’ve got about two months before you’ve got too much brain to fit in your skull and you slip into a coma and die.”

The patient looked up at her. He scratched his toothy lesion and blinked wetly.

Author : Richard “Zig” Zagorski

Amanda awoke from a deep slumber and saw that her alarm clock would be going off in ten minutes. Not pressing enough to climb out of bed to turn it off just yet, but unfortunately also too little time left to fall back asleep.

However it only took a moment or so for her to realize that today was the day. The day she’d be finally free of her mood ring. Suddenly the morning seemed full of promises she had rarely dared to dream of for fear her ring would betray her. Shout out that she was not on an even keel. Medications to bring her back into ordained normality would follow if the ring reported such emotions becoming commonplace.

She had already been using unlawful ware the past few months to occasionally fudge the logs her ring kept. Logs which would be dutifully uploaded by her ring for expert systems and her parents to review each time she entered the warm embrace of the home network. Uploaded each time she passed a contraband detector at PS 34 for analysis by the school’s psychological systems and even a therapist to review if the records justified flagging by the so-called expert systems.

Altering the logs was a crime warranting a grounding at home and one leading to detention and mandatory group therapy at school. It was worth it though. To hide the “dangerous” pulses of wonder, anger, lust and angst that not even a generation ago would have been considered normal for a girl her age and, more importantly, be something she’d be able to keep to herself and maybe a well hid journal. Finally she’d be secure in her own mind and emotions.

Those occasioned bouts of rebelliousness and the feelings they engendered would soon be more easily had. Watching illicit films like “The Breakfast Club”, reading passed around beat up copies of novels considered too stimulating for kids and teens or listening to the ancient (21 or older only, please!) crooning of Jim Morrison – “Oh tell me where your freedom lies…”

After third period Chemistry hers would lie in a new mood ring. One with altered circuitry and hacked software.

A week ago she had let Harold run a scanner over her ring. He said piece of cake and he’d have her new ring ready in seven days.

If it was so simple she wondered why it should cost her $400 in horded allowance and baby sitting money…but can one put a price on her own freedom?

The few people she dared to raise the subject with all said Harold had the know-how and, more importantly, the connections to get an illicit replacement for her. One encoded to give off the same secret handshakes as her real one and to camouflage all extremes of emotion with bland ordinariness.

Today her ring, which would scream out in vivid red, yellow and violet if she dared be herself and which dutifully tattled on her with seemingly greater enthusiasm than her little sister, would be replaced. The new ring would glow gentle hues, but stay mainly dead, dull, safe, complacent grey. The log files would show brief, low spikes of emotions. A nice, safe, boring, well adjusted teenage girl. Just what every parent wanted and every expert said was the standard to be strived for. Square pegs must be made round!

Today freedom of thought and freedom of experience would be hers. All wrapped up in illusionary grey.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

I got pretty good at morse code after a while.

My co-pilot had a beak. The only way we could figure out how to communicate was if he clicked his beak at me in morse code. He was a pretty impatient dude so he did it really fast. He was wired to the eyeballs with Hexamex for the course changes that might be needed. Being that sped up and prepared for a possibility that might not happen isn’t any kind of fun. Makes a person a little high strung.

The only time he was verbose was when he was making up curses. He didn’t get the abstract notions of my human swear words but he understood actions and verbs so it was fun to hear him be creative when he was telling me off.

One memorable time he told me that my mother enjoyed having sex with hyenas because at least when they laughed at her, she didn’t have to take it as an insult. He also insinuated that my hyena father was where I got my annoying laugh, my short legs, and my hunger for dead animal meat. His race was herbivorous.

He was an Aereacoltra, a flying bird man. He would still be a flying bird man except for the fact that his wings were torn off as part of a prison sentence. He lost an eye in that prison as well during a scuffle over living quarters. Now he’s just a dude with a beak and an eyepatch.

He told me that an antigravity harness is nothing compared to banking and wheeling in a silent sky on a huge pair of wings. That’s the longest thing he told me other than the cursing.

His name was a series of chirps and whistles but I ended up just calling him Stan. Sometimes he hummed to himself as he scanned the instruments for possible pursuit. He sounded like he was gargling marbles but it was oddly musical and whispery.

The irony of the fact that he was a pilot who used to be able to fly wasn’t lost on him. In fact, he took off one of my fingers with that beak of his when I pointed it out.

What’s freaking me out now is that he’s locked himself in his quarters and he hasn’t come out for six days. There’s only so much I can do by myself at the controls before I need some down time. The autopilot’s an emergency measure and we really can’t take the risk of having no one at the wheel, not in this asteroid-laden sector.

“Stan! Get out here! Now!” I pounded and yelled at his door.

