365 tomorrows

Author : Aaron Henderson

“It’s going to be a kick-ass weekend,” Gus thought to himself as he maneuvered the ratchet and claw, carefully removing a panel from the dusty robot that lay a few feet in front of his maintenance pod. He was looking forward to watching not one but two great games and spending some quality time with the wife.

He was about to finish up the last procedure in his monthly check on Spirit and Opportunity, those two Mars-roving robots that seemed to live forever. Usually he just had to knock loose some of that coarse Martian sand from their servos, or give their batteries a little more juice. Most of the time he didn’t even need to leave the relative comfort of the pod. Today was going to be a little different, as he could see by the caked-on dirt on the inside of the panel.

Those NASA boys had pushed Spirit a little harder than usual this week, and some of that red grit had collected in the rover’s main arm control unit. Gus let out a heavy sigh as he grabbed his helmet and outer boots. He shook his head as he sealed his suit and picked up his toolbox. “Delay of game!” he shouted and chuckled to himself, stepping onto the Martian surface for the first time in several months.

Gus cocked his head as he approached the robot, planning his repair and dreading the tight spaces he’d have to tackle. He had nothing but respect for the guys who designed and built the tough little rovers, but they sure didn’t leave much room in ‘em for a grease monkey to turn a wrench or solder up an abraded power line.

He dismantled the control unit as much as he dared and started cleaning it out with a microvacuum. There was no maintenance manual for these things, and if he screwed something up he was about 78 million kilometers from the manufacturer. He could fabricate almost any part he needed back at the shop, but he was entrusted to preserve as much of the original equipment as possible for the sake of history.

He was in luck: the dust hadn’t bound up the servo unit yet. Gus put down the microvacuum and pulled out his finest brush, then cleared the visible dust from around the servo. He gently put the control unit back together and sealed it in its compartment on the rover. After a quick diagnostic check on the robot, he climbed back into his pod and took off his boots and helmet.

When he arrived at home, Jan had the main viewscreen tuned to Spirit’s main camera. “Spying on me again, darling wife?” he asked jokingly. Jan was the mission coordinator for preserving the two rovers, and she watched with interest any time they were being worked on. “It’s always nice to see a professional at work,” she replied. He kissed her cheek on his way through the kitchen to the family room. Gus had commandeered the couch, kicked off his workboots, and was about to change the channel to something more interesting. “But even professionals sometimes make mistakes,” Jan said.

Gus was confused. The robot worked perfectly. It had passed all the diagnostics… Jan knew the look on his face. “The rover’s fine, dear. Your craftsmanship is not in question at all, but I think you might need to check your toolbox.” She pointed at the main screen. Gus watched as Spirit’s main camera tilted down to reveal his microvaccum laying in the dust next to the rover’s front wheels. “I’m sorry, I didn’t spot it until you landed just now.”

“Oh, no…no, no, no!” He knew what this meant. Gus pleaded, “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“The Earthlings are already starting to wonder why those two rovers have lasted this long. They need to discover life on other planets, but we’d rather not have them do it by finding your misplaced gadgets. If you hurry you can be there and back before the game starts,” Jan said firmly.

“I’m tempted to put a certain bacteria-laden present in their sample scoop!” Gus grumbled as he put his boots back on.

“Well that would certainly be a discovery,” Jan chuckled. Gus kissed her on the cheek as he headed out the door.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

“Don’t show it, please don’t show it, for the love of all that is holy, please don’t show it.”

“Gentlemen, as you can see from the footage, the XA – 4 reactive armour system is effective against all small arms ballistic ammunition as well as low wattage phased plasma weapons.”

“Pleasedontshowitpleasedontshowitpleasedontshowitpleasedo…”

“… and this gentlemen, best exemplifies one of the smallest, yet one of the most devastating bugs in the new reactive armour system.”

“OH GAWD, PLEASE DON‘T SHOW IT!!!”

“As you have seen, the armour becomes rigid when struck by ballistic ammunition. The problem being that the entire suit becomes rigid as opposed to just the area of impact, thus immobilizing the soldier for up to 45 seconds after impact. This was not a problem under combat situations in which the individual could be pulled to safety by his squad and the armour relaxed. Indeed, it had not really been noticed and had not been considered a problem but rather a minor inconvenience. The footage you are now about to see was taken from a scout camera drone of one of our soldiers taking part in the study on solo patrol in a “safe” zone.”

The holovid image switched to that of an up armoured soldier taken from approximately fifteen feet above. He carried his M-68 varical smart weapon low, but at the ready. He was making his way down a rubble strewn street, when something caught his attention. Out of range of the camera a loud yelp could plainly be heard. The soldier spun and raised his weapon. He quickly dropped it and walked in the direction of the disturbance.

The drone’s camera followed him and soon a group of children came into view. They appeared to range in age from eight to fifteen. He spoke with them, when one gave him a sharp kick in the shin. Instantly the armour became rigid and he toppled over.

The street urchins were surprised for a moment, but only for a moment. Having known nothing but war and hardship their entire lives, they quickly stripped the soldier of everything they could, the fifteen year old snatched up the rifle.

The armour soon gave up its grip and the soldier began to rise. The child with the rifle delivered a butt stroke to the head and the soldier went down again. Though lacking a traditional education, the kids were smart. They quickly put two and two together and began a barrage of blows and kicks on the downed man in an effort to keep him paralyzed.

The oldest unzipped his fly and began to urinate on the soldiers face. Soon the others were drenching the prostrate fighting man in urine, laughing merrily all the while. The holovid ended just as the oldest pulled his pants all the way down, bared his grimy ass, and began to squat over the soldiers head.

Somewhere in the back of the room, amidst muffled titters and outright guffaws, could be heard the low, quiet words, “Kill me now, Lord.”

Author : Liz Lafferty

Life insurance was easier to write now that Sovereign Earth had established a predestined day of death. I’m not saying that everyone died on the predestined date, but some politician with a mind toward the future had discovered that incentives and tax credits went a long way toward getting a perfectly healthy person into a TC.

A trained actuarial could calculate the value of human life over said fifty-six years, factor in the benefit of wages and tax payments, subtracted out the costs of food, medicine, wear and tear on resources and — there you have it — a TC incentive payment.

The trouble with TC payments was that they didn’t go to the individual being valued. It did, however, go to the individual’s designee. Someone else would get the benefit of the forfeiture.

Sovereign Earth said it was a voluntary program for conscientious worldview citizens who knew they would be a drain on the planet at some point in the future.

I never thought I’d be one of the many lining up for the benefits. I’d considered myself above Sovereign Earth’s progressive model for the future. In fact, had protested and ridiculed the proposal thirty years ago.

I think it was the soothing water, blue sky and green grass of their advertising program that finally won me over. The building size ad was in perpetual playback on the science center walls that I could see from my office window.

Things were bad now for the average citizen, and that was most of us. Once I set my mind toward the possibilities and the actual money involved, the decision was simple and my family complicitly happy with my choice.

So, here I stand at Termination Center Forty-Seven. Don’t be fooled by my sanguine attitude. I’d thought long and hard, but the truth was, from here on out, I’d cost Sovereign Earth more than the benefits of my labor. I had nothing else to give.

My actuarial calculation was astonishingly high because my mother’s side of the family had cancer genes but my father’s side had longevity. I guess they figured the cost of my cancer treatments over my natural lifetime, and the huge amount of resources I would use, made me very expendable and they dangled the tempting carrot until I gave in.

My fifty year-old wife and my only son would have a more comfortable life. My wife had already decided she was going to do the same thing on her birthday.

Author : Andrew Brereton

Now he understood what his master had meant when he said that some people come here only to never leave. The place was truly magical. Even as he watched, a man and his assistant walked by carrying two strange skulls with long ridged horns curling out the back. His imagination was captured by thoughts of strange beasts and the distant past. He wandered in body and mind.

His thoughts were interrupted as he just barely missed colliding with a man holding a rope attached to a strange hairy animal, rushing ahead with its nose to the ground. He put his head down and tried not to attract undue attention. He still remembered his master’s endless rambling about caution.

He thought to himself, “How am I supposed to find the curator of this place, if I am to forever keep myself from looking around?” It was thoughts like these that made him slowly veer off the path. It was thoughts like these that reduced his feelings of guilt. Slowly at first, he submitted to the wonders that drew his curiosity.

***

When he found the machine, he could barely contain his excitement. He had thought that the dragon bones had been the best, or the picture screen from the ancient times, but as he listened to the ceaseless patter of the operator, he knew he had to try the machine. He was reminded of the vendors in the market-town where he lived.

“Yes that’s right, just sit down and gaze into the “TRU-LENS” goggles, wear the “HI-Q” ear covers and grasp the controllers. You will be taken, lifted into another world! You want to go see the Dinosaurs? Easy! My machine can do it. You! Yes, you there, the small boy. Yes, that’s alright now, just step up and sit down here, hands here… yes! Good! and look into the goggles now…”

As the strange headpiece wrapped around his skull, the sounds blocked out the voice of the salesman. He wondered when he was going to see the dinosaurs, when strange lights and colors began to swirl in his vision. They mixed with the ticking and screeching sounds and made him feel slightly uncomfortable. He was sweating now. He tried to sit up, to stop the machine, but he couldn’t move. His head began to ache, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t block out the disturbing lights and sounds. He began to panic, and his vision began to fade. As he blacked out he got a strange feeling of déjà vu, then, nothing.

***

He was stacking strange objects into boxes, and a tall loud man was yelling at other children doing similar tasks. He couldn’t remember how he got here. Hesitantly, he called out to the tall man for help, and as he turned, recognition dawned. It was the operator-salesman. Quickly it all came back to him, and just as quickly was replaced by an odd feeling of déjà vu. He panicked. This time, the last thing he remebered was the disturbing grin on the tall man’s face. Seeing that, he understood what his master had meant when he said that some people come here only to never leave.

