This free passage was promised to all. Only, no one knew when or where. It just happened to come when we, Mr and Mrs Jones, were the other side of the world! We were on a special holiday, in deepest Asia. Typical! It kicked off on the day we planned to meet the staff at the orphanage our church sponsored. This holiday was going to last much longer than we imagined. Not all my family were with my hubby and me; just our youngest, Fran and her mate, Kate.
But some couldn’t take it, couldn’t believe in a free lunch never mind free passage! It was just the same here as at home. They were like our neighbours. We were in unfamiliar territory. It was expected to be hot but not this hot! This was stifling, stinking and burning. There in front of our four-wheeled vehicle was an erupting volcano. We didn’t realise it hadn’t been active for years. Our native tour rep panicked. He turned the Land Rover and expected us to go with him. But through the translation headphones we were fed lies…
January 4, 2010
An excerpt from “Paradise Lost. Not!” by Fiona Linday
November 23, 2009
An excerpt from “Gone, But Not Forgotten” by J.F. Juzwik
Below is an excerpt from “Gone, But Not Forgotten” by J.F. Juzwik.
“He knew the woman was dead before she hit the ground. Even though her throat had been deeply slashed, the amount of blood still surprised and sickened him. As he watched her fall, he realized he too was being watched. He turned and ran from the darkened alleyway onto the busy thoroughfare, narrowly avoiding the oncoming traffic. Horns blared, brakes squealed, but he found safe harbor in an unlocked delivery entrance to one of the many downtown food suppliers’ warehouses. He glanced quickly through a crack in the door, and saw he had not been followed. No one would know that it was he in the alley. He took his handkerchief from his shirt pocket, wiped his face and blotted his shirt and pants to remove the blood that had splattered when she was first cut. Perhaps he should just walk home instead of taking the transit; less noticeable that way. He put his handkerchief back in his pocket so he could discard it at home; leaving it here would only bring disaster to his doorstep. They would be on him within the hour because of the DNA. He decided he would wait a few more minutes before he ventured back out on the street. He reached for his wallet to see if he had enough coins for a coffee from one of the sidewalk dispensers, but found his pants pocket was torn and his wallet was nowhere to be found. He frantically turned all his pockets inside out, but knew exactly what had happened. When he had turned to run down the alley, he had run into a pipe sticking out of the wall and got his suit caught up on it. When he had pulled to free himself, the pocket had torn and his wallet had fallen out. His wallet, with his identi-card inside, that contained his name, address, photo, fingerprints, DNA strip… Now, there would be no just walking away.”
November 8, 2009
October 23, 2009
October 16, 2009
Excerpt from “Transition” by Bill Kirton
- Transition by Bill Kirton
Way back at the start of the century, the role-playing sites had been a revelation. People had thrown themselves into them, become slaves. masters, warlords – even poets, God help them. They’d fallen in love, married, indulged in sexual gymnastics totally incompatible with their physical condition and levels of attractiveness. And many of them had been broken when they found that the magic and freedoms they enjoyed in their virtual worlds just refused to transfer to their everyday routines.
But evolution got faster: the servers got bigger, the online experiences became even more realistic and the headsets, with their visual and olfactory sophistication, transported wearers into a virtuality which moved closer and closer to the real.
For Jez, it still wasn’t fast enough. It struck home one day in May. After breakfast he’d put on his headset and logged in to AD, which is what everyone now called Alternative Dimension. There, he was Gabriel, master of Glentyre. He harnessed his unicorn, rode it through the lava flow, left it tied up outside the Sistine Chapel while he ducked inside to fuck a wolf he’d met the previous evening in Chicago. It wasn’t special but the wolf was grateful. On the way back to his ranch on the plateau, he stopped briefly to release a tree elf from a rock in which she’d been locked by a guy with one silver wing sticking out of his forehead. She was grateful, too. The day had started well.
When he got home, his neighbour Gerry, a homosexual giraffe whose aspirations to be a DJ had so far been wrecked by the fact that he had no microphone or deck, was outside, doing his Tai Chi.
‘Hey Gerry,’ said Gabriel.
The giraffe ignored him as he moved his neck slowly from one side of his garden to the other. Gabriel stepped back as it hovered over him and, yet again, plummeted off his footpath to the floor of the ravine six thousand feet below. He always did that. It was so tedious. He got up, dusted his jacket down and flew back up. For maybe the hundredth time, he sighed at the predictability of AD and made a mental note to move the path away from the edge.
Inside the house, Derek, his stone gargoyle, was sweeping and dusting as usual. His welcome greeting sounded hollow.
‘Good morning, master. What is your pleasure?’
In the early days, before voice activation, Gabriel had smiled as he saw the words come up on the screen. Then the boredom had set in and he’d given him various answers.
‘World domination.’
‘Sex with a mushroom.’
‘Peanut butter with nipples.’
‘Tongueless cunnilingus.’
Derek had no sense of humour. His reply never varied.
‘The master has excellent taste.’
Bill Kirton.