Softly, I could hear scrabbling behind the door and then the clicking of the lock. The door swooshed open and there was Stan. He looked exhausted.

“What the hell, Stan? What’s going on! It’s been six days!” I screamed at him.

Stan stepped to the side. Behind him were four eggs. Stan looked at me apologetically.

‘Quadruplets’, he clicked at me with his beak. ‘I guess the condom must have broke at that last space port’

Open-mouthed, I looked from Stan to the eggs and back to Stan again. We weren’t due to dock for another eight months. Stan looked ashamed.

“So should I start calling you Stella instead of Stan?” I asked.

It’s hard to tell when someone with a beak is smiling.

Author : Cesium

Each clutching the other’s hand, they waited atop the Green Building.

They weren’t supposed to be here. No one was. But the tallest building in Cambridge, Massachusetts would soon depart the soil on which it had stood for so long, and they couldn’t have missed the chance to be here. To watch the final stage of Daedalus, from the inside.

Some enterprising soul had planted a replica of an Apollo Lunar Module on the roof behind them, likening to the old Saturn Vs the twenty-one-story concrete box on which it perched. A flag hung above it, unmoving in the still air. The motionless silence unnerved her. There should be wind. There should be people walking far below, talking of subjects she would never understand. Yet there was nothing. Beyond the sheath that now enclosed the building, she could see the labyrinthine tracery of streets that filled Cambridge to the north, the cars in their orderly caravans sliding efficiently from place to place, while the sun crept down to the horizon and the fiery clouds above glowed orange and violet.

But within, the Green Building, neatly packaged for transport, rested in preparation for its own journey.

Around them, a huge tract of land adjacent to the Charles lay vacant, fallow dirt under long shadows. It had of course long since gone to the highest bidder, a Dubai company planning to raise an arcology on the site. But that had to wait until Daedalus finished. Until it cleared away this, the last remnant of old MIT.

It was just MIT now, as it had been for decades, since its focus had shifted offworld and “Massachusetts” had become inaccurate (and also, if the rumor was to be believed, so it could sue the pants off MarsTech). For almost as long the original campus, here in Cambridge, had been suffering from declining admissions and increasing irrelevance. Yet its reputation remained untarnished, and history still lived in its bones. So now, as the wealth of the outer system was starting to pour back to the mother planet, the children of MIT, the architects and the chemists and the astroengineers, had returned to lift these old halls into the future. Just because they could.

And that was Daedalus.

Giant engines above had raised the buildings of MIT one by one out of Earth’s gravity well. An unprecedented feat, it had taken years and drawn the awe and fascination of the world. Enclosed in protective organic sheaths, miracles of bioengineering, the buildings floating like soap bubbles among the stars had joined the construction of New Boston, a gigantic space station with artificial gravity. Not all had emerged unscathed, of course, but that most survived had given them courage enough to stand here on this night, looking out over the city spread below them.

There was a slight tremor beneath their feet; the near-transparent sheath rippled noticeably. Cables, pillars and struts holding the building in place adjusted automatically. Her hand tightened its grip on his. It was time.

“Boston is lovely at night,” he said, slowly. “But you have to see it from above–”

They leapt toward the sky.

Author : Ian Rennie

When the doctor asked Lacey what he could do for her, she explained everything. She told him about growing up plain, being ignored by boys and teased by girls every day of her school life. She told him about Joey LeMartin’s hypnotic blue eyes that never swung in her direction. Then, she told him what she wanted.

The doctor nodded slowly, thinking about payment under the table, black market cash.

“It will be expensive”

Money, Lacey said, was no object.

Four months later, all the scars healed and the course of medication finished, she was back in her home town, standing outside a bar she knew he visited. Tomorrow night was the ten year reunion. She wouldn’t be attending, her reunion was tonight.

When he came out, he was exactly as Lacey remembered him. The hair was in a short business cut, and he had the beginnings of a spare tire, but he was still the same Joey LeMartin.

“Joey.”

He turned to look at her, and didn’t recognize her. She hadn’t expected him to.

“It’s me. Lacey Monroe, from high school.”

He frowned for a second until the name clicked. She wasn’t surprised. He was associating the name with a dowdy duckling, not the swan before him. Finally, he got it.

“Lacey! Yeah, we were in geography together, weren’t we? Wow, you look great.”

She did look great. She had paid to look great, but it was good to hear him say so.

“I’m in town for the reunion, and I thought I’d look up old friends. You want to go get a drink?”

He did. With how she looked, anyone would.

Hours later, they were in her hotel room. She poured bourbon into plastic glasses. He loosened his tie and made flirtatious small talk. The big moment was coming, they could both feel it.

“I wish I’d got to know you better in school,” he said, looking down her cleavage, “I really missed out.”

“Well, you can always get to know me now.” she said, putting the glass down.