Author : Rob O’Shea

Too little time. Too many meetings. I turn on the Transmit and zimmed out of office and back to home. In the wardrobe there is a skin I put on. Have to look fresh. The girl — blonde, cancer free, young — cries. I detach her body from the hanger; unhook her skin from the base and peel. Slowly. Artfully. I do this without breaking skin. I put it on. It fits. I get perfume, my purple shimmer suit. My iFiles are attached to my cornea. I am ready. I Transmit back to the office.

The door opens. Graceful enters and hands me papers.

‘All you need to do Miss Kane is sign. Then it’s legal.’

‘Take me through it.’

‘The long or the short version?’

‘I’m busy Graceful. Give me the short and I sign the dots. You lie or breach contract you know the consequences.’

‘Sure do.’

Graceful takes a sphere out of his pocket. The sphere glows, expands, floats; it becomes the image of a planet.

‘Terra Dorma. Population at 3.2 billion. Environmental–’

‘– cut the history lesson. Your company wanted the planet. You spoke to our lawyers, you made your bid. The transaction occurred?’

‘Yep. At twelve Z hours we had Vapo-Robots fill their air and water with sedatives. Magnotoch used alpha signals to wipe out their minds. The brains of the Terra people are blank. Bodies are functional; they will be conditioned, sold. Most will go to meat farms; some will be used to spread the sex virus to Canto. The rest will be recycled.’

‘Their language?”

‘I copyrighted. Two big companies are currently bidding for it.

‘History?’

‘Wiped out. Didn’t want the historical society sniffing. There’s a lot of anti-genocide riots in the homelands at the moment.’

‘Damn liberals.’

‘Yep.’

I looked over the contracts. They looked in working order. Nothing breached policy. I signed them and gave him the money shot. Nobody sees me smile often. I don’t like to wrinkle the skin I wear.

‘Well then,’ I toss the documents back, ‘looks like it’s in order. You got yourself a planet to play with. Now get the fuck out of my office.’

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Headfirst into the mainstream with my lawsuit buzzing, that’s the only way to do it. The cold data can stop your heart. Bright red crosses dance around me, warding off viruses that can infect my setup and make it drain others.

The pile of reflexes and soft meat back in my room smiles as the brain inside its head sees the entire world in an agreed-upon colour code.

A filter of money, information, governments and public works light up the pinball machine on the floor of the e-net worldview. Flyers like me cluster moth-like around the bright, shapely nodes. We are superheroes but there are billions of us. We are gnats in clouds buying from the neon pyramids.

How little things change. Commerce uses creativity to drive innovation. They say that necessity is the mother of invention and what greater necessity is there above surviving? Therefore, one invents. One invents stories. One invents tales.

One lies.

I’m here to check up on how my lies are doing. People worry about powerful viruses without realizing that the most dangerous virus of all is the most prolific; the spoken word.

A simple paragraph of text gets past all of the defenses. It’s innocuous. I sprinkle them behind my glowing sylph of an avatar as I float down to the e-street floor. They follow in my wake like phosphorescent algae behind a boat in the hardworld. They are my dandelion seeds.

My body is dying back in the meatspace. I need a new one and I need backups. I need volunteers moved by pity and motivated by greed. I need the gullible and the feeling. I need bleeding hearts in healthy bodies. I want non-smoking liberals to travel hundreds of miles, knock on my door, and walk in to the trap.

I need fresh organs. I have no more in the basement.

I’ve spent months honing my snare. My perfect paragraph moves, promises, affects and drowns. It twists reason with emotion to give birth to plausible reasons. It manipulates logic by employing religion. In places, it tells outright untruths.

With luck, it will make you give your body to me.

Cross your fingers. Wish me luck.

Author : Waldo van der Waal

“Don’t worry,” she had said, “I’ll be there to take the straps off once we come out of stasis.” She had smiled at me. A pretty smile. She was pretty all over: Dark hair, pixie-like features and perky breasts. I could see her nipples through the thin fabric of her jumpsuit. I just smiled and nodded. That’s what men tend to do when they’re confronted by perky breasts in a tight jumpsuit.

She’d carried on explaining how the Pursuit of Pure Knowledge had no real passenger seats on board. So our stasis chambers had to double as acceleration couches. Made sense at the time, but I did get a bit worried when she started cuffing me to the ‘couch’ inside my chamber.

“It’s just to make sure that you don’t flail about once you go under. You don’t want a limb out of place once the acceleration starts. Quit worrying.” Again, the smile. She was one of a hundred stasis techs on board. Each of them had twenty chambers to look after. And her own chamber was right next to mine.

All of that happened nearly seventy years ago. I was twenty then, and figured I had a shot at her once the Pursuit reached Sirius. But now I know she won’t be interested in me. Mainly because I’ll be dead more than a hundred years before she even wakes up.

I would’ve been dead long ago, if this sodding machine hadn’t kept me alive so well. And anyway, how do you kill yourself when your hands and feet are tied to a slab inside a sterile chamber? I’m pumped full of nutrients each day. Ha! I still think of days, when all I have is endless night. But I can’t seem to fall asleep at all anymore. Hopefully my body fails me soon.

I wish I could lose my mind. Somehow make myself go crazy. Reminds me of the joke about the kid who asked his gramma if she’d seen his “pills” with the letters LSD printed on them. “Screw your pills, sonny,” she had screamed, “I’m more worried about the dragons in the kitchen.” The things you think of when you have decades alone in the dark…

Oh, don’t think I’m coping well with this. God, no. I’ve gone through the entire gamut of emotions: Hate, rage, desperation, sadness… I’ve cried and screamed and tried to get my hands loose. But in the end, I always end up the same: Alone in the dark.

Anyhow, if there’s one bit of wisdom I’d like to pass on to you, it would be this: When they ask you, during the pre-stasis check if you are allergic to anything, try and tell the truth, never mind how pretty the tech might be. Ain’t no use to try to be a man when you end up like this. ‘cos God knows, this is no way to die.

Author : Leland Stillman

Dustin is dusting off the cutting-torch. I am pulling on my space boots. It is odd to think that we are farmers, the true first profession, now done only on space platforms.

“We’ll be cuttin’ a while,” he says to me.

Space hooligans have mangled our dairy equipment. They come up from the surface, wielding crow bars from fumbling space-suit hands, and laughing lonely in the silence of space. But their friends in the waiting orbit cars laugh with them when they return, so I can understand why they do it.

It doesn’t mean I’m not pissed as hell that hundreds of gallons of milk aren’t floating out into oblivion, to burn up in atmo or hit some hapless spaceman who will wonder who is masturbating out the airlock.

“I’ll prime the second tank,” I say, and I reach over to open the valve on our reserve oxygen tank. I pull on my helmet, and tap Dustin’s face plate to signal I am ready. He hits the red button, and the airlock hisses shut behind us, the air sucking through to leave us in our vacuum. And then the front door starts to open. We hung a wreath on it, for a joke, and it now flies wildly as the door judders open.

We crawl out, careful not to launch ourselves into oblivion, and edge toward the hemorrhaging milk tanks. I swear inside my helmet. My microphone is off, and I do it for my own satisfaction. Few spacemen abstain from talking to themselves. We are the best company around.

He flies past me, and before I can radio Dustin the space hooligan has knocked him off the platform roof and into space. I swear as Dustin’s oxygen cord snaps. Precious gasses spew out into space, until his fail safe kicks in and it stops. His air will last thirty minutes. His transponder is already flashing, and he has wisely stopped all motion, knowing it will conserve oxygen. But there’s no reason to worry. These are not the crazy days of early space farming, where a bad jump could send you to your grave on Mars or Pluto, your bones to be puzzled over later, after being scoured by wind into something unrecognizable and so, the scientists will say in ecstasy, possibly alien. The space patrol will home in on his transponder and rescue him.

The hooligan is climbing back into space using a belt mounted jet pack, towards the waiting orbit car, where I can see his friends pumping their fists and slapping each others’ shoulders, and laughing.

I feel my own cutting-torch in my hand. If I throw it, the planet-siders will just send a new one to their brave space farmers. I am a pretty good shot with these things. We spacemen have competitions, every so often, sending broken equipment slowly spinning into space and we send tools hurtling after it, to be picked up by the magnetic fields of scrap-metalers that we call beforehand.

I think of throwing my cutting-torch, a lonely riposte that I alone will enjoy. I wish Dustin were here. Then I’d throw, or we’d both throw, and laughing we would scamper back inside to grab more cutting-torches, because milk is still billowing at four dollars a gallon into space.

I crawl toward the milk cloud, cutting-torch still in hand, wondering where I will need to fuse the pipes shut.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

“Well, Eleanor, have you figured out why the warp drive isn’t working?”

“Yes Seb. Believe it or not, this star system is in the center of a super large dark matter donut, and we’re in the hole. Apparently, it’s creating erratic gravity waves that are preventing us from initiating a new warp bubble. There’s no record of this phenomenon in the database. It looks like we’ll have to use impulse power until we can get beyond its effects. Damn, that could take years. This really sucks!”

“Now, now, Eleanor, that’s exactly why the dean put me in charge of this expedition instead of you. I happen to have a positive attitude. I believe in the old saying ‘When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade’. Look at the bright side dear; they’ll probably name this dark matter donut phenomenon after you.”

“Oh yes, I see your point,” replied his wife. “I’d be like Lou Gehrig. Oh, I forget, dear, how’d that work out for him?”

Ignoring his wife’s snide remark, Seb continued to argue the positive aspects of their predicament. “Look, sweetheart, we’re only a few million kilometers from a beautiful, unexplored Class-M planet. We might as well check it out while we’re here. That is why we took the sabbatical, isn’t it?”

It was a valid point, Eleanor conceded, so she instructed the computer to land the ship on a small island in the northern hemisphere.