Web: http://www.bill-kirton.co.uk/
Twitter @carver22
October 1, 2009
Excerpt from “The Gardener” by Fergus Neff
Taku
Taku from "The Gardener" - Illustration; Keith O'Connor
The man crossed the room, stood before Argarrai and spoke with a soft engaging voice, conveying more than direct translation.
“My name is Taku.” he said.
He looked out the window to where the lights of a ship could be seen slowly ascending through the atmosphere from the nearby space port. Argarrai had spent most of his professional life there.
“When I was young, I was like you, I viewed things the same way and my life was not unlike yours. I felt curiosity burning inside whenever I looked into the night sky. Interstellar travel was well established when I was born. My people had escaped gravity to explore our local space. Eventually reaching beyond our physical limits to travel intergalactic distances, using different scales of time and life. Ship after ship went into the darkness in search of universal answers. We found other civilisations, new materials and technologies but the simple questions remained.”
He paused.
“I would battle with what I was, what my world was, what my people were and simply, why?”
He looked at his hands as if first noticing them, glanced briefly at Argarrai and returned his gaze
to the stars.
“It was a long time ago”
The words “long time” were emphasised. The stranger was intriguing but there was something
odd, something that made Argarrai uncomfortable, he was too familiar.
“Who are you?”
The words rasped. Argarrai’s chest rose and fell rapidly, the sweat on his brow glistened as
breathing became more difficult. His toes were outlined, involuntarily clenching and unclenching
against the sheets.
“I have little time for new friends or flippant conversation.”
His eyes glistened with amusement; even on his death bed a little sarcasm could be served. His mind was clear and curious. This was how he had always felt! A sense of deep frustration at his place in the universe. A successful professional life and overcoming personal tragedy to raise his daughter Sen, were universally trivial – it was all constrained within a painfully minimal context and had little to do with the surrounding world, the planet he grew up on, the solar system, the galactic arm, deep space and the expanding universe beyond. In short – what was the bloody point?
Taku smiled kindly, apparently sensing Argarrai’s thoughts. He leaned further forward,
chuckling.
“Yes, you are just like me”
“You know that it is your time to die and you desperately want answers. For that you must live
much, much longer. You must look into the night sky and see more than stars.”
–
Maybe Tomorrow: @mayb2morrow
Fergus Neff: @chillyspoon
Illustration of Taku for The Gardener by Keith O’Connor – Aug 2009.
September 28, 2009
Excerpt from “Life” by Sheila Deeth
Life
It was supposed to be the highlight of her career, an alien planet, as foreign as it gets. But the air in her helmet was stale as a college dorm at 10 a.m. The gloves and boots sealed her from touch; not a co-ed dorm in that case. And she felt like a walking machine. Rough fabric crinkled and squeaked round arms and legs as if she were still back home in the water-tank. Someone had scrubbed the scenery off the walls and scattered rocks on the tiles.
Forget looking for alien life, Jen thought. She wasn’t even sure there were humans here.
Twitter: @mayb2morrow
September 23, 2009
Excerpt from “Deathless” by Carole Gill
The following is an excerpt from “Deathless” by Carole Gill.
“It is the year 2299.
Death has ceased to exist.
There are almost no births—over seventy percent of the population is sterile. A genetic outcome of past history.
There is no disease of any kind.
The eco wars of two hundred years ago caused society to virtually breakdown.
Disease killed three billion people, approximately half of earth’s population.
Those who survived faced great hardship.
Extraterrestrials, already familiar with ancient earth exploration, developed colonies here.
They became the Guardians.
Astute scholars of ancient biblical history—they began to re-establish God Centers for the betterment of humankind.
Eventually they withdrew themselves.
More recently, human-alien hybrid Guardians have taken their place.
My treatise on our history.
I am a scholar and documenter, employed at the Center for Archeological Studies in Zone 29.
I am at my place of work when two Guardians come into see me.
They inform me that my son Corsco 123 has requested a life termination.
Such requests are rare.
We ride to the Great Hall in their flytram. There is little or no conversation.
I have been to the Great Hall previously–once when my birth provider and I married and once to hand over the infant for education and treatment. Treatment consisting of cyclic vaccination therapy. Preventative medicine thus enabling immortality.
I am handed over to two different Guardians. They are from the Office of Termination.
The door is opened and I am asked to sit at a desk. Facing me is a familiar slogan:
The all loving spirit of God comforts us all.
A motto—but never something I questioned. For I have always been an obedient citizen. A willing participant in the world I knew to be mine.
My name is Arbin 157. I am 157 years old.
“You have been informed?”
“Yes, I was told my son seeks termination.”
“That’s quite true. How do you feel about that?”
“I should like to speak with him!”
One of the Guardians cuts me off.
“It will not be necessary. His termination was approved and he’s already been euthanized.”
His words hit me hard. I stutter.
“But surely I should have had an opportunity to speak with him.”
“No. The procedure was carried out yesterday. His remains are in transport.”
I didn’t speak for some time. But only squirmed under their watchful gaze—glancing up every so often at the slogan.
I couldn’t understand his action. Our world was perfect—every desire catered for. We knew neither sickness nor death. No war had been fought within living memory.
Finally, I managed to speak.
“What reasons did he give?”
“He said he was ready. That was all he said.””