He leaned in for the first kiss. As he did, she looked into his hypnotic blue eyes. The plasma disruptor behind her artificial right eye gave off a charging whine that only she could hear.

They would find him tomorrow in a hotel room under a fake name. The face would be too badly burned for iris or dental recognition, but the fingerprints would eventually identify him.

It would take him several hours to die, his blue eyes burned out, unable to cry.

Or to put it another way, he would remember her for the rest of his life.

Author : Rob Burton

I sip champagne, and snatch a truffle from the waiter’s tray. A flush of excitement rushes through me as a handsome man catches my eye from across the room. A moment to politely disengage himself from his group, and he moves towards me like I am the only person in the room.

‘Miss Harrow?’ he asks rhetorically, ‘I’m Leon Gibbs. I’m a great admirer of your work.’

I offer him my hand, inviting him to kiss it. I know, in that instant, that this will be the man I marry.

An irritating alarm beeps and my world fades to grey. I regain my mundane flesh and lift the immersion visor from my face. Beside me, oblivious to my company, sits the real Miss Harrow, now Mrs Gibbs, the equipment that helps her relive her favourite memories protruding from her scalp. An arrow projected on the wall marks out which of her companions needs my attention.

I pass rows upon row of patients sat behind beatific smiles. My occasional colleague, Byson, tells me that he finds their fixed grins creepy. Unfortunately for him, there are few jobs other than nursing. He’s saving to move out to the reforestation projects, saying he’d rather attend machines, but I like these old people, living in the time machine of their own memories. Their lives had infinite variety, much more so than any I could live in this depleted world.

With all the world pillaged into their bank accounts, and automatic systems ensuring it stays that way, the comparably tiny number of us under a century old attend them while we wait to inherit. We try to stitch the world back together as best we can, and hope that future generations might appreciate our efforts, and we wait to sit here and relive our own happy times.

An I.V. pipe hangs loose from Mrs Patel. I find a vein, insert it and tape it back into place. She mutters ‘Naveed’. Her son. I wonder if, when I am in her place, I will remember times from my own life, or hers.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

“Another fuckin’ night at the VFW,” Jerry Pesetski thought gloomily to himself. His arm hummed loudly as he raised the glass to his mouth. Halfway to his lips the movement stopped with a sharp grinding sound. “Damn government piece of shit,” he growled.

In a drunken fit of rage he tried to throw his glass at the wall. His fingers failed to release and he merely spattered the nearest barflies with beer.

He slammed his arm on the bar, shattering the glass in his stainless steel hand. “Look at thish shit,” he slurred, waving his malfunctioning right arm above his head, “iss not even a proper proshthetic. It’s from maintenance `bot.” He motioned for another beer, grabbed it in his left hand, and finished it in one go.

He swung around nearly knocking his drinking buddy, Ron Kazner, off the bar where he was perched and addressed his reluctant audience, many of whom had at least one prosthetic appliance themselves.

“Twenty-two fuckin’ years I served. The Israeli Invasion, the…the… Vatican Wars, and the Colonial Lunar Wars. Not a scratch on me. A bona fidy war hero, a chest full of fruit salad, and then some goddamn punk, fresh out of Paris Island , doesn’t know the bore from the breech, blows my fuckin’ arm off at the range.”

He tossed back another beer. “And this is what the VA gave me. A second hand arm that doesn’t even fuckin’ work.” He waved the gleaming metal limb wildly, nearly dislodging his friend a second time. “I hear the arms they give the goddamn officers are fully functional in every way. They even have Syntheskin, with full tac…tac…tactile…ya can feel titties with ‘em.. Hell, the way I heard it those arms are so good, you can switch hands while you’re jackin’ off and gain a stroke.” He barked a bitter laugh.

“Hey Jer, Why don’t you lay off the beer and give it a rest? Nobody wants to hear it,” Ron croaked. His voice held a peculiar metallic quality as it resonated through his artificial larynx.

“What the hell would you know about it? You were only in the Corps for tree years. Only in combat once. Didn‘t do a whole lot of good there anyway.” Jerry threw back another beer. “Pussy,” he added.

“Yeah Jer,” he sighed, “you’re right. What would I know? I’ve never had a limb replaced with a rebuilt arm designed for a robot garbage collector. What the hell do I know?” His voice through the tiny loud speaker took on the sound of rustling leaves. The closest thing he could get to sarcasm from his synthetic voice.

“Yer goddamn right. Don’ ya ferget it. Jes try spending a day in my shoes why don’cha,” he bellowed, slamming his arm on the bar again, splintering the wood beneath.

“Whatever, just give me another beer.”

Carefully, Jerry removed the lid from the small tank that sat on the bar and poured a beer into the nutrient rich soup that bathed Ron’s naked brain