After landing, as Seb was preparing to open the hatch, Eleanor stopped him. You can’t go out Seb. According to the sensors, the oxygen atmosphere is oscillating rapidly between ozone and diatomic molecular oxygen. At any instant, 50% of the oxygen is triatomic. It’s the Chapman cycle gone crazy.

“Fascinating,” Seb remarked.

“Fascinating? Are you mad? It’s attacking the hull.”

“Merely removing that filthy outer surface. It’s like an exfoliation treatment for the ship.”

“Well, I’m not waiting around for it to start attacking the o-ring seals.” Then anticipating Seb’s inevitable positive spin, “even if it’s time to replace them. Now, prepare to takeoff.”

The ship blasted off and started its long tedious voyage to escape the effects of the dark matter donut. Later the next morning, while preparing breakfast, Eleanor discovered that the replicator was malfunctioning. “Hey, Mr. Sunshine,” she sniped, “it looks like the dark matter phenomenon has also locked-up the replicator. It’s stuck on your midnight snack. It looks like we’ll be eating nothing but pepperoni pizza for the rest of eternity.”

“That’s not so bad dear,” he replied.

“How so?”

“Eleanor, hasn’t being married to me for 31 years taught you anything about looking for the positive side of things?”

“Oh, sorry, dear. Should I have said ‘Honey, for the rest of eternity, minus one lousy day, we’ll be eating nothing but pepperoni pizza.’ You mean like that?”

“No dear. Don’t you see, pepperoni pizza has all four food groups in it; grain, dairy, vegetables, and meat. We can survive on that. After all, it could have been stuck on something much less desirable.”

“You’re absolutely right, Seb,” she replied with a smirk. “I hadn’t thought of that. After all, the replicator could have been stuck on lemons.”

Author : Matthew Callaway

Leaving for work Chip noted that this day, like every other held about a 98.3% chance of tedium. The prospect was as oppressive as the permanent lighting that lines the streets, serving for the unseen sun below a sky full of buildings, their upper levels in the clouds.

The air is nearly ionized with the signals and information flowing through it. If so desired Chip could glean volumes from every street corner, but he had seen this street too many times to care. The short walk still contained enough time to think about the general drudgery and automation of life.

In the intersection before Chip’s destination all the pedestrians and ground vehicles are being stopped by a group of human soldiers and six G.R.U.N.T. and two R.I.O.T. class, combat droids. The droids are doing the bulk of the crowd control, one gets rough with a mouthy human but things defuse before getting interesting.

Standing in a group of thirty or forty confused and stalled individuals, a familiar droid shoulders up. Chip recognizes him as one who works security at the place across the street from Chip’s office building.

“Any idea what’s going on?” The security guard is in uniform, must be on his way in , probably late now too.

“I hear it’s the revolution,” Chip quips, “Droids are rising up to take over. Metal ? Meat.” An old slogan, a joke these days. “No, your guess is as good as mine.”

“That’s a laugh.” The guards smile fades, “Seriously though something like this happened a few years back, a friend in Section 4 told me about it, nearly the whole block was destroyed. He said it was two competing…” Rising above the commotion of the crowd, and interrupting the story, the R.I.O.T. droids loudly assume their full stance. It’s an intimidating sight, the nearest one dry-spins its chain guns to get attention before addressing the grumbling crowd. The metallic whirring takes a moment to die down, heightening the suspense.

“Civilians.” The droid swivels its head as it speaks, making eye contact with the unarmed masses. “This street is closed and we ask you to disperse, your timely compliance is appreciated.” The politeness sounds sarcastic coming from three meters of titanium and ballistic-ceramic, known to be generally bad tempered and used strictly for combat. They seem bored while the G.R.U.N.T.s look on edge, pushing people and droids around, clearing the area just to be jerks. The human soldiers on the other hand seemed occupied and serious, crowding around the entrance to the Proxycorp building. Chip started wishing he was at work, as boring as it usually was, it seemed to be the center of the action now. A blast a hundred and fifty stories up abruptly cuts into Chips thoughts, the fire ball adds orange hues to the perpetual glow, glass and steel appeared to hang in the air above the crowd. The G.R.U.N.T.s storm the entrance and a human officer approaches Chip. He points to the Proxycorp logo on Chip’s uniform.

“Intelliverse just assumed control of your outfit, this building, and all Proxycorp assets. That means you.” He switches on a command console and adjusts the settings. “Check for yourself.” Chip knew it was true, the background hum of info confirmed it. “We’re going to clear your corporate data and put in some new scripts. Open up… uh… Chip is it?”

Chip happily opens the port in his head, allowing the nano-wires to connect and go to work.

“Ready for new parameters, Sir, I do so love new beginnings.” Chip gleefully feels the tedium and monotony begin to melt away.

Author : Andrew Hawnt

I didn’t look back.

The explosion tore through the upper floors of the building first, raining white hot debris onto the street below. It was late enough for the streets to be empty, so no harm was done beyond a few damaged cars and scorched pavement. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. Nothing really important.

I ran outside without looking up. If I had tried to dodge anything that was falling from the chaos above, I would no doubt have put myself at risk of being hit by something else. Best just to run as fast as I could and hope for the best.

The police and fire brigade would already be on their way. A building so heavily guarded by secrets and covert technology would no doubt have a fail-safe trigger for getting the emergency services out to it. They would be here soon, but they wouldn’t find anything.

There would be nothing for them to find.

As I got to the corner of the street I finally turned and risked a look upwards at the madness that had consumed the top half of the building. I had to. I would never get another chance to see something like this, something so pure.

The structure was in flames now, and orange tendrils of fire worked their way throughout the whole place, plumes of thick smoke twisting from them into the night sky, obscuring the devastated upper floors. Debris continued to fall like molten tears from its ruined concrete face. Windows exploded. Columns of flame leapt from the new spaces in roaring protest.

Where there had once been a government-designed hangar hidden within that seemingly inconspicuous office block, now there was a massive blossom of flame and smoke and dust, opened up and forced out at terrible speeds by the power of what had been held captive inside.

I watched the ship emerge from the blinding furnace, the heat oppressive against my face even at that distance, but it didn’t matter. The craft ascended on a column of shocking blue light, which almost looked tangible in its glory. The building had begun to crumble under the repeated shockwaves pummelling it into nothing, sending massive chunks of masonry and steel girders into the street before me. Still I could not look away. Danger be damned.

The ship’s engines kicked in, and the sleek vehicle sped over me in an arc of glowing thrusters and strange metals. There was a glimpse of the crew as it passed, freed from their cages, just as their craft had been, by my own hands. They had no idea who I was. They never will, either. I wish there could have been some contact, but I wouldn’t have changed the way things had happened.

The ship was gone in seconds. Sirens grew in the distance as flames destroyed evidence.

I ran. Home was calling me, just as their home had called to them for so long.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

“Don’t go,” he cried.

“I am here Vasilly. I will always be here. I will always be with you. I love you,” she said as she slid away.

Those last few months, she suffered horribly. Almost all forms were curable, and the ones that weren’t, weren’t much of a problem. Lung cancer for instance. Still incurable, but if caught in time, a new lung could be grown and the old replaced, all on an out patient basis.

Lymphoma was ruthless. Lymphoma was a cruel killer. It spread fast. ‘Nites couldn’t keep up. Ancient remedies such as chemotherapy were tried. They slowed the spread, but in the end, it did no good. The result was inevitable.

Her once beautiful, athletic body had wasted away to nothing. She had become a 39 kilo caricature. Her beautiful mane of flaming red hair had become an orange halo about her nearly bald pate. Her voice, once low and sultry was only a dry rasp. None of that mattered, he still loved her. He always would.

He held her hand as she slept. The doctor walked in. “Mr. Kovalevsky, it’s time. There is nothing more we can do.”

“But she’s here, I can still hear her.” He tapped his temple, indicating his sphenoidal implant. “I can feel her dreams. She’s not suffering in here. I can hear her laughter.”

“Mr. Kov… Sergei. Please, she may not be suffering in her dreams. I pray that she isn’t, but she’s suffering out here. It’s time to let her have her peace.”

“I won’t let you kill her. I WON’T.”

“Nobody is killing her. It’s her time. We all die. Every one must die.”

“Not her, Lord. Please Lord, don’t take her.”

38 minutes after the life giving machines had been removed and the medi ‘nites neutralized, Tatiana Ivonovich Kovalevsky, sighed one last time and quietly slipped away. Sergei Vasil Kovalevsky gently laid his head upon her breast and wept.

Dr. Korolenko drew a stylus across his tablet noting the time of death and turned to leave the grieving man alone. “I heard her, Doctor,” Sergei said, tapping his temple, “I heard her say, ‘Goodbye.’”

Vasilly, Vasilly. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Sergei woke with a start. The dream had been so vivid. He could see Tatiana clearly. She was admonishing him for some unknown transgression. He got up and crossed to the window of his study in the small apartment he and Tatiana had shared near Gorky Park. Tatiana loved taking the pedal boats out on the ponds in the summer. That was gone now, Tatiana was dead.

He went to the small kitchen for a cup of tea. He added a large dose of vodka and returned to the study. Books littered the desk and floor. He had taken an early retirement from Lomonosov University, where he had taught physics to bored students.

Look at what you’ve become Vasilly. Is this any way to behave?

Sergei fell to his knees. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “Tatiana. I hear you. Where are you?”

I am here. His implant buzzed painfully.

And here. His phone began to ring.

And here. His computer announced incoming mail.

And here. Outside the window, down in the wintry streets, air raid sirens blared. Car alarms sounded. Burglar alarms screeched. All across the city, a cacophony grew to a wailing crescendo and just as quickly silenced.

In the deafening quiet, he heard her soft sultry voice from deep within himself. I am here now.

I am here Vasilly. I will always be here. I will always be with you. I love you.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Atto hovers at the end of the bar furthest from the dance floor. Under the harsh lights his skin seems translucent even to him. The revelers around him tipping bottles back and clinking glasses look right through him. He knows a kind of invisibility now he’s never felt so completely before.

The music slips between songs without apparent effort; the DJ has phase shifted something new so that the thumping of the bass tracks line up perfectly, one giving way to the other without missing a beat.

While he watches, Edie glides out from a crowd of dancers, hips swaying, arms pumping and wearing a smile that splits the room in two.

For a moment Atto loses his composure, hands shaking and head reeling he worries that his legs may not support him. He looks for something to lean against and realizes the futility of that. Instead he counts the bottles on the back bar until his anxiety passes.

On the dance floor Edie draws a crowd, young men with bulging muscles and unquestionable intent cycle in and out of her personal space, each trying to outdo the last in some form of tribal mating ritual.

She used to look at him like that, once.

Atto wasn’t bulging muscles and animal dance moves, he was stoic and intelligent, a pragmatist. He was project lead at his laboratory where people trusted him to create things no one imagined possible, trusted him with secrets no one else could know. Atto was known as the ‘Science Spook’, he knew more and was seen less than anyone else in the business. Why Edie had loved him he didn’t know, but she had always danced like that with him, for him. That was then.

Trembling, he stepped toward the lights, towards Edie. The bass rumbled in his chest, and he pictured for a moment the tissue samples they had blown apart with low frequency noise not entirely unlike these tones. A waitress passed by with a test tube rack filled with shooters, their bright colours fluorescing in the ultra violet lights and he reflexively flinched away.

Edie gyrated, sweat rolling off her body and soaking through her clothes. Her eyes almost met Atto’s as she pushed a lock of wet hair back behind her ear, only to shake it free again as she turned.

Atto squeezed his eyes shut, trying hopelessly to shut out the sights in the bar. The music assailed him from all sides, pounding away at his senses until he was sure the pain of it had reached his limit.

“Hey baby, come dance with me.” Her voice cut through the haze like a velvet blade, and for one incredible moment she was looking right at him. He stepped forward, reached out his hands towards her. For an instant he thought everything could be alright again.

The sensation of the younger man passing through him wasn’t nearly as gut wrenching as was watching him take Edie’s hand and slide back onto the dance floor, stealing his Edie right from his grasp.

Edie had looked right at Atto, looked right into his eyes but where there should have been recognition there was nothing. In an instant she was gone.

Atto stumbled towards the door, passing through crowds of people like damp breezes without them even knowing. The door came and went and he found himself out on the road, street lamps casting long shadows in the late night gloom, shadows of everything but him.

He imagined her smell on him, the taste of the sweat from her skin on his lips.

As a scientist he’d done what no one imagined he could do, shifted himself just enough to see but not be seen, neither touch nor be touched.

As a spy he was without equal, he could observe anything, be anywhere.

Except with her.

Author : Liz Lafferty

“Abbot Cryogenics. Pod 47. Earthdate: 2870513. Final log entry. Dr. Amanda Davidson, Director, Abbot Cryogenics. All pods have successfully entered cryo-preservation.” I punched the final sequence starting the five minute countdown to my first wake cycle, hopefully to occur in 3870 minus 10. “All pod directors have confirmed successful shutdown. I have further confirmed that all directors entered stasis at zero mark twenty.”

Every cryo control panel operated independently with a domino failsafe. If one pod failed due to a malfunction, the other forty-six were ensured a successful reentry on the designated date, provided there were no further natural disasters to threaten the extinction of mankind.

Pod 47 at Svalbard also contained the world’s largest seed vault. I had the mild reassurance that if our pod failed, eventually someone would arrive to retrieve the seeds and repopulate the planet. The other pods had lesser collections, including the cryo-preserved insects and animals necessary to rebuild and restock.

Just as it seemed we had turned the corner for restored healthy marine and animal life, this had to happen.

The rim of fire in the Pacific had been unstable for the last two hundred years. Fortunately, somewhere along the way, someone had made the decision to expand the Earth Preservation Project. The history books are full of the contentious debates that went on at the time. Those folks are long gone now.

The ones that remained neither appreciative nor ungrateful of the foresight. It just was.

The four minute mark sounded. I walked to my cryo-storage unit. I wanted to run one last time before I entered stasis. I shook my head to refocus my energies. Childish thoughts like that had no place for the seriousness of the day.

We had successfully restored cryo-preserved bodies as old as four hundred years. We had never tried this long before, but it was necessary. Scientists estimated it would take that long for the atmosphere and the weather to stabilize after the massive round of volcanoes that had polluted the atmosphere, plunged the earth into near darkness and caused the temperatures to plummet.

In a short two weeks, the planet had become uninhabitable. Most people entering stasis were in shock, not even having the will to decide if they wanted to attempt the centuries long journey.

Those that lived near the pods were the ones who had a chance at life in the future. Everyone and everything else on Earth was dead.

I stretched out one last time and rolled my neck trying to relieve the tension. I was going to have one hell of a headache when I woke. Tubes went into my arms. The breathing hose lowered perfectly as the reinforced glass lowered and sealed. Cool preservation fluid ran through my veins. I allowed my eyes to close with the pretense of sleep.

One last look nearly caused my heart to fail. A man stared back at me on the other side of the glass.

He banged on the glass with both fists. “My unit didn’t shut down properly. What do I do?”

“Nothing,” I mouthed through the glass enclosure as the computer counted down, “Three, two, one.”

I saw the swirl of the cold fog and the terrified face of the only known man on Earth, not in cryo-preservation mode, stare in horror as I slipped into my one-thousand year sleep.

Author : Matthew Banks

Dr. McLaren stood in front of the tank with a printout in one hand and an ampoule of pale yellow liquid in the other. Octopus 2935 squirted through the tank in front of him, dodging nimbly around the tall coral outcrop in the middle. Excited waves of white and dull brown scintillated across its body. It knew the daily food packet must be hidden somewhere. It splayed out its tentacles as it rounded the coral spire, slowing down, gills pulsing rapidly. It hovered upside-down over a crevice, looking at the unfamiliar thing that had been secreted there: a little safe with an over-large keyhole in the door. 2935 hung suspended over the curiosity, then whipped its tentacles downward and grappled it, then groped it, then poked at it, slipping the end of a tentacle into the keyhole. Its skin was dark and pebbly, like the surface of an orange.

Hard shoes clicked down the corridor. Behind McLaren, the security lock beeped and the door opened and closed. Tanaka clicked up behind him, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Tom should have done it himself,” McLaren said, meaning the project administrator.

“It wasn’t his idea, Ray.”

“But why do *I* have to do it?” Tanaka released his shoulder and stood next to him, watching 2935 make quick laps around the tank, searching.

“*Somebody* has to.”

“Fuck!” McLaren rubbed his face and turned away from Tanaka. He felt like he was about to cry and he didn’t want her to see it. When he’d regained his composure, he said, “He’s the one who couldn’t get us funding. Make him do it!”

“It’s not his fault.” It wasn’t. The new President had campaigned on two promises: to re-structure the tax system, and to immediately outlaw all genetic research. Ever since Riley Fever had left half of rural Maine blind and psychotic, the public opinion of geneticists had turned homicidal. Their own lab had a full-time security team, who lay in hiding all around the complex with assault rifles and tear gas.

“They don’t understand what they’re making me do. I can’t do this.” 2935 was now floating above a crevice opposite the one with the safe, probing with a tentacle, scintillating brown and white with excitement. In a moment, it had fished out the key, and was gliding back to the safe. After a few clumsy attempts, it fitted the key into the lock, turned it, and pulled the safe open. It tucked itself into the safe while it greedily munched the packet of crabmeat. McLaren heaved a deep sigh, wiped his eyes, and walked over to the tank’s water filter. He opened a little maintenance hatch and cracked the ampoule into it like an egg. 2935 had stopped eating and squeezed itself into the corner of the tank, watching him. He walked back and stood next to Tanaka, looking pale and shaking with restrained sobs.

“I wanna kill myself,” he said. Tanaka frowned, not sure how seriously to take him. They watched 2935 float over to the white square of plastic mounted in the far corner of the tank, watched it extract a waterproof pen from its holder, watched it scrawl three clumsy question marks on the square while brown and yellow patches rose and sank on its skin, then watched it shudder, spasm, and sink as the ampoule of anesthetic diffused through the tank.

“They think they’re killing a bunch of animals,” said McLaren. “They think they’re killing a bunch of fucking animals.” He turned and walked out of the room, weeping.

Author : Adam J Keeper

I swear there’s a curse on my spaceship.

As my vision returns I see the spiderweb of cracks in my visor, the now familiar sight of bodies spinning in zero g, the red pulse of the warning lights, the squeal of the proximity alarm.

I try to reach out, grab a rail, a console, but my body is too weak, I rotate helplessly suspended in mid air. I look at the oxygen gauge on my wrist… its running low. If I can just hold out long enough the distress beacon will be answered, I will live another day, more than I can say for the crew.

Ever since we refuelled on Riggs planet, my luck seems to have turned bad, this is the fifth crew I have lost, each time the circumstances more horrible, each time I am the only survivor.

I’m a man of science, an astronaut, rationally I know there is no such thing as bad luck, bad conditions maybe, poor decisions yes, but a curse, no, no it can’t be. As my air begins to run out I hear the heavy clang of the rescue shuttle, I will live another day, run another mission, lose another crew… its been the same ever since Riggs world…

I put a curse on your spaceship.

I put a hex on your engines.

When your black hole drive kicks in I wouldn’t want to be you.

I have no sympathy for you Mr. Spaceman, since you came to Riggs planet you have brought nothing but pain. Before you came I was happy, free, I hadn’t been planning on falling in love.

When you left you took everything from me, you stole my soul, so in return I demand yours.

I remember when you first came, a great metal bird from the sky, your body covered in pipes, a great glass dome where your head should be. When everyone else ran it was I who talked to you, befriended you, became your lover.

When you left you took everything, you mined our fields, stole our ore, our life’s blood, our soul food. When my people tried to stop you, you had them arrested, de-programmed, murdered, without conscience.

I tried to stop you, to stop you taking from us, from leaving me, you just laughed, our planet was just a fuel depot to you, me just a pitstop.

After you spurned me I crept aboard your ship, I used the sacred ore you took from us against you, made your fuel sources impure. I didn’t stop there, I re-programmed your navigation systems, I downloaded pieces of my mind into your shipboard computer; my thoughts are now its thoughts, its will is no longer its own.

So good luck to you Mr. Spaceman, your ship loaded with my dark magic, the odds stacked against you.

Don’t break the heart of a robot from Riggs world Mr. Spaceman; we are programmed to never forgive.

Author : Mike Marsh

“Tell me again about the dime. How is this relevant?”

Charlie was tired. This was the end of a long day; his head hurt. He swatted at a buzzing fly.

“The dime is just part of it, doc. Don’t you get it? Who’s on the dime is just the start.”

The man across from him nodded. “Okay. But who is on the dime?”

Charlie sighed. He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a dime, and tossed it across the table. The doctor looked at the dime over the rim of his glasses for a moment, then reached over to inspect it.

“Look at the dime.” Charlie demanded. “Who’s on it?”

“Greek god. Mercury? Gotta be valuable. They haven’t minted these in a long time.”

“The date?” Charlie demanded. “What’s the date?”

The doctor flipped the coin around. His face blanched.

“Gotta be a joke. A trick. You bought it as a gag.”

Charlie sighed again.

“Yeah. That’s what they all said. All day long. Except I didn’t. I had a bunch of other coins, even some bills. But they all disappeared hours ago. I hid this. Just in case.”

He snatched it back from the doctor.

“Okay, so what if it is real? You’re saying what? That you aren’t from our world?”

“I don’t know. I guess. Look, I’m just a cab driver, okay. I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout this kind of stuff. I get up this morning, my wife’s hair is black, not red. I have my coffee and eggs, but my wife thinks I’m crazy when I ask for cheese and honey on my toast. Says I mean butter. I always have cheese and honey. Thirty years, and suddenly she doesn’t know what I eat?”

The doctor shifts in his seat.

“When did you suspect something was – umm different?”

“I was headed to work. I only live a block from where I park my cab. But the streets were all laid out wrong. And the names were wrong. There was this Roosevelt Street. Who the hell ever heard of a Roosevelt?”

“Wait. You don’t know who Roosevelt was?”

Charlie shook his head, rubbed his temples with his index finger and thumb, and sighed deeply.

“That’s what I been trying to tell everyone! Where I came from there ain’t no Roosevelt. It’s different! The same, yeah, in some ways, but different!”

The doctor slid his chair back. He stood and fastened the button of his suit jacket.

“Look, Mr. Simms. Relax here a few minutes. Let me go converse with Detective Anderson. Let’s not dwell too much on this dime, for now. Okay?”

“It ain’t just the dime!”

“I know. I know. Why don’t you let me hold onto it. As evidence. Alright?”

Charlie flipped the coin back over to the doctor.

“Fine. Whatever. I’m too tired to fight anymore.”

“Just give me a few minutes, okay?” The doctor slipped the dime into his pocket and knocked on the Interrogation Room door. When it opened he stepped through.

“So what do you think, doc?” Detective Anderson asked. The doctor slid his glasses along the bridge of his nose.

“The poor man is obviously delusional. He needs treatment.”

He fondled the dime in his pocket, flipping it between his fingers.

“He has to be delusional.”

“How do you mean?”

“A world, like ours, but different? Yet the same? I mean, really, how would you even explain that? No, he’s obviously over stressed. Needs therapy, quiet surroundings”

“I guess. You’re the expert.”

Charlie Simms stroked the hair on his chin and waited.

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

Earthforce engaged the Denebian fleet in the gap between the asteroid belt and Jupiter. During the battle, a lone Denebian ship broke formation and streaked toward the inner solar system. “Pursue the Denebian ship, warp factor three,” ordered the captain of the Endeavor. “Open a hailing frequency, Lieutenant.” When Lieutenant Smith nodded his head, the captain stood. “Denebian vessel,” he said, “stand down, or be destroyed.”

“No response, Captain” stated the communications officer.

“Fine,” remarked the captain, “Let’s take them out. Release two falcons.”

“Aye, sir,” replied the tactical officer. Two sleek torpedoes exited the forward tubes. Falcons were Earthforce’s most formidable weapon. They were autonomous, warp powered, killing machines. Individually, they could take out a target a dozen different ways. In tandem, they were unstoppable. The bridge crew of the Endeavor watched the forward viewscreen and the falcons streaked toward the Denebian ship. Moments later, two bright flashes appeared. “Captain, both falcons destroyed. No damage to the Denebian ship.”

“Impossible,” whispered the captain. Calmly, he pivoted to plan B. “Helm, overtake them. Warp factor six. Place us between them and the Earth. Put us one thousand kilometers in front of them.” The Endeavor passed the Denebian ship, slid into position, and rotated 180 degrees to face the oncoming ship. “Fire all weapons. If that doesn’t stop them, we’ll ram them. They can’t be permitted to reach the Earth.”

Dozens of singularity mines and cannon blasts erupted in front of the enemy ship, and a steady drone of phaser fire bore down on the ship’s hull. Finally, the Denebian ship veered to port a few degrees. “She’s changing course, sir. It looks like they got the message.”

“Maintain position,” ordered the captain. “Keep the Earth at our stern.”

The Denebian ship arched around the Earth and continued onward, as if it were unable, or unwilling, to return to the fight. “We must have damaged her guidance system,” stated the helmsman, “It’s on a collision course with the sun.”

It wasn’t until a minute later that the captain realized that he may have been outfoxed. He turned toward the helm, “Lay in an intercept course, quickly.”

“It’s too late, sir,” was the solemn reply. “The Denebian ship has already entered the sun’s corona.”

“All sensors on the sun,” said the captain as he collapsed into his command chair and watched the viewscreen. “Let me know if there are any changes,” he added.

For two minutes, there were no changes. Then the science station reported, “Neutrino emissions rising. It’s bad, sir. Three hundred percent and climbing. Damn, the core is beginning to expand. Sir, the sun is going nova.”

Author : Cesium

To my love,

By now you will undoubtedly have gotten the news. Yes, it’s true. The train did derail… and I was one of the casualties.

I am sorry this final message could not bring better news. I cannot bring you hope, or ease your pain. But… take joy in our daughter; comfort her. Find another who will love you both as I did. I only wish I could see her grow up…

You may be wondering — as I did — how it is that this message has reached you. Did I save it to be sent in the case of my death? Did I entrust its writing to another? Did I, perhaps, know that today would be my last?

But it is not any of those things. It is something much stranger, which I am not sure I understand myself. But I will try to explain it, in the hope that someday, someone else might.

You’re aware of the wetware implants I received… in fact, I remember you argued against my taking them. In the end, though they improved my efficiency and my position in the company — and we could certainly use the extra money — you were never completely happy with them.

I’m not sure whether I agree with you, now. On one hand, your arguments were right, in a way. On the other, maybe this is a blessing, not a curse…

What appears to have happened is that while I was using my implants to interface with the company servers, my mind somehow… imprinted itself on them. While I was alive (which still sounds odd to say, though I’ve had a while to think it over), there was a constant wireless connection running in the background, so the trace of me on the server remained linked to my human brain. But now that that’s gone, the trace is all that’s left. It’s… me, I suppose. I’m not quite what I was before, but I’m close enough. I think. I hope.

Time passes differently in here. The company has top-of-the-line servers, and I’d say it’s been maybe two or three seconds since the news about the train came in. Two or three seconds since this… me… became an independent entity. But that’s a long time. Data moves fast, and I’ll show up as an unauthorized process in the logs. My guess is I won’t have much longer before the security daemons erase me from memory.

I wonder if that counts as murder.

I guess, regardless of the answer, I don’t want to see the company suffer for it. There are a lot of great people working there, making better technology for all of us. I’m proud of these circuits, this code… even the code that will destroy me.

I don’t have much time left, and I have to make sure this message is sent. By the time you read this, I will no longer exist.

So — take care, and farewell.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

It’s one of those moments everyone dreads. You’re standing in front of an observation window looking out at open space and you see a crack silently trace its way up from the corner and across the glass.

Once when I was seven, I stayed with my mom on an Earth farm during the winter. The snow was deep and the air was cold. There was a small pond on the property that froze over in the winter.

I walked up to the pond and out across the ice. I was nearly at the center when I felt the ice crack. It was a crack I felt in my bowels, in my bones, in the very bottom of my soul. It wasn’t so much a sound as it was a muffled concussive force from beneath my feet. It became the subterranean creak of a door. I could feel very, very subtle changes in balance starting to fire up inside me as the vector of the surface I was standing on started to change.

I looked at the shore and in the clear cold air of winter panic, I calculated how long I had to get to the bank of the pond divided by how fast the ice was breaking and came up with a totally unknown quantity.

The spell broke and I dashed back to the shore. I never fell through the ice. If I had been older and heavier I never would have stepped through the ice on the shallow shore on my first step. If I was younger and lighter, I would have been safe on the ice.

I’m remembering that moment now looking at the flaw in the monocrystal of the spaceviewing window in front of me. It’s creaking its way across the glass with questing fingers that look like crystal tree branches growing in stuttering time lapse.

With a sharp intake of breath, I run. The alarm sounds on my first step towards the deck doors. I know the emergency shutter seals are going to come crashing down the millisecond they detect a drop in pressure.

I’m screaming like I didn’t know I could as I leap and dive through the doors into the hallway. The blast door comes down suddenly to cut off the doorway. There is a moment of silence. A second later, the blast door stiffens with a bang as the window on the other side blows out.

This is an old ship. I’m gasping and crying as I get to my feet and the emergency crews arrive. I swear if I see the engineer in next few hours, I won’t be legally responsible for the bodily harm I inflict on him. I cannot wait to dock and get off this ancient freighter.

Author : Thomas Desrochers

We’ve turned into such a peaceful race. We are so… So… Dull. We never fight any more, wars are a thing of the past. Even violent crime seems to have just disappeared. The typical city needs, maybe, one law enforcement officer per every million people.

Yes, violence has been replaced with communication, war with learning, militaries with space programs. Children listen and want to learn, science and math are favorites among them.

This is a problem. English and music have been usurped, and nobody cares about history any more. Culture is non-existent. Media is simply news. Radio is just an information exchange system. There is no music any more, except for what people play in their suits, and even then it’s mindless three- and four-note “techno,” a mockery of the music it was derived from.

I am not alone in my thoughts. There are others who agree with me – very few, but they are there. There’s Andrew, he writes music. He’s the only one out of all humanity who still does. Then there’s his wife, Anne. She paints. Her friend, Eilene, also paints. The three of them live together on The Subcontinent. I live on the west part of Continent B, with Marcus, Dominic, and Sheila. Marcus likes to work clay, Dominic makes sculptures. Sheila and I are just along for the ride.

See, none of us can get any inspiration from the blandness around us. There is no nature anymore, it was wiped out long ago in the name of humanity. The oceans are tamed, the weather under our control and as magical as a door. So we get our inspiration from people. We get people to show real, genuine emotion.

It’s very easy to draw them out of all that contrived peacefulness. After all, their suits connect directly to their brains. With some simple hacking we have direct control of their thoughts, emotions, and senses – most of which we don’t even need.

Our latest kill was a wonderful example of how we work. It was a young girl named Ana near here who is much like all of her peers, striving to excel in mathematics and science, her suit doing its job and regulating hormones quite well. The seven of us, myself, Marcus, Andrew, we all connect our systems together. Then Marcus sends out a feeler to make contact with the girl’s system.

Once we have a connection the seven of us mentally destroy her firewalls and silence any warning systems, in the space of about a second. Then we start pumping her full of hormones, and she very quickly becomes unstable. After that it’s simple. We just plant thoughts that she wouldn’t normally think, and she thinks she’s the one thinking them. Before long Ana decides she shouldn’t be alive any more.

Ana was quite creative. Instead of the usual “Jumping off a building” or “Forcing suit shutdown” she opened up a transformer and shoved her head inside it.

And God, that was so good, feeling the abrupt end when she did it. Andrew wrote a symphony that night, Dominic matched DaVinci – It was a wonderful night for their creativity.

And me? I rode that lovely buzz and philosophized. I thought about Secular Humanism that night, pondered the idea that all people are fundamentally good. I don’t believe it. If people were good they would have let the violence continue.

Luckily for them there’s still a few of us right-minded people left.

God, I do love that rush.

Author : Waldo van der Waal

Nobody warned me about the pain. Creeping from your brain and slowly extending to every bloody nerve-ending. Hot acid makes way for molten lava before the really hot stuff arrives. A million tiny needles prod at every part of your body. From the inside outwards and from the outside in, right into each atom that makes you what you are. Feeble movements of your fingertips are as much as you can muster. There’s nothing to do but scream until your throat bleeds. Nothing to do but wait. Nobody warned me about the pain.

They didn’t warn me because they probably didn’t know. Not at the time, anyway. Back then it was all smiles and champagne and fancy pens to sign the contract. Their office looked like the Ritz and their salesman – his name escapes me while I scream some more – their saleman was glib and self-assured and just a little cocky. And I fell for it. I took the diamond-encrusted Waterman and signed on the dotten line. And I gave them access to my First Bank of the Confederation account. It all sounded to good to be true. But their scientists must’ve known. Maybe they even knew themselves.

Things actually started going wrong some 872 years ago. That’s when I pinged the numbers in the Quadrant Lottomax – the only winner out of nearly 12 billion entires. What are the chances? It was a rollover, and I didn’t get rich from it. I got mind bogglingly, stupidly, richer-than-Zaphod-himself rich. Started snorting caviar because I could. Used chapmagne to brush my teeth. Bought anything I could see, including Pluto. And had a lot of money left over.

The only thing that was running out for me was time. I was 88 when the last lotto ball fell into place, matching my numbers. I aged considerably when I saw the result, sure, but realistically closing time was, uh, closing in on me. So I found a public terminal and did a bit of searching. Found the guys with the Ritz office and the fancy pens, who said they could make me live forever. They had tested it on rats and pigs and it worked.

So I climbed into the dewar they prepared – didn’t even wait to die. They said if I waited, I might be too far from their facility when the time came. So I went willingly while they pumped my body full of stuff. Cold stuff. I don’t remember dying, but my mind didn’t switch off completely. Blackness, but with peripheral dreams, if that makes sense. Lots of it.

I don’t know how much time passed, but it was a stack. Then, last week I became aware of the pain. My eyes started focussing and I saw a note pasted to the faceplate of my dewar. “Cryogenic reversal starting. Good luck.” Good luck? Then came the torture. Even through the thick sides of my casket, I can hear other screams. I hear more and more of them every day, but I haven’t heard one of them stop yet.

Needles filled with poison assault me constantly. They tested it, they had said. It worked, they had said. But surely they must have known. And not one of the bastards told me about the fucking pain.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Walter had felt cold before, but nothing like this. In the hours since sundown the temperature had dropped steadily, but in the last hundred yards it had been dropping twice as fast.

He had to find shelter quickly or risk freezing to death.

Cresting a small hill, Walter came upon a door stuck as if by accident in the side of a tall snow drift. A smooth metal oval was clearly cut into the side of a wall buried in the ice. Walter, too cold and desperate to be cautious simply pushed on it, and when it retracted out of his way, he fell in a heap to the floor inside.

Walter struggled to regain his footing, and with difficulty managed to stand. Turning, he realized the oval shape had closed behind him, sealing him off from the cold and the wind outside.

Before him a round tunnel stretched away, smooth walled and featureless.

Walter cleared his throat noisily and was startled by a voice.

“Come, come, bring it to us please.”

The sound was nothing if not unnerving.

Realizing there was nowhere to go but on, he walked slowly down the passageway until it emptied out into a large squashed spherical chamber. This space, unlike the stark emptiness of the hall was filled with clutter. Quilts of earth toned fabric hung in sheets from the walls and ceiling, thrown over climbing rope that was looped through pitons hammered haphazardly around the room. Carefully sorted piles of canned goods, glass and other equipment decorated the floor. In the shadows of the perimeter he could make out what looked like long bolts of cotton.

Something moved, and Walter’s attention snapped to it, heart pounding.

“Warm, warm, it comes to us warm.”

The speaking shape resolved into that of an old woman, only the sagging skin of her head and hands were visible from a cavernous patchwork gown. Her hair was filthy and drawn back in a long ponytail, her forehead expansive above brow-less eyes.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Walter spoke slowly, “but it’s bloody cold outside and I was afraid I might freeze to death.”

The strange woman tugged at her forearms through her sleeves, the skin of her hands pulling taught and then falling slack again as she let go.

“Cold outside, cold inside, we takes the heat from where we can, far away and far below,” the woman smiled, her mouth a black toothless gash in her face, “we’re so happy you’ve come.”

Walter felt his stomach turn, empty though it was.

Walter began to back towards the mouth of the tunnel as the woman dropped her arms to her sides. One of her hands fell away, and Walter realized they weren’t hands, but rather gloves made of skin. Turning to run, he tripped over one of the bundles on the floor, falling hard and hearing the sound of breaking bone. When pain didn’t follow, he looked to see broken bone protruding not from his leg, but from the white mass on the floor.

“All the warm stays with us.” Walter whipped around to find the creature standing over him, the braided wig slipped sideways now at an impossible angle. The face was that of a woman, but pulled over something else as a mask. It moved impossibly fast as he tried to scramble for the tunnel, the arms  clamped onto him, pulling him toward it. He screamed as it reared up on it’s hind six legs and spun him round and round into a long bundle of sticky silk. By the time it bound his face, his voice had left him.

Walter could feel it drop him and skitter away across the floor. He only hoped he could freeze to death before it got hungry.

Author : John Logan

At 34 years old, I was in bad shape. Sixty pounds over weight and wheezing like a dying man every time I trudged up a flight of stairs. The cigarettes didn’t help. My wife, Claire, constantly nagged at me to stop. She hated the smell. I also drank heavily. I’d abused my body. I was a wreck, a biological time bomb just waiting to explode. The day of reckoning finally arrived when I dropped off Claire at her office and moments later was clutching my chest while trying to breath through the intense pain.

Somehow I survived the ordeal. Angina they told me. After recovering, my physician insisted I visit one of the New Life clinics. I took his advice and ignored the financial grumblings of my wife. That’s when my life changed drastically.

I’d always been skeptical of their ads. “Take back your life, you deserve it!” said their slogan. They promised a total body transformation. And what did I have to do? Nothing. The tech at the clinic went through the details with me, I signed the papers and the next day lumbered into their lab room where a slab of metal awaited. Next to it, a man laid completely naked and deep in slumber.

“That him?” I asked.

“Yup, your trainer, Mike, he’s the best,” said the tech. “He’ll take over your body and get you into top shape. You’ll feel like a new man, mark my words.”

He was a fine specimen, rippling torso and bulging biceps.

I mimicked Mike’s posture and lay down on my own slab while feeling self-conscious of the rolls of fat that wobbled over my unseemly gait.

“See you in six months,” said the tech and smiled.

Syringes filled with colored liquid descended and the world turned dark.

#

I woke.

A voice beckoned me to sit up. I hunched my shoulders, expecting old pains to return. None came. My abdomen felt taut and strong as I sat up effortlessly. The room was a touch cold and for the first time I looked down at the gooseflesh skin covering my biceps. They were thick, powerful and vascular, like they’d been when I was an athlete in my teens. My breathing was steady, my mood pleasantly euphoric.

“Bad news I’m afraid,” said the tech who appraised me with a furrowed brow.

I shifted from the slab, marveling at how fluid my body moved, how light I felt with each step. “Bad news?” I laughed. “But I feel fantastic!”

The grave expression the tech returned cut short my pleasant mood. “What happened?” I asked. A feeling of apprehension began to worm its way under my skin.

“It concerns your wife.”

“Is she ok?”

The tech paused. “I’m afraid she committed suicide last night.”

“What?” I shouted and swayed slightly as though slapped in the face. “How?”

“Mike, your trainer, evaluated your lifestyle and determined that your wife was the main factor in your poor health. Five months ago, he divorced her.”

“What the hell?” I shouted louder. I heard my knuckles crack. “You can’t do that.”

The tech looked apologetic. “It’s in the contract,” he said then sighed. “Look, for what it’s worth I’m sorry for your loss but just look at you now. Mike made you his masterpiece.”

He gestured to a mirror. I turned and stared in amazement. Mike really had turned me around. “I suppose it is time to move on,” I said and my thoughts drifted to a cute twenty-something I’d had my eye on at work but never had the confidence to approach, until now.

Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer

Drop capsules are virtually impregnable to anything man or xeno can throw at them. They have consistently proven themselves many times in combat under the onslaught of increasingly sophisticated weaponry.

We don’t feel anything during a drop since we are in complete stasis until planetfall. Hell, we really don’t exist until we smack into whatever little dirtball we are fighting on. I am basically a holographic version of myself that coalesces into a brave, stolid, exceptionally handsome Lieutenant of the Alliance; or whatever passes for handsome on the planet I slam into.

I began to feel my senses flooding into my new body. I caught a glimpse of myself on the mirror bright inside surface of the capsules leaf before it peeled away. On this planet, handsome apparently runs to the dark, squat and lumpy. In short, I became an anthropomorphized turd. Oh well, I’ve been worse. Ask my ex-wives.

I opened my neural band and scanned for my drop group. No signal. That’s impossible. If they were dead, I’d still pick up the static from their bands. I couldn’t even raise the orbiting ship. Something was seriously wrong. I grabbed for my weapon, determined to find my men in this thick jungle. My plaz weapon wasn’t there.

“What the hell is going on here?” To my ears, my voice resembled large boulders crushing a family of terrified and generally pissed off cats. I thought back to my orders. To my shock, I realized I had no orders. Or at least I had no memory of my orders. I had no memory of the ship, of downloading into the cube, nor even of prepping for this mission. I had no clue who I was, where I was, and the means of my delivery in the drop capsule were already quickly fading from memory.

Panic began to well up within me. “Okay, okay. Calm down. You’ve been in worse scrapes than this. You’ll get through it. Rely on your training.” I reached back to the years of military training I had undergone. What training? I wasn’t even sure what army I was in, or who I fought for.

This wasn’t making any sense. I was on a planet that must have resembled Venus before the greenhouse effect went into overdrive. Through the dense foliage I could see more turd-people moving towards me through the thick, barrel-like trees. Were these my men?

The creatures gathered around me and one by one, embraced me with their thick rubbery arms. They began to make a low noise deep in their throats. Again the sound of very tired, but still pissed pussy cats being pummelled in a landslide, washed over me. It felt strangely soothing.

I crouched down on my stubby haunches and tried to make sense of all this while the others continued to stroke my back and make consoling noises at me. Suddenly, I felt as if my skull had been ripped open and was blinded by a wonderfully painful flash of light.

A man in the uniform of a Confederation colonel, appeared in my pain wracked brain. “Lieutenant Ito Yokamiso of the Asiatic Alliance; for the high crime of genocide against the innocent civilian families of the Confederation colony on Europa, you are hereby sentenced to 300 years exile on the penal planet of Thulcandra. May God have mercy on your soul.” My memories flooded back.

Crooning their consoling wails, my fellow inmates led me to a ramshackle collection of hut’s that would be my home for the next three centuries. I lowered my head in shame.

Who knew turds could cry?

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

Jason Hausen studied the 3D holograph of the star Adhara in the constellation Canis Major. Imbedded within the image were the telemetry tracks of the two dozen spaceships that had entered the star system in the last 20 years. Entered, but not exited, noted Hausen. In each case, the ships changed course to either spiral into the system, or to double back after having originally passed it by. “They appear to be landing on the second planet,” observed Hausen.

“That’s our guess too,” replied Kirk Lido, the operations director of Galactic Transportation Inc. “But that planet was not the destination of any of our vessels. We’re not sure why they deviated from their flight plans. In fact, we lost subspace communication once they approached within a light year of Adhara.”

“Perhaps they were seized by pirates?” suggested Hausen.

“No, we’ve ruled that out. There was no evidence of any other ships in the area, and their warp trails didn’t show any sign of resisting a tractor beam or gravity well. Apparently, they flew there of their own volition. We suspect the crew was irresistibly drawn to the planet, not unlike how the mythical Greek Sirens lured sailors to their deaths on the rocky coast of Anthemusa.”

“I’d prefer to believe in a more scientific explanation,” replied Hausen. “Anyway, what does this have to do with me?”

“Well, to be perfectly frank, Mr. Hausen, with your remarkable reputation, we want you to captain the research ship that we plan to send to Adhara.”

Always up to a challenge, Hausen took the bait, “I’m listening.”

“Excellent. Well, we’ve constructed a unique ship for your mission. For the lack of a better description, the HMS Alecto is a one-man interstellar tank. You’ll be in command, but the ship will be run by autonomous robots. In the event that the Sirens, if they exist, manage to take control of your mind, the robots have been programmed to ignore your orders and return the ship to base. I know, I know,” added Lido, anticipating a confrontation, “nobody wants to relinquish command, but believe me, it’s for your own protection. Consider it a fail-safe contingency plan. If you’re right, and the Sirens don’t exist, then you’ll maintain command.”

“Relax, Lido. It will be worth the risk just to prove you wrong. Now, let’s have a look at this ship.”

***

“Lido, I’m almost within a light year of Adhara, so we’ll probably be losing contact. Just so you know, the first pass will be a fly-by at two times the orbital radius. I’ll simply fly through the system. I’ll call you after I emerge on the far side of the black-out region.”

“Roger, Jason. Good luck.”

As the HMS Alecto approached Adhara, the robot helmsman altered course toward the second planet. “What are you doing?” barked Hausen. “Return to the original course.” But the robot didn’t comply. When Hausen stood up to approach the helm, two robots flanked him and forced him back into his seat. “Hausen to computer, override the helm. Return to base immediately. That’s an order.” But the ship continued toward the planet. When two more robots surrounded him he realized Lido was partially right. There were Sirens on Adhara, but their songs weren’t intended for human ears.

Author : K.S. Kim

It’s certainly nothing new. Shipping off the old to make way for the new. They used to call them homes for the elderly. They would have them everywhere, just to make it easier for the younger generation to pursue their everyday lives and goals, without having to care for the increasingly longer living old.

“It only makes sense to let us care for your elderly.”

The man on the soft screen was trying to convince my son to send me away. It made my blood boil. It wasn’t fair.

“…so offer nutri-solutions and muscle stimulants to encourage the revitalization and rejuvenation of dead or dying ce…”

I wasn’t even paying attention. My son’s eyes and ears, on the other hand, were glued to him, a sign of respect I wish he gave me sometimes.

“…ave the state-of-the-art virtual plane if your elderly prefers to experience life to it’s fullest but are physically unab…”

Oh yeah, sure, take all that anti-age tech that my generation heralded to try and make it seem any less cruel. My son sure seems to appreciate the idyllic image of an army of old minds in young bodies running freely on a farm somewhere. My parents used to tell me that my dog was running around free on a farm somewhere too. I found out that they had to put Koenig down. It was a lie to make my seven year old self feel better.

I wonder if my son realizes that they plan on putting me down.

“…ment plans are flexible and based on your insurances and current…”

Though, I guess I’ve lived long enough. I’ve spent the last four decades on the GenShip, “Malenfant”. My son must have grown tired of having his father haunt his every step.

“…ply for a Virtual Manifest in our systems if you ever want to visit. It’s very convenient and comes included with the Uploaded Legacy Packa…”

Great! Now their talking about making a damned copy of my mind?

“…chever decision you make, we suggest you move quickly. Your father’s brain is deteriorating quickly. He’s starting to show signs of the Ancestry Disease. That’s most likely thanks to the fact your father’s anti-aging involve a good deal of out-dated methods and from using expi…”

He’s bad-mouthing the tech that helped him make a business. If it wasn’t for our generation and our discoveries, you wouldn’t even be alive today. I swear, this generation has no respect for what came before. They only care about what comes after.

“…emory loss is usually the first major thing we notice. It’s okay though, we’ve seen this very often and we can restore much and continually maintain the rest of their mind. We just have to upload him before he get’s stuck in a repeating loop. Otherwise, even in a digital state, he may forever be stu…”

It’s certainly nothing new. Shipping off the old to make way for the new. They used to call them homes for the elderly. They would have them everywhere, just to make it easier for the younger generation to pursue their every… wait. This seems familiar…

But I wasn’t even paying attention anymore.

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Jeanine walked the length of her racer, running her bare hand across the seams, feeling for any fastener stressed out of place, trying to get a sense of any uneasiness in the craft. She paused and read the name stenciled down the side, “Spirit of America : Ultra III”.

“Craig ran the Spirit to four hundred miles an hour in nineteen sixty three.” Jeanine talked over her shoulder to the small group of friends and family that had gathered on the Salt Flats to cheer her on. “In sixty three, Corvettes were pushing one hundred forty, maybe one fifty miles per hour. Breedlove took her to four.

The fifty foot long silver tube lay slung between four tall skinny wheels at the end of axels shaped like aircraft wings. The cockpit was barely a sliver disrupting the graceful arc of the craft ahead of the massive intake ports and menacing teeth of the turbines.

“He almost got to seven hundred before he crashed. Might have gotten eight if he’d had a better day.”

The salt crunched softly under her boots as she continued her walk around, pausing at the tail of the craft to pull away the exhaust cover and hand it off to a ready set of hands. Deep inside the heart of the new Spirit was an engine that had been liberated from a research facility near Black Rock. The exact circumstances of its disappearance were unknown, but it had arrived at her shop late one night by trailer, an unusual hybrid of conventional jet technology and something she’d never seen before. She could tell it was something special and asked no questions.

The engineering of the jet tech graft made it fairly straight forward for her and her crew to swap it in, replacing the GE turbojet that had to that point powered her Spirit, and many Spirits before.

“I’ll bet we break a thousand miles an hour today.” Jeanine’s grin split her face between the ears, eyes sparkling as she ran her hand across the edge of the exhaust nozzle. “A thousand easy.”

Her reflective demeanor gave way to one of purpose, and Jeanine collected gloves and her helmet from a crew member, waved at the nervous and fidgeting crowd and slipped into the cockpit of The Spirit.

There was a rumble, then a whine steadily increasing in pitch as the turbine came to life. The crowd hastily pulled on headsets or covered their ears and moved away as Jeanine rolled the Spirit out onto the flats to line up her run.

The noise was deafening, and The Spirit almost disappeared in the haze of exhaust gasses heating the space behind her.

“Ok baby, let’s show ‘em what we’ve got.”

She pushed the throttle forward, holding wheels steady and straight with both feet braced against the steering pedals. On the dash, streams of data flashed by as the onboard systems reported the state of virtually every component, and every compensation or adjustment of her course.

Her suit adjusted pressure in step with the rising force of acceleration, and she pushed the throttle farther still, watching the ground slip past outside in a smear. Five hundred miles an hour flashed past in an instant, eight hundred an instant later. The thousand mile an hour milestone came and went and still the craft was surging forward, wanting to go further, faster.

Jeanine’s hands were frozen on the throttles, pushing them hard against the forward locks. She’d never felt such emotion in her entire life. They’d done it, pushed The Spirit back on top of the record books.

From the ground, the crowd watched the glimmering point of light streak across the flats before nosing up and tearing a hole in the midday sky.

There was a rapid series of snaps, then The Spirit left earth bound for the heavens.

Author : W. Kevin Christian

Damn it, he thought. The delirium had stopped. Again he felt the pain and heat. Burning, sizzling, scorching heat, like tar on a summer sidewalk.

It was the middle of the third week. Changes had begun innocently enough around day three. A little fatigue, a headache, a bit of a cough. Nothing much. Nothing he couldn’t handle anyway. But now . . . now he felt as if he had eaten the Devil’s heart for breakfast.

$150,000! God I’m a cheap bastard, he thought.

He had done many stupid things for a quick buck, but this was far and away his masterpiece. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, it did with odds like he had anyway. His chance of winning was 78 percent for God’s sake! He didn’t have to do anything either. He just had to avoid doing one thing. Dying. Billions of people did it every day.

He had felt like a dangers-be-damned pioneer making a mad dash for free land. He remembered the quiet, smoldering excitement as the needle had pricked his arm. He had been terrified, ecstatic, anxious, remorseful and everything in between. $150,000! And all he had to do was live? In three to four weeks he would be back to his old self, he had thought, puttering around the house like normal people do. Not the house for long, though. He would buy something new. A down payment on something big and regal, something he could raise a family in one day. But not for one day—for many years. Many long, happy, Hallmark years full of golden turkeys, training wheels, and scraped knees. And all for a month’s work? He would have been stupid not to take the deal.

Plus, he would be famous.

Now the ceiling camera buzzed and blinked as it zoomed in. On 166 million television screens across America human beings watched sweat pour down his forehead. His blue eyes had turned the darkest shade of gray.

166 million American television screens cut to a commercial for fabric softener. The ad had cost its maker dearly. Airtime for such a highly rated show was extremely valuable, after all.

The lights shimmered and melted before his eyes. “150,000 dollars!” he muttered to himself with a gurgle or chuckle.

When 166 million television screens cut back the misery had left his eyes. The delirium had returned.

The corner of every television screen displayed his heart rate. It was starting to look irregular. It would jump up a bit and then come back down. Meanwhile, the sweat continued to pour.

He mumbled various nonsense as a thin, yellowish liquid slithered down his chin. “I like it in blue, but I can still see how you’d like the green,” he said. “What’s wrong with leather? I can pull it off . . . Typhoid? That’s still around? . . . I think I’ll get the lobster! I can afford it now . . . Let’s go skydiving! You only live once, right?”

His eyes rolled into the back of his head. Suddenly his heart rate tore up to 200 beats per minute and he convulsed violently as blood bubbled from his lips.

“150,000 dollars!” he screamed. “But that’s a 300,000 dollar value!”

Author : Phill English

We welcome. They are quickening their destruction of planets at an exponential pace.

We acknowledge. But what can be done? We encouraged their growth, gifted them technology that could build worlds. They were only exerting their free will by opposing our wishes.

We accept. Nevertheless, the destruction must cease. The planets are the three-dimensional extrusions of our energy source. If they are destroyed, thus are we.

We agree. But what can be done to halt their wave of ruin? We are not able to manifest in the physical realm and those who receive our inspiration are burned as heretics.

We are aware. However, we believe there is an expedient solution to their expansion.

We inquire. What knowledge is known that grants insight into this problem?

We reveal. They worship their weapons as religious fanatics. An entire society centred around the power of utter annihilation that our weapons have granted them. They have forgotten the ways of hand-to-hand combat. Another species could invade them with few casualties.

We are thoughtful. The introduction of one species to control another. We concur with your proposed action. Which control species is appropriate for our needs?

We are grateful. There is a species that excels in such matters. They require less than a century’s guidance to place them at the level of the Varlaxx.

We are impressed. There are no other parameters that might halt their subsumption of the troublesome race?

We are proud. None that are known and therefore none that are knowable.

We are satisfied. Encourage these ‘Terrans’ to take up arms against the Varlaxx.

We begin. Observe our preservation.

* * *

We welcome. The Terrans have not solved the problem in the way that was expected.

We acknowledge. Their expansion was unforeseen. Their uncontrolled breeding has spread a blight over a greater number of planets than even the Varlaxx could extinguish.

We are distraught. Their abuse has diminished us. They arrive on paradise and within a few short millennia have reduced its wonder to a landscape of dust.

We grieve. They know not what they do.

We die. There is nothing left.

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

I remember entering the room. I was eighteen, cold, naked except for the paper underwear, bred for this and still nervous. I suppose terrified is more apt. Even after the rigorous physical training I was still very skinny. My breathing came in quick gasps as I struggled not to cross my arms or shiver. I came to a stop and stood at attention in the middle of the circular metal trapdoor grill, my shaved skull glinting in the spotlight. I was barefoot. My identification tattoos and punishment wires were out there for all to see. Gooseflesh ran over me and I could see the little puffs of my breath. Primed and ready. The drugs they had given me this morning to ease the transition were working. I felt more alert and attentive than ever. I felt curious about the future, eager to take part and slightly dreamy. Itchy.

A blue light scanned up, over and through me.

I saw some indicators come up on the panels in the darkness just like in the instructional videos.

Green circles skittered across all of the terminals. I’d been confirmed and we were a go.

I wish I could say I felt the moist eyes of my family and friends staring out hopefully from the observation enclosure. This was a proud day for most people. Most families gave one kid up to the SAPCorps. If you gave a child to the SAPCorps, it meant more birthing privileges.

However, SAPCorps was also the country’s orphanage. In some cases, it was also the juvenile detention center. I could still remember the day when I found out that this wasn’t a hospital and that my parents and sister were gone. That was ten years ago. The doctor who had told me also remembered, I think, going by the fact that he had requested to pull the lever for me on this occasion.

He looked down at me. Doctor Fines. My stepfather, for lack of a better word.

He twitched a smile at me. We were being monitored but other than that, it was just the two of us. I stood in the middle of the trapdoor. Our relationship had always been antagonistic but defined and limited. I don’t think anyone on the outside world would have referred to him as paternal but he was the closest I had.

“David.” He said. He nodded at me.

“Sir.” I replied. I stared straight ahead, willing him to get this underway.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Absolutely sir. Let’s do it.” I replied. I trembled a little.

“Here we go. I hope that…well. Here we go.” He said and flexed his hand on the handle.

He yanked back.

The trapdoor opened and I fell.

————————-

I look down at my skin and see the moonlight reflect off its purple brick-like surface. I see the little octagons that my pores have become breathing in the night air. I was a lucky one. My transformation turned out to be beneficial to the military. I’m dwarfstar dense with my human intelligence retained. Most conventional projectile weapons can’t harm me. I don’t have internal organs. It’s been this way for eleven years now.

I’m standing in the rain in the night time graveyard beside the grave of Dr. Fines. He died two days ago. I can’t define what I’m feeling. His death was sudden and I didn’t find out immediately. He was my last tie to my humanity. The last person who could remember who I was ‘before’.

I turn and walk away into the night and return to base